#i hope this series goes seven games because it's going to be absolute comedy

[ponytailcoby]

I love how everyone on my tl who aren't Warriors or Lakers fans are either loving this match-up or are preparing to stay off Twitter until the series is over 😂

[words-writ-in-starlight]

hey star! i’m thinking about watching (listening to?) taz, but i know absolutely nothing about it except that it might be vaguely related to some brothers called the mcelroys? and that they have something to do with critical role and a bunch of other podcasts. should i watch/listen to (is it a podcast too?) taz, why is there “adventure” and “amnesty” and etc, and what do the mcelroys have to do with anything? thank you and i hope the job is going well!

OKAY, so, The Adventure Zone (TAZ) is a DnD podcast done by the three McElroy brothers (that’s said “Mackle-roy,” btw, not “Mick-elroy”), Justin (oldest), Travis (middlest), and Griffin (youngest and DM), and their dad.  I unconditionally recommend it as some of the best, funniest comedy I’ve ever encountered, as a genuinely good and heartwarming narrative that brought me to tears more than once, and also just as...like...sometimes a bitch wants to enjoy media that centers around a family that actually loves and enjoys each other as people.  If that last sounds like your cup of tea, I recommend the entire McElroy podcast empire (that’s a separate post), but ESPECIALLY The Adventure Zone.  

Now, in terms of DnD, a lot of people are nervous about starting TAZ because they associate DnD with a very rules-heavy exhaustive kind of activity, which they assume will be zero fun whatsoever.  Now, I...play a lot of DnD, so that wasn’t really a concern for me.  Regardless, the McElroys absolutely do not understand the rules of DnD and have never allowed a rule to stop them from making a good joke or having a good time, and frankly I think that is a totally valid way to play the game!  It’s also extremely accessible to people who may not have ever played DnD before, because hey, half the cast has no idea which dice to roll at any given moment.  They are right there with you.  Go forth.

(On the other hand, if you HAVE played DnD before and you don’t mind committing yourself to an ungodly amount of content, I whole-heartedly recommend Critical Role!  It is a YouTube series that also exists as a podcast, both equally fun ways to consume the material.  The seven players and DM are all famous voice actors that you have definitely heard in something somewhere, their characters are fucking clutch, and they play a much more rules-heavy game, classic in every way right down to the dungeons and dragons, that is a ton of fun.  The main reason I usually tell people to start with TAZ, however, is this: TAZ episodes run about an hour, with few exceptions, and release every other week.  Critical Role episodes average four hours and release weekly.  So if you have that kind of time, that’s awesome, absolutely do it!  I’ve finally started watching through their first campaign and it’s great, I’m mostly caught up on their current campaign and it’s also great.  Watching their DM work is just...competence porn, and the characters are fucking destroying me in both campaigns.  TAZ is more approachable in terms of content volume, though.)

Narratively speaking, you should start at the beginning of TAZ, at the start of their Balance campaign.  You asked about the “Amnesty” thing, and this is your answer--you can’t run a DnD campaign forever, all stories end eventually, so their first campaign that kicked off the podcast is called “Balance” and is 69 episodes long.  If you hear people talking about Taako, Magnus, Merle, “the seven birds”, etc, those are all from Balance.  Then they ran some mini campaigns where they tried new stuff out, specifically “Commitment” and “Dust,” and then they settled on “Amnesty” as their new campaign.  Each campaign is set in a totally different world with wildly different rules and they’re all pretty radical, but here’s a short breakdown:

BALANCE: It’s fucking DnD, babes (although remarkably short on both dungeons and dragons).  They fight goblins, they get magic items, they have a wizard and a fighter and a cleric.  They go to the moon to join a secret society and get in a deadly car battlewagon race, there are liches and time loops and Wheels of Misfortune, there’s a giant mindwiping jellyfish and Garfield the Deals Warlock.  There are elevators.  ...okay, so they get pretty far from your traditional DnD universe build, the universe gets weird pretty quick, but like.  Just trust me, get a good giggle out of two or three arcs worth of dick jokes, and then buckle in for the emotional shit.

COMMITMENT: A superhero mini-campaign!  Three people get superpowers from their place of business and trash shit at an abandoned amusement park, it’s a good time.

DUST: Urban fantasy old Western murder mystery.  What else do I even need to say, honestly.

AMNESTY: The new arc!  If Supernatural took place in small-town West Virginia where half the monsters were pretty chill actually and the cast was Sketchy Con Man With Car, Long-Suffering Chosen Forest Ranger, and Punk Magical Bisexual With Pet Rabbit.  This one has a much more cohesive aesthetic than Balance, but I love it anyway.  

TLDR: yes you SHOULD listen to The Adventure Zone.  It’s hilarious when they’re busy telling dick jokes at first, and heartwrenching when they realize they have the ability to get heartwrenching, and those two things happen within minutes of each other more often than not.  And if you have gotten this far and you are sitting there thinking “Huh, this is weird, normally this is where Star goes the fuck Off about pitching the narrative,” it’s a DnD game! They go on quests to find shit!  There are seven shits to find!  They have mixed success at finding the shit!  What do you want from me!  

Oh, also, something that I have come to really appreciate lately: the McElroys put a lot of work into being funny without being mean.  Balance and Amnesty and the mini campaigns are all diverse, enjoyable universes, the punchline of a joke is never “ha ha, that person is [whatever]”, queer characters live long badass lives--I dunno, this might not matter to people, but I just find it incredibly restful.  Four cis white heterosexual men are not necessarily who I expected to provide that restful universe, but damned if they didn’t deliver in spades.  Plant your gays in healthy topsoil and water regularly and you too could mysteriously end up on the NYT bestseller list.

[robedisimo]

“It Rhymes”: Cascading Character Roles Across the Star Wars Trilogies [PART I]

[Disclaimer: PART III of this post chain contains speculation and theories about the upcoming Star Wars – The Last Jedi that, if correct, would count as SPOILERS. While it’s unlikely that my musings are 100% accurate, keep that in mind if your intention is to go into the film completely blind.]

1. Modern fiction and the monomyth

When questioned about the repeating themes and story beats in his two Star Wars trilogies, George Lucas once famously replied: “It’s like poetry; it rhymes”.

View it as a statement on conscious creative methodology or as a middling excuse for predictability, the result doesn’t change: the Star Wars franchise is a creature of recurring plot points and character types, echoing from one iteration to the next in a never-ending cycle of repetition. Which isn’t really surprising when you take into account Lucas’s outstated inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a 1949 400-page essay on the nature and journey of the archetypal hero throughout ancient-world mythologies.

The so-called “monomyth” outlined by Campbell’s influential study hinges on simple narrative categories so engrained into our collective fiction-churning society that we instinctively recognise them wherever they’re used, whether we realise it or not: if a piece of modern fiction incorporates these elements its flavour and texture are those of a “classic”; if it doesn’t, they aren’t. Simple as that.

It’s not even a matter of quality, either. Have these narrative elements endured the test of time because they’re demonstrably better than others? Are they incessantly repeated because they’re iconic, or are they iconic because they’re incessantly repeated? Whatever the case, we’ve seen them so many times in so many different – yet not-so-different – permutations that each new iteration feels like coming back to the same, familiar story, the One Grand Tale mankind has been telling itself for the past four millennia at the very least.

Virtually all pieces of contemporary fiction that proved able to take root in our collective subconscious – what we call “pop culture” – share these same archetypal themes, story arcs and character moulds: properties such as the original Matrix, the Lord of the Rings books and films and the ongoing myth-spinning relay that are superhero comic-books all tapped into that same potential for endless recycling of pre-existing narrative categories.

Yet none leaned into it so hard, and so successfully, than the Star Wars franchise. Its staying power as a modern mythology for the 20th century and beyond is peerless. Is its adherence to the formula uncovered by Campbell a stroke of foresight-imbued genius, or the lucky side-effect of a pedestrian imitation game? I’m afraid we’ll never know for sure, but the results are so self-evident as to make that point entirely moot.

2. Narrative roles in the Star Wars mythology: the Original Trilogy

What’s most interesting, however, isn’t just how Star Wars recycles age-old narrative tropes, but rather how those tropes cascade from one trilogy into another. The now three-trilogies-spanning franchise has shaped into a monomyth all its own, built on a singular story being told and re-told multiple times through a specific set of internal rules.

The first of those rules – I use the term loosely; I’m not trying to pass my musings as exact science here, merely pointing out patterns where they seem to arise – concerns the story and the narrative categories that allow it to function. These categories were established in the Original Trilogy comprised of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but as you’ll see they can be readily applied to later permutations of the franchise.

At the best of my current ability to analyse the topic, the main character roles that allow the plot of a Star Wars trilogy to hold itself together boil down to seven specific archetypes, loosely defined as follows:

the Selfless Hero – Pretty much what it says on the tin. The Hero is the main active force of good in the story, propelling the plot forwards through a series of choices primarily motivated by altruism. They’re less prone to take part in comedy scenes, and when they do it’s mostly through quipping rather than practical gags.

the Rogue – Coming from a dangerous background, their motives are often dubious. Unruly and undisciplined, they initially align with the “good guys” out of self-interest, and tend to be motivated (even in their positive choices) by personal feelings and attachments rather than by interest in a greater cause of universal good. Among the three protagonists they’re the most likely to take part in physical comedy.

the Warrior Princess – Strong and independent (often to the point of overconfidence) they nonetheless tend to require a lot of rescuing. As noble as the Hero but less misguided in their choices, they serve as the story’s moral anchor. They’re the least likely member of the protagonist trio to get involved in comedy relief.

the Mentor – The Hero’s first teacher and tutor. Killed by the Dark Knight by the end of the first chapter, to form a grudge between the protagonist and main antagonist and to act as an inspirational moral compass.

the Sage – A secondary instructor to the Hero, acting as a connecting figure to past lore greater than the story’s present concerns.

the Dark Knight – The story’s active antagonist, pursuing the protagonists and representing a physical menace. Caught in the middle of a personal character arc that puts them on an eventual course of collision with the Dark Lord.

the Dark Lord – The story’s passive antagonist, acting as a behind-the-scenes mastermind. Less physically involved in battle, they represent an almost incorporeal, abstract concept of evil to be defeated at all costs, portrayed with fewer human qualities than the Dark Knight, if any at all. Much like the Sage, their character is already formed and undergoes no meaningful variation throughout the trilogy.

As far as the monomyth is concerned, the Original Trilogy is by far the most classical of the Star Wars iterations. Its themes and aesthetic – as alluded to in my choice of terminology – lean heavily into archetypal sword-and-sorcery elements: a farm boy with a greater destiny is led by a wizard to the rescue of a captive princess, held prisoner by an evil wizard-king and his right-hand black knight.

As such, it’s also easiest to make the OT’s cast of characters fall neatly into our grid. Here’s how (right-click and “show picture” or “open in new tab” to expand):

3. The Prequel Trilogy: recurring motifs and variation

Things get more interesting as we “backtrack forward”, as it were, to find ourselves in Prequel Trilogy waters. The prequels are a fairly different affair from Episodes IV through VI, but while the substance and setting of their narrative arc play to a different tune from what made the original Star Wars films what they were, the character types inhabiting that narrative are very, very familiar.

The formula we defined when looking at the Original Trilogy can be seen at play here with several overlapping points and a few key variations, first and foremost in the fact that this time around the Selfless Hero isn’t the main protagonist: the prequels’ focus, in accordance with their darker story arc, instead falls on the Rogue, personified by the younger Anakin.

Plot-wise – and also character-wise; more on this in Part 2 of this post chain – the Rogue is defined by change. They start in one position and often end at the opposite end of the spectrum. Han enters the Original Trilogy as a scoundrel and a street rat, and exits it as a decorated hero on track to marry into royalty. Anakin’s arc leads him from slavery – a position of absolute lack of power – to the heights of Force-infused might, from good to evil, and from hope to despair.

All that lays the groundwork for his transition into the Original Trilogy’s main antagonist, creating a precedent for the Hero and the Rogue falling on opposing sides of the good/bad moral axis as they trade their spot in one trilogy’s trio of protagonists for one of the four other positions in the character ladder. This will be a very important point as our analysis moves into predictive territory.

The other roles are filled in with ease... save for one: the Dark Knight category is, admittedly, a bit of a contended spot. In my mind, the Knight is the “villain with an arc”: their motivations – and even their ultimate alignment – change throughout the trilogy they inhabit, whereas the Dark Lord looms as an immutable agent of evil whose personal goals and inclinations are pretty much set in stone.

It could be argued that Palpatine ends up filling the role, as his arc as a villain is at least as well-explored as Vader’s was in the Original Trilogy films; still, as compelling as his final transition from Sheev Palpatine to a full-fledged Darth Sidious is, he only half-fits the bill. More importantly, his role in the prequels’ overarching plotline is clearly more suitably tailored on the “mastermind in the shadows” archetype, a dead ringer for the Dark Lord label.

So the Dark Knight spot is possibly meant to be left vacant, at least if we only take the films as our frame of reference. Instead, things get a lot clearer if we turn our attention towards the additional material provided by the – entirely canonical, unlike the rest of the now-scrapped Expanded Universe – Clone Wars and Rebels animated shows, where Darth Maul is not only revealed to have survived the end of The Phantom Menace, but also goes on to have a complex and extensive character arc.

I don’t agree with the entirety of Belated Media’s What if the Star Wars Prequels Were Good? YouTube series, but I absolutely concur that treating Maul, Dooku and Grievous as interchangeable pawns in Palpatine’s scheme was a major mistake that would’ve been sorted out by simply giving Maul a more developed story arc beyond Episode I. The Clone Wars and Rebels do exactly that and, wouldn’t you know it, his journey begins by killing the Mentor (Qui-Gon Jinn) and ends with him turning against his former master, the exact same arc followed by Vader in the Original Trilogy.

Now that’s what I call a Dark Knight. Our character role chart, thus informed, shapes up as follows:

At this point I’ve hopefully managed to provide you with a solid enough grasp of the system’s general bases. We’re going to need that as we head forward into a second tier of analysis: how plot mechanics interact with character dynamics.

[ NEXT – Thematic classes and the Sequel Trilogy ]

[sleepykittypaws]

Best and Worst of 2019

With Christmas content increasing exponentially year over year (e.g. 84 new made-for-TV movies on cable/Netflix in 2018 vs 121 this season), it seems like we’ll never run out of holiday viewing to rate and review.

2019 saw a staggering 171 new movies debut on broadcast, cable, streaming or VOD, with 15-20 more theatrical releases, plus dozens of series and specials. There were so many new movie options this season, I kept a real-time ranking, for the first time ever.

All told, well more than 350 new holiday-themed viewing options aired in 2019, with no end to the escalation in sight. No one could possibly even begin to tackle them all, but of the 50-plus new, or new-to-me, things I watched this season (starting, for the first time, way back in October), here’s what I felt made for the best and worst holiday viewing in 2019…

Best Made-for-TV Holiday Movie of 2019

This category was basically a dead heat between the well-made, and heart-tugging, Holiday for Heroes on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, the only Hallmark movie this season I can say I really enjoyed, and the Hilarie Burton vehicle A Christmas Wish, on Lifetime. In the end, I had more fun watching the latter, so I’m giving Wish the slight edge, but Heroes, as manipulative and predictable as it was, did make me cry at least three times, so it’s hard to quantify.

The dark horse here is Greyson Family Christmas from Bounce TV, a network I never even knew existed before watching this. Greyson was smart and sweet, and though I know it probably had half the budget of even a Hallmark or Lifetime cheapie, it was very well done, with a great cast. A sequel may be in the works, according to producers, so 🤞.

Lastly, whatever Lifetime does next season, they need to keep Emily Moss Wilson happy, because she produced my two favorite movies on the net, directing and co-writing both Wish and Christmas in Louisiana.

Top 10 made-for-TV Christmas Movies of 2019

A Christmas Wish, Lifetime

Holiday for Heroes, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries

Greyson Family Christmas, Bounce TV

Christmas in Louisiana, Lifetime

Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas, Freeform

Christmas Belles, BET

Holiday in the Wild, Netflix

Turkey Drop, Freeform

Twas the Chaos Before Christmas, BET

Sweet Mountain Christmas, Lifetime

Between Hallmark and Lifetime I managed to watch 14 of their 70 (!!) movies, 4 of which (3 Lifetime, 1 Hallmark) made my top 10. There was a much better return-on-investment for Freeform and BET, who produced only 3 and 4 new movies, respectively, but both had 2 that I felt ranked in that top group. Bounce only had 2 total, with 1 showing up here. 

All of that to say…Quantity often seems to come at the expense of quality, and I’m not talking about financial investment, since the budget for Bounce and BET movies is probably half that of Hallmark’s average, if not less. But regardless of overall budget, it seems the more movies a network makes, the less attention—in production, editing, script development, etc.—each can receive. I may have liked more on Lifetime (though I also watched more there), but I definitely think the toll of the numbers increase is showing on both Hallmark and Lifetime. 

One area where Lifetime, and every other channel for that matter, absolutely outshines Hallmark, is in diversity, both in front of and behind the camera. 

Best Theatrical Holiday Movie of 2019

The gorgeous 2D animation of the destined-to-be-a-classic Klaus just edges out the big-budget, superhero with holiday heart, action movie Shazam! at the top of my list, but there were more great, theatrical-quality Christmas movies out there to enjoy than ever before.

For instance, the West Viriginia-set indie, Feast of the Seven Fishes, was a made-on-a-shoestring, holiday delight, which will definitely get repeat viewings for us.

Klaus, Shazam! and Fishes were my three favorite, new holiday movies of the year, of any genre.  

Top 5 Theatrical Holiday Movies of 2019

Klaus, theatrical/Netflix

Shazam!, theatrical

Feast of the Seven Fishes, limited theatrical/VOD

Noelle, Disney+

Let It Snow, Netflix

And that list doesn’t even touch on movies that weren’t specifically Christmas-themed, but either prominently featured the holiday in key moments (what I call “stealth” Christmas movies), for example Hustlers, or that weren’t about Christmas, but had a holiday-appropriate, snowy vibe, like Disney+’s extraordinary adventure film Togo, or DreamWorks’ Abominable. All three of which would have ranked quite highly had I considered them.

Best Holiday Special of 2019

One in four Brits watched the Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special on Christmas Day. That the latest chapter in the classic series, which last aired a decade ago, felt like such a seamless continuation of the story and characters after so long, is impressive, as was the actors’ ability to recapture that Barry Island vibe without missing a beat.

Though the rest of the series is also available on Hulu and Amazon Prime for Americans, it was Britbox that made this available to U.S. viewers the same day as in the U.K. Watching it inspired me to go back and binge the entire series, and I have to say I think it was even better the second time around. Watching the original series finale and then the 2019 special just minutes apart, I couldn’t help but notice how seamlessly the continuity held up. And, having recently seen the whole thing again, meant I picked up on some inside jokes and Easter Eggs in the special I’d missed the first time ‘round. I truly hope this isn’t the last we see of the Shipman-West and Jenkins-Smith families, but, if is the end, it were “lush,” as Stacey would say.

Honorable mention in this category goes to Netflix’s A Family Reunion Christmas. Wasn’t sure what to expect, having never seen the series it’s based on, but this was a a cute, kid-friendly lark my whole family enjoyed. Not to mention showing off how much more comedy Tia Mowry-Hardrict is capable of than she's allowed to show in her Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies.

A late breaking addition to this category is Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings: Two Doors Down. It’s not so much what you’d call “good,” per se, but it is the cheese-y, feel-good, Queer-centric holiday romance featuring Dolly Parton singing Auld Lange Syne I think we all needed. 

Best Holiday Series of 2019

Even though though Fox seemed to have no faith in The Moodys (Christmas), burning it off over three non-consecutive  nights, I really enjoyed this American remake of the Austrian original, A Moody Christmas. (Update: Folks at Fox are at least teasing the idea of renewal.)

Fox marketing for this was so convoluted they couldn’t even seem to settle on a name. Was it The Moodys? Or The Moodys Christmas? Don’t ask the network, because they’re definitely not sure, even just based on their own graphics.

Despite all that, Dennis Leary and Elizabeth Perkins were awesome as the parents, and we laughed a lot at this series that also had plenty of heart. The action did feel rushed in a way the original, set over years, not days, did not, but both series are well worth watching, and you can find both seasons of the Oz original on Acorn.

Best Holiday Reality Series of 2019

Yep, there’s now so much holiday TV, that we have not only a “best series” category, but also a “best reality series” category. It’s bonkers! 

A word that also aptly describes Freeform’s deceptively simple Wrap Battle, a gift-wrapping reality show. Yeah, you not only heard that premise correctly, but it actually ended up being good. Plot twist! 

Fresh, fun and inventive, Wrap Battle had enough snark to be snappy, but not so much that it felt un-festive. Exquisitely cast—why, I ask the universe, isn’t Carson Kressley hosting absolutely everything?—this even inspired my 12-year-old to up his own gift-wrapping game. We were opening pleated and fanned presents all of December 25.

Best New-to-Me Holiday Discovery of 2019

I didn’t get to Lifetime’s 2018 acquisition, Christmas Perfection, now available on Hulu, last season, but if I had it would have easily challenged for, and likely even won, my best-of-2018. (Coincidentally, my selected favorite, Every Other Holiday, was another movie acquired by Lifetime. Whoever was picking these last year, really deserves a raise.)

Perfection’s story of a Christmas junkie transported into her idyll Christmas village was smartly written and great at poking holiday movie tropes, while still being an absolute delight of a Christmas movie in and of itself. So much more fun than this year’s A Christmas Movie Christmas.

Honorable mention in this category goes to the sweet, gentle 2018 animated feature, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, which our entire family enjoyed on Christmas Eve. It’s a very different take than the 1966 special, with the Grinch more misunderstood than truly misanthrope, but it’s one of those sure to grow in popularity in coming seasons.

I also finally watched the 2011, Hallmark favorite-of-many Trading Christmas, and while it won’t enter my personal pantheon of made-for-TV favorites, it certainly highlights how different Hallmark has become in recent years. This G-rated movie actually allowed adults to act like, well, adults, which sounds basic, but is a pretty dramatic difference from what we see on the network today.

Best Holiday Network of 2019

If I could only have access to one content creator for the holiday season—my Desert Island Network—I’d have to pick Netflix, which has a large variety of both originals and classics, and is making some of the most interesting and high quality Christmas content out there. One of things I think is so smart about Netflix’s holiday strategy, is not only are they working to make something to please all types of Christmas fans (cheesy rom-coms, YA, animation, reality, sitcoms and serious foreign fare), but they also continue to release non-holiday stuff throughout November and December. Netflix, unlike others, seems to get that variety really is the spice of life. 

And, the streamer isn’t stopping anytime soon. Netflix already has a full slate of 2020 holiday delights lined up.

An honorable mention goes to Amazon Prime, which has limited original holiday options, but a deep, deep bench of classics, often not available anywhere else, which keep expanding each year. I wish some of these more esoteric options were easier to find on the Prime service, but if you’re willing to dig, there’s more available to watch then you’d find time for in 10 holidays. 

Well, that’s it for the season’s superlatives, now on to my more Grinch-worthy gripes…

Worst Made-for-TV Holiday Movie of 2019

Rarely have two such talented and sparkly actors, including personal favorite Ashley Williams, come together to make something as dull and nonsensical as Hallmark Movies & Mysteries' Holiday Hearts. Even by Hallmark standards this was poorly plotted, badly decorated and with a set-up so stupid even preschoolers were rolling their eyes. Not to mention product placement so glaring, the Balsam Hill boxes were probably higher on the call sheet than poor Paul Campbell.

Not that the awfulness was confined to Hallmark. Netflix produced a real dud with Holiday Rush, made doubly disappointing because everyone involved—Romany Malco, Darlene Love, Deon Cole—are usually very good, plus this was the streamer’s first Black holiday film. Unfortunate failure, to say the least.

Only movies I actually watched all the way through are eligible for this “honor,” so we won’t even discuss the half dozen Hallmark and Lifetime titles I bailed on at the 15 or 20 minute mark, or knew not to even try to watch, but suffice to say it’s clear that the answer to the annual question of if we actually need 121 new Christmas romances a season is a resounding, ‘NO!’

Worst Theatrical Holiday Movie of 2019

If you’d told me in August that I’d be naming Last Christmas as my least-favorite theatrical holiday film of the season, I’d have called you a liar.

As it goes, I didn’t hate this Emilia Clarke-Henry Golding romance, and even  rated theatrical-ish movies Christmas Survival (Released in UK theaters last year as Surviving Christmas with the Relatives) and The Turkey Bowl (day and date limited theatrical and VOD release), well behind Last Christmas, but there was unquestionably no movie I was more disappointed in.

And, while it’s quite possible I could soften on this one with repeat holiday viewings (something that has certainly occurred before), there was no film I was more looking forward to more in 2019, yet I left feeling flat and spent the next few days mentally re-editing Last Christmas to make it all I think it could have been. 

I still adore these actors, particularly Golding and Emma Thompson, as well as director Paul Feig���Just really wish this had been the new holiday classic I’d hoped for, and still feel like it could have been. Last Christmas had all the elements right there, it just didn’t deploy them well. At all. 

Worst Holiday Special of 2019

Sadly, Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot has had more lows than highs, despite big budgets and great casts, but the Christmas-themed episode, A Traveler, released in April, is a shadow of the far-superior The Monsters are Due on Maple Street it attempts to invoke, making it my least favorite of the season.

That is, if you don’t count the BBC’s A Berry Royal Christmas which is dead boring and utterly unnecessary in every sense—but, since it isn’t yet technically available in the U.S. (though it’s very easy to find, in full, online), I didn’t think it should count. (That’s also why I didn’t officially review it; Though, if I had, it would have received no paws.)

Lastly, if I could have watched more than 10 minutes of the deeply uninteresting, somewhat unsettling and unrelentingly gaudy, Holiday with the Houghs, on NBC, it probably would have danced away with this category. (TL; DR: I disliked it a lot.)

Worst Holiday Series of 2019

I was really looking forward to Netflix’s Merry Happy Whatever. It had a great cast—I’m particularly partial to Dennis Quaid—and I’ve long loved the idea of a holiday-themed sitcom. But, even though it covered much of the same dysfunctional family ground as my favorite this season, The Moodys Christmas, Merry Happy never stopped feeling forced and lifeless. 

A big factor in that was the overwhelming, and never-not-intrusive, laugh track, which ruined whatever slight charm the series might have otherwise offered. The writing also really let down these talented actors, as the jokes were as pained as the canned laughter that followed them.

Worst Holiday Reality Series of 2019

Nickelodon’s Top Elf had the potential to be a holiday-themed Making It for the younger set, but just fell short on every level. Poorly executed and badly cast, this one was a DOA dud.

Speaking of Making It…NBC’s decision to burn off their second season of this charming crafting competition and call it holiday programming really seemed to sell short not only the series as a whole, but the concept, which would have been perfectly poised to pull off a season of holiday-themed challenges, a la ABC’s The Great American Baking Show: Holiday Edition, now in its 5th season. No idea why NBC can’t make something this delightful a ratings hit, but suspect it’s much more about the network, than the series itself.

Worst New-to-Me Holiday Discovery of 2019

I actually didn’t endure much awful content from yesteryear this season, perhaps because I didn’t find myself with much time to watch content past, thanks to so much new fare on offer.

But I can’t say I much enjoyed the 2006 BBC three-episode, holiday-themed series, The Worst Week of My Life Christmas (2006)—available, along with the show’s two other, non-holiday seasons, on Acorn. The first episode is kind of fun, but the the main character quickly runs the joke of his horrifically bad luck into the ground. His choices are never-not infuriating, plus he has so few redeeming personal qualities it’s hard to imagine why anyone would put up him for an instant, let alone a lifetime. 

The comedy is broad and slapstick and I quickly grew exhausted with both the character and the premise. Hate that Alison Steadman, so lively and fun on Gavin & Stacey, is stuck being the hapless, uptight matriarch here.

Worst Holiday Network of 2019

What’s the flip side of a Desert Island Network? A Demented Island Network, perhaps? Whatever you call it, the one channel I’d hate to be stuck with for the holiday season is now, hands down, the Hallmark Channel. Not only do I seemingly enjoy their new offerings less each year, the utter sameness of the content would drive me batty if I had to watch it non-stop. 

Every new offering on these channels I once really loved now seems so bland, boring and utterly the same I could easily have missed everything they offered in 2019 and been fine with it. It hasn’t always been this way, as there’s been plenty on Hallmark I’ve loved in the past, but the network’s tastes and mine have been diverging for a while now. And that’s without even discussing the channel’s ever more cringe-worthy and backwards politics. 

So, that wraps it up. Congratulations to us all on surviving another holiday viewing season. It sure doesn’t look like 2020 is likely to slow down when it comes to Christmas content, so we’ll see how much longer I can try to keep up, as I’ve been considering at least taking a few steps back from this hobby that’s somehow morphed into an unpaid side job.

 Whatever the New Year brings, here are cheers to you and yours in 2020.  

[meaeris]

So Far Away

Chap 1 | Chap 2 | Chap 3 | Chap 4 | Chap 5 Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Series - Fluff, Comedy, will get Angst

Summary: You are a happy-go-lucky rookie director, and you couldn’t know that your new job in a visual and design agency would bring you to directly work with the famous idol group “BTS”. You couldn’t neither imagine that you would grow fond of one of the members, the hot-headed and peculiar rapper Min Yoongi.

A/N: Second chapter, it took less time than expected haha. Thank you for your patience. First interactions with the boys. I’ll use Korean honorifics from now on, to make it more realistic. Please support!

CHAPTER 2 First Words

They arrived at the BigHit building at midday. At the entrance they were welcomed by the manager, Seijin, who invited them to follow him inside. (Yn) still couldn't believe that she would have met a group of idols, and not a random one, but those taking over the music industry at those precise days.

They entered a large room with some sofas and a coffee table in the center. It had to be the hall where everyone reunited. As the three guests crossed the door, a dozen heads turned to them and rose from the sofas. (Yn) was sweating cold trying to stay calm and composed. - Here you are, welcome - said a tall, robust man, - Oh, I don't remember seeing you before. When (Yn) realized he was referring to her, she bowed and showed off her best smile. - I am the new apprentice of H.C., my name is (Yn) (sn). I can't wait to work with you. - Same here. I am Bang Sihyuk, and this is my colleague P-Dogg, we are both BTS producers. And these are our successful guys. The seven stars bowed simultaneously. They presented one by one, but (yn) kind of remembered their names before. Kim Seokjin. Min Yoongi. Jung Hoseok. Kim Namjoon. Park Jimin. Kim Taehyung. Jeon Jungkook.  

- I propose to go have lunch and in the meantime we’ll decide what to do, - Namjoon, the leader of the group, suggested, with whom everyone agreed. (Yn) knew that eating was a big issue for Korean culture, especially for bonding and business topics. She had to get that through. They chose a local restaurant, however her stomach was completely closed, so she just ordered simple kimbap. By avoiding the confused looks of the presents, she pretended to be satisfied.   - (Yn) (sn), can I ask you where you're from? - Kim Taehyung asked with a radiant smile.   - (YC). And please you all can just call me (yn). - Oh! Seems nice. We could go there someday, (Yn). - Ready to be your own personal guide! Taewon, her colleague, was visibly disappointed. - How do you think to get full with a single kimbap plate?   (Yn) laughed. - I'm not very hungry today.  - It's not good for your health, though. Don't skip meals - suggested Taehyung, and (yn) nodded. The afternoon heat didn't help (YN) to stay focused, indeed it made her even more nervous. (Yn) was sitting right in front of Kim Taehyung and Min Yoongi. Beside here, there was the reassuring presence of Taewon, who even though she had just met, she knew she could rely on. - So how long have you been here? - Taehyung asked to break the ice, and (yn) was grateful for it.   - Since yesterday? Immediately after I got to the office. I'll have time to be a tourist during the weekend, hopefully.   - Great! I hope you will like Seoul.   - I don't doubt it. It's completely different from my country, in a good way.   - It would be nice to be able to visit (YC) one day. I think it would be a fun experience, - Min Yoongi suggested, to which Taehyung nodded eagerly. To her eye, among all the members, the dark-haired rapper was the only one to have risen her curiosity. He was often described as the serious, silent and lazy type, but she could see that those voices were only partially correct. He didn't seem to have any problems in making a conversation, even though he kept a stoic expression or just kept it short. 

Looking away, her eyes fell on the shirt wore by the person to the right of Taehyung, Jeon Jungkook.   - Jungkook-ssi, cool T-shirt, I had one like that myself, until it was ruined in the waching machine... The boy first looked at the shirt, then at Yoongi and then at (yn), taken aback. He scratched his head with his hand, a gesture that (yn) found extremely cute.   - Oh, do you know Overwatch?   - Of course, I also played it for a while, until I realized I was a noob with that kind of games. At this point the conversation was geared. Jungkook seemed happy to have found a person with similar interests. Taehyung and Yoongi were happy to see their maknae comfortable. (Yn) also found out he was her age, which made them feel embarrassed for having used formal language all the time. Lunch went on from one chat to another and at one point Bang PD intervened for the real business. He began to describe the first ideas for the new album he was already working on, and (yn) and his colleagues intervened to suggest or correct some of the proposals. H.C. would have set up some storyboards and as soon as they were approved, the shooting would have begun.

The group split up very early, especially because of the very tight schedule of the boys.   - I hope to meet you again. Don't work too hard - (yn) said to them, bowing. She sincerely had fun. - Same goes for you, - Namjoon said with a smile. Back in the agency, Hyeonsoo sat to his working place and turned to (yn).   - What do you think about it?   - About what? The work, the boys or lunch? Hyeonsoo laughed. - Everything. Do you already have any suggestions for the new MV?   - While they were talking, some idea popped in mind, but very vague. I should write something down. The director nodded delightedly. - Then you already know what to do. After gathering all possible ideas, we will make a briefing and put together the best projects. Hyeonsoo handed some documents to (yn).   - These are the instructions Bang-PD gave us, it contains also the elements that he absolutely wants to be present in the project, everything else is entrusted to our creativity. (Yn) nodded enthusiastically and grabbed the papers. - I'll get to work right away.   - Do not overdo it, after all it's your first day and for now I just want to see how you work.   - I'll try.

To Be Continued...

[cherrystreet]

"should we just search romantic comedies on netflix and see what we find?" so, i totally come to you with every fic idea that pops into my head. but like, i reeeally need little snippets of the times harry and louis decide to put on netflix. like, after takeout arrives or for movie night with the lads or to pick a new show to watch because they just finished the office (us version this time). or even when they're bickering and get passive aggressive over what to watch for said movie night

This is a little different than what you wanted but that’s only because I don’t know how to write domestic pieces so I hope this is okay and ily xx

It didn’t start as a routine.

The first time it happened, it was a Tuesday night filled with too much homework, the October weather already too cold for Harry’s liking. The blinking cursor on a blank Word document seemed to be mocking him, laughing at his inability to form a cohesive thought after working nonstop for the past four hours. Eventually, he abandoned his endless string of papers, walking aimlessly around his apartment for the better part of an hour in an attempt to find something better than writing 5,000 words on Game Theory. Nothing jumped out at him, so he continued to shuffle around, sighing obnoxiously, until his roommate Sam hollered from the other room, “If you don’t cut it with those pathetic noises, I’m going to punch you in the throat.”

Harry frowned. “I’m not even being loud,” he yelled back.

“Shut up and do your homework.”

“But my brain is fried–”

“Harry, enough.”

“Ugh.” He kicked off his shoes and slumped down onto the couch, staring at the clock as the minute hand steadily ticked forward. Somehow, watching time was more appealing than reopening up his laptop and forcing himself to write another word.

Sam was right. Absolutely pathetic.

“What should I do?” he asked after a few minutes, eyes nearly glazed over.

“The fuck should I know,” Sam replied, finally appearing around the corner. “Go down to the Hub.”

“It’s too cold out for that. And it’s raining.”

“Order some food.”

“I don’t have any money on me.”

“Watch a movie.”

“Nothing good is on.”

“How would you even know?! The TV is off!”

Harry shrugged. “Gimme your Netflix password. Maybe new stuff has been added.”

“Will you finally stop talking?”

“Maybe.”

Sam reached for the remote to the TV. “Thank God.”

 It took about 17 minutes of “Chopped” for Harry to send out a text to everyone he could think of, a simple Come over. Everyone’s here. He didn’t want to sit alone, just wanted to unwind with the company of some friends. Sam was clearly no help, just kept yelling from his bedroom to keep the volume down, that “some people actually take their classes seriously, Harry.” And saying that everyone was already gathered together wasn’t technically a lie. Sam was there. And his fish. And the cast of “The Office,” currently streaming from the main TV in the living room.

Whatever. Semantics. People would be there shortly. People to talk to him and not tell him to shut up.

Twenty minutes later, Louis was standing in front of Harry, sweatpants too big and glasses smudged.

“Shut up,” he said, tugging on his hoodie strings. “What is this?!”

So much for that, Harry thought. “What?”

“You said people were here. It’s just you.”

“Is that so bad?”

“If I wanted to spend the night doing nothing and listening to someone drone on and on about nothing, I’d put on a Bob Ross special.”

Harry furrowed his brow. “Bob Ross is extremely talented…”

“Bob Ross is dead. And boring. And he never would have tricked me into coming here on a shitty Tuesday night under false pretenses.”

“I thought other people would show up!” He squished deeper into the couch cushions. “You gonna leave?”

Louis groaned and kicked Harry’s shoes out of the way as he climbed onto the couch beside him. “No. I came all the way here.”

“It’s, like, a nine minute walk…”

“Yeah, nine minutes in the wind and rain. You better have food as compensation. And why the fuck are you watching the British version of ‘The Office’? Why do you hate yourself? Give me the remote.”

Harry shook his head, standing up to grab snacks, wondering how constant abuse was the better alternative to staring idly at the wall.

The following Tuesday, Harry turned in his biochemistry assignment early, cracking his knuckles as soon as he his submit. It felt good to get rid of a week’s worth of studying, to not have to look at it anymore, and he slipped out of his jeans and into his most worn pair of pajama pants, the hole in the knee stretching with every wash. It didn’t take long for the couch to mold perfectly to his body, the apartment warm and quiet, Sam out for the evening. It was relaxing. It was welcoming. It was. Not what Harry wanted.

“Hey, I’ll order pizza,” he said through the phone’s receiver. “Dominos, if you want it.”

“I always want it,” Louis replied. “Cheap shot.”

“Pepperoni?”

“Ugh, Harry, can’t Steve Carell wait? We know what happens.”

“But it’s my favorite episode and I wanna watch you watch it.”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“I’ve never seen you watch it, though. Lou, they have a fucking benefit for rabies. Rabies. I need to see your face when Michael donates a giant check to a disease that’s already been cured.”

“Oh my God,” Louis snorted, but Harry could tell he was wearing him down. “Alright, whatever, fine, but make sure it’s extra cheese with the pepperoni.”

 Seven days later, Harry did much less arm twisting, just casually mentioning they were up to the start of season five. Louis texted back, Don’t start without me. I’ll know if you’re lying.

Harry sucked in his cheeks, smile worming its way out, anyway. Wouldn’t dream of it.

The last Tuesday of the month, Louis was knocking on Harry’s door without bothering to ask if he was busy. Harry let him in graciously, snacks already on the coffee table and blankets on the arm of the couch.

And just like that, Tuesday became Harry’s favorite day of the week.

It’s been five months since Harry and Louis created their non-date date night, and they’ve gone through nearly everything on the Netflix list that moderately sparks their interest. Comedies, dramas, documentaries, musicals… They’ve watched them all, not too picky, hunkering down together to enjoy a casual night of TV. And neither one of them got bored of it, never asking to cut the night short or go out to do something else. Harry loves having the time to unwind, loves the fact that he has something so comfortable to count on, loves Louis’ company more than just about anything.

And that’s why he snaps when Louis doesn’t show up on Tuesday night in late March, the Netflix home screen nearly burned onto Harry’s retinas, waiting for Louis to walk through the door and pick the movie. He taps his fingers along his thighs, annoyed, wondering where the hell he could be. Nine o’clock comes and goes, as does ten o’clock, and by 11:30, “The Holiday” playing quietly in the background, Harry is less angry and more concerned that something horrible has happened. Louis doesn’t answer his phone the second time Harry calls him, or the third, but he does by the ninth, beyond irritated when he picks up.

“Harry, what the fuck,” he says, his voice tight. There’s a lot of background noise but Harry can’t figure out where he might be. “You had better be fucking dying.”

Harry skims his finger along the frayed edge of the blanket, suddenly embarrassed. “No, but, like, where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m at Ian’s. Is that why you called 100 times? Are you for real?”

“Why aren’t you here?” he says stupidly, his face hot. Who’s Ian? He hates him, regardless. “‘m watching Cameron Diaz try to seduce that hot British guy…”

“Jude Law?!”

“Yeah, him, and, like–”

“Harry, you called me nine times to talk to me about Jude Law.” It’s not a question.

“No,” he starts, “I didn’t. I called you nine times to ask why you stood me up.”

“Did we have plans?”

Harry looks down at his lap. “I mean, not verbal ones, but you always come here on Tuesdays and you’re not here now and–”

“Ian wanted to get a drink before he headed to Spain for the rest of the semester,” Louis says, cutting him off. “I didn’t think I needed to cancel a stupid friend hangout to do that. You’re kind of acting like a crazy boyfriend.”

“It’s not stupid and that’s not…” He starts to argue, but stops himself short, his heart racing in his chest. He knows he’s being irrationally angry and insane and, well, idiotically jealous, and now that Louis’ had to go ahead and say the B word, it’s ricocheting through his brain like live wire, sparking and hot. The thing is, they’re not boyfriends, because that’s not a line they’ve ever crossed, but just about everything they do - Tuesdays and otherwise - might argue that fact. They meet each other after class for coffee, they call each other on Sunday mornings, they spend school breaks at each other’s homes. Harry carries Louis’ backpack, Louis buys Harry dinner, they steal one another’s clothing… They share a fucking blanket on Harry’s Goddamn couch every single week, their knees brushing together, sending shocks up Harry’s spine, Harry unable to stop himself from stealing a series of unsubtle glances at Louis’ profile, his cheekbones, his lips. Fuck. His temple throbs and he does his best to swallow around the lump in his throat. Boyfriend. “Okay, yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry,” he chokes out.

Louis breathes through the phone for a beat too long. “I’m safe. I wasn’t kidnapped. I just… We’ll hang out later, alright?”

He doesn’t sound angry anymore, but Harry feels too antsy to keep talking. “Yeah, later. Bon voyage to Ian. I’ll see you this weekend or something.”

“Okay,” he replies. “Or something.”

Harry hangs up the phone with a thousand words on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows every single one of them and wills himself to stop thinking about the fact that he’s gone and lost his mind over his best friend spending the night out with a guy who isn’t him. He should be here on this couch, thigh pressed up against Harry’s, and this is not the way it was supposed to go. None of it was.

He must doze off at some point, because the next thing he knows, there’s a bang on the door, followed by a tinny voice mumbling, “Please let me in. I’m tired and cold.”

Harry flicks on the hallway light and pulls open the door as quickly as his body will allow himself to, finding himself face to face with a pink-cheeked Louis. “Lou, it’s…” He looks over at the clock. “Two in the morning.”

Louis shrugs, worming his way inside. “Yeah, well. I’m two hours late for our date. Sorry about that. You still watching ‘The Holiday’?”

He bites back his smile, body feeling like it’s deflating. “Finished it earlier. Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and see what we find?”

“That… Sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

Harry snorts, closing the door behind him and follows Louis into the living room. Louis’ already making himself comfortable on the couch, yawning. “Then what do you suggest?”

“We haven’t checked out the horror genre in a while.”

“Yeah, for a reason.” He sits beside Louis, lets Louis drape his legs across his lap. Like a magnet, his hand immediately goes to grip Louis’ ankle. “I get nightmares.”

Louis looks up at him from under his lashes, blinking slower than usual, and it makes Harry’s stomach twist. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe it’s something else. “Big baby.”

“Yeah,” he says, smirking, thumb drawing circles across Louis’ skin. “That’s me.”

Neither of them say anything else, nor do they move, and Harry’s trying to find something to say that isn’t something clicked for me tonight, but Louis speaks first, licking his lips.

“Sorry I stood you up,” he says softly, grabbing for the remote and selecting the first title on the menu, not looking at Harry. “I was a dick about it.”

Harry shrugs, inching his way closer, watching the way the screen’s colors dances across Louis’ face. “It’s alright. Just missed you.”

He can actually hear Louis swallow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Louis nods, biting at his bottom lip. He’s nervous. Harry exhales once he notices. “Can I stay over tonight?”

Harry isn’t sure what the implications are behind his question, or why Louis’ bothering to ask when he’s never asked before - usually just passes out on the couch or on Harry’s bed, curling up into a ball on the edge of the mattress - but it’s clear something has changed, based on the way Louis is looking up at him. He’s never looked at Harry like that before.

“Yeah,” Harry murmurs, “Lou, whatever you want.”

He doesn’t remember closing his eyes, doesn’t remember leaning in, but then there’s just breath between them, and then not even that, just skin on skin, warm and sweet and entirely too perfect. And Harry has no idea what’s playing on the screen in front of them, but it’s decidedly his new favorite film.

[mandibierly]

Richard Cabral Talks ‘American Crime,’ and Revving Up for ‘Mayans MC’

Richard Cabral as Isaac in Season 3 of ‘American Crime’ (Credit: Nicole Wilder/ABC)

Richard Cabral knows what you were thinking after last Sunday’s episode of American Crime: “‘Please don’t tell me that you hurt the little white boy.’ That’s what a couple people were saying on social media,'” he says. But, of course, Cabral’s character, farm crew chief Isaac, did hurt Connor Jessup’s Coy. Badly.

In this Sunday’s episode of the ABC drama, viewers see the aftermath of that beating — and of Luis (Benito Martinez) learning the fate of his son, Teo, who went missing while working on the farm.

Cabral, who received an Emmy nomination for Season 1 of the John Ridley anthology series, spoke to Yahoo TV about the dynamic between Isaac and Coy, and about his next high-profile gig — playing Johnny “El Coco” Cruz in FX’s much-anticipated Sons of Anarchy spinoff pilot, Mayans MC, which he begins filming Monday.

In your mind, why did Isaac beat Coy so brutally? What all was going through his mind? Coy put me in a position. Once you see in episodes 2 and 3 my relationship with my brother [farm boss Diego, played by Clayton Cardenas], you get it. Even though I have my own free will, I’m still under my brother. I really had no way out. I’m trying to help out the kid, but I still have to pay respect to my brother and pay respect to the farm. I really had no other choice but to do that. There were no words, but my hope is that the audience understood through that look that, that was it. That was it.

“You just let it happen.” #AmericanCrime pic.twitter.com/FQ7rzsmNYX

— American Crime (@AmericanCrimeTV) March 27, 2017

Fans have different theories about the relationship Isaac wants with Coy. How do you view it? How I saw it in the beginning, and I continue to see it: I was missing something in my life. My story is that yeah, I have my brother and I have this farm, but there’s a void. There’s a hole that I was trying to fill through true friendship, and as you see in the second and maybe in the beginning of the third episode, there’s a friendship that Coy and I are establishing. It’s really that. Obviously he’s missing something because he talks about his brother. In the first episode, he’s like, “I have a brother, but he’s not like yours.” That’s how I see it: We’re both missing something and we’re trying to fill it in. But due to the situation that we’re living in, stuff kinda hits the fan and it goes another route.

Obviously you’ve been a part of American Crime each season. But what was it about Isaac that made you want to play him? Regardless of what John Ridley and [fellow executive producer] Michael McDonald did, I was gonna do it. I’ve never worked with filmmakers and writers like this. So I knew once the pen hit the paper that we’re going in for an emotional ride, telling some deep stories. But what attracted me to Isaac was that relationship between the brothers. Seeing that with Latino eyes, as an audience, I’ve never really seen a relationship like that. There’s a beautiful relationship between Isaac and his brother. It’s in this messed up world, but they’re striving for that. I didn’t grow up with any brothers, but I have my cousins and I had my good friends, so I know what it is to have that bro relationship. Sometimes it’s messed up, but that’s a brother relationship. That was really exciting to me, and then as we get deeper into it…

My #mayans artwork i@cardenasclayton @EmilioRivera48 @PardoJD @antoniojmllo @CabralRichy pic.twitter.com/SDiNUemUN9

— Sharni Quittenton (@missquittenton) March 27, 2017

Let’s switch gears and talk Mayans MC. Cameras haven’t even rolled on that pilot, and there’s already fan art because SOA fans are so ready for this to become a series. What’s it like to have that huge fanbase for a pilot? It’s surreal. What a beautiful thing to have that energy — I believe in energy — and our fans just believing in us. And all that is getting extended to [co-creators] Kurt Sutter and Elgin James. They’re feeling it. To be with your leadership, just excited and with that energy — that’s the type of set you want to work on. You want to work where everybody is on that level. I’ve been working on it going on three weeks with training on the Harleys and working on rehearsals. We haven’t even started [shooting], and it’s good! I’ve never worked on a set like this.

“Coco”~ Sharpshooter training getting ready for @TheMayansMC #RollOut pic.twitter.com/A6BTODBZML

— Richard Cabral (@CabralRichy) March 27, 2017

How did the role come your way? [Coco is a full patch member of Mayans MC, Santo Padre, and a former Army sharpshooter and weapons specialist.] It was kinda weird, because I was on a panel. A couple people from the Obama administration did a panel with Hollywood artists — actors, directors, and writers — that had formerly been incarcerated, and with a few people that are actively involved in the community and media. It was on how media affects our society and how people like us — that came from broken communities and with a past like us, that came from prison — how we’re involved. Elgin James was on that panel, ’cause he had formerly been incarcerated. He has a similar story to me: He was in prison, in a gang, but in Boston. So he was on that panel, and this was like two or three months ago. That was the first time we met. So he reached out. I was already a fan of his work, he was a fan of my work. We had a conversation and he started talking about the Mayans, and that’s how it all started.

You’ve posted video of you working on your sharpshooter skills. What’s been the most fun and/or challenging stuff you’ve been doing to prep for the role? Definitely the sharpshooting, because I’m working with active LAPD SWAT and active-duty Marines and former Marines. So they walk different, they talk different. It’s a whole different ballgame over there. Really that’s been the most challenging. But I absolutely love it, for me to really be getting into my character, Coco, and to be really bringing this military aspect to the role and to the world.

The big question is, did you ride before you got the role? I used to ride. I’m a native of Los Angeles, so I used to ride out here. I went down, I crashed twice, and I had the kid, so I kinda hung it up for a couple of years. Getting back on it, it was right on. I was in it. Before I used to ride the fast ones, the race bikes. So it’s a whole different thing riding the Harleys. I got the itch. I think I might get a Harley now.

Have you already tried on the Mayans cut? I imagine that’s a big moment for the cast. Yeah! Oh my god. Oh my god. It’s been amazing. All the guys, we had a photo shoot like two days ago, and there was like seven of the Mayans — Emilio [Rivera, who plays Marcus Alvarez] was right there, and all the new guys are right there. The caliber of actors on the show — it’s just spot-on. Being with John Ortiz, I’m such a fan of his. But yeah, we were all rocking the cut, and it’s badass. I mean, the Harleys, Mayans, an all Latino cast. Kurt Sutter. I don’t know if the world is ready for this.

I know you probably can’t say too much about the plot, but one last question: One of the things Sons fans always loved about that show was the dark humor mixed in with the action and the drama. Reading the description of your character — “Johnny earned a section 8 for shooting a cigar out of his CO’s mouth from a half-mile away… while he was stoned” — it feels like you might get a chance to do a bit of comedy as well. We’ll see that humor in the mix of Mayans MC? Oh, for sure. Kurt is kind of a sick man. Kurt’s a wild man. He’s excited. He’s just like a little kid. And I already know, once we’re going to series, it’s game on. We’re gonna see things that we didn’t see on Sons. There is gonna be that humor, but it’s gonna be a sick type of humor.

American Crime airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on ABC.

Read more from Yahoo TV:‘Scandal’ Postmortem: Darby Stanchfield Talks Abby’s Difficult Choice37 Funko Pop! TV Figures We Need in 2017‘The Walking Dead’: Norman Reedus Gives Us Two Lies and a Truth About the Season 7 Finale

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 5/21/19

Anne Happy, Vol. 9 | By Cotoji | Yen Press – This is the second-to-last volume, but while there are a few hints of plot (Hibari’s family is lampshaded a bit), for the most part it’s devoted to another test of “happiness,” this time by a VR environment that causes everyone to resemble children. Given our main cast already know each other and are pretty good friends, the stakes are honestly pretty low, and there’s a bit less “everyone is useless” here—I don’t even think Botan coughed up blood once. It does make it feel like this is a series that needs to come to an end, though, which is why it’s good that it’s about to. If you’ve been following Anne Happy, this is a pleasant enough volume, and there’s no reason to stop just before the end. – Sean Gaffney

Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey, Vol. 1 | By Akiko Higashimura | Seven Seas – I’d loved everything by Higashimura that I’d previously read—Princess Jellyfish and Tokyo Tarareba Girls—so I was looking forward to the release of the award-winning Blank Canvas a great deal. After reading the first volume I can confidently declare that I’m still enamored with Higashimura’s work. Blank Canvas is an autobiographical series in which Higashimura, now a successful manga creator, reflects back upon her early days as an artist. The first volume shows her in high school as she’s preparing to apply for art school, a somewhat daunting challenge since up until that point she’d largely been coasting through her clubs and classes. Determined to become a famous shojo creator, she enrolls in a community art program, the teacher of which isn’t about to let her get away with slacking off. Told with Higashimura’s characteristic mix of humor, heart, and honesty, Blank Canvas is a tremendously engaging manga. – Ash Brown

Dr. STONE, Vol. 5 | By Riichiro Inagaki and Boichi | Viz Media – Tempted as I am to just copy/paste my review of the fourth volume here, I will try to say something new. It’s hard, though, as the same two things I spoke about last time are focused on this time. Senku is very invested in science, but it’s a ridiculous shonen kind of science. Also, ridiculous is the order of the day elsewhere, as this series really goes over the top in everything it does. Thankfully, the tournament arc doesn’t last too long. The winner may surprise you, unless you’ve read any other shonen manga ever. I admit I laughed at Ruri’s sprint across the village. But we’re getting a backstory flashback as well, as Ruri knows Senku’s last name. How? We’ll find out next time. – Sean Gaffney

Eve and Eve | By Nagashiro Rouge | Seven Seas – Between Seven Seas and Yen Press, we’re getting quite a few yuri anthologies in 2019. This one is a collection of yuri-themed stories by the same artist, and the title comes from the first of these. They’re fairly explicit—Seven Seas actually labeled the title Mature, something they rarely do—and a few of them range towards science fiction. Two of them also involve getting pregnant in a handwavey sort of way, and in fact those ran in “Yuri Pregnancies” in Japan, which I assume is an anthology and not a magazine. There was nothing earth-shaking in here, but nothing truly bad either. If you like yuri, and don’t mind that it gets sexual (or the magical pregnancies), it’s a good volume to pick up. – Sean Gaffney

Haikyu!!, Vol. 32 | By Haruichi Furudate | VIZ Media – Karasuno’s game against Inarizaki continues in (and beyond) this volume. The plot = “volleyball,” but that allows Furudate’s artistry to shine. Getting caught up in the drama of who will win is unavoidable, but I also marvel at the skill with which Furudate fleshes out the opposing team and imbues moments of individual victory with significance. For example, I loved when terminal bench-warmer Kinoshita thinks he’s missed his chance at heroism only to be credited by Nishinoya for helping him practice a move that pays off on the court. And I especially loved when Hinata not only manages to perfectly return an intimidating serve but proves so defensively competent that even Tsukushima comes to rely on him. That’s major progress! I love this series so much. – Michelle Smith

Hitorijime My Hero, Vol. 3 | By Memeco Arii | Kodansha Comics – I’m happy to report that Hitorijime My Hero has improved a lot since its first volume, which left me with some trepidations. In this volume, Masahiro’s friends find out about his relationship with Kousuke and one reacts badly, though it’s mostly coming from a place of feeling like he was the last to know something so important. Starting with volume two, Kousuke has been worried that Masahiro might focus on him instead of his “youth,” so he gives some good advice that helps them sort things out. I also appreciated that Kousuke’s friends are really concerned about his choices and grill Masahiro a bit to find out how much of a threat he poses. No, Kousuke doesn’t actually get arrested—although one of his friends is a cop, he’s an absolutely useless cretin—but it’s nice that it’s acknowledged that he could be. I’ll keep reading. – Michelle Smith

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 8 | By Aka Akasaka | Viz Media – After the plot-filled seventh volume, we’re back to wacky gag chapters in this book. Which is good, as this series does comedy well. It’s still working Ino into the fun, but even when the humor is based around a Japanese concept (one chapter talks about collecting bellmarks, which helpfully is so old in Japan that it’s explained in the text) there’s still laughs. My favorite chapter might be the one where Chika tries to tell Kaguya about the one she likes, and paranoia makes everything so much worse (and also reveals Chika is well aware of Kaguya’s ambiguity towards her). As for our lead couple, well, even Kaguya literally collapsing and going to the hospital can’t stop the laughs—or get them together. Great fun. – Sean Gaffney

Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 6 | By Afro | Yen Press – There’s some actual character development here, though for the most part the series still runs on ‘cuties camping’ for all its attention. Nadeshiko has been sort of the airhead of the group for most of the series, and I was expecting her desire to own the camping lantern to be blown up in some way, but no—she gets a part-time job, is decent at it, and buys the lamp. The author even toys with us, having her trip and almost break the lamp, but then catching it. What’s more, she wants to try solo camping. Hopefully her camping goes better than Inuko, Aki and Ena, who try a cold-weather campout and thankfully don’t die—though they need a little help to avoid it. This is getting better as it goes on. – Sean Gaffney

Murcielago, Vol. 10 | By Yoshimurakana | Yen Press – I never thought I’d say this, but this is actually a pretty sedate volume of Murcielago. Oh sure, Kuroko finds a new girl she wants to seduce, and there’s some naked bathing, but there’s no sex in this one. Even the violence is relatively behind-the-scenes here, though I have a feeling the volume after this will take things up a notch. We’re at a fishing village with a dark secret at the local church, one that’s led to an awful lot of dead people being eaten by sharks. And, of course, Kuroko’s new girl turns out to be the key to it all—or rather, the rosary left to her by her late father is. Will Kuroko and Hinako save the day? Can Suiren avoid getting seduced? Likely no to that second one, but that’s what makes Murcielago what it is. – Sean Gaffney

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare, Vol. 1 | By Yuhki Kamatani | Seven Seas – Tasuku Kaname has recently transferred to a new high school. His classmates are friendly enough, but soon a rumor starts circulating that he’s gay. Tasuku is quick to deny it, though the truth is he’s struggling to come to terms with his sexuality since it carries such a large social stigma. It’s only after he meets and learns the stories of several other people who are likewise not straight that Tasuku starts to feel less isolated and is able begin to accept himself. The fear, anxiety, and agony that results from not being able to freely live true to oneself both inwardly and outwardly is exceptionally well-conveyed by Kamatani in Our Dreams at Dusk. But while the first volume is at times heartbreaking, it’s also not without hope. Emotionally intense and tear-inducing for both sorrowful and joyful reasons, Our Dreams at Dusk is off to an incredibly compelling start. – Ash Brown

A Strange & Mystifying Story, Vol. 7 | By Tsuta Suzuki | SuBLime – And so, A Strange & Mystifying Story comes to an end. I could quibble with some aspects of this finale, like how Tsumugi convinced grief-stricken Magawa to give up on his destructive quest with ease to spare, but since it led to a happy ending for all concerned, I’m not going to argue with it. There are some great moments between Tsumugi and Kurayori, especially a tearful and relieved two-page hug once the effect of Magawa’s spell is reversed, and I adored their first love scene. It’s fumbling and awkward and loving and entirely about the characters. It felt necessary and not gratuitous. This series stumbled a little in the beginning but I’m glad I kept with it because from the third volume on, it became something special. I recommend it highly. – Michelle Smith

By: Ash Brown

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DGB Grab Gag: Retconning the Knights, Touching Trophies, and Good Ol' Kerry Fraser

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Golden Knights are feeling it – Laugh it up now, guys. Let's see how glib you are when you go through some rough times. You know, eventually. Probably some time in 2023 or so.

The second star: Ryan Miller's three-year-old son – This kid goes right for the jugular. I respect that.

The first star: This photo – I don't say this lightly, but this might be my favorite NHL photo of all time. Sorry, Bobby Orr, you had a good run. But this one captures the yin and the yang of what the league is all about: the overwhelming excitement of a game-winning goal, and the eye-rolling annoyance of basically everything else. It's perfect.

Debating the Issues

Editor's note: Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, this week's regularly scheduled debate is not available. In its place, please enjoy this rerun from June 2017.

This week’s debate: The expansion draft was held last night, and the Vegas Golden Knights finally have a roster. And wow, are they ever super-good! But was it wrong for the NHL to make it so easy for the Knights to become the Stanley Cup favorites right out of the gate?

In favor: I think it was. Sure, we all want to see new teams succeed, and nobody wants to go back to the days when the Senators or Capitals were terrible for years before they could build anything resembling a competitive team. But with last night's draft, the pendulum seems to have swung way too far to the other side. Because man, as everyone agrees, the Golden Knights are stacked.

Opposed: Well I… wait, sorry, what's happening here?

In favor: I mean, sure, it would be nice if the Knights could be in the playoff race in year one. We'd all have been on board with that. But instead, the league gift-wrapped the Knights with a championship roster from day one. I mean, talk about making it way too easy.

Opposed: They… they did?

In favor: Oh for sure. Imagine being one of the other teams in the Pacific, or even the Western Conference. You've been building up a team for years, hoping to contend someday. And then suddenly, you know you have no chance next year, because the league went and rigged the expansion draft to give the Golden Knights all the good players!

Opposed: [squinting at roster] I don't see any good players.

In favor: Look closer, because as fans around the league are unanimously declaring right now and certainly not with hindsight, the Knights are loaded. What team wouldn't want to start with established superstars like David Perron, Erik Haula, and Alex Tuch?

Opposed: I mean, those players are fine, I guess. But none of them are remotely considered stars.

In favor: And then there's Jonathan Marchessault, who's virtually guaranteed to score somewhere in the range of 74 to 76 points.

Opposed: He was good last year, but he's had one career season of more than 20 points.

In favor: And then there's William Karlsson. I mean, how could the league just hand these guys a 40-goal scorer?

Opposed: I… I don't actually know who William Karlsson is. What team did they get him from?

In favor: And then there's the goaltending.

Opposed: OK, yes, that's the one position we can agree on. Marc-Andre Fleury should be fine. He lost his job to a rookie in Pittsburgh, but he could absolutely give the Knights a solid option for a few years. As long as he stays healthy.

In favor: No, even if he gets hurt early and they have to use like five different goalies, they'll be totally fine.

Opposed: I don't understand anything you are saying right now.

In favor: And besides, Fleury will be healthy in time for the playoffs, at which point he'll turn into vintage Ken Dryden and lead the Knights to a Cup. Everyone is predicting this right now, in June of 2017.

Opposed: But Fleury has a reputation for being terrible in the playoffs.

In favor: And if having the best roster in the league isn't bad enough, the Knights also have the league's best coach (who was left at the curb by the Panthers) and the best GM (who made the Martin Erat trade). They're unbeatable! Everyone can see this!

Opposed: [looking around] what alternate reality is this?

In favor: The one where the expansion draft is rigged and everyone knows the league made it too easy on the Golden Knights. Duh.

Opposed: Yeah but, that's not what's happening. Everyone thinks the Knights drafted a terrible team. Literally every single person agrees on this point.

In favor: Well, everyone is wrong. And also, everyone is going to forget all about that by the time the Knights are about to win a Cup. Within about 11 months, we're all going to be complaining that the expansion draft was rigged and this was all inevitable.

Opposed: How do you know all this?

In favor: Uh, call it a hunch.

Opposed: Man. A Stanley Cup run? I'm just not seeing it. It seems impossible right now.

In favor: Trust me, it all works out.

Opposed: Wow. I guess this Shipachyov kid must turn out to be unstoppable.

In favor: Yeah, about that…

The final verdict: We hope you enjoyed this rerun from June 2017. The regularly scheduled debate feature will return soon.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

The Capitals actually won a Game 7 this week, and they did it on the strength of a Braden Holtby shutout. It's fair to say that that's a reversal of the typical pattern when it comes to this team. And the only thing more painful than watching the Capitals lose a Game 7 is watching the Capitals lose the equivalent of two Game 7s on one night. So this week, let's bestow obscure player honors to Bob Mason.

Mason was an undrafted goaltender out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth who signed with the Capitals shortly after playing for Team USA at the 1984 Olympics. He made his NHL debut in a handful of games that year, and spent most of the next two years in the minors while serving as an occasional backup in Washington.

That changed in 1986-87, when Mason spent the entire year in the NHL splitting the crease duties with Pete Peeters. The Caps made the playoffs and took a 3-1 series lead against the Islanders in the opening round, so you can probably guess where this is going. The Isles extended the series to a seventh game, and Mason got the start. It would end up being one of the most memorable game sevens in NHL history: The Easter Epic, a quadruple overtime thriller that ended on Pat LaFontaine's winner.

Mason's stunned reaction was one of the greatest Sad Goalie Slumps ever, and is burned into the memory of most Caps fans to this day.

Mason was picked as the third goalie for Team USA in that summer's World Cup; by then he'd signed with the Blackhawks as a free agent. He spent a year in Chicago before being dealt to Quebec and then back to Washington, and he finished his NHL career with a half-dozen appearances for the Canucks in 1991. He bounced around the AHL and IHL for a few more years before retiring, having played 145 NHL games.

Mason went on to a career in coaching, and has been the goaltending coach for the Minnesota Wild since 2002.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: Both the Capitals and Golden Knights capped off their conference final wins by touching the trophies. The outrage: You never touch the trophy! Is it justified: We can all agree this stupid tradition can end now, right?

It was cool for a while, with a neat sort of "We only have one goal" vibe to it. Then it morphed into a superstition, which was fine. But then, like everything else in hockey that's vaguely fun, it was almost immediately beaten into the ground. Playoff beards were cool too, until they became mandatory and 19-year-old kids who'd never shaved in their lives were suddenly being brow-beaten about it if they didn't show up looking like a stunt double for ZZ Top. When "Don't touch the trophy" went from suggestion to commandment, any fun drained out of it. Once the NHL marketing department starts promoting something, you know it's run its course.

But now that both teams have done it, one of two things will happen. One, they'll catch some rare strain of influenza from the trophy and the Final will be cancelled. Or two, we can all stop pretending this is a thing.

Here's hoping we over-correct by steering in the other direction, and it becomes a competition to see who can come up with the most creative way to engage with the conference final trophy. Skate it around. Dance with it. Paint a little face on it, wrap a jersey around it and make it sit on the bench during the final. Give it a name and everything. "This is Campbell, he's our backup goalie tonight."

Just touch it. Or don't, if that's your thing. But let's all stop pretending the whole thing is endlessly fascinating.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

We've spent some time over the course of the year reliving the 1992-93 season, i.e. the best NHL season ever. That was 25 years ago, and it can be fun to check the calendar and see what was happening, or about to happen, during that frantic season a quarter-century ago.

Which means right about now would be when we'd get to … sigh … look, can we talk?

Maple Leaf fans, I know you're expecting it. But we don't have to do this. Just because you hit yourself in the face with a hammer 25 years ago doesn't mean you have to relive it every year for the rest of your life. Remember a few weeks ago when we did the Wendel Clark/Curtis Joseph clip? Remember how happy we all were? Back when Curtis Joseph's head exploded? Good times. We can stay that way. There's no reason to go any further.

Yeah, you're right. We really don't have a choice. Fine. Roll the clip.

So it's May 27, 1993, and no I didn't have to look that date up, thank you very much. The date has been ingrained in the heads of Maple Leafs fans ever since. Literally, in some cases—some of us got tattoos. Don't judge until you've been there.

Here's the situation. The Maple Leafs are in L.A. to face the Kings in Game 6 of the Western Conference Final. Toronto leads the series 3-2, meaning a win sends them to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1967. Waiting for them there: the Montreal Canadiens. It's destiny. It's going to happen.

But first, the Kings, who apparently missed the memo about the inevitable Leafs/Habs showdown. They've given Toronto a tough game and held a 4-2 lead late in the third. But Wendel Clark tied it up with the goalie out, completing a hat trick and quite possibly the best individual game by a Maple Leaf in the modern era, so now we're in overtime. Can you guess what's about to happen?

If you said "the worst thing ever," then you win.

The Kings are on the powerplay because Glenn Anderson took the Target logo literally, and they're set up in the Leafs zone. But Wayne Gretzky's shot is blocked, and while going for the rebound he clips Doug Gilmour under the chin, drawing blood. That's an automatic five-and-a-game back in 1993. But will they call it?

Seriously, will they? I've watched this clip roughly ten thousand times and I keep waiting for the ending to change.

Gilmour goes right to referee Kerry Fraser, who confers with his linesman. Meanwhile, Harry Neale knows exactly what's up. "Wouldn't this be something if Wayne Gretzky was thrown out for a high-stick." Indeed, Harry. Wouldn't it, though.

I know the whole "Kerry Fraser has great hair" thing was beaten into the ground over the years, but good lord, he really did have great hair. Look at it. He's been skating hard for three hours at this point, and it's immaculate. Meanwhile, I get my hair cut and step outside into a slight breeze and I immediately look like Neil Hamburger. Life isn't fair.

So Fraser talks with his linesmen, who don't seem to have much to say. It goes without saying that Fraser took a ton of heat over what comes next, and to some extent the buck stops with him. But as Don Cherry pointed out two nights later, his linesmen could have bailed him out here. Any of the three could have made the call; none did. But Fraser has been hearing about it for 25 years, and most Leafs fans couldn't even tell you who the linesmen were. Did we mention the part about life not being fair?

Gretzky's guilty face here is the best. He's every little kid who ever wet his bed and really hopes mom and dad somehow don't notice.

We get a decent replay, which makes it clear that this is indeed a penalty. To this day you still hear people try to make the "It was on the follow-through" argument. Those people are liars who deserve to be in jail.

Now comes the weirdest part of the clip, especially if you're a fan that's heard about this play but never actually seen it. Neale is breaking down the replay, and just casually slips in a "They're not going to give him a penalty by the look of it," and the game just continues.

Really, that's it. Nobody's all that shocked. Pat Burns doesn't throw a fit. Gilmour barely complains. Neale and Bob Cole kind of shrug. And the game continues. That's the weird thing about this play in hindsight—at the time it happened, it wasn't actually that big a deal. Even after Gretzky scores the winner a few seconds later, the missed call was considered one part of the story. Compared to what happens when a call gets missed today, the immediate reaction was pretty mild.

I'm not sure why that is. Part of me thinks it's because before Twitter, we were actually able to process things without immediately racing towards the hottest possible take. Or maybe it's because this was a West Coast game, and it was after midnight in Toronto and we were all too tired to get worked up. Or maybe everyone just kind of assumed the Leafs were winning Game 7 at home. Whatever it was, the missed call didn't really ascend to legendary status until after the Kings won the series.

Epilogue: The Kings lost to the Canadiens, ironically with help from another controversial Fraser moment. The Leafs have yet to get this close to the Stanley Cup Final again. Fraser admits that he missed the call, but has had to deal with criticism, conspiracy theories, and random idiots ever since. And Maple Leafs fans got over it, and certainly didn't drone on and on about it for decades.

Also, I still get angry every time I see a Target logo, but that's probably just me.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

DGB Grab Gag: Retconning the Knights, Touching Trophies, and Good Ol' Kerry Fraser published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[beautifulboycast-blog]

Nat's TV round up - 2017 in Review

Television is an unusual beast when we discuss how great it is. The last year marked a few key notes, notably the increasingly large presence that streaming services have thanks to A Handmaid’s Tale, which went on to win Best Drama at the Emmy's, becoming the first streaming show to do so. Normally, it would be smarter to discuss television in the middle of summer when most notable series are in-between seasons. That's no longer the case, thanks in large part to streaming services, as well as basic and premium cable.

I don't have a list of every show I watched this past year and I won't be handing out a dozen awards for how great a singular show was. Instead, I'll offer up three separate awards: Best Returning Series, Best New Series and Best Animated Series. It's pretty self explanatory. Best Returning series is for shows that are in their second season or beyond. Best New Series is for shows in their first season, mini-series included. Best Animated series is simply for animated shows in general which are no longer following the strict yearly season format of live action shows.

Best Returning Show: Game of Thrones (Season 7) There really wasn't another option. Despite the season being a few episodes shorter and arriving in the middle of summer as opposed to its usual spring premiere, game of thrones remains the best show currently airing. Season 7 had a slower start, but quickly catalyzed into one grand moment after another. The thrilling seven episodes that aired featured massive battles on the water, on the ground and in the frozen wastes beyond the wall. Gone are the slow politically driven conversations that were featured in earlier seasons, only fitting and satisfying conclusions to loose ends remain.

Perhaps the only detractor for this season is the smaller episode count. While the cast is much smaller this season, the missing few hours of content would have been appreciated to once again flesh out conversations and character motivations. And while the finale promises even greater things for season 8, the wait until then is an unpleasant one. The final season probably won't see light until 2019.Game of Thrones remains the only show on tv that sends the collective masses into hysteria. Season 7 led to more “Did you catch that?” moments than any other season yet and we hope the wait for season 8 isn't too long. Perhaps some news on those spin offs would be enough to keep us from going insane? Your move, HBO.

Highlight moment: Episode 4 - The Spoils of War This episode features the single greatest battle in game of thrones yet. It's the only time in recent memory where my jaw was on the floor in awe. I actually had a fork in my hand when the scene started and by the end it had fallen to the floor. For what was only about half an hour, I was 100% drawn in with zero distractions to my television screen. It wasn't a plot twist or a satisfying end to a subplot. No, the greatest moment in television last year was something that only multi-million budgeted movies get right and it was glorious.

Other Notable Series

Stranger Things (Season 2): This is probably the closest a returning series got to beating out Game of Thrones and it wasn't even close. Stranger Things continued the story of the first season with all of its 80’s charm. This season, however, loses points for splitting up its characters too often and the pacing issues it suffers. While there is some great action and character moments (Dustin is the star of this season), it just doesn't hold a candle to Thrones.

Comedy Series (Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Modern Family, The Good Place): This is my junk food. I love comedy series and these are the four most notable ones that I keep track of. Always Sunny continues to be one of the best written shows on tv and the season finale was fantastic. Here's hoping for at least one more season from the gang. Brooklyn Nine-Nine had an excellent year notably for tackling issues like police brutality and the rights of the accused, something that would have never happened on a network comedy ten years ago. Modern Family had a decent year and here's hoping that the series reaches its conclusion soon. Some of the jokes are starting to get old and the lack of interesting new characters has made the series start to become stale. The Good Place is the most recent series on the list. I loved the twist ending to season one and the direction season two has taken so far. There's a lot of potential here.

House of Cards (Season 5): Oh how the mighty have fallen. A year ago I was so excited for House of Cards to return and now I'm ready to put it out of its misery. Production issues aside, season 5 was a bloated mess that took an idea and spent an entire season trying to make it come off as a big deal. All it left was the watering down of Frank Underwood as a character and a sloppy gateway for a sixth season. Luckily season 6 is coming so our other lead, Claire Underwood, will have a fitting conclusion.

Orange is the New Black (Season 5): After struggling to find its footing a few seasons ago, Orange is the New Black is stronger than ever, mixing comedy with real drama. Most of season five deals with the aftermath of the final episode of season 4 and the writers run with it. My only concern is the show’s main character, Piper, taking a back seat for most of the season. Here's hoping she plays a larger role in season 6.

Better Call Saul (Season 3): With it's best season under its belt, Better Call Saul remains one of the best shows on tv that unfortunately isn't garnering the audience it deserves. Season 3 picked up the pace and is slowly transforming into its own beast of a show outside of its predecessor’s shadow. While AMC isn't the Titan it was a few years ago, their commitment to this series gives me hope that its wings won't be clipped too soon as there's a lot of potential here. Please, please check this show out. It's well worth it.

Best New Series - Glow: I made it a goal in 2017 to check out new series whenever I could. While I didn't watch as many new shows as I had hoped, I found myself struggling to crown a winner for best new series. I ultimately settled on Glow, a new series from Netflix starring Community-alumni, Alison Brie. Set in the 1980’s, Glow is a show about a group of wannabe actors and wash ups, trying their hand at women’s professional wrestling. As someone who has always loved the absolute cheesiness of professional wrestling, watching a show about it is a treat. The series is a comedy with some dramatic moments, similar to Orange is the New Black. In fact, the series has a lot in common with Orange is the New Black, but wins out for having a greater sense of theming. It knows it's a comedy and plays with it perfectly.

The biggest detractor is the length. At ten episodes with a 30 minute run time, the show is over just as it really begins to get good. Netflix has renewed the series for a second season, but still at only 10 episodes. An additional 5 episodes in the season would have been perfect. It would also give the large supporting cast a chance to shine.

I'm eager to watch more of Glow and I think it has the legs to replace some of the older shows in Netflix’s line-up in the coming months. Highlight moment: Episode 10 - Money’s in the Chase The entire season is building up towards their first public performance and the season finale spends its entire run time showing us that performance. I loved this as it really feels like we're watching the show with the audience. It's full of some great twists and some absolutely corny wrestling moves. Here's hoping season 2 features more of these performances.

Other Notable series:

Ozark: My runner up for best new series. I really enjoyed this show, especially Jason Bateman as the lead. It has a similar theme to Breaking Bad, which is always fantastic. The biggest problem for Ozark is that I'm afraid it won't have the legs to last more than a few seasons. I could be wrong, but that and some pacing issues are what made me choose Glow over it for best new series.

Mindhunter: This show has an absolutely horrible pilot, but a pretty solid show follows that. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here. The pilot almost killed the series for me and hints of its problems last throughout. Poor direction, awkward camera angles and bloated writing aside, the show gets better the more you watch.

A Handmaid’s Tale: I believe I'm one of the few people out there who did not enjoy this series. It's well made and the acting is top notch. I have no major problems with the series from a design standpoint. It's the story and characters that lose me. Everything is so drab and dull. I never cared for the characters because they kept trying to keep things a mystery. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood or mind set for this show. I found the most interesting character to be on who barely appears in the show and one that they inevitably cut out entirely. I expect a season 2 for the show and hopefully it'll grab me. Until then, I would say to watch the first episode and see if it's your style. If not, it's worth skipping.

Girl Boss: There is nothing notable about this show. It isn't good. It's not necessarily hot garbage either. It can be funny, but it isn't hilarious. It's 100% average, or perhaps, mediocre. Why does that matter? Because this was the first “Netflix original series" that I experienced like this. Netflix has pumped out some garbage before, but they usually let you know in advance. Not this time. Girl Boss was hyped up to be another great series from the streaming giant and it failed to make an impact. I guess that explains why it was cancelled, a rarity for Netflix.

Best Animated Series: My Hero Academia (Season 2) If there’s one thing I watched more of in 2017 than previous years, it was anime. While it was mostly re-watching various Dragon Ball related shows, I decided to check out a new series that my friends had been raving about. That new series was My Hero Academia. I thought the 13 episode season one was good enough. It had an amazing set up for the world and the characters started to grow on me towards the end. Season 2 is fantastic. It covers three arcs from the manga in 25 episodes and really begins to put the series into perspective. I normally avoid long running series like this until they’re closer to the end, but this is my exception. Season 3 is coming sometime in 2018 and I’m excited to start reading the manga soon. This is an absolutely fantastic series with some great fight scenes, interesting characters and really well done animation.

Highlight Moment: Episode 10 - Shoto Todoroki: Origin Season 1 introduced us to a lot of new characters, but only a handful got enough time to be fleshed out. Season 2 began to fix this immediately by turning Todoroki into Deku’s (Our protagonist) main rival. The entire arcs lasts for most of the season, but it’s the fight between Todoroki and Deku that puts this show as my favorite of the year. Weaving an origin story into the series’ biggest fight yet is a major undertaking, but doing it this well is a masterstroke. Much like the massive battles in game of thrones, I was left speechless while watching this episode. What makes it even better is that the entire arc has no villain. It’s simply our heroes battling for the spotlight in one of the best made tournament arcs in recent memory.

Other Notable Series:

Attack on Titan (Season 2): I watched the first season of AoT back in 2015 and fell in love with the series. I dropped it after catching up on the manga, however. With Season 2 releasing in the states finally, I picked the series back up and I’m in love once more. Season 2 has better pacing than season 1, but suffers from a shorter episode count (12 episodes vs the 25 from season 1). Because of that the story can feel a bit uneven especially with a major plot reveal happening at the very end of the last episode. The animation is still top notch though, perhaps even better than season 1. And thankfully, season 3 will be airing sometime next year. No more half decade wait times. Rick and Morty (Season 3): Speaking of wait times, thank god Rick and Morty is back. I was considering giving this my best animation series award, but it came up short compared to My Hero. I had a blast with season 3 however. It was laughing the entire time, even if some of the episodes weren’t as funny as others. Bob’s Burgers, South Park (Season 21) and Bojack Horseman (Season 4): I guess this is like my catch all category? Regardless, I enjoy all three of these series and felt like each of them had a somewhat decent 2017. Bob’s Burgers is basically my junk food cartoon show, even if it’s starting to wear a bit thin. South Park had a decent season; one that I enjoyed more as I watched it while playing the latest south park game. And of course, Bojack came around for a fourth season. It wasn’t quite as good as season 3, but I still enjoyed it.

That wraps it up for my favorite shows of 2017. I mentioned quite a few shows that I’m looking forward to in 2018 before, but I’ll give special mention to Westworld which is returning for its second season soon. I should also mention that there are a few shows from 2017 that I’ve been meaning to catch up on, but haven’t had the time. It mostly includes seasons released in December and I’ll get to them eventually. If I feel the need to discuss them further, I’ll write up a separate piece.

Until next time. Continue enjoying the new year and stay beautiful.

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Nashville Predators enjoyed Halloween – We won’t clog this whole section with NHL player Halloween costumes. If that’s your thing, you can find a rundown on the league web site, although they seem to have left one out. But we will mention the Predators, who may have been enjoying themselves a little too much, starting with P.K. Subban:

But the real stars were Nick Bonnino and his wife Lauren, who went as the scariest thing a hockey player can imagine.

The second star: Ryan Reaves vs. Phil Kessel – OK, one more Halloween one.

The first star: Chance the mascot – The new Vegas mascot has not had a warm reception, as documented here.

Honestly, the whole thing is reasonably funny, but I’m putting it in the top spot solely for the little girl who goes “GOOD ONE, DEL.” That kid kills me. That needs to go right up there with “Way to go, Paul” as a generic hockey putdown.

Be It Resolved

We’re a month into the season, and the Golden Knights are still decent. Sure, everyone realizes that they’re not as good as their record indicates, but they’re far better than most of us expected. It turns out that expansion teams in the salary cap era can be reasonably competitive right away.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Coyotes began the year with a record-tying 11 straight losses, and their season is already basically over. Other teams, like the Sabres, Rangers, Canadiens, and Oilers are another bad week or two away from being in the same boat.

All of which leads us to our crazy idea of the month. From the same minds that brought you the Jagr Draft, Cup champs picking their banner night opponent on live TV, and using the Cliffhanger guy to announce player signings, please welcome the league’s newest rule: The Nuclear Option.

Yes, the name’s kind of dramatic, I know. The idea lives up to it.

It would work like this. Every year, at the end of the regular season, all the non-playoff teams have the option of hitting the reset button on the entire franchise. If a team decides to go nuclear, they get to protect up to three players in the entire organization—not just NHL, but prospects, unsigned picks, etc.—and everyone else instantly becomes a free agent. No cap hits, no buyouts, no re-signing anyone, no compensation. Everything you spent the last decade building is gone.

In return for nuking the entire organization, the team gets two things. First, they move to the front of the line for that year’s draft lottery odds, if they’re not already there. And second, they get to restock in an expansion draft, under the same rules as the ones the Golden Knights just had.

Three players, an otherwise barren cap situation, top odds in the lottery, and an expansion draft to start all over with. Would you do it? Would you take the Nuclear Option?

It goes without saying that not many teams would. This year’s Coyotes wouldn’t, for example. They’ve been rebuilding for years, and have plenty of good young players worth holding onto. I doubt any of this year’s bad teams would seriously consider it, unless things go completely off the rails somewhere.

But last year’s Avalanche would have had to at least think about it, right? And you can bet that a team like the Sabres would have jumped at the chance a few years ago leading into the McDavid draft. You’d probably see the option used once or twice a decade, just about always after a team had fired its old GM and hired a replacement with a mandate to rebuild. Imagine that new guy having the option to walk in, take one look around, go “NOPE” and just bulldoze the entire thing.

(As an added bonus, the same league full of cry-baby GMs who spent all of last year whining about how the expansion draft made their jobs slightly harder would absolutely lose their minds if they had another one dropped on them with a few weeks’ notice. That’s not the main point here, but it’s a nice side-benefit.)

How much fun would it be to argue over whether your favorite team should use the Nuclear Option? How hard would you have to work before you started to talk yourself into it? How mad would you be when Nuke Day came around and your team chickened out and didn’t do it?

Like most great ideas, the NHL would never do it in a million years. But they should. Terrible teams need hope too, and the Golden Knights have proven that it’s not as far away as you might think. You just need a way to get there. You need the Nuclear Option.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Today’s obscure player is a guy you probably saw a few photos of this week: former Sabres and Canucks goaltender Gary “Bones” Bromley.

Bromley was never drafted, but was signed by the expansion Sabres in 1971 and made his NHL debut two years later. He played 12 games backing up Dave Dryden for the 1973-74 Sabres, then won the starting job for most of the 1974-75 season after Dryden left. He played well, going 26-11-11 and helping the Sabres to a league-high 113 points. That team went all the way to the Stanley Cup final, but turned to late-season acquisition Gerry Desjardins and Roger Crozier for the entire run; despite appearing in over 50 regular season games, Bromley never even saw the ice in a playoff game that year.

He’d play just one more game for the Sabres the following year before heading to the WHA for two seasons. He returned to the NHL in 1978 after signing with the Canucks, and spent three years pulling part-time duty. After a year in the minors, he retired in 1982, having won 54 games over six NHL seasons.

Today, he’s probably best remembered for the fearsome skull mask he wore in Vancouver. It was one of the most unique looks of the era, and to this day often shows up on lists of the greatest masks ever.

Trivial Annoyance of the Week

Have you ever been at a point when things were going well—not awesome, not great, but reasonably well—and then your stupid friends show up to remind you that their lives are way better than yours?

That’s what it felt like to be a hockey fan this week.

The big news in the sports world this week was the World Series, a seven-game thriller that drew big ratings. Games six and seven were good, but the real show came earlier in the series, as the league’s secret new baseballs resulted in every third batter hitting a home run off the face of the moon and everyone went crazy over how much fun it was. Oh, OK, so now sports fans enjoy games with lots of offense. When did this happen?

[Checks earpiece]

I’m being told that everyone has always thought offense was fun. Huh. Well OK, then where were all of you during the NHL playoffs?

[Checks earpiece]

Right, I’m told that the deciding game of the Stanley Cup final featured 58 scoreless minutes, a fluke goal that had to be reviewed, and an empty netter. Huh. I’d completely forgotten about that game. I can’t imagine why.

Meanwhile, the NFL stole a few headlines with it trade deadline. If you follow football, you know that their deadline is usually a bust. Unlike in the NHL, where GMs just pretend because they like excuses, the salary cap actually does make trading hard in the NFL because signing bonuses get instantly converted to dead money when a player switches teams. So moves are rare, especially midseason ones, and the trade deadline often passes without anyone really even noticing.

But not this year, where everything went insane and trades were happening everywhere. And not just NHL deadline-style veteran rentals, but big names, young stars, potential franchise quarterbacks…everyone. It was madness. Glorious, wonderful madness.

And then you’ve got the NBA, where the season is only just starting but everyone has a personality and says interesting things and players quit on their teams over Twitter and fired coaches go scorched earth on Instagram.

Look, other leagues, we get it. You’re more fun than the NHL. Leave us alone.

I mean, we’re trying, OK? The Golden Knights are a genuinely cool story, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos are killing it in Tampa, the Kings are kind of back, and the Blues and Devils are surprisingly good. That’s something, right? Scoring’s up slightly because of extra power plays, there’s intrigue in New York, and the Coyotes are terrible, which can be entertaining in its own kind of way.

Sure, we may not have record offense and blockbuster trades and social media wars. We’re working on it, OK? You don’t need to rub it in our faces all at once. Why don’t you go lose half a season to a work stoppage?

[Checks earpiece]

I’m told that other sports don’t do that anymore. Wonderful. Good for you. Now finish your seasons, pack up and get out of your stadiums. We’re going to need them for our outdoor games pretty soon.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Hey, it’s not like the NHL never serves up a ridiculously high-scoring playoff game. For example, today let’s travel back to 2006 and see what happens when two rivals decide to play with the goaltending sliders pushed all the way down…

It’s the second round of the 2006 playoffs, and the Senators are hosting the Sabres for game one. It’s a great matchup, featuring a 113-point team facing a 110-point team. It also pits the conference’s lowest goals-against against its fourth-lowest, so I’m sure there won’t be much offense. Hey, defense wins championships, am I right?

Our clip begins a few seconds after the opening faceoff as we get a look at the Sabres lines and yeah it’s already 1-0.

Mike Grier has tipped in a Derek Roy feed to give the Sabres the lead. Nice start. Now they just have to settle in and play a classic road playoff games, take the crowd out of it and wait until—oops never mind it’s 1-1.

That Ottawa goal was Jason Spezza from Dany Heatley and Wade Redden, as the Senators deploy their famed “guys we love right now but will eventually leave town as villains” line. I guess Daniel Alfredsson missed a shift.

The Senators make it 2-1 just 15 seconds later. A quick warning here: This game is in Ottawa, which means it features the Senators goal horn guy, which means you’re going to be deaf by the end of it. He’s a tad excitable. Here’s some behind-the-scenes footage of him at work, but it’s a preseason game so he’s taking it easy.

On the other hand, we’ve got Bob Cole. You win some, you lose some.

Six minutes in, the Sabres tie it at 2-2. (Hello, Numminen.) Amazingly, this will be the last goal of the first period, as everyone’s arms are tired and they decide to just skip ahead to the intermission.

By the way, the goaltending matchup here is Ray Emery against Ryan Miller, which is fine, but we have to point out that this was the year the Senators had Dominik Hasek. But he got hurt at the Olympics, depriving us of one of the great face-the-former-team revenge matchups in league history. Damn you, Olympic injuries, maybe Gary Bettman was right about you all along.

We’re back for the second period, both teams having made their intermission adjustments. In the Sabres case, that was apparently “let’s give up easy breakaways.” and they go out and execute it beautifully.

Buffalo gets it back quickly, as they get a 2-on-1 and then do that video games move where you forget which button is the pass one and just end up with everyone skating into the goalie and pushing the puck into the net because you have penalties turned off. It’s super effective!

A few seconds later, the Senators have a 5-on-3 and you can probably guess how this turns out. They do that thing where they park Zdeno Chara directly in front of the net and dare the goalie to do anything about it. It works, because the only goalie crazy enough to ever swing at Chara was Ray Emery.

We skip ahead to goals by Derek Roy at the end of the second and Mike Fisher at the start of the third, and it’s 5-4 Ottawa. Both starting goalies are still in, by the way, and will stay in for the entire game. I always thought that was an underrated aspect of this game’s silliness.

Side note: This is somehow only the second craziest game featuring Ray Emery and the Sabres.

At this point, things actually settle down and the two teams decide to play NHL playoff hockey, which is to say nobody does anything interesting for almost an entire period. The keyword here is “almost,” as things are going to go off the rails as soon as we get to two minutes left. Which is right…now.

The Senators have a one-goal lead late in regulation, a powerplay, the puck in the Sabres’ zone, and still somehow manage to give up a 2-on-1. Derek Roy buries the one-timer and it’s 5-5.

Hey, was I the only one who called him Derek Wah for his whole career, like Patrick Roy? I don’t think I was.

We get a brief glimpse of a dude with an Obscure Player Alumni Maxim Afinogenov jersey, but before our brains can process that we’re back to the action. The Senators still have a powerplay, remember. You’ll never guess what happens next.

This may be my favorite moment from the game, as Bryan Smolinksi bangs home the go-ahead goal with a minute left and makes one of the all-time great “whew, did we ever just dodge a bullet there” smug faces. Hold that thought, Bryan.

We’re down to 20 seconds left, and all the Senators have to do now is cram all six guys into the goal frame and call it a day. Instead, there’s a mixup behind the net, the puck comes out front, and Tim Connolly buries it to tie the game. The crowd makes that classic “Are you F-ing kidding me?” noise you only get in the NHL playoffs, and we’re off to overtime.

OK, settle in because these two teams are going to smarten up and get conservative. Ha, no, just kidding, the overtime is going to last 18 seconds.

The end comes when Anton Volchenkov commits what might literally be the worst turnover in modern playoff history. Seriously, let’s just admire that thing. Not only does he fan on the pass, he kicks it off both skates and then turns his back to the puck as the Sabres break in. By the time Chris Drury scores the winner, Volchenkov is just sadly sliding off into the corner on his belly. Other than that, I thought the shift went well.

The Sabres ended up taking the series in five games, three of which came in overtime. But the Senators earned revenge in 2007, knocking out Buffalo on their way to the Stanley Cup final. This time, Emery and the Senators learned from their mistakes and made sure that when the puck was behind their own net at a crucial moment, they never let the other team even touch it.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[junker-town]

The Marshawn Lynch Encyclopedia

Everything there is to know about the weird, wonderful man that is Beast Mode.

Marshawn Lynch never gives interviews, but has several of the NFL's most famous quotes. He says over and over again he wants to avoid media attention, but gets called an attention-seeker. His job description includes getting tackled, but he inflicts more pain than the tacklers.

Marshawn Lynch makes so little sense in this world that wherever he goes, he leaves a trail of fascinating things in his wake. Sometimes they're weird words. Sometimes they're brutalized defenders. We can't hope to understand him, but we've tried to compile all the wonderful, strange, and good things about Marshawn Lynch in one post. This is the Marshawn Lynch Encyclopedia.

Bear Grylls

In 2016, Lynch went on an adventure with Bear Grylls for his NBC show Running Wild, which mostly consisted of Lynch reacting in disbelief to the things he and Grylls had to do Corsican Mountains -- like hunting a wild hog and making a fire from Lynch's dreads.

It made for a great buddy comedy, which sometimes became heartfelt. We know Lynch has been reluctant to talk to the media, but Grylls managed to get some insight on his social welfare work, and why he left football (until 2017, when he agreed to sign with the pre-Vegas Raiders.)

Beast Mode

The first recorded instance of Lynch's "Beast Mode" comes from this pre-draft interview. Lynch is asked about his attitude. He firmly responds with "BEAST MODE, on the field."

Although he coined the phrase earlier. As he explained in an interview with NFL Countdown his second season in the league:

It came about one of my coaches always called me a beast, from Pop Warner. And it kinda stuck with me. So when I got up to the league, that was my mindstate. That I was going to be a beast. I took it and ran with it.

By the end of his first NFL season, he already had a grill with the phrase.

The meaning of the phrase varies. Sometimes, it's a nickname for Lynch. Sometimes, it's the bruising, take-no-prisoners style with which he runs. Sometimes it's specific runs he's made.

Lynch's definition for the phrase fluctuates as well. From a 2014 profile by Kevin Fixler:

"Beast Mode, it's part of the lifestyle," he says later. "It's pretty much self-explanatory. It gets thrown around loosely, I mean, all over. It's not set to one specific thing like we're football players or basketball players. Just if you are in your everyday life and you feel like you just accomplished something big that you had going on, then that's Beast Mode. It's an accomplishment, that you put yourself through something to get something better out of it. I feel that that's Beast Mode."

However, the explanation that caught the most traction came in an interview with ex-teammate Michael Robinson released in December:.

The general idea is: Lynch wants to run through defenders, not around them. As Danny Kelly pointed out in his profile of Lynch Tuesday, his 101 broken tackles this season is the most since that category has been tracked. His 15 broken tackles in the NFC Championship game against the Packers was a playoff record, that broke... his own playoff record, from last year's game against the Saints. From that earlier NFL Countdown interview.

"When a defender comes up to tackle me, I want him to feel that ground. I would describe the point of impact as a wonderful feeling. It's what I thrive on: contact."

Marshawn now owns the trademark for "Beast Mode," and hats with the phrase sold out after he wore one at Media Day.

Beast Quake

With the Seahawks leading the massively favored Saints 34-30 late in a Wild Card playoff game, Lynch busted out one of the most impressive runs in NFL history:

He made contact with seven New Orleans defenders, but none brought him down, as he went 67 yards for the game-sealing score. The enormous sound from the Seahawks' fans in the stadium was such that area seismologists noticed the movement created by jumping, yelling Seahawks fans. Hence, Beast Quake. For any and all reading about this play, turn to Matt Ufford's story about it

What happened in the stadium next is the sort of thing that NFL Films molds into the league's mythology, a battle-sport fought by giants and replayed in slow-motion to Wagnerian string music.

But I was there, and I'm telling you: the sky ripped open with noise. A roar beyond sound, a physical thing more industrial than human. The earth shook. It really happened.

Against the Cardinals this year, he had a similar run dubbed "Beast Mode 2" (although there was no groundshaking, because they were on the road, and Arizona's fans did not feel like creating an earthquake while watching their team get run through.)

As it turns out, the seismic activity caused by Lynch's run wasn't unique. Scientists in the Pacific Northwest have to be on alert for such things because of the threat of area earthquakes and volcanoes. Plus, for fun and research, they've started paying special attention to CenturyLink Field during games.

They published a full seismic report of this year's playoff win over the Saints on the Seahawks' website, and the quake from after the two-point conversion in the team's massive NFC Championship comeback against the Packers was actually larger than the Lynch run. But the power of that run -- and the idea that Lynch's punishing style caused the ground to move -- will give the original Beast Quake its moment in lore.

Buffalo

Although the majority of Lynch's fame has come on the west coast, his first NFL home was out East. Lynch was selected by the Bills 12th overall in the 2007 NFL Draft. Lynch knew that Buffalo was in New York... but didn't realize it wasn't New York, New York.

"I didn’t know what to expect, I just knew I was going to New York," Lynch told E:60. "I thought I was gonna be out there with Jay-Z, and then when I finally landed in Buffalo… [there was] slush on the ground. It had just finished snowing. I didn’t [know anything about snow]."

Lynch was the replacement for Willis McGahee, who was traded to the Ravens in the 2007 offseason. On his way out of town, McGahee gave a series of quotes about his distaste for Buffalo, a town he felt had unattractive women and little in the way of nightlife besides chain restaurants. Which led to this absolutely brilliant Kenny Mayne video about Lynch's passion for living it up at chain restaurants.

"As a matter of fact, he ate at Applebee's 12 times during the bye week."

"I love the ambiance... I love the decor... I spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one I love more: the ambiance, or the decor."

Lynch managed a thousand yards in his first two years and was selected to the Pro Bowl in his second season, but was unable to gain his starting spot back from Fred Jackson after missing the first three games of the 2009 season with a suspension. He was traded during the 2010 season to the Seahawks for fourth and fifth round draft picks.

Dancing

There's dancing with cheerleaders:

Dancing with an extremely unwilling Seahawks kicker Steven Hauschka:

And dancing because, dammit, you just won the Super Bowl:

Football strategy

Microphones captured an instance where Pete Carroll tried to explain the intricacies of why a hole would open up for him. Lynch feigned interest, but eventually replied with "I just read it" until a bemused Carroll decided to walk away:

Marshawn's other important piece of football strategy is that scoring points is good:

Fuck

Marshawn wore a FUCK YOU hoodie before the Seahawks' divisional round game against the Saints in 2014:

Marshawn Lynch this morning at Top Pot Donuts. I guess you could say #PissedOffForGreatness? http://pic.twitter.com/l4mDK9hnNg

— Marshall Cherrington (@MWCherrington) January 11, 2014

He also forgot he wasn't supposed to say it in his E:60 video:

He doesn't just use his words to cuss -- before this year's game in Kansas City

Coworkers buddy ran into beastmode last night. Seems friendly. #Chiefs http://pic.twitter.com/K8Jpr2d9yh

— DRMiller (@DRscrilla8) November 15, 2014

Golf carts

Lynch ran for 150 yards and two touchdowns -- including the game-winner -- on a pair of sprained ankles against Washington. He didn't feel like using his legs anymore after the game, so he took a golf cart for a joy ride:

He would also commandeer a cart after his final college game, a 45-10 whooping of Texas A&M in the Holiday Bowl:

Grills

The original video of Lynch purchasing his Seahawks grill has been made private, but this Vice Sports video of Lynch purchasing a Seahawks grill appears to be the same video:

In it, Lynch tells the story of the time he threw out his first grill at a Jack-in-a-Box after putting it in a napkin while eating so he wouldn't get it dirty.

Lynch also owns a Beast Mode grill, apparently purchased during his first NFL season.

Lynch notes that although he's one of the few football players to wear a grill during games, he doesn't notice it at all, especially with a mouthguard in.

Just about that action, boss

The highlight of Marshawn Lynch's brief 2014 Super Bowl media day appearance was an interview with Deion Sanders. When asked why he didn't want to talk to reporters, Lynch was blunt, saying he was "just about that action, boss:"

Because "that action" -- you know, football -- is more important than interviews to Lynch. One of the least talkative players in the NFL had spawned yet another catchphrase: Soon there was a Just About That Action Boss remix and now it's on a soundboard.

Lynch has never liked speaking to the media. Let's turn the clock back to when Lynch was but a sophomore running back at Cal:

A player who has enough jukes in his arsenal to fake out an entire defense, Lynch tries to pull one more move from his bag of tricks before practice ends on this particular evening. As he approaches the crowd of journalists, Lynch slowly creeps behind wide receiver Robert Jordan, who is walking off the field.

"Hide me, hide me," says Lynch playfully. "They ain't gonna see me."

Nevermind the fact that Lynch is about 55 pounds heavier than Jordan. The sophomore tailback is using his cousin as... a lead blocker to guide himself away from the expectant reporters.

At the time, Lynch's distaste for giving interviews didn't ring a million alarms. The title for this piece is "Reluctant poster boy," as if Lynch was hesitant to take the spotlight, whereas now, amateur psychoanalysts seem to believe Lynch's failure to talk to the media is in and of itself a way of gaining attention. However, his stance has remained the same: He'd prefer to play football.

From that Cal student paper story:

"It ain't that, man," he says. "I just try to do my thing on the field to get ready for the game, instead of being in the way."

From a wide-ranging profile with NFL.com's Michael Silver:

"I've never seen anybody win the game in the media. But at the same time, I understand what it could do for you, if you wanted to be someone who talks a lot. But that's not me...

"Football's just always been hella fun to me, not expressing myself in the media. I don't do it to get attention; I just do it 'cause I love that (expletive)."

And from a 2014 interview with former teammate Michael Robinson:

"I ain't got nothing to say. I just wanna play football."

However, Lynch's lack of interest in talking to the press didn't really turn heads until the 2013-14 season. That's when he got a whopping $50,000 fine for refusing to speak to media shortly before Super Bowl 48. Fans tried to raise money to pay his fine, although Lynch said he would in turn donate their money to charity. It was eventually rescinded under a deal where the fine would be forgotten if Lynch upheld further media obligations, but it would be doubled if he failed to do so. A few weeks later, he went to Super Bowl Media Day for six minutes -- one over the mandatory five.

This November, after the Seahawks' loss to the Chiefs, the NFL ruled Lynch had failed to uphold his media responsibilities, despite the fact that he talked by phone to NFL Network reporters. This triggered the earlier $50,000 fine and an additional $50,000 fine. Since, he's made all his mandatory appearances, but has made a point of giving nearly identical answers to every question. After playing the Cardinals in November, every answer was one word:

The next week, he told reporters he'd changed his word from "yup" to "nope:"

Against the Cardinals in December, he used three words -- but the same three words each time:

Transcript of @MoneyLynch's post-game quotes: http://pic.twitter.com/cuEIfYgzau

— Danny 710ESPNSeattle (@DDMon710) December 22, 2014

After beating the Panthers in the playoffs his response was "I'm Thankful:"

On Super Bowl Media Day, he responded to every question with "I'm here so I won't get fined."

The next day, he said "You know why I'm here."

Despite the fines, Lynch might end up making money off his resistance to interviews: For this year's Super Bowl, Skittles and Progressive both made ads starring Lynch where the primary joke is Lynch suddenly being moved to free-flowing, jovial conversation when presented with either Skittles or the opportunity to discuss Progressive insurance. And the hat Lynch wore during media day quickly sold out (although he might pick up an additional fine for wearing it.)

Marshawn Lynch's dick

On Marshawn Lynch's first famous Beast Mode run, after shedding the trillion Saints who tried to bring him, Lynch realized he had clear sailing to the end zone. He responded to this freedom by jumping backwards into the end zone while holding his dick, as a sign of utter, complete disrespect for all the Saints he just embarrassed.

This crowning achievement was immortalized by a Youtube video where a guy commentated Lynch's run, punctuated by a sudden "HOLD MY DIIIIIIICK" as he bounded backwards into the end zone.

On Lynch's similar run this year against the Cardinals, he once again went to his dick:

But this time, the NFL was watching, and gave Lynch an $11,000 fine for the gesture.

Lynch had another big run against the Packers, and knew that if the referees saw him grabbing his dick, they'd give him a 15-yard penalty. So he tried to be subtle, and instead of jumping backwards, merely turned and put his hands on his dick:

Photo credit: Steven Bisig, USA Today Sports

It didn't work, as Lynch received a $20,000 fine and a warning that he would be penalized for dickgrabbing in the Super Bowl. There was a bit of humor here, as the NFL was spotted selling pictures of the penis-touching mere hours after the fine came down. The league also fined Lynch's teammate for allegedly making an obscene gesture near Lynch, although there's no evidence anybody has seen that this ever actually happened.

Before the Super Bowl, Lynch appeared on Conan to teach Conan O'Brien and Rob Gronkowski how to do the dick grab:

Marshawn the Magnaninmous

From the time he was taking his offensive line to Sizzler even though he was broke, Lynch has gone out of his way to give things to people. Even things it doesn't really make sense to give to people. From a Monday Morning QB profile by Robert Klemko:

During his college years at Cal, if a teammate, friend or acquaintance complimented Lynch on the shirt he was wearing, he would hand it over. "He’s walking around on the street with his shirt off," says Ravens running back Justin Forsett, a former teammate of Lynch’s at Cal and in Seattle. "Just because somebody said, ‘That’s a nice shirt.’ "

He gives away touchdown balls:

"I don’t know why," (fellow Seahawks RB Robert) Turbin said. "But he told me, ‘I want you to have this ball. It’s for us. It’s for the running backs, the group, a representation of how we go about our business on a daily basis.’ For whatever reason, that one particular touchdown meant a lot to him, and he wanted me to have it."

He gives extravagant gifts to teammates, although aside from a set of fancy watches, none have been reported:

Every year he takes care of the offensive line. And you hear about running backs taking care of the offensive line, but he goes well above and beyond. He does ridiculous things for the offensive line. I won’t get too much into it because it’s his business.

He makes sure wallets he finds get returned to their owners (although the same name might've helped) Marshawn Lynch returns a wallet to a fellow Lynch.

@MoneyLynch thank you so much for going outta your way to return my wallet!A Lynch taking care of a Lynch#GOODKARMA http://pic.twitter.com/19tTI211bQ

— Jason Lynch (@206Lynch) November 19, 2014

He handed $500 to a 19-year-old McDonald's employee who complimented his shoes, telling him to get some of his own.

"If you're serious about getting those shoes, here's some money to help you get 'em," Lynch said, according to Downs. "My job is to continue to see you grow."

Lynch thinks about people others wouldn't.

Little known: When Ken Norton Jr. returned to Seattle last yr. after father's death 1 player met him at airport to support - Marshawn Lynch.

— Armando Salguero (@ArmandoSalguero) January 28, 2015

And per Klemko: .

Before Jauron’s daughter, Amy, married Falcons media relations assistant Brian Cearns in 2012, Lynch called his buddies who played for Atlanta, including former Pro Bowl safety Lawyer Milloy, to make sure Cearns was an upstanding guy. Apparently satisfied, he never told Jauron that he’d vetted the coach’s future son-in-law.

"That’s priceless," Jauron said upon being told the news more than two years later. "That’s Marshawn."

This profile by Kevin Fixler details the work he does with the Fam 1st Family Foundation, which he started with his cousin, 49ers backup Josh Johnson.

Origin story

Marshawn Lynch's mom tells a story about his birth explaining his incredible power:

One of four children raised by a single mother, Lynch arrived on April 22, 1986, with an unexpected message from the midwife: he might have had a twin that didn't develop.

"They just knew that Marshawn was living off two placentas," his mother, Delisa, said. "She told me that with that, he may be an amazingly strong child. And I was like, 'For real?'"

Plumbing

Lynch can fix an entire house's plumbing with his bare hands in a minute flat:

Sizzler

After rumbling for 163 rushing yards, 75 receiving yards, and five touchdowns in Oakland Tech's city championship, a high school-aged, admittedly broke Lynch promised he'd take his linemen to Sizzler for their job blocking:

As previously noted, Lynch is, on occasion, incredibly passionate towards family chain dining establishments.

Skittles

The first televised instance of Marshawn's Skittles habit comes on Dec. 1, 2011, as the Seahawks play the Eagles. After the play, a sideline attendant is seen giving Lynch a handful of Skittles, which he happily eats:

Lynch would finish with 148 yards and two touchdowns, but the biggest story is the Skittles. Within 24 hours, he's reached a promotional deal with the company earning him two years' free supply of the candy and a custom dispenser. However, it was far from his first sideline Skittles experience. Lynch's mom Delisa says she started giving him the candy for games when he was just a kid:

`"When Marshawn was 12 or 13, we'd go to his games and I'd always have little candies in my purse," Lynch's mama explained. "Before the game, I would say, ‘Here Marshawn, come and get you power pellets.'

"I would give him a handful of Skittles and say, ‘Eat 'em up, baby. They're going to make you run fast and they're going to make you play good."

When he broke down his famous run against the Saints for NFL Films, he credited the candy as his inspiration. In November, 2011, a teammate revealed Lynch couldn't stop thinking about the candy during a game-winning drive against the Ravens:

"All he was talking about in the middle of that last drive," Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson said, "was somebody give him some Skittles. That’s the type of guy he is."

Lynch wore a pair of Skittles cleats about a month later against the 49ers:

Photo credit: Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images

And was fined $10,000 for wearing them. Soon, fans took to throwing Skittles on the field when Lynch did good things:

Photo credit: Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

During the 2014 playoffs, Lynch was given his own flavor of Skittles:

As part of Marshawn Lynch deal, Skittles has produced a limited amount of this "Seattle Mix" http://pic.twitter.com/egfE9iMZSA

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) January 28, 2014

Lynch threw Skittles to fans from a duck boat at the Seahawks' Super Bowl parade -- and somebody handed him a bottle of Fireball in return:

Before the 2015 Super Bowl, he appeared in a Skittles ad that riffed on his infamously laconic press conferences, and in 2017, he traveled to Houston, Scotland to ask people about the Super Bowl, play bagpipes, and do wheelies on the street.

Another video of Marshawn Lynch doon Paisley High Street playing chicken with buses video courtesy of @jobbyweecher http://pic.twitter.com/3kxPBUcEOG

— Steff CSL RSC (@Steff_James84) January 17, 2017

Swimming

A story from Marshawn's mother, Delisa, from a Seattle Times profile:

Anything he tried, he excelled at doing. He came home one day and told his mother that he won a swim meet.

"What? You can’t swim," Delisa said.

He pulled out a blue, first-place ribbon. After asking around, Delisa realized her son was a good swimmer, even though he never had any formal lessons.

Lynch claims he's still elite, although we somewhat doubt it:

Michael Phelps wouldn't have been on the Wheaties box if I stuck with swimming. I've been swimming since I was a little kid. I still swim. I'm the best. I am Olympic caliber right now, hell yeah.

Velvet ropes

Marshawn Lynch places velvet ropes around his Lamborghini when he parks it in public -- or at least he did once:

@FieldGulls beastmode's Lambo, complete with velvet ropes. http://pic.twitter.com/5nZXwY1gKf

— chuck brezina (@chuckbrezina) July 22, 2014

That's really Marshawn's Lambo, but this is apparently not a regular occurrence -- Kevin Fixler reports this was a staged scene in a movie about Lynch.

World of his own

Marshawn has a special talent for looking like he doesn't realize other people are there, too. At the ESPYS:

In the middle of a game:

In an interview, when he literally puts his mouth on the camera and yells if anybody is there:

The end

And at the end of it all, Marshawn Lynch retired in the most perfect way.

✌ http://pic.twitter.com/wesip4IhOR

— Shawn Lynch (@MoneyLynch) February 8, 2016

[recentanimenews]

Anime NYC, Day One

It’s Anime NYC weekend! I’m here to cover everything for you – at least, everything I can get to. We’re starting early, though, as I’m typing this before the con begins. That’s because Seven Seas, which is not allowed to leave California due to some agreement with a lich, I believe, has announced a giant pile of titles every day this week, including some absolute stunners.

We start with Dragon, Ie wo Kau (Dragon Goes House Hunting), which sounds absolutely hilarious based on title alone. It’s a Mag Garden title that runs in Comic Blade, and a fairly recent series. As for the premise, well, I’d hate to spoil…

Do you like sports manga? Have you been thinking “I like sports manga, but there’s not enough fanservice? Where are my girls in swimsuits”? In that case, we have Harukana Receive, a beach volleyball manga that takes place in Okinawa. It runs in Houbunsha’s Manga Time Kirara Forward, and has 4 volumes to date.

I greatly enjoyed My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness when it came out earlier this year, and so am delighted to hear Seven Seas has licensed the sequel, My Solo Exchange Diary, which only comes out in Japan next month. Judging by the title, it promises to be as emotionally compelling as the previous book (exchange diaries by definition requiring another person).

I have often begged for licenses from Shogakukan’s Big Comic Superior, one of the more overlooked seinen magazines. And, well, OK, I asked for it. Now we have Wonderland, which manages to turn Alice in Wonderland into a horror thriller sort of deal, as humanity shrinks all of a sudden and has to fight to survive. The author may be best known over here for Fighting Beauty Wulong.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom has been one of J-Novel Club’s breakaway hits, so it’s no surprise that Seven Seas will be releasing it in print. Get ready to hear about Machivelli’s The Prince a lot and ask yourself “Isn’t that Saber?”.

This should not be a surprise anymore given the number of classic titles Seven Seas has announced, but it still surprised me. Space Battleship Yamoto will be coming out as one omnibus manga! From 1974, it ran in Akita Shoten’s now defunct Bouken Ou magazine, though I believe Media Factory may have the rights now. The anime version may be better known to Western fans as old as I am as Star Blazers.

Udon still has the rights to Rose of Versailles, though it’s been significantly delayed. But Seven Seas teased us with two sort-of-related titles. The first is Versailles of the Dead, combining 18th century France with zombies. It runs in Shogakukan’s Hibana, and is from the creator of After School Charisma.

And we may not have Rose of Versailles yet, but we are getting a Ryoko Ikeda title, as we have Claudine! This single volume shoujo manga is considered a pioneer in the field of LGBT manga, meaning of course that it’s going to end unhappily for all concerned, like most pioneers of LGBT manga. Claudine ran in Shueisha’s Margaret, and will be complete in one volume.

Who wanted a combination of beloved fairy tales and survival game manga? Certainly not me, but there’s definitely a market for it, and they should be delighted with Fairy Tale Battle Royale, a Kadokawa title that runs in Gene Pixiv.

If you liked The Heiress and the Chauffeur, Seven Seas has a new shoujo series by the same author (and that also ran in LaLa from Hakusensha). The Bride and the Exorcist Knight is about a young woman who attracts demons, and the boy who rescues her… and then says they should get married. The boy’s age worries me (he’s apparently 12), but we’ll see how this is handled.

The biggest surprise so far (I may have to edit this when Friday’s titles come out) is the license of the Shin Tenchi Muyo novels. These novels expand on the past of the original OAV series, with one devoted to Aeka’s family, one to Tenchi’s grandfather, and one to Washuu. (Romanization may vary depending on when you got obsessed with Tenchi Muyo). These came out in the 1990s, and were on no one’s radar, so I was stunned. But I will absolutely pick them up.

Friday brings us the final Seven Seas titles. First we have Elf-san wa Yaserarenai (Plus-Sized Elf), a comedy manga from Comic Gum. Dieting elves seem to be the comedy du jour.

Ojojojo proves that the Dragon Maid author can still get things licensed, but at least it doesn’t seem to feature monster girls. Outcast girl meets outcast boy in this 4-volume series from Takeshobo’s Manga Life.

Lastly, there is Hanayome wa Motodanshi (The Bride was a Boy), an Asuka Shinsha title about the titular bride, who was assigned male at birth but has decided to transition, and her husband who finds out about this but falls for her anyway. It’s apparently autobiographical, and should appeal to fans of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness-style manga.

Now onto Anime NYC proper. After a bit of line wackiness (better signage was desperately needed), I got into the Exhibit Hall, grabbed a copy of Nekomonogatari Back (likely my sole purchase this weekend), and headed to the panel on Anime Fandom 15 years ago, run by Doug Wilder of Animecons.com.

It really is startling to see how far we’ve come in that time. 15 years ago, VHS was dying and DVDs were the new thing, but they were frequently high-priced and sometimes came with a box to hold the remaining volumes… which may not always have come out if sales were really poor. Streaming was being talked about, but that’s all. It was a physical media world.

There were magazines! Animerica, Protoculture Addicts, Newtype USA. Wizard magazine devoted part of its content to anime, which makes me sad as it means I have to remember Wizard magazine. You still had Toonami and Adult Swim, but ADV Films (remember them?) was starting up The Anime Network. We had the Lupin dub! Which changed so much dialogue it could have been a different series.

There were the usual gateways. Sailor Moon, etc. Gundam Wing was HUGE at the time. I noted from the audience that it was the Gundam series that attracted a lot of female viewers. Doug also discussed other robot series like G Gundam and Battler Aura Dunbine, which tried to sell itself as being similar to Gundam Wing, which… it wasn’t.

After this nostalgic trip, I toured the show floor a bit. Spoke to Mangagamer about the delays on the Higurashi re-release (their programmer is very busy with other titles, so Tsumihoroboshi may take a few more months.) Got a hot dog, because the days when I try to power through an entire day on water are long gone. Then camped for Viz, which meant seeing Funimation Favorites, which was fun. They’re excited about the Nichijou re-release.

Viz had a lot of people at its panel, though the only panelist was Charlene Ingram, their marketing director. Most of the announcements were things that had been mentioned at prior events, such as Infini-T Force and the Homestuck print omnibuses. A lot of anime clips, which the audience appreciated. The Terra Formars one was quite violent.

A big announcement was that Viz has partnered with Pluto TV, an app that allows you to watch various titles whenever you want, including Viz titles. They were also very excited about Osomatsu-san, the very popular comedy manga that sort of came out of nowhere this past year.

On the manga front, we talked about to My Hero Academia speedup starting in 2018, as well as the Vigilantes spinoff being licensed. The one new series that they announced was That Blue Sky Feeling (Sorairo Flutter), an LGBT series that runs in Square Enix’s Gangan Joker. It’s about a boy drawn to the school outcast, who may be gay but that’s not stopping our hero getting close to him. It looks quite interesting.

After the Viz panel I went to dinner with two friends at a pub on 46th street nowhere near the con, which I always recommend when you do NYC cons – the convention center is near absolutely nothing. Fish and chips were eaten, rum and coke was drank, and a good time was had by all.

Then back to the con for the One Piece 20th anniversary panel, which had a considerable line, but everyone managed to get in. (By the way, the con had about 20,000 people, which is not bad given it’s a first-year con. The panel was run by the One Piece Podcast, and the hosts were Zach and Kelly. They oddly tried to keep it a spoiler-free con, which was increasingly difficult as the panel went on.

A lot of the events going on in Japan for the anniversary were discussed. One Piece is big business there, with shops, restaurants (one restaurant is run by a guy dressed as Sanji, who flirts with the women but is hirrible to any male customers. That sounds… a bit too accurate for my taste) and the like.

There’s an exhibit at Tokyo Tower. There’s a kabuki show, though the lead actor recently got injured. One Piece is used in tons of ads – Coke, Nippon Ham, and a ludicrous ad in appalling Engrish for a pen, ending with “THIS IS A PEN!” declaimed. (That phrase is the standard opener for Japanese kids learning English.)

The live-action One Piece is in production for North America, and few fans seem excited, even with Oda supervising it. Too many people remember Dragon Ball… and Ghost in the Shell… and Death Note. Still, hope springs eternal. Oh yes, and they also showed the 4Kids opening – a surprising number of people grooved along. I guess it didn’t kill the fandom after all!

They had a history of the One Piece anime and manga over the years after this, which got increasingly vague as we tried not to spoil. Unfortunately, I had to cut out before the panel ended, so that I could come back here and write all of this up for you.

Tomorrow brings us Kodansha, Yen, and other assorted fun things. Who’s gonna be there with me?

By: Sean Gaffney

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DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Nashville Predators enjoyed Halloween – We won't clog this whole section with NHL player Halloween costumes. If that's your thing, you can find a rundown on the league web site, although they seem to have left one out. But we will mention the Predators, who may have been enjoying themselves a little too much, starting with P.K. Subban:

But the real stars were Nick Bonnino and his wife Lauren, who went as the scariest thing a hockey player can imagine.

The second star: Ryan Reaves vs. Phil Kessel – OK, one more Halloween one.

The first star: Chance the mascot – The new Vegas mascot has not had a warm reception, as documented here.

Honestly, the whole thing is reasonably funny, but I'm putting it in the top spot solely for the little girl who goes "GOOD ONE, DEL." That kid kills me. That needs to go right up there with "Way to go, Paul" as a generic hockey putdown.

Be It Resolved

We're a month into the season, and the Golden Knights are still decent. Sure, everyone realizes that they're not as good as their record indicates, but they're far better than most of us expected. It turns out that expansion teams in the salary cap era can be reasonably competitive right away.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Coyotes began the year with a record-tying 11 straight losses, and their season is already basically over. Other teams, like the Sabres, Rangers, Canadiens, and Oilers are another bad week or two away from being in the same boat.

All of which leads us to our crazy idea of the month. From the same minds that brought you the Jagr Draft, Cup champs picking their banner night opponent on live TV, and using the Cliffhanger guy to announce player signings, please welcome the league's newest rule: The Nuclear Option.

Yes, the name's kind of dramatic, I know. The idea lives up to it.

It would work like this. Every year, at the end of the regular season, all the non-playoff teams have the option of hitting the reset button on the entire franchise. If a team decides to go nuclear, they get to protect up to three players in the entire organization—not just NHL, but prospects, unsigned picks, etc.—and everyone else instantly becomes a free agent. No cap hits, no buyouts, no re-signing anyone, no compensation. Everything you spent the last decade building is gone.

In return for nuking the entire organization, the team gets two things. First, they move to the front of the line for that year's draft lottery odds, if they're not already there. And second, they get to restock in an expansion draft, under the same rules as the ones the Golden Knights just had.

Three players, an otherwise barren cap situation, top odds in the lottery, and an expansion draft to start all over with. Would you do it? Would you take the Nuclear Option?

It goes without saying that not many teams would. This year's Coyotes wouldn't, for example. They've been rebuilding for years, and have plenty of good young players worth holding onto. I doubt any of this year's bad teams would seriously consider it, unless things go completely off the rails somewhere.

But last year's Avalanche would have had to at least think about it, right? And you can bet that a team like the Sabres would have jumped at the chance a few years ago leading into the McDavid draft. You'd probably see the option used once or twice a decade, just about always after a team had fired its old GM and hired a replacement with a mandate to rebuild. Imagine that new guy having the option to walk in, take one look around, go "NOPE" and just bulldoze the entire thing.

(As an added bonus, the same league full of cry-baby GMs who spent all of last year whining about how the expansion draft made their jobs slightly harder would absolutely lose their minds if they had another one dropped on them with a few weeks' notice. That's not the main point here, but it's a nice side-benefit.)

How much fun would it be to argue over whether your favorite team should use the Nuclear Option? How hard would you have to work before you started to talk yourself into it? How mad would you be when Nuke Day came around and your team chickened out and didn't do it?

Like most great ideas, the NHL would never do it in a million years. But they should. Terrible teams need hope too, and the Golden Knights have proven that it's not as far away as you might think. You just need a way to get there. You need the Nuclear Option.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Today's obscure player is a guy you probably saw a few photos of this week: former Sabres and Canucks goaltender Gary "Bones" Bromley.

Bromley was never drafted, but was signed by the expansion Sabres in 1971 and made his NHL debut two years later. He played 12 games backing up Dave Dryden for the 1973-74 Sabres, then won the starting job for most of the 1974-75 season after Dryden left. He played well, going 26-11-11 and helping the Sabres to a league-high 113 points. That team went all the way to the Stanley Cup final, but turned to late-season acquisition Gerry Desjardins and Roger Crozier for the entire run; despite appearing in over 50 regular season games, Bromley never even saw the ice in a playoff game that year.

He'd play just one more game for the Sabres the following year before heading to the WHA for two seasons. He returned to the NHL in 1978 after signing with the Canucks, and spent three years pulling part-time duty. After a year in the minors, he retired in 1982, having won 54 games over six NHL seasons.

Today, he's probably best remembered for the fearsome skull mask he wore in Vancouver. It was one of the most unique looks of the era, and to this day often shows up on lists of the greatest masks ever.

Trivial Annoyance of the Week

Have you ever been at a point when things were going well—not awesome, not great, but reasonably well—and then your stupid friends show up to remind you that their lives are way better than yours?

That's what it felt like to be a hockey fan this week.

The big news in the sports world this week was the World Series, a seven-game thriller that drew big ratings. Games six and seven were good, but the real show came earlier in the series, as the league's secret new baseballs resulted in every third batter hitting a home run off the face of the moon and everyone went crazy over how much fun it was. Oh, OK, so now sports fans enjoy games with lots of offense. When did this happen?

[Checks earpiece]

I'm being told that everyone has always thought offense was fun. Huh. Well OK, then where were all of you during the NHL playoffs?

[Checks earpiece]

Right, I'm told that the deciding game of the Stanley Cup final featured 58 scoreless minutes, a fluke goal that had to be reviewed, and an empty netter. Huh. I'd completely forgotten about that game. I can't imagine why.

Meanwhile, the NFL stole a few headlines with it trade deadline. If you follow football, you know that their deadline is usually a bust. Unlike in the NHL, where GMs just pretend because they like excuses, the salary cap actually does make trading hard in the NFL because signing bonuses get instantly converted to dead money when a player switches teams. So moves are rare, especially midseason ones, and the trade deadline often passes without anyone really even noticing.

But not this year, where everything went insane and trades were happening everywhere. And not just NHL deadline-style veteran rentals, but big names, young stars, potential franchise quarterbacks…everyone. It was madness. Glorious, wonderful madness.

And then you've got the NBA, where the season is only just starting but everyone has a personality and says interesting things and players quit on their teams over Twitter and fired coaches go scorched earth on Instagram.

Look, other leagues, we get it. You're more fun than the NHL. Leave us alone.

I mean, we're trying, OK? The Golden Knights are a genuinely cool story, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos are killing it in Tampa, the Kings are kind of back, and the Blues and Devils are surprisingly good. That's something, right? Scoring's up slightly because of extra power plays, there's intrigue in New York, and the Coyotes are terrible, which can be entertaining in its own kind of way.

Sure, we may not have record offense and blockbuster trades and social media wars. We're working on it, OK? You don't need to rub it in our faces all at once. Why don't you go lose half a season to a work stoppage?

[Checks earpiece]

I'm told that other sports don't do that anymore. Wonderful. Good for you. Now finish your seasons, pack up and get out of your stadiums. We're going to need them for our outdoor games pretty soon.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Hey, it's not like the NHL never serves up a ridiculously high-scoring playoff game. For example, today let's travel back to 2006 and see what happens when two rivals decide to play with the goaltending sliders pushed all the way down…

It's the second round of the 2006 playoffs, and the Senators are hosting the Sabres for game one. It's a great matchup, featuring a 113-point team facing a 110-point team. It also pits the conference's lowest goals-against against its fourth-lowest, so I'm sure there won't be much offense. Hey, defense wins championships, am I right?

Our clip begins a few seconds after the opening faceoff as we get a look at the Sabres lines and yeah it's already 1-0.

Mike Grier has tipped in a Derek Roy feed to give the Sabres the lead. Nice start. Now they just have to settle in and play a classic road playoff games, take the crowd out of it and wait until—oops never mind it's 1-1.

That Ottawa goal was Jason Spezza from Dany Heatley and Wade Redden, as the Senators deploy their famed "guys we love right now but will eventually leave town as villains" line. I guess Daniel Alfredsson missed a shift.

The Senators make it 2-1 just 15 seconds later. A quick warning here: This game is in Ottawa, which means it features the Senators goal horn guy, which means you're going to be deaf by the end of it. He's a tad excitable. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of him at work, but it's a preseason game so he's taking it easy.

On the other hand, we've got Bob Cole. You win some, you lose some.

Six minutes in, the Sabres tie it at 2-2. (Hello, Numminen.) Amazingly, this will be the last goal of the first period, as everyone's arms are tired and they decide to just skip ahead to the intermission.

By the way, the goaltending matchup here is Ray Emery against Ryan Miller, which is fine, but we have to point out that this was the year the Senators had Dominik Hasek. But he got hurt at the Olympics, depriving us of one of the great face-the-former-team revenge matchups in league history. Damn you, Olympic injuries, maybe Gary Bettman was right about you all along.

We're back for the second period, both teams having made their intermission adjustments. In the Sabres case, that was apparently "let's give up easy breakaways." and they go out and execute it beautifully.

Buffalo gets it back quickly, as they get a 2-on-1 and then do that video games move where you forget which button is the pass one and just end up with everyone skating into the goalie and pushing the puck into the net because you have penalties turned off. It's super effective!

A few seconds later, the Senators have a 5-on-3 and you can probably guess how this turns out. They do that thing where they park Zdeno Chara directly in front of the net and dare the goalie to do anything about it. It works, because the only goalie crazy enough to ever swing at Chara was Ray Emery.

We skip ahead to goals by Derek Roy at the end of the second and Mike Fisher at the start of the third, and it's 5-4 Ottawa. Both starting goalies are still in, by the way, and will stay in for the entire game. I always thought that was an underrated aspect of this game's silliness.

Side note: This is somehow only the second craziest game featuring Ray Emery and the Sabres.

At this point, things actually settle down and the two teams decide to play NHL playoff hockey, which is to say nobody does anything interesting for almost an entire period. The keyword here is "almost," as things are going to go off the rails as soon as we get to two minutes left. Which is right…now.

The Senators have a one-goal lead late in regulation, a powerplay, the puck in the Sabres' zone, and still somehow manage to give up a 2-on-1. Derek Roy buries the one-timer and it's 5-5.

Hey, was I the only one who called him Derek Wah for his whole career, like Patrick Roy? I don't think I was.

We get a brief glimpse of a dude with an Obscure Player Alumni Maxim Afinogenov jersey, but before our brains can process that we're back to the action. The Senators still have a powerplay, remember. You'll never guess what happens next.

This may be my favorite moment from the game, as Bryan Smolinksi bangs home the go-ahead goal with a minute left and makes one of the all-time great "whew, did we ever just dodge a bullet there" smug faces. Hold that thought, Bryan.

We're down to 20 seconds left, and all the Senators have to do now is cram all six guys into the goal frame and call it a day. Instead, there's a mixup behind the net, the puck comes out front, and Tim Connolly buries it to tie the game. The crowd makes that classic "Are you F-ing kidding me?" noise you only get in the NHL playoffs, and we're off to overtime.

OK, settle in because these two teams are going to smarten up and get conservative. Ha, no, just kidding, the overtime is going to last 18 seconds.

The end comes when Anton Volchenkov commits what might literally be the worst turnover in modern playoff history. Seriously, let's just admire that thing. Not only does he fan on the pass, he kicks it off both skates and then turns his back to the puck as the Sabres break in. By the time Chris Drury scores the winner, Volchenkov is just sadly sliding off into the corner on his belly. Other than that, I thought the shift went well.

The Sabres ended up taking the series in five games, three of which came in overtime. But the Senators earned revenge in 2007, knocking out Buffalo on their way to the Stanley Cup final. This time, Emery and the Senators learned from their mistakes and made sure that when the puck was behind their own net at a crucial moment, they never let the other team even touch it.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Nashville Predators enjoyed Halloween – We won't clog this whole section with NHL player Halloween costumes. If that's your thing, you can find a rundown on the league web site, although they seem to have left one out. But we will mention the Predators, who may have been enjoying themselves a little too much, starting with P.K. Subban:

But the real stars were Nick Bonnino and his wife Lauren, who went as the scariest thing a hockey player can imagine.

The second star: Ryan Reaves vs. Phil Kessel – OK, one more Halloween one.

The first star: Chance the mascot – The new Vegas mascot has not had a warm reception, as documented here.

Honestly, the whole thing is reasonably funny, but I'm putting it in the top spot solely for the little girl who goes "GOOD ONE, DEL." That kid kills me. That needs to go right up there with "Way to go, Paul" as a generic hockey putdown.

Be It Resolved

We're a month into the season, and the Golden Knights are still decent. Sure, everyone realizes that they're not as good as their record indicates, but they're far better than most of us expected. It turns out that expansion teams in the salary cap era can be reasonably competitive right away.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Coyotes began the year with a record-tying 11 straight losses, and their season is already basically over. Other teams, like the Sabres, Rangers, Canadiens, and Oilers are another bad week or two away from being in the same boat.

All of which leads us to our crazy idea of the month. From the same minds that brought you the Jagr Draft, Cup champs picking their banner night opponent on live TV, and using the Cliffhanger guy to announce player signings, please welcome the league's newest rule: The Nuclear Option.

Yes, the name's kind of dramatic, I know. The idea lives up to it.

It would work like this. Every year, at the end of the regular season, all the non-playoff teams have the option of hitting the reset button on the entire franchise. If a team decides to go nuclear, they get to protect up to three players in the entire organization—not just NHL, but prospects, unsigned picks, etc.—and everyone else instantly becomes a free agent. No cap hits, no buyouts, no re-signing anyone, no compensation. Everything you spent the last decade building is gone.

In return for nuking the entire organization, the team gets two things. First, they move to the front of the line for that year's draft lottery odds, if they're not already there. And second, they get to restock in an expansion draft, under the same rules as the ones the Golden Knights just had.

Three players, an otherwise barren cap situation, top odds in the lottery, and an expansion draft to start all over with. Would you do it? Would you take the Nuclear Option?

It goes without saying that not many teams would. This year's Coyotes wouldn't, for example. They've been rebuilding for years, and have plenty of good young players worth holding onto. I doubt any of this year's bad teams would seriously consider it, unless things go completely off the rails somewhere.

But last year's Avalanche would have had to at least think about it, right? And you can bet that a team like the Sabres would have jumped at the chance a few years ago leading into the McDavid draft. You'd probably see the option used once or twice a decade, just about always after a team had fired its old GM and hired a replacement with a mandate to rebuild. Imagine that new guy having the option to walk in, take one look around, go "NOPE" and just bulldoze the entire thing.

(As an added bonus, the same league full of cry-baby GMs who spent all of last year whining about how the expansion draft made their jobs slightly harder would absolutely lose their minds if they had another one dropped on them with a few weeks' notice. That's not the main point here, but it's a nice side-benefit.)

How much fun would it be to argue over whether your favorite team should use the Nuclear Option? How hard would you have to work before you started to talk yourself into it? How mad would you be when Nuke Day came around and your team chickened out and didn't do it?

Like most great ideas, the NHL would never do it in a million years. But they should. Terrible teams need hope too, and the Golden Knights have proven that it's not as far away as you might think. You just need a way to get there. You need the Nuclear Option.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Today's obscure player is a guy you probably saw a few photos of this week: former Sabres and Canucks goaltender Gary "Bones" Bromley.

Bromley was never drafted, but was signed by the expansion Sabres in 1971 and made his NHL debut two years later. He played 12 games backing up Dave Dryden for the 1973-74 Sabres, then won the starting job for most of the 1974-75 season after Dryden left. He played well, going 26-11-11 and helping the Sabres to a league-high 113 points. That team went all the way to the Stanley Cup final, but turned to late-season acquisition Gerry Desjardins and Roger Crozier for the entire run; despite appearing in over 50 regular season games, Bromley never even saw the ice in a playoff game that year.

He'd play just one more game for the Sabres the following year before heading to the WHA for two seasons. He returned to the NHL in 1978 after signing with the Canucks, and spent three years pulling part-time duty. After a year in the minors, he retired in 1982, having won 54 games over six NHL seasons.

Today, he's probably best remembered for the fearsome skull mask he wore in Vancouver. It was one of the most unique looks of the era, and to this day often shows up on lists of the greatest masks ever.

Trivial Annoyance of the Week

Have you ever been at a point when things were going well—not awesome, not great, but reasonably well—and then your stupid friends show up to remind you that their lives are way better than yours?

That's what it felt like to be a hockey fan this week.

The big news in the sports world this week was the World Series, a seven-game thriller that drew big ratings. Games six and seven were good, but the real show came earlier in the series, as the league's secret new baseballs resulted in every third batter hitting a home run off the face of the moon and everyone went crazy over how much fun it was. Oh, OK, so now sports fans enjoy games with lots of offense. When did this happen?

[Checks earpiece]

I'm being told that everyone has always thought offense was fun. Huh. Well OK, then where were all of you during the NHL playoffs?

[Checks earpiece]

Right, I'm told that the deciding game of the Stanley Cup final featured 58 scoreless minutes, a fluke goal that had to be reviewed, and an empty netter. Huh. I'd completely forgotten about that game. I can't imagine why.

Meanwhile, the NFL stole a few headlines with it trade deadline. If you follow football, you know that their deadline is usually a bust. Unlike in the NHL, where GMs just pretend because they like excuses, the salary cap actually does make trading hard in the NFL because signing bonuses get instantly converted to dead money when a player switches teams. So moves are rare, especially midseason ones, and the trade deadline often passes without anyone really even noticing.

But not this year, where everything went insane and trades were happening everywhere. And not just NHL deadline-style veteran rentals, but big names, young stars, potential franchise quarterbacks…everyone. It was madness. Glorious, wonderful madness.

And then you've got the NBA, where the season is only just starting but everyone has a personality and says interesting things and players quit on their teams over Twitter and fired coaches go scorched earth on Instagram.

Look, other leagues, we get it. You're more fun than the NHL. Leave us alone.

I mean, we're trying, OK? The Golden Knights are a genuinely cool story, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos are killing it in Tampa, the Kings are kind of back, and the Blues and Devils are surprisingly good. That's something, right? Scoring's up slightly because of extra power plays, there's intrigue in New York, and the Coyotes are terrible, which can be entertaining in its own kind of way.

Sure, we may not have record offense and blockbuster trades and social media wars. We're working on it, OK? You don't need to rub it in our faces all at once. Why don't you go lose half a season to a work stoppage?

[Checks earpiece]

I'm told that other sports don't do that anymore. Wonderful. Good for you. Now finish your seasons, pack up and get out of your stadiums. We're going to need them for our outdoor games pretty soon.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Hey, it's not like the NHL never serves up a ridiculously high-scoring playoff game. For example, today let's travel back to 2006 and see what happens when two rivals decide to play with the goaltending sliders pushed all the way down…

It's the second round of the 2006 playoffs, and the Senators are hosting the Sabres for game one. It's a great matchup, featuring a 113-point team facing a 110-point team. It also pits the conference's lowest goals-against against its fourth-lowest, so I'm sure there won't be much offense. Hey, defense wins championships, am I right?

Our clip begins a few seconds after the opening faceoff as we get a look at the Sabres lines and yeah it's already 1-0.

Mike Grier has tipped in a Derek Roy feed to give the Sabres the lead. Nice start. Now they just have to settle in and play a classic road playoff games, take the crowd out of it and wait until—oops never mind it's 1-1.

That Ottawa goal was Jason Spezza from Dany Heatley and Wade Redden, as the Senators deploy their famed "guys we love right now but will eventually leave town as villains" line. I guess Daniel Alfredsson missed a shift.

The Senators make it 2-1 just 15 seconds later. A quick warning here: This game is in Ottawa, which means it features the Senators goal horn guy, which means you're going to be deaf by the end of it. He's a tad excitable. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of him at work, but it's a preseason game so he's taking it easy.

On the other hand, we've got Bob Cole. You win some, you lose some.

Six minutes in, the Sabres tie it at 2-2. (Hello, Numminen.) Amazingly, this will be the last goal of the first period, as everyone's arms are tired and they decide to just skip ahead to the intermission.

By the way, the goaltending matchup here is Ray Emery against Ryan Miller, which is fine, but we have to point out that this was the year the Senators had Dominik Hasek. But he got hurt at the Olympics, depriving us of one of the great face-the-former-team revenge matchups in league history. Damn you, Olympic injuries, maybe Gary Bettman was right about you all along.

We're back for the second period, both teams having made their intermission adjustments. In the Sabres case, that was apparently "let's give up easy breakaways." and they go out and execute it beautifully.

Buffalo gets it back quickly, as they get a 2-on-1 and then do that video games move where you forget which button is the pass one and just end up with everyone skating into the goalie and pushing the puck into the net because you have penalties turned off. It's super effective!

A few seconds later, the Senators have a 5-on-3 and you can probably guess how this turns out. They do that thing where they park Zdeno Chara directly in front of the net and dare the goalie to do anything about it. It works, because the only goalie crazy enough to ever swing at Chara was Ray Emery.

We skip ahead to goals by Derek Roy at the end of the second and Mike Fisher at the start of the third, and it's 5-4 Ottawa. Both starting goalies are still in, by the way, and will stay in for the entire game. I always thought that was an underrated aspect of this game's silliness.

Side note: This is somehow only the second craziest game featuring Ray Emery and the Sabres.

At this point, things actually settle down and the two teams decide to play NHL playoff hockey, which is to say nobody does anything interesting for almost an entire period. The keyword here is "almost," as things are going to go off the rails as soon as we get to two minutes left. Which is right…now.

The Senators have a one-goal lead late in regulation, a powerplay, the puck in the Sabres' zone, and still somehow manage to give up a 2-on-1. Derek Roy buries the one-timer and it's 5-5.

Hey, was I the only one who called him Derek Wah for his whole career, like Patrick Roy? I don't think I was.

We get a brief glimpse of a dude with an Obscure Player Alumni Maxim Afinogenov jersey, but before our brains can process that we're back to the action. The Senators still have a powerplay, remember. You'll never guess what happens next.

This may be my favorite moment from the game, as Bryan Smolinksi bangs home the go-ahead goal with a minute left and makes one of the all-time great "whew, did we ever just dodge a bullet there" smug faces. Hold that thought, Bryan.

We're down to 20 seconds left, and all the Senators have to do now is cram all six guys into the goal frame and call it a day. Instead, there's a mixup behind the net, the puck comes out front, and Tim Connolly buries it to tie the game. The crowd makes that classic "Are you F-ing kidding me?" noise you only get in the NHL playoffs, and we're off to overtime.

OK, settle in because these two teams are going to smarten up and get conservative. Ha, no, just kidding, the overtime is going to last 18 seconds.

The end comes when Anton Volchenkov commits what might literally be the worst turnover in modern playoff history. Seriously, let's just admire that thing. Not only does he fan on the pass, he kicks it off both skates and then turns his back to the puck as the Sabres break in. By the time Chris Drury scores the winner, Volchenkov is just sadly sliding off into the corner on his belly. Other than that, I thought the shift went well.

The Sabres ended up taking the series in five games, three of which came in overtime. But the Senators earned revenge in 2007, knocking out Buffalo on their way to the Stanley Cup final. This time, Emery and the Senators learned from their mistakes and made sure that when the puck was behind their own net at a crucial moment, they never let the other team even touch it.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: The Nashville Predators enjoyed Halloween – We won't clog this whole section with NHL player Halloween costumes. If that's your thing, you can find a rundown on the league web site, although they seem to have left one out. But we will mention the Predators, who may have been enjoying themselves a little too much, starting with P.K. Subban:

But the real stars were Nick Bonnino and his wife Lauren, who went as the scariest thing a hockey player can imagine.

The second star: Ryan Reaves vs. Phil Kessel – OK, one more Halloween one.

The first star: Chance the mascot – The new Vegas mascot has not had a warm reception, as documented here.

Honestly, the whole thing is reasonably funny, but I'm putting it in the top spot solely for the little girl who goes "GOOD ONE, DEL." That kid kills me. That needs to go right up there with "Way to go, Paul" as a generic hockey putdown.

Be It Resolved

We're a month into the season, and the Golden Knights are still decent. Sure, everyone realizes that they're not as good as their record indicates, but they're far better than most of us expected. It turns out that expansion teams in the salary cap era can be reasonably competitive right away.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Coyotes began the year with a record-tying 11 straight losses, and their season is already basically over. Other teams, like the Sabres, Rangers, Canadiens, and Oilers are another bad week or two away from being in the same boat.

All of which leads us to our crazy idea of the month. From the same minds that brought you the Jagr Draft, Cup champs picking their banner night opponent on live TV, and using the Cliffhanger guy to announce player signings, please welcome the league's newest rule: The Nuclear Option.

Yes, the name's kind of dramatic, I know. The idea lives up to it.

It would work like this. Every year, at the end of the regular season, all the non-playoff teams have the option of hitting the reset button on the entire franchise. If a team decides to go nuclear, they get to protect up to three players in the entire organization—not just NHL, but prospects, unsigned picks, etc.—and everyone else instantly becomes a free agent. No cap hits, no buyouts, no re-signing anyone, no compensation. Everything you spent the last decade building is gone.

In return for nuking the entire organization, the team gets two things. First, they move to the front of the line for that year's draft lottery odds, if they're not already there. And second, they get to restock in an expansion draft, under the same rules as the ones the Golden Knights just had.

Three players, an otherwise barren cap situation, top odds in the lottery, and an expansion draft to start all over with. Would you do it? Would you take the Nuclear Option?

It goes without saying that not many teams would. This year's Coyotes wouldn't, for example. They've been rebuilding for years, and have plenty of good young players worth holding onto. I doubt any of this year's bad teams would seriously consider it, unless things go completely off the rails somewhere.

But last year's Avalanche would have had to at least think about it, right? And you can bet that a team like the Sabres would have jumped at the chance a few years ago leading into the McDavid draft. You'd probably see the option used once or twice a decade, just about always after a team had fired its old GM and hired a replacement with a mandate to rebuild. Imagine that new guy having the option to walk in, take one look around, go "NOPE" and just bulldoze the entire thing.

(As an added bonus, the same league full of cry-baby GMs who spent all of last year whining about how the expansion draft made their jobs slightly harder would absolutely lose their minds if they had another one dropped on them with a few weeks' notice. That's not the main point here, but it's a nice side-benefit.)

How much fun would it be to argue over whether your favorite team should use the Nuclear Option? How hard would you have to work before you started to talk yourself into it? How mad would you be when Nuke Day came around and your team chickened out and didn't do it?

Like most great ideas, the NHL would never do it in a million years. But they should. Terrible teams need hope too, and the Golden Knights have proven that it's not as far away as you might think. You just need a way to get there. You need the Nuclear Option.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Today's obscure player is a guy you probably saw a few photos of this week: former Sabres and Canucks goaltender Gary "Bones" Bromley.

Bromley was never drafted, but was signed by the expansion Sabres in 1971 and made his NHL debut two years later. He played 12 games backing up Dave Dryden for the 1973-74 Sabres, then won the starting job for most of the 1974-75 season after Dryden left. He played well, going 26-11-11 and helping the Sabres to a league-high 113 points. That team went all the way to the Stanley Cup final, but turned to late-season acquisition Gerry Desjardins and Roger Crozier for the entire run; despite appearing in over 50 regular season games, Bromley never even saw the ice in a playoff game that year.

He'd play just one more game for the Sabres the following year before heading to the WHA for two seasons. He returned to the NHL in 1978 after signing with the Canucks, and spent three years pulling part-time duty. After a year in the minors, he retired in 1982, having won 54 games over six NHL seasons.

Today, he's probably best remembered for the fearsome skull mask he wore in Vancouver. It was one of the most unique looks of the era, and to this day often shows up on lists of the greatest masks ever.

Trivial Annoyance of the Week

Have you ever been at a point when things were going well—not awesome, not great, but reasonably well—and then your stupid friends show up to remind you that their lives are way better than yours?

That's what it felt like to be a hockey fan this week.

The big news in the sports world this week was the World Series, a seven-game thriller that drew big ratings. Games six and seven were good, but the real show came earlier in the series, as the league's secret new baseballs resulted in every third batter hitting a home run off the face of the moon and everyone went crazy over how much fun it was. Oh, OK, so now sports fans enjoy games with lots of offense. When did this happen?

[Checks earpiece]

I'm being told that everyone has always thought offense was fun. Huh. Well OK, then where were all of you during the NHL playoffs?

[Checks earpiece]

Right, I'm told that the deciding game of the Stanley Cup final featured 58 scoreless minutes, a fluke goal that had to be reviewed, and an empty netter. Huh. I'd completely forgotten about that game. I can't imagine why.

Meanwhile, the NFL stole a few headlines with it trade deadline. If you follow football, you know that their deadline is usually a bust. Unlike in the NHL, where GMs just pretend because they like excuses, the salary cap actually does make trading hard in the NFL because signing bonuses get instantly converted to dead money when a player switches teams. So moves are rare, especially midseason ones, and the trade deadline often passes without anyone really even noticing.

But not this year, where everything went insane and trades were happening everywhere. And not just NHL deadline-style veteran rentals, but big names, young stars, potential franchise quarterbacks…everyone. It was madness. Glorious, wonderful madness.

And then you've got the NBA, where the season is only just starting but everyone has a personality and says interesting things and players quit on their teams over Twitter and fired coaches go scorched earth on Instagram.

Look, other leagues, we get it. You're more fun than the NHL. Leave us alone.

I mean, we're trying, OK? The Golden Knights are a genuinely cool story, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos are killing it in Tampa, the Kings are kind of back, and the Blues and Devils are surprisingly good. That's something, right? Scoring's up slightly because of extra power plays, there's intrigue in New York, and the Coyotes are terrible, which can be entertaining in its own kind of way.

Sure, we may not have record offense and blockbuster trades and social media wars. We're working on it, OK? You don't need to rub it in our faces all at once. Why don't you go lose half a season to a work stoppage?

[Checks earpiece]

I'm told that other sports don't do that anymore. Wonderful. Good for you. Now finish your seasons, pack up and get out of your stadiums. We're going to need them for our outdoor games pretty soon.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Hey, it's not like the NHL never serves up a ridiculously high-scoring playoff game. For example, today let's travel back to 2006 and see what happens when two rivals decide to play with the goaltending sliders pushed all the way down…

It's the second round of the 2006 playoffs, and the Senators are hosting the Sabres for game one. It's a great matchup, featuring a 113-point team facing a 110-point team. It also pits the conference's lowest goals-against against its fourth-lowest, so I'm sure there won't be much offense. Hey, defense wins championships, am I right?

Our clip begins a few seconds after the opening faceoff as we get a look at the Sabres lines and yeah it's already 1-0.

Mike Grier has tipped in a Derek Roy feed to give the Sabres the lead. Nice start. Now they just have to settle in and play a classic road playoff games, take the crowd out of it and wait until—oops never mind it's 1-1.

That Ottawa goal was Jason Spezza from Dany Heatley and Wade Redden, as the Senators deploy their famed "guys we love right now but will eventually leave town as villains" line. I guess Daniel Alfredsson missed a shift.

The Senators make it 2-1 just 15 seconds later. A quick warning here: This game is in Ottawa, which means it features the Senators goal horn guy, which means you're going to be deaf by the end of it. He's a tad excitable. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of him at work, but it's a preseason game so he's taking it easy.

On the other hand, we've got Bob Cole. You win some, you lose some.

Six minutes in, the Sabres tie it at 2-2. (Hello, Numminen.) Amazingly, this will be the last goal of the first period, as everyone's arms are tired and they decide to just skip ahead to the intermission.

By the way, the goaltending matchup here is Ray Emery against Ryan Miller, which is fine, but we have to point out that this was the year the Senators had Dominik Hasek. But he got hurt at the Olympics, depriving us of one of the great face-the-former-team revenge matchups in league history. Damn you, Olympic injuries, maybe Gary Bettman was right about you all along.

We're back for the second period, both teams having made their intermission adjustments. In the Sabres case, that was apparently "let's give up easy breakaways." and they go out and execute it beautifully.

Buffalo gets it back quickly, as they get a 2-on-1 and then do that video games move where you forget which button is the pass one and just end up with everyone skating into the goalie and pushing the puck into the net because you have penalties turned off. It's super effective!

A few seconds later, the Senators have a 5-on-3 and you can probably guess how this turns out. They do that thing where they park Zdeno Chara directly in front of the net and dare the goalie to do anything about it. It works, because the only goalie crazy enough to ever swing at Chara was Ray Emery.

We skip ahead to goals by Derek Roy at the end of the second and Mike Fisher at the start of the third, and it's 5-4 Ottawa. Both starting goalies are still in, by the way, and will stay in for the entire game. I always thought that was an underrated aspect of this game's silliness.

Side note: This is somehow only the second craziest game featuring Ray Emery and the Sabres.

At this point, things actually settle down and the two teams decide to play NHL playoff hockey, which is to say nobody does anything interesting for almost an entire period. The keyword here is "almost," as things are going to go off the rails as soon as we get to two minutes left. Which is right…now.

The Senators have a one-goal lead late in regulation, a powerplay, the puck in the Sabres' zone, and still somehow manage to give up a 2-on-1. Derek Roy buries the one-timer and it's 5-5.

Hey, was I the only one who called him Derek Wah for his whole career, like Patrick Roy? I don't think I was.

We get a brief glimpse of a dude with an Obscure Player Alumni Maxim Afinogenov jersey, but before our brains can process that we're back to the action. The Senators still have a powerplay, remember. You'll never guess what happens next.

This may be my favorite moment from the game, as Bryan Smolinksi bangs home the go-ahead goal with a minute left and makes one of the all-time great "whew, did we ever just dodge a bullet there" smug faces. Hold that thought, Bryan.

We're down to 20 seconds left, and all the Senators have to do now is cram all six guys into the goal frame and call it a day. Instead, there's a mixup behind the net, the puck comes out front, and Tim Connolly buries it to tie the game. The crowd makes that classic "Are you F-ing kidding me?" noise you only get in the NHL playoffs, and we're off to overtime.

OK, settle in because these two teams are going to smarten up and get conservative. Ha, no, just kidding, the overtime is going to last 18 seconds.

The end comes when Anton Volchenkov commits what might literally be the worst turnover in modern playoff history. Seriously, let's just admire that thing. Not only does he fan on the pass, he kicks it off both skates and then turns his back to the puck as the Sabres break in. By the time Chris Drury scores the winner, Volchenkov is just sadly sliding off into the corner on his belly. Other than that, I thought the shift went well.

The Sabres ended up taking the series in five games, three of which came in overtime. But the Senators earned revenge in 2007, knocking out Buffalo on their way to the Stanley Cup final. This time, Emery and the Senators learned from their mistakes and made sure that when the puck was behind their own net at a crucial moment, they never let the other team even touch it.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: Halloween Hijinx, The Nuclear Option, and an Ode to Offense published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv