#it started interesting but then it became a food contest where little d was the focus and not Beel???

[nocreativityfornames]

It didn't change, it was Lou then and it's Lou now 🦚

My 2° favorite though did change, because it used to be Beel but he's now fourth, having lost his spot to Satan and Solomon

[tobesensation-9]

hi~ i really love your writings 🥰👌🏼 anw, i want to request a scenario(?) when sf9 and s/o have to babysit their s/o's 3y.o niece for 24h? d-do you get what i mean.. 🥺 shsjdjsh i love you pls stay healthy and stay safe!!!!! 🥺🧡🙏🏼

This is so adorable 😍. I have nieces and one of them is three so this is soo cute to write! Thanks a lot and you too, stay strong 💪.

SF9: Babysitting Together

Youngbin

When you mentioned the news to him he was really excited. “Really? I’ll finally meet her!”

“Hi yn/n!” She’d run to you with her cute little legs while your sibling drops her off. You’d pick her up and turn to Youngbin so they can officially meet. Of course like a lot of little kids she’s nervous.

“Hi! My name is Youngbin. You’re so cute.”

She’d act timid not saying anything or waving at first because she was too busy hiding her face in your chest.

But as the day went on she and Youngbin became the closest friends. You started to get envious seeing that she was having more fun with him than she was with you.

“(The title she calls you) look at what Bin and I made?”

She’d come to you with a cookie in hand. You knew he wanted to make cookies with her. A brave task to take with a three-year-old, but he survived and had a ton of fun.

The cookie had the cuteness of what a toddlers art would looks like, only on a cookie. You took a piece and ate it in delight.

“Mmmm. It’s so good!” At your compliment she’d run over to Youngbin and hug him telling him how much you loved the cookie. He’d look up at you smiling and you smile back.

Inseong

This intellectual lol. Would definitely want to teach your niece a few things.

You’d be making them lunch in the kitchen when you see Inseong and your niece laying on the floor looking at a book.

It showed pictures of the different planets of the solar system. You loved how it wasn’t the ideal dolls and other ideal girl toys. So you loved it even more that she was really into it.

“What is this one called? It’s so biiiiiggg.”

“That’s Jupiter. Did you know it’s the largest planet in the solar system?”

“WHATTT?”

He’d end up taking her to the store and coming back after getting supplies to make their own solar system model. 

They’d talk about all sorts of things until her bedtime approached. She’d would definitely be reluctant unless he read more books to her as she fell asleep.

Jaeyoon

He’s always doing crafty things on vlive, so I see him making bracelets with her. When you told him he’d make the effort to buy all sorts of charms at the arts and crafts store. Wanting to give her a huge variety to choose from.

“So you’d add them like this.” The three of you are sitting at the table adding the charms to your bracelets.

“I don’t know what to add?” You could tell that he took the variety so seriously it kinda overwhelmed her.

“Well.... what about this one?” He’d pick a crown charm. “A crown?”

“Yeah, because your beautiful princess.”

“Yay a princess!” She’d end up making a bracelet with nothing but crowns, shoes and dresses, on it reminding you guys every 10 minutes that she was a beautiful princess.

You’d definitely have to buy her a crown before the day was over.

Dawon

After seeing how he interacted with the kids on ‘WDDD’ Dawon has an even bigger soft spot in my heart. Similar to the concept of his variety show, he'd try to complete every task that your niece requests, even the one’s he may not like 😂 ...

“What color do you like? I like purple on you.” 

“Ahhh....okay that's fine. That shade is pretty so I’ll let you.” 

“It is! I knew you'd like it!” 

You’d walk in on your niece giving Sanghyuk a make over. His hair was tied and two disheveled ponytails, with cutely and messy done makeup and now she was polishing his nails. He seemed to do a good job of making sure she didn’t make a mess of anything. But instead, his face was her creative canvas. 

“Oh you look so pretty!” You teased him, sitting in his stool, glaring at you and smiling back at your niece through the pain. 

Also see him giving her piggyback rides running all of over the play with with her squealing and laughing delight.

Zuho

Like Inseong, I see him sharing his knowledge and interest with your niece and she suck all of it up like a sponge. I’ve learned that young kids are so receptive and willing to learn new things all the time, its too cute. I also had to take the idea from SF9 Sangsa (the new episode was priceless 😂). 

So he’d be making music on one of her piano toys and she'd be so astounded.  

“Wait can you do that again?” 

“What this?” 

He’d play a short and cute segment of the chorus of ‘Summer Breeze’ and she’d love it and bounce around dancing like how cute toddlers are. He’d be jumping around and dancing with her too. He’d even be trying to teach her at one point, with her hitting all the wrong keys and laughing together. 

From all the excitement she’d have him playing the same melody from the song until she had gotten tired of it. 

Rowoon

I see Seokwoo really just trying to engage with your niece. Like he’d bring up different topics or she’d bring up different things and they'd be talking and playing for hours. 

You’d laugh at how inquisitive your niece would get. Seeing their interactions would tickle you to your core. 

“Mr. Seokwoo?” 

“Call me Uncle Seokwoo”. This would make you snicker 

He’d be sitting next to her, leaning to her giving her all his attention. 

“Uncle Seokwoo, are you a giant?” 

He’d chuckle, “Am I a giant?” 

“Yeah. You’re so big. I was scared when I first saw you. Because you look like a giant.” 

“Well, I guess you can call me that. You don’t have to be scared. I’m the nicest giant you'd meet.” He’d poke her nose and flash her a smile. She’d giggle and they'd giggle together. 

It was so cute and funny how quick she warmed up to him and how his charms can work on anyone. 

Taeyang

Taeyang just seems so gentle and tender. I think any kid would love him. Of course I think he would try to cook with her or teach her some dance moves. They’d be in a separate room, and you'd hear him playing tons of SF9 songs teaching her some of the dances. Of course modifying them to make the easier for her.

“Like this?’ She’d ask. 

“Yeah, just like that. You really got the hang of it!” 

In the living room where you were you’d see your niece running out of the room with Taeyang walking behind

“Can we you show you the dances Taeyang taught me?” 

“Sure go ahead.” 

With a speaker in hand, Taeyang would start playing ‘Life is so Beautiful’ which you’d assume was her favourite song to dance too since you heard this one the most. 

She’d look back a Taeyang the entire time laughing with the biggest smile on her face. 

Hwiyoung

For some reason I see him having playful banter with your niece. Younger kids can't help but be honest. I think that would poke at his sensitive side and it would turn into playful banter. 

“Youngkyun, where are your sleeves?” 

She’d be touching his arm. He was wearing one of his iconic no-sleeve, chuffed shirts 

“It doesn't have any.” 

“Why? It’s cold outside. You’re gonna get sick.” 

“I wore a jacket yn/n”. 

“Thats not warm enough. Find your sleeves”. 

“I told you it’s not supposed to have them.” 

You’d see them talking and see him getting flustered by the bluntness of a three-year-old. 

He’d look at you, flushed, but trying to laugh it off 😅😂.

Chani

I see him and your niece having a competition to see who’s the cutest for your attention. Like an aegyo contest. 

She’d come up to you just being a natural cutie pie telling all the things she’s doing and you praising her for it. And right after to play with her he’d tap you and do some of his famous aegyo and turning to her for a reaction. 

Not realising herself she’d try acting cuter for the rest of the day. 

“Look (your title)! My dress looks super cute with all the glitter!” 

“Look y/n, aren’t my cute eyes and cheeks cuter’, you’d just scoff at him and you’d see your niece just starring at him tapping you to tell you something that she thinks was better.

Even with this little competition they’d get along perfectly. That’s just the nature of Chani he seems to get along well with anyone.  

Extra points 

- I also think that some of them wouldn’t have any trouble putting her to sleep like Jaeyoon, Inseong, Rowoon and Taeyang. But I think the rest of them would need your help with that. 

- Even for those who would have trouble, she’d most likely take a nap next to or leaning on them instead of you before the day was over

- (Definitely see Rowoon, Zuho, Taeyang, and Youngbin just picking her up and laying her on his chest if they were sitting in the coach next to you). 

- Your niece would also want ideal food that kids would like, like pizza and chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs. And all of then would agree with her, especially Zuho. 

- I see you trying to disagree and suggest something else but they end up chanting for dinosaur nuggets together 

- And not forgetting their juice or milk boxes that you’d serve both of them. 

[zhong-taro]

shotaro as a friendly ghost

 this is 2.8k words of shotaro and taeyong interacting and yes it’s all self-indulgent

tw: small mention of suicide, but it’s marked very clearly!

Ok so this is definitely part of a longer, more detailed AU that I’ll probably go into more later (like way later)

bUT let’s start here - Shotaro is a friendly ghost

Oh my g o d he’s such a sweetie you have no idea

When he dies, it’s something really dumb

He and his parents had moved to Korea after his father had sold his company and suddenly come into a significant amount of money 

It’s enough that they buy a large plot of land in Korea

Shotaro is about five years old when they buy the land and start construction on the house

It’s positioned at the top of a large hill that looked down over a small Korean town, and in the hot summers the house provided shade for a park, and when it rained the house blocked from too much flooding

Well, once it was finally built it did

It took five years for this absolute MANSION of a house to be built. Shotaro and his family had lived in a small rental home in the town, acquainting themselves with everyone and becoming established members of the community

When the place was finally finished, Shotaro was ten and the Osaki’s would have large gatherings of people at their home most weekends, with large parties every holidays

Originally, the family had built such a large home because they planned on taking in many foster children and helping to raise orphaned children

They never get to

The 1950’s were an absolute golden era for the Osakis, they’re loved by everyone around them and their perfect little boy Shotaro shines in Korea like he never had in Japan

Until in 1959, when they suffer great tragedy and the family is never the same again

Personally, Shotaro thinks he couldn’t have had a dumber death

He was nineteen and it was the night before the town dance contest. He was more than nervous - his parents had already been taking him out of town for dance lessons because he was too scared that the entire town would think he was bad at dancing, but now he was actually facing them

All of these people had known him since he was a toddler, he couldn’t handle the idea of all of them thinking he was bad at something he had found he loved

So he couldn’t sleep

And he had wandered downstairs, grabbing a cup of water and taking it back to his bedroom

However, he had tripped on the top step while going back to his bedroom and spilled water all over the hardwood floor

When he took the last step to try and clean up the spilled water, he slipped and fell down the stairs

Unfortunately, the Osaki parents woke up to a gruesome scene of their son dead at the entryway to their home

Shotaro thought he woke up, but when he stood up and his body didn’t stand with him, he knew something was wrong

And when his mother walked down the stairs (through him, mind you) and screamed, sobbing into his body, he realized that things might’ve been worse than he realized

It didn’t take long to figure out that he had died

(( tw // suicide for the next two bullet points ))

His parents couldn’t handle the pain

After his funeral, it took less than a month for both of his parents to commit suicide

Shotaro had been hoping that they would also become ghosts, but no such luck

So he was left alone, in a huge house that hadn’t seemed nearly as lonely only a month before

Of course he tried to leave, but he could never get past the gates that marked his parent’s property at the bottom of the hill

And so he sat in his house

For decades

Throughout the years, the house decayed and became decrepit. The chandelier fell one year, leaving glass scattered across the front entryway

Books became dusty, all but the ones in the library because Shotaro spent most of his time in that room and watched the days go by through the stories he would read

And when he opened up the windows on a nice spring day and leaned out, looking over the small town that he had loved so much, he heard the rumors

Tales of the haunted house at the top of the hill, told by a new generation of children who had never seen the Osaki home in its original glory

And Shotaro felt the repeating disappointment when a child would look into the windows, seem to spot him, and yelp before running away

So Shotaro becomes a recluse - not because he wanted to, but because he has to

After about 15 years, people start trying to sell the house

He doesn’t let that happen. Shotaro had become quite the… depressed person since his parents death. He had never really been given the opportunity to react to things as they happen. He’s always to put down the book and take a few deep breaths before continuing, or just walk away from the window when the rumors become too upsetting

But when that first person - a potbellied, middle aged man - comes to see the house in the interest of buying it, Shotaro sees red

And so he does what he thinks ghosts are supposed to do

He scares the man off

Years later he looks back and sees how bad of a ghost he was, but that just means that the guy must’ve been real cowardly

Because all he has to do is open a few windows, move around a few glasses, make some scary noises, and the guy is turning on his tail and sprinting out the door

More people come back - a family of three very wealthy foreigners who don’t speak the language, one rich old woman who decides the house would be too much upkeep six sons with two tired parents who decided there was too much room for trouble, and probably dozens more

The ones that don’t decide to move out on their own, Shotaro scares off

He gradually gets better at it - it’s hard to learn how to keep himself transparent at first

He thinks that he can become completely invisible, slightly translucent, or almost-solid but he’s never spoken to someone to figure it out

But as he watches the house crumble more and more around him, it gets more and more difficult to scare away the shoppers

He just wishes somebody other than pretentious jerks would come looking. He likes the original gothic architecture his parents designed, and he knows the house would be beautifully unique if somebody came along to restore it. But he’s not sure if he likes the idea of someone else coming into his house

Although he doesn’t have much of a choice after a while

The man comes along with the same real estate agent who’s been trying to sell Shotaro’s house for at least five years now

He’s pretty sure the woman knows he’s haunting the house, because she shoots glares into the empty air where he makes strange noises or moves furniture, but that sure doesn’t stop him from scaring all her clients away

When she steps in, she holds the open for a red haired man with a sharp jaw

He whistles as he looks around the large entryway, the noise echoing. He looks down at the large chandelier, still shattered on the marble floor, and raises one eyebrow at the agent

“What happened there?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s been there ever since I started trying to sell this place.”

“Have you tried to have it cleaned?”

“Of course,” she looks a little insulted. “But the… ghost,” she glares into the empty air, across the room from where Shotaro is currently floating, “Seems to scare everyone off before they can get much done.”

The man smirks, turning away from her and looking around the entire room. He stands in silence for a few moments, scanning everything (Shotaro tries to ignore how nervous he feels when the man’s eyes briefly pause at his place at the old dining room table, but he tries a lot harder to not think about the point of his teeth)

“I’ll take it.”

The man shows up again the next day, and Shotaro is not happy about it

When he arrives, Shotaro is standing on the stairs and glaring at the front door

After unlocking the doors and stepping in, the red-haired man placed his hands firmly on his hips and smiled while looking around the room

“My name is Lee Taeyong.” the man announced loudly. The smile didn’t slip off of his face as the silence of the house continued. “I was born in 1995,” (how has that much time passed since he died?) “I’m a vampire, and I promise I will treat your home with respect.” 

Well. That’s interesting

But Shotaro chooses to gloss over the vampire thing and scoffs, storming up the stairs

The man - supposed vampire - doesn’t go into any rooms or even go upstairs on the first night. He just sleeps (pretends to sleep? Do vampires sleep? Are vampires even real? Shotaro stows all these thoughts away to deal with later) on the couch after ordering food in.

When he wakes up in the morning, Taeyong still has that obnoxious smile on as he looks around at nothing. Shotaro is there, watching and making sure the man doesn’t mess anything up

So when Taeyong fiddles at the dining room table, which only has three working legs and is almost broken in half, and asks the room “Would you be ok with me getting rid of this table?” Shotaro throws a glass at his head

He misses, intentionally obviously, and the old glass cup shatters against the peeling wallpaper of his dining room. Taeyong snorts and holds his hands up in surrender “Alright, no table. Hey, can you throw another glass if you’re a male ghost, please?”

Shotaro throws another glass, and once again ignores the point of the new man’s teeth

Later in the morning, early afternoon, Taeyong starts looking around the house.

“Are you  gonna try and kill me again if I go upstairs?” He asks, and Shotaro does nothing but cross his arms from where he’s sitting on the dusty banister

“I’ll take that as a no.”

And so they head upstairs. Taeyong stops in front of every doorway, and if Shotaro doesn’t want him going in the room he makes the door shake and bangs on the wall a few times

Taeyong doesn’t understand this message at first, and when he almost opens the door to Shotaro’s parent’s room he loses it

The ghost bangs on the door so hard the whole thing shakes, making what little art that was still hanging shudder. He yells for effect, coming out more of an angry groan (because he still can’t quite talk to humans when he’s invisible), and shoves Taeyong away from the door

The older (well, physically older) man looks shocked and stands still for a moment staring at the door, before shaking his hand and smiling a little. “Alright, I get the message Mr. Ghost.”

Shotaro only stops him again at his own bedroom door and his library, everywhere else he lets Taeyong explore. The vampire goes back to one of the guest rooms with an en suite and asks if he can keep this room as his own

Shotaro reluctantly lets him take the room, and tries to tell himself that this man is not going to be the one who ends up staying in his house

Again, the night Taeyong orders food in and eats on his own

Although before ordering the food, he grabs a box that had showed up on the front doorstep when Shotaro wasn’t looking

He floats around Taeyong as the other man carried the box to the only table not broken (a coffee table) and opens it with his unnaturally sharp nails. Shotaro’s nose crinkles at the bags of warm blood, and he reaches in to shift them around

“Animal blood,” Taeyong says quickly. “I promise I’m not a murderer, ghost friend.”

Shotaro has to look away as Taeyong drinks it, and gags for the first time since he’s died when he uses the animal blood as a topping for his burger and fries

The next morning, Shotaro comes out of his library after a night of reading and smells breakfast. When he goes downstairs, he’s greeted with Taeyong, dancing a little to a song playing out of a small metal box that Shotaro doesn’t understand and making breakfast

Shotaro peeks over Taeyong’s shoulder to see the bacon, eggs, and pancakes he’s making

He lets himself float up a little and pushes open the window open right above the counter

“Oh!” Taeyong looks up with wide eyes, looking around. “Hello, Mr. Ghost!” He smiles and his eyes pause where Shotaro floats before continuing to look around. “I’m not sure if you can eat, but if you can you’re welcome to some of the food.”

Shotaro can’t eat, but he appreciates the gesture

Through the next few days, they fall into a rhythm

Taeyong doesn’t seem to sleep, but meditates. He never goes fully unconscious but he does seem to float a little bit. Every other day the box of blood arrives and Taeyong drinks some with every meal, plus three full glasses throughout the rest of the day, and Shotaro learns to live with it

Shotaro won’t let Taeyong into only two rooms, but lets the vampire look around the rest of his home

They fight over a few things, like fixing different things up, but not much. Eventually Shotaro lets him buy new furniture and doesn’t object when the man adds a few new paintings to the walls

Shotaro finds himself thinking that maybe this one person (undead vampire?)  might not be so bad to live with - for now, at least

Shotaro walks into his library one day, about a month into living together, and finds Taeyong already there. He tries not to get angry, and feels a wave of emotions when he sees that Taeyong is staring up at the portrait of the Osaki family hanging between two large windows. He distantly notices that the man is sitting on the only section of couch without direct sunlight landing on it

He lets the door creak and close noisily as he steps inside, tries to will the wind from the open windows to grow a little colder as he floats next to where Taeyong is sitting

“Which one are you?”

Shotaro wishes he could respond, and looks around desperately for a way to show him

He grabs a dead flower from a large vase sitting on the end table and uses it to point to his face, the painted-him smiling slightly between his two parents and looking as awkward as he always felt in life

Taeyong sighs a little. “You must be so young…” He stares at where he must estimate Shotaro’s head is, judging by the floating flower, and smiles sadly. “I can’t believe the ghost haunting my house is a teenager.”

The painting rumbles a little as the wall shakes.

“Fine, sorry,” Taeyong chuckles a little. “Your house.”

Shotaro can see a shift in Taeyong’s behavior after that

The man seems to actively seek him out and starts talking to him more and more

He starts asking more questions - mostly things Shotaro can’t figure out how to answer - and becomes more joke-y with him

“Can I see you?”

Shotaro freezes from his perched position on a chair across from Taeyong.

“I don’t know if you even know how to show me what you look like, but I’ve been living here for 3 months, don’t you think it’d be more comfortable if I actually knew where you were?” Taeyong is looking at where Shotaro has his book propped up as he marks his page and puts it down

With very little effort, he wills himself into view. Not fully - he still isn’t sure he can even do that - but enough that his features are visible

Taeyong stares for a few moments before speaking

“You’re a baby.”

Shotaro gapes for a moment before laughing, a soft sound that sounds muted in his non corporeal form.

“You can’t be anything but a teenager, how old are you?” Taeyong’s surprised look has slipped off his face and now he looks more curious and excited.

“Well, physically 19,” Shotaro speaks slowly, trying to get used to the way his voice sounds - he hasn’t spoken much since his death. “But I died in 1959”

Aaaand Taeyong gapes again

“Holy crap, that was 50 years ago!”

Shotaro tilts his head to the side a little, thinking. “Really? Hmm, I didn’t realize it was so long ago.”

Taeyong smiles again, leaning forward as he pushes away his breakfast plate. “What’s your name, ghost-teenager?”

“Shotaro, Osaki Shotaro.”

“Nice to meet you Shotaro,” Taeyong grins at him, hair falling into his face. “I’m Taeyong.”

[itsjackgilbert]

Situation Comedy

INSCRUTABLE MUSIC-VIDEO GENIUS MAKES MOVIE. IT'S VERY GOOD. INSCRUTABLE FILMMAKER DOES MAGAZINE INTERVIEW. IT'S VERY BIZARRE. A VERY SMALL GLIMPSE INTO THE INSULAR WORLD OF SPIKE JONZE, WHERE MAKING AWESOMELY STRANGE FILMS, WEARING FAKE PENISES, AND GETTING BEAT UP (SORT OF) ALL ARE PART OF THE SCENERY

BY ZEV BOROW

"He came to visit me once and when he first arrived I got a phone call that I had to come pick him up because his car had been impounded because he'd been chased by, like, ten cops on bikes after he drove his car onto these little fairgrounds and did a bunch of doughnuts. So, then I had to drive him around all weekend." — Three Kings director David O. Russell

"Actors are more consistent. They tend to land their tricks." — filmmaker Spike Jonze, on who is easier to direct, actors or skaters.

"He wanted his brother to be in Three Kings, so he shot an audition tape with his brother doing the Sharon Stone role in Basic Instinct, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It was the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen." — David O. Russell

I meet Spike Jonze at the production offices of his new movie, Being John Malkovich, which is a bizarre comedy about a love triangle between three people who find a secret portal into John Malkovich's head behind a file cabinet in an office building where the ceilings are four feet high. John Cusack and Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener are in it. So is John Malkovich. It's really good and weird and funny, though not always in that order. Spike Jonze directed it.

Jonze is 29 years old and sort of famous for directing some of the best music videos ever made: the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage"; Fatboy Slim's "Praise You"; Weezer's "Buddy Holly"; Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet"; and other really good ones, too. He's also made some excellent commercials and two interesting short films. However, mostly because of the exceedingly cool videos he's done for, mostly, exceedingly cool people, Jonze has also become famous for being exceedingly cool. A wide and deep selection of the hippest people alive dig Jonze. They are his friends. This past July Jonze married actress, filmmaker, and fellow sort-of-famous person Sofia Coppola. Tom Waits sang at their wedding. Tom fucking Waits.

Jonze is small and wiry, with the body and demeanor of a skateboarder, which he is. He is relaxed, unfailingly polite, and has a voice suggesting a 15-year-old boy. When we meet he is wearing a T-shirt and scuffed-up $350 Marc Jacobs shoes. He tells me he's supposed to meet with Knox, an as-yet-unknown guitar player, to discuss ideas for his video and invites me along. But first we go to buy a big bag of cat food for his cat.

Jonze says Knox plays "sort of country-funkabilly-Prince-like music...really beautiful stuff." A friend gave him a tape, he says, and he fell in love with it. We get lost trying to find Knox's house.

When we finally arrive, Knox says he was asleep because Jonze was supposed to arrive hours ago. Jonze says he's sorry, that it must have been his assistant's fault. Knox is tall, with short, dark hair styled vaguely pompadour-ish. His apartment is small. Neil Young in on the CD player. An acoustic guitar rests in the corner.

"I'm the only one in the band, so I do the whole gig," Knox says. "My old man was a guitarist and my mother was, like...well, she was a capable pianist, not great. I'm from Tenness–Knoxville–that's why I go by Knox. My mother ahd a baby two years before me, a little boy, and it died at birth, and I am, like, the copy of that kid. And my little brother almost died at birth 'cause of me, so it's kind of all cyclical. But I'm still tweaking it. So, uh, what kind of ideas do you have?"

Jonze talks about making a video that's not very commercial, about something that's cool in and of itself.

Knox: "I just don't want it to be cute. Don't take this as an affront, but some of your videos are...cute. The 'Buddy Holly' thing was little fucking cute. I was thinking more of an early John Cugar-type of thing. Like 'Jack and Diane.' Maybe with some of the words on the bottom of the screen."

Jonze: "Uh, cool.... But it’s also cool to do something maybe not as literal.” He asks Knox if he wants to be in the video. Knox says maybe just his face, as a child.

Jonze says he could come over with a video camera and they could try some stuff out.

Knox: “Like what?”

Jonze: “Well, I don’t want to just throw stuff out.”

Knox: “Well, I’m not going to steal your stuff.”

Jonze laughs, sort of. There is an awkward silence.

Jonze: “How about a video with Xeroxes, just as a cool medium?”

Knox: “Yeah, well, that sounds schticky. Xeroxes are schticky.”

Jonze tries to say something about form. Knox says he likes “the Jazzercize” video Jonze did.

Jonze: “‘Praise you.’ Cool.”

Knox turns toward me and says he doesn’t think Spike looks very into it. Jonze says he doesn’t want to do anything he’s done already. He asks Knox if he saw the video he did for Sean Lennon.

Knox: “Nah. That guy’s too fuckin’ avant garde for me.”

Jonze: “No, I’m not saying that. It’s just I don’t want to make something silly out of your song, but at the same time....” He trails off.

There’s a tense silence, then Knox turns to me and asks if I have any ideas for videos. I tell him I don’t. Knox says “fuck,” loudly.

Jonze: “Look, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, and if you don’t really like my stuff maybe we shouldn’t work together. I like working with people who are....”

Knox: “Yeah, well...fuck.... Well, if you come up with some ideas, any ideas, call, but I just...shit.”

Jonze: “I should go.”

Jonze gets up. Knox begins to pace. Then he screams, “Fuck!” and throws a small wooden chair Jonze had been sitting on against the wall. It shatters.

Jonze: “Dude, chill.”

Knox: “I think you better leave!”

Jonze: “I was just....”

Knox: “Just fucking leave!”

Then Knox pushes Jonze into a wall, hard. I think to myself: Spike Jonze is about to get his ass kicked. Then, like a panther (or jaguar), Jonze jumps at Knox. They hit the floor. Jonze is on top of Knox, throwing punches at his head. After about 15 seconds, I pull them apart. Knox gets up and screams, “Wait right fucking there!” and runs into a back room. Jonze looks at me and says, “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” and runs out the door, fast.

Knox jumps out from the back room, glowering and holding a baseball bat.

DRIVING AWAY, JONZE MUSES ABOUT HOW “HECTIC” things got with Knox. He repeatedly pushes his face toward the rearview mirror and asks if I think his eye looks swollen. It doesn’t. He says nothing like that has ever happened to him before, except once “with Everlast, but it never got physical.” We pull into a 7-Eleven and he gets a juice and some Advil.

I try to ask some more questions about the movie. “I’m apprehensive about talking about it at all,” he says, “because I feel like it’s going to cloud someone’s opinion. You think about all the movies you had preconceived notions about, about all the ones you read stuff about until you were sick of them before you even saw them.

SPIKE JONZE’S REAL NAME IS ADAM SPIEGEL. He isn’t interested in talking about why, or when, he started going by Spike Jonze, or how much it has to do with Spike Jones, the 1940s band leader, but it’s probably related to the fact he grew up hanging out with a lot of competitive BMX bikers similarly fond of pseudonyms and alter egos. He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland, a well-heeled suburb of Washington, D.C., where his mother enjoyed photography and his father enjoyed being the scion of an extremely successful family-owned catalog company. Jonze is the middle child (younger brother; older sister) and was into skateboarding, photography, lots of Dischord-era punk rock, and, most of all, BMX.

In the mid-’80s, BMXing’s popularity was exploding, and Jonze was spending much of his time at Rockville BMX, a legendary retail and mail-order BMX shop in nearby Rockville, Maryland. At age 15, he accompanied the Haro pro-BMX team on a summer tour of the U.S., serving as part-time roadie, contest announcer, T-shirt salesperson, and using an old 35-millimeter camera, team photographer. By the time he was 16, he was writing and taking pictures for skate and bike magazines. At 17, immediately after finishing high school, he moved to Torrance, California, to work at Freestylin’, the sport’s preeminent glossy. There, he met Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins, two kindred spirits.

“We were all living together in this apartment across the street from the magazine’s offices, in the Valley, which was like the epicenter of the skateboarding and BMX world,” says Lewman, who was 18 at the time and is now a creative director at Lambesis, a San Diego–based advertising agency that deciphers youth culture. “We’d skate to work, ride ramps, listen to Black Flag and Eric B. and Rakim, and get into adventures drinking Night Train, being weird, and stomping around downtown L.A.”

They’d also make zines. First, in 1991, Homeboy, then, two years later, Dirt. Clever and funny, they became popular with the 25-and-under, proto-extreme-sport, punk/rap-inclined hipster set. During this time, Jonze also started getting hired to take photos for magazines such as Details and Interview. And he began filming skateboarding videos, including one particular deft collaboration with ‘80s skate god Mark Gonzales titled Blind Skateboard Video.

One night, backstage at a Sonic Youth concert, Gonzales gave a copy of that tape to his friend Kim Gordon, who dug it so much that she asked Tamra Davis–who had just directed her first film, Gun Crazy, and had yet to become the wife of Beastie Boy Mike D.–to work with Jonze on shooting some skateboarding segments for Sonic Youth’s video for the song “100%.” He was 21.

Jonze has always lived in something of a rarefied world inhabited by bikers, skaters, emerging rock icons, and movie stars. Even so, he notes, he first met the Beastie Boys through his sister. She and Adam Yauch met in traffic school. The Beasties and Jonze share an appreciation for the absurd. Yauch and Jonze used to do things like rent police uniforms so they could direct traffic in Manhattan.

A few short years after “100%,” Jonze was established as America’s preeminent director of unusual music videos. This fact seemed to bore him. In 1998′s Fatboy Slim “Praise You” video, the one with the dancers in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Jonze credited the direction to Richard Koufey and the Torrance Community Dancers. To this day, Jonze denies having been a part of it. Earlier this year, a typed letter arrived at the Spin offices vehemently demanding Spin retract its report that Jonze directed the video. It was signed Richard Koufey and included a detailed résumé for Koufey that stated he was a dancer in the “Thriller” video, the “Love Shack” video, the film Dirty Dancing, and something called “Dancextravaganza” at the opening of a Dellamo Fashion Center.

IN ADDITION TO BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Jonze has another movie coming out, one in which he acts. It’s called Three Kings and was written and directed by David O’Russell. The two met when Jonze hired Russell to help him write a script for Harold and the Purple Crayon, which was to be a partially animated adaption of the children’s book, and Jonze’s feature-film debut, but never made it into production. Jonze costars in Three Kings with George Clooney, Ice Cube, and Mark Wahlberg. They play four U.S. soldiers who try to steal a secret cache of Kuwaiti gold at the end of the Gulf War. It’s a different, very sharp war-genre picture. Jonze plays a redneck private who is the sidekick of Wahlberg’s more seasoned soldier.

“I’d never really acted before,” Jonze says. “A few little things with friends, but nothing serious. And it’s not like I really want to get into acting. But David was really into me doing it, and Mark was especially supportive. In some ways I feel like I had no right to do it. But it was a lot of fun.”

Russell recalls Jonze’s commitment to the project. “He stayed in character a lot on set, and I think he eventually regretted it because Mark started beating the shit out of him as if Spike was really his tagalong sidekick. We tried telling Mark to go easy on him, but he was in character too. I think Spike was upset that that was happening.

AMONG THOSE IMMERSED IN THE CULT of Spike Jonze, the Weird Al prank is infamous. As partially recounted in an issue of the Beastie Boys’ zine, Grand Royal, Mike D. and Russell Simins, the drummer for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, interviewed by Weird Al. During the interview, they got the conversation to come around to the Beatles. Precisely at that moment, they had Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono walk by and staged something weird and funny. No one at Grand Royal can remember exactly what happened, but it included Spike Jonze dressed up as a waiter.

I didn’t know of the Weird Al prank until weeks after meeting Jonze. As such, I spent a good portion of my evening immediately following the Knox vs. Jonze incident breathlessly telling friends all about their fight, until a friend, a longtime skater, looked at me and matter-of-factly said: “He staged it.”

Two days after the fight I go to meet Jonze for lunch, and, even though I’m not sure, I tell him I now that the afternoon with Knox was staged. Jonze demurs. “That would be gnarly” he says. “Maybe we should come back to this topic after lunch.

We pull into a Carl’s Jr. Things between us are slightly tense. I keep pressing him on the issue as we walk into the restaurant. Jonze doesn’t say anything until he’s just about to order at the counter, then he says we should walk outside. I follow him into the parking lot toward a parked black sedan. There is a guy in dark sunglasses sitting there, sipping on a Coke.

“Dude, it’s off,” Jonze says. “We’re busted.”

Jonze then reveals that he’d “planned something” for right there, right then, at the Carl’s Jr. We all had back inside the restaurant, where Jonze begins walking around the seating area and tapping on what appear to be lonely Carl’s Jr. diners on the shoulder. There are four of them, strategically placed; two have video cameras hidden on them, on has a regular camera. Two of them, including the guy from the car, who is Jeff Tremaine, the art director of the skateboarding magazine Big Brother, are wearing hidden microphones.

“This was going to be an all-out assault,” Tremaine says. “I was going to walk by and bump into Spike and my drink was going to fall all over me. And then I was going to get all jacked at Spike and knock some shit on him and get into a fight.”

“I was actually going to take a punch this time,” Jonze says, “but I was also going to bite down on some blood pellets.” He shows me two small capsules of fake blood. “I wanted the whole article to be about how I keep getting my ass kicked.”

“I was going to knock over the salad bar,” Tremaine says. “We were going to have the whole thing on tape. I twas going to be a turkey shoot, like Kennedy.”

“You are all extremely fucked up,” I tell them.

Jonze says he started planning for it late last night and tells everyone he’s sorry he didn’t go through with it. Tremaine tells Jonze that he was excited to punch him. Then, everyone tells me some stories of previous pranks, the best of which is described as simply the Hard-On One. It goes something like this:

The guy who played Knox yesterday–a friend of Jonze’s who also pulls stunts like getting himself hit by a car (for a Big Brother photo shoot) and shooting himself with a gun while wearing a bulletproof vest (for fun)–puts on a pair of flimsy gym shorts, out of which sticks a large, fake rubber penis. Then, he goes out and gets into a pickup basketball game. Next, he walks into a guitar store, where, when a salesman hands him a cord to plug in, the salesman is pulled toward the fake rubber penis. After that, he makes a quick stop at a karate studio, from which he is quickly removed. Finally, he goes to get measured for a tux, where, according to Jonze, the tailor exclaims [in a thick Indian accent], “What? You always run around with your dick sticking out?”

“It’s amazing,” Jonze says. “We’ve got the whole thing on tape.”

After Carl’s Jr., Spike lobbies me to concoct a wild, made-up story with him, one I could submit in lieu of the article. He’s got some funny, clever ideas for it, too.

“SPIKE DIDN’T GROW UP WATCHING A TON OF FILMS or even TV,” says Kim Gordon, who has known Spike ever since he worked on “100%.” “So he’s not tied to any sense of history image-wise, the way most people are. He just has a real instinctual feel for what people like. And he’s willing to try absolutely anything.”

“I think he kind of looks at everything like it’s a chance to take a golf cart and make it go 60 miles per hour,” says his old friend Lewman. “It’s always been about having a really good time.” Even so, by all accounts Jonze is meticulous, tireless even, whether it concerns a feature film, or taking down a Carl’s Jr. salad bar. His willingness to go to almost any lengths to maintain the integrity of any project–no matter how seemingly small, trivial, or twisted–is nothing short of spectacular. It is probably the one quality that best portends him making very good movies for a long time. A vast portion of Jonze’s creative energies are consumed by these tiny, hysterical performances that will never make any money, that are solely for the benefit of himself and his like-minded friends.

“But it’s not about being weird for weird’s sake,” Lewman says. “I mean, Malkovich is a movie that, at its heart, is about something everyone can relate to–desperately wanting to be someone else.... I think a lot of how [Jonze] looks at the world might come from skating and biking. You do that as a kid and you don’t look at things normally. You look at a hockey rink and see a place to skateboard. You look at a bench as a thing to do tricks off of.”

I SEE JONZE ONE MORE TIME. HE MAKES IT OBVIOUS he’d rather I not write about the Knox and Carl’s Jr. pranks. Further, he mostly turns off my tape recorder any time I start to ask him anything. He tells me he doesn’t know what to do because he doesn’t want to come off as a guy who is lucky enough to make cool movies with big stars but is all petulant about talking to the press. He tells me again how anything he says as far as explanation of his own work is less interesting than someone’s own interpretation of his, or any, movie. About an hour passes. I ask him to name some of his favorite movies and filmmakers.

“I like stuff that is unpredictable in terms of tone,” he says. “I like Tim Burton, The World According to Garp, Being There, all the Coen brothers’ stuff. I feel really lucky to even have the opportunity to try to make those kinds of movies.”

I ask about his movie, about what Malkovich was like.

“He’s just amazing. Really genuinely eccentric. He heard about the script and contacted us, loved the idea. It was weird because he plays himself in the movie, but it’s not really him, it’s the script’s idea of him. Whenever I see him do the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment, I’m like, this guy is my hero.”

The Dance of Despair and Disillusionment is reason alone to see Being John Malkovich. In the movie, John Cusack plays a puppeteer who enters the body of John Malkovich and forces him to give up acting for puppeteering. At one point, Malkovich acts out the dance he wants to be his ultimate master-puppeteer work, the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment. Just out of the shower, he acts it out in a towel. David Fincher, the director of Seven and Fight Club, fellow former music-video director, and close friend of Jonze, calls it “up there with Butch and Sundance jumping off the cliff, as far as greatest movie moments ever go.”

I try to get Jonze to talk about other things, videos, his commercial work. (Jonze often shoots commercials, the most recent being Lee Jeans’ “Buddy Lee” spots.) He won’t. A few days later, we talk on the phone. He asks how I’ve decided to “handle” the article, says he knows I’ll write “something good.” The next day, I call him back, ask him to clear up some factual stuff, dates he worked on things, how he first met certain people. He’s not into it. But, before we get off the phone, he does answer one question.

Me: Where did the idea for the “Sabotage” video come from?

Jonze: “Australia.”

[chiseler]

Hello, Molly

Molly Picon stopped growing when she was a kid and topped out at around four foot eight -- four-eleven standing on her tiptoes, she liked to say. The biggest thing about her was her impish Betty Boop eyes. But she packed a lot of energy and spirit into that miniature package. She could and would do anything to amuse an audience -- sing, dance, do a somersault, climb a rope, crack jokes, wear blackface or boy's knickers. She played gamins, waifs, soubrettes well into her matronly years. The one thing she wouldn't and maybe couldn't do was to hide or even just tone down her essential Jewishness to appeal to the goys in the mainstream audience. It sets her apart from many other Jewish entertainers of her day. Whether she was performing in Yiddish or English, on Second Avenue or in Hollywood, there was never any question that Molly Picon was Jewish. Very Jewish.

She was born Malka Pyekoon on the Lower East Side in 1898, in a fourth-floor back bedroom of a tenement on Broome Street near Bowery. Her mother was a seamstress who'd escaped the pogroms near Kiev as one of a dozen children. Her father was an educated man from Warsaw who was never happy doing an immigrant's menial labor in America, so he did as little as he could. He also turned out to have a previous wife back in Poland he'd never legally divorced. He drifted in and mostly out of Molly and her sister Helen's lives. Decades later, when Molly became well-off and world famous, he'd drift back into hers, to borrow money.

Their mother and grandmother picked up and moved the girls to Philadelphia, where Mom became a seamstress at a Yiddish theater and took in boarders. Later she'd run a small grocery store. The story of how Molly got her start in show business -- like many of the tales in her charming and irrepressibly schmaltzy memoir Molly! -- is too good not to be true. When Molly was five her mother, who made all her daughters' clothes out of odds and ends, stitched her up a fine outfit and took her on a trolley headed for amateur night at a burlesque theater, the Bijou. On the trolley a drunk challenged the little girl to show him her act. She sang and danced in the aisle. Charmed, he passed the hat and collected two dollars. At the Bijou the audience tossed pennies on the stage while she performed. She also won the first prize, a five dollar gold piece. Her grandmother was astonished at the ten dollars she'd earned -- roughly a week's wages for an adult worker. When her mother said she was going to start taking her around to all the amateur contests, her grandmother said forget the theaters, there weren't enough in Philadelphia -- just keep taking her on the trolley.

Boris Thomashefsky's brother Mike ran Philadelphia's Columbia Theatre. He soon put Molly and Helen in a Yiddish production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Helen as Little Eva, Molly in blackface as Topsy. Molly, billed as Baby Margaret, continued to act through her childhood. She dropped out of high school in 1915 to tour small-time vaudeville in a female quartet, the Four Seasons. In Boston in 1918 she visited a Yiddish theater group who performed one night a week at the Grand Opera House, a large but no longer grand theater in the South End that staged wrestling and boxing the rest of the week. One of the young actors she met there was Muni Weisenfreund; ten years later he'd go to Hollywood and become Paul Muni.

Jacob Kalich, who ran the theater company, came (like Weisenfreund) from Galicia, a province on the Austro-Hungarian empire. He'd studied to be a rabbi but then fell in with traveling Yiddish theater troupes. He'd slipped into America without a passport and speaking no English in 1914. Kalich hired Molly away from the Seasons, they fell in love and were married the next year in the back room of her mother's grocery store. According to Molly's memoir, her mother stitched her wedding gown from a stage curtain.

Yonkel, as Molly called Kalich, wrote parts and whole plays specifically for his new wife. One was Yonkele, an operetta in which she wore boy's clothes and sang, danced and did her somersaults as a kind of Yiddish Dennis the Menace. Kalich was unsuccessful in trying to get one of the Yiddish theaters on Second Avenue interested. On the Lower East Side as in American theater generally, leading ladies tended to be stately Lillian Russell grandes dames, not petite gamins in knickers.

After a child was stillborn in 1920 Kalich distracted Molly with a new project. They sailed for Europe. His plan was to make her a star (and improve her Yiddish) in the theaters there, then return in triumph. They started in Paris, where Yonkele was a hit, then toured it around Europe for two years. In her memoir she says they did three thousand performances, almost surely an exaggeration, but they did keep busy, and her star kept growing. She made her first Yiddish-themed silent films in Vienna starting in 1921, playing a sassy soubrette or a boy. When they were in Bucharest hundreds of university students shouting anti-Semitic slurs rioted in and outside of a theater where she was performing. They may have been put up to it by the Romanian National Theatre, which was losing business to Picon. It was time to come home.

Jews around Europe had been writing their American relations about the wonderful new star. Kalich's plan had worked. By 1922 the Second Avenue Theatre near Second Street was happy to host Yonkele and anything else Kalich put together, as long as it had Picon in it -- Gypsy Girl, The Circus Girl, Schmendrick, Oy is dus a Madel (Oh, What a Girl!). Picon played to houses packed not just with Yiddish-speaking Lower East Siders but with celebrities like Greta Garbo, Mayor Jimmy Walker, Albert Einstein and D. W. Griffith. Griffith was on the downside of a long career by then and tried, without success, to raise money for a film starring Picon. Flo Ziegfeld and his wife Billie Burke (the good witch in Wizard of Oz) came over from Broadway to see Molly perform. Afterward, Yonkel and Molly took them to a Jewish restaurant, where the waiter covered the table with plates of pickles, sauerkraut, fried steak, radishes slathered in schmaltz. The very goy Burke asked the waiter if she might have some vegetables. What, he snorted, pickles and sauerkraut aren't vegetables?

Picon was such a star that Kalich got the idea of renaming the theater the Molly Picon Theatre. When their packed performance schedule there permitted, they toured Yiddish theaters around the country. Later, Jews who had fled Eastern Europe for South America organized a tour for her there. She would also tour South Africa.

She returned to vaudeville in a big way, headlining at the Palace in Times Square with Sophie Tucker. Picon sang half her songs in English, Tucker sang half of hers in Yiddish, and they triumphed. When Picon played the Palace in Chicago, Al Capone (who had started out on the Lower East Side himself) bought out the first three rows. After the show he took Picon and Kalich out to dinner. At his request she sang "The Rabbi's Melody" (a big hit on Second Avenue) and, she claims, he "cried like a baby." For the rest of her career she introduced it as "the song that made Al Capone cry."

The crash of 1929 ruined Picon and Kalich along with everybody else. They scrambled to get back on their feet. They took over the grand Yiddish Art Theatre on Second Avenue and renamed it Molly Picon's Folks Theatre. In 1936 she and Yonkel sailed back to Europe to film a Yiddish musical in Poland, Yidl mitn Fidl (Yidl with a Fiddle). She plays a penniless girl who disguises herself as a boy to join a band of traveling musicians. Location shooting took place in Kazimierz, the once grand, now bedraggled Jewish zone in Krakow. They recruited the whole neighborhood as extras for a big wedding scene that took days to shoot. Few if any of the locals, deeply Orthodox and very poor, had ever seen a movie. They marveled at the food that kept appearing as scenes of the wedding feast were shot and reshot.

Yidl was a hit with Yiddish audiences worldwide. It inspired one of Hollywood's great eccentrics, director Edgar G. Ulmer, to shoot a couple of his own Yiddish films in America. Ulmer, another Jewish immigrant from the Austro-Hungarian empire, had started his career in Hollywood directing the 1934 Karloff-Lugosi vehicle The Black Cat for Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures. On the set he met and stole the wife of one of Laemmle's nephews, for which the mogul reputedly banished him from Hollywood. Ulmer drifted to New York. When he saw Yidl drawing big crowds on Second Avenue he started a small Yiddish production company, Collective Film Producers, and filmed Grine Felder (Green Fields), recreating the shtetl in a field in New Jersey on a shoestring budget. Ulmer spoke no Yiddish himself, so he hired the Second Avenue star Jacob Ben-Ami as co-director and go-between with the cast of Second Avenue actors. The movie went on to be one of the most praised in the history of Yiddish film. (Ulmer later went back to Hollywood and a now-celebrated career as a Poverty Row maker of lowest-budget B's, ranging from brilliantly idiosyncratic noir like Detour to zero-budget sci-fi like Beyond the Time Barrier.)

As the 1930s drew to a close, Picon and Kalich saw that they were playing to the same dwindling and aging audiences over and over. Yiddish was dying out among the American-born children of immigrants, taking Yiddish theater with it. Although they would continue to work on Second Avenue through the 1950s, Picon still playing Yonkele in her fifties, it was clear they needed to work harder to crack the mainstream.

In 1940 she took her first serious roll on Broadway in Morningstar, a short-lived and soon-forgotten drama notable mostly for her spot in it and that of a thirteen-year-old actor named Sidney Lumet. In 1942 she returned to Broadway with a big gamble, her and Yonkel's musical Oy Is Dus a Leben! (Oh Is This a Life!), the first Yiddish play on Broadway. It was a vanity piece about Molly's life and their marriage, and they played themselves on stage. The Al Jolson Theatre -- where Jolson had taken thirty-seven curtain calls on the opening night of the revue Bombo in 1921 -- was renamed the Molly Picon Theatre for the occasion. The Times' Brooks Atkinson (who later got a theater named for him, too) caught the opening night, when the house was packed solid with fans and Molly pulled out all the stops. They adored her; Atkinson, who was as goyish as Molly was Jewish, thought she overplayed and mugged for them too much, coming off "gauche and coy." Atkinson was the most powerful theater critic in New York at the time, and his reviews made or broke plays. But his tepid response to Oy Is Dus a Leben! couldn't overpower Picon's appeal with Jewish audiences. The show ran for a respectable seventeen weeks, and she claims it only ended when the producers, feeling that they'd shown it to every Jew in New York by then, decided to quit while they were ahead.

During World War Two Picon did many USO concerts, played every military base she could get to, joined in many all-star benefits for refugees. She stands out in a very brief and uncredited scene in The Naked City, the 1948 cop movie inspired by Weegee's book. She runs a soda fountain at the corner of Norfolk and Rivington Streets. "Got any cold root beer?" a detective asks her. "Like ice!" she replies, then goes into a bit of endearing Yiddishe mamele schtick. After that, while she remained very busy on stage and did some tv, there was nothing much from Hollywood until 1963, when she played Frank Sinatra's mom in the screen version of Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn. When Frank had signed on they changed Simon's Jewish family to Italian to accommodate him. Then they hired Picon and changed it back to Jewish. This turned into a problem for Lee J. Cobb, who played the father despite being just four years older than Frank; they gave Cobb old man make-up to age him and put a wig on Frank to make him look younger. Cobb was Jewish, born Leo Jacob in the Bronx, but he hadn't played Jewish in years. He had to relearn it. It's not a good movie but it was a box office success and Picon earned an Oscar nomination for her performance.

In 1961 she was in another hit on Broadway, Milk and Honey, a Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!) musical comedy about a busload of Jewish widows from America trying to find new husbands in Israel. She was in her early sixties, but still managed to work a somersault into the part. When she left the show to go film Come Blow Your Horn, Hermione Gingold replaced her.

Then Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway in 1964. It was a record-setting hit that ran until July 1972. Picon was not in it. The role of Yente the matchmaker went to Bea Arthur. But when Norman Jewison -- not himself Jewish, despite the name -- put together the cast for the 1971 film adaptation, he studied Yidl mitn Fidl for background and hired Picon for Yente. Inarguably the schmaltziest Hollywood film ever made about Jews, it was the perfect setting for her and remains the role she's most known for today.

After Yonkel died in 1975 she gradually withdrew from the public eye, puttering around in their home up the Hudson, which they'd named Chez Schmendrick. She wrote her memoir, did a little more tv (Grandma Mona on The Facts of Life) and a couple more movies (Mrs. Goldfarb in The Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II), and in 1979 toured a one-woman show, Hello, Molly! But her own health was deteriorating. She lived her last decade quietly and was ninety-three when she died in 1992.

by John Strausbaugh

[ynibytina]

Meet Christine!!!

When I stumbled across the popular blog Beyoutiful Hope through a giveaway, I never thought that I would become friends with the owner Christine!!! I watched a few of her YouTube videos, tweeted her, & left a few comments on her blog. Suddenly I learned that like myself, she is a huge fan of fashion, has a passion for trying to stop human trafficking, & loves doing DIY projects. In case you don't know, Beyoutiful Hope is a blog that focuses a lot on fashion, faith, and inspiration. It is definitely one of my top 5 blogs to read when I'm feeling down!!! If you want to learn more about her & her blog please click here. She has a giveaway on her blog right now, so make sure to check it out!!!

Where You Live: Western New York

Favorite Store: Free People (although their corporate social responsibility sucks)

Favorite Fashion Trend: Trends...hmmm. I don't like them.

Favorite Makeup Item: Lipgloss!

Favorite Bible Verse: 1 Corinthians 13:13

Favorite Food: SUSHI

Favorite Color: No favorite color! I love all the happy colors! (no brown)

Favorite Holiday: Any day with my Lord and family!

Heels or Flats: Wedges :p

Mac or PC: PC

Blackberry or iPhone: Blackberry

Twitter or Facebook: Twitter

Chocolate or Vanilla: Vanilla

Winter or Summer: Summer

Pancakes or Waffles: Belgium Waffles

Math or Science: Science

Past, Present, or Future: Present

How long have you been modeling? What was it like to win the Maurices Mainstreet Model competition in 2011?

My interest in being photographed began when I saw blogging as a fashion outlet. The MMM contest sparked my interest in the fashion industry as a career possibility. I first entered the contest to win the $7,500 for a mission that I volunteer at(which I won). When modeling for Maurices, I realized my happy place is behind the camera lens, more than in front of it. Modeling is fun, but for me, it is easy to become extremely self-critical, or self-obsessed and thus, I try to avoid thinking of my blog as modeling. haha.

Since you love fashion, how would you describe your personal style of clothing?

I wouldn't say that I love fashion because I could honestly live without it! I think of fashion as expression more than love. My personal style is a mix between boho-glam and the classics! :D

Are there things you won’t do in modeling since you are a Christian?

Well, "hoochie" is what I avoid. When looking through photos, I try not to post anything that could be taken sexually... and I try to dress in a way that is modern, but tasteful. I try to ask myself what honors God's temple which is my body... although I think I could ask myself that more often than I do.

What do you love more: modeling, taking pictures of other people, doing crafts, or trying to end human trafficking?

Personally, taking pictures of people is the most fulfilling. Advocating against human trafficking is more of a duty I feel I have as a sister to all of humanity.

What are some of your favorite places to go in New York when you have free time?

I love going to church, the ballet studio, swing dancing, and to the local park.

I love the name and meaning behind Beyoutiful Hope! In today's society, so many people get bullied and feel like they are not pretty enough to fit in. Is that one of the reasons you started Beyoutiful Hope? Were you ever bullied growing up?

Definitely! Feeling inferior to the stereotype of beauty that Americans have developed is one of the reasons behind this name. My blog is about trying to find who I am and what makes me BeYouTiful. I also hope that my blog can be an inspiration to all my readers, so they can see all the potential God has given to each of them! I was bullied in middle school. I ended up going to 3 high schools and as the new kid, I wasn't bullied, I actually formed my own little group of cultural, kid-at-heart friends. I actually became such a strong leader because of this!

What does a current day in your life look like?

This may be better in list format: Do morning push-ups, drive brothers to school, go to classes, visit advisers(because I like them more than most students), check BASI emails, more classes, come home, blog marketing/BASI emails, work on scholarships, clean/cook, homework, exercise/go to work some days, TV, work on the human trafficking awareness event I am organizing. I need to make more time for God and studying!

What are some of your favorite DIY projects that you’ve made?

I made a headband holder out of wood I found in the garage, which I wrapped in a knit, then in ribbon! It's been with me so long, I forgot how excited I was to first make it! HAHA- but I was that girl in middle school who Swarovski crystaled the majority of her clothes! I shall blame it on being a dancer my whole life!

Last but not least, your blog reminds me of one of my favorite websites called Project Inspired (www.projectinspired.com) which was started by a former fashion model named Nicole Weider. Have you ever heard of it? If not you should totally look it up. It has great fashion and beauty advice, all from a Christian perspective.

I just checked it out-her site is so exciting! I just watched the video for the store and when she said "modest is hottest" it cracked me up. It is definitely not hottest according to THIS world, but it is how to live in love according to the world that really matters (according to the Lord our God).

[nardaviel]

Part 6 / ?, introducing seasons(!) and an exciting new supporting cast member(!!!).

Many images contained within. The tags have spoilers, if you care about that sort of thing and if it isn’t already too obvious to count as a spoiler.

Starting out strong again with a chance card from En, just like in the last post. En would definitely go with the experimental piece but it’s a bit nerve-wracking because he's going to be promoted today, I think, if he doesn't screw this up.

Never mind about the promotion, then. :c

Especially if he's going to be pissed off for the rest of his shift. Poor En-chan. I’m interested in Pig Nose Galaxy.

Congrats, Atsushi! Everyone’s money-earning skills are maxed now. :D Maybe this has something to do with the brilliant centerpieces he once again improvised at work.

Poor En. Rough day, I know.

He shouts some forbidden words to blow off steam. Everything seems a little easier to take after that. Nothing quite like screaming “FUCK! SHIT! COCKSUCKER!” in broad daylight in the middle of the street to cheer you up.

Atsushi is making that face because he's a pastry chef now! He lost one of his days off but he only works five hours a day now, so I guess it kind of evens out?

An uneventful day later, Kinshirou goes out to send a book to the publisher, but when he turns around... there he is.

So that night, Atsushi finally learns how to make those garlic decorations. Here are the wreaths! There are going to be braids indoors as well, in case a vampire ever breaks in. The boys aren’t 100% clear on how they work, except that Sims can't get eaten while there's garlic around. So the more garlic the better, as far as they’re concerned.

One of the saddest things (really the only sad thing besides the expense) about building a second story was that Hou-chan couldn't follow them into their bedrooms anymore. I'm glad she can climb stairs now that she's an adult kitty.

I got this far into the game, then took a long hiatus from TS4, during which time Seasons(!!!!!!!) came out. When I came back to the game, I decided I wanted to play around with the new gardening career and the changes to the gardening skill.

So guess who I made.

That's right. Their new neighbor has finally moved in.

Poor Ibushi, I made him a decent house (or the best house I could make with such an extremely tiny lot and limited budget) and then he could barely afford any furniture for it. No floor plan because I don't intend to spend much (or any?) more time in these posts following the Arima household. This is a Kinatsuen LP, after all. But we can take a look at his welcome wagon.

Ibushi: Ah, hello! Come in, don't mind the lack of furniture... En: *stares across the street at his own house* I could be asleep right now, but no.

Look at that grumpy face. Atsushi just dragged him out of bed ten minutes ago, didn't he. That’s why he’s not in the other screenshot. He was still getting dressed.

Kinshirou: Psst. Atchan. Atsushi: What is it? Kinshirou: There's barely any furniture in here. Atsushi: Shh! Don't be rude.

But the real reason Kinshirou is so uncomfortable is that Ibushi's sudden appearance makes the Veil series—in which the triad have a four-way romance with a guy named Ibushi Arima, who looks and behaves very much like this new neighbor—suddenly very strange and kind of creepy. Hopefully Ibushi isn't familiar with Kinshirou's work.

Atsushi has brought the fruitcake this time. He places it on the one surface in the entire house.

Ibushi thanks Kinshirou for coming very enthusiastically. (The shitty lighting, like the lack of furniture, is down to Ibushi's lack of cash. He has §3 right now.)

Ibushi: And can I say, it’s such an honor to meet you. I'm a big fan of your writing. Kinshirou: Ah... Thank you...

It was impossible to make a decent Ibushi Sim, though. As impossible as it is to take decent screenshots in this house with all these people here. I didn't think about that when I made it because I forgot about welcome wagons. But yeah, this is the best Ibushi I could get. He’s grown on me, though! I like him now. But I remember at first I was a little uncertain.

I ship it. Go sit on the bed with them, Atsushi.

Atsushi waited too long to make his move. En is disappointed too. That, or he's just jealous of Avery's fruitcake but he doesn’t want to get up to get his own.

What's up with Atsushi? Is he just pleased to see plants, or...?

Yep, he's just... talking to them. You have real humans you could talk to inside, sweetheart, but all right.

En: What are you doing out here all alone? Kinshirou: Are you talking to the plants? (Does he feel lonely? That’s the only time he talks to our plants...)

Just a reminder: I can’t control them right now. I’m playing Ibushi’s household. They autonomously came out here, one right after the other, to kiss Atsushi’s cheek...

...then to hug each other and congratulate each other on their good Atsushi-cheering teamwork.

Ibushi doesn’t have enough good things to say about Atsushi’s fruitcake.

Ibushi: One time when my grandmother fed us some fruitcake, it broke my cousin’s tooth, but yours was actually enjoyable. You have a real talent.

He follows up with what looks like a stressful attempt to tell an amusing story while Kinshirou passive-aggressively waters the plants. Look, Kinshirou, you're the one who arrived while he was in the middle of watering, okay. It’s your own fault he didn’t get it done.

En has wandered back in and now finds himself alone with their neighbor Avery. I wonder what’s going on with this interaction.

This is the face Kinshirou makes when he's listening very intently. Ibushi’s love of fruitcake must have caught his attention.

After the welcome wagon has wound down and everyone else has gone home, En remains, eating some of the last of Ibushi's non-fruitcake food. Thanks, En.

Ibushi hangs out with them all several times after this, but I usually don't bother with screencaps. Here's a short mostly-text recap of relevant or amusing happenings:

Ibushi sends Atsushi a happy text. Atsushi responds with something to the effect of "yeah isn't today great, let's hang out!!!" so they do, and Ibushi becomes friends with Atsushi before either of the others

Atsushi asks Ibushi if he wants to meet at the Spice Festival, Ibushi agrees because he was already at the Spice Festival anyway lmao

While they're there they spot En lurking by the curry contest wearing this

?????????????????????????????? Nice bracelets, En.

Ibushi chats with En online and befriends him also, making Kinshirou the last one he's not friends with? Weird

But almost as soon as he and En are friends, Kinshirou texts him asking him to go hang out in the park at 12:03am ... is he jealous ... it's especially suspicious because he takes Ibushi to the park that's mostly just a wedding venue. It starts raining as soon as they get there (Seasons!!!!!! best xpac) but they sit around in the rain anyway and become friends

"Incoming text message: En Yufuin. "Hey, I heard you became friends with Kinshirou Kusatsu! He's pretty cool!"" That is the most OOC thing the game has done so far

Atsushi invites Ibushi to the Romance Festival which is a little bit ??? until Ibushi goes and sees that En's come to sell paintings

Atsushi just wanted to bring his boyfriend more customers lmao. In any event, Ibushi splurges and buys both paintings. The diagram can make him focused which is good for gardening, and he just liked the doughnuts. I like how, when En goes out to sell his artwork, he brings a questionable mathematical diagram and a painting of sweets

So that's how things are going with the four of them, although I will say that by the time I start playing the Kinatsuen household, the inside of Ibushi’s house is looking much nicer and he's actually run out of space to put stuff. So don't worry about him, he's fine.

New with Seasons, a calendar that (among other things) tells me when everyone has a free day. Too bad I didn't have it when Enatsu were still struggling to go on a date.

Here's something troubling, though. The house is decorated that way (I think) because all the neighbors' houses get decorations relevant to the next holiday, and for a little while Kinatsuen were neighbors, not the active household. But they don't actually have the item that lets you add, remove, or change out decorations. So are they just going to be stuck with Halloween decorations forever...?

(No. Kinshirou will get them their box of decorations and insist on putting up seasonally appropriate decor.)

Also they need to get the gardening plants sorted out, now that most of them only grow in some seasons.

Look, I'm just really excited about the new glass roofs, okay. (Although why aren't there any white panes??? It looks so bad right now lol) I don't know why anyone would want to have a greenhouse on top of their bedroom but whatever, the game has HVAC now too. I just hope I don't forget the plants are there.

And now they finally have space (and money) for an observatory :D

I don't know what they're going to have beside the house where the plants were. Maybe that's where they'll make snowmen or whatever.

While Atsushi works and Kinshirou meditates, En explains the meaning of his newest painting to Hou-chan.

En: No, like, it’s abstract, right? So the fact that there’s no Loch Ness monster is the commentary on the Loch Ness monster. It could be anywhere, it could be nowhere. All you can see is the water.

For a while now, Atsushi has wanted to host a dinner party and cook for people. The arrival of their new neighbor (half a year ago since it’s now autumn but whatever okay) is a good opportunity.

As he gets started on a rack of lamb and En gets started on his dessert...

...Kinshirou introduces himself to Avery, even though they met earlier at Ibushi's welcome wagon, and possibly earlier than that at Kinatsuen’s own welcome wagon. Maybe Kinshirou doesn’t recognize him because he’s gotten old? I’ve done this too, forgetting you’ve already met someone. It’s super embarrassing.

It's a shame you have to invite 2+ guests to dinner parties tbh because I wanted it to just be the four of them. Ibushi looks pleased be here, at least.

They bought a stereo for ambiance during the party (i.e. it's part of one of the goals) but Hou-chan is terrified of it. :C

Looks like everyone’s pleased with the food.

And here’s a screenshot with just the important people, where their faces aren’t covered. What a nice dinner party. :D Good job, Atsushi!

screenshots that make you go hmmm

I would love to tell you what happened to En but I have, genuinely, no idea. I didn’t see it happen, there was no notif or informative moodlet afterwards... a mystery.

En and Atsushi are both asleep by the time the party's over because they're terrible hosts, so Kinshirou is the only one who gets to enjoy the confident moodlet they all got for their good party. It wasn't gold, but it was silver and that was all Atsushi needed for his cooking aspiration. So! Mission accomplished.

The next day is Halloween! I had to make it myself because it didn't come with the game. The holiday traditions are trick-or-treating, wearing costumes, telling stories, "spooky spirit", and decorating.

This is how I discovered that Sims can love or ignore traditions according to their personality traits. The more I play Seasons, the better it gets. En hates decorating and will not do it, but he likes wearing costumes... take that however you want. Meanwhile Kinshirou loves decorating (although the house was already decorated), he and Atsushi both love telling stories, and he ignores trick-or-treating because he's a snob <3

As soon as he wakes up, En gets in costume. It’s not a real premade outfit without a clippy hat!!

Kinshirou: What is that vulgar costume? I can't even look at it. En: Really? I thought you'd like it. It's from this porno where a guy—

Atsushi: En-chan, please, I'm not awake enough to play referee right now.

After breakfast En and Atsushi harass Kinshirou about costumes, until:

Atsushi: Kin-chan, your costume looks so good! En: Wow, yeah, it seriously does. Is that the supervillain costume? It’s a good look. Kinshirou: Ugh. These plebeian traditions...

Sims don’t work on Halloween, so Enatsu spend it telling each other spooky stories in costume.

Kinshirou, however, changes out of his costume as soon as possible and happily waters the plants.

Hou-chan is enjoying Halloween too!! As she deserves.

That evening, Atsushi handles the trick-or-treaters. He chooses to give treats to everyone so next year their house is going to be swarmed with kids, I suppose. The first time he does it, I have a minor freakout because it seems like it costs §75 to give a treat, but it turns out En has just spent §75 to start a medium-sized painting...

...which ends up being another impressionist masterpiece, and also, extremely cute.

Atsushi runs out back to burn this leaf pile behind their property that’s gotten gross, and that’s how I learn that adding spooky spirit to a holiday means lots of ghosts come out that night... so um.

Being the polite young man he is, he introduces himself. He’s terrified, poor thing.

Atsushi: Ah, yes, um, hello. Nice to meet you. I'm Atsushi. Ghost: I am Paolo. Atsushi: Paolo! Nice to meet you, Paolo. So um... what... brings you to these parts... eheheh...

This is honestly En’s new favorite place to sleep.

The next morning, they're all happy because of their awesome Halloween. Kinshirou decides to spend this wonderful morning up in the greenhouse researching Atsushi's plants, which are quickly becoming his plants.

The greenhouse which now has a white CC roof, thank god.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CONGRATS, EN

He didn't even need the good easel from the promotion reward lol. That was the only reason he was even working, if you’ve forgotten. To get that easel so he could finish his aspiration. But he's so close to getting it that it seems like a shame to have him quit now. One more promotion then you can quit, En!!

Oh, lord, what should his next aspiration be though. There's no ultimate procrastination advocate aspiration... I think he just wants to enjoy his success for a little while. No need to start on something else right away, right? He can just chill out for a bit.

Honestly, though, I was just trying to get him to make another playful doughnut painting like Ibushi bought, but instead he made a masterpiece-quality playful painting that's in all other respects exactly the same as the playful painting we already had.

Can you tell the difference? No? I'll tell you the difference: The difference is, the painting on the top is a masterpiece that is worth §2,000 more and emits much more playful vibes than the identical painting on the bottom.

Meanwhile, Kin-chan has learned how to comfort himself with plants when he's lonely, even though there’s a cat right next to him.

And Atsushi is happily drinking tea that he believes to be “healthy green” tea. For once, En is the only Sim who has it together.

On the other hand, Kinshirou really is far and away the biggest earner in the household. Jeez. That's §4,621 right there. For comparison, that masterpiece of En's was his most expensive ever at about §2,300, and I almost never sell his masterpieces anyway because I feel bad about it. Atsushi brings in a little more than §500 a day.

En painted a second masterpiece in a row. He's so talented. :D That's a strange choice of subject for a flirty painting, though, since they're all dudes.

In the spirit of letting En have a chill time now that his aspiration is done, I downloaded a custom aspiration for him that's just about fulfilling whims. His life goal right now is to do whatever he feels like at any given moment. Very En, I think. Also I never pay attention to whims, so maybe this will get me to start.

Ibushi invites En over to hang out and En brings Kinshirou with him. A fun, relaxing afternoon at a friend’s.

...is what they think but then they arrive to find Ibushi literally freezing to death outside his home. It’s so cold out wtf why isn’t he wearing his cold weather clothes??

Everyone else is in their cold weather outfits! Why are you just standing around in short sleeves, Ibushi!!! God.

Despite the fact that he is near death, En has to practically drag him indoors and turn on the heat for him.

Ibushi: So cold :c En: Hey, here's an idea. Ibushi: Mm? En: Why don't you change into some warm clothes? You know, since it's freezing cold out?

Ibushi: Oh. You mean like this? En: ...yeah. Nice sweater.

Ibushi: *sensing sarcasm* Thank you. It's a shame I can't say the same about yours.

It’s at this moment, watching Ibushi, that I learned that uncomfortable Sims' lips tremble like they're about to start crying. He looks so sad and pathetic that I feel kind of bad, but like... honestly why didn't he just put on a sweater.

Here’s Woody Arima, the puppy Ibushi adopted. An aggressive little bby who barks all the time, but he's very loyal! And Ibushi was charmed by how he tries to be all fierce when he's so tiny. He’s a bit dirty now but don’t worry about that, it’ll be taken care of.

Apparently, Kinshirou is the type of guy who comes over to your house and then spends the whole time on your computer, chatting with other people.

En: Hahaha, that's hilari... huh? Kinshirou, where are you going? Kinshirou: I'm bathing your puppy, Ibushi. He's filthy. Ibushi: Oh, you don't need to— En: No, let him do it. Cleaning things makes him happy.

Presented without comment.

And then...

En: You're a good guy, you know? A good friend. Ibushi: You are too, I suppose. Despite the state of your winter clothes. En: Yeah, okay, whatever. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I don't think I have a better friend than you. Ibushi: Yes, I... feel the same way, En. En: ...You know what we have to do now? Ibushi: I believe so.

So now En and Ibushi are BFFs.

(I know this is a bit odd but my logic goes like this: Only one Kinatsuen couple can be BFFs since you can't have more than one, Kinshirou has to be married to his BFF for his aspiration so he has to be half of the BFF couple, and Kinatsu is a much more likely BFF duo than Enkin. So I'm glad En has someone to be best friends with now. Even if the lighting in these screenshots still makes me sigh sadly.)

Upstairs, Kinshirou is having a fun time doing his favorite activity: cleaning.

Clean doggo. The true Woody!

En chats with his new BFF a little more before he and Kinshirou have to head home to see Atsushi. In the background, all Ibushi’s plants are growing happily. I told you his house got less depressing.

When they get back, En plays in a leaf pile behind the house. What else are leaf piles for if not to play in, right??? We’ll get an answer to that later on in the post actually. In the background, Atsushi trots around being responsible and burning old piles that have started to rot.

Is this what fulfilling whims does for Sims? I should be doing it all the time. He’s so happy.

Atsushi: *singing under his breath* Cool guys don’t look at explosions... they blow things up and then walk away...

Lmao he won't go up to the door anymore. He just stands awkwardly at the top of the front steps for a while and then leaves.

A rare cutaway walls screenshot to show Kinshirou and En not even sharing a bed but sleeping in each other’s beds. (Also, yes, they leave the bathroom light on at night.)

Zundar begins to show his true colors. Although who detected these trace signatures of radiation, exactly?

Uh-oh. Is this his response to Kinshirou's biography of him? An autobiography written under a pseudonym?? Two different narratives competing for the public's attention???

While En and Atsushi are at work, Kinshirou and Hou-chan bond and become companions. :D He’s not concerned about your autobiography, Zundar.

A true modern relationship: Complaining about work to your gay boyfriend while he cranes his neck to look at you from his adjacent computer desk.

Atsushi curls his lip in contempt. He must have had a real bad day. Maybe he just needs to wear his glasses to work?

I am not gonna lie, he looks really, really attractive here.

Atsushi: You know what, Kin-chan? I'm sick of coming home every day with a headache. I'm wearing my glasses to work and if my boss doesn't like it, I'll talk to HR.

I can't believe it took me this long to google "how to edit someones work outfit in sims 4". God.

In fact, changing out of his work clothes altogether and meditating seems like a good plan right now.

He did it! That’s the easel! Congrats, En, now you can quit your job! That is a huge pay raise, though, it almost seems like a shame...

But look at that sulky face. He just wants to be done.

He and Atsushi both came home really wanting a vacation. Is it getting to be that time again...? I've been kind of wanting to send someone to Selvadorada. If Atsushi starts constantly getting the moodlet, maybe I'll think about it.

But before En quits his job, he has a plan.

En: Hello? Hi, it's Yufuin. Sorry about this, a last-minute thing came up and I'm going to need to take all my paid time off starting tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Thanks.

The new easel for which he toiled so long. His first two paintings on it are masterpieces :D

Other Sims just have whims about playing in leaves and stuff during autumn, but Kinshirou daydreams about doing chores. Who am I to deny him?

Oh, no... Hou-chan is scared of their nice cozy fireplace too...

Atsushi: Hey, hey, it's all right, Hou-chan. It won't hurt you.

En: Hey, welcome back. You worked hard out there, huh?

En: How about claiming your reward? ;) Kinshirou: What? En: ;))) Kinshirou: ...Ah.

Kinshirou: Very well.

Kinshirou: This is absurd. You come up with the most ridiculous ideas. En: You say that like you don't like it, but you’re smiling at me.

En: Now come on. Kinshirou: So abruptly—!

En: Yeah.

This is my new favorite WooHoo location. It’s a shame it’s only available during fall.

Kinshirou: Ah, you have a leaf on you. En: Oh, thanks. Kinshirou: Of course, you might not be so disheveled if you hadn’t rolled us around so much... En: Oh, really? Should I do it less next time then? Kinshirou: ... En: That’s what I thought.

Atsushi is having a nice time in front of the fire watching a cooking show, oblivious to the debauchery taking place on his own front lawn.

Kinshirou: ...and now the leaves are scattered around the yard again. Perhaps I should have predicted that. I suppose I should get them back in order. En: You really don't have to, you know. No one's going to care if you wait until morning. Kinshirou: I will care. En: Well, I'm going to sleep. Come find me when you're done. Kinshirou: ...I'll spend the night with Atchan.

How are those wedding plans coming along? Since Kinshirou probably won’t let him sleep all day, what is En even going to do with all his new free time? When will they move out, and what will happen to their neighborly relationship with Ibushi when they do? Are they actually going to go to Selvadorada? I can’t guarantee that most of those questions will be answered soon but I can promise that the next part will include, among other things, such delights(?) as Pretty Boy Day and En doing yoga.

[galaxyacerodoesart]

FINALLY IM DONE WITH THIS OH MY GOD. My SAI crashed while I was finishing the painting one of the images and my stupid past-self hadn’t save literally since I had finished the lineart, which meant I had to start doing the colors all over again. Which sucked. A  L O T .

BUT, WITHOUT ANY OTHER INTERUPTIONS, I HERE PRESENT, FUTURE!VIRGIL IN MY SANDERS SIDES POKÉMON AU....

Nurse Virgil.

Yes, you guys aren’t seeing or reading wrong, I thought for what I wanted Virgil’s future to be in my AU, and somehow the idea of him becoming a nurse on a pokémon center came to me and I was like “????? it??? somehow fits his character in my AU??? And he would look nice af??? Heck yeah, let’s do this.” Honestly, I was thinking about how he does always try to look out for everyone and everything, and somehow the idea of him in my AU becoming a Nurse clicked and i loved it. So yeah I HAVE thought a little about how and when in his path he decided to follow the path of becoming a pokémon nurse and all, will explain better under keep reading like I always do. But one thing I knew I had to give him, was a new “nurse pokémon” like the ones Nurse Joy always have with her in every generation, and then without even thinking much, I went with Audino simply because it’s shiny is purple. Yes, that was the only reason, and is a valid af reson. 

His old pokémon obviously still are with him, and seems like we have a new addiction BESIDES Audino?? my, my how did that little fella joined the team, I wonder?? Perhaps the information is under the read more....~  and warning. It’s DEFINITELY a LOOOONG one. Told you all I imagined the story behind WHY Virgil took this path. :’D

BUT FIRST. TAGGING LIST! AGAIN, IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS TAG LIST ANYMORE, PLEASE INFORM ME! My reason behing this list is mainly the feedback received on my past SSPokémon!AU fanarts and such. So yeah...sorry if you didn’t want to be tagged ;u; @revengeraptor @samthekoalabear @not-so-innocent-bi-sander@warnadudenexttime @anxious-fander-talian-bean@flynnisthename@anxiousoddish @madly-handsome @pastel-patton123 @virgil-angsty-sanders @smokeyrutilequartz @heythereprincey @ flowersquirl

 Virgil ended up taking into the nurse path after taking the job of being Nurse’s joy “errand boy” for a while. At that point in his life, he was actually living with Patton in his daycare, finally deciding to stop wondering the world after something he didn’t even know what was. He did help Patton around the daycare, but still liked to help the old nurse on the pokémon center every now and then. Patton obviously had nothing against it and even encouraged Virgil to do so, always happily saying how he could see Virgil’s anxious and reserved self slowly but surely start to dissapear as he could see the boy slowly start to open up easily to others and trust them a little bit more. The Nurse Joy he helped was already pretty old, having worked on what she loved for pretty much all her life, she was also always happy to have Virgil around even if just for the company, something about how when you worked on taking care of pokémon and seeing trainers come and go so fast, she barely was able to take a break, it was nice to have a helping hand other than from her pokémon. Until one day she asked Virgil if HE wasn’t interested in actually becoming a nurse himself, seeing that without even realizing Virgil DID start to do more than just “get her itens and medicine she had bought from town” and actually helping around with treating the pokémon that trainers would bring. Virgil obviously thought she was joking??? Like, Wasn’t becoming a nurse a Joy thing??? All nurses he had seen in his journey WERE Nurses JOY after all. Sure, he might had helped the poor woman with taking care of the pokémon bringing them their medicine and food, but surely being an ACTUAL nurse of a pokémon center was WAY Different than THAT. And most importantly, he still saw himself as an anxious mess, what if he couldn’t treat a pokémon properly?? what if he messed up and ended up giving the wrong treatment???  Joy answered his doubts. And say that no, while most nurses WERE Joys, it wasn’t actually a “only Joy” thing. Anyone could actually apply and study to become one, the Joys were simply the most famous and best at that, but that didn’t mean ALL Joys were nurses, or that all nurses WERE Joys, she knew the poor boy anxiety problem, but still tried to reasure that he would do fine, it wasn’t like he really needed to if he didn’t want to, it was just a suggestion of her, he obviously wouldn’t be at that boat alone, all his pokémon WOULD be able to help him around, even if he probably would get a new “healing pokémon”. All his pokémon already were pretty much therapy pokémon so, it would obviously be completely fine. But still. The final choice to apply and try out all the studies was his. Virgil didn’t think much of it then, but..the more he tought about it, somehow, the less strange it was??? He even talked with Patton and Logan about it, bringing the deal up as a joke, but then they both actually agreed it could be something he could do??? Again, it took a lot of talking from Patton’s and Logan’s side to make Virgil believe it was something he was capable of, and then a little more on Logan’s side pointing out the positive traits the study would bring, and finishing saying “You might study and finish it with golden stars, but it’s not like that means you ARE OBLIGATED to become a Pokémon Nurse. You can go for the knowledge, but if at the end of all, it isn’t something you want to do, you can come back. We won’t bring the deal anymore and we will support you in your decision.” That Virgil decided to actually go back to the Nurse Joy to ask where exactly he could apply to study, who not only gave him the adress, but also a recomendation letter that surely got him in the Pokémon Nurse university, and eventually finished with golden stars.

Now that THAT Part is out of the way... A little bit more about him once he became a Nurse:

While it is an POKÉMON center, specialized in taking care of Pokémon, he also takes care of trainers who might have been injuired or attacked by pokémon. Like, trainers under effects of a Paralizing Powder and stuff like that.

Virgil as a nurse is literally 30% less anxious, 60% more frustrated and 100% DONE.

Ask him “why there isn’t a hot nurse Joy working here instead of an emo kid”, I fucking dare you.

“Geez, I don’t know Derek, Maybe because the poor woman might have other dreams in mind and don’t want to stay behind a desk wearing all the shit that comes out of the mouth of guys like you??? Maybe she just didn’t want to become a nurse??? I DON’T KNOW DEREK, WHY ARE YOU HERE ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS WHEN THERE ARE TRAINERS ACTUALLY NEEDING TO HAVE THEIR POKÉMON HEALED AND ARE HAVING TO WAIT BECAUSE YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE THAT IS KEEPING ME FROM DOING MY WORK TO ASK QUESTIONS LIKE THIS HUH DEREK?!!? WHY?!?!!?”

Definitely not giving up his dark clothes and make-up simply because he now is a nurse. His uniform is literally more purple-ish than pink, and he only allows himself to wear the white apron.

He honestly just...worries. Which is something he always did. But now he is more worried because of how dumb some trainers seem to be like?? Why would you fight a LV35 Ursaring when your poor Bayleef is only LV17???? WHY Would you look at a dark forest full of wild Vileplumes and Glooms and think “Yeah, I can definitely go through there without a repellent or anything like that, i’ll be JUST FINE.” Seriously. He just can’t take all that anymore. 

All his friends are obviously proud as heck of him for becoming a Nurse, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get frustrated with them as well. 

More than once Patton was bought to the center after being poisoned by hugging a Muk. “Patton, tell me..WHY did you hug him?!?!” “HE LOOKED SAD!!!” “PATTON, HE’S LITERALLY MADE OF TOXIC AND POLUTION WASTE!!” “THAT ONLY MEANT HE NEVER HAD BEEN HUGGED, SO I DEFINITELY HAD TO HUG HIM!!!”

The others aren’t any different though.

“Logan, I swear, If you have to be bought here again because you exasted yourself to the point of collapsing, I am tying you up to the table.” “That’s ridiculous, I assure you, I am perfectly FINE! You and Patton are simply exagerating. I can define my working and resting time just fine.” “Logan, You do realize your Alakazam literally knows the pokémon center number right.” “....How does he even know how to dia-” “I gave him orders to keep an eye on you and literally put you to sleep using hypnosis if he sees you overworking yourself again.” “WHA- HOW- HOW DID YOU-” “I talked to him, i know. shocker. Don’t try me Logan. Just do what I say. DOCTORS orders.”

“Remy...what...what are you doing here...it’s...literally 3AM. WHY did you press the emergency alarm?!?!” “...’Cause it’s an emergency???” “... None of your pokémon are with you and you look fine.” “Im out of coffe Virgil.” “...wha-” “there’s none left home! :(” “...Remy, I already told you. The guy that runs the coffe bar here in the pokémon center only comes and open it up at 6:30AM. Go home.” “wait wait! I have another reason!” “...What.” “ I Came...uuuh...to hang?! :D” “Get the fuck out of my pokémon center, before I send you straight to an actual hospital.”

“Aaah, my fair Virgil...isn’t it amazing how after all those years, I’m now a famous Top coordinator, and you are coming out of your shell and helpng so many people! Isn’t it amazing?!?!” “The only amazing thing here Princey, is how the fuck you managed to actually win the Grand Festival when your moves are still mediocre at best. ;)” “ *offended princey noises* “ WHA- HOW DARE- YOU!! I- “Love ya too princey. Now here. Ariel is completely healed, thank you hope to see you soon. ” “....im not sure if you just want to see ME again, or if you want my pokémon to get hurt.” “And that is what you have to think about for the next contest~ Hope to see you in the judges line soon.”

His relationship with Roman still is...strange. They love eachother tho, no one say anything, they probably will realize by themselves. 

Yeah...probably.

He does still love contests and all that, he DID grew up around it. So he often is called to be one of the judges of the contests around, which is something he happily do if he isn’t too busy.

He got Audino from the old nurse Joy that got him to apply in the first place. She was a “new recruit” sended to her, but since she was retiring now that Virgil was taking her place in the Pokémon Center, she decided to let him have her.

Hey, she was purple, he wasn’t complaining.

She also is probably 30% of his emotional control now that he works at the pokémon center, so that is a bonus.

As Joy had said, he was able to keep his old pokémon with him and have them help around the center. Even if neither of them had healing abilities like Audino does, they manage to help in other ways.

Most of the time, they help with bringing itens and medicine he needs, but they also help the trainers around the center to wait for their turn so the whole thing doesn’t become a mess in days where the place is full.

Most people were rather...scared of having a GHOST type like Haunter in a place where it isn’t uncommon to have sick and hurt pokémon. But it didn’t take them long to realize that Virgil’s Haunter was literally the biggest goofball and prankster they had seen. He is AMAZING with baby pokémon and young trainers/children that come around the Pokémon center. There are literally days were schools would bring their pre-school studants to the pokémon center just to see Haunter. Virgil had agreed on it. Haunter definitely is happy to entertain the kids and to help spread that Ghost pokémon aren’t “evil” or something like that.

Mimikyu is ALSO a new addiction to the team, but it’s one that happened BEFORE he went to study. Mimikyu was a gift from one of the other guys to him. Who was that gave him a Mimikyu??? Mimikyu’s type is literally the only and big hint im leaving here. ;)

Mimikyu loves to wear bows, so Virgil always make sure to tie his “uniform” in one. The little guy LOVES it. Mimikyu mainly stays close to Virgil during the day though, helping him more behind the desk than anything. He still isn’t really used to big crowds. Virgil can understand that feeling.

[johannesviii]

Grimm Reality

Some highlights of the last EDA I’ve read (Grimm Reality).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

Have you ever eaten a cake which was so full of delicious sugary goodness that you wanted to like it, but couldn’t bear the thought of eating more than a tiny slice of it? Well, this book is that kind of cake. Reading it entirely took me four months. At some point, I was certain I was approaching the end of the story, surely, but when I checked the number of pages, I was barely one third into the book. It’s exhausting.

Oh, it’s a good book. But it’s so dense, packed with so many details, full of so many characters who all have their own little subplot, that it ends up looking like a written description of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It’s great, beautiful and complex, but it’s very hard to tell what exactly is going on, and it goes on for way too long. I want to love it as a whole, but I can only appreciate it in tiny, tiny bites. 8/10

Oh. So. This is actually like a Grimm tale, then.

What could possibly go wrong.

IT WAS A TRAP. SURPRISE.

Is this Oxygen

Okay yes this is definitely Oxygen

Doctor, you already know it won’t be marvellous for long, if any of your adventures can be trusted.

Or maybe it will! I don’t know! Surprise me.

“WE’VE LANDED SOMEWHERE! :D" Oh Eight.

SUDDENLY APPEARING FOREST

Ummmm.

You might want to run.

You idiot

I’m 100% on Anji’s side there

Doctor, no

I kinda like these aliens.

Meanwhile, Team TARDIS met a witch! :D

GUYS STOP LAUGHING AT HIM

okay I would probably laugh too

And now they’re in a market and I’m starting to enjoy this.

I’m laughing like an idiot

Anji, that was rude and uncalled for

“That’s not a good sign"

YEAH YOU THINK

Ahhhh this is too cute, I kinda want to draw Eight fixing the toad’s tiny leg now

The most difficult question of all.

This description makes me want to go back to sleep under my blankets right now

Oh wait, Anji’s been kidnapped because of her bargain, right ?

Also I can’t help but picture a warning sign for magical black coaches.

Fitz in a wolf-hide cloak is also an entertaining picture.

POISONED APPLE SOMNOLENCE SYNDROME OH MY GOD

Doctor you little shit

Wait, is the entire planet some kind of beast? What??

Probably.

He’s so happy to have learned a new way to insult people haha

Fitz you idiot, I love you but why are you like this

I’m starting to notice that everyone and everything here has a tiny backstory, and I’m really not complaining, except it’s giving me a headache.

That sounds like a bad idea.

Oh there’s a spirit trapped in a globe, now.

The globe isn’t bigger on the inside, eh

And now Eight has a gnome friend since he freed him from the globe.

Meanwhile, Fitz is scared to go pee in the woods. Really.

Gilfred you liar, you still have a lot of food.

Why do I get the feeling that this last sentence will turn out to have a useful and cryptic meaning later

And now this Alex guy joins Eight’s party because his friend was eaten by a… stove??

It happens, I guess.

That makes me a lot sadder than it should

EIGHT SAYING STUFF LIKE THIS SHOULDN’T MAKE ME SO SAD

Meanwhile, Anji makes things worse by trying to trick her captors into breaking her magical contract, and failing.

Oh my god.

I love this description.

OH SHIT FITZ AND THE PRINCES SLEPT IN THE HOUSE WHERE THE PEOPLE-EATING STOVE IS

THE ENTIRE HOUSE EATS PEOPLE OH MY GOD

THE WITCH TOLD HIM TO WATCH HIS BACK AND HE’S SAVED BY HIS WOLF-SKIN CLOAK, I LOVE THIS

Nice try.

STOP WRITING DESCRIPTIONS LIKE THIS, I’M OVERDOSING

If the bone in the inn was real, giants do exist here, so don’t worry too much.

Thanks! I can’t wait to see this character die a painful death!

This book in a nutshell

Meanwhile, an ogre has fallen in love with Anji and he’s calling his witch grandmother to help her- a sentence I never expected to write about a Doctor Who book.

Oh my god Anji.

TALKING SPARROWS

They’re trying to help Christina and I’m sorry but - TALKING SPARROWS AHHHH CUTE

Oh, that’s the cover of the book, isn’t it?

Something’s gonna go wrong, I can feel it.

Oh shit here it comes.

You kinda fell into that one a bit too easily, to be honest.

Meanwhile, in the giant’s home: alien geometry.

“No one in their right mind could find this fun”

Thank you Inex, that was almost helpful.

Eight you idiot

EIGHT YOU IDIOT

[Dr. Nyarlathotep fans cheering in the distance]

That made me laugh way too hard.

Try again, Eight.

I shouldn’t be laughing so hard but I can’t help it, this scene is hysterical

And he managed to get out by hurting the giant’s teeth, haha.

Well that sounds reasona-

-GODDAMMIT EIGHT

This is a fun little detail.

“Are giants accidents“

Uh. That was weird. Is the giant talking for several creatures now?

Well that’s reassuring.

Noooooo not the TARDIS keyyyyyy-

Who am I kidding, of course they’re going to find it later.

So the wishing boxes show an infinity of possible outcomes, and you pick one? Is that how it works?

That sounds exactly like all these fairytales where you pick three items to throw at your pursuer.

This is the mental picture my brain instantly provided for the river-sucker.

And that was exactly like one of those fairytales I was talking about, haha. Too bad this setting makes some things more predictable at times.

Meanwhile, Anji is in a contest against Christina to win the hand of that insufferable prince from earlier.

I swear a million things are happening in this story.

Now that’s just being mean to that poor guy.

And it doesn’t make any sense, too. Great job, prince of jerks.

This is cute.

Wishes really are some sort of medium of exchange around here, aren’t they?

I’m glad this minor character had his own little happy ending.

What the actual fuck.

Meanwhile, Fitz is in prison, because of course he is.

Meanwhile, another wish was used to cheat during the contest.

This is a lot more interesting than wishes solving everything, though. Go on, Anji.

Meanwhile, that random character knows way too much about Eight, and if I keep saying ‘meanwhile’ a lot, it’s because all this stuff is a bit hard to follow.

HOLY SHIT WOLFSKIN IS A PERSON.

That's... that's your only problem with this? All right, then.

ANJI OH MY GOD.

Hahaha oh wow, serves him right.

This strongly reminds me of a chapter from Mushishi where someone ate a fruit containing the memory of an old tree. Is this the memory of the planet?

Wait, the planet isn’t an organism mimicking a planet, but an actual living planet??

Also

Ooooooh. So that’s why the giant’s teeth were damaged. The miners did it to the planet.

Also, a planet called Albert is a wonderful thing.

Fitz, please never change.

So the wishes are bargains that the planet makes with its inhabitants? That’s really weird.

Doctor, admit it, you don’t have any plan whatsoever.

To be honest, there’s so many characters I had forgotten about her.

GOOD. VERY GOOD.

For once I think you should all listen to Fitz.

IT’S THE CERULEAN REVOLUTION, EVERYBODY RUN

Holy shit hahaha, that’s another wonderful mental picture.

Well Christina, the first thing you should know is that none of them has the faintest idea how this whole thing works.

I wonder how many stories in Doctor Who have this kind of "the planet/the moon/the star is alive" theme, now. Because there’s already been quite a few.

Oh so the wishing boxes are literally "potential futures” stored in tiny boxes, then. This is starting to make some kind of sense. Some.

WOLFSKIN NOOOOO

WHAT

OKAY SO WOLFSKIN IS NOW OFFICIALLY A PERSON AGAIN

WHAT THE HELL

YEAH YOU THINK

And now the lovesick ogre is back.

What did he wish for? I need to know.

Indeed.

Same, Fitz, same.

A perfect summary of all the plans Eight has ever made.

Ho don’t do it

Okay so he’s gonna pick what the beast is going to be.

Please don’t pick a rabbit. You know how that’ll work.

That was clever.

SHUT UP IT’S MAGIC

No, it’s only a law of storytelling.

And here’s the princess suffering from PASS!

FITZ NO.

Okay, so the wishing boxes are possible futures full of possibilities, spat out on this planet by the white hole nearby, and one of the possible futures quantum thingies became some sort of prince because it was sentient?? This is really weird.

IT’S A TRAP.

I love how Anji saw it as a long discussion while Fitz saw it as ‘fuck off’.

Whatever you do, don’t think of a giant marshmallow man.

I love this.

Okay. So he’s gonna wish for a tiny change in reality, and the quantum sentient whatever thingie will inhabit that change. I think. This is all very abstract.

Ah, I was wondering where the miners were going to fit in that ending.

That sounds like a bad idea.

Hahaha oh wow.

Ohhh, the Vuim captain wished to cure his entire species from a plague!

That’s pretty nice. Could have been a lot worse.

YOU CALL THAT UNCOMPLICATED??

Oh no that’s cute.

And Christina is a cat now, and too many things happened at the same time, so I missed how that happened, so I’m just going to accept it.

That was a good book, but I’m also glad it’s over.

Let’s wish for something simpler next time. I need a break.

[aintneverhadfriendslikeus]

Parcly Taxel: Tatami (畳) is a very common flooring in Japanese restaurants and homes. Its prevalence in the latter is declining, in part because of the younger population moving into more internationally oriented apartments; these contain wooden or marble floors like those found in Canterlot Castle. Nevertheless, it remains an important cultural asset and rooms rented out to foreigners often have one or two tatami rooms.

Versatility is one of their advantages. They can serve as a base for futons, which we would sleep on throughout our trip, or support a short table for eating meals of the sort we enjoyed in Kinosaki.

For me, the most interesting thing about these mats is their combinatorics: the standard shape of one mat is a domino (with half-size squares allowed when needed to exactly cover a rectangle) and convention is to arrange those mats so that no four mats meet at a point. Counting the number of such tilings is a problem of research interest.

Spindle: Shaking off the shenanigans of the previous day, we cleaned up the place, unfolding every blanket and bedsheet flat. Regarding the waste we had generated, recycling is much more extensive in Japan than it is in some other places, so we sorted out the paper and cans and threw them in their respective bins. For the mare on the Clopham omnibus, the amount of waste that remains after this sorting is dwindling.

Airing on NHK Educational TV (Eテレ) was – to my surprise – a programming programme, explained with live characters acting out commands in video games made from a pedagogical language, Scratch. Both Parcly and I recalled happy memories of using it, me teaching a class for younger windigos and she hacking up a full reverse Polish notation calculator. My species is always aware of the need to enable other sentient beings to harness technology rather than be enslaved by it. I warmed the surrounding air, seeing that this message was being transmitted outwards.

Parcly: Our next destination was Osaka, the heart of the Keihanshin and the second-most populous city in Japan. The two-day pass for Kyoto having now expired, we bought single tickets for each leg of our journey: subway to Kyoto Central followed by JR to Sakuranomiya (桜ノ宮), transiting at Osaka Central. The last three stops in particular were on the Osaka Loop, a very heavily used ring railway which would be important for our future explorations.

Our lodging lay just under the Loop. When I arrived, the original tenant was still preparing it with his two female assistants, strewn objects lying here and there. The ceilings were a little too low for an alicorn like me, while empty areas engaged in a staring contest. Dilapidated as it was, I already knew why.

Remember the cooks? They work in cramped, sweaty conditions against hordes of patrons. Osaka is the food bowl of the nation.

Spindle: As in Kyoto, the nearest subway station of Miyakojima (都島) was an extended walk away, passing by the city's general hospital. We hopped one stop for lunch, which was udon with raw egg (the base) paired with croquette and tempura (add-ons). Unlike our stripped-down apartment, a television sat in one corner of the shop.

Parcly: A stroll down the shopping street of Tenjinbashi (天神橋) revealed a lot about local demographics and lifestyles. The ponies are generally older and more sociable, relaxed in their gait and contemplative in mind. Pachinko parlours popped up at regular intervals, some without the frosted exterior glass normally included for privacy.

Time started to skid in my working memory, causing me to turn back. I couldn't make head or tail of where I was, the ends crowded out by shifting shoppers. A wave of excitement pulsed through me; I could feel myself stretching with muscles and thinner bones, my hindlegs melting together and tickling with flaky scales… until I had transformed into a lamia, my hexagon-patterned snake tail exceeding four metres.

Considering how much distance was left till the other end, I slithered along in erratic waves, grabbing any and all food I wanted to devour. Lamias love eating things, after all! Finally, I re-entered open sky and twisted back to see my suspicions verified: Tenjinbashi is the longest shopping street in all Japan at 2.6 kilometres, cut into six segments by intersecting roads.

Needing to regain my bearings, I lunged towards the nearest subway station of Minami-morimachi (南森町), my panting warped into hisses. There I regrew my hindlegs and fuzzy tail so that closing train doors wouldn't squish me paper-thin.

Spindle: Transferring to the next stop towards Miyakojima, Higashi-Umeda (東梅田), we got swamped. Peak hours were in full swing. Shopping centres like Daimaru drove us in the right and then the wrong direction, across resonating bridges and isolated lifts. When we could see stars again, we were in a city in a city. Osaka Station City.

Dwarfing Kyoto Central when neighbouring buildings (North Gate, South Gate, Yodobashi, etc.) are included, I filtered the fresh night air through myself and we worked out where to have dinner. Ending up at Ichiran (一蘭), a booth-based ramen restaurant, Parcly seemed confused at what steps to take.

Parcly: My "shift" started out with a vending machine where I selected my meal, receiving an order ticket alongside a pad where I could fine-tune how my meal would taste. Not being a picky pony at all, I opted for a standard ramen-and-pork bowl with extra noodles and was led to one of several one-mare cubicles by a bevy of flashing occupancy lights, where my order was processed and I slurped away.

The extra noodles were at first an empty tray with their description printed. To materialise it, I placed it on a sensor plate and one of the waiters took it, giving me back one extra lump of noodles as expected. I was so happy levitating those chopsticks that only after the last strand and drop was exhausted did I feel something in my hind legs.

Tempest Shadow: I was feeling something much more serious, so I unlocked the partition to my right. Parcly had reverted to a lamia and was coiling around me!

Parcly: As soon as I became aware, I relaxed all my constricting muscles and Tempest made a small smile. "Thanks for the surprise," she commented.

Tempest: Still, she loves transforming into strange hybrids like this, and couldn't bring herself to transform back because she was naturally tsundere. I guided her via the Loop to Sakuranomiya, full and voracious like she imagined Osaka ponies would be, where she pointed out the inconvenient ceilings.

"It'd be better with a broken horn like me, you know."

[wisdenindia-blog]

The eighth wonder of the world

The eighth wonder of the world

The most unpredictable thing about New Zealand is its weather. After jinxing myself with too much talk about sunscreen and the summer heat in the first part of the diary, I found myself waddling through rain, shivering in the cold wind and waking up in disbelief as snow appeared out of nowhere on the morning after Cyclone Fehi lashed South Island in my last week in the country.

Because of the weather, the cricket suffered too. But the emotional rollercoaster India’s victory in the final put us through made up for every lost moment over the past month.

We will get to the night of the final later, but first, where did we leave last time?

Aah, beautiful Whangarei – feels like it was ages ago! There was intense drama after that first round. Afghanistan followed up their win against Pakistan with another victory over Sri Lanka, looking good to finish on top of the group. Pakistan recovered from the early jolt by thrashing Ireland, and then pipping Sri Lanka in a do-or-die contest to qualify for the knockouts.

Being part of a small media contingent in a tournament has its perks. By now, I had gotten close enough with the Afghans to be invited for a cup of tea on most evenings. Mind you, only Alokozay green tea with cinnamon and herbs, because none of the regular Kiwi variants suit the Afghan palette.

The Pakistan players posing for one of their many photoshoots in front of our correspondent’s camera. © Wisden India

With Pakistan, the relationship had reached a stage where invitations to Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar were being meted out with every photo I clicked for the boys. With none of the matches in Whangarei being televised, my camera had become their only source of memorabilia.

On the field, just when it looked like Group D was all done and dusted, the last match – labelled a dead rubber – saw Ireland topple Afghanistan in a nail-biting encounter and mess with the Afghans hopes of finishing No. 1. The travelling families of the Irish boys celebrated, and the only two journalists who were witness to the week-long spectacle so far finally found some downtime to explore the lovely little town.

With not much idea about the geography outside the home-stadium-home range, we set off to Walton Street in search of a spot. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves gazing across the street at an interesting looking resto-pub named ‘The Jovial Judge’.

Little did we know we were about to bump into one of the biggest cricket nuts in Whangarei.

Jovial Judge is the place to be if you want to enjoy sports over an evening snack. © Wisden India

Ross Kneebone, the owner of the property, is a former cricketer and an umpire. At 61, he has seen more cricket than most have across Northland. Over the three hours we spent there, he tells us stories of the fat kid named Tim Southee who walked the lanes outside not so long ago. Peter Borren, the Netherlands captain who once sat where we were sitting, couldn’t believe that the guy who was umpiring the other day actually owned this place. Here’s the best one though: In 2014, during India’s tour game against a New Zealand XI side, Ishant Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane came knocking at The Jovial Judge’s window late at night looking for food.

“The guys were wearing hoodies and it was kinda late. I thought some blokes had come to mug me but when I looked closer, it was that lanky fellow Ishant and with him, Rahane, out looking for some food. I pulled the shutter down and got them in for a snack.”

Kneebone’s love for cricket is legendary, as we find out from one of the last guys walking out of the door: “If you talk cricket, he is going to keep this place open all night long.”

Though the temptation of staying on for more stories was strong, we remembered we had an early morning bus to catch to Auckland. On the way out, we made a promise to come back again someday.

Part II: Mesmerising Queenstown

Queenstown – View from above. © Wisden India

Every local I had met till this point told me Queenstown was going to blow my mind. Having not got much sleep on the bus from Whangarei to Auckland, I chose the two-hour flight from Auckland to Queenstown to catch up on some rest. Minutes before landing, a jerk woke me up. Nothing major, just some usual turbulence. I couldn’t have been more thankful to that bump though.

The scene outside the window was out of this world. We were flying between two mountain ranges – possibly the Remarkables and Ben Lomond – and Lake Wakatipu looked like a digitally enhanced photoshop file from top. I had to pinch myself to believe it wasn’t a dream.

The exit from the rather small airport had plenty of evidence that Under-19 World Cup matches were being staged in the city. On the picturesque drive towards town, there were flags and banners with the #FutureStars tag prominently displayed along the sidelines.

The blue hue of Lake Wakatipu makes it look like a digitally enhanced photoshop file. © Wisden India

It was still the usual summer weather when I initially arrived here. England and Australia played out a cracker of a quarterfinal and Lloyd Pope became the talk of town. Overheard a group of Ausssie backpackers at Fergburger, popularly ranked as the best burger place in the country, discussing how a young ripper had barbied the Poms at the cricket.

Up next, India demolished Bangladesh to join Australia in the semifinals and in Christchurch, the boys from Pakistan and Afghanistan also made it past the quarters. I wasn’t going to be around for the semis (in Christchurch), because there was still a lot of unfinished business in Queenstown with the third, fifth and seventh-place playoffs coming up.

There was a gap between the games, and that gave me just enough time to make a day trip to Milford Sound, labelled the eighth wonder of the world by Rudyard Kipling. I soon found out why.

Milford sound – the eighth wonder of the world. © Wisden India

There aren’t many words suited to describe the beauty of this fiord. The scenery is straight out of Jurassic Park, with ragged peaks jutting out of the rainforests and waterfalls running down the slopes till the cruise opens up to the mighty Tasman Sea. We didn’t see any Pterosaurs or Velociraptors on our journey, but we did come across a bunch of Kiwi fur seals lazing on the rocks.

The New Zealand fur seals, also known as kekenos. © Wisden India

Done with a day of touristy activities, I was back at the beautiful John Davies Oval to find out what the Bangladesh v England game had in store. The ground, by the way, shares its boundary with the international airport, which makes for a fantastic frame every time an aircraft takes off or lands.

While I was trying to get the perfect shot of the planes, Afif Hossain put up a clinical show to see Bangladesh through to the fifth-place playoff, and England went down once again. Sharing a common mother tongue with the boys from across the border, it was hard to hold back a chuckle as they giggled in Bangla about the tactics they used to unsettle England. (I wish I could share them here, but the content isn’t perfectly suited for print-space.)

An Air New Zealand flight taking off from the Queenstown Airport neighbouring John Davies Oval. © Wisden India

In the days that followed, South Africa put an end to Bangladesh’s good run to take the fifth spot, and England made amends to beat New Zealand and finish seventh.

Meanwhile in Christchurch, the business end of the tournament was heating up with India and Australia qualifying for the final, which meant Afghanistan and Pakistan were to lock horns in the third-place playoff in my last game here.

Thrilled by the prospect of a reunion with the guys, I sat down to make a plan for the contest. That is when I came across the weather forecast. “Cloud increasing, rain developing tonight. Gusty northerlies.”

Within hours, the sky over Queenstown went from being bright blue to dark grey, and you could hear the locals grumble about the cyclone approaching the region. Not a single ball was bowled in the third-place playoff as the constant rain turned everything soggy under the feet, and made the mercury drop at an alarming rate.

My last night in Queenstown made me think of what a taxi driver had told me in Whangarei: “You can experience four seasons in one day in New Zealand.” Almost as if to add weight to that statement, the weather gods turned it down to sub-zero at night, and the morning drive to the airport left me in complete awe. The remarkable mountains had turned white with snow, and even though the sun was peeking back out, the temperature in the afternoon read 5°C.

Goodbye Queenstown, you have been strangely beautiful!

Part III: A mid-summer night’s dream in Tauranga

The weather delayed the flight, which resulted in my missing the connecting bus from Auckland. When I finally reached Tauranga, it was 9 pm on the eve of the final. I was greeted by fellow journalists, all of whom had congregated to cover the grand finale after being scattered all over the country over the past month.

It was the only day-night game in my roster, which gave me some time in the morning to explore the beaches around Mt Maunganui. The mind, however, kept going back to the cricket. After all, you don’t get to be at an India v Australia World Cup final very often.

There was support for both sides during the final, but by the end of the night, the blue had overpowered the yellow. © Wisden India

The atmosphere at Bay Oval was fantastic from the start, with supporters from both sides turning up. It wasn’t long before the blue jerseys overpowered the yellow ones, and the on-field efforts of Prithvi Shaw and co. only made the cheers for India go louder with every passing hour. With 217 as the target, India were clear favourites. Manjot Kalra led the way, and the rest is etched in history forever.

A ‘temporary pitch access’ card meant the author could join the team on their victory lap around the ground. © Wisden India

The SLR camera I borrowed from my brother-in-law before making the trip proved my trump card on the night. It fetched me a ‘temporary pitch access’ card, which meant I could join the team on their victory lap around the ground. Five years in sports journalism have conditioned me to watch the sport as a neutral viewer, but it was hard not to feel proud of the boys in blue at that moment.

It was the first time since April 2, 2011 that I felt the joy of seeing a team lift a trophy once again. It was a privilege to be part of the wild celebrations that went on till the wee hours of that night at the team hotel, which ended with a much-need pit-stop at a 24-hour burger joint at sunrise.

[lliinnkk]

Love And Laughter - Dinner With A Skeleton

"Wow! Amazing! I-I wish I could d-draw like you!" Alphys exclaimed, staring in awe at the sight. "If you stick around long enough, you may even get to see the finished product as it's being made!" beamed Kirsty. "As much as I'd love Alphys to stay, she better not be too long; me and Kirsty are going-" Frisk said. Kirsty intervened at once, informing her that "it's not 'me and Kirsty'. It's Kirsty and I." "... Yeah. Right. Kirsty and I are going for dinner at the MTT Resort." "Yeah, I'm gettin' kinda bored, sitting around, watching Mettaton. Let's go home, Alphys. I'm gettin' hungry!" Undyne moaned, pulling her lizard lover out of the house. "Oh. I guess I don't really have a choice. B-bye, Kirsty! I hope I s-see you again soon!" Alphys yelled. "Bye, Alphys! Bye, Undyne!" shouted Kirsty, waving goodbye as the door closed with a bang.

"Alright, Ms Kirsty Poppy, we better get ready, 'cause we're not just going for dinner at the Mettaton Resort; we're going with Papyrus and Sans." said Frisk, pulling Kirsty onto her feet. "Oh, cool. I like Papyrus. He's really nice." smiled the girl, letting down her hair and brushing it thoroughly. "I'm glad you like him. You'll probably like Sans, too. He's real funny." the almost teen grinned. "Really? Cool! I like funny people." Kirsty commented. "Well, in that case, let's not waste time talking!"

Soon enough, the humans were in a more formal state, ready for dinner with skeletons. They smelled like lovely lavender, owned two sets each of pearly white gnashers and and had low, tied-back, brown hair.

Frisk took Kirsty through the snow, past several houses, to a nearby river. Hovering on the water was a small boat, just big enough for five people, and on it sat a hooded figure, who spoke, "Tralala. Where to today, humans?" "Hotlands, please." Frisk said, sitting on the boat with Kirsty. "Tralala. Hotlands it is then." the figure replied. The boat took off at a satisfactory speed, right away. "Hotlands?" asked Kirsty. "Yeah. There's the Ruins (where humans fall), Snowdin (where we live), Waterfall (where Undyne lives), Hotlands (where the MTT Resort is) and Tori's Castle (where the queen lives, of course). Hotlands is, obviously, very hot - so you might wanna take off that massive coat - and there lava - try not to fall in." Frisk explained, taking off Kirsty's winter coat. "Alright. Sounds fun."

Soft, tepid waves slowed to a stop as the boat ride shortly ended. Frisk and Kirsty climbed out and thanked the figure kindly. The abrupt change in atmosphere caught Kirsty off guard. She had gone from being so cold that her breath came out in great clouds of smoke like a dragon, shivering as she took each step and watching as she turned into Kirsty The Red-nosed Human to being so hot that she had the sudden urge to strip off completely - which she would have, had there not've been people strolling along the sweltering streets. Kirsty now started to sweat and she took off her GEEK jacket, tying it around her waist.

"Haha!" laughed Frisk. "I told you it was hot!" "I don't think I like this heat." the teen chuckled. "I hope it's not this hot in the resort." "Oh, nah. They're kind enough to have air conditioning." Frisk clarified, giggling happily as her friend breathed a sigh of relief.

The two of them walked along the rocky path, chatting about people and places, dodging the bursts and bubbles of lava that the pools shot at them, making their way towards the hotel - a large, blue building, which read 'MTT' above the glass door. Unprecedented changes in the air became frequent to Kirsty; she made a mental not to always expect the unexpected. The cool breeze from Snowdin had followed her to the resort like a dog to it's caring owner and this fact lifted their spirits (and their coats onto the trustworthy coat hanger near the entrance). Wet from the overflowing Mettaton fountain, the floor they danced over was a perfect, brilliant gold. The only thing terrible about the place was the staff; an orange cat cashier could be seen stealing money from the till, not even trying to be subtle or secretive about it.

Frisk took Kirsty to him, asking if he'd seen two skeletons pass through. He replied with, "Yeah. A tall one and a short one. You with them, little buddy?" "Yeah, we are. Thanks, BP." said Frisk, dragging Kirsty away. "Any time, little buddy." he nodded. "'BP'?" asked the teen. "It stands for Burger Pants. That's what everybody calls 'im. Don't ask why." Frisk chortled. "Well, what's his real name?" "Er... Dunno."

The restaurant had a stage at one wall and a multitude of round tables in a range of sizes. Neat tablecloths were thrown onto them, cutlery set out tidily, chairs tucked in, a single candle on every surface - 'This is certainly a place worth admiring.' thought Kirsty. "There they are!" Frisk pointed out. What with there being only a few people in the room and the monsters in question were having trouble with not standing out, there was really no need to point them out, 'but, whatever floats your boat, I guess.' shrugged Kirsty. "Hey, Papyrus! Hey, Sans!" There, right in front of the stage, sitting next to each other at a table for four, was Papyrus and his brother, Sans.

Papyrus was still in his 'battle body' - a red scarf, red gloves and red boots - a kind of formal outfit. His brother, on the other hand, was quite the opposite - everything-wise, apart from the fact that they're both skeletons, of course. Sans was short and wore a blue hoodie, a white sweater, a pair of black and white, striped shorts and sneakers. He leaned back in his chair, half-asleep, while Papyrus sat politely upright.

When they heard the humans coming, Papyrus waved excitedly. Sans lifted an eyelid, then the other. His eyes - if he had any - widened. "Papyrus," he whispered. "you said she was pretty, but I had no idea she was this...beautiful." "She is, isn't she? Quite a pretty picture." Papyrus nodded in agreement.

The humans took their seats at the table, Kirsty shuffling the cutlery about until she saw it fit her liking. She looked Sans up and down, deciding that he was just another person to add to the Crowd Of Gawping People. "Hello, humans!" grinned Papyrus. "I was wondering when you were going to come." "Sorry if we were late." Frisk apologised. "Actually, I think it was just that they were a bit early." explained Kirsty. "Ah." said Frisk. "Well, in that case, not sorry." "Oh... Um... I didn't... Okay." Kirsty stammered. "Hehe. It's okay. It was a joke, yeah?" said Frisk. "Uh... Yeah." replied Kirsty.

"So, anyway, Kirsty, this is Sans. Sans, this is Kirsty. She's the newest human, but you probably already knew that. Go ahead, Kirsty, shake his hand." urged Frisk, grinning at the skeleton. Sans offered the girl his hand, but she was quick enough to uncover the prank, pointing out a hidden whoopie cushion. "Heh. You're pretty observant, huh?" he laughed, stuffing the failed joke in his pocket and properly shaking her hand, forgetting to let go. "Thanks... Can I have my hand back now?" asked Kirsty, shyly. His grip was firm, yet kind. She almost enjoyed it. "What...? Er... Oh. Yeah, sure." Sans let go, faintly blushing. "Sans!" Papyrus hissed. "Don't embarrass yourself in front of the human! At least try to make a good first impression!" Sans shrugged, staring at his hand.

"Yeah, Sans is pretty good at the jokes. Do you know any good ones?" asked Frisk. "Um... Knock knock." said Kirsty. "Oh, God! Please, don't!" cried Papyrus. "Who's there?" Sans asked, ignoring Papyrus' begging. "To." Kirsty replied. "To who?" "No, it's 'to whom', actually." Frisk and Sans chuckled; Papyrus rolled his eyes, scowling. "That was a good one!" Frisk cheered. "I'm not as good at telling jokes as Sans is. Why don't you tell one?" "Uh... Erm... I..." stuttered Sans, at a loss for words.

However, before he could say anything, his younger brother called to a waiter and ordered the staff to surprise them. He said, crossing his arms, that he "just had to put an end to the disgusting topic", as it was making him more and more uncomfortable.

Papyrus and Frisk then began talking non-stop about food and the cooking lessons with Undyne. Apparently, Undyne and Frisk - but mostly Undyne - had set her whole house ablaze when they were cooking spaghetti together (turns out, the final product wasn't actually half bad). She then had to live with Papyrus and Sans until her house was put back together again. They had a lot of fun. At this point, Kirsty chose to switch off again. She allowed herself to daydream as she waited for an MTT Meal. The imaginative cogs in her brain whirred into motion, running as quick as a nice cube in Hell.

The images of future sleepovers with her future besties, Alphys and Frisk, roamed the vast complexity of her mind. They attacked each other with playful pillow fights, toyed with subjects not to be messed about with, roasted marshmallows over the fire in the lounge, played truth or dare, and talked about cute boys (or girls) they took an interest in, all whilst having a whale of a time - and whales do make some noise, so, of course, they did too. Bang! Slam! Boom! Clap! No one got rest on the nights they spent together (not even them). Was there any better way to have a sleepover with your possible BFFs? Ah, yes! Movies! Now this was a practically perfect party. And, if it wasn't, Kirsty was filled with perseverance to make sure it was.

As her mind wandered, so did her eyes - they, themselves, seemed to have a mind of their own. They drifted about the room, travelling from the ceiling to the floor, from the cutlery to the door, and from one person to the other. Soon, Kirsty found herself staring blankly at Sans, who sat opposite her, staring back. It felt as if they were having a staring contest, but neither really cared for winning. They stayed like this for almost a minute, before Kirsty managed to shake herself out of the magic spell, without stopping to wonder if their moment meant anything.

Frisk found Kirsty sitting on the cream sofa, looking into the fire in her pyjamas. The evening had gone smoothly. The food was delicious and she hadn't spoken much, but how could she when others kept babbling about somewhat unrelated subjects? Sans held her hand on the way to Snowdin, but she no one ever thought anything of it. Papyrus and Frisk held hands, so why couldn't they? Her hair was freely falling down her shoulders, her fringe persistent to veil her sleepy, emerald green eyes. She hugged her knees, mesmerised by the dancing flames, letting out a tired yawn as Frisk sat beside her.

"So, what do you think?" asked the twelve year old. "Of the Underground, I mean." "Good." Kirsty replied. "I'll explore it tomorrow. It seems interesting, all these different places. I bet there'll be different people there... They're all really different...really confident...not afraid to be who they are... That's my favourite part..."

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