#if you want a Black character who just politely gets along with his white midwestern friends in the 1980s then you and i are different | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

peccolias · 4 years

Note

Do you have any podcasts youd recommend? I've been listening to TMA and am caught up, otherwise the only other ones i listen to are mcelroy podcasts. Do you happen to have any podcasts you like and would just rec. In general?

(Updated 8/25/20)

HECK YEAH I do! For you and anyone else who’s looking for something new, keeping in mind I lean towards the horror genre, but here’s a mixed bag:

Podcasts I have finished/caught up on/can fully rec:

Welcome to Night Vale (first podcast I ever listened to, and the only one I listened to for a long time. Mixed radio show/narrative fiction style with a real cozy comforting sort of spooky atmosphere and there are so many E M O T I O N S. Probably THE most well-known, if you haven’t listened yet, definitely give it a try)

The Magnus Archives (you already said this one, but it’s very good horror and everyone should give it a chance. It’s pretty much the flipside of WTNV, with plenty of mystery, intrigue and creeping dread. Don’t let the first 20 or so eps fool you; it isn’t an anthology and the plot spirals deeper and deeper and it gets pretty depressing sometimes actually)

Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery (You want an explicitly mixed black female wlw lead who gets a Latina gf?? Explicit they/them NB rep?? Spooky queerness?? A haunted small town boarding house with ghosts and weird doors?? And a celery festival?? This one's for you. Oh there's also a cult. So far it's a great balance of uneasy creepiness and good slice of life with a full cast of colorful characters, and the town's name slaps. Mt. Absalom?? Hello?? Has serious moments that will hurt you, too)

Limetown (COMPLETE. short thriller/mystery type, interesting story about an entire small community that goes missing, has a TV series now I think?)

Wolf 359 (COMPLETE. AMAZING radio drama one of my good friends who always recs good things rec’d to me and now I rec to YOU. you won’t regret listening if you like great stories and upbeat sci fi comedies that go horribly, horribly wrong. IN SPACE.)

I Am In Eskew (COMPLETE. Really good casual yet seriously fucked up foray into Lovecraftian psychological horror centering around a living city called Eskew and its horrible and equally despondent occupants and occurrences. Follows two voiced characters whose paths eventually converge. It's sort of depressing and hurt my heart sometimes for the sheer hopelessness, but it's worth the journey.)

Podcasts I like but have not caught up on:

Old Gods of Appalachia (old country american horror anthology)

King Falls AM (cozy little small town late night radio show with a colorful cast of characters and plenty of spooks)

Wrong Station (vintage radio show style horror anthology based on old TV and radio shows of the same flavor. but modern.)

The Lost Cat Podcast (Lighthearted horror (yeah it exists) and existentialism revolving around the narrator and his lost cat and many glasses of wine. There are many cats. I mean a lot. If you don't want depressing scary horror but still want to step into a world of kooky spooky Eldritch supernatural stuff and relevant musical interludes per episode, this is the way to go. I'm not very far along but it's a fun time.)

The Bridge (interesting setting and story premise. It’s a whole system of bridges across the Atlantic. come on. oh, but make sure you find the right one. it isn’t the talk show about politics and news)

Rusty Quill Gaming (had a hankering for familiar voices during the TMA hiatus and since this has some TMA voice actors in it I gave it a try. First rpg podcast I’ve listened to, but I fell in love with their campaign and characters)

Podcasts I have NOT listened to but they look good/I’ve heard things/they’re by the same creators of series I enjoy:

Dreamboy (Night Vale Presents)

Alice Isn’t Dead (Night Vale Presents)

Within the Wires (Night Vale Presents)

Stellar Firma (Rusty Quill)

Zero Hours (Wolf 359 creator/cast)

ars Paradoxica (friend who rec’d Wolf 359 to me mentioned this one so I trust it)

Death By Dying

The White Vault

The Bright Sessions

The Black Tapes

Blackwood

Archive 81

Sayer

Wooden Overcoats

The Penumbra Podcast (I hear EXCELLENT things about this one)

The Adventure Zone and other McElroy podcasts (more of a note to self. I really need to start listening to them boys)

–

That’s about it, that’s my current lineup for listening and as many as I know. Y’all feel free to reblog with more recs or more info on the ones I haven’t listened to.

Hope you find something you enjoy, anon!

#p says stuff #p listens to podcasts #podcast recommendations #podcasts #Anonymous

34 notes · View notes

flimflamfandom · 5 years

Text

A Night Out

Haven’t posted a one shot in a while! This one is a pre-Atlas’ murder one taking place in the summer of ‘26, with two unlikely partners in crime...Mordecai and Ivy. Enjoy!

words:1354 Summary: Mordecai is staking someone out, but needs a fashionable young date to complete his character for the evening. Warnings: No serious ones come to mind.

“Does this look good enough?” Ivy was wearing a deep red dress, with black stockings, matching heels, and a stole she’d borrowed from Mitzi. Mitzi had been..informed, that her god daughter was accompanying Mordecai on this stakeout, but she’d been drunk at the time, and whether or not she really listened was...up to debate.

“You look fine.” Mordecai said, putting on his glasses, wearing a smartly fitted tuxedo with tails. He walked closer to her. “What’s your name?”

“Moira Friedman.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Stay at home, married to you.”

“And my name is?”

“Walter Friedman, we met at cape cod and I was stricken with you. Our age difference meant we had to elope.”

“And what does your husband do?”

“Financier and bank executive.” Mordecai couldn’t help but smile. For someone who’d been described to him as a dumb dora, she’d memorized all of her alias information very well. Why’d she need all of this, though? Simple.

They were going to a party.

They were going, essentially, to stake out a man named Bart Naismith, who just so happened to let some confidential Daisy papers ‘slip’ into the hands of the Marigold. Mordecai was going to stalk him, offer to take him to his home, and make him disappear. Bart was rich, but operated under all sorts of names, and when people went missing from the criminal underground of the city, they were typically forgotten in a matter of weeks. Just another casualty. At least, that’s how it had been for Mordecai.

Mordecai got into the car and looked at Ivy. “No funny business. The romance is purely in character.”

“Of course! I know about you and the big guy.”

“Hmm.” He drove. “Tell me, Moira...what were you doing in cape cod?”

“Family sailing trip.”

“So your family sails? Your midwestern family?” There was slight hesitation.

“Well, my father’s from Minneapolis, and there’s plenty of sailing on the lakes. He wanted to give the open ocean a try.” She said. Mordecai smiled again. “You’re not half bad.”

“Thank you, Mr. Friedman!” She responded, proudly and cheerfully. They got to the mansion, and walked to the front door. “Name, please?” A butler playing doorman asked them. Mordecai spoke, with Ivy hanging off his arm. “Mr. and Mrs. Walter Friedman.” For a few tense seconds, the butler looked through his list. “...here you are. Enjoy your evening.” He opened the door for them.

This wasn’t Ivy’s first taste of high society, but it was definitely her first taste of this type of high society; a string band played waltzes and ballads from tin pan alley, and drinks and hors devours being passed around by men in gleaming white suit coats. Men with pencil thin mustaches and women with cigarette filters as long as skyscrapers were tall talked in small circles, letting off loud laughs that blurred the line between genuine and artificial. She tried to fit in. “Excuse me, ma’am,” A woman spoke to her, “But I just adore that stolel of yours...is that mink?”

“Oh? Oh! Yes, it was a gift though, couldn’t tell you where on earth I got it from…” She’d lost Mordecai. Well, ‘lost’ might not be the right word. She still saw him, but was separated...she walked over and tuned into the conversation.

“...which of course meant we were barely able to even get champagne!” The men, including Mordecai, all laughed. Mordecai was completely different...even his accent had changed. “Oh, where are my manners, boys? I’d like to show off, er...introduce my wife to you. This is Moira.” Ivy waved politely. “Evening, gentlemen!”

“Evening.” The group responded, almost unanimously. “Moira, this is Barty Naismith.” The target. Naismith shook Ivy’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Moira.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Naismith! I was hoping to see you here, my husband’s talked so much about you!” Naismith smiled. “I see Walter’s very interested in some of my portfolios.” He said. Mordecai nodded. “Indeed.” Naismith looked to Ivy.

“So, when did you two meet? You’re an adorable couple.”

“Oh, a few summers ago on Cape Cod...my family was there for a sailing trip, and I met him the day we came back getting his boat out.” She said. She leaned into him. “I remember begging to stay a few more days so I could go along with him!” Mordecai kissed the top of her head. “Oh, you…” Naismith looked charmed.

“Such an age difference as well.”

“Yes, well, we had to elope.” Mordecai said. “Elope!” Naismith seemed surprised. “I tried to elope with my last girlfriend, but her parents caught on…”

“Oh, you poor thing!” Ivy said, putting her hand on his arm. “It must’ve been awful...y’know, my parents tried very hard to move us apart.”

“Did they now?” Ivy nodded.

“What is it your parents did?”

“Real estate.” She said. Mordecai nodded. “I thought about buying a large stake in the company, but I didn’t want to pour salt on the wound.”

“Maybe that’s why my last girl’s parents got so mad.”

“You...bought a large portion of their company?” Mordecai asked. “I may have, yes. So, those portfolios…”

“We could look at them at our place?”

“Now?” Naismith asked. Mordecai smiled warmly. “Why, of course! The night is young, I’m sure the answer will be yes...I have much better alcohol than these folks do.” He whispered and winked. “Well, if you say it like that…” Naismith nodded. “I’ll drive home with you.” Ivy clasped her hands. “Splendid! Oh, you’ll have such a great time at our house, Mr. Naismith!”

They all walked out to the car, and Mordecai kissed Ivy as he opened the door for Naismith. He drew her in, and whispered in her ear, “We’ll have a car issue half way back and I’ll take care of it.” Ivy nodded...she dreaded this part.

They started to drive. It was mostly talk about stocks, money, sailing, things like that...then Mordecai shifted wrong. “Oh...hmm.” He tried again, making the same mistake. “Hang on...let me pull over, seems like a belt might be loose.”

“You sure? It could just be faulty shifting.”

“I’m certain, this car’s had the same problem since we got it!” Ivy said. As Mordecai pulled over and got out, Ivy knew what was coming next. She sunk into the seat, her stomach churning. “Everything alright?” Asked Naismith.

“Yes, just...I don’t like stopping by the side of the road too much.”

“Oh, that’s understandable. I always get afraid that someone’ll come out of the woods and-” She heard the door open. “Hey, wh-”

BANG!

She heard a slump. She huffed. “...is he dead?”

“Very much so.” Mordecai’s voice and accent came back. So did his demeanor as he got back in. “I hate to ruin my upholstery this way.”

“...he’s dead.”

“You knew he would b-”

“He’s DEAD.” She was shaking a little. “...gone.” Mordecai sighed. “Ivy…” He patted her shoulder without looking over, watching the road and following the limit to a tee. “You’re blameless. We did what we had to do.”

“I can still feel bad about it!”

“You have every right to.” He said. “I’m sorry.” Ivy shook her head. “I just...should’ve been more prepared I guess.”

“No one is prepared their first time.” Ivy looked down. “You won’t be disappointed that this might be my last time on one of your runs too?”

“Of course not.” He said. She looked over, and he was smiling. “You were fantastic.”

The next day, Ivy sat in the shower for an hour and a half. She was lucky it was dorm water, or it would’ve run cold. She walked slowly into the Daisy. Mitzi smiled. “Morning, sweetie...feeling okay?”

“Oh? Sure.” She said. Mitzi walked over. “Mordecai left this for you.” She handed over a box.

Ivy smiled a bit as she saw, of all things, a mink stole and a note-

‘Sorry I couldn’t have been quieter. I appreciate everything you did, it wouldn’t have gone well without you. This is the very least I could do. -Mordecai’

#Lackadaisy #mordecai heller #ivy pepper

13 notes · View notes

worstshowever · 7 years

Text

Alante & Nevaeh

“Alante & Nevaeh”

Season 6 Episode 2

Original Airdate: March 8, 2017

More Appropriately Titled: Kissin’ Cousins

This season has been full of mooks so far. Here are two more.

Alante emails “A small town guy with a big time love.” Nev immediately finds a way to make this all about him. He shares his dream car is a Cadillac Alante. Wow, big surprise. I learned something about Nev I neither asked for nor wanted to know. Alante is from Saginaw, Michigan. The crowd goes wild because 90% of America’s catfish are in Michigan. For eight (!) years, Alante has been in purgatorial relationship with Nevaeh. Ross and Rachel suggest she could be the female Nev. Please, for the love of God, I do not have the mental strength to handle two Nevs.

Alante has gone to meet her multiple times. However, something always popped up that prevented them from meeting, which is completely shocking and unheard of. He says she disappears for weeks at a time. I also do that, but that’s because I’m rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.

They get Alante on the horn. He met Nevaeh online when he was a senior in high school. They spoke for years, but it only got serious when they swapped heart and kissy face emojis.

*Looks into the camera like Jim Halpert*

I look into the camera like Jim Halpert for the following reasons:

1) Millennials are stupid. 2017 is stupid. The future is stupid.

2) The art of communication is dead. Aristotle would be horrified.

3) My mom literally just told me she needs attention.

Alante and Nevaeh have Skyped, but she’s always been in a pitch-black room. Nev musters up the strength to talk about someone other than himself. He asks Alante if he sees how suspicious all these moving pieces are. Alante says, “I try not to think of it like that.” I don’t think he’s thought much about the mechanics of this relationship.

Nev starts rambling some garbage about how this will be the one! She will be who she says she is! It’s mad trash. This is why you should sign my WhiteHouse.gov petition to have me replace Nev. Max completely ignores Nev’s barf-worthy sentiment because he, like myself, has common sense.

They're off to see the wizard.

They arrive in Saginaw. Surprisingly, Nev rings the doorbell instead of letting himself in uninvited. After chatting for a few minutes, Max does something very Nev-like and asks if Nevaeh’s tiny girl brain is capable of keeping up with Alante’s highly intellectual wit. Trust me, he’s no rocket scientist.

Alante tells Phoebe and Joey that he and Nevaeh spoke all day long until Jimmy Hoffa here suddenly disappeared for months at a time. She would reappear and pick up the conversation as if nothing had happened. Way to keep the upper hand, girl.

Alante has seen eight photos of Nevaeh in the last eight years. The stress of not knowing her is causing him hair loss. He was recently hospitalized due to the stress she brings him. I dead-ass don't even have a joke for this. Some people deserve to get catfished. We’ve seen plenty of bozos over the years deserve it. Nev definitely deserved it. Now this guy (eight years!).

Nev drives recklessly through a parking lot and then they arrive at their off-brand Starbucks. Alante sends Monica and Chandler all the dirty deets and we learn Nevaeh has two phone numbers.

*Looks into the camera like Jim Halpert*

I look into the camera like Jim Halpert for the following reasons:

1) He should know better. Midwesterners are smarter than folks from the rest of the country. Think about the mental fortitude it takes to endure a -30 degree winter. It takes some brains to do that and not die. As a midwesterner from the greatest state in the union (Illinnoying), I am ashamed.

2) I have nothing for this point. I did, but it’s in an argument with someone about how it’s pop, not soda. Politely, of course.

The google image search yields results. Nevaeh is really Audrey. She has 13,000 Instagram followers. As they look through her Facebook, a producer tells them how to insert their usernames into the URL to look at their friendship and see what they've posted to each other. They marvel as if this is a great hack. However, Facebook has a button called, “See Friendship.” This is a prime example of why no one, especially the kale eating, trendy exercise-doing west coast, can measure up to the great midwest. If you want kale in the midwest, you gotta farm it. But I digress.

Alante and Nevaeh have 46 mutual friends, which is a lot for a fake profile. All their mutuals are in Saginaw. They send out the Catfish miranda rights to all 46 friends.

They google the phone number, excuse me, ONE of the phone numbers and learn it belongs to a Latoya in Saginaw. They do their super cool cutting edge new hack and find she and Alante have 23 mutual friends. I don't think this means anything at all and has contributed nothing to this search but what do I know. I only went to one of Newsweek’s top high schools and one of Forbes’ top 50 colleges. Both in the midwest.

One of their 46 new best friends messages them back, so they decide to come on too strong and give him a call. Royon tells Rachel and Monica he was recently flirting with Nevaeh on Facebook.

Max then says something so white, it’s wearing a polo shirt on a golf course; “She’s hollering at guys in Saginaw.”

The next morning, Nev tells Max he continued on with Nev’s Catfish, written, directed, produced, and hosted by Nev and nobody else. He spoke to two more fellas from Saginaw. They both said Nevaeh flirted with them on Facebook. I do not know if the intended purpose of sharing this information was to show the wide net cast by this catfish or to needlessly slut-shame her, but either way, they achieved their goal.

They head over to Alante’s house. He’s hosting a barbecue. The guests of honor lucky enough to meet handsome, rational Max are Alante’s brother, Joe, and his godsister, Ericka. Ericka’s chest and shoulders are all tatted up and I think women who tattoo their chest are mad brave. She says she hopes Alante gets the closure he needs because eight years is quite a long time to string someone along. She is also positive Nevaeh is a girl. I love this juicy lil diddy, so keep it in mind as we continue on this adventure.

Joe and I have almost the same pair of glasses, so I’m going to trust whatever he says. As he puts nearly a whole hot dog in his mouth, he tells Nev he hopes Nevaeh can cook. Maybe I won’t trust what he says because that’s really not our top concern right now.

Ross and Chandler sit down to show Alante the deer they shot on their hunting trip. As they open Audrey’s (the real girl’s) blog, the recoil hits Alante right in the eye. Nev shows Alante his and Nevaeh’s mutual friends. He asks if he recognizes anyone. Wow, c’est incroyable, Alante recognizes his Facebook friends. Nev then takes a tone as if Alante was the one who asked such a stupid question. To kick him while he’s down, Nev tells Alante Nevaeh is flirting with other fellas on Facebook.

They show him Latoya’s Facebook. He does not recognize her. MTV plays an angsty song about pain and love lost.

Nev shoots the ole gal a very demanding text. Right as Alante falls apart emotionally, Joey and Monica decide to leave. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Cool glasses, huh? However, mine are gold all the way around.

In the car, Nev gets a call from Seiairah, Nevaeh’s friend. She asks to meet them. The goons are concerned this is a trap. A trap for what. You’re two grown men with an MTV camera crew. What’s gonna happen to you.

They meet Seiairah at what I can only assume is an abandoned gas station where teenagers smoke beer at night. Seiairah is good friends with both Nevaeh and Alante. She says there’s more to Nevaeh than they know and she wants her to come clean. She offers to call Nevaeh since Ross and Phoebe have been unable to get in touch with her. Sieairah does the job MTV is paying them a million dollars to do. Nevaeh will meet them at a park in an hour.

They meet up with Alante and, shockingly, Nev breaks character and doesn’t storm into his house uninvited. Alante confirms he knows Sieairah and she has a big crush on him. Sieairah looked like she was 16, so naturally, Nev says something gross and disgusting. “A little young. She’s cute. Not sure what your hangup is on that.”

*Looks into the camera like Jim Halpert*

I look into the camera like Jim Halpert for the following reasons:

1) I am disgusted.

2) I am appalled.

3) I am legend.

Max does not touch this with a ten foot pole because he’s not a human dumpster fire.

The squad arrives at the park. Nev’s gross comment is followed by something equally cringeworthy. Nevaeh is Ericka, Alante’s godsister. I don’t totally know what a godsister is, I barely know what god is, but if you were raised together and/or have “sister” in your title, should you really be in a romantic relationship.

Ericka says this was a lesson Alante needed to learn. Eight years ago, Serairah had a crush on Alante. To prove he was a dirty dog, Ericka made the Facebook page to show her he talks to other girls. She says she continued the page for so long at Sieairah’s direction and chose her side over Alante’s as some sort of womanly solidarity. Nev calls her on her bullshit.

Nev takes Alante on a man walk to discuss man topics as men. Alante maintains he never had any feelings for Sieairah and never led her to believe he did. Handsome, thoughtful Max stays with Ericka. She tells him she never came clean because she wanted to let him down gently. What’s more gentle than a national television audience and the court of public opinion!

The next morning, Nev performs a classic Nev action and barges into the house without knocking as if he is claiming it under Taliban law. He calls Ericka to come over and “talk calmly.” Nev finds all women to be hysterical and incapable of controlling their emotions.

Ericka has arrived and she knocked like a normal person who wasn’t raised in a barn on the Upper West Side. She says, “If you hurt me, I’m going to get you.” Yes! We’re finally getting somewhere. I wanna know the petty reason someone stuck with catfishing for eight years.

Back when Bush was still president, Ericka began dating one of Alante’s friends. We learn he was a dog and Alante knew but didn't warn her. They dated on and off for seven years. At that point, it’s Ericka’s fault. Come on. This guy wasn't into Ericka and Alante knew but didn't tell her.

Ericka gets honest and says she loved the attention she got from being Nevaeh. The two establish their friendship is over and Ericka leaves in tears.

Three months later, Ericka and Alante are on the Skype together. His dad passed away and mourning brought the two back together. Ericka is expecting. Nev practices his best gotcha journalism when he asks who’s the father. He looks like a local Toledo reporter who once had New York City dreams. Nev was sure he was going to end the episode with an M. Night Shyamalan twist. Nice try, Nev.

Recommendation: 3/5 Would Recommend. I'm a fan of any episode in which we meet a middle (wo)man before we meet the catfish. Plus, this one had a good creep factor because of the godsibling aspect. However, their relationship was not high-drama enough to justify eight years. That's fucking insane.

Final Thoughts: I apologize for the quantity of rants and advertisements promoting the midwest. However, I do NOT apologize for what I said. Midwest is best. Follow me on Twitter @MaeveMcDonough I was just told by my boss to clean it up, so you know it’s good.

#catfish #catfish the tv show #catfish recap #catfish season 6 #alante and nevaeh #nev and max #max joseph #nev schulman #mtv #comedy #comedy writing #tv recap #reality tv #humor

10 notes · View notes

archermaygar083-blog · 6 years

Text

Poor Chic Bathroom. Suggestions

When you're worn out as well as fed up of your house, and also you are actually beginning to presume that it's ordinary, you may begin scanning lots of fashion, interior decorating as well as housekeeping journals to discover the very best looking remedy for your property. One in ten South Africans is HIV good but AIDS-related fatalities are actually dropping as ramped-up treatment begins to have an effect, the nation's authorities statistics organization said Tuesday. @Mira - French perfumes are actually attractive and also a number of those that you want to really love possessing them about, most of them tell me of the gorgeous aromatic countryside. Simple Facts on South America - The two South American countries 'Chili as well as Argentina' possess much to provide in the technique of culture, great red wine and also dining, as well as a satisfying holiday. It commemorates the homecoming of Shiva and also Parvati, and also is actually an opportunity when the metropolitan area bursts with life, observing a lot vocal singing as well as dance to people songs. Select blossoms such as red tulips and white daisies for an adorable nation style. His preliminary blunder of opinion, the minute of leave "colored" by his evaluation of white colored American and also British procedure of afro-americans, comes to be shateringly noticeable to him. South Korea is perhaps some of the most convenient nations to reside and also educate in. As a result of the large American army presence in the nation safeguarding the border, there is a demand for know-how in the English language. VHA's results reveals that Americans precisely might possess higher-quality medical at lower price. Population in the 100s-- Additional well-known ski areas & retreats can easily in some cases be actually bursting at the seams, but Reddish Stream has actually constantly been actually little & takes pleasure in sustaining a quite old-school sense to the town. Spain took on a brand-new body in 2000 which comprises 4 amounts the 3 letters, black figures on white histories rear as well as main, although the last 3 characters can offer an indication of where as well as when the automobile was actually initial registered it is actually not as clear as the outdated device where the initial two characters of the enrollment number suggested the capital area of the location interested e.g M for Madrid and MA for Malaga.

This Water Time, observe exactly how your contribution - whether it's $5 or even $400 - can easily aid youths worldwide. Therefore new" (call it contemporary) nation ended up being the phenomenon of the 80s and a phenomenon that would continue to persist right into our own opportunities when also hip jump has influences on today's cross-over nation. Nevertheless, by the 1980s, household ties had virtually been dropped through people leaving their hometowns to work or build careers in additional advantageous spots; our agriculture had basically been actually managed by big companies, our production had actually primarily moved to Asia, China and also India as well as our authorities was actually regulating much more of our personal life-- basically, we yearned for back right into the myths, a returning to the basic and also naïve olden times therefore the fad for urban cowboy-ism blew up throughout the property, a putting on of our cherished the other days-- legendary or not-- became our personality in our style, in our perspectives as well as in our popular music. " What if he determines to flip-flop on terror Keep Reading and also have American soldiers fighting alongside Osama container Laden in a bloody jihad versus the west just because it is actually preferred in the surveys?" Georgia is one of several voters who states she may wait up till the last few days, or preferably the last few few seconds, of the political election to choose.The genre of rural noir is broadening rapidly, and also it possesses space to do it. Each David Delight and Jamie Kornegay have actually revealed brand-new alleys along with their books Where All Light Often Tends To Go as well as Ground Jamie Kornegay joins our company Monday, Might 4, for Noir at the Bar at Opal Divine's Frank Wheeler, Jr.'s launching, Prosperity, embeded in country Nebraska, ideally welcome a long profession writing terrific non-urban noir embed in Midwestern marshes.By following these tips, your household may effectively get through the at times difficult, regularly interesting, relocate to an additional country. I presume the ethical of this account is actually that flags are, by the end of the day, signs, and also what they represent has an impact on whether individuals wish to maintain it or otherwise.You can locate the true meaning of your lifestyle while sipping either reddish or even white colored red wine in the peaceful countryside of the country if you are actually a hardcore lover of red or white wine. Bassett, John E. Harlem in Testimonial: Vital Responses to Dark American Writers, 1917-1939.

0 notes

healthcaretipsblog · 6 years

Link

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has all the makings of an Oscar frontrunner. The festival favorite boasts a riveting turn from lead Frances McDormand, a deliciously sharp screenplay from director Martin McDonagh, and a tour-de-force performance from Sam Rockwell as a self-loathing corrupt cop. It received near-universal praise at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. At key awards ceremonies, Three Billboards swept — winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama, the SAG Award for Best Ensemble, the TIFF People’s Choice Awards, and landing a spot in the AFI top 10 of 2017.

Most importantly, it was timely. Three Billboards is a story about a bereaved mother Mildred Hayes who shakes up a small Midwestern town with her bitter attacks against the beloved Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) for his department’s inability to find the culprit behind her daughter’s rape and murder. The film hit the festival circuit right at the crest of #MeToo movement, an industry-wide reckoning of the systemic abuse and harassment of women at the hands of Hollywood’s most powerful men. It seemed fitting, then, that the Oscar frontrunner would be about righteous female vengeance, led by a middle-aged actress whose furious performance threatened to sear through the screen.

And yet, Three Billboards finds itself facing its own reckoning, with a backlash as fierce as Mildred’s single-minded quest for justice.

You could chalk it up to the usual polarization of the Oscar race, wherein the nuances of the best films of the year are boiled down to their most basic flaws. La La Land fell victim to this last year — seeing itself transformed from “charming love letter to classic Hollywood musicals” to “nostalgic relic emblematic of the racial tumult overtaking America.” Backlash and Oscar favorite almost always go hand-in-hand, with public opinion turning on a perfectly fine film for want of a narrative with a villain and an underdog.

Opening to Critical Acclaim

The thing about Three Billboards is that it seemed poised to take on that underdog role. When the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, it was presented as the polar opposite of Oscar bait: a brutal, barbed black comedy that dared you to like it.

Its borderline farcical approach to grief cut away any semblance of pretension, yet it carried an Important Message on female wrath in the form of McDormand’s caustic Mildred Hayes. Owen Gleiberman wrote in his Variety review, “She’s woke, she’s fierce, she’s beyond shame or scruples, she’s screaming truth to power, she’s charged up with the wrath of an avenger.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday wrote in its rave review, “McDonagh couldn’t have anticipated the moment when his movie would arrive, a time when sexism in its most virulent forms has been revealed in a daily drumbeat of stories recounting unspeakable exploitation and abuse.” In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, Mildred soon became the standard bearer for the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, 2017’s embodiment of female rage.

The movie hit a nerve. It won a standing ovation at its premiere at Venice, where McDonagh won the best screenplay prize. It would win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival over crowd-pleasing movies like The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, and Molly’s Game. But the movie’s initial full-bodied support would soon change once it hit general theaters.

Out of the Festival Bubble

As Three Billboards spilled out of the festival circuit, there were rumblings among critics of color about the film’s clumsy (some would say non-existent) handling of race. The criticisms were aimed at Sam Rockwell’s Dixon, a racist, violent cop who was rumored to have tortured a black man in custody. Rockwell plays Dixon as a pathetic dope rigged to explode, and for the first half of the film, Three Billboards doesn’t ask you to sympathize with him. He’s an alcoholic, he commits horrific, senseless beatings, he lives with his emotionally abusive mom. But Chief Willoughby is convinced that underneath that veneer of intolerance, there’s a “good man” in Dixon, which triggers a transformation in Rockwell’s character, from revolting villain to sympathetic ally.

Vulture’s Nate Jones points out, “The second half of the movie largely belongs to Sam Rockwell’s Dixon, a ne’er-do-well cop with a history of racist violence who gets some measure of redemption by the end of the film. Dixon’s arc has made Rockwell a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor races at the same time as it’s rubbed some viewers the wrong way thanks to a noticeable bit of sleight of hand: McDonagh never lets us meet the black person Dixon is said to have tortured, which lets his past crimes stay entirely in the abstract.” Jones’ Vulture colleague Kyle Buchanan notes that the film’s only other black characters are all “good-hearted ciphers.”

The issue of redemption remains the point of contention for many defenders of Three Billboards. “What if Three Billboards is a tale of damnation, not redemption?” Washington Post critic Sonny Bunch writes. The film “has a much stronger message about the dangerously fascist impulse that goes along the desire for total and perfect justice.”

In the most thoughtful analysis of Three Billboards and its race problem, Allison Willmore at Buzzfeed astutely points out that the film takes place in the state where three years ago, tensions between police and the black community came to a head after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. But “in striving to make Ebbing feel like a lived-in place, rather than just an idea of one, Three Billboards treats racism like it’s just another quaint regional detail — part of the local decor,” Willmore writes. “Three Billboards is so sharp when it comes to depicting Mildred’s pain, and yet so clumsy when it comes to depicting the habitual racism of the place in which she lives, that it feels indicative of the terrible fallacy that we can only focus on one type of oppression at once.”

Willmore points to McDonagh’s roots commenting on Irish working-class conflicts as the issue, which the director attempts to try to transport to Middle America. The Daily Beast‘s Ira Madison doubles down on this assertion, writing “Whether it be through malice or ignorance, McDonagh’s attempts to script the black experience in America are often fumbling and backward and full of outdated tropes.”

These kinds of criticisms continued to roll in as the film expanded to general theaters in November. Why the sudden outcry? NPR’s Gene Demby posited that the film’s rave reception at Toronto was an indictment of the overwhelming whiteness of the festival circuit and the critical establishment. Demby said on Twitter, “I think festival audiences are so used to the centrality of white people’s inner lives treated as the Actual Emotional Stakes that they don’t get what’s janky about a movie set in a town where cops torture black [people] but the plot is about thwarted justice for a white lady.”

Catapulted to Awards Favorite

The difference between Three Billboards and past Oscar “favorites-turned-pariahs” is that this criticism began before the film became an awards frontrunner. But as awards season kicked into gear, it became apparent that Three Billboards was the clear favorite. Three Billboards swept the Golden Globes, winning the most film awards of the night with Best Drama, Best Supporting Actor for Rockwell, Best Actress for McDormand, and Best Screenplay. It also won the Best Ensemble Prize at the SAG Awards, an award that often goes to future Best Picture winners.

The Golden Globes was Hollywood’s first public show of the reckoning of men in power. Actors and actresses wore black in solidarity with the anti-harassment and abuse coalition Time’s Up, series and films dealing with the sexual assault and the female experience won big (Big Little Lies, Handmaid’s Tale), stirring speeches against sexism were given by Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey. Three Billboards, with its wrathful tale of female vengeance, became part of that narrative with its four wins. Some critics accused the night of being “performative” in its wokeness, while others were encouraged by how these movements would rock the Academy Awards, an institution that is well-documented to be averse to progress.

Essentially, critics are saying, it’s hypocritical for a film that has been propelled to the front of the Oscar race because of its pertinence to one movement (#MeToo) to be completely indifferent to another movement (#BlackLivesMatter). It all sounds very political, because awards season inevitably is political, New York Times writer Wesley Morris writes. Three Billboards “can’t be just the misfire that it is,” Morris says. “The enthusiasm for it has to represent the injustice the movie believes it’s aware of — against young murdered women, their suffering dysfunctional families and black torture victims we never see — but fails to sufficiently poeticize or dramatize what Mr. McDonagh is up to here: a search for grace that carries a whiff of American vandalism. Of course, few movies can predict their moment, but “Three Billboards” might be inadequately built for this one.”

The post The ‘Three Billboards Against Ebbing, Missouri’ Backlash, Explained appeared first on /Film.

from /Film http://ift.tt/2DAs5qh

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

derickandveronica-blog · 7 years

Text

V #1. Real Characters

I walk the two miles all the way down to No Frills because it’s one of those off brand grocery stores where things are cheaper but you have to bag your own stuff. I wish I could go to the nice bodega downtown that sells creamy, herb cheese set in little displays with plastic grapes, but right now that’s a luxury I can’t afford. My friend Jackie says, “Always set aside enough money for fancy cheese,” but I guess this month I forgot.

It’s lucky, though, that the walk to No Frills is a nice one. It’s all downhill and I get to walk through this neighborhood filled with great, old Victorian houses. Some of the houses have gold historical preservation plaques tacked on their fronts, and the ones that don’t are painted bright, beautiful colors, like they’re competing for the plaques.

My favorite house, between Chestnut and Oak Street, is painted a smooth gradient of orange, starting pumpkin colored at the base of the house and gradually getting lighter, until at the paneling near the roof where it’s a soft creamsicle color. It just looks like light and happiness is beaming off the house, rising through the roof, like heat.

My own place used to be a stately, Victorian house, but it got chopped up and divided into apartments some years back, before I moved in. My landlord, Emily, doesn’t care about the place in the slightest. She’s let the paint fade and chip and she doesn’t seem to mind the awful stripe of black sludge down the front of the house. Its where the gutter empties. All winter, when the rain never stops and everyone is always muttering “the rain, the rain, the rain” like some kind of city-wide chant, the black, greasy rainwater pools at the roof before sliding down the front of the house into the yard below.

When I’m walking and not looking at the brightly painted houses I think about my usual stresses. I wish I could just focus on the houses and the pleasant heat in my leg muscles as I walk, but I can’t.

There’s a term paper I need to write about earthquakes and a doctor’s appointment I’ve been meaning to reschedule. And there’s my mom. She called me this morning. I had stood in my kitchen, gently stirring some oatmeal and saw that the phone was ringing, the screen lit up and vibrating. I had considered letting it ring all the way to voicemail. But I picked up. I wish I wasn’t so hopeful like that, but I am.

She told me about this new medication they’ve got her on, one that gives her these urgent, visceral, terrifying dreams. She told me she had a dream I died, something that also had to do with me being pregnant and wearing some god-awful denim dress. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say.

“I’m still alive,” I said finally.

She sighed into the phone.

Really, she’s the one dying. Of emphysema. The unsurprising result of smoking for 40 years.

I don’t have a whole lot of feelings about my mom dying. It’s hard to explain this to people. When I tell them about her diagnosis they arrange their faces to be sympathetic or gently horrified. I arrange mine to look sad, or like I’m carrying an awful burden, but this is mostly just for the other people. It makes them more comfortable. I wish I didn’t do things to make others comfortable, but I do.

The summer before she went to the doctors and he sat there and told her about her condition and, then, five minutes later she called me and told me “I have emphysema. I’m dying. You better call me more often,” and then hung up the phone—the summer before all of that—I went home for the first time in years.

I was delusional, of course. Maybe a few years of living on the West Coast, where everyone breathes and sighs about community and love and healing got to me.

We’d fought the whole time. She was drunk and angry and always larger and taller than me. She steamed up the house with her cigarette smoke, kept the windows locked, so that I woke up in the morning feeling like the back of my throat was dry and dirty. It was like she wanted to die.

That summer I had a revelation.

The first time I wore a bikini I was thirteen and it was bright red. I had noticed, only recently, the way men looked at me. How they poked each other in the ribs when I walked past. I spent hours looking at myself in the mirror, topless, running my hands along the smooth planes of my stomach. It was a miracle that we found the matching set for the bikini, since we got it at Goodwill. But it fit perfectly and looked great against my tan skin.

“Brown as a bunny, you are!” my mom said sometimes. Which was nice.

We went to the pool by our house, a neighborhood pool and something of an establishment during the hot Midwestern summer days. When we got there I stripped off my summer dress and took note of the muscled, gleaming lifeguards at the water’s edge. My mom, as was her habit, promptly passed out on a pool chair. Her mouth leaked open at the corners and her arms splayed out at her sides.

The bikini looked even better glistening under the chlorine blue water. But after diving off the diving board many times and frog crawling along the checkered bottom of the pool it had begun to hang loose on my body. The strings at my back, holding the top piece in place, threatened to come loose and reveal my breasts.

I woke my mother.

“Can you please tie this?” I asked. “It’s coming loose!” I was perhaps a bit hysterical.

She rose from the pool chair, her eyes puffy and groggy. She looked evil like a villainous character rising from their dark throne, and I realized, my stomach clenching, that I’d made a huge mistake.

And then, there in front of the moms and babies and muscled lifeguards, she ripped my bikini top from my body. One swift motion and it was gone.

The tender pink cones of my nipples were seeing the outside world for the first time. They felt fragile, sensitive to the dry summer air.

A woman nearby gasped.

“Get your shit and let’s go,” my mother growled. And so, we left.

My revelation was simple. I had been dreaming, since I was a little girl, maybe even before the red bikini episode, no more relationship with my mother.

Not one where she knew how I felt, or where we fought about why I never came to visit, and not one where I was willfully and purposefully cutting her from my life. Just one that was no more, brimming with nothingness.

When she called me that day after the doctor’s appointment, blurting out the news and then hanging up, the revelation rung inside of me, like a gong.

At No Frills I grab my usual items: bananas and oatmeal and eggs and potato chips. The linoleum is freshly waxed and gleaming. Everything is gleaming. The apples, the cucumbers, the mirrored surfaces of the meat counter. They’re playing a classic rock station over the radio and “Stairway to Heaven” comes on and I sing a little out loud, softly, when it gets to the part where Robert Plant screams and the drums get loud. It feels good sometimes to sing in public. Like I’m testing the boundaries of what’s okay to do. It makes me feel like the kind of girl brooding, artistic men would write poetry about, or else the kind of girl who’s quirky and thin and cutely-fragile who writes her own poetry. But I don’t think I’m either of those.

In line at the checkout I watch two West Coast weirdos, as my friend Jackie calls them, talk to each other. They’re real characters, like New Yorkers say in the movies. The man is wearing earmuffs, even though its blazing hot summer outside. The earmuffs are those puffy white childish ones, like they’re made from the fur of the abominable snowman, and they look ridiculous against the balding slab of his head. The woman with him, either his sister or maybe his wife--in the way that sometimes people who look alike become couples—is talking at him, nonstop, way too loudly, in some language that might actually be Latin.

“Oblitus dicere!” she says.

He doesn’t respond, just looks glassily off into the distance. Perhaps the earmuffs have made her voice fuzzy and distant. Perhaps this is their purpose.

What makes me laugh the most is that the couple has many, many cans of tuna fish in their cart and nothing else.

Back out on the street, blinking in the sunlight, I wait for the bus. The two characters are here, like I knew they would be. I think about talking to them, but I don’t know what I’d say.

My mom would sometimes involve herself in other people’s private business. Stuff that was definitely closed to her, but she didn’t care. I try not to be like this, even when I’m curious.

Once, upon coming out of the library, with stacks of books piled in our arms—hers about political conspiracy theories and mine about girls who lived fashionable, glittering lives in New York City—she spotted a couple sitting on a bench at the library’s entrance. It was obvious, immediately, what was happening.

The girl was crying gently and the boy, with a falsely sympathetic face, was speaking quietly and quickly and patting her leg like the way distant relatives do.

My mom marched over. She shifted her stack of books to the crook of her left arm so she could point her right finger accusingly at the couple.

She took a deep breath.

“You don’t need him! You can do much better than an ugly boy like him!” She was shrieking, and the whites of her eyes were huge and lit up, like there was a light bulb illuminated inside her head.

The girl was stunned. But the boy, strangely enough, looked as if he’d been expecting this. He smiled haughtily at my mom, his lips curled up, and that was when I realized it. My mom was one of them. The weirdos on the street. The characters.

I felt myself shrink down, wanting desperately to be somewhere else.

“Stay out of it, lady!” he smirked.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said.

Sometimes, once in a blue moon, my mom wasn’t a character. Or, at least, she kept it under wraps. Once, when we were on a plane and the flight attendant angrily slapped a bag of cookies down on my tray table after I took too long deciding between my snack options, my mom smiled a small smile and peered at me out of the corner of her eyes. Her face said, “Somebody’s having a bad day!” I had smiled wide, not caring about the cookies anymore.

I craved these kinds of moments. When we were on the same team. I just knew that there was another world, jogging along right next to ours, that was full of these moments. Where we had inside jokes and camaraderie.

This other earth, though, was almost always frustratingly out of my grasp.

This morning on the phone she’d told me that she was ready to die.

“I just want to be fucking dead already,” she said. It was so brash and ugly and hard to look at. I stayed quiet on the phone.

After a while she sighed. Sometimes, I had no idea what my mother knew, how wide her awareness extended.

“Maybe you want that too,” she said.

But I didn’t know what world we were in. The real one or the one just out of reach. We were, for once, on the same team. But it was all wrong.

The houses get steadily uglier as the bug chugs towards my neighborhood. It drops me off a few blocks from my house, and the characters stay on the bus, heading, no doubt, into the even seedier parts of the city.

My shoulders and hands ache with the groceries and I have to stop every block to stretch my fingers and then curl them into fists, pumping blood and sensation back into them. At my house, I peer up at the black sludge down the front of the house, but it doesn’t look too bad today, maybe because of the sunshine. The sun has a way of smoothing out all the ugly things, blurring your vision a little. I wish I could have this effect on people, but I can’t.

I unlock the front door, give it a little kick with my foot so it doesn’t stick, and climb the stairs up to my apartment. I knock my hips against the stair’s railing, forming a soft fleshy bruise I’ll feel for the next few days but which will look oddly beautiful against my skin, because the bags are just too heavy.

#veronica

0 notes

healthcaretipsblog · 6 years

Link

And yet, Three Billboards finds itself facing its own reckoning, with a backlash as fierce as Mildred’s single-minded quest for justice.

Opening to Critical Acclaim

Out of the Festival Bubble

Catapulted to Awards Favorite

The post The ‘Three Billboards Against Ebbing, Missouri’ Backlash, Explained appeared first on /Film.

from /Film http://ift.tt/2DAs5qh

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes