#and then BOOM he's suddenly 40 years old and on an airplane | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

qiankunfics · 3 years

Text

KunTen Fic Alert

AO3

1. The Thief by HaloHalo

2. Welcome Home by DestinyHope

3. eye of a magpie by angelic_angel

Summary: As a child, Kun always had a habit of taking things that weren’t his.As an adult, he realises that old habits die hard. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

4. another failed lifetime by thatone_kunstan for nik_nimmi

Summary: In one more lifetime, Qian Kun and Lee Yongqin never quite get the ending right. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

5. How To Spend A Free Evening 101 by DoreenKing

Summary: Qian Kun is a Good Boyfriend™ and okay, maybe he's a little bit domestic, but it works for them. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

6. An Eternity (Hopefully Spent With You) by AwkwardMirae

Summary: Ten wants to believe Kun is cursed to eternity too. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

7. Captain 🍆💦 by quarterpastnoona

Summary: The story of Ten and Captain 🍆💦 Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

8. Big chance (Love is blinding you). by Cris_ss

Summary: Ten is totally in love with Kun and the good thing is Kun adores him as much. Rating: Explicit Status: One-shot (part of KunTen courtship story)

9. taste it right off my lips by earthsandwich

Summary: Yangyang sighs. “Is competition some sort of foreplay between you two?”“Maybe,” Ten answers for the both of them, laughing. “It’s kind of exciting.” Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

10. Cat-sìth by YHXLWTK

Summary: Kun travellers to the Scottish highlands to work on some music. A magical creature in the form of a cat distracts him from his work. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

11. catch him if you can by blazingsirius

Finally completed!

12. what once was by angelic_angel

Summary:Ten comes back to his grandparents' seaside cottage for the summer, running from a life he wants to forget and a past he never wants to remember. Rating: Mature Status: On-Going

13. Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) by Anonymous

Summary:Ten has been disappearing for days at a time without warning, coming back with a new piercing and a refusal to acknowledge anything is wrong. Kun is starting to slowly lose his patience. Rating: Mature Status: One-Shot

14. Trust Worthy by taetens

15. my soul calls for yours. by nik_nimmi

16. On Thin Ice by taetens

17. Lofi Music to study and fall in Love to by Fijou

Summary: Kun firmly believed that listening to music late at night was something incredibly personal. A routine that he had learned to love over long nights spent studying, mellow beats and his cat the only ones keeping him company. And lately, a stranger by the username Ten10_0. Rating: Teen Status: On-Going

18. change in routine by andnowforyaya

Summary: “Hey,” Kun said gently, in the voice he typically used when one of their cats was sleeping on his arm. “Hey, how do you feel?” Rating: General Status: One-Shot

19. The Fishy Tail of Qian Kun by besthonestliar

Summary: Kun is just living his typical idol life when boom, he's suddenly a mermaid. How's this going to work? Rating: Teen Status: On-Going

20. saturdays by andnowforyaya

Summary: There was something magical about Saturdays. Kun usually woke early, around 7 or 8, to go for a nice, long, leisurely run around the park, and when he returned, Louis and Leon would greet him at the front door, tails high in the air, meowing impatiently for Kun to fill their food bowls. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

21. this is not the kunten-t we signed up for by writesinfontuwu

Summary: If only the soundproofing of the walls worked, he wouldn't have to deal with the not-so-innocent sounds (read: butt slaps) from the two oldest. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

22. No Biting by taetens

23. Missing Spark by taetens

24. a million cups by rainingover

Summary: It’s something Kun’s found himself doing a lot— automatically doing things for Ten, just because. Because he wants to, because it feels right. It's automatic, like breathing, or blinking. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

25. Friday I'm in Love

Summary: He doesn’t know why and how, though the more he considers it, the more he wills himself to come to the conclusion that he's feeling this way because Ten is the best friend he never thought he would have. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

26. 6:30 am | kunten! by jayprkz

27. keep it going, lovebound by earthsandwich

Summary: Kun and Ten are suspish, Yangyang is confused, and Xiaojun is just there for the drama. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

28. dig deeper, you're a keeper by primroseshows

Summary: Ten gets fed up with Kun's Jay Chou obsession and decides to play a game to get back at him. Ten's crush has nothing to do with it. Rating: Mature Status: One-Shot

29. A (Very) Fluffy Secret by Sicc_01

Summary: WayV's cute and curious moments with Kun, the shy and fluffy kitsune. Rating: Teen Status: On-going

30. oral argument by illie

31. Wrong (Right) Ad by Alette

32. Countdown from Nine by MailOrderBride

33. then have my lips the sin that they have took

Summary: Ten falls in love with Kun. This isn't a problem, if you leave aside the fact that he is a vampire and Kun is a werewolf - and that they are both sworn enemies. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

34. make it happen (kiss and makeup) by miramiro

Summary: Wherein Kun applying eyeliner on Ten makes them drift apart and ten years later, brings them together. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

35. Me, My Boyfriend, And His Fucking Midi by doiemination (sweetmedusaaa)

Summary:Ten has a lot of tips when it comes to dating a Capricorn. Rating: Teen Status: One-shot

36. The Lucky Hare's Menu by VAMPIROKUN

Summary: In which Kun's a chef that wants nothing more than for his restaurant to be successful, and Ten is a food critic who is bad at hiding his feelings. Their story doesn't really start there, though. Rating: Teen Status: Completed

37. kitchen island by snowyleeknow

Summary: Kun loves Ten more than he hates the fact that Ten keeps sitting on the damn kitchen island. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

38. airplane, love (come with me) by earthsandwich

39. The Cat Problem by starlitsprout

Summary: Ten needs a cat sitter. Johnny finds him a Disney prince lookalike with pretty dimples to solve his problem. Whatever else happens, is up to Ten. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

40. Broken Line by taetens

Summary: A tiny thread, so minuscule yet impactful, leads to the one thing everyone but Qian Kun wants: a soulmate. Rating: Teem Status: One-Shot

41. first dates (and other disasters) by snowyleeknow

Summary: Yangyang provokes Ten by telling him he'd be terrible at first dates. Ten proves him wrong a little too well. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

42. Commercial Flying (and Crying) by Mntsnflrs

43. If I Really Love You by devinemoon

Summary: Ten falls in love with someone who keeps running away from it. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

44. Mystery Boy by taetens

45. Five (5) by Josferatu

46. cola chupa chups (pick me) by miramiro

Summary: Kun is not amused, and vows to make sure his "secret admirer" won't be for too long either. Rating: Teen Status: On-Going

47. the arrangement by evijuls

Summary: In the car to the studio, Ten’s mind drifts to a year back, when he and Kun made their arrangement. That arrangement that he sometimes hates with everything he has and sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps him going. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

48. Moonwalk by hyuckaboo

49.electric magnetic by miramiro

50. sorry about the mess by andnowforyaya

51. to reach you by mysheeples

Summary: Yangyang finds himself with some free time and finally understands what's going on between Ten and Kun. Frustration ensues. Rating: General Status: One-Shot

52. c'est ça l'amour by camellia117

53. in tongues and quiet sighs by evijuls

Summary:It was their first kiss, and it was Kun who made a move, and his lips were soft and confident, and hot, and the movements of his tongue made something inside of Ten flutter. Like fucking butterflies. Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

54. Fakers by taetens

55. You Are a Keeper by jiaqins

56. kiss me more by kingnyoungie

Summary: “We could be fucking something,” Ten sings along quite loudly—he’s letting loose, give him a break! Work’s been up his ass and this has been the only time he could ever— Rating: Teen Status: One-Shot

57. right from the start by evijuls

Summary: Sometimes Kun thinks that Ten knows each of them even better than they do themselves and all he wants is to be the person who knows Ten just as well. Better than anyone else. Rating: Explicit Status: One-Shot

58. things you said after you kissed me by itsgameover

59. Loving you is a comfort by nik_nimmi

#fic alerts #kunten #tenkun #wayv #qian kun #kun #fic alert #new fics #updates #fic updates #kun/ten #ten/kun

29 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Bridesmaids Ten Years on: “It Should Not Have Been Subversive”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

“From the producer of Superbad, Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin” headlines the 2011 poster for Bridesmaids. It might as well have continued “comes a comedy starring… women!” While the producer in question, Judd Apatow, had nearly created his own subgenre of modern coming-of-age comedies featuring male friendships (regardless of the age his characters were ‘coming of’), a credible, genuinely funny, ensemble laugher starring all women was virtually unheard of. Or at least so it seemed at the time. Quotes on other posters included proclamations like, “Chick flicks don’t have to suck!” (Movieline) and “Better Than The Hangover!” (Cosmopolitan).

Ten years on, it seems both like yesterday when the film came out and also a whole era away: a time when women headlining a comedy movie was somehow strange, “chick flicks” were accepted to be a lesser form of cinema, and The Hangover was considered the pinnacle of hilarity. From a script written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig (who also stars), featuring a wedding where romance is in no way the focus of the movie, and starring a host of funny women, a smattering of gross-out humor, and some of the most honest and empathetic depictions of female friendship around, Bridesmaids was a beacon. And it shines just as strong today.

A week ahead of Bridesmaids’ 10th birthday (its original U.S. release was May 13, 2011), Den of Geek is chatting with director Paul Feig via Zoom. Feig is in Belfast and into week four of his fantasy adaptation The School for Good and Evil (based on the book). When we tell him we can’t quite believe it’s been 10 years he laughs, “You can’t? Imagine how I feel!”

While the movie itself remains fresh, funny, and sweet, that it was considered quite so daring just 10 years ago is a bit of a shock now. Certainly Feig never considered the movie to be subversive at the time.

“But everybody kept talking to us like it was!” he says. “It just made me mad because the whole subversive thing was, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a movie starring women.’ And it was like, ‘Really?’ It was 2009 or 2010 at the time we were making it. It was like ‘Wow, if this is subversive, that’s kind of a sad indictment of the industry that we’re in.’ It was annoyingly subversive. It should not have been subversive. It should just have been a funny comedy starring funny people.”

He’s right of course. The fact is the movie was a benchmark. Feig explains that female writer friends who were pitching ideas for female casts at the time Bridesmaids was being made were all told across the board, “We have to wait and see how Bridesmaids does.” That is a whole lot of pressure for one movie—the idea that Feig’s comedy would influence the cinematic landscape for an entire gender. But the reality is, it did.

Feig is demure when we bring up how much the movie changed the film world, but he concedes that it did help to prove to studio execs that female-led films can make money.

“I’d been told in the years running up to that, when I would be pitching female-led projects, ‘Oh no, you can’t, because men won’t go see it. Internationally, it won’t work. Blah, blah, blah.’ All these rules, rules, rules, and you just start to go like, ‘Well, so we’re just going to accept those rules? So women can never have their own projects?’

“We were able to at least show them, ‘Look, if you do it, and it works, then audiences will show up. And not just female audiences. Men will show up.’ I think our movie benefited from the fact that women would bring their significant others to the film, whether they wanted to go or not, and then they could tell their friends, ‘Hey, you should see that. It’s really funny.’”

It worked. Bridesmaids was a massive success, both critically and commercially, grossing over $288 million worldwide (it’s the highest grossing Apatow movie to date) and bagging two Oscar nominations.

Bridesmaids isn’t the first female ensemble comedy, but it’s undeniable that it was a 21st century game-changer. Without it we may not have had movies like Pitch Perfect and its two sequels (if you think that film isn’t influenced by Bridesmaids, check out the poster), Bad Moms, Ocean’s Eight, Girls’ Trip, Feig’s own Ghostbusters reboot, Rough Night, as well as Melissa McCarthy vehicles Identity Thief, The Heat, Spy, Tammy, and The Boss.

Not every one of those projects is gold and nor should they have to be. The fact that they are allowed to exist and stand or fall on their own merits is crucial. It’s the equivalent of the idea that women in various forms of employment automatically have to be that much better than their male counterparts. Women should have the right to create and star in terrible comedies just as much as men…

Though she was relatively famous before Bridesmaids—perhaps most recognizable for her TV roles including as Sookie St. James in Gilmore Girls—it was Bridesmaids that truly pushed Melissa McCarthy into the mainstream. Nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as sister of the groom Megan in Bridesmaids, since then McCarthy’s become one of the highest paid actresses in the world.

It’s quite astonishing, then, that Feig didn’t actually know who she was before he met her at a table read.

“I had never met her before in my life,” he laughs. “We brought her in for an audition because she was friends with Kristen and Annie, and we were having trouble casting that role. Then she just blew me away. And I can’t believe to this day that I did not know she existed until the moment I saw her because she’d been working a lot before that.”

Feig’s first encounter with the script and McCarthy was at a table read back in 2007. Feig says he was in the middle of post-production on an “unsuccessful Christmas movie” called Unaccompanied Minors, which featured Wiig, when Apatow called up.

“He said ‘I know you like to work with female characters, so you should come and see this.’” Feig recalls. “I remember just going like, ‘Oh my God, we can have an amazing vehicle for the funniest women we can find.”

It wasn’t until three years later though that the project finally came to fruition. Feig says all the basic structure of the script was there but with some differences to the detail. The airplane scene wasn’t originally in the movie, and the women made it to Vegas. The character of Officer Rhodes (played by Chris O’Dowd) was a little different. And the infamous dress shop scene, where the group gets explosively ill after Wiig’s Annie takes them for a meal at a cheap restaurant was, according to Feig, “a little more of a competition about Helen [Rose Byrne] wanting an expensive dress and Annie trying to steer towards a cheap dress.”

The dress shop scene in the finished film has become notorious with food poisoning landing in full force during a bridal fitting, McCarthy’s Megan straddling a sink, and Maya Rudolph’s bride-to-be Lillian forced to relieve herself in the middle of the road wearing a wedding dress. Yep, not only is Bridesmaids a film about women, it’s a film where women have violent diarrhea, a massive taboo, even still. Feig recalls it was a delicate balance to make sure it was character driven and not just gross.

“When we first came up with the idea and pitched it to Kristen, she was a little nervous, but rightly so. I mean, honestly, with Judd and I, two guys suddenly going, ‘Hey, let’s do this,’ it could have been terrible,” Feig says.

“We like to have these outrageous scenes that stick with you, but they can’t be outrageous just because, ‘Hey, let’s just have something, everybody shits and farts all over the place.’ That’s not funny to us. What’s funny to us is the idea of she’s competing with somebody who has more money. She has no money. She’s going to try to compete by taking them to a shitty restaurant and saying it’s a good restaurant. And it’s going to blow up in her face. How does it blow up in her face?

“The funny thing is she’s not going to admit in front of her nemesis that this blew up in her face. And so now the comedy is like, ‘We’re just going to throw so much evidence at you that you’ve screwed up.’ The comedy’s going to be like, ‘I’m fine. They’re fine. Nothing’s wrong. I’m not sweating. I’m not about to die.’ And that’s why it’s funny. Then that allows us to go like, ‘And now let’s just have the evidence be hilarious and go crazy with it.’”

So much of what works so brilliantly about the movie is the chemistry between all of the cast. Wiig and Rudolph were already best friends in real life, and the rest of the cast, who all came from the world of improv, had either worked together or at least seen each other’s work.

“The great thing about comedy people, in improv especially, is they’re not lone wolves,” Feig explains. “They live and die by the interaction they have with the people they’re working with. So you don’t get a situation where somebody is a diva or trying to be like, ‘Oh, they’re stealing my jokes.’ They want to make each other as funny as they can while they also make themselves as funny as they can. So it was just a wonderful, supportive set. I mean, we had so much fun. There were never any moments of anything other than just laughing and having a great time.”

Though most of the cast was recognizable, to a U.S. audience at least, from TV shows like SNL, since Bridesmaids their careers have boomed. As well as McCarthy’s enormous success, Wiig has most recently starred as a main character in Wonder Woman 1984 (with a chance she might return for another installment); Ellie Kemper is now best known as The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmit; Wendi McLendon-Covey is the star of The Goldbergs; and Maya Rudolph seems to be in everything—we loved her as the Judge in The Good Place, among other things.

Pre-Bridesmaids Australian actress Rose Byrne was probably best known for serious roles in movies like Sunshine, 28 Weeks Later and Troy, and while her character, Helen, is something of the straight woman of the gang, she’s had plenty of opportunities to exercise her comedy chops since, with movies including Neighbors, Instant Family, and Like a Boss.

Though the antagonism between Annie and Helen and the effect it has on Annie’s friendship with Lillian is the central tension of the plot, it was always important to Wiig and Feig not to turn Helen into the villain of the piece.

“Helen doesn’t really do anything terrible,” Feig explains. “I always said, we have to face this from Helen’s point-of-view, which is: Helen meets Lillian. Lillian’s this awesome, smart person. And she then meets her friend who she’s heard all these weird stories about and the friend is kind of a mess. And so to her, she goes like, ‘That’s kind of a toxic friend. I’m going to, in a very lovely way, try to steer Lillian away from this bad influence in her life and towards better things, because I think she can go better places.’ So from Helen’s point-of-view, everything that Annie is doing is terrible because Annie’s trying so hard.”

It means that Bridesmaids very clearly avoids the trope that women aren’t able to get along, and Feig and Wiig pointedly wanted to avoid any sense of it being a catfight.

“We like to redeem people at the end,” Feig says. “It’s really sweet to redeem Helen and go, no, she’s just this needy person who has a husband who was never home. And she’s trying. She clearly has no self-confidence whatsoever, no self-esteem and so she’s just trying to buy it. So it just makes everybody redeemable and lovely at the end.”

Feig says he’s always been fascinated by female friendships and says he’s mostly friends with women. It’s another reason it was always important to him that despite being a “wedding movie” that Bridesmaids kept the relationships between the women at the heart.

Says Feig, “I don’t consider this a romantic comedy, even with the Chris O’Dowd love story. To me, that’s just a prize at the end that Annie gets when she works herself out with her friend. But that’s what drew me to it. If you look at my other movies, I’m just obsessed with the idea of female friendship and exploring it on screen, because I just find it to be one of the most interesting and fun and sweet relationships in my life that I’ve experienced.”

It’s this authenticity that helps Bridesmaids still ring so true a decade on. Though a comedy about women, written by two really funny women, which isn’t a romance and contains farts and shits shouldn’t be subversive, it was definitely a trailblazer. And Feig concedes that it’s helped with “getting over that stupid hurdle of ‘chick flick.’”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“I despise that term because it’s just a way for guys to dismiss movies starring the opposite sex,” he says. “Hollywood is not an altruistic town. They’re not going to do stuff just to do the right thing. It has to make money. We were at least able to show: look, you can actually make money and do the right thing.”

Bridesmaids is now exclusively streaming on Peacock.

The post Bridesmaids Ten Years on: “It Should Not Have Been Subversive” appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3y2TKgl

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

2 notes · View notes

rolltidewrestlingfan4life · 5 years

Photo

THIS IS VERY LONG AND VERY PERSONAL FOR ME. YOU MAY FIND IT AN ENJOYABLE STORY. I DID NOT PLAN TO WRITE A VIRTUAL NOVELLA BUT MY HEART AND SOUL STARTED POURING.

I didn’t do this back in February but this man deserves the mention and respect. This is the man that raised me. The man I idolize. He died February 5th as I was performing CPR on him or just before. I’m happy that he had a very quick and painless death that I believe he was expecting and prepared for. This man was born in New Hampshire and took a job in the 8th grade, he never returned to school and usually worked 2 jobs 6 days a week. His family moved back and forth between New Hampshire and Vermont. He got his first car when his brother’s car broke down, his brother traded him a 48 Ford for a bicycle.He loved riding his Indian motorcycle until a car slowed too fast in front of him and he collided and flew over the top of the car, miraculously his only injuries were cuts and knocked out teeth. In 1955, he made the decision to join the US Air Force.It would be the decision that triggered his destiny, After completing basic training he returned home to New Hampshire, gave his brother his air force ring as a momento (I have it now) and headed to Savannah Georgia where he was stationed.

431 miles away, in a booming coal mining town deep in the country of central Alabama, there lived a teenage girl in her senior year of high school. She didn’t really care for any of the boys in her town though she would “take them from their girlfriends to prove she could” She had an aunt and uncle that lived up in the big city in Birmingham, that is..until her Uncle joined the Army. Ironically, he was station in Savannah.

As fate would have it, the man from Alabama met the young man from New Hampshire and they became friends. One day there was a special event at the base where family was invited, the teenage girl came with her aunt to see her Uncle. In the cool twilight of the day the girl was walking outside when she saw a man sitting on a bench beneath an oak tree. The tree was huge,it had stood for many decades if not a century, the tree had wisdom in it’s soul. She stared at the young man in the distance. The sun was fading as swamp moss swayed in the breeze as the night began to overtake the day. She saw a flicker of light as the young man lit a Lucky Strike with his zippo. “he looks just like Elvis Presley” she thought. Something in the breeze made her sneeze, try as she might she could not hold it in. The young man turned at the sound and stopped in his tracks. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever saw and he had to meet her. He approached her and introduced himself, he was the young man from New Hampshire. They spent a lot of that night sitting under that mighty oak and talking about their pasts, their presents and their hopes for the future.

Not long after the meeting, the man was deployed to Morocco in North Africa. Morocco had been under French control and the locals were ready for a revolution. He was a photographer, after a battle between the rebels and the french, he would either sit on the edge or hang from a cord out of a helicopter and take photos of dead bodies, destroyed buildings. He saw a lot of things a man just don’t want to remember while he was in Africa. When he was being sent home, the airplane he was in lost an engine over the Bermuda triangle, the plane struggled but managed an emergency landing in the Virgin Islands.. after a day there, he was in the air bound for Savannah.

He was pleasantly surprised and happy to see the girl from Alabama waiting when he and his fellow soldiers stepped off the plane. They went to the movies that day. They would talk on the phone and write long love letters to one another almost daily. I have a shoebox full of these and they span a month, It was clear these two were smitten. One weekend, he decided he had to see her. He went AWOL on a Friday night and drove almost 7 hours through a state he had never seen, to a town he had never heard of. The young girl’s mother had heard about him and knew he was her brother in law’s friend, she also knew her daughter was crazy about him. She invited him in for supper and to talk and get to know the family. When bedtime came though, the young man was made to sleep on the porch. Going AWOL on weekends to spend days in her house and nights alone on her porch became a regular thing until finally, he showed up one weekend with a ring. A week later, they were married in a small church that her family had established decades ago, He was called up to serve in the Bay of Pigs but received his honorable discharge just a week before. He flew to New Hampshire and kissed his momma, got his dad’s guitar (the only thing he had left of his father) and wished his brothers and sisters well. He flew back to his new home and his new wife in Alabama. He opened his own photography studio but business was slow, there just wasn’t a demand for professional photography in this town. He took a job with the owner of a gas station/general store at the end of Main Street, he worked 6 days a week,, delivering items, repairing things and installing huge propane tanks. In 1959, he and his wife had their first child, a daughter. A little boy came in 1961. His father in law was an electrician at the huge hospital in Birmingham Alabama, he got the young man a job in the maintenance department.

He learned much working at the huge University Hospital, he learned about electricity, he learned HVAC, he learned plumbing. He watched and soaked in everything. He was a long way away from the burning corpses he photographed in Africa, or was he? September 15 1963 seemed a usual day at work. Even a slow day, He was working in the attic area of the hospital, running ductwork, secluded from people or news. Around noon he got a call to immediately go to the morgue and repair a broken light. When he got there he climbed his ladder and fixed the light. With the room now bright, he realized he had illuminated bad memories and new sorrow, as he climbed down the ladder he looked down upon the charred and burned bodies of four young innocent girls. One was completely decapitated, barely recognizable as a human, another had metal embedded in her head. He could not fathom what he was seeing, he did not know what he felt. He only knew his heart was broken. He found out later these girls were murdered. The church they were attending sunday school at was bombed, an act of racism in the deep south in 1963. He hated it. This man never liked seeing someone innocent hurt or suffer. He also never saw color, he saw people for being decent or not. He was a part of history that day, however small a part it may have been.

After 5 years of working at the huge hospital in the magic city, he was told of a new, smaller hospital being built. It was closer to home and they were paying more to attract employees. He started in maintenance and engineering the day they hospital opened in 1964. Two months later, the director of plant operations resigned, this position was 3rd in command of the whole hospital and responsible for overseeing engineering, maintenance, and security. At only 26 years old,he was shocked when the position was offered to him. He accepted without hesitation. He was a nervous wreck but it fueled him. His wife took a job at the same hospital.

In 1982, his first grandchild was born, His son had a daughter. A grandson followed in 1984. In 1989, his daughter had her only son. To the man, there was something different about this kid, maybe it was his father not being around, maybe it was fate but the man decided he would mold this kid and raise this kid. He was closer to this kid than the other grandchildren. He fell in love with that baby and as he grew that baby became a kid and loved that man too. From then on out, they were absolutely inseparable.. I am that kid. We would ride dirt roads while Alan Jackson or George Strait, George Jones and Merle Haggard blaring on the radio. I was always the flashlight man. Deep in a dark crawlspace holding it while he worked on electrical wires.. just as he did I was watching, I was learning, I was soaking in his knowledge like a sponge. We would ride the country roads on the weekend, stopping at every yardsale and junkyard we’d pass. Oh, how I loved when we’d burn brush or leaves and watch the fire. We’d go fishing and somehow there was always a venomous snake and he always killed it with a wooden handle floating fishing knife. I still have that knife today.

His father in law had passed in 1984 and his mother in law’s health was failing, His wife retired early from the hospital in 2001 to take care of her. Her aunt and the Uncle that had arranged their meeting way back in Savannah were also gravely ill, she moved them in too. He kept working at the hospital,He was the man that made that place run. His mother in law passed in late 2001. In 2003, her uncle passed away. It had come full circle. He had made it possible for them to meet and they had returned the favor by caring for him, her aunt followed him in death shortly after.

By this time, his granddaughter had two daughters and he and his wife had been through a lot caring for 3 bedridden people for 3 years. When he received word that the huge hospital in Birmingham he had left 40 years ago was taking over the hospital, he retired. For the next 19 years, It was yard sales, brush fires, and working on houses. I was grown but I was still a kid, still watching his every move, still his helper, still his flashlight man. In 2017, he suddenly grew weaker. He still worked and pushed himself as hard as he could but something was wrong. He knew it. He just didn’t know what. Through 2018 I became the main repairman, he just couldn’t do it anymore. His leg and back had great pain. He lit the pilot light with me and all but collapsed as we exited the basement. His legs had grown week and just gave out on him. Later that day I had to repair something in the attic, I will never forget him saying “I’m sorry, I’d help you if I could, I’d even just hold your flashlight but I gotta say in my chair right now, you know what you’re doing son.” Neither of us spoke it, but that was a powerful moment.. He had called me son. All of my life, I never saw him as my grandad, though I did call him Papa. I called him dad from that day forward. Later that year, I bought a fuel pump for his truck, I love that truck. I bought new tires and got it running. When he saw it running, he told me “You did a good job getting her going son, take care of YOUR truck.” He knew he had grown old, his memory had began failing, his legs weakening. He had passed his role as the fixer around three houses, and he had passed his truck to me.

Through 2018 most of our time together was spent in his den, him in his recliner, me on the couch, nana in hers. We watched NASCAR, we watched every Alabama football game together, when nana was gone.. me and Papa would watch reruns of Gunsmoke, and Mash. He passed out at a store in late 2018 and was admitted to the hospital, all the test revealed nothing wrong, they attributed the pain to a nerve. On February 4 2019, He really wanted a haircut to the point the barber had to stay late to wait for us. It was a 15 minute drive to the barbershop and he and I talked, we talked about memories, we talked about friends who had died, and family who had died. His memory was sharp as a tack that day. On the way home, I asked him why he was in such a hurry for a haircut.. He reached over and put his hand on my knee, gave me a gentle pat.. his eyes.. the same eyes that had seen dead bodies in Africa, burnt little girls dead in alabama, that had seen 60 years of a wonderful marriage, 2 children, 2 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren, those same eyes looked at me. There was a focus yet a distance in them as he answered “I just felt like I needed to look good for tomorrow.”

The next morning, I woke up around 7 as usual and walked next door to their house, he wasn’t awake yet. He had started sleeping in, or just laying in the bed. It had gotten to where by the time he got up and got dressed, his legs were so weak he had to lay right back down. I got my coffee and visited with my grandmother a while and refilled my cup and went home. A couple hours later I had the strongest urge to go see him, as I got up I noticed my coffee cup was full. “He’s probably not up yet, I’ll wait until all my coffee is gone then I’ll see him.” That was a decision I will always regret.

Maybe 30 minutes later, As I was listening to the The Rolling Stones through my headphones, I heard the sound of my little cousin screaming. She was outside running toward my house just screaming help and crying at the top of her lungs. I ran outside and she yelled it’s papa. The whole world became a blur. I knew nothing. Nothing was familiar. It was so fast yet so slow. All I knew was I was me, and he was him. I loved him. He was my life and I was his. I had to get ti him. I ran faster than I ever dreamed I could, I didn’t even notice doors or steps.. Though I had to have somehow seen them. Everything was blur. I was here, he was there. It felt like an hour but it was really less than a minute. I got to him. There he was, laying on his back in front of his bedroom door. As soon as I saw him, his words about his haircut the day before played in my mind. I knew he was gone. He was my Papa, my dad, my friend, my teacher, my everything. I had to try and bring him back. I immediately started cpr. 911 advised me to do mouth to mouth as well, when I did, I tasted blood. I never stopped cpr. I knew je was gone. In that moment, his kid finally became a man. I felt different, I finally felt just like him. My Mind 2 months later is still in the floor with him. Today, I let that go. He would want me too. He would say sometimes, well we tried everything.. that thing just can’t be fixed. A couple nights ago I had a dream, so vivid. It was an exact replay. I was over his body desperately performing CPR, suddenly, in the dream.. he appeared and pulled me away from his own body. It was clear this was his spirit as he put his arm around me and hugged me and said “It just gave out on me, you tried everything, that old thing just couldn’t be fixed.” He lived an amazing life. The world will not remember nor remark him but today I celebrate him. I celebrate him for going from an 8th grade education to an air force photographer to spending 40 years as director of engineering at a hospital. I celebrate him for being a rock who always helped his family or those in need. I celebrate him for picking me. It’s no secret I was his favorite. He never tried to hide it, not to spite the others. This man loved all of his grandchildren equally.. There was just something different with me. It was like we were twins. We were just inseparable. I write all this to celebrate him and to let him go. My mind must stop trying to bring him back. He lived his life and he is now free from pain and a failing body. He is learning all the mysteries, he is getting all the answers so that he can teach me when I get there. I love you so much Papa, your soul is in heaven, but your spirit is in me. I see you in my eyes, I wear your belt buckle and I use your tools. I drive our truck. Your fingerprints are everywhere. It’s okay that you’re not here in your body. You’ve left a mark on everything. You will always be alive in us. I wish you had lived until I had children, I know you liked the young lady I wish would be mine.I can’t wait until I do have children and I can tell and show them all about their amazing Papa.

Heaven needed a jack of all trades engineer, they got you. Have fun up there, I’ve got it down here, I learned from the best and you taught me well. I will take care of nana, the houses and the rest of the family and hopefully one day I’ll do what you did and move and marry the girl of my dreams. I hope you get to watch my life from up there, and I hope I make you proud.

-JLM

2 notes · View notes

dailydaveeddiggs · 6 years

Photo

Today, thanks to “Hamilton,” Diggs, 35, may be the more established half of the “Blindspotting” duo, but that wasn’t the case when he moved back to Oakland after earning his theater degree from Brown. Though four years younger, Casal had already made a name for himself on the Bay Area spoken-word scene, from which he was plucked to appear on HBO’s “Def Poetry.”

Casal had set up a recording studio with the aim of finding other musicians to collaborate with, reaching out to Diggs on the strength of a demo CD the rapper had recorded in his college dorm room. The friendship took hold almost immediately: That first night, they created a few songs, which led to albums, live performances (with a group they dubbed the Getback) and countless sketches and online videos.

“Rafael was the most famous person I knew,” Diggs recalls. “He had really tapped into the YouTube audience pretty early.”

Casal’s videos caught the attention of Jess Calder (then Jess Wu). The young producer, partnered in Snoot with her husband, Keith Calder, had seen a couple of his spoken-word performances and was struck by both Casal’s charisma and the fact that he appeared to be a natural-born storyteller.

“In my mind, anyone who can tell a great story can definitely translate that to film,” explains the producer, who contacted Casal and proposed they meet for coffee. She asked if he’d ever thought about writing a screenplay.

“I’d thought about theater a lot, [but at that age] you’re trying to get $5 for something at McDonald’s. A movie is millions of dollars away,” says Casal. But he was definitely intrigued, and began fleshing out a character that was loosely autobiographical. Things started to click about a year and a half later, when the Snoot duo asked Casal to perform at a screening of their documentary “Thunder Soul” at a January 2009 presidential inauguration event in Washington, D.C. Casal couldn’t make it but suggested they book Diggs in his place.

“Daveed came and did like 15 minutes of freestyle at the event and kind of blew our minds,” recalls Keith Calder. “We were immediately like, ‘Rafael, the movie’s gotta be about the two of you!’”

And from that moment forward, “Blindspotting” became the story of two friends of different races forced to consider the world from one another’s viewpoints, all set against the rapidly changing Bay Area backdrop.

Casal hails from Berkeley, the city directly north of Diggs’ Oakland. But they both attended Berkeley High School and later split a four-bedroom house with two other friends for $1,200. “I can’t even imagine what that place would cost now,” Casal says.

Gentrification, fueled by the tech boom, has transformed the neighborhoods they once knew. “Seventh Street is just a BART station and a post office now, but in the ’30s and ’40s, that was one of the jazz and blues centers of the world,” Diggs says. The last of the local music venues, Esther’s Orbit Room (where Diggs’ brother had been a bartender), finally shut down in 2010. His mother and father (also born in Oakland) both had to move, priced out by the newcomers.

Though not a musical in the conventional sense, “Blindspotting” was born out of a desire to translate spoken-word poetry into cinema. “There are versions where it was damn near a poem the whole time,” Diggs says.

From 2009 onward, he and Casal worked on the script together, huddling over the same laptop since they had only a single licensed copy of Final Draft between them.

“We were trying to find a recipe for a world where verse could exist without it feeling like there’s a deliberate shift every time it goes into a number,” Casal explains. “The Bay Area is known for slang and for turn of phrase. It’s the evolution of pimp culture, so heightened language is already very prevalent in the way people relate to each other.”

For the next several years, Diggs and Casal spent their time driving up and down Interstate 5 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, parking out front of wherever Snoot headquarters happened to be at the time and sleeping in their car if needed. They wrote draft after draft of “Blindspotting,” pitching the changes to the Calders while using Snoot’s facilities to work on music videos and other projects.

“I’ve always felt like our offices were a place where they should feel safe to create art,” says Jess Calder.

Before Diggs and Casal could complete a shooting version of the script, they were pulled away by other professional opportunities. Casal went off to teach verse-driven theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years. And, for Diggs, “Hamilton” happened.

“The thing about this business is you never know if something’s a break,” says Diggs. “I met Lin-Manuel Miranda because of a clerical error.” Diggs showed up for the same substitute teaching job as one of Miranda’s friends, Anthony Veneziale, who was also a rapper. They hit it off, and Veneziale invited Diggs to freestyle with his group, of which Miranda was a member. Later, when it came time to do an early reading of “Hamilton,” Miranda remembered Diggs and his rapid-fire delivery. “I was invited because I have this particular skill set that allows me to learn a lot of things very quickly,” recalls Diggs, who had just five days to memorize the show’s most demanding part. “I assumed they would replace me because they had plenty of Broadway performers to choose from.”

Except that Miranda didn’t replace Diggs, who spent nearly a year and a half with the production. “Before leaving ‘Hamilton,’ I made this comment to one of my agents,” Diggs recalls. “I was ready to go, but scared that I wouldn’t make any money again, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ and promptly booked my life with all these things.”

The day after his last “Hamilton” performance in mid-2016, Diggs found himself shooting the movie “Wonder,” starring Julia Roberts. The following week, he began working on ABC’s “Black-ish.” That was swiftly followed by a recurring role on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which had to be juggled amid a long-planned national tour with his experimental rap group, Clipping.

Into the midst of this whirlwind came the moment for which Diggs and Casal had long been waiting. Last March, the Snoot producers told them they had the greenlight to make “Blindspotting,” provided the duo could get their script in shape to shoot in June.

“What if I move to L.A. in two days and I write it for a month?” Casal recalls asking — and that’s exactly what he did, undertaking a page-one overhaul while Diggs’ fledgling screen career kept him busy.

“I was on airplanes every other day,” says Diggs, “so really the only through line were these midnight phone calls from Rafael to talk about this thing we’d been talking about for a decade.”

Excited about the prospect of finally making the movie, Diggs kept a rare 25-day window open in June for the shoot. Casal managed to get the rewrite done in four weeks. Reaching out to another old friend, they brought in director López Estrada, who immediately began pre-production.

The project’s Oakland focus attracted some production talent whom the producers normally couldn’t afford, including DP Robby Baumgartner, who had worked in the lighting department for Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and who brought the lighting crew from “Moonlight” aboard.

“We suddenly had this amazing team of people from the Bay Area,” says Diggs. “Doing something with your friends at a high level, that’s a dream.”

After production wrapped, Snoot submitted a rough cut to Sundance, which recommended the music-driven film for a Dolby Family Sound Fellowship. “Blindspotting” is one of two 2018 Sundance selections to have earned the generous post-production grant, making it possible for the filmmakers to upgrade their mix in time for its festival debut. (Past recipients of the grant include “Mudbound” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”)

Thanks to the grant, Diggs, Casal and other members of the production team — including López Estrada and the Calders — spent late December camped out on the Paramount Pictures lot on the same Technicolor stage where Michael Bay mixes his “Transformers” films.

On the same day of Variety’s visit, Diggs and Casal wrote a short piece of original music to replace a few seconds of temp score. Since they came up with the cue themselves, that means they can later expand it into a full-blown song for the soundtrack.

It’s the kind of on-the-fly challenge that has fueled the duo’s creative partnership for more than a decade — though “Blindspotting” is the first time they’ve been able to combine their writing, performance and musical talents to such a degree.

“As an artist, the only thing you ever want to do is something that requires every part of yourself,” Diggs says. “And it is so rare when that happens.” (x)

LOVE the insight as to how this all came together.

#daveed diggs #rafael casal #blindspotting #sundance #sundance film festival #2018 sundance film festival #variety #jess calder

97 notes · View notes

nobelmemories · 6 years

Photo

Part VI

More Nobel Memories – Along The Nobel Road

I have inserted two photographs. The first being the Hammel homestead as it is today, the second is of the homesteaders William James “Billy” Hammel and his wife Jessman “ Emily” Hailstone and their three daughters. Elizabeth, Berta, Mable. The two boys Charlie and Gordon were not in the Photograph.

My starting point for this session is the laneway that runs from present day Nobel Rd to Hammel Avenue. I think we use to call it Cecs Lane. As most of the old timers know the confectionary store located there was owned by Cec Mayotte. Pretty well everything in that part of Nobel was supplied by Cec’s Confectionary. Cec was a shrewd business man business man and had his hand in many ventures. He was also an excellent dry wall and plasterer. His companion was Dot Edwards who usually could be found behind the counter in the Confectionary store. Dot had two boys that I remember Jimmy was the oldest and Reg a year or two younger. Reg was a likeable sort and was involved in hockey and other sports. I never chummed with Reg, but we often would be in the same crowds and spoke often. The last time I seen Reg was about 1952 or 53. In 1979 I was on the OPP stationed at Wawa Ontario. I was acting Detachment Commander at the time. One weekend we received a call that an airplane had crashed on Midgin Lake about 25 miles south east of Wawa. This was a fly in lake about ten miles off the Highway. I sent a Constable down to investigate with instructions to call me and fill me in when he returned. About six hours later I received the call from the Constable, he filled me in on his investigation and the notifications he had made. Then he informed me that the pilot knew me and wanted to talk to me. The Pilot came on the phone and it was Reg Edwards. It turned out that he had screwed up and did several things wrong which led to the crash but the good thing was he and his three passengers were not hurt. Before he hung up he said to me Garry I have always remembered something you told me about girls. He never did tell me just what I had told him, but I have always wondered what great piece of advice it was. I have been married for almost 59 years and my wife Rhoda will tell you that I still don’t understand women. Can you just imagine, it was something I said to him when I was 15 or 16 years old and he remembered it for another 27 years?

Now Jimmy Edwards was tarred with a different brush. He taught me a lesson which I have never forgotten. Jimmy had a reputation for being a bit of a bully and a dirty fighter. One night at the High School I picked a fight with him. I thought I was going to teach him a lesson. Jimmy was a pretty good boxer but I thought I could handle that part. Anyway we sparred around a little bit and I was planning on giving him an Elephant Fling. It is a wrestling move where you grab the opponent’s right wrist with your left hand, put your right hand under his left armpit, pull, lift and twist.

If done properly, he goes up in the air does a summersault and lands on his back. It usually ends the fight. I was dancing around with my right fist cocked and my left hand open. Jimmy threw a right heading for my nose and I blocked it with my open left hand. His fist struck my hand where the joint is that joins your thumb to your hand. I did not realize what had happened, but my thumb joint was suddenly in the palm of my hand. I made a fist and struck him with my left hand and suddenly was on my knees with the pain. Jimmy stopped fighting, took one look and said you better get to a doctor. Now if he had been a dirty fighter, he certainly had me at a disadvantage. So the lesson learned was never ever pick a fight. When you lose it is double embarrassing. Don’t say someone is a dirty fighter unless you can prove it. By the way it took three doctors to put the thumb back into place.

Moving on west on Hammel Ave from Cec’s Lane was the Galipeau’s. Alex and Nora were the parents, and I remember Roger and Milly as being two of the children. Roger was a little younger than I, but was always happy and friendly. Roger became a very good hockey player and was quite successful as a teacher and a lawyer. I did not know this but stumbled onto the fact that he was inducted into the Bobby Orr Hall of fame in 2010. Anyone querying his name will see just how successful he was. Sadly he passed to Cancer in 1997. He certainly came from humble beginnings at Nobel and reading his story will make any local person proud.

I know there were more houses as we travelled on west on Hammel Ave., but I don’t remember who they were. I do remember a certain maple tree as you start down the hill on the north side of the road. It came up out of the ground and hooked to the right like a chair back. As a young boy I went to the Nobel United Church Sunday School and I seldom walked by that I did not stop and admire that tree. That was close to 72 years ago and the tree is still there, just grown closer to the ground. Speaking of Sunday School, how many of you older people still have your pins for perfect attendance. I have both the silver and gold ones.

The next place I remember from the 1940’s is the Hammel Place. It is presently located at 125 Hammel Ave. and is occupied by my friends Bob & Isabel Hammel. In the 1940’s it was occupied by Ed & Maggie Hammel. Ed was a Master Mechanic at DIL during the war. He was well respected for his work both at DIL and his shop which was located just west of his house at the edge of the road.

I remember when I was eight or nine years old. My Dad had a 1928 Chevrolet. It had a crack about 10” long in the front fender. The metal in those fenders was quite thick. Dad took me with him and we drove up to Ed’s to get it welded. Ed took the wheel off and welded the fender from the underside. It’s not everyone who can do overhead welding. Ed’s weld was a thing of beauty, every bead was like a wishbone, all neat and in a perfect row. They put the wheel back on and Dad was on his knee’s looking at the weld. He could not resist reaching up and touching it. He quickly pulled back his hand and stood up and I noticed he put his hand in his pocket. He thanked Ed and paid him for the job and we left. As we were driving down the road, Dad lifted up his hand and looked at his fingers. The skin was burnt off the tips of three of them. I said that must hurt, Dad said: when you do something stupid you don’t advertise it! I often thought of that in later years when I likewise did something stupid. Ed’s shop was something very special even compared with shops of today. He had just about ever tool you could imagine. There was grinders, saws, drill presses, lathes and more. The fascinating thing was that they were all driven by an old gasoline hit and miss motor. A series of belts and pulleys were distributed around the shop so they could all be engaged as they were needed using the same drive source.

In later years I worked at Stanrock Mine during the uranium boom at ELLIOT Lake and also spent a few years working as a Lead Burner at the Sulphuric acid plant at Cutler. It did not seem to matter where I went in the north I would run across someone who had worked with or knew of Ed Hammel.

I remember my Uncle Harry telling me that when he worked with him, Ed developed a way to successfully weld cast iron. He built a small furnace that he could preheat the cast iron, then lift up the top, lean in and weld it while it was still hot. This prevented it from cracking as it cooled.

◦ It was sad, years later that I learned that old age did not treat him well. He developed memory problems. He had walked the land behind his farm most of his life. He first got turned around on the rocks behind his farm and was found I believe on Hwy 124 near Waubamic. Sometime later he walked in the same area, but never was found. Many people have searched the area hoping to find his remains. At one time the Canadian Army had a search for him. To date all searches have been unsuccessful.

Ed & Maggie had two daughters, Isabel & Beryl. I think in the 40’s Beryl lived in the house that was located between their shop and their house. The thing I remember is that there was a very tasty crabapple tree beside Beryl’s house that the kids from the school would visit quite often. This resulted in an announcement being made at school that the Apple tree was on private property and we were not to pick the apples. I think it helped, Some!

I recently visited Bob and Isabel Hammel nee Gougeon and learned some very interesting information. I am not sure whether Hammel Ave., is named after Ed or just the family, either way it is well deserved. To begin with six generations of Hammel.s have lived on that property. The first generation began with the marriage of Willam James “Billy” Hammel and Emily Hailstone. I am assuming that this took place in the early 1880’s. I am told there were three girls and two boy as a result of this union. I only learned of the name of one of the girls, who was named Mable. The boys were Charlie and ED. These were second generation. Charlie and Ena nee Fenton had two boys, Gordon and Jim. Ed and Maggie had two girls, Isabel and Beryl. These were third generation. Gordon and Agnes nee Thompson had a boy, Bob and a girl Wilma, these were fourth generation. Bob and Isabel nee Gougeon had a boy Chuck, fifth generation and finally Chuck had a boy Cameron who would be the sixth generation. The Hammel’s have continued to contribute to the growth of the Municipality for these many years. Gerry Hammel one of Billy Hammel’s grandsons was killed in one of the tow explosions that took place at Nobel. He lost his life in 1940.

The next home that I remember from the forties is the old United Church Manse. The first name that comes to mind was Tristrams. The father was the church minister and I remember two boys one was Tom I believe and the older brother was John. John worked for a number of years in the carpenter trade. I remember the old Shebeshekong Church that my mother and dad were married in was located on the right hand side of Hwy 559 just before the hill that Hare’s road is on. The church was built in 1911. I believe it was during the Easter holiday of 1949 John Tristram and Slim Colberg had taken a contract to tear down the church. They hired me to remove the nails to salvage the boards. I was paid 59 cents and hour. I also was given the old organ which I tore for the wood.

The last building I remember on what was then called the side road and now Hammel Ave, was the United Church where I went to Sunday school. It did not have the added room on then. The Nobel Consolidated School was there with the old annex beside that I attended grade four in. Then on past the present circle that now ends Hammel Ave was the old brown school. It was situated just about where Avro Arrow road now exists. My mother attended that school in grade eight and said she was taught by Ruby Cook. My brother also attended there and I believe his teacher was a Mr Mendelson. In the 1940’s the side road continued out past the school to Hwy 69 then also called the Nobel Rd.

If you wish to view my previous submissions under this title, please go to the following URL: https://nobelmemories.tumblr.com

Garry Crawford

0 notes