#its 9 somewhere not in philly

[please-dont-hurt-me]

I’m still late but here’s the ao3 link to the first chapter of To quote Daft Punk's song 'Touch'; "Touch, touch/ I remember touch/ Where do I belong?" which uses the prompt of touch to explore lonliness and my bitterness.

In summary: its about how Jodie banner gets adopted and forgives Bruce for being sent into space.

15 seems a little too young for a mid-life crisis. But what is considered your mid-life if you don't know when you’re going to die or start to truly live. That's really dramatic but you can get that Jodie wasn't doing so great emotionally.

Bounce. Catch.

Jodie sat on the bed in the guest room of her foster parent’s house, throwing a ball at the wall. She was told by her case worker that it’s just temporary and they’ll find her a family soon. That’s a load of baloney if she’s ever heard any.

Bounce, catch.  

She was 15 years old and had given up being adopted. The only dude who wanted a black teenage girl with depression and abandonment issues had almost, almost adopted her but either fucked off or died two years ago.

Bounce, catch.

Honestly, she thought he just abandoned her the first time he left but three years later she got a call from him. He told her why he had run the last time he was in Philly and tried to adopt her. Apparently, the paperwork was halfway done when he fucking left.

Bounce, catch.

A tear fell down her cheek. She dropped the ball and wiped it away. No, it’s over. She’s over it. She’d never see him again. There’s no use crying about it. It doesn’t matter that she loved, that he had been a perfect dad, or that he almost got her out of the system. He’s gone and dead.

Bounce. Catch.  

There was a knock at the door.

She shifted her body to be upside down. “Come in.”

The tall man who was her foster dad opened the door. Don’t know his name, don’t care. He’ll get rid of her soon.  “Jodie, the agency has some people at the office who might adopt you. Come on.”

Jodie sighed and let herself fall from the bed to the floor. This was going to be a waste of time. Another disappointment. “I’ll get my shoes on.”

And she does. Doesn’t bother with anything else. She follows the foster dad to his Prius and climbed into the passenger seat. He started the car.  

The car was filled with the tail end of one of the tabloid networks. “-nner and Thor were spotted in west Philly-” and then foster dad turned on NPR and they drove with false chatter and actual silence.

Jodie’s kind of thankful that this one is so dull.

He stopped at what used to be the orphanage. She got out and nodded.

She approached the old building that was probably made in the 60’s. She pushed open the door and smelled the sterile air that was in the ‘office’ these days. The bell chimed and yelled that she was here in the lull of keyboard clicking and printers humming.

She walked in to the lobby and up to the receptionist, Matt. “Mr. Miller said someone wanted to see me?”

Matt smiled at her. “Yeah, he’s actually holding them off with sticks because he needs to talk to you first.”

Jodie blinked. “What.”

Matt looked at her, then over his shoulder, then turned back to her to grin like a cat that caught the pigeon. “Kid just hurry up. This is going to be ridiculous. I’m filming the shit out of this.”

She moved past Matt. That was weird, and Jodie has a sneaking suspicion that things aren't going to make much sense after she talks to Miller.  

She was halfway there before Miller, the social worker who was usually known as level headed at best and stoic at worst, practically ran to her. Yeah, hypothesis confirmed. Shit was gonna get stranger. “Jodie, Jodie, Jodie. You’re really not going to believe what just happened.”

“Thanos returned to earth and wants a bedazzled hot dog.” Jodie said blandly. “Look, let’s not do gossip. You don't do a good delivery and I really don’t care. Show me the people and then let me leave.”

She tried to move past him, but he put a hand over her shoulder. “Jodie, have you been keeping up with the news? Like the stuff to with heroes?”

Jodie frowned, this was going to be one of those dumb hero couples who heard about her knowing Bruce and were going to be looking for the spotlight. They were one of her least favorite group of attempted-adopters. “Not really. Just enough to know when the next alien induced apocalypse is upon us.”

Miller sighed. God here comes the lecture.

“Well you know that the Asgardians landed a couple of weeks ago.” He said.

Jodie raised an eyebrow. “Why would they do that? Don’t they have a golden palace in a universe far, far away or something like that.”

Miller blinked at her before sighing. "I know that you have an aversion to hero's but Christ. So, the planet Asgard got exploded and they are here now as citizens of earth.”

Jodie blinked before shrugging. That’s fucking weird and she’s probably going to see xenophobic shit about Asgardians in the near future. That’s just peachy. “So what does all of that have to do with us, here in Philly. ”

“They brought back Bruce banner.”

Jodie was silent before whispering, “And?”

“He’s here. In my office with King Thor.” Miller said and pointed his thumb at said office. “Come with me?”

Surprise, surprise, Bruce not actually dead. But he’s not going to adopt her right? He’s going to say goodbye in some tragic fashion and run away again. Or get her hopes up and then disappear again.

“Fine, but no promises.” She says and presses past Miller. She pushes the door to his office open and is met with Bruce. Again.

Bruce banner didn’t look as sad and haggard as when she first met him five years ago. He didn’t look better, groomed, but stressed like she had seen him 2 years ago. He was ... happy looking.  

He was wearing what some would call business causal, he had longer hair with small braids, he was holding the hand of the man standing next to him (who Jodie is just going to assume is Thor), and he looked like he had gone through a reality show makeover.

He looked up from Thor’s (probably) hand when she had come through the door and smiled when he saw her. “Jodie.”

Just like that? He left her for two years and now he’s back calling her ‘Jodie’? Like none of that shit never happened? Like he left after promising not to? That he left like everyone else and he knew it? Why the hell is he back?

She’s angry. Of course, she was. She got her hopes up about getting out of the system and then everything falls to pieces and he’s gone. She knew about the hulk and all that bullshit, why did he leave? Why is he back?

She clenched her fist. “Why are you back.”

Bruce smiled at her. It was an expression that was a killer combination of happy, fond, parently (was that a word), honest, sad, and regretful. “I’m sorry I left, I really didn’t plan on getting shot into space and stranded on an alien planet.”

She looked at him and then at the chair. “The sentiment is appreciated. Didn’t answer my question though.”

“I wanted to see you again.”

Why did you come back? Why come back now? Why not wait another three years? You seem to have a pattern going there, I’d hate to break it.

She laughed bitterly, “I’ll believe that, but why not wait another year. I mean it fits the pattern.”

He made a sigh and looked at her with the same puppy dog eyes as when she was 10. “I really don’t want a pattern. I just want my daughter back.”

She was speechless for a second. He continued speaking

“I want to adopt you and I don’t want to leave you alone again. But whether or not that happens is entirely up to you” Bruce looks at her. The combination of long hair, beard, and care bear stare is killing her.

Time to deflect emotions.

Jodie turned to Thor. “Where do you fit into this?”

Thor smiled at her and Jodie realized that Thor was going to be indefinitely sappier and more emotional than Bruce. She realized her mistake as he opened his mouth.

“Bruce told me about you.” He squeezed his hand that was melded with Bruce’s. God that was sappy. “How much he loved you, how proud of you he was, and how much he missed you. Part of my culture’s courting ritual is that we spend time with our intended family in preparation for become a part of our own. I haven't been able to do this step completely because Bruce has little family to speak of. But if you wish to be adopted, you shall have that wish granted, and I’ll spend time with you for when you become my daughter as Bruce becomes my husband. You will not only have Bruce’s small family but mine as well.”

Jodie like she had been struck by lightning.

How often had she fantasized a family taking her away? How often was it Bruce taking her and caring for her. Never leaving. Hugging her and comforting her.

How often did she wish on stars that someone would looks at her with so much love and potential love in their eyes as the pair of heroes in front of her?

She was still angry but... she almost couldn't feel it over the shock.

Jodie gulped.  “I’ll think about it.”

Bruce smiles at her, “I know. Give us a call when have an answer. Or tell Miller.”

They say their goodbyes and then leave. Well, not before Thor gives her a cookie he made. He smiles as she tries to refuse. He tells her that, “If you do call us, tell me how it turned out. I figured out how to bake a couple days ago and Loki keeps telling me it’s awful, so I have no idea what it’s like.”

Jodie headed back to the Prius with foster dad. As he drove away from the office, she reflected on her life and how it might change. For better, or for worse.

[bqstqnbruin]

blurb for anyone you want w the prompt that says something like its never too late for a milkshake??

53. “It’s always time for a milkshake.”

Hi this is the one where I fix this

Happy blurb weekend!

______________

The summer sun in D.C. was beating down on you, surprisingly hot for the end of May. You and your friends had gotten up early to grab breakfast, bringing it over to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to sit around while looking out at the National Mall. Lisa and Katie were chatting away, Ashley sitting there on her phone, while you stayed pushing around the hashbrowns in the container with the plastic fork you wish wouldn’t harm the environment so much, putting your sunglasses on top of your head. 

“Babe, have you eaten anything?” you hear Lisa’s voice, snapping you out of the trance you were in. You shake your head ‘no,’ not looking up from the container. “Have you talked to Nolan at all?” 

You shake your head again. Since that night at your apartment when he told you he didn’t love you, leaving you after an awkward silence. You hadn’t heard from him since, and you didn’t think you were going to ever again. 

“Well, maybe we can take your mind off him. What were we going to do today?” Katie asks, pulling out her phone to see the list of places you still wanted to visit in the area. “Oh, we were going to go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum!” 

“You guys can go. I kind of just want to people watch,” you try to tell them, praying that you would get your first moments alone to process what had happened that night. “I can catch up with you guys when you want to get lunch.” You know they were exchanging looks, not wanting to leave you alone. “Come on, I went for a run this morning by myself. I can sit here on the steps by myself.” you try to convince them.

“Keep your phone on you.”

“We’re tracking your location every second.” 

The three of them go off to the museum you really didn’t want to go to anyway, leaving you with the food you still had barely touched. 

You flick your sunglasses down, watching the people walking the Mall: a few couples, some families, groups of friends like yours, some school groups, maybe a church group if you were judging it correctly, everyone out looking like they were enjoying themselves while walking around the country’s capital. 

“Anyone sitting here?” you hear a familiar voice come from behind you, looking through your sunglasses at the figure towering over you.

“What are you doing here?” you answer Nolan, him sitting down without you inviting him to.

“I drove down here. I had to see you. I couldn’t wait.” 

“You drove to see me?”

“Well Philly’s too close to fly, but taking a train is an option.” He sighs, a small laugh escaping his lips. 

“How did you even find me?” you ask before he can say anything else.

“Everyone you talk to at least once a week has your location. If you go missing it’s either going to be one of us, or we’ll be able to find you in a few seconds.” You both laugh, knowing that he was right. “I don’t like how we left things.” You turn to him, finally taking a bite of the food you had been playing with the entire time, your eyebrow raised to egg him on to say more. “I shouldn’t have said I don’t love you.”

“Yeah, but you still did, Nolan. Right after I told you that I do love you. It would have been better to just say nothing.”

“I tried to say nothing and you still got mad at me.” He closes his eyes, taking in a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight with you. Either way, I shouldn’t have said I don’t. Because I do. But I’ve never said it to someone before and meant it,” he mumbles, his cheeks turning more pink, either from the sun or his obvious nervousness. 

“So?”

“So when you pressured me to say something, I just said I don’t. I panicked,” he explains

You bite your bottom lip, scrunching up your face. You knew you were wrong for that, the biggest regret you had that night besides not chasing after him and apologizing to him before he could get away. “I’m sorry.” 

“You should be. But I shouldn’t have said no. I love you,” he says, taking your hand, his other on your face, his thumb running across your cheek. 

You look at him, the heat rushing to your cheeks this time. “You do?”

“Of course I do,” he says, a smile on his face before he kisses you. He pulls away, his forehead pressed to yours, his entire face bright red. “So, do you want to sit here or do you want to get up and go wander D.C.?”

“I kind of want something else to eat,” you say, closing the container of now cold food, kissing him on the cheek. “What about milkshakes? I heard there’s a really good place by Georgetown.”

He pulls you up, walking down the steps with you. “It’s 9 am. It’s way too early for a milkshake.” 

“There is no such thing as ‘too early for a milkshake.’ It’s always time for a milkshake,” you counter, Nolan groaning as he pulls out his phone to find somewhere for you. “Oh, come on. Smile, Pat?”

He rolls his eyes, a smile on his face, more than he would do for his best friend. “Only for you.” 

[turnupfortragedy]

Operation MOVE : an essay on Philadelphia PD racism & Leftover Crack

SAME TEXT AS IN PHOTO SET JUST DIFFERENT FORMAT

A simple bass line plays for a few seconds, violins and soft sounding strings follow in; creating a build up to deliberately deep drumming then an electric guitar plays and he screams. “Philadelphia, 78’, shut down MOVE by police state,” sings Stza, the lead singer of an American punk rock band from New York. Scott “Stza” Sturgeon was just a kid when at the time Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo ordered the black liberation group MOVE to vacate their home. 9 members of MOVE were imprisoned for the death of James Ramp, a cop, who was shot in the back of the neck. Mayor Rizzo in an archive of NY Times on August 8th 1978 “There is no question that MOVE fired the first shot.” Years later, in 1985 the Philadelphia PD dropped two bombs on MOVE; catching 65 row homes on fire and killing eleven people. Today Black Lives Matter is protesting the murder of George Floyd, a black man, killed by Derek Chauvin, a cop, that knelt on Floyd’s neck. Seems like things have not changed much since then.

My professor mentioned MOVE in class while we all talked about George Floyd, the BLM protests in Philly, and society's need to keep black people oppressed. That conversation made me remember this song that I really love: Operation MOVE by Lëftover Crack. I listened to it a lot with one of my best friends Lauren; they introduced me to the song on one of our many drives to I-don’t-know-where during our time together at a college in Philadelphia county. They like a lot of really awesome music that I had never heard of because I led a pretty sheltered life until then. 

There is this awesome memory I have of us always, almost constantly, playing this song after they showed it to me. We would be blasting the song so loud the car’s speakers were probably blown out from it. Together we'd punch the roof of their car from the inside with all the windows down; forcing the world to listen though they probably didn't understand the lyrics from all that screaming. Maybe I didn't either or not entirely anyway but I felt the music and what it meant. I never looked the lyrics up. I was too busy disassociating and following Lauren’s lead; Even when I was having a good time my mind was fogged with feelings and off somewhere, I’m not sure where. “Until the movement was incinerated” we would shout with the song, our fists red from hitting the metal roof.

MOVE was created in 1972, they fought for the rights of all living things, animals and humans alike. The group held demonstrations against police brutality and protested zoos. In my research I've found they follow the anarcho primitivism philosophy. “Friendly fire kills officer dead, the MOVE 9 are framed up instead” the song states the situation that occurred between MOVE and P.P.D. Most people believe friendly fire killed the officer in 1978 but our justice system incarcerated the 9 MOVE members for the killing of that cop. There is not much in the way of lyrics when speaking of the length of the written word for the song; but every bit powerful and packed with meaning. The tracking is 10 minutes long and has a wide range of musical genres working with the theme; the tragedy of how our country treats anyone against systemic oppression of minorities and people of color. Those instrumentals in the beginning hype you up for what is about to happen when the lyrics open up with that first incident. 

Twenty seconds of the song between the lyrics in the beginning and the next set is more drumming and electric guitar that gives me goosebumps knowing what is coming. 

The bombing of their commune or so called "compound", which I would argue both have a negative connotation, happened on May 13th in 1985. Philadelphia PD Lieutenant Frank Powell dropped two one pound bombs from above their home in a helicopter with the blessing of Police Commissioner George Sambor. "Sights trained on exits, the police wait. A firing squad for those who fight to escape" Lëftover Crack sings. You can clearly hear the anger that the  band has for the destruction of everything the band believes in, just like MOVE does. "MOVE fought against exploitation, the state's injustice, and their oppression. For these crimes that the city pigs created, The Africa's were incinerated."

 The lyrics are depressing but they aren't something dark the band created from their minds, this is factual; it is something our government allowed to happen. You can feel what those victims must have felt and how enraged the band is about the destruction of people and rights to their beliefs. Maybe because I agree with "f--k the police" that there cannot be peace without justice, that regardless of the individuals "ACAB." The world's opinions get to me and often I wonder am I biased, is the need for this fight, a revolution all in my head? Will my undying love for all people and their right to live life sway me into thinking the song is good? 

The lyrics are good because they are written well; they put together the story of those who fought with their lives for something they believed in. I feel an uproar in my soul and the urge to fight when I listen to this song. I find myself trying to scream the lyrics like Stza does, I don't sound like him all punk and metal but I sound infuriated. The song transports me, imagining myself at the time this occurred, imagining the horrific moments the MOVE folks faced in their own home. A good writer does this, they create the scene and you can swear you see it there in front of you with your very own eyes. 

I can picture the surrounding houses on fire, MOVE trying to escape. Their thoughts, awful ones, probably about dying; fighting for what is right then being met with gunfire by those sworn to protect and serve. I was young when I heard the band and mostly listening to the sounds of his screaming and the instrumentals, barely making out all his words in that song. But even though I couldn't make out everything he was screaming the feeling I could understand, these chills and this fire that already burned inside igniting more and more with each listen. 

Now I know the lyrics, I've listened to many of songs with screamers; my ear is trained to understand the singers. Now I know skills to use to try and keep me from disassociating so I'm more present instead of scared, off somewhere in my mind. Now I know the history about MOVE,  the Africa's, and how the world saw them through the eyes of the media: a cult, a terrorist group, cop killers. They, we, are people against the world looking for truth and justice. 

Reports are conflicting but I do not put it past our government to have acted like they wanted to stop the fire and instead said LET IT BURN. Destroying their city in order to further oppress those against law enforcement overpowering the people they take an oath to protect, regardless of race and status. My professor mentioned MOVE and how her area of the city remembers. A lot of us don't know because in our world it's reported on, then gone like a trend. These injustices happens again and again, the cycle seems to never end. People forget they put the past out of their mind or move on quickly by deeming it a tragic accident. 

"Sentenced to be incinerated, Sentenced to be incinerated" are Scott's last lyrics sung. When the song is coming to its end violins fade out the harsh metal theme for a few seconds. The song picks back up with the full works drums and all, the music sounds like frustration. Fading into another silence and a large piano piece with an acoustic guitar is played. The vocalist can be heard shouting vaguely, quietly ,and randomly, the music sounds like sad peacefulness. It is the year 2020 and I think, I hope these things don't have to occur anymore… that these songs don't need to be made. If they are made it is only to tell us the past not show us our future. I am waiting for that uplifting moment of music to lead this oppression to its end, not more death.

[jessiewre]

Day 44

Mon 17th Feb

Arrived at Watamu

Arrived at 6am to the Gede stop with slightly aching necks and backs, but we were in our hotel by 6:30am and they let us check into our room. In fact they were SO ready and waiting for us that they handed us a cold orange juice each on arrival. It was great. Our room was clean and a good size, plus it looked out over the beach and was en-suite with AC. The lovely girl on reception even got us extra pillows and plug in mosquito repellent. Finally Jessie Tours had found us a banging place and I got the feeling we were going to like it here...

We had a little sleep and then the room phone rang at 9:30am to ask if we wanted breakfast. How nice of them to ask. I said Yes but Phil insisted we’d go elsewhere. He was still sleepy and wanted to avoid rushing. Well by 10:30, we headed out to find somewhere and Phil realised he was critical, but everywhere we went had stopped breakfast and were prepping for lunch. UH OH amateur move. So after 20 minutes of searching, we went back to our hotel to apologise for our fooolishness and see if there was any chance they could make us something to avoid pure sadness for Phil’s rumbling tummy.

Thankfully the lovely staff at our hotel got the chef to open the kitchen for us and they made us two spanish omelettes with coffees and the day was saved. THIS PLACE JUST GOT BETTER AND BETTER. Awkward, Philly Tours better watch out, I think we have a new travel expert on the scene 😏. We tipped the chef and waiter to thank them for sorting us out and headed to the beach to find a lounger.

Boy the sun was hotttttt. I know the sun is hot btw I’m not a moron but seriously, in Watamu the heat was so much more intense that where we’d been before. We got loungers by buying a few drinks at a beach bar and chilled out for a few hours enjoying the peaceful beach. The water was so shallow that even the water was hot too.

We went to the hotel next to ours for lunch as fancied sitting by their pool for the afternoon. It was busier than ours with more vibe, so we walked in with our shades on, full of confidence, hoping no one would tell us we couldn’t be there. After a swim, Phil went to get menus and we asked if we could eat by the pool. Then the guy said, Yeah but you need to pay for loungers, unless you spend 15$ each on food. Shoot we’d been busted. However we switched on the ‘We had no idea, and by the way we’re really nice people’ thing, and after a bit of a conversation where we explained we were from the hotel next door who had recommended them for lunch, and that we had no idea and we were really nice people - he totally chilled out and said it was fine. Said he hadn’t realised we were from next door.

Problem averted...

After all that effort, the pasta was actually well boring but the Marinara pizza (garlic, mozzarella & onions) was really tasty at least. And they had mayonnaise which as we all know is excellent with pizza. After we’d eaten, Phil was keen to walk into town and find a barber as the 4 hairs on his head had got a bit unruly so off he went while I relaxed. It’s a tough life.

The pool was pretty warm to be honest which didn’t make it much of a relief from the heat of the sun but like I said, its a tough life and you just learn to cope with these things.

The heat was so strong that we couldn’t really stay in the sun for too long, so we went back to the room to chill there for sunset and beers on the balcony.

We walked to the nearby village street to look for a dinner place and settled on Makuti pizzeria. Phil ordered bruschetta to start and the waiter walked over with two tiny pieces of bread with cubes of tomato on. He must have seen our faces, as he quickly laughed and said Don’t worry, this isn’t your bruschetta starter! We breathed a sigh of relief and were like Phew ha, thanks for the little extra snack!

Then he came over with Phil’s bruschetta starter and it was a plate of the exact same kind of pieces of bread and tomato, but now there were FOUR pieces, not two. 😐

Thankfully the mains were a MAJOR step up from this and our pizzas were bloody DELICIOUS! Maybe the best pizzas we’ve ever had. Seriously.

The highlight of the night was when Phil tried to do an absolute mafia handshake to give the waiter his tip as we left and his arm swung in from about 2 miles away before his hand connected with the waiters hand. The money transition was done with zero subtlety and everyone around knew about it 😂.

Watamu area is a major Italian vibe place, with lots of Italian business owners, and therefore a lot of Italian holidaymakers - so its no surprise really that our pizza was ace of base. We went back to our AC room soon after for bed - what a treat to be able to type AC.

[jerjclooners]

With Mac’s performance, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia can no longer be a show about nongrowth.

Its only been like a day since I saw that beautiful season 13 finale of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but I can already sense the people around me getting tired because it’s all I want to talk about. My roommates are only vaguely aware of the show. They’ve never been obsessed with it like I was from 2012, until 2016. And then now. I’ve been haunting the apartment with my laptop, opened to youtube, the video clip of the end of “Mac Finds His Pride” queued up, ready to be watched for maybe the ninth time. I sent it to my friends who I think would be willing to have a conversation with me about it. It doesn’t matter to me who has the context of the rest of Sunny, and who doesn’t. All that matters to me is if someone is willing to watch and listen. Because I want to talk about it.

I think it was in 2016, in the middle of the 11th season, when I finally gave up on the new episodes. But sometimes, I’d open Hulu and binge on seasons 2 to 8, and I’d think about what I believe has gone wrong with the latest seasons, starting from season 9. I’ll think about why I stopped watching. 

Maybe its just me, but it seemed like every character in Sunny had all turned into caricatures. In the beginning, the popularity of the show stemmed from the fact that these are all terrible people who no one would want to meet in real life. None of them have any sense of social responsibility, or empathy. But what made the show good, and the antics funny, was that on some level, the audience could understand the impulses the gang acted on in every episode. It was low budget with a simple concept. The worst people in the worst city in America acting on their worst impulses. And for the show to keep working on this concept, their characters could never learn from their behavior, could never grow or develop. 

It’s Always Sunny was a good show until it wasn’t anymore. I don’t know. The jokes began to feel stale. The show couldn’t give me character development--this was their promise from the beginning, but it wasn’t giving me anything else to make the characters and their antics fresh. I could start to predict the plot easily. A few episodes might get a chuckle, but not a hearty belly laugh. The new episodes just didn’t feel new. The quality of picture and sound maybe got better, the budget more expensive. The gang was leaving Philly more and more often, and the schemes were getting wilder, bigger. But I wasn’t laughing anymore. My opinion was that keeping Sunny running for so long was a mistake. It seemed like the creators were becoming more progressive people who were trying to address complex topics--definitely a good thing, but they were growing past their own show, because their characters were not capable of complexity. Sunny taught their audiences that their characters will never change, and so the show was becoming stale because they were recycling material and old jokes without complicating them, because how could they when their own characters are not meant to be seen as complicated. They cannot grow or develop. That was the point from the beginning.

A couple days ago, I came across a few shots of Mac’s Dance. I thought, “Oh cool, Rob Mcelhenney is in another thing.” I never considered that those shots would be from It’s Always Sunny until I saw the whole thing. They looked too serious, too polished and sculpted. 

My opinion is changed. Rob Mcelhenney did something insanely brilliant with Mac in the season finale, reversing the tone of the show unexpectedly, taking a giant leap, so to speak. And I don’t know what to do with this new thing Sunny has given me. But if any character of Sunny deserved character development, it was definitely Mac. If you were to ask me, he had the most complicated material to work with, not only including his sexuality. When I actually try and consider it, he was always the most sympathetic. As a practicing Catholic, he operates off of some kind of moral compass, no matter how flawed, damaging, and often bigoted. Of the entire gang, he was the one who tried the hardest to be a good person, or the person he believed he should be in the confines of something bigger than himself. The rest of the gang never thought of their identities as deeply as Mac. That was why coming out of the closet was such a big deal for him. In the episode where he comes out to the gang, he accepts his sexuality, but he gets depressed, telling the group that God is not real, because even though he accepts his sexuality now, he cannot accept that God would make him gay. The two main components of Mac’s identity, Catholicism and homosexuality, are contradictory. He cannot accept them existing at the same time. I can’t think of anything nearly as interesting happening with the other four.

Mac also has body dysmorphic disorder. He constantly changes his physical appearance as he seeks the approval of others. That’s part of the joke, though, that his appearance is constantly changing and nobody knows or understands why. In season 13, it only comes off as another joke aimed at Mac’s dysmorphia. The joke is that he gets ripped because he thought it was part of one of the gang’s schemes when it wasn’t. It’s a call back to a previous joke in season seven. Mac gets fat because he thinks he’s “cultivating mass” for another one of the gangs schemes, which isn’t actually part of any plan. In season 13, he presents his ripped torso to the gang, who don’t understand what is going on. Charlie then explains, “Oh, yeah, no one ever really knows what’s going on with Mac. He’s fat, he’s skinny, he’s muscular. It’s really a cry for help and attention, I think. So, what you do in that situation is you ignore him.” Then Mac, unsure, asks, “We’re not going to put it into the plan? Why did I do it?” Everyone: “Nobody knows.” 

Mac: “You guys like me, right?”

Nobody answers.

Mac’s character was always seeking the approval of someone. It begins with his father in season 3, “Dennis Looks Like A Registered Sex Offender,” which shows Mac desperately trying to bond with an unresponsive father. In later seasons, Mac mainly seeks his approval from Dennis, who doesn’t approve of anyone in the gang, the gang is just easy for him to control, especially Mac. So, when Mac didn’t have approval from his dad, he sought approval from Dennis and from God. Neither of which worked out for him. 

Now, we have the season 13 finale. It’s just so, so good. It’s emotional, heartbreaking, and the reason for this is because of who Mac is. He’s actually a sympathetic character. He’s complex, three-dimensional. Flawed, but tortured. The audience can react emotionally to the dance because of everything Mac had given thus far, not just from the beginning of “Mac Finds His Pride,” but maybe as far back as season six, or even further, in “Dennis Looks Like A Registered Sex Offender,” when Mac struggles desperately and fails to connect with his emotionally distant, ex-con father. Sure, in that episode, it’s meant to build to a punchline of the joke at the end, that as soon as Mac reacts appropriately to the way his father was treating him, he finds out that his dad did have plans to connect with his son, before Mac ruined it. 

The dance is unexpected. For 13 seasons, Sunny fans have been taught that no matter what, Mac would make a fool of himself. Not this time.

In this article from Vulture, Rob Mcelhenney expresses his intention for the finale. “’We got a really overwhelming emotional response from the LGBTQ community last year,’ McElhenney said. ‘I took it seriously and I felt it would be completely unexpected to have this much more emotionally resonant end to the season. You would expect that Mac would express himself through the art of contemporary dance and it go horribly wrong, until you realize that’s not the direction we’re taking.’” 

All Mac really needed was for someone to tell him that all the confusing things going on inside of him (the storm they are dancing in, the dance itself, all of it meant to represent his struggle) is okay. Mac needed someone to tell him that it was okay, that everything he is, and everything he feels even though it is confusing and contradictory, is okay. Thinking back to everything the audience has seen from Mac, you realize he is just a deeply wounded person. Maybe he’s involved with a bunch of narcissists like Dennis, Frank, Dee, and Charlie because of how wounded he is and has always been. But even before this, he has shown more complexity than all the other characters combined.

Again, from Vulture: “Rob came out of the writers room saying he wanted it to represent the struggle, the push and pull, and that helped Leo and me to put the choreography together in a way that showed vulnerability and strength,” Faulk said. “The woman represents the light and the good and everything pure and amazing — and he’s the dark. So it’s basically a giant metaphor for being able to love and accept yourself.”

Sunny did something completely different and unexpected for one of their most complex characters, they gave him a platform in which he is able to find love and acceptance, and then receive it as it came from somewhere he wasn’t expecting.

I feel pretty inspired by what Sunny just did, and now, I am going to expect more from the show. The creators have grown as people, and the stories they want to tell are more complex than before. Their characters are going to have to, or will have to continue to, catch up with them. I’ve been waiting for the show to end, thinking it could never grow. Sunny just proved me wrong.

One concrete example of what I wish to see in the next season: Mac standing up for himself against Dennis. If the show goes back to the way they were doing things before season 13, I will be completely disappointed. I don’t necessarily expect Mac to be completely different after this, but he’s the character who has shown the most character growth and complexity, even before the finale. If Dennis treats Mac the same way and Mac doesn’t stand up for himself in some way of another, I will be deeply uncomfortable. I might even feel betrayed. 

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia just threw away their old playbook. It’s a new show now.

[the-bummer-set]

Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet Part 10

Part 1/ Part 2/ Part 3/ Part 4/ Part 5 /Part 6/ Part 7 /Part 8/ Part 9

Part 11

Paring: Steve Harrington x Reader

Synopsis: You’re Chief Hopper’s niece, called in from Philadelphia to help him out with Jane. You are finishing your senior year at Hawkins. This is what ensues…

Warnings: Swearing

It had been a week since the dance and you still didn't talk to Steve. You figured that you should give yourselves a little time to regroup and figure out what to do next. It was killing you though. You never felt like this about anyone, your hopes so high after what Hopper told you in the hospital, and how long you waited for Steve to admit it to you.  "Hey, so still not talking to Steve?" Jonathan asked as he leaned up against the locker adjacent to yours.  "No." You sighed.  "You know, I don't know the reason, but it probably isn't worth you guys fighting like this."  "I wouldn't really call it a fight." "Whatever it is, I'm sure he's hurting just as much as you are." "I doubt it Jonathan...." You closed your locker heaving your bag over your shoulder. "If he wants to talk to me, he will. I won't make the first move." You brushed past him making your way to class. ______________________________________________________________ "And what am I supposed to say to her Jonathan?" Steve questioned. "I don't know, I don't even know what happened." "Doesn't matter." "Okay, fine... but she told me that she won't make the first move. You need to do it or else lose her for good, she is going back to Philly after graduation. Then she might be gone for good." Steve sat there quietly, he knew that you would leave, that if you left, you wouldn't bother coming back. Not for anyone. Maybe if Jane was desperate or Hopper paid you, but most definitely not for him. He drummed his pen on his notebook, then began to write. ______________________________________________________________ Between 4th and 5th period you went back to your locker. Once it was opened, a note fluttered to the floor:

 Y/N,  I'm sorry. We need to talk about this. If you want to, meet me at the park at 7.  Steve.

 You slipped the note in your back pocket, grabbed your books and headed off to class. You tried to pay attention to the lecture but couldn't focus on anything but trying to make this right with Steve. Not that it was your fault. You huffed. No, this wasn't your fault. You scribbled down your own note, tucking it into his locker when the periods changed.

  Steve,  I'll be there. 7. Y/N ______________________________________________________________

You made it to the park at 6:45.. You made you way to the bench where you and Steve had your first kiss where he was already waiting for you.  "You're always early." He smiled softly.  "Being on time is simply being late."  You sat down beside him, somehow overcoming the urge to snuggle closer to him.  "I'm sorry." He spoke just above a whisper.  "I know." You responded. "I'm sorry too... I didn't even give you a chance to explain."  "No, you didn't. But, I would like the chance to."   You didn't speak, you simply nodded not looking up from your feet. "When I saw Nance and Jonathan dancing, I was confused with how I was feeling. I was jealous at first, I loved her. She was my first love. Then it hit me. When you saw me smiling at her, it wasn't because of me still loving her. It was because I was really able to completely let go of her. I love her, I do, but not like I used to. I was happy that someone was loving her and treating her well. I realized that she might have been my first love, but she wasn't going to be my last..." Steve stopped and looked over at you. You lifted your head to meet his eyes.  "But then you just came up to me and freaked out. Then you told me what Hopper told you, then you brought up your dream school and how you turned it down and it just knocked me off my fucking feet."  "Not my shining moment, I know." You sighed heavily.  "You asked me how much I loved you..."  "Yeah, I shouldn't have.."   "I didn't answer it." Steve ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't answer it because I was afraid to. I didn't know that you already knew. I didn't know that Hopper was going to tell you everything. I should have figured he would have. He was pretty pissed at the time, saying that if I loved you as much as I said I did that you wouldn't have been in that hospital room. That I wouldn't have been stupid enough to put you in that situation. Maybe he told you so you wouldn't blame me for what happened." He looked down at the scars on your hand. "Steve.. I..."  "I love you more than anything in this entire universe and that is one of the scariest things I have ever felt. You asked me how much I loved you? Enough that if you want to leave, I won't hold you back, but it would kill me every single day that I don't get to see your face or hear your voice. I love you enough that if you decided to stay, you would never have to question it ever again, because I would devote my whole life to loving you." He stifled a small laugh. "I sound absolutely fucking crazy don't I?" "Yeah, you do, but I know how you feel." He turned to face you. "I love you Steve Harrington. I love you more than I can even fathom and its scary and its crazy but it is absolutely amazing."  Steve cradled your face in his hands smiling at you before kissing your lips passionately. It took your breath away. For the month you waited for him to confess all of this to you, it didn't matter anymore. You were undoubtedly in love and nothing else mattered.   ______________________________________________________________

  In the three months since you and Steve made up you spent as much time together as possible between dates, game nights, and different adventures with the kids. Everything was going great, except for prom. Getting ready for prom wasn't an easy task.  You tried on multiple dresses while Hopper and Jane looked on. "I don't know, maybe I'll just re-wear the one I wore to the Valentines dance." You shrugged.  "You can't re-wear a dress to prom!" Jane yelled.  "I could have my mom ship me one." You retorted. "Who would know the difference?"  "I would. You would. He would." Jane answered as she walked around the dress section on the store.  "What about this one!?" She brought it over to you excitedly. It was beautiful. Black sweetheart bodice with a gold ruffled skirt. "It looks like something Madonna would wear!"  "If Madonna would wear it, it is a no." Hopper announced as he looked it over.  "Oh come on just let me try it on!" You begged.  "Fine, try it, but it will be a no."   You went into the dressing room and slipped it on. It fit like a dream, and even in its Madonna-esque vibe, it was sophisticated and modest. You walked out and Jane's jaw hit the floor.  "You look amazing!"  "Right?!" You two excitedly squealed about how perfect the dress really was. "What do you think Uncle Jim?" You twirled to show it off.  "It is nice, more modest that I thought. Man raising girls isn't easy at all." You smiled softly, knowing that he was missing his little girl. You remembered Sara, how she was only a few years younger than you. No one ever really brought her up, but you knew that he was thinking about how dress shopping would be with her there too.  "If that is the one you want, you can get it." He said reluctantly.

  The night of prom you slipped into your dress and heels before curling and hair spraying your hair. You looked amazing. You slipped on your heels and did a final swipe of lipstick before heading out into the living room.  "Okay this time we do have to take pictures. All of them!" Jane insisted.  You posed for all the pictures she could take laughing with her and enjoying yourself.  When Steve got there he marveled in the way you looked and allowed Jane to continue taking pictures. When she had her fill, and ran out of film, Steve escorted you out to his car. He opened the door for you kissing you softly before closing it. Once at the school you made your way inside. You spent the whole night dancing and having the time of your life.    During every slow song Steve would wrap his arms around you and twirl you around the dance floor. Tommy and Carol were crowned prom King and Queen. You were secretly relieved and while everyone watched them dance you and Steve ducked out of the gym to be alone.  "Do you want to get out of here?" Steve asked you.  "Yeah." You replied. "My feet are killing me."  He opened the car door for you again you got in and slipped off your heels.  He got in the drivers side then looked over at you. "Where should we go?"  "Take me somewhere we can see the stars...." You whispered before kissing him on the cheek.    It didn't take long to find a quiet spot in the vicinity of Hawkins, Indiana. A small clearing by a lake where the moon and stars seemed to go on forever. It was breathtaking.  "Look a shooting star!" You smiled pointing at it. Steve never took his eyes off of you.  "Make a wish." He spoke.    You closed your eyes and could feel his lips close to yours. You returned the kiss feeling pulses of electricity shooting through your veins. The whole atmosphere changed in the car. The feeling the air gets right before it storms......

[werewolfwilds]

i redid an ask meme that i had originally done ~3 years ago to see the comparison so for archiving purposes im putting it in a lil journal entry here ! i wanna start doing small journal entries again it was fun when i did that

new answers bolded

1) what images do you have set for your desktop/cell phone wallpapers?

my desktop bg is literally just…. a collage of kageyama manga screencaps a h a,,,, and my cellphone bg are drawings some gay drew me like 74724 years ago :v // my desktop rn is actually a background from one of the dmmd routes LMFAO..... idk which one it is but i’ve always liked those bg pics!! my cell lock screen is p5 art and my bg is leopika

2) have you ever had a crush on a teacher?

nooooope // nah

3) what was your last text message?

my phone is dead so i wouldnt be able to tell you lmfao i dont even remember // it was a gif from kelly lol

4) what do you see yourself doing in 10 years?

hopefully working a job i enjoy and making costumes and being happy!! // god i have no idea and it freaks me out... hopefully working,,

5) if you could be anywhere else right now, where would you be?

hoommee ((or at katsucon tbh)) // at the beach with friends maybe

6) what was your coolest halloween costume?

a white cat probably lmao // i dont think ive ever had a particularly exciting halloween costume but one year i was sharpay from high school musical and i think i peaked then tbh

7) what was your favorite 90s show?

uhhhh….. i didnt really… start watching tv until like… the 2000′s so i really cant tell you man lol // spongebob started in 1999 does that coUNT,

8) who was your last kiss?

(answer redacted) // :/ someone should kiss me so i can change this answer lmao

9) have you ever been stood up?

nope //  nah

10) favorite ice cream flavor?

vanilla w/ vanilla oreos ok u need to underst a n d // this hasn’t changed i haven’t had this particular ice cream in a long time but i still stand by it

11) have you been to las vegas?

nahh // nope

12) your favorite pair of shoes?

idk i have these black ones i wear everywhere lol // i have a pair of white sneakers that i refuse to stop wearing now

13) honestly, have you ever cheated on your significant other?

i wouldnt even consider it. // no bc i’m not a piece of shit lmao?

14) what is your favorite fruit?

hmmm…. pineapple orrr…. strawberries but only if they’re the really good kind like they have to be perfect // pineapple!!

15) have you talked to anyone on tumblr that you could see yourself  dating/having sex with? if possible?

….. ye s… yes. // in the past apparently so but thinking about it now nah lol

16) are you into hookups? short or long term relationships?

hookups arent my thing eh i prefer long term relationships altho i cant really say ive been in a “long” term relationship pffff // i don’t think hookups will ever be my thing, emotionally long term relationships are what i’m here for but i’m also a Very Impulsive Person so i cant tell you if this will stay a fact :’)

17) do you smoke? if so, what?

nope dont wanna // no thanks

18) what do you do to get over your anger?

usually talk to people or shout into word // i have to vent about it to someone probably a thousand times even months or years after it happens tbh

19) do you believe in god?

nahh // nah

20) does the person you’re in love with know it?

i aint in love with anyone rn so no? // i’m not in love with anyone.

21) favorite position?

………….. for w hat………. // oh honey lmfao... N/A

22) what’s your horoscope sign?

virgo/ox ovob // Virgo/sun, Aries/moon, Libra/rising and Cancer/midheaven

23) your fears?

literally everything i already named a few so ill name some others… ghh anything in… the ocean or lakes and stuff frightens me and i really dont know why bu tlike…. fish and crabs and jellyfish and seaweed cuz it’s evil and stu f f basically anything that’s not a mammal or turtles or penguins…. lo l im a baby // uncertainty is a big fear of mine and also people being mad at me lmao... as far as physical fears though i have debilitating fears of almost all insects/arachnids and lobsters/shrimp/crawfish :^)))))

24) how many pets do you have? what kind?

two cats and a dog!! // one cat one dog

25) what never fails to turn you on?

i dunno,,/////// // lol neck biting/kissing oof

26) your idea of a perfect first date?

im okay with mostly anything i just really like spending time with the person ; v ; // i’ve never really had an answer for this? thinking about dates has always made me so anxious for whatever reason but i’ll be happy to just spend time with them doing whatever honestly, i’m a super indecisive person aha

27) what is something most people don’t know about you?

i dont really know tbh lmfao // i’ve considered in the past looking into mental conditions (anxiety/bpd/etc) to see if i might have one or two but i never want to say anything about it because i don’t want to self-diagnose anything.

28) what makes you feel the happiest?

nice weather and nice conversations w/ best people u//v//u // nice weather and hanging out with people who are fun and easy to talk to

29) what store do you shop at most often?

does….. arda wigs count or… // does arda wigs still count bc mood lmao but truthfully now it’s probably target

30) how do you feel about oral? giving and/or receiving?

kkdkjsfkjkjfj??fsfj/// go for i t??? i have no problems with i t??? i dont think ill ever be willing to put a dick in my mouth though // these random sexual questions thrown in here are something aren’t they lmao. not going to disclose much but i will stand by the fact that i will not put a dick in my mouth lo l

31) do you believe in karma?

sometimes ye // i believe that people will eventually get what’s coming to them but i don’t believe in karma as a solid concept if that makes sense? like i don’t think it’s guaranteed

32) are you single?

yup yup // yeah it’s been wild lmao

33) do you think flowers or candy are a better way to apologize?

i think being sincere is the best way to apologize– if you truly mean it the person will know. you dont need to buy your forgiveness. // the best way to apologize is just to apologize sincerely and change your behavior if it’s applicable.

34) are you a good swimmer?

ehh??? im ok i guess– i took swimming lessons as a kid but i havent done legit swimming ever since then lmao,, ive always been best at the backstroke tho yea // i mean i have the ability to swim but i’m not olympic-worthy or anything lmao

35) coffee or tea?

ehhh im not big on either tbh // chocolate milk and you can fight me

36) online shopping or shopping in person?

depends what your shopping for i guess?? online is more relaxed i guess // online probably because shopping in person Gives Me Anxiety

37) would you rather be older or younger than your current age?

ehhh im happy where i am tbh // older

38) cats or dogs?

do not make me choose // cats and dogs* there i fixed it for you

39) are you a competitive person?

ahaa,,,,, oh god yeah,, // OOF yeah

40) do you believe in aliens?

i believe there’s life on other planets somewhere?? so i guess?? // i believe in aliens in the sense that there’s no way we are the only living life forms in the universe but not in the science-fiction way you feel me

41) do you like dancing?

i do but i suck at it lmao // i do but i: A- suck, and B- have no stamina

42) what kind of music to you listen to?

nearly everything tbh // i’m not picky when it comes to music but imma be real w u. almost all of the music on my phone is kpop. seventeen is my favorite group along with astro, and i also enjoy super junior, shinee, red velvet, etc among so many others,,, im pretty wide spread !

43) what is your favorite cartoon character?

i will never be able to pick just one // i’ll literally never be able to answer this

44) where are you from?

philadelphia uvu // philly!

45) eat at home or eat out?

hmmm at home. // at home

46) how much more social are you when you’re drunk?

i never plan on being drunk tyvm // i’ve never consumed alcohol in my life and to be Quite Fucking Honest i want nothing to do with it

47) what was the last thing you bought for yourself?

bracelets ! ; u ; // uh... excluding food and music... earrings i think

48) why do you think your followers follow you?

uhhhhhhh lmfao i have no idea i think… a good amount are for my cosplays at least?? or id like to think so lmfao but i really dont know pfft // my followers have just accumulated and hung around over the years... i know i gained a good amount from my snk days as arlert-the-troops and then through my haikyuu phase, whether it was for my cosplay or other posts that i made... whenever someone follows me now im not entirely sure what its for but i appreciate everyone who’s stuck around!

49) how many hours do you sleep at night?

it’s never regular man // 6-9 (lol) hours is pretty normal for me

50) what worries you most about the future?

everything tbh // the future as a concept worries me lol

[jafreitag]

Grateful Dead Monthly: Hollywood Sportatorium – Pembroke Pines, FL 5/22/77

On Sunday, May 22, 1977, the Grateful Dead played a concert at the Hollywood Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

The Sportatorium was built in 1968 in a then-sparsely-populated and unincorporated area of Broward County southwest of Fort Lauderdale and northwest of Miami. The developers were a couple of guys – Stephen Calder and Norman Johnson – who opened a horse track and later a motorsports track nearby. The plan for the venue sounds like a proto Florida Man’s fever dream. From the Wiki:

Among the plans for the Sportatorium were sports events, ice follies programs, auto and boat shows, and eventually a “Gold Coast State Fair”. The Sportatorium was constructed as a hangar-like facility constructed out of concrete, a steel roof, an asphalt floor, and no air conditioning. Originally designed to seat 18,000 for stage events and 15,000 for arena events, it opened in December 1969 with only 6,000 seats.

“The idea was to have a facility which could have entertainment and events out of weather”, said Bruce Johnson, Norman Johnson’s son, who managed the arena until 1980. At first, it hosted indoor rodeos, indoor motocross events, wrestling, boxing, and some concerts.

According to the Wiki, the first event in the Sportatorium was the 1969 Miami Rock Festival on 12/27-29. The Dead played that Fest on 12/28, but Deadlists indicates that the venue was the International Speedway (the aforementioned motorsports track?), so the Wiki is likely inaccurate. The Sportatorium ultimately did become the premier concert mecca in South Florida, fulfilling the Johnson family promise of something something inside. Here’s a list of who played there in the early/mid-’70s: ELP, Zeppelin, the MC5, Fleetwood Mac, and Spirit in 1971; ABB, Floyd, and Yes in 1972; Uriah Heep, Zappa, Elton John, and Chicago in 1973; Dylan and King Crimson in 1974; the Doobies and Skynyrd in 1975; and the Eagles, ZZ Top, Clapton, and KISS in 1976. Yeah, the ’70s were eclectic and amazing, and dominated by duuudes.

By the late ’80s, the Miami Arena was the main stop for big acts, and the Sportatorium was reduced to booking stale metal bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. (Zero shade: I’m fine with Maiden and Priest, but they were past their primes at that point.) The last show there was on 10/21/88 – some country and western unknowns. In 1992, the land was zoned residential. In 1993 after Hurricane Andrew, the Sportatorium was leveled.

The Dead played there for the first time in 1977. (They returned in ’78, 80, and ’85.) Let’s get to the tour and the show. Caveat: I am a complete ’77 geek. I don’t think that the band played a bad show that entire year, and most of them were exemplary.

The band started the year with a handful of Cali shows – San Bernardino (2/26), Santa Barbara (2/27), Winterland (3/18-20) – before heading to the other coast. By then, the weird/cool segue-happy ’76 approach had been jettisoned for something leaner, setlist-wise. The 1977 template was basically the one that the band would use until 1995: A crowd-pleaser opener or openers; Bobby stuff (sometimes cowboy, sometimes blues, and Dylan in the ’80s-90s) interspersed with Jerry stuff (mostly ballads); a big first-set closer; a big second-set opener; a song or two leading into something sorta jam-able; drums and space; a vaguely-segued, three-to-five-song, crowd-pleaser ender that could/would include Bobby energy and Jerry gravitas; and encore that might be fun. Shit was predictable, but it worked.

In April, the band landed in Philly (4/22), traveled up to Springfield, MA (4/23), traveled back down to Passiac, NJ (4/25-27), camped out for five nights (4/29-30, 5/1, 3-4) at the Palladium in NYC, then jumped from New Haven, CT (5/5) to maybe the best three consecutive nights in their history – Boston (5/7), Ithaca, NY (5/8), and Buffalo (5/9). The tour then wound its way around the eastern half of the country: St. Paul > Chicago > St. Louis > Tuscaloosa, AL > Atlanta > Florida (two places, including the Sportatorium) > Richmond, VA > Baltimore > Hartford, CT. My recitation of that itinerary isn’t gratuitous. Like the setlist architecture, the tour structure was starting to take shape. The only reason that ’77 didn’t become the template for the latter was Mickey’s June 20th car accident, which gave the band a summer break that extended until September.

On a recent road trip, my best friend and I deep-dived into the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, the “official” podcast from Rhino Records, who owns the vault. The first season was a track-by-track dissection of Workingman’s Dead. The second season was a track-by-track dissection of American Beauty. Those records celebrated 50th birthdays last year. Somewhere in the second season, main talker Jesse Jarnow mentions that touring wasn’t really a thing in the late ’60s and early ’70s. His point, which comes across with great aplomb in an interview with road manager Sam Cutler, is that the Dead had to create the tour concept for themselves before they could draw ‘heads into following them across the country year after year. Anyway, I can’t recommend that podcast highly enough – it’s been fantastic so far, and I’m excited to hear when it goes next. Well worth a listen.

So. 5/22/77. It must be alright if Dick Latvala picked it as the third release in the vault series that bears his name? Yep.

The show starts with a fun Funiculi Funicula wiggle, then drops into a funky The Music Never Stops. Next is a fantastic Sugaree that seems to go on forever. Is it the longest of the tour? No. According to a post on the Dead for a Year blog, there were seven versions of Sugaree in 5/77. (I confirmed that.)The longest is 5/28 (18:43, per Deadlists); the next longest is 5/19 (17:02). The rest, including 5/22, fall into the 13-15 minute range. This one is 15:38, and it doesn’t disappoint. The rest of the first set is a trade off between Bobby and Jerry. El Paso, Peggy-O, Minglewood, Friend of the Devil, Lazy Lightnin’ > Supplication, Ramble on Rose. All excellent. The first set-closing Dancing in the Street is just slightly less great than the Cornell version.

The second set-opening Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower is just slightly less great than the Buffalo version. (Hey, DW. Just checking if you’re awake.) The Samson & Delilah pops, and Donna isn’t a minus, until she is. After a so-so Brown-Eyed Women and an even more so-so Good Lovin’, she’s back to lead Sunrise. Whatever. The Estimated > Eyes ticks all the boxes for me. Estimated is big and round, and Eyes is plenty fast. The segue from Eyes into Wharf Rat is an honest >, noodly and smooth. (Deadlists calls it Space, but it’s better than that.) A short Terrapin and a long Dew ends the set. And Sugar Magnolia is a suitable encore. That’s my take.

Here’s everybody’s favorite Deadhead with his listening notes. Ladies and Gentlemen, Emcee ECM…

When GD archivist, Dick Latvala unearthed a damaged analog tape of 5/22/77, it was probably one of best finds/surprises in Grateful Dead taping history. Of course, the story of Rob Eaton acquiring the Betty Boards of 5/8/77 (among many other shows that were missing from the vault) takes first prize, but most people in the taping community already knew about Cornell from audience tapes that circulated. With 5/22/77, nothing circulated. It was a completely unknown show, which made it’s mystery all the more intriguing. Latvala and crew painstakingly restored the damaged analog tape and released it for all of us to hear as Dick’s Pick Volume 3 in 1995. The show opens with a mind blowing Music > Sugaree combo, the latter being an all-time version. Listen to the way Garcia weaves a hypnotic spider web of notes in Sugaree. Later in the set we get a sizzling Lazy>Supplication and a tender Peggy-O. The set closes with a groove-a-licious version of Dancing In The Street that gives Cornell a run for its money.

In Set 2, we get our faces melted with a spellbinding Slipknot! and a joyous Franklin’s Tower. Eyes of the World starts with a gorgeous lengthy opening jam before the verses and ends with an otherworldly jam that leads into a stunning Wharf Rat. Then we get to the reason why Dick Latvala released this show. It’s one of those magical Grateful Dead moments where everything seems right in the universe. Here, somehow, Wharf Rat finds its way into Terrapin Station WITHOUT the Lady With A Fan section. It’s the only time this ever happened. From there we get another incredibly rare treat: Morning Dew. The last version the band played was at Cornell two weeks before this performance. Dew was only played five times in 1977, and all of the versions are astounding including this one. Also, this is the third of only four performances ever of the TerraDew combo. Wish they would have played it more just as I wish they would have performed the Playin’ Palindrome more often. A legendary Grateful Dead show in the legendary month of May 1977. Time to revisit this Dick’s Picks if you haven’t done so already.

As Ed mentioned, most of this show is an official release, Dick’s Picks #3. (Idk why they opted to include Sunrise over BEW or Sugar Mags.) Here’s the Spotify widget…

And if you’re not on Spotify, or just want the whole show, transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

JF

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[junker-town]

Dorktown: The quest for the six-win playoff team

Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The NFC East is so bad that we’re in danger of seeing a six-win team in the playoffs. Maybe even a five-win team.

When the NFC East heads into Week 11, its leader will have three wins. THREE WINS! Ever since the NFL split into its eight-division format in 2002, there have been 152 opportunities for a team to drag its sorry three-win-having ass to Week 11 and find itself atop its division. This is the first and only time it has ever happened. Congratulations to the 3-5-1 Philadelphia Eagles.

At this stage of the season, you almost always need at least six wins to lead a division, but the Eagles hold sole possession of first without even having to resort to tiebreakers:

Eagles (3-5-1)

Giants (3-7)

Washington (2-7)

Dallas (2-7)

Know this: throughout NFL history, no team has started 2-7 or 3-7 and made the postseason – unsurprising, since even if they’d somehow turned around and ran the table the rest of the way, 9-7 is often not good enough. This year, the NFC East is harboring three such teams, and all three are right in the thick of the playoff hunt.

If this were intentional, it would take a lot of orchestration. This is a two-stage rocket, and the first stage concerns the games these teams play against each other. Time and again, we’ve seen a not-great team vault into a record like 10-6 after proving just good enough to pick up cupcake wins within its weak division. That won’t work here. All four of these teams have to be more or less equally bad, such that they notch equal wins and losses against one another. So far, they’re doing a great job of this. These are their records within the division:

They’re sharing wins and losses as equally as the schedule allows; as of this date, the Giants and Cowboys are stuck with odd records only because they’ve played an odd number of division games. There’s every reason to hope that this equal winning and losing will continue: the Eagles have lost to Washington, who have lost to the Giants, who have lost to the Cowboys, who have lost to the Eagles, who have lost to the Giants, who have lost to the Cowboys, who have lost to Washington.

Now, the second stage of this rocket is a far more demanding one: these teams have to go out and lose to everyone else. And have they ever:

Look at all that orange. When NFC East teams are kicked out of the house by their exasperated parents and told to go play with the neighborhood children, they almost always lose. They’re 2-18-1 against the rest of the NFL this season. Let’s examine those three games that weren’t losses:

Eagles 25, 49ers 20. Philly squeaks by an injury-depleted Niners team that was missing their starting quarterback, their top two running backs, their starting center, star edge rushers Nick Bosa and Dee Ford, star cornerback Richard Sherman, and several other key guys. They did so after mounting a fourth-quarter comeback and barely surviving a last-minute drive led by their third-string quarterback.

Eagles 23, Bengals 23. Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz leads a last-minute drive to tie a Bengals team that is universally understood to be bad. Overtime goes like this: Bengals punt, Eagles punt, Bengals punt, Eagles punt, Bengals punt, Eagles punt, end of game. During their final two possessions, the Eagles make it well into Bengals territory before penalties pushed them back to their side of the field.

Cowboys 40, Falcons 39. Atlanta leads 39-24 with under six minutes left in the game. In one of the most spectacular comebacks I’ve ever seen in the NFL, Dak Prescott mounts three quick, heroic drives to pull out the squeaker. Of these three non-losses, this is the only particularly impressive one, although three things must be said about it. First, it hinged entirely on a recovered onside kick, which in today’s NFL counts as an incredible stroke of luck. Second, this happened against the Falcons. Not the Raheem Morris-coached Falcons who have really shown some fight over the last month, but the Dan Quinn Falcons who went 0-5. Third, Prescott was sadly lost to injury a few weeks later, robbing the NFC East of their only guy who’s proven himself capable of this kind of magic.

Two wins, 18 losses, one tie. Since ties are conventionally counted as 0.5 wins and 0.5 losses, this gives us a winning percentage of .119. Let’s flip that around: this season, teams who get to play an NFC East team this season have a winning percentage of .881. They’re juggernauts.

Consider how tough it is to find any split that will get you more favorable results than .881 over a span of at least 21 games. Let’s stack up a few splits that would seem favorable, with the help of Pro-Football-Reference’s Stathead tool.

Let’s have even more fun or even less fun, depending on who’s reading:

Brief aside: this is due to the sample size really thinning out toward the summit, but it is pretty funny that NFL teams’ winning percentages actually dip just slightly if they pass 42 points, and only recover once they hit 50. Similarly, that .881 winning percentage is based on a sample of just 21 games, so this chart wouldn’t quite hold up in an academic paper, but the fact remains: teams that score at least 30 points still have a less impressive winning percentage than literally any non-NFC East team that plays an NFC East team in 2020.

Now, it is true that the interdivisional schedules of these four teams have been pretty damn tough. Let’s use Football Outsiders’ DVOA rankings (through Week 9) to sort the quality of these teams from top to bottom, and count how many times our poor heroes have had to play them:

Rough stuff. Most of the time, they’ve run into good or very good teams. They’ve had to play the team with the NFL’s best record, the Steelers, three times (although it could just as easily be said that the Steelers have the NFL’s best record in part because they’ve gotten to play the NFC East three times).

Of course, the above chart omits the NFC East’s worst opponents: them. Come on out, fellas! There’s a bunch of folks here and they wanna laugh at you! Come on now!

This is why we can’t feel bad for any of these teams individually. Any tough opponents they’ve had to face elsewhere are more than balanced out by the privilege of being able to play their sorry selves.

You know, if I had the ability to assign teams to any division I wanted before the season started, with the objective of producing a division leader with as few wins as possible, I don’t know if I’d change anything. I think reality might have given us our best shot here, or at least something very, very close to it. If I just chose what I felt were the four very worst teams in the Jets, Bengals, Jags and Broncos, that could be trouble, because I suspect the Jets are miles worse than even the Bengals are. That would give the other three a punching bag that would allow them to pad their wins, which would blow the whole thing.

Instead, give me four teams who are both unmistakably bad, and almost the exact same degree of bad. Four teams who are dog shit in quadruplicate, and don’t appear to be much better or worse than each other in any material way.

So. Are we gonna see the NFL’s first-ever six-win playoff team? It’s absolutely in play, maybe even likely. I’m going to add a few more words in the hope of speaking them into existence:

We might see a five-win playoff team.

Let’s run through the remaining schedules of the Eagles, Giants, Cowboys and Football Team and see where we sit entering Week 11. Once again, we’ll rely on Football Outsiders’ DVOA.

Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys would need to win five of these seven games to reach seven wins and ruin our day. While they did play the Steelers close over the weekend, and they have four very winnable games ahead, this is a team that’s lost four straight. I just can’t see Andy Dalton coming back from the bye and winning five of seven.

(I’m not factoring home-field advantage here, although it’s worth noting that home teams only hold a slight advantage this season. The omnipresent NFC East loser vibes are far stronger in my view.)

Washington Football Team

Same story as the Cowboys. Washington needs five wins to kill our dreams. I find the most useful way of framing this is: do we even trust them to get to three? I don’t.

New York Giants

The numbers are just slightly more friendly to the Giants: to make us unhappy, they need to win four of six, rather than five of seven. Their most likely path would be to beat the Cowboys and Bengals, then find some way to beat two 6-3 teams out of four.

I don’t see this as likely, but for purely unscientific reasons based on previous Giants team with entirely different rosters who stumbled backwards into sudden success, I think these guys are the most likely of the four to reach seven wins.

Especially because the Eagles’ upcoming schedule is so difficult.

Philadelphia Eagles

On paper, the Eagles have the easiest path to seven wins, as they only need to win four of their next seven. Four of these opponents are good-to-great (although the recent injury sustained by Drew Brees may mean beating the Saints is less unrealistic). The other three teams are subpar. All seven, though, hold a better DVOA than the Eagles.

The odds of Philadelphia reaching seven wins feel somewhere around 50-50 to me. I’ll take it! They still get to play two of their division rivals, and if they beat them both – which they’ll probably have to do in order to have a shot at 7-9 – that consequently deals a serious blow to all their seven-win aspirations, hopefully leaving the Eagles as the only team we’ll have left to worry about. From there, we hope that all five of the other teams, which are currently 6-3 or better, beat them.

Now, a five-win division champion? The road to that is tougher, but it’s absolutely possible. The math gets a little tricky, since in division games one team’s loss is another’s win, but you’re not at work here. You’re having fun. Simply scroll back up to those four charts and find:

four teams that can beat the Cowboys

four teams that can beat Washington

four teams that can beat the Giants

four teams that can beat the Eagles

If you can do that, you can imagine a team that lurches into the playoffs with a record of either 5-11 or 5-10-1. I need this. I need such a team to reach the playoffs while a very good team, like the Saints, Bucs, Cardinals, Rams or Seahawks, gets shut out of the postseason. Please, NFC East. Deliver us this future.

For further reading on the NFC East, check out this history lesson from Will, who points that these teams have been producing bad football since the 1930s.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/nation-and-world-news-briefs-national-8/

Nation and world news briefs | National

Dozens infected, 9 dead in COVID-19 outbreak at California nursing home

LOS ANGELES — A skilled nursing home in Santa Cruz County is suffering a severe outbreak of COVID-19, with 61 people having tested positive and nine dead, a county health spokeswoman said Thursday.

Of the 61 infected at the Watsonville Post-Acute Center, nine were staff members. All those who died were residents and ranged in age from their early 70s to 90s, said Corinne Hyland, a public information officer for the county Department of Public Health. The facility is licensed for 95 beds.

Hyland said the facility had been following state guidelines for employee testing, which exposed the outbreak. The center reported the outbreak to the county Sept. 17 after a resident tested positive. An outbreak at a nursing home is defined as an infection in one resident. Visitors have been barred during the pandemic, she said.

“It spread pretty quickly,” Hyland said. “Unfortunately, this is a very vulnerable population.”

Dr. David Ghilarducci, deputy health officer for Santa Cruz County, said the county’s public health staff was working closely with the facility to control the outbreak.

Santa Cruz County health officials have been visiting the facility daily to review protocols on isolation, quarantine, testing and screening, and to respond to requests for more resources.

Officials from the California Department of Public Health have made multiple visits to the facility to assess the situation and make recommendations, and the California National Guard also is providing help, the county said.

Because many nursing home employees work in more than one facility, the county immediately alerted other homes of the outbreak, Hyland said. She added that the county was tracing the contacts of the infected.

“This is really a large outbreak,” Hyland said. “We haven’t seen this sort of thing in our county until now.”

Jill Biden says women in Pennsylvania where she grew up ‘may determine the entire election’

PHILADELPHIA — Jill Biden thanked volunteers and told a group of elected female leaders at a small backyard rally that the 2020 election could be in the hands of Pennsylvania women, during a campaign swing Thursday in the Philadelphia suburbs.

“Women will decide the future of this state, and this state may determine the entire election,” Biden said at a stop in Swarthmore, in Delaware County.

Biden, 69, the former second lady and a 35-year educator, grew up in Willow Grove and attended Upper Moreland High School. At her first stop, outside U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean’s Jenkintown office in Montgomery County, Dean presented Biden with an Upper Moreland High School sweatshirt personalized with “Dr. B” on the back.

“You’re an amazing role model to a lot of women, and I hope you recognize that,” Dean told her. “And being a Philly girl, I think there really is something in our DNA. We believe in the founding of our nation … life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Biden recounted for the small, socially distanced crowd how much she and her four sisters enjoyed growing up in Willow Grove. Then she helped distribute materials to people who were off to canvass for the campaign. “Thank you for welcoming me home,” Biden said. “It feels good to be home. You know what else feels good? This election feels good.”

Jill Biden’s visit came as ABC News and Biden’s campaign announced that the Democratic nominee would appear at a town-hall event in Philadelphia on Oct. 15, when the second presidential debate was supposed to take place. Trump withdrew from the debate Thursday, objecting to a decision by the commission that conducts the debates to hold it virtually because of Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis.

During a second stop, at the home of Colleen Guiney, who heads the Delaware County Democrats, Jill Biden commended women in Pennsylvania for helping Democrats flip control of the House of Representatives in 2018. Pennsylvania sent four women to the U.S. House in 2018 as freshman members.

“Women know how to organize. We know how to fight for the people we love and we win elections,” Biden told the crowd of about 20 elected female leaders, which included U.S. Reps Mary Gay Scanlon and Chrissy Houlahan.

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

2020 ties record on billion-dollar natural disasters, NOAA says

With months left in 2020, the United States has already tied a record for the most billion-dollar natural disasters.

So far, the country has had more than a dozen climate and weather catastrophes that cost at least $1 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The first 9 months of 2020 ties the annual record of 16 events that occurred in 2011 and 2017,” NOAA said as of Wednesday.

On average, there were about six billion-dollar natural disasters each year from 1980 to 2019, according to figures that are adjusted for inflation. In the past five years, the annual average was roughly 13 disasters.

Hurricanes, wildfires, drought, tornadoes, hail storms and other costly weather events have ravaged parts of the country in 2020. The catastrophes come in a year that has also seen financial hardship from the coronavirus pandemic.

To come up with its findings, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information says it examined data from state and federal governments, forecasters, media outlets and the insurance industry.

—The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)

Dozens injured as 33-story building in South Korea goes up in flames

SEOUL, South Korea — Dozens of people were injured after a 33-story apartment building went up in flames on Thursday night in the South Korean city of Ulsan, local media including the Yonhap news agency reported.

By early Friday morning, 88 people who had either fled the fire or been rescued had been hospitalized, Yonhap reported, citing rescue services.

Most had low-level injuries, including from smoke inhalation. It was not immediately clear if anyone had died in the blaze.

The fire, which is thought to have started somewhere between the 8th and the 12th floors before spreading to the upper floors, was brought under control, but it remains unclear whether there is a risk of collapse.

Some outlets showed footage of the structure engulfed in flames and slabs of burning concrete falling to the street below.

Strong winds are thought to have caused the blaze to spread rapidly.

There have been no reports of fatalities so far.

Rescue workers from the fire brigade had tried to evacuate the apartment building’s 380 residents as quickly as possible, the report said.

Some 50 people fled to the roof of the building when the fire started.

Ulsan is a city of 1.2 million people in the southeast of the country.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Copyright 2020 Tribune Content Agency.

[teamnorthamericaatrash]

Thank you @numbah79 for tagging me!

1) What is the color of your hairbrush? Black and blue

2) Name a food you never eat? OLIVES

3) Are you typically too warm or too cold? Too warm

4) What were you doing 45 mins ago? Drinking coffee

5) What’s your favorite candy bar? I’m a slut for a twix

6) Have you ever been to a professional sports game? I have! Several Hurricanes and Flyers games, also a Phillies game

7) What was the last thing you said out loud? “You’re gonna get in trouble!”

8) What is your favorite ice cream? Half Baked

9) What was the last thing you had to drink? Coffee

10) Do you like your wallet? I dont own a wallet, I probably should lol

11) What was the last thing you ate? An everything bagel

12) Did you buy any new clothing last weekend? I did actually, my apologies to my bank account

13) What’s the last sporting event you watched? I watched part of a basketball game with my dad

14) What is your favorite flavor of popcorn? KETTLE CORN BBY

15) Who was the last person you sent a text to? Nicole

16) Ever go camping? Nope

17) Do you take your vitamins? Nope

18) Do you regularly attend a place of worship? Nope

19) Do you have a tan? God no

20) Do you prefer Chinese or pizza? I guess pizza

21) Do you drink soda through straws? Most of the time

22) What color socks do you usually wear? Black or white

23) Do you ever drive above the speed limit? 5 over at all times

24) What terrifies you? Snakes, not amounting to anything, dying alone

25) Look to you left, what do you see? A mirror

26) What chore do you hate the most? I guess taking out the trash

27) What do you think when you hear an Australian accent? “I can do that too”

28) What’s your favorite soda? Diet Dr Pepper

29) Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru? Depends on how long the line is

30) What’s your favorite number? 16 or 27

31) Who’s the last person you talked to? My mom

32) Favorite cut of beef? Filet I guess. Is that a cut?

33) Last song you listened to? Its All Coming Back to Me Now by Celine Dion lmao

34) Last book you read? Something for school, I don’t remember

35) Favorite day of the week? Saturday

36) Can you say the alphabet backwards? NO

37) How do you like your coffee? iced with vanilla and soy milk

38) Favorite pair of shoes? My Jeffrey Campbell platforms

39) Time you normally get up? Anywhere from 9:30-11. I’m on pandemic time, bby 

40) Do you prefer sunrise or sunset? Sunset

41) Describe your kitchen plates? From Urban Outfitters. Light grey 

42) How many blankets on your bed? Just one

43) Describe your kitchen at the moment? I live with my parents so its way more cluttered than when I lived alone

44) Do you have a favorite alcoholic drink? White wine is my jam, but if i’m somewhere more casual its usually a vodka cran or rum and coke.

45) Do you play cards? I do not

46) What color is your car? It’s white

47) Can you change a tire? I never have before, but it doesn't look too hard

48) Favorite state? I guess NC because I was born there

49) Favorite job you’ve had? None of them? lmao

50) tags @flamesleafsjets @waytogetmyhopesup 

(no pressure if you’ve done it)

[mtairyartgarage-blog]

June Poetry Slam Is Coming & April Lynn James Wants To Talk About It!

Poetry Slam Saturday, June 7, 2014 @ 7 pm

I came to Philadelphia in search of Communi-Tea. My immediate family had become toxic, and after taking a friend up on an offer of sanctuary and sharing her studio apartment in NYC’s East Village for the first half of 2013, I needed to find a home somewhere. I had to begin again. After traveling the northeast (Boston, Maine) and across the pond (France, the Netherlands, Germany), I moved to Chestnut Hill. Here in northwest Philadelphia, amid trees and stone, I hoped to heal my heart and find other artists.

Cohosts: April Lynn James (R) and Mary Ann Domanska (L)

I had heard that Philly was a town supportive of the arts and artists.  At a street fair in Mt. Airy in September 2013, I learned of the Mt. Airy Art Garage, and met Arleen, one of its founders. I became a dues-paying member the following month, and met Linda, MAAG’s President. I loved Linda and Arleen’s vision of creating a space for all the arts—visual, literary and performative. I attended events sporadically over the fall and winter, and got involved in planning the second annual International Women’s Day event. In March 2014, I had the opportunity to co-host that event and to perform some of my (and my alter ego’s) poetry. It was during the IWD event that I met Mary Ann, who was leading MAAG’s Writer’s Group. I was exhorted to attend the Slam, so I did. The vibe was so friendly that inaugural night: people brought their picnic baskets, filled with wine, cheese and other edibles and sat themselves around the candlelit tables. One entrant brought her entire family who cheered her on. The audience and participants were a mixture of young and old, black and white, gay and straight, and all things in-between. We had 60 plus people at that first Slam, exceeding our expectations, and challenging our supply of chairs.

The biggest surprise for me that night was that I won the slam! I had come simply to support a fledgling event and to share my work, yet here I was walking away with the top prize!  How about that? A Sonneteer wins in Mt. Airy! This would never have happened in gritty, cut-throaty New York City! Now, I co-host the Poetry Slam. Our audience for the second slam was also a vibrant and vocal mix of folk from Germantown, Mt. Airy, Chestnut Hill and other parts of the city. Yes, some folks even came up from Center City! What, you say? People traveling into the Northwest for poetry? Yes, Virginia—yet again, something that would never happen in NYC.

I want to see this Poetry Slam become THE place to be the first Saturday evening of every month.

This month our featured poet will be Kasey Jueds, author of The Keeper. Her poems have appeared in publications including Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Manhattan Review, Salamander, Crab Orchard Review, Women’s Review of Books, and 5AM. She’s been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation. Keeper, my first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. So, we expect an exciting evening!

The slam starts at 7 pm and goes until 9pm. You can sign up at the door, or send an email to poetryslam.maag@gmail.com. Download the list of Slam Rules HERE. The poets are limited to five, count ‘em 5 entrants. At only $5, the MAAG Poetry Slam’s a deal that can’t be beat. And for those competition-shy amongst us, there is an Open Mic directly following the Slam at 9 pm. Come one, come all and spread the word!

[phillygirlabouttown]

Cary Ann Hearst (Spill! Archive)

The below interview appeared on Girl About Town on 4/24/2008, announcing Cary Ann Hearst would be playing one of our blog sponsored parties, and was written by PGAT contributor, Amy Williams. This is just prior to Hearst beginning to perform as Shovels & Rope.

Girl About Town is STOKED to introduce Cary Ann Hearst to Philadelphia this Thursday for our Spring Fling (9 PM at the Khyber). Cary’s a southern country girl full of soul and charisma. As the Charlestonians (as Cary likes to call people from her hometown of Charleston) will tell you, seeing Cary and the Gun Street Girls live is a twangy, feet-stomping, REAL southern experience. It’s not the modern country or alt-country that you are used to now. It’s the emotional performing and songwriting that Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash were known for; delivered by a sultry, raspy, little spitfire of a gal.  Girl About Town caught up with Cary to get some info on her inspiration and to find out how she likes to spice up her live shows.

Girl About Town: Your sound plays a great ode to classic, whiskey-soaked country (when country was at its best with the likes of Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash). Do you strain your influence from those roots? What inspires your style and songwriting process now?

Cary Ann Hearst: I am deeply stoned on the intoxicating effects of that kind of music. I grew up with it and despite all my resistance as a punk kid in Nashville, TN, I was inevitably captivated. I have a hard time pulling loose of those apron strings when I write, but I find inspiration where ever someone leaves it around. I am currently obsessed with the Shangri-Las and I hope they influence me, though I would not have wanted to be lumped into their girl gang.

You have been playing the Charleston music scene for over a decade. What part has Charleston played in molding your sound?

We are pretty isolated over here. We Charlestonians spend all our time with each other, stealing from each other's ideas and changing it up enough to turn into flattery. I am constantly making self righteous commentary on my peers, so if it weren’t for the debauchery of the average Charlestonian, I wouldn’t have much of a schtick. I suppose. HA!

You are signed with Taylor Shults of TKO Artist Management who represents Toby Keith, among other big names in country. How did you connect?

On a musical level, we don’t connect. Me and TKO that is, although they are all wonderful to me and he does my business the way I would want it done. I have nothing to do with commercial country music and I want nothing to do with it for the most part. I met Taylor at a gig and I was SO VERY RETICENT to trust anyone out of Nashville. I pretty much wrote him off when I found out who he works for. I was afraid he would wanna put me in pink lipstick and tell me my music was too country or not country enough or whatever it is everyone likes to say to an artist who can be easily classified.  He swore up and down after much persistence that I ought to give it a shot. Schults rocks and he gets done that which I can not. Now I make no apologies. Hell, Toby Keith’s having a nice career.... maybe these guys know what they are doing.  Hell, he's my own personal Albert Grossman.

We came across some interesting information about you producing a rock & roll Burlesque/Cabaret show a few years ago along with a Rock n' Roll Rejects Prom...tell us about that! Are you still involved with putting on these shows? Also, when can we expect a new album; what's in store this summer?

Since I play Charleston pretty frequently, I try to mix in some other visual or thematic aspects to show productions to keep it interesting and fresh for the folks (and for the band too). My interests are 'schitzo' so it works out that I can do whatever I want and everyone goes along with it... "That Cary Ann, she's just so capable!" That’s what they say! (Laughs at own joke here.)  Summer time has more of the same... country band practices on Sunday. Rock and roll on Monday. Cabaret KIKI in May, Gun Street Girls tour in July.  Shovels And Rope record will be coming out, hopefully one from The Gun Street Girls, and somewhere in there I am gonna find myself. "We haven’t located our selves yet....," gratuitous Wes Anderson reference.

Last but not least, what's your favorite thing about Philadelphia?

Freedom and Hoots and Hellmouth. Honestly, that’s all I know about Philly. Perhaps this will be the beginning of a hot romance with the city of Bro-Love.  If you will have me back that is.

Don't forget, you can catch Cary Ann Hearst and the Gun Street Girls THIS THURSDAY (5/1/2008) at Girl About Town's Spring Fling!

Cary Ann Hearst - band site / myspace

[justholdingstill]

Rules: List 10 songs you’re currently vibing on and tag 10 people.

The lovely @pantheonofdiscord tagged me in this, and while I love music I listen to SO MUCH & I hate making decisions, so I just plain cheated here. But more tunes for y’all, so, uh...sorry not sorry. ;) Click song titles for links through to YouTube vids! 

1."Brother", "Rumbrave", and "I Came Around" - Murder by Death

Here's the thing: I have no idea how more folks in the Supernatural fandom haven't heard of Murder by Death, because their early stuff especially is so thematically and sonically in line with the aesthetics of the show. And sweet crispy jesus, they have a cellist as an integral part of the band (who is intimidatingly babely in person I might add), which is an automatic win in my books. I've been lucky enough to see these guys live twice, and I definitely recommend checking them out album by album.

So brother, raise another pint/ Rev up the engine and drive off in the night/ See you somewhere, some place some time/ I know there's better brothers, but you're the only one that's mine.

2. Sable On Blonde - Stevie Nicks

I think I rediscovered this song because the author of a fic I was reading made note that they'd had it on repeat incessantly & I was like YES that's a good fucking song. And it is. It's got keyboards, it's got mournful electric guitar, it's got Stevie, and what more do you need for witchy winter morning vibes, really?

3. At The Center Of All Infinity - Yuri Gagarin (full album)

Our Kitten loves this album and so do I. I blast it & she lays down in front of the speakers and purrs her face off. It's on the heavier side, yet approachable, with some great prog-y guitar solos and a Swedish stoner "space-rock" feel, and I actually find it super energizing to write to.

4. Cry - Carly Rae Jepsen

Okay, so I'm pretty sure I listened to the album EMOTION by Ms. Jepsen at least 40 times this summer because it's super catchy & feel-good, and also kind of a modern-day pop masterpiece with an 80's feel (and, I swear to god, MAD Dean/Cas vibes in the lyrics of most of the songs). This is a killer B-side off that album which just wrecks me with its synth, its beat, and its plaintive vocals.

5. Lotta Love - Choir! Choir! Choir! ft. Sarah Harmer

We've covered cellos, we've covered synth, and now we get to the third thing that pretty much guarantees my listening pleasure: goddamn three part harmonies. The original C!C!C! is based out of Toronto, I think, and it's pretty much a large, free-from group of people who all get together, learn a song, and sing the heck out of it. They have a ton of awesome covers on YT (their Space Oddity is a standout), but I love Sarah Harmer, and this version of a Neil Young classic is particularly soulful.

6. Uthuling Hyl - Osi and the Jupiter (full album)

Honestly, I dont even know how I came across this band or this album, and I don't really know how to describe it; my best stab is "ambient progressive dark norse folk" but basically it sounds like it's halfway between the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and if Radiohead made a soft metal album with input from Bjork. It's really interesting & soothing by turns, and it's in fairly heavy rotation on my writing playlist.

7. I'd Rather Be With You - Bootsy Collins

First of all, I freaking love Redbone by Childish Gambino, which samples Bootsy here. Second of all, Bootsy Collins. He's funk royalty, this song bumps, and Andre 3000 probably wouldn't be the man he is without this intensely cool dude having paved his way.

8. Careless Whisper (Beave Remix)

I don't know much about Beave except that they're an Irish DJ who drops the kind of whomping deep dirty house that makes me wish I was still 22 wearing glitter and staying up all night dancing myself sore at the gay bar. Those were, as they say, the days. Some might say you don't fuck with a classic like this, but I say I've had myself some excellent boogie breaks to this edit.

(Bonus: this trap remix of Careless Whisper is stonkingly ridiculous and I love it.

9. Warm Enough - Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment (ft. NoName Gypsy & J. Cole)

jfc these LYRICS though.

Deceptive carnations, our wedding we announced On Sunday for the holy of it/ Solely covet me and you, for you and I/ Are blissfully tethered to simple redeeming When sadness gets worse and we don't know why/ Our city is bleeding for crimson/ I don't protest, I just dance in my shadows/ Hallow be thy empty/ When my name don't sing, shallow waters/ Under bridges don't forget 'bout me/ Who are you to love me and not call me by my name?

10. Need to Feel Your Love - Sheer Mag (full album)

I totally get that some people do not jive with the vocals of this Philly punk rock group, but they & this album have seriously grown on me. It's got serious cred & I bet Dean would be totally into it. :p

11. Sisters - A Tribe Called Red ft. Northern Voice

Another banger! First Nations music doesn't tend to get much representation in the mainstream media, and ATCR have been amazingly successful at helping to break down that barrier with their unique EDM. Their shows have been some of the most energetic & electrifying I've ever been to, and I 100% recommend going if you ever get the chance.

12. The Darkest One - The Tragically Hip

I'm still not over Gord & I probably never will be. Let's round out our Canadian contingent with probably the most Canuck music video that ever was.

13. Anais Mitchell: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Oh Anais...somehow over the last 2 years I managed to forget that I'm absolutely in love with the woman who wrote Hadestown, the folk rock opera based on the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice. I have been such a fool, and rediscovering her lyricism has been like coming home.

okay okay okay, I'm really done now. I tag @bowleggedcharmer @nox-lee @knittedgauntlets @60r3d0m @conquestcastiel @hadespuppy @lucy-flawless- @theriverscribe @magicalmess93 and @goodtidingsdean

[travelswithzsubes]

2:57:19

I kind of can’t believe I’m sitting here writing this race report.

The very idea of it felt like a pipe dream for so many years. I actually can’t really remember the exact moment when I decided I wanted to run a sub-3 hour marathon. Was it in 2009, when I decided, lying comfortably on a Seaman Street bed in New Brunswick, that my first marathon would be in Pittsburgh? (Spoiler alert: No.) Was it in 2011, when I really tried to qualify for Boston for the first time? (No - I was just trying to run below a 3:10:59 in Wilmington that day so I could make the minimum Boston qualifying time.) Was it in 2012? (Kind of - my first half of the Ocean Drive Marathon was sub 1:30. But, looking back, that first half was a little bit too good to be true, and I faded hard to my 3:03 with an asterisk.) The first real time I tried to go sub-3 was 2015, in Philly, when I had a real shot at it with a 1:27 first half, and then my legs died and I had nothing. I also had nothing in 2017 in Boston. So - another try, at age 33, without really knowing if my body was capable of doing such a thing.

I actually started training for this marathon back in April, when, during a normal 10 mile run, I felt positively like a doughball. I could barely crack a 7 minute pace during the run. Enough. Enough! Time to train for real.

And so I went on a diet and started attacking my workouts. I went to Crossfit. I began running 4-5 days a week - because of injury, that had been unheard of during my buildups in 2012, 2015, 2017. I linked up with RVRR buddies to do speed workouts on the track basically once a week. I did a few summer series 5Ks. I started feeling faster on the track, and I did an unmeasurable number of double digit runs in what felt like triple digit heat. (An endless supply of hot runs during training.) Most crucially - I avoided any major injury. My knee always gives me little problems here and there, and I had some foot concerns throughout, but unlike other years I didn’t develop some kind of exotic and fun new injury from this training. And once I did my 22 mile training run at a 7:23 per mile pace, I knew I at least had a shot at my goal. 

Running the incredibly hot Newport Half in Jersey City, four weeks before the marathon. My 1:25:51 was solid, but it wasn’t fast enough to make me feel fully confident.

Yes, I had a small bout of mysterious stomach muscle discomfort when I pushed during my track workouts and during other runs, and that freaked me out a little bit, but I came to terms with the fact that there wasn’t much I could do about it. “Just know it’s going to hurt and accept it,” Matt said. And it was true.

October 13, and I showed up in Schenectady with that mentality. There’s nothing like a small race, the Mohawk Hudson Marathon, mostly along bike paths and the eponymous rivers (and through duly named towns like Watervliet and Colonie and Cohoes), with everyone congregated and shivering in a small parking lot as the mist rises off the dewy grass, to get you fired up. I stripped off my pants and hoodie, dutifully handed my bag drop to the volunteers, and waited for the gun to go off.

***

I had just bought a GPS watch for this race, and it was equal parts distracting and helpful. Knowing that I was running about a 6:35 pace from the start of the race was incredibly helpful, yes. But it also meant that I was checking my watch incessantly throughout the first mile, and, therefore, during the whole race. It definitely took some joy out of the running and unquestionably took me out of the moment.

But whatever. I wasn’t in this race to have a Zen kind of experience. I really only had one mission - to run a sub-3 time, really no matter what it took. And so I checked my watch at the expense of being a bit more in touch with my body (and certainly at the expense of looking at the fall colors all around me and observing the Mohawk River floating lazily to my left).

The beginning of the race felt fine. It wasn’t hard for me to start with a 6:37 mile. It didn’t even feel that fast at that point, and it’s all lost in a sea of adrenaline then anyways. My goal was to run 6:45s for the first half (to reach the 13.1 mile mark in about 1:28) and then try to stay consistent enough through the end to run a 2:59 or whatever it was. Even so, 6:37 felt OK. The stomach thing did seem to act up briefly, which was a little disconcerting. But it faded away early on, and even though pushing felt hard, it didn’t have a major say in how I performed throughout the race.

I saw a nice pack of 7 runners in front of me around Mile 2, and I put in a little burst of speed. It was a small race, and running with a little group to break the wind for me would be kind of nice, I figured. I kind of stuck with them. The next few miles: 6:31, 6:26, 6:22. Suffice it to say I was feeling good, and maybe a little too good. There was a bunch of downhill, and I’m pretty sure I hit a 6:00 pace at some point in there, which affected those paces for sure.

That’s when I caught a conversation between a couple of the guys I was running with. “We’re trying to hit the halfway point at 1:25,” one said to another. So - too fast for me! It wasn’t easy to do, but I immediately dropped back. I’ve made the mistake to stay with - or even pass - a group like that in previous marathons. You feel so good, and nothing can go wrong at that point, but it’ll never get you very far. At that point I basically decided to focus on running relatively comfortable, consistent miles. We were solidly on the bike path at that point, where we’d stay for the next 13 miles or so. Even though the path is relatively uninspiring, and doesn’t have a ton of crowd support, it’s beautiful, and it really lets you get into a legitimate rhythm. Plus the cheering at the water stops wasn’t bad. I tried to take Alexi Pappas’s advice: “When it hurts, just smile.” It actually kind of weirdly works.

6:41, 6:39, 6:40. Except for one outlier mile at 6:33, every mile up until 13 was between 6:39 and 6:44. That was pretty much what I was going for. I looked at my watch all the while and just tried to let myself settle. I’d call it defensive running. I was being conservative, running slower than I was capable of, just really trying to set the internal pace metronome and trying to stick right to it.

But I started to get scared around Mile 9. That was where I felt myself needing to put in a little more effort to maintain that pace. Oh, I thought. I have a very long way to go. If I can barely maintain it here…

…just get to Mile 13, I told my unsettled mind. Just get there, and then the race really begins. Then you can really start doing damage; then you can really see what you’re made of today.

But you can’t get to the real part of the race without the mise en place of those first 13 miles. And so they mess with your mind. They’re fake, a mirage before the stage play, but they stand in front of you like obstacles.

The last one was the hardest. Mile 13 had a little uphill, then a steep downhill, then a couple more uphills. I overcompensated on them a bit and found myself running a 6 minute pace. Up a hill. My legs didn’t feel great doing it. Easy, I thought. You’re going too fast.

Thankfully the half marathon mark beckoned, not too far ahead. I hit it in about 1:26:30 - well ahead of my goal. I had plenty of time in the bank now to make things happen, which was good, because I could tell I was weakening. Miles 13-18 are tough. They’re so far from the end, but so deep into the race. Try to just keep up that same pace, I thought. Just keep turning them over and here we go.

And I actually felt like I hit a second wind. Mile 14 was a little scary. At that point, you just know the wall is coming at some point, and you hope you don’t hit it too soon. I felt the death sneer of it all creep its fingers up my neck. But it wasn’t there yet, and even though it took more effort, I turned over a 6:41. Others started to catch up to me, and so then I tried to mostly keep their pace. I actually started to somehow feel strong. 6:39. 6:34 for Mile 16. I knew, for the second half, that I just had to average somewhere between 6:52 and 7 minute miles to achieve my goal. Every mile I ran faster than that I was putting time in the bank. Just keep putting doing that, I thought. Who knows how much longer you can go. 

And yet, somehow, I actually felt fast.

I ate a GU at Mile 16. I immediately got a stomach cramp. I haven’t gotten one of those in a long time. GU is usually fine to me - thankfully, somehow, the cramp teetered on the edge before fading away. Maybe the thumb jammed into my insides actually worked.

And then I was at Mile 17 - where you get off the trail and on to the streets. At this point the haze started to kick in. 

Life can be dark, and it’s especially grim at Mile 17 of a marathon. Your soul starts to struggle. Is this all there is? Black, joyless, never ending strides forward? Nothing in your body really wants to keep going; everything wants to be still. It’s a deep, desolate place. You feel like a baby; you want to cry every second. Here, running is an emotional experience much more than a physical one.

And yet you keep running. You have to.

There was a rail crossing at mile 17.5 in Cohoes on road that is open to trains. No matter, there was no train. I ran downhill afterward, feeling the small adrenaline rush from the lack of train traffic that would have derailed my Boston time. You take anything you can get at that moment. The crowd started to pick up at this point, and I just tried now to keep moving straight and try to keep turning over the same pace. Just. Keep. Running. The. Same. Pace. You’re okay. Sweetheart. Keep running at the same speed. Over. And. Over.

It mostly worked!

I got to Mile 20 feeling rough, but I passed it at about 2:12:30. That meant I could run the rest of the pace at close to 8 minute miles and still make 3 hours. At that point I wasn’t even close to that. I knew I had a real shot now.

And yet you never know. The last six miles…the wheels can just fall off.

So, again. Defensive running. Just try to keep up a solid pace, nothing fancy. Run your race. It’s OK to slow down to 7 minute miles now. That is more than OK. The crowd was nearby, cheering, but people simply look like apparitions at this point, scarecrows that you just have to pass on your way to the finish line.

When I started running Mile 22 and saw that I was hovering around a 7 minute pace, putting more than enough time in the bank, I actually briefly teared up. It was so close. And yet. NOT NOW! I thought. Anything can happen. NOT YET!

On cue, my left calf cramped up briefly. Is this how it ends? I thought. With me cramping on the side of the road, unable to run another step?

No. It wasn’t. Thankfully, I got on the last section of the path around Mile 22 and just…at this point, I was simply gutting it out. I didn’t have much left. I so badly wanted to stop. And yet…four more miles. That’s not nothing. Just maintain, I thought. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts now. Just maintain, and the glory will come.

Here and there my leg continued to cramp. Any one spasm could end me. It was terrifying. I ate another GU. Maintain, maintain, maintain.

Mile 23: 7:04. One more mile, I thought. Just one more mile, and you’ll have tons of time in the bank.

Mile 24: 7:08.

I now had about 20 minutes to run 2.2 miles. How many times have I done that in my life? So very many.

And yet.

Just NOW one more mile, I thought. If you get to 1.2 miles left, and you have more than 10 minutes to do that, there’s almost no way you’ll fail, unless the cramps get you.

I saw a bridge over the Hudson up ahead. Don’t look at your watch till you get there, I told myself. There’s a water stop there. Your legs are jelly; you can barely run. Just maintain.

I got to the bridge. I looked at my watch.

I was holding a 7:11 pace.

And when I got to Mile 25, with 13 minutes left to run 1.2 miles, I knew it was basically sealed.

I was too cracked out and dazed and tired to be in a celebratory mood. Just, please, someone, anyone, let it end. I knew I didn’t have to run fast, but I still tried to keep it up. I really couldn’t anymore, though. Maybe it’s because I knew I had it, but the thought of crushing a final mile in 6:30 seemed impossible. Someone passed me. “You’ve been pulling me for 10 miles,” he told me. I tried to stay with him. He wasn’t even running fast. I couldn’t.

And so the crowd numbers increased as I wound my way along the path to the finish line. A half mile to go. This was actually happening.

In the end I barely remember the finish line. My brain was fried, overfed on self-control and the metronomic pace of a 6:41 mile. It wasn’t some glorious Eliud Kipchoge-esque finish. But as I saw the finishing banner come into view, I smiled wide. (You can see this in the race photos.) I felt nothing more than a broad, deep sense of satisfaction. My smile that you can see in the photos reflects that.

Me on the right, with the weight off my shoulders

I guess I finished at some point. My watch read 2:57:19.

And I stood just past the chalk, holding the gate, trying to soak it all in, trying to understand what it means for a goal of 10 years to be finally realized.

The immensity of it is impossible to understand at that point. But as I stood there, I felt deep exhaustion. That much was unmistakable. But with deep exhaustion comes a deep sense of peace. I could rest now, bask in the literal and metaphorical 60 degree warm sun that shone above us. And I could drive home two hours later, high on chocolate milk and Ruffles potato chips, screaming uncontrollably with joy as I blazed down the highway, knowing that this was it. This was actually it.

***

I’m planning on running Boston in 2021. I know I’ll get in at this point. It feels amazing. It’s an incredible race and I’m so happy to be going back.

I’ll always have a special place in my heart for that strip of bike path along the Hudson River where the race ended. I’m a sub-three hour marathoner now, no matter what. It’s mine, and I’m going to hold on to it like a grateful child.

I’m writing this a few days later. The run already feels like a long time ago. I can mostly walk normally again. Life moves on, and I’m already looking at half marathons I can do in November to capitalized on my in-shape status. I’ll run the Turkey Chase 10K on Thanksgiving Day. Work is heating up; the Jewish holidays are in full swing. It’s easy for all this to be in the rearview mirror.

But I’m trying to hold on to this as tightly as I can. For a brief time, as I sat on a grassy hill after the race, soaking in the adulation that comes with congratulatory text messages, on a perfect fall day, there was absolutely nothing more that I needed from my life. It’s rare that you get perfect moments. A moment where nothing is wrong, and you can’t imagine anything being wrong, and there’s nothing more the day demands of you. 

If nothing else, having that made it all worth it. 

[orindasfinest]

TDFL PR W#3

To admit to a thing that everyone already knows like Bill Clinton will someday when the antifa firing squad has him wetting his senile pants at gunpoint stammering about how Epstein was onto something with the tightness of 15-year-old box: yes, I missed last week. I shockingly have a girlfriend AND aspirations of being something other than a water babysitter for the rest of my life and the two combined to stop me from shitposting about fantasy football. I have now concluded with my significant other and with my job applications, filling both with rich cum, and will thereby turn my attention to the band of misfits I decided to assemble in hopes of winning a fantasy league for once in my fucking life, which in this instance would basically be like beating ‘Through the Fire and the Flames’ on Guitar Hero in easy difficulty. At least the Eagles officially suck so nobody can feel good about real-life accomplishments except for me and my lovable group of New Englanders who use HGH as lube when waxing their shaven carrots to lithographs of Jock Sutherland’s single-wing play designs. That is a real reference and I am so gratified that I got to waste seconds of your life making you try and process such a string of words – much like you will continue to do if you keep reading! Let’s begin.

10. Leaguema Balls (Mike)

Record: 0-3 | PF: 305.1 | PA: 425.3 | Streak: L3 | Last Week (I actually wrote out a rankings but then just never added the roasts, so they were worthless, but trust me) 10

Plays Next: Sean’s Hard Mangos (Sean)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Continuing to draw breath

It’s comforting to know that I can leave my sweet foundling rankings alone for a week and still have the unmoving anchor way at the bottom to keep it grounded and sturdy. You would have thought that assembling a competent fantasy football roster was Rogaine given Michael’s lack of familiarity with the concept. If you want, Dirt, you can think up an AIM away message to leave in this slot to save me the work for the next 13 weeks and so this entry has some consistency besides sucking more than spilling soup down your shirt in a meeting. (I know that wasn’t you but this guy deserves some of your grilling space.) Marquise Brown is going to blow out a lung trying to run under Lamar’s 102-yard touch passes on Sunday and turn back into Steve Breaston with a dumber nickname.

9. Sean’s Hard Mangos (Sean)

Record: 0-3 | PF: 374.4 | PA: 401.2 | Streak: L3 | Last Week: 8

Plays Next: Oh dear christ not my repeaters again

Questionable Decision of the Week: Dick amputation by tendon fatigue

Just as I take solace in Mike’s cellar-dwelling ways, I can relax about the other two Philly league members having decent squads just by looking at Sean’s merry band of sap-sucking stupidheads. You’d find more consistent direction from Sean behind the wheel of a car than you would from a team led by Derrick Henry and James Conner. And here I thought you were done with uninterested, underperforming ball-grabbers when you broke up with Hannah. Word of advice, dawg! You’re gonna get your first win this week because the algorithm isn’t yet advanced enough to throw up in both of your faces instead of assigning a victor between you and Michael, so act like you’ve been there before, or at least act like you know how to run a palatable social media account after three fucking years of trying and failing.

8. James White is Right (Tori)

Record: 0-3 | PF: 372.7 | PA: 439.7 | Streak: L3 | Last Week: 9

Plays Next: Cartoon Colt Copulation (Hahahahaha)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Acting like her dirt star is the brightest light in the sky when in reality it’s Proxima Centauri from Event Horizon

Much like capitalism, the league has created a placated and clueless middle class, consolidated wealth in the top 1%, and left the lower half of the populace to shiver and die like Austin Ekeler on the sidelines now that Melvin Gordon is back. Of course, knowing Tori’s family, they’d just bray about how the economy is thunderously good before unironically sharing deep-fried boomer memes while she gently chides them through comments, pretending there’s not a little racist in her team name. And in her soul. James White is back, though, having just watched his wife give birth, knowing that whole time that the tearing and screeching he was witnessing would pale in comparison to Tori trying to fit a toothpick up her half-thimble rear entrance.

7. Mark Ruffalo’s Ruffalo Bills (Aidan)

Record: 2-1 | PF: 410.5 | PA: 408.8 | Streak: L1 | Last Week: 3

Plays Next: The Queen’s Booty Lickers (Liv)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Using his asshole around women and not expecting repercussions

Benefiting from a more questionable handout than the insurance settlement that gives him money for having headaches sometimes, Aidan rode high on the back of a free Mahomes the first two weeks of the season. That all came crashing down when Lauren put him in a dumpster in this past matchup, which was probably an upgrade from his place in Chicago. Aidan has a picture of the Blues Brothers’ trainside apartment on his vision board in the hopes that someday he can move somewhere that high-class. Expect further regression as Josh Jacobs and Leonard Fournette continue to suffer from some sort of Power 5 running back glaucoma which makes them barrel directly into their linemen’s asses on every handoff instead of bouncing to the acres of green space just outside the tackles. This is much like how Aidan rushes for beans on toast instead of attempting to taste flavor.

6. Airstrip One Ezekiels Engels (Derv)

Record: 2-1 | PF: 404.7 | PA: 387.8 | Streak: W2 | Last Week: 7

Plays Next: TEAM DUMPSTER BEARS (Lauren)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Fookin ‘ell ‘ard ta pick one innit luv xx

After a less auspicious start than the Easter Rebellion, Derv has rebounded from a sheer fleecing to fashion herself into something of a competent franchise owner. Knowing the strength of her impostor syndrome, though, she’s liable to swap Zeke for a scalding slap in the face *battered whisper* because that’s the type of team that she deserves. I would say this ranking of 6 will be the highest you will ever get but I think if you’re a good enough girl this year, around Thanksgiving your dad will finally put you on his shoulders so you can see the inflatable turkeys parading down the garbage metropolis a mere three hours from you upstate hovel. Otherwise it’ll be another long outing of sinking further down the standings and standing so low at 4’8 you look like you’re dissolving into a sinkhole.

5. The Queen’s Booty Lickers (Liv)

Record: 2-1 | PF: 399.7 | PA: 394.3 | Streak: L1 | Last Week: 1

Plays Next: Mark Ruffalo’s Still Not a Funny Name (Aidan)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Taking dick so long it got mistaken for the amount of time she spends on the toilet

How the mighty have fallen! One minute, you look like an infallible cock destroyer, and then BANG! You get run over. But I won’t bring up your car accident too much. I’m seeing more hopeless tears from your Johnson & Johnson RB corps than from babies piteously afflicted by their cornea-searing shampoo. It’s fitting that such an intermittent contributor would have a roster full of people that basically decide whether or not they want to do a football on a play-by-play basis. “How about an out route, Amari?” “How about you sit in a room for 10 minutes with Liv’s roommate, coach?” This team could light the league on fire but it’ll settle for searing its own britches at completely unpredictable hours. Again, just like Liv.

4. The Birds Have Arrived (John)

Record: 2-1 | PF: 402.1 | PA: 391.4 | Streak: W1 | Last Week: 4

Plays Next: Poo Poo Point Diarrheas (Griffin)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Sending Snickers to hell. She was a good cat john.

The man with the worst opinions in the league dropped Antonio Brown for some reason even though he was clearly a kindred spirit in that regard. There’s no difference between what AB did and what John said about candy, except for the fact that I’d be more comfortable with jizz on my back than I would listening to more of his sweets-based takes. (Come to think of it, I’d just be more comfortable with jizz on my back.) As alluded to before, Melvin Gordon is returning to action, which means John can stop pretending that Miles Sanders will be any kind of valuable contributor, about 4 years and one hair-tearingly bad contract extension before the Eagles do the same. While you’re on the road with the VengaBus, Oakman, see if you can pick up a kicker who realizes that people with apostrophes in their names belong on the defensive line and who can actually put the ball through the fucking uprights.

3. Cartoon Colt Copulation (Gabe)

Record: 2-1 | PF: 422.5 | PA: 333 | Streak: W2 | Last Week: 2

Plays Next: James White is Right (Delicious)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Looking past all the signs that Lauren sabotages air travel just to spend extra time with me and trying to aim my blasts to curve around her IUD anyway

I would just like to immediately point out that my points for is second highest in the league and therefore I righteously deserve my place near the top of the rankings AND could even go for higher. I would also like to admit that I have by far the lowest points against. So even when I excel, I do it in arenas that are specifically set up for me to succeed, which feels appropriate for me as a white man. I’m swinging my dick on an unlevel playing field like Steve-O on a teeter-totter with a scorpion. Saquon’s injury is all I need to have the pinchers come rocketing towards my little glistening head and put the clamps on my high-falutin’ status. BUT FOR NOW FUCK YOU JACOBY BRISSETT IS GOD which is only right and fair in the name of equality

2. TEAM DUMPSTER BEARS (Lauren)

Record: 2-1 | PF: 426 | PA: 363 | Streak: W1 | Last Week: 6

Plays Next: Airstrip One Historical Reference Yawn (Derv)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Do I really have to spell it out? After she spent a whole weekend plus in my bed? Come on, guys. Going back to Buzz City and pretending low rent is a fair tradeoff for having about as much culture as spoiled yogurt

Team Clemson had a TAMU product to thank for their banana sandwich performance in matchday number three as Mike Evans put up FORTY FIVE FUCKING BIG ONES in, of course, a losing effort for his real-life Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Scoring points but losing everything of consequence is nothing new to Lauren after her latest tussles with Catan. But the soaring to improbable heights is taking on gorgeous new wrinkles as different folks step up week after week to put up the performances of their lives, only to be invariably out of gas week nine, leaving her roster a withered, gaping husk with bitter glances back towards what once was as she tries to wring some sort of enjoyment from the remnants. Welcome to childbirth, honey!

1. Poo Poo Point Diarrheas (Griffin)

Record: 3-0 | PF: 396.5 | PA: 342.7 | Streak: W3 | Last Week: 5

Plays Next: The Birds Have Arrived (John)

Questionable Decision of the Week: Getting tested for STDs. Next you’re gonna tell Sean not to drunk drive. Narc

Griffin has the 4th-lowest point total out of all of us, yet he is the sole occupant of first place as of press time. The last time I saw a fatty get this much undeserved shine, my ex-girlfriend made me watch an entire episode of This Is Us. You’re rocking Mitchy Trubes at quarterback, whose play style must be similar to your lovemaking technique: going long a lot, but never looking like you have any idea what you’re doing. I am so happy about your brief stay at the top of the mountain and I hope you can brag about it at show choir or whatever. Just remember that the #1 spot in these rankings is not like having abandonment issues. You don’t need to get used to it.