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the-desolated-quill · 4 years

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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2019

Congratulations! You’ve made it through another year! You’ve faced many obstacles and overcome many adversaries to arrive here, at the dawn of a new decade. So as we prepare to leave the 2010s and make our way into the 2020s, lets take a look back at the challenges and hardships of 2019. And by challenges and hardships, I of course mean shitty fiction and media.

Yes, it’s time for yet another edition of Quill’s Swill, where we mark the absolute worst stories that the industry had to offer over the past year and proceed to tear them to shreds. Think of it as like voiding your bowels before the New Year.

As always remember that this is my personal, subjective opinion. If you happen to like any of the things on this list, that’s fine. More power to you. Go make your own list. Also bear in mind I haven’t seen everything 2019 has to offer due to various other commitments. So as much as I really, really want to, I can’t put Avengers Endgame on here. I know what happens. It sounds fucking terrible, but I haven’t seen the film, so it wouldn’t be fair of me to put it on the list, even though it would most definitely deserve it.

...

Seriously, read the synopsis of Endgame on Wikipedia some time. It’s like fanfic written by a nine year old. It’s truly shocking. And now it’s the highest grossing movie of all time? Give me strength.

All In A Row

Don’t you just hate it when you’re expected to parent your autistic child? Like actually show love and care and consideration to your offspring. Look at him, expecting you to treat him like a human being. Selfish bastard! If only there was a play that explored the horrors of having to be a decent person to your own flesh and blood and how objectively awful it is. If you’re one of those people, then the play All In A Row will be right up your street.

Premiering on the 14th February at Southwark Playhouse in London, All In A Row was a total shitshow to say the least. The playwright, Alex Oates, claimed to have ten years of experience working with autistic children, which you wouldn’t have believed if you saw the play as the autistic child at the centre of the play, Lawrence, seemed more like a wild animal than a person. In fact two of the main characters compare him to a dog. And if you thought this wasn’t dehumanising enough, Lawrence isn’t even a child. He’s a puppet. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.

All In A Row seems to place all of the blame for the family’s predicament on the autistic child, who’s presented as barely functional, bordering on bestial. There’s no effort to really make an emotional connection with Lawrence (how can you? He’s a puppet!) as the play instead focuses on how this kid has effectively ruined this family’s life because of his autism and aggressive behaviour. Speaking as someone on the autism spectrum, I can say quite confidently that this play is fucking despicable. Badly written, badly conceived, insulting and downright mean spirited. I wouldn’t want Oates looking after my autistic children, that’s for damn sure.

Anthem

EA is back and this time they’re dragging the critical darling that is BioWare down with them.

Anthem was a desperate attempt to jump aboard the ‘live service’ bandwagon, trying to replicate the success of other video games like Overwatch, Destiny and Warframe. They failed spectacularly. The game itself had more bugs than A Bug’s Life, loot drops were often stingy and unrewarding, loading times were farcically long, and the story and worldbuilding was fucking pitiful. Oh yeah, and if you played it on PS4, there was a good chance it could permanently damage it. Thankfully I have a uni friend with an Xbox One and they allowed me to play the game on that. It was a crushing disappointment, especially coming fresh off the heels of Mass Effect Andromeda, which didn’t exactly set the world on fire back in 2017.

It didn’t help that EA’s reputation was in tatters thanks to the lootbox controversy of Star Wars Battlefront II and having to try and win back the trust of fans, but worse still reports began to service of what went on behind the scenes at BioWare during the game’s development. Apparently the game’s story and mechanics kept changing every other day as the creative directors and writers didn’t have the faintest idea what kind of game they wanted to make, and the developers were often forced to work obscenely long work hours in abusive crunch periods to get the game finished for launch. It got so bad that, according to an article on Kotaku, some members of the team had to leave for weeks or even months at a time to recover from ‘stress casualties.’

To think this was the same company that gave us Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Knights Of The Old Republic. Thank God that Obsidian Entertainment is there to pick up the slack on the RPG front because I think it’s safe to assume that BioWare won’t be around for much longer at this rate.

The Lion King (2019 remake)

Here we go. Yet another live action remake of a Disney classic. Excpet it’s not live action, is it? Well... it’s live action in the sense that Dinosaur was live action (remember that film? Don’t worry if you don’t. No one does). Real locations but CGI characters. Millions of dollars spent on cutting edge tech to create photo realistic animals... and the film ends up duller than a bowl of porridge that really likes trainspotting.

It’s not just the fact that The Lion King remake is yet another soulless cash grab from the House of Mouse, it’s also the fact that it’s done really badly that upsets me. The Lion King works as an animated film. Bright colourful images, over the top song and dance sequences and vibrant character designs. As a ‘live action’ film, it just looks awkward and stilted. None of the animals are very expressive, leaving it up to the poor voice actors to carry the film, and to cap it all off the CGI isn’t even all that convincing in my opinion. At no point did I look at Simba and go ‘oh yeah, he looks like a real lion.’ It’s so obviously fake. In fact it reminds me of those early 00s movies like Cats & Dogs or Stuart Little where you see the jaws of the talking animals moving up and down like some messed up ventriloquist act or something. And here’s me thinking cinema has evolved past this.

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds

Remember Peter Harness? That guy who wrote that Doctor Who episode about the moon being an egg? Yeah, he’s back and he’s doing an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds. And guess what! It’s fucking ghastly! :D

The three part BBC mini-series was without a doubt some of the worst telly I think I’ve ever seen. It’s staggering how clueless Harness is as a writer. For starters he managed to achieve the impossible and somehow made a Martian invasion of Earth boring. I didn’t even think it was possible, but somehow he pulled it off. Then he sucks all tension out of the story by revealing the ultimate fate of the Martians at the beginning of the second episode, so now any threat or danger has been chucked out of the window because we know that the main female protagonist Amy at least would survive. And then finally he takes a massive dump over the source material by having humanity weaponise typhoid to kill the red weed rather than just having the Martians die of the common cold like in the book. Because God forbid us Brits should be presented as anything other than heroic and dignified.

So what we’re left with is a poorly realised allegory with ineffectual horror tropes full of OTT progressive posturing in a pathetic attempt to make Harness and the BBC look more liberal than they actually are. There’s no effort to really explore the themes of imperialism and colonialism outside of casual lip service, and we barely get a glimpse of the dark side of humanity. Everyone is presented as flawed, but basically awesome or, in the case of Rafe Spall’s character, utterly gormless. Our TV license fees help fund this shit, you know?!

And if you think this was bad, just wait till New Year’s Day where we’ll get to see Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ butcher Dracula. Can we stop giving these beloved literary icons to these hacks please?

Glass

I liked Split. It wasn’t an amazing movie, but it was entertaining with some good ideas, a great performance from James McAvoy and was a true return to form for M Night Shyamalan. That being said, I wasn’t keen on the idea of it taking place in the same universe as Unbreakable. I feared it would be a step too far and we’d end up having something like... well, something like Glass.

On paper, Glass isn’t a bad idea. The idea of superpowers being a delusion is legitimately intriguing and could have been a great post-modern deconstruction of the superhero genre. Except Shyamalan never actually does anything with it. The first act drags on and on with absolutely nothing happening, none of the characters really grow or change over the course of the film, Bruce Willis in particular is basically only here for an extended cameo as his character does pretty much nothing for the majority of the film, and then the entire film is undermined by that stupid Shyamalan twist. Turns out superhumans are real and there’s a big cover up. Oh great! So not only does it render the entire film pointless, it also undoes what made Unbreakable and Split so good. They’re no longer people capable of extraordinary feats via rational means. They’re just superhuman. They can do anything. Sigh.

Shyamalan... maybe it’s time to give up the director’s chair, yeah?

Cats

Oh come on! Don’t act surprised! Did you honestly think I wouldn’t put Cats on this list?!

Cats, without a doubt, is the worst film of the decade and, yes, the CGI is terrible. Not only are there these sub-human cat mutants running around, we also have mice and cockroaches with child faces, James Corden coughing up furballs, Taylor Swift trying to give the furries in the audience boners, Idris Elba looking disturbingly underdressed and Rebel Wilson being... well... Rebel Wilson. It’s a disaster of a film. And really, should we even be surprised? We all knew this was going to suck. And no it’s not because of the CGI. I thought the CGI in Pokemon: Detective Pikachu was creepy as well, but at least it had a decent script and good performances to back it up. No the reason why Cats sucked is because... it’s Cats. It’s always been that bad. No amount of ‘advanced fur technology’ was going to change that. It was still going to be a confused, plotless mess with one dimensional characters and bad songs.

The only consolation I had was that I didn’t waste money buying a ticket. A friend of mine snuck me into the premiere and we watched it in the projector room. The plan was to make fun of it and have a laugh, but we didn’t even do that because honestly there’s nothing to really make fun. There’s only so many times you can take the piss out of the CGI and honestly the film was just boring more than anything else. It doesn’t even have the distinction of being so bad it’s good like Sharknado or Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It’s just bad, period.

I just hope we don’t see something similar happen to Starlight Express. Just think. Anthropomorphic, singing trains on roller skates. Shudder.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

Finally we have yet another cynical cash grab from Disney.

I confess I didn’t exactly go into The Rise Of Skywalker with an open mind. I was never all that keen on a sequel trilogy in the first place, and neither The Force Awakens nor The Last Jedi ever convinced me otherwise. Admittedly they weren’t bad movies. Just derivative and painfully uninspired, and I was expecting more of the same for Episode IX. What I got instead was quite possibly the worst Star Wars film since Attack Of The Clones. Yes, it’s that bad.

This film is very poorly made, filled with plot contrivances and logic holes galore. I lost count of the number of times the protagonists got into a dangerous situation because of Rey constantly wandering off like a confused toddler lost in a shopping mall. Oh and we finally find out who her parents were and it was quite a twist, but only because it was really stupid. Of course we didn’t see it coming because nobody would have guessed it would be something that moronic. I feel JJ Abrams’ stupid ‘mystery box’ philosophy is to blame for this. It’s derailed countless franchises before such as Lost and Cloverfield, and now Abrams has fucked up Star Wars because he’s obsessed with mystery for the sake of mystery and Disney are so lazy that they couldn’t be bothered to plan an actual trilogy out properly beforehand. Instead they just wing it, making it up as they go along, which led to Rian Johnson ‘subverting our expectations’ and left Abrams desperately trying to pick up the pieces.

In fact a lot of The Rise Of Skywalker seemed designed specifically to appease people of both sides of the wide chasm The Last Jedi had created. The roles of characters of colour like Finn and Rose were significantly reduced, Poe and Finn don’t end up together because of homophobia, but we do see two women kiss in the background of one two second shot that could easily be cut out when they release the film in China, Kylo Ren gets his stupid redemption even though he hasn’t fucking earned it, Lando Calrissian shows up for no fucking reason, Rey is given ‘flaws’ relating to her parentage in order to combat those accusing her of being a Mary Sue, but they’re the boring kind of flaws that don’t have any real impact on her character, and that ghastly ship Reylo is made canon even though it makes no sodding sense in the context of this movie, let alone the whole trilogy. They even go to the trouble of baiting us with a FinnRey romance before pulling the rug out from under us. Then, just to add insult to injury, the film retroactively ends up making the entire original trilogy completely pointless. All because Disney wanted more dollars to put in their Scrooge McDuck money bin.

The Rise Of Skywalker, and indeed the entire sequel trilogy, should serve as a cautionary tale against the dangers of hype and nostalgia. The reason The Force Awakens was successful wasn’t because it was a good movie (because lets be brutally honest here, it really fucking wasn’t). It was because it gave gullible Star Wars fans warm fuzzies because it reminded them of A New Hope whilst tempting them with the vague promise that things might get more interesting later on. And when that didn’t materialise, quelle surprise, the fanbase didn’t take it very well. I would love to think that this will serve as an important lesson for the future when people go and see Disney movies, but who am I kidding? I guarantee at some point we’re going to get Episodes X, XI and XII and we’ll have to go through this sorry process all over again.

So there we have it. The worst of 2019. May they rot forever in Satan’s rectum or wherever it is stories go to die. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Yes it’s the Quill Seal Of Approval Awards! The best of the best! Who shall win? The suspense is killing me! Ooooh, I can’t wait! You’ll be there tomorrow, won’t you? Of course you will. How could you not?

#quill's swill #quill's swill 2019 #worst of the year #review #opinion

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sam-i-am-27 · 6 years

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The Haunting and Killings of Iplier Manor

Summary: Mark Iplier Manor has always been a subject of great mystery and a possible investigation for Ryan and Shane. So when they finally go, thinking it’ll just be another ‘haunted’ home, they are in for a real surprise...

Word Count: 3,854

Thank you to my amazing editor, Jay, aka @pastel-and-gore. They are an amazing human bean who deserves the world! I can’t believe they can put up with my multiple doc bullshit and continue to edit but I am so grateful for them doing this. I literally cannot say thank you enough, my dude.

A/N: This is not a script. This is how I believe the experience Ryan and Shane would have in the manor would go if they visited. The reason not everything Also, everything in bold would be where the visuals would be and is the ‘script’ that Ryan wrote.

“I don’t like this, Shane. Like really don't like this,” Ryan said, looking up at the Manor they'd be covering in this new video. The sense of death hung in the air, something Ryan had felt at almost every single place they've filmed, but it never got easier to experience. It was even worse here, the air was so heavy that it was almost tangible.

“You say that everywhere we go,” Shane argued, glancing at the door and patio.

“Yeah, but none of the places has so many sales and ownership transfers for the same reason!” he sighed. “Let's just get some daytime, outdoor shots and then get inside. We’re doing this alone, remember? The landlords didn’t want to ‘risk’ more than two people at a time. And that’s something that’s already a horrible thought.”

“Whatever dude. His loss,” Shane said, turning on his camera and walking to the left.

As Ryan walked around the house, the mere sight of it gave him chills. Not because it was creepy, but because it wasn't. While weeds and grass were overgrown in the nearby gardens, the house remained very intact, only the occasional chipped brick or vine. Other than that, it was in perfect condition. The mansion itself was confusing and he felt like he was walking in circles. Was that chessboard always there? How many times had he passed by the pond-sized pool?

When he finally caught up with Shane, he felt thoroughly dizzy.

“Dude there’s a golf course and a giant chessboard!” his friend said, holding a few of their lights.

“Yeah, I saw it. Multiple times,” Ryan muttered, glancing at the setting sun. “Let's get inside before it gets too dark.”

Opening the door and walking inside was just as unnerving as walking outside. The door hinges barely creaked and the wood floor was completely unmarked, except to the right of the entrance.

“Murderers! We’re here for a murder!”

“Shut up, let’s just go inside,” Ryan said, rushing in behind Shane.

“Hey check out this mirror,” Shane said, pointing his camera at a broken mirror on the other side of the foyer.

“Yeah, there was a bit of shooting in the house during the time it was occupied. A bullet must have hit it,” Ryan snapped. “Let's just find a place to set up.”

Twenty minutes later, they had situated their equipment, Ryan's heart was still pounding in fear. Where had that very obvious and close lightning come from on such a clear night?

“Ryan, come on. Do it for the folks at home!” Shane said, patting him on the back. Ryan sighed and nodded.

“Yeah, let's do this shit and get out of here.”

They sat down in front of the rolling cameras and Ryan held up three fingers. Then two. One.

“This week on a special episode of Buzzfeed: Unsolved, we cover the mysterious hauntings and deaths within the Northern California home, Markiplier Manor,” he narrated. “Not only is this house reportedly haunted by dozens of real estate agents who have tried to sell it to new owners, but apparently, it is the sight of one of the cruelest, most motivated and quite frankly, one of the strangest killings we’ve ever covered.”

“Well I don’t know if this is true or not, so I’m holding back all judgement,” Shane said.

“Well other than you don’t believe that it’s haunted.”

“Obviously.”

Ryan laughed and sat back up straight. “Anyways, we’re investigating the hauntings and killings…” No lightning. “The killings of Mark Iplier Manor. For the sake of video length, the fact that this video will be part of the Supernatural season, and for my own sanity, we won’t be going much into the mystery of the killings itself and focusing more on the ghosts that haunt this place. Also, I’m not going to use the word M-U-D-E-R because according to reports, the word seemed to be a trigger word of sorts for whatever spirits haunt this place.”

“Murrrd...ock,” Shane taunted.

“L- let's just get into this… Before we begin, there are two things that need to be noted. One, for reasons unknown, many of the people in this story have no recorded history, last names or legal records. So all information I am giving has holes and is from news released to the public or from reports of one of our characters that were found abandoned in different locations. Second, there is background information that needs be covered before we can go over the deaths that occurred here.” He pulled out the script. “Mark Iplier Manor was built and owned by the parents of their son, Mark Iplier, who they named the house after.”

“Already I know he’s a fuckboy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

"Come on, you name a multi-storied manor in the middle of Northern California after your son, the kid’s going to be spoiled rotten!” Shane said, making Ryan laugh.

“Well he was, but we’ll get back to that a little while later,” Ryan agreed. “As a child, Mark spent a majority of his time with his three friends, William Jackson Barnum and siblings Damien and Celine, no surname recorded. When they were older, Mark and Celine fell in love and eventually got married, living in this Manor with a hired a butler named Benjamin, no last name given, and a Chef who only went by the name Chef.”

“Benjamin the Butler and Chef Chef?!” Shane chuckled. “Where there any other names like… William the Ward?”

“Shut up and let me do this quickly. Damien remained unmarried and moved on to run for mayor. William, unmarried but publically jealous of Celine and Mark's relationship, became a Private in the military, working as the employer of Chef for a time, and eventually a Colonel. After he was done with the military, he reconciled with Mark and managed to convince his friend to fund millions into expeditions.”

“Millions for a guy who wanted to fuck his wife!” Shane laughed. “’Oh hey dude, I wanna go do some Jumanji shit with your WIFE. Can I have a few million dollars?’”

Ryan laughed uncontrollably for a second. “He had money to spare and at the time, I think he was in a state of shock that rendered him a little incapable of processing how fucked up this situation was.”

“Yeah because no one realizes when their wife has gone missing with their best friend.”

Ryan chuckled and shuffled his papers, shivering as a draft blew through the room but ignoring it to continue the explanation. “By the time that William had returned, he hadn't made nearly enough to pay off his debts to Mark. This led to the two friends growing farther and farther apart, leaving William financially crippled. But Celine, who was still studying the mystic arts, was growing closer to William. The two didn't keep their relationship very secret and one day, William ran off with Celine, leaving Mark alone and broken in a reportedly haunted house.”

“Okay, so obviously the Colonel dude and Mark had some rough patches,” Shane said.

“Oh you think?!” Ryan asked, unable to hold back a small laugh.

“So what about Damien?” Shane asked. “Was he like ‘Oh my sister’s fucking my two best friends who want to kill each other. Better run for mayor!’”

“Actually yes. He won mayor with the help of one of his other friends, who we will cover later,” Ryan said and continued to read the script. “Almost a year later, on October 10, Mark called all his friends -excluding Celine and including a detective friend Mark had made, Abraham, and Damien’s District Attorney, who strangely, had no background information, not even a gender- back to the manor for a night of poker with no explanation as to why other than to, quote, ‘Get the old gang back together’. The events that occurred over the next two days ended with the disappearance of William, Mark, Celine, and the District Attorney.”

He took a breath but before he continued, the draft picked up, bringing a haunting voice with it.

“I’m here.”

Ryan yelped and turned around, looking for the source of the voice, and was surprised to see that Shane was looking too. “You heard that?”

His friend nodded, looking a tad bit paler than usual. “Yup… that was definitely words of some sort.”

“‘I’m here’ or something like that.”

“I heard something ‘Da deer’,” Shane reasoned, but Ryan knew he was just convincing himself.

“Uh… let's just start our investigations.” He began to pull out his Spirit Box. “In the manor, there are reportedly three areas in the house that are the most haunted: the Foyer, the Seance room, and the room we are in now, the Living Room. There are reports of whispers, random cold spots, disappearing and reappearing objects and rooms. Many of the guests who visit here say that they will black out randomly and appear somewhere else”

“Who haunts this place, Ryan?” Shane asked in mock curiosity.

“If you’d let me talk, I could tell you.”

“Alright, go ahead!”

“The night of the Poker Party, everyone had gotten very drunk over the course of seven hours. When the Attorney woke up, spoke with Benjamin and Damien before coming down here. Immediately, they were met with a crack of lightning and saw Mark's body on the floor.”

“So they walk in, BOOM WAKE THE FUCK UP and then splat. body?”

“Yeah, just like that,” Ryan confirmed. “The remaining people ran into the room and Abraham took over the scene with the Attorney as his new partner.”

“What happened his last one?”

“Well according to what little I could find on Abraham, every single one of his partners died or went missing in increasingly painful and violent ways.”

“Oh. So like one got shot and he’s like ‘Oh no, can’t get any worse’ and then the next one gets impaled by a bull?”

Ryan laughed and shook his head. “I mean I guess! Can I get through this?!”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“So also according to Abraham, who examined the body personally, Mark had been stabbed 37 times, poisoned, beaten, strangled, drowned, and shot in that order.”

“WHOA! Someone wanted him dead.”

“Yup. Out of curiosity, who do you think it was?” Ryan asked.

“William. Come on. In debt, with this guys wife. It's got to be him,” Shane said.

“We’ll just see,” Ryan said. “Anyways, about an hour later, while Abraham was out of the room talking with his partner, the body vanished without trace, explanation or evidence that one of the guests had stolen it. It was never found and is still missing to this day. But it’s rumored that his ghost still haunts this room.”

“So it could be under our feet? Or in the roof? Or in the room we're sleeping in?!”

“I don’t want to think about where it is. Besides, a lot of theories say that it was either a faked death, buried in the yard or became a zombie.”

“No.”

“Yeah, that’s another reason we’re not discussing the mystery itself: you’d hate every bit of it. Now shut up and let's just talk to the ghost…” Ryan groaned and held up the Spirit Box. “Uh, Mark Iplier, I'm Ryan. This is my friend, Shane. This is a Spirit Box and it will help you talk to us if you want to. I'm turning it on… now.”

The high pitch whine the machine made made him groan but he held the box tight.

“Mark Iplier, are you here right now?”

The channels changed without a word spoken.

“Mark, if you can here is, I heard you had a pretty violent death and a pretty bad life… uh… are you-”

“H-He-ll-lo?”

“Oh fuck…”

“Hi,” Shane said cheerfully.

“Are you Mark Iplier?” Ryan asked, his voice shaky.

“N-o-oo.”

“New? Are you a new ghost?” Shane asked.

“Shut up dude. It just said that it’s not Mark, so it’s probably someone else,” Ryan said. “Can you tell us what color shirt are our shirts?”

There was silence for a second.

“I-I c-c-an-n-t-t s-s-s-ee. I-I-t-t-s d-a-a-a-r-k.”

“Okay dude these are clear sentences,” Ryan said. “Clear words that are forming functional sentences.”

“Sure. I'm just hearing huh-guh-cuuhhh-"

“Whatever dude. Let's just wrap this up so we can move to the next room and next story,” Ryan said. “Well, Mark or whoever you are, we’re going to go now and check out the rest of the house. Bye.”

“W-W-a-a-i-”

But it was too late and Ryan was putting the Spirit Box away. He really didn’t want to put it away, seeing as to how he was getting some of the most definite proof they had ever gotten, but he wanted to move on as quickly as possible and get to sleeping and besides, if it was this haunted here, hopefully it’d be just as in the other rooms.

“Okay, on to the second room, the Seance Room, which is upstairs,” Ryan said, getting up and grabbing the hand-held camera.

“Oh we’re moving?”

“Yeah, it’s upstairs. We’re not just going to tele-”

The world turned upside-down. Ryan everything inside of him float for half a second before crashing down. He stumbled and retched, not realizing he was standing in the foyer, sweating and cold. He could feel the cold leather seat but it wasn’t there. He had been moved into the foyer by an unknown force and he felt fear worse than he’d ever felt before. As he realized where he was and wiped his mouth of the bile, he whispered, “What the hell?”

Shane came running out of the living room and looked at his friend with a fear he hadn’t ever seen on his face. He saw the vomit and pulled out some water for Ryan to use.

“What just happened?” Ryan asked, taking the bottle gratefully.

“You disappeared dude,” Shane said. “One moment you were there in the living room. The next you’re out here.”

“Fuck, dude, I hate this… I hate this,” Ryan said, sitting down in the middle of the room, taking deep steadying breaths as he tried to rationalize what was happening. “Okay, so we can either keep going or we can stop… I really want to stop but if we can keep going…”

“Ryan, your camera was still going,” Shane said, pointing to the GoPro strapped to his chest. “We can check that-”

“Shane I just teleported!” Ryan said. “Do we really want to keep going for the sake of a video?!”

“It’s money, Ryan. I know we’re both scared, and yes, I’ll admit that I’m scared out of my fucking mind, but we are getting footage that could boost our careers exponentially! If you’re too uncomfortable and want to leave, we can do the Jerome investigation instead, but… nothing else. It’s up to you.”

Every single part of his being was telling him to run, to get out of this place this instant. However his curiosity part was telling him that this manor, The Eastern State Penitentiary, and the Sally House was the closest thing to a true haunting. But now… did he really want to keep going with this for a job and some money?

“We can… just do the recordings… and not spend the night. I cannot spend a night in this place… but let’s just get through this place as quick as possible,” Ryan whispered. “Let’s just do the foyer right now.”

“Okay,” Shane said, sitting right next to Ryan and placing the camera in front of them.

“So the Foyer… according to Abraham’s reports, there had been building tension between him and William for some time. On the final day of these events, William found something out that caused him to pull his gun. In an act of anger, on that balcony up there,” Ryan pointed above them to the railing, “William shot Abraham in the side, just below the ribs, and it was not fatal but it did knock him unconscious for a long while. The Attorney rushed forward to tear the gun away from William and after only a second of struggling, was also shot and fell over the railing down here. When Abraham awoke, he found the house abandoned by everyone and the Attorney’s body missing.”

“Well then. That was a quick and sudden ending,” Shane said.

“I mean Abraham did spend an unknown amount of years chasing down William, who escaped the country under many different names before both of them disappeared from the books completely. But yeah, a sudden ending here,” Ryan said sarcastically.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So the rumor about this room is that the Attorney’s spirit resides not only throughout the entire room, but mainly within that mirror you were looking at earlier. Apparently, they like to pound on it, press their hands up against it. Sometimes you can hear a gunshot at approximately 4:30 every day whether it be day or night, or calls to Abraham, William, Damien and Celine.”

“Oh yeah, what happened to the two of them?” Shane asked.

“That we’ll get to later,” Ryan said as he pulled out the Spirit Box again. “Okay, uh, Attorney, my name is Ryan, this is my friend Shane… we’re going to use this thing called a Spirit Box. You can speak to us through it.”

He turned on the box and before the high pitch whine cut through his ears, there was a voice, clear as day.

“P-Pleas-s-e. I-I a-m-m s-s-so al-l-on-ne.”

Ryan screamed and dropped the box. He and Shane backed away from the box as it sat on the floor, continuing to hiss and screech.

“What the hell…”

“I-I-I tried-d to t-t-alk-k… I n-n-e-e-d to-o get-t-t out-t-t…”

“Okay, Ryan, I take it back,” Shane said. “This might not be worth the money if our lives are in danger… but the cameras are rolling so that’s something... ”

Ryan was too terrified to respond. He was pretty sure that if he moved another inch, he’d continue moving right out the door and into Father Thomas’ home until he died. This was happening… an actual ghost was talking to them so clearly that anything that Shane was scared. He couldn’t reason his way out of this situation.

“T-Th-h-h-e hous-s-e is-s the-e-e enem-m-my… g-g-e-t-t out-t-t… H-H-el-l-p-p m-m-me-e…” the voice said.

“Are you the Attorney?” Ryan asked, his voice wavering on the brink of tears. They were interacting with a paranormal entity and from the sound of it, it wasn’t alone.

There was no response from the box. For a second, the white noise was barely muffling Ryan and Shane’s heavy breathing. He was going to cry… he was sure he was going to cry…

Something shook the entire room and Ryan screamed as the broken mirror across the foyer fogged up and a bloody hand pressed up against it. A fuzzy reflection of a person pressed up against the glass, smearing blood everywhere. A high pitch whine filled the air, making the two humans grab their pleading, “Save me! Please! I can’t do this! Please! Find Damien and Celine! They did this! LET ME OUT!”

There was a crack of lightning louder than any they had heard already. The room was suddenly filled with a bright red light and Ryan looked up at the balcony to see a red entity of some sort standing there, glaring down at them. Ryan felt a wave of fear, anger, and need sweep through him, making him want to go to the light… but at the same time, he knew he had to get out of here if he wanted to survive.

“GO! GO!”

The two of them sprinted to the door, every thought of money, viewers, and the equipment left behind in the house. Ryan barely made it through the door as it slammed closed. The back of his shirt snagged between the crack and he yelped as this small bit of fabric began to get dragged back into the home.

“SHANE!” he screamed, holding out a hand to his friend. Shane grabbed his arm and pulled, his strength barely matching that of whatever was dragging him back inside. Light was pouring out the windows, starting to blind him and light up the night sky. Ryan scrambled to rip his shirt off and with a rip, the end of his shirt being sucked into the house, but he didn’t have time to care. He needed to leave now.

As the two sprinted through the grounds, Ryan noticed how the world seemed to be splitting in three, reflecting on two levels of red and blue and white. He couldn’t tell what was real and what was the illusion. He felt like he was running in circles again, but the gate was barely getting closer and the pull from the house was getting stronger. But he plunged forward with a scream, bursting through the gates and hopping into the car as quick as he could, Shane following right behind him. The house literally howled with rage, shaking the world and making Ryan certain that the ringing noise would take days to go away.

Without looking back, he drove the car as fast and as quickly as he could away from that house.

It wouldn’t be until nearly an hour of driving later that Ryan would be able to breathe somewhat normally. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking for days and anytime he would be able to catch a wink of sleep, they’d be plagued with that light, with that broken mirror…

He couldn’t go back to work… he could barely go around corners without a mirror. It had only been a few seconds of downright encounter but the time spent in that house had been hours upon hours of fear. As if the past two years worth of investigating hadn’t left him scarred enough. Now he jumped at shadows, which were cast by the Light. His own reflection became the Attorney’s bloody hands and image, pleading with him to save them.

Shane wasn’t doing any better. For the first time in the years that Ryan had known him, he didn’t have a snarky quip or a smile or anything. His girlfriend worried about him and tried to get him to smile, but it just wasn’t working. She and Ryan’s girlfriend both worried so much but neither could tell them what had happened…

It could only be believed if they saw it.

“Ryan… we need to look at that footage,” Shane said almost two weeks later, his voice scratchy from lack of speaking and the occasional screaming nightmare.

“I know… we need to for everyone’s sake…” Ryan said, his voice aching for the same reasons. “But… I don’t want to remember anything more than I need to.”

“We’ll look at it and we’ll see what we can do with it… If we can’t do anything, we take a long break. We won’t ever do any hauntings or ghosts again. Just mysteries and stuff, okay?” Shane said, holding out the three cameras that had been recording every second of their encounter. Ryan looked at them and then at Shane, with his baggy, bloodshot eyes and nodded.

“Let’s fucking do this.”

So uh yeah! THE BOYS ARE MENTALLY SCARRED.

I had a ton of fun writing this. Like way too much fun writing it, but I am so glad that I did because it’s been building up in my head for a while. And I am in love with the result.

Uh... yeah! I don’t think I have a general taglist (if I do, I’m sorry I’m an idiot and I lost the names) but it is open!

Reblogs are awesome.

Have a good day!

#Markiplier #Buzzfeed: Unsolved #Fan Fiction #Who Killed Markiplier #Wilford Warfstache #Abe the Detective #Ryan Bergara #Shane Medej #Damien #Celine

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lynchgirl90 · 7 years

Video

KYLE MACLACHLAN FLIRTS WITH THE DARKNESS #TwinPeaks

David Lynch's most reliable guide reveals that Twin Peaks will never end, because everything is Twin Peaks.

TYLER COATES

SEP 3, 2017

I am standing outside the Soho House in Manhattan when I get a text from an unknown number. "Hey Tyler. Kyle here. I'm on the sixth floor at the end of the room. (Walk towards the light! 😆) See you soon."

KYLE MACLACHLAN JUST TEXTED ME.

I stand in place for a moment. I take a breath.

Kyle MacLachlan just texted me a joke and he used an emoji.

My reply, which takes entirely too much time to compose, is simply to tell him I'll see him upstairs soon. He writes back: "Cool 👍" And I immediately picture FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, the character he played on Twin Peaks (and is playing—sort of—on Twin Peaks: The Return) giving an ecstatic thumbs-up on the original iteration of the series.

I'm aware that I'm slightly nervous as I walk through the sixth floor restaurant. Meeting a famous person is nerve-racking! And MacLachlan is a big deal in my brain, maybe because I've been consumed all summer with Twin Peaks: The Return, David Lynch's revival of his cult classic TV series on which MacLachlan starred in its two-season run from 1990 to 1991. Maybe it's because MacLachlan is, let's face it, a very handsome man. He's also less foreboding in person than on television. His hair is a little messy rather than perfectly combed in place and shellacked with pomade; the collar on his navy polo shirt slightly popped in a breezily unkempt manner, as if he's on a late-summer vacation. (He lives not far from here in Manhattan.)

And maybe my nervousness is why I immediately bring up Blue Velvet, his second movie ever, and his second collaboration with David Lynch. I mention that I saw the movie when I was 13 or 14, somehow convincing my dad to let me rent it. (My mother's theory: "He probably thought it was about Elizabeth Taylor and a horse.") That's when MacLachlan gives a slightly embarrassed laugh, and he says, "I bet that was...frightening?" There's an iconic scene in which he's completely nude and Isabella Rosselini, clutching a butcher knife, goes down on him after their characters first meet. So yes, I was possibly frightened. But I knew then—as I know now, having seen much of David Lynch's work, with and without MacLachlan—that it was something interesting, peculiar, scary, and absurd, and everyone involved was willing to take a major risk to fulfill this one guy's crazy artistic notions.

I settle in my seat, and I remember that I'm here to talk about David Lynch—and Twin Peaks—with the man who has been the face of those notions for many years. Lynch is big on avatars and doppelgangers, the nature of good and evil, and fucking around with our ideas of the American Dream and the horrors that exist just below the surface, hidden thanks to our willful ignorance. And he's put all of this into the world by telling a large, expansive story with MacLachlan's face—still handsome after all these years—at the forefront.

What's the allure of Kyle MacLachlan, anyway? There is the obvious handsomeness, an all-American look that the actor attributes to one feature in particular. "It's the chin," he says with a laugh. "It's hard to get away from that." But there's something about his personality, too, that offsets—and maybe works in tandem—with his looks. He has a kind sensibility, an inherent goofiness that makes one naturally comfortable around him. He seems to have heard this before, from people who have tried to describe him without being able to put their finger on it exactly. Back to his face, just for a second: MacLachlan tells me that it's got an edge to it, so he hears, that has served as a trademark of sorts. "There's something off—that's the thing," he says. "People would always tell me, 'Something about your face is a little bit off.'" (Writer Rich Cohen once described him, in an early '90s profile in Rolling Stone, as "the boy next door, if that boy spent lots of time alone in the basement.") Does he sweat the comments he's received about the indiscernible weirdness of his persona, his face? Not really. "Listen, if it gets me work, that's fine," he says.

Lynch gave MacLachlan his first big break: the starring role in Dune, the anticipated adaptation of Frank Herbert's celebrated sci-fi novel. Most young actors dream of landing such a role, playing the hero in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster helmed by a buzzy director (Lynch's previous film, The Elephant Man, earned eight Oscar nominations). But Dune was a disaster—both on the production side and once it was released, flopping with critics and audiences alike. It was a hard first lesson for MacLachlan: Expectations could work against you, and it was important to be a practical actor, not to dwell on the losses, and to always keep an eye out for the next thing.

The next thing happened to come not long after, when Lynch came back to him with the script for Blue Velvet and offered him the role of the lead, Jeffrey Beaumont. Blue Velvet was the second big break—the real one, the one that propelled MacLachlan's career forward, and what solidified his connection to his director and friend.

"David is not Hollywood," MacLachlan explains. "My sense of it was that people didn't know what to do with me." He'd done the post-Dune audition rounds, and he wasn't finding other jobs landing in his lap. "Somebody does a movie that makes a zillion dollars, he plays the young hero, and producers can plug him into a million other things," he says. "The smart ones obviously build a construct. Not everyone has that ability."

Blue Velvet introduced a regular theme that Lynch has examined throughout his work since, which MacLachlan describes as "flirting with that dark soul, getting closer and closer to it until you're faced with the ultimate evil." Despite the film's brutality, it has a somewhat happy ending—suggesting that triumph over evil is possible. "Jeffrey barely escapes," MacLachlan says, "but he's changed forever."

With Jeffrey Beaumont, MacLachlan displayed full-on naïveté, playing a young man who realizes that the world in which he finds comfort is hiding sinister forces. His next major role, another created by David Lynch, would be a character who would find himself up against similarly dark factions—although this time of a supernatural quality.

MacLachlan admits that Twin Peaks was a bit of a fluke. The idea of David Lynch working in the realm of network television was absurd in itself. Blue Velvet, while earning Lynch his second Oscar nomination for Best Director, was met with a polarizing critical response. (Roger Ebert's review in particular was a scorcher, and he branded Lynch a misogynist for the way he "degraded" Rossellini on film.) His follow-up, Wild at Heart, which premiered at Cannes a month after Twin Peaks debuted on ABC, was met with equal parts enthusiasm and derision. (It won the Palme d'Or that year, even though the film was met with boos by the notoriously vocal film festival audience.)

Pairing up with writer Mark Frost, who had spent three years as a writer on NBC's police drama Hill Street Blues, Lynch broadened his idea of Americana—specifically, the darkness that lies beneath the surface of a quaint and seemingly wholesome small logging town in Washington—into a series. MacLachlan, bolstered by the critical success of Blue Velvet yet still reticent of how Lynch's next idea would play, didn't have high hopes. "It was completely unexpected that it would be anything more than a Movie of the Week," he tells me. "That's why a lot of us were on board: to watch David Lynch do this—and the anarchy that would reign down. Yeah, okay. Why not?"

But ABC executives loved the two-hour pilot, which introduced the murder of the beautiful homecoming queen Laura Palmer, the FBI agent who was summoned to solve her murder, and the various cast of characters who may very well have had something to do with the crime. "Suddenly we were doing it," MacLachlan says. "They called our bluff and bought the show."

Twin Peaks was a bonafide phenomenon, and its first season—consisting of the pilot and seven subsequent episodes—was a massive hit over the course of its eight-week run in the spring of 1990. Not only did it reunite MacLachlan with the director who introduced him to movie audiences, but it assembled a large ensemble cast of familiar and fresh faces.

The show was a mixture of television neo-noir and classic nighttime soap, but with a certain quirkiness that grabbed the attention of television audiences. There was a central murder mystery plot, yes, but there was also romantic intrigue, whispered secrets, a woman who communicated with a log. It often depicted its protagonist dreaming of a mysterious room, decorated with red drapes and a black-and-white chevron-patterned floor and populated by the kind of grotesque characters straight out of a Flannery O'Connor short story. It blended Lynch's dry humor and his absurdist non-sequiturs with the themes he began exploring in Blue Velvet—but with an entirely new style that filmmakers would spend years trying to replicate.

Laura Palmer's murder was solved in the early part of the second season—she had been raped and killed by her father, Leland, while he was under the influence of a demonic presence known as BOB—and the show began to shift into an unwieldy procedural drama. MacLachlan is honest about the missteps of the show's middling second season.

"I thought the first seven episodes [in Season One] were brilliant," he admits. "We had gone on a crazy tangent [in Season Two], and they were trying to pull it back. But it had already drifted too far off."

The series ended with a massive cliffhanger in a final episode directed by Lynch. Cooper, who had a new love interest in Heather Graham's Annie Blackburn, attempts to save her from an ex-FBI agent who has committed his life to terrorizing Cooper's. The pursuit finds him entering the mysterious red room of his dream through a portal in the woods; caught in what is known as the Black Lodge, he comes face to face with his mortal enemy as well as the evil that is holding the town hostage: BOB himself. BOB overtakes Cooper, creating a doppelganger of our hero and entering our world in disguise—leaving Cooper trapped in this impeccably decorated limbo.

Once again: disappointment. As with Dune, MacLachlan took it in stride. After all, Twin Peaks had earned him two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe. He had had a steady job and got to work again with Lynch to craft a great role—arguably, in hindsight, the most vital of his career. "There was certainly a disappointment when it was cancelled," he tells me. "But I said to myself, 'Well, that's done. Time to find the next thing.'"

Two things propel actors: Getting work that pays enough to stay afloat between jobs, and finding work that's compelling and challenging—roles that don't leave you typecast and stuck playing the same character over and over again.

Of course, MacLachlan did play Dale Cooper again in Lynch's big-screen prequel to the series, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which was released a year after the show's cancellation. MacLachlan initially passed on playing Cooper again so soon after the show ended, although he eventually joined the production. But his role was small, and the absence of many other Twin Peaks regulars (and its bleak, darker tone) was off-putting for fans. The film was not a commercial success, and the critical response was mixed.

MacLachlan—who tells me that he had to find "a construct" for himself, a certain kind of figure he could play with slight variation—took a few odd roles in the '90s. There are a couple of forgettable indie movies on his résumé, plus Oliver Stone's The Doors, in which he played keyboardist Ray Manzarek. In what would be one of the biggest box-office successes of his career (that is until he leant his voice for a small role in the Pixar film Inside Out), he played Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones, an insanely successful movie (it earned over $300 million worldwide) that feels like a lost '90s relic. (Do you remember anything about The Flintstones, other than it happened? I saw it twice, and I mostly just remember MacLachlan's biceps.) Yet he still proved he could play a different type: the sexy antagonist—even if that chance involved wearing a sleeveless double-breasted suit and playing the foil to John Goodman's Fred Flintstone.

But that led to his next role in what would be another infamous moment in modern film history: Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls, one of the most notorious movies of all time and the first big-budget NC-17-rated film to get a wide release. MacLachlan has been vocal about how he feels about the film. (He told Esquireearlier this year, "What did I learn from Showgirls? I learned what not to do!") Naturally, he chuckles when I even bring it up. (It's an inevitable topic of conversation. You can't not mention Showgirls in the presence of Kyle MacLachlan.) And he's honest with me about why he took the role. "It was a deliberate attempt to change things up a bit," he says. "All actors do that to varying degrees of success and failure. And, to be honest, I was a big fan of Paul Verhoeven, so I thought, 'Well, this could be fun.' I just happened to pick the wrong one." (Every gay man I know would suggest otherwise, but hey: Everybody's a critic.)

Once again, MacLachlan's career took another oddball turn. But these moments were still high-profile; he was still on the radar. And his early work with David Lynch continued to cast a welcome shadow over him as an actor, particularly as those who appreciated and found influence in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks began to rise in the Hollywood ranks themselves. At least that's MacLachlan's theory for his three major television roles of the last two decades: Trey MacDougal, the impotent Upper East Side mama's boy who served as a frustrating love interest to Charlotte on Sex and the City; Orson Hodge, a devious dentist on Desperate Housewives; and the Mayor of Portland on Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's hipster satire Portlandia, who could very well be Dale Cooper if he had gone into local politics instead of the Black Lodge.

"These things came to me because of my work with David," MacLachlan says. "Not because they were looking at the roles and saying, 'Oh, he'd be perfect for that.' The creators were people who had in some way been inspired by David, or affected somehow."

Two decades after Twin Peaks, as the show's cult following only grew larger and larger and its influence became more overt as dark, quirky mystery shows about the dangers hidden out of sight in small-town America became more and more popular, MacLachlan couldn't shake the series from his head. He and Lynch remained good friends, and Twin Peaks was often a topic of conversation when they saw each other. "Over the years, we'd get together and sit, chat, have coffee, catch up," MacLachlan tells me. "Occasionally I would bring up the idea of Twin Peaks. I recognized for me, selfishly, it was a great character, a great period of time. I was hungry to revisit that and to have the experience of working with David again."

"OCCASIONALLY I WOULD BRING UP THE IDEA OF TWIN PEAKS. I WAS HUNGRY TO REVISIT THAT AND TO HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF WORKING WITH DAVID AGAIN."

Years later, Lynch called MacLachlan on the phone, and his tone was markedly more assertive than normal. "I need to talk to you," Lynch said to him, "but I can't do it over the phone." The two met in New York, and Lynch delivered the news: He and Mark Frost had figured a way back into the world of Twin Peaks. Was MacLachlan interested in joining them? "We've talked about this, David," MacLachlan recalls saying. "But if you need to hear it from me: Yes, I'm in." Nothing was settled yet. Scripts hadn't been written. A precarious deal with Showtime was in the works, and there were stops and starts, which naturally worried MacLachlan. But eventually everything fell into place, Lynch and Frost and MacLachlan signed their deals, members of the cast were coming back, along with some new familiar faces. The network handed the keys over to Lynch to direct a whopping 18 episodes. It was official: Twin Peaks was returning to TV.

Let's rock.

Where the hell do I begin with Twin Peaks: The Return? For one thing, as I write this, I still haven't finished it; Showtime is keeping a close guard on the final two episodes that make up its grand finale, and the network didn't provide journalists screeners throughout the season. Perhaps that's part of why it's been so fun to watch: Not only is every episode completely unexpected, with most of the theories surrounding its complex and meandering plot as indecipherable as the show itself, but no one is getting an early look at this show. We all have to wait to see what David Lynch has in store for us precisely when he's ready to give it away.

I'm chatting with MacLachlan on the Monday afternoon following the 16th episode of the series—the one in which Agent Cooper finally comes out of the catatonic state in which he's been trapped for a very long time (15-plus hours for us, but much longer for him). Before that, he was trapped in the body of Dougie Jones, a Cooper doppelganger who lives in Las Vegas, sells insurance, and presumably has a gambling problem; most of his biography before the events of the season begins is provided by his wife, Janey-E, through one of her regular screaming sessions leveled at her dim man-child of a husband. (Naomi Watts, playing Janey-E, is a master at the David Lynch monologue.) How he got into Dougie Jones is still sort of a complicated mystery. Some people have their ideas of how it works, but for me, well… I've simply watched the show and kept myself from asking too many questions for the sake of my own sanity. I've simply enjoyed the long, twisted ride.

MacLachlan hasn't seen the final two episodes, either, although he knows what happens. From the beginning, he was in possession of what he calls The Bible. "After a little bit of cajoling, they let me have the script," he admits to me, "as long as I absolutely swore never to show anyone." (He keeps that promise with me, despite any effort I make to milk a secret or two out of him. "We all felt an obligation, really," he says. "We wanted to protect this thing so that people could experience it in the proper sequence.")

The world of the new Twin Peaks is massive. It expands beyond the borders of the small Washington town, with scenes taking place in Manhattan, Las Vegas, South Dakota, New Mexico in 1945, and in the Black Lodge. And while it brings with it a return of many of the beloved characters from the original series (with a few noted exceptions), it also introduces a wide variety of new characters in those far-flung locations. It is perhaps the most impressive cast of actors on television in recent history, and that doesn't include the musical guest that shows up every week at the Bang Bang Bar. (Whoever is booking for the Roadhouse is doing one hell of a job.)

"WE ALL FELT AN OBLIGATION, REALLY. WE WANTED TO PROTECT THIS THING SO THAT PEOPLE COULD EXPERIENCE IT IN THE PROPER SEQUENCE."

MacLachlan asked for the complete script almost out of a necessity to understand where his role fit within the larger story. Well, I should say "roles," because at this point he's playing three: there's Special Agent Dale Cooper, trapped in the Black Lodge for 25 years and then released into the world once again; Dougie Jones, the aforementioned dummy who's learning about the world almost like a child (or maybe he's actually Cooper, trying to remember who he actually is); and then there's Mr. C, the Cooper doppelganger who left the Black Lodge behind in 1991 at the end of the original series.

As much as the rest of us wondered how the residents of Twin Peaks would look and act after a 25-year hiatus, MacLachlan himself wondered how to get back into the role of Agent Cooper. But first he had to tackle the two opposite poles of Dougie and Mr. C. For Dougie, he looked to Peter Sellers for inspiration, also remembering Jeff Bridges's performance in Starman; for Mr. C, he thought of Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. Dougie, he admits, was the easier role to take on, while Mr. C was much tougher.

"It's hard for me to play that," he admits. "I can do it, of course, but I don't know if I really want to."

I bring up the moment when Mr. C murders his son, Richard Horne, steering him on top of a rock formation and watching as he is electrocuted. Mr. C shows no sign of empathy—that's in his nature, of course. But it was hard for MacLachlan to pull off. "Of all the things David had me do, that was the worst. But it's true to the character. As an actor, I want to show some humanity. It's so hard to be absolute." I can tell, through the calm and measured quality of the good-natured man who sits before me, that diving into the depths of his own potential dark side was no easy mission. He had to find that humanity within his director, who he says went along with him on both Dougie and Mr. C's journey. "David almost embodies the qualities of the characters," he says. "I can see it in his face. With Dougie, there's a certain energy. When I'm Mr. C, it's dark and he's in another place. It gave me the confidence to carry the character to its fulfillment."

He tells me another difficult task was to act as Mr. C with David Lynch as his character, FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole. "I didn't like it at all," he says, definitively, and with a look of deep concern. It suggests that MacLachlan felt uneasy breaking out of the kind of figure that Lynch has pushed him to play so many times: the innocent who flirts with danger but ultimately controls it. Dougie, in a way, was his own release from that darkness: all joy and absurdity. When I ask him about his favorite scenes, MacLachlan immediately sports a big Dougie Jones smile. His sex scene with Naomi Watts comes to mind, and he imitates the look of perplexed ecstasy on Dougie's face as he sleeps with his wife. He flails his arms about a bit, not noticing that he's drawing some attention from some of the people sitting near us in the restaurant. But I suppose when you've taken the leaps that he has—flirting with the darkness that David Lynch has created, or even doing something so bold as acting in a sex scene in front of a film crew—you lose some of your inhibitions fairly easily. I'm much less nervous around MacLachlan by now, and much more impressed with the confidence he exudes, something he's learned from the fearlessness that his job requires.

MacLachlan knows Twin Peaks: The Return isn't for everybody. He knew this as soon as he saw the script, realizing that fans of the original show might not embrace the revival with as much enthusiasm. I suggest that there are two different kinds of people: Twin Peaksfans and David Lynch fans. "Twin Peaks: The Return is for the David Lynch fans," I say, and MacLachlan nods.

"It was going to be the Lynch fans who would have the most fun," MacLachlan says. "That was obvious to me as we were traveling on that journey. It was going to be darker, visceral, and have the same kind of surreal elements that David loves to mix in with the ingredients. Who's to say how the Twin Peaks fan base and the David Lynch fan base would find common ground? David Lynch fans were in for it the entire way, and the Twin Peaks fans who made the leap might find something special, too."

As one of David Lynch's regular players, MacLachlan has learned not to parse the material for meaning—just as he's learned not to demand too much explanation from his director. This, he admits, he learned the hard way. "On Dune, I was rabid. I drove David to madness," he says. "And finally he closed the door on me." He offers no detailed analysis of what has transpired over the show's 16 episodes so far, and I get the sense that my intuition—to focus less on the meaning and more on the form—is the best way to experience it.

Instead, he accepts that there's a purpose to everything he's done, simply because Lynch has created it. He offers an explanation for the director's working relationship with Mark Frost, who is certainly more grounded in his craft. "Mark is the kind of writer who says there needs to be reason and process," he explains. Lynch, on the other hand, pays closer attention to theme and ideas—particularly where evil comes from, how it corrupts innocent men and women as it spreads like a virus, and where to put it in order to keep it contained. "I don't think David feels compelled to resolve everything by any means, maybe because of the idea that it's ongoing and we'll pick it back up if we have to," he says, pointing to the differences in the way Lynch and Frost attack the material. "Maybe that's why they get together once every 25 years," he laughs.

At the end of the day, the return of Twin Peaks is almost enough of a treat for MacLachlan as much as, I'd suggest, the people who are tuning in each week. "It's like a weird high school reunion," he says, and I think that the people who either watched it when it first aired or throughout the years on DVD or streaming on Netflix might say the same thing.

"I DON'T THINK DAVID FEELS COMPELLED TO RESOLVE EVERYTHING BY ANY MEANS, MAYBE BECAUSE OF THE IDEA THAT IT'S ONGOING AND WE'LL PICK IT BACK UP IF WE HAVE TO."

Working with Lynch again has been a delight, MacLachlan says, as has acting for the first time with fellow Lynch muse Naomi Watts. And, naturally, he speaks with visible exuberance about seeing Laura Dern on set again 30 years after they starred in Blue Velvet together. Dern plays Diane, the previously unseen assistant to Agent Cooper who would receive his daily briefings in the original series; she steals every scene with a sharp, bitter tongue and a platinum blonde bob wig. "Laura and I have traveled this road together a long time," MacLachlan says. "We love David very much, and we get a real kick out of each other."

But seeing Dern interact with Lynch, who directed her in Wild at Heart and Inland Empire, showed MacLachlan a different side to his friend and director. "They tease each other a lot—David and I don't really tease each other!" he laughs. "I mean, we get along, we have fun, we have a laugh. But I never felt thatcomfortable, you know? I wondered, how does she do that?" MacLachlan says that he and Dern aren't unlike siblings, realizing that their individual relationships to their father is surprisingly different.

Ultimately, MacLachlan is grateful for the opportunity to play this character again, and he's grateful for the fans for keeping the spirit of Twin Peaks alive. ("I think the fans played a big part of this," he says of the revival.) He feels like he's a part of something bigger, a piece of moving art that is ripe for interpretation and inspiration as much as it is entertaining. And, as always, he guides me to understanding how it falls within David Lynch's worldview, as well: "David tells me, 'Everything is Twin Peaks. It's all Twin Peaks,'" he says. "These stories continue—that's the whole thing. Everybody kept living and going on and doing their thing. It never stopped. Now we're picking it up again, 25 years later. Who knows if we'll pick them up again down the road, I don't know."

Before I'm even able to ask the final question—either because he knows it's coming, or simply because his answer is so obvious for him—he gives a sly smile when he responds.

"Would you do it again, down the road?"

"Oh, yes. In a minute."

Link (KM)

#Twin Peaks #Kyle MacLachlan #Esquire #David Lynch #Agent Cooper #season 3 #The Return

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cutiecrates · 5 years

Text

Cutie Reviews: Kawaii Box Sept 18

HAPPY LATE EASTER EVERYBUNNY!

This months theme: Travel with Sumikko Gurashi!

This months word: Hikouki - Airplane

Inu Sticky Notes & Unicorn Washi Tape

Our first items are these sticky notes that come in a variety of Inu and Neko styles. There are 30 pieces in all and they stand 50mm x 90mm. Each one costs $2.60 on the Blippo website. I think these are the standing sticky notes, base on how it looks.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very cute, and I love the detail. Pen just glides on it very nicely. But I did notice you have to be careful tearing it and take your time, otherwise it rips and you don’t actually get any of the stickiness, which is also very light. I found this out after wasting 2 of them.

Our next item is this cute pastel Unicorn washi/masking tape. It’s 1.5cm x 5 m length and costs $2.90.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

This one actually left me a little conflicted. I love unicorns and pastels, and the design is pretty simple, but cute, but I noticed that unless you have something white beneath the tape, it’s extremely translucent! And even then it’s still a bit hard to see!

On the plus side, if you write on it, you will see it very easy.

Sparkly Deco Tape Set

This next item is a whole set of deco tapes. Now, if you’ve been a long-time reader, you may recall a set I got like this a long time back. I thought the little tapes were cute, the little tape dispenser was adorable... but it BROKE on me the second I very gently opened it up.

So when I saw this, I was both excited, and a bit worried <3< especially because I’m convince this is one of those dollar store products. On Blippo, each set costs $1.80

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I am happy to report that this time that didn’t happen. So they either change something, or my first one was faulty. I was pleasantly surprise, although the tear is a little messy and you might be better off cutting these with scissors. I think the tapes themselves are pretty decent, and even though they’re small, you get a nice amount.

Sumikko Gurashi Winter Plushie Charm

Our next item is this kawaii Sumikko Gurashi cloaked plush charm. Each main character is available and wears a cloak that has a string bow on the front and a string strap with a felt “companion“ matching the character. Each character also wears a cloak based on someone else- except for Ebi, who wears her own cloak.

The chain is attached to this part of the character, rather than the cloak; I assume it’s to make sure they don’t slide out of it if you were to take it outside or attach it to a bag. On each of their tags, they also have little images and descriptions about the character you got, which I think is a nice touch.

Each one costs $6.90 on the Blippo website. But as of this moment they aren’t available.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I love the concept! I think it’s very cute, and I think they executed it very well. However, this is probably just me, but I think it’s kind of weird that this is qualified as a charm plush when the chain is beneath the cloak. I mean I can see why they did that, and I love the idea of dressing it up whenever I want, but I feel like if you use it as a charm, you could easily misplace the cloak.

I also notice a small amount of accuracy issues with the characters. Like compare Ebi up above between her plush and cloak form. She has her normal black mouth on the cloak, but the actual plush has a pink nose/mouth. I also notice Shirokuma has no nose but his cloak does, Neko is missing his markings, etc. That might not bother a lot of people, but it bothered me a tiny bit.

Gudetama Transparent Delicacies Sticker Set

Available for $2.90 on the Blippo website, this Gudetama set of transparent stickers includes 20 styles of sticker per set/pack (4 in total), and there are 60 stickers per set/pack.

And yes I did count just to make sure. There are 20 different stickers, and I think there’s 3 of each to equal 60.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

These are translucent as you can see, and they almost match the level of the unicorn tape- but they are WAY more defined than it was. I love them, and I’m pretty sure any Gudetama fan would enjoy these too! I like how you can see how they would look wherever you’d put them before application.

Sumikko Gurashi Traveling Around the World Badge

Our next item is this really cute badge, base on the traveling Sumikko Gurashi theme. Each costs $1.90 and there was 8 different types.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Although I favor Neko and Shirokuma, I think this is actually really cute. They were all cute actually, if I had somewhere to put them I’d probably buy all 8!

I have one issue though. I don’t know if they’re all like this or if it’s just mine- but I notice the fastener on the back is very flimsy and wriggles up and down, making it a little difficult to hold and un-fasten and fasten. Not impossible, just a little bit of a hassle.

Sumikko Gurashi Traveling Around The World Medium Notepad & 2 Unicorn Pens

On occasion we get these items in Kawaii Box that surprise me by it’s quality, and this is the one for this box. Not only is it sturdy an super-cute, but it features designs on both the front and back, a sheet of stickers,a shiny spine, and 4 sets of page designs, one of which is horizontal rather than vertical. Each notepad has it’s own set of designs too!

On the Blippo website, there is a variety of these available for $4.80.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I really really really REALLY love it! If you like Summiko Gurashi I’d recommend!

Besides this cute notepad, we also get 2 unicorn pens, which is a surprise because we normally get 1 per-box.

I’ll start with the pink tubed pen, which features 0.5mm pen and an LED unicorn on top. It comes in this pink tube, white, and lavender (which features a pastel mane in comparison to the other two) and costs $2.90.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It smears just barely until dry, and I think it’s a pretty cure and simple pen. The unicorn on it is cute, but it’s one reflective looking solid piece, meaning the horn, mane, and ears are attache. The mane looks fine, but the ears and horn are kind of weird from the front and back, to me anyway.

The other pen is fairly similar, but features no LED, has a different texture, and the unicorn is completely molded. It’s also a gel pen.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Out of the two, I noticed this pen isn’t as lasting as the other (just barely though), but it’s way more smooth when writing and right after writing I rubbed my finger on it and got no smudges. I also really like the more details on this one, so out of the two pens I favor this one.

Oddly enough though, I couldn’t find this one on the Blippo website. I spent 20 minutes looking and didn’t see it. I would assume it was around the same price as the other one though.

Happy Nikukyu Paw Gummy Candies - Cola

Our last item is this pack of adorable, cola-flavored paw gummies. I've gotten one or two bags of these before, but as obsessed with Cola as I am- I was definitely anticipating these, and their scent is heavenly~

Each bag is about 90-something kcal, and on Blippo they cost $3.60.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

They’re so soft and squishy, it almost feels like you’re chewing on a real cat paw (as cringey as that image may be), and they taste very good. The only thing I can really think that's noteworthy to mention is that they have a "coating" to them, which may leave a bit of... grime in your mouth while eating these. But I feel like it would only bother some people.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ I really liked everything in this box. I wasn’t super-excited or anticipating this review because nothing really excited me an I didn’t have much to do with the stuff- but I thought thee quality and details really made up for last time.

Price - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ If by some chance I added up right (and remember one item I couldn’t find) then this box came up to about 30 dollars! And keep in mind a few items are on sale right now. That’s about 10 or so dollars more then we actually pay, so I think this was a really good deal!

Theme - ♥ ♥ ♥ The theme was about... half-included this time around. I wasn’t displease by it, but I can’t say I would have guessed it if I was asked to. I know they could have done better.

Total Rank: 7 out of 10 Cuties. I really wanted to like this box, and initially i did until I was forced to really look at it. Usually the quality is really good, so I was kind of disappointed I found so many little problems with a lot of the items. I really liked this box. It didn't excite or entice me in any shape or form- but I love the items we got and the quality was great! I had very few complaints an even then they didn't hinder anything.

♥ Cutie Scale ♥

(I decide to skip the cutie scale for this one only because I’m not feeling well an I wanted to get this published before I went to bed. Until next time, stay cute!)

#kawaiibox #blippo kawaii shop #kawaii box #sumikko gurashi

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yesbothways · 7 years

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Dear ‘Supergirl’, I love you! Also, are we breaking up?!?

I’m one of those folks who is currently in a passion love-hate or else hate-love relationship with the show Supergirl depending on the day. I wanted to write this long post for folks who are also processing this currently. I had been thinking for a long time that aside from the single thread of the Mon-El storyline, Supergirl still had a solid, core identity as a show. The show’s appeal to its audience rested on four foundations in my mind: 1) the incredible likability and reliability of their dynamic lead with her awesome combination of classic hero problems and recognizable lady problems 2) a charismatic and deep sisterhood that formed the central love relationship and unified the dramatic arcs of the show and also let it pass the Bechdel test every episode quite easily 3) positive representations of both women and the men who are also outsiders that they share love bonds with, and 4) general lightheartedness and positivity, so even when it went dark, it was just not all THAT dark. At its worst, the show was fluffy or annoying.

With the trust I had established through s1, I thought that what they were trying to do with Mon-El was to depict a narcissistic, sexist guy who turns into one of the good guys. I thought, well, they think that’s a positive message. They’ve depicted him an “outsider” or misfit, because he’s among all these high-functioning outsiders acting like an incompetent norm. And I thought, well, this was a terrible idea. When you write a subversive story, and then you subvert your subversion, you get normative crap that’s even more generic than the original crap. It’s a parody that’s hard to watch. But it’s all well intentioned. And it will be over soon. It’s not the show. This won’t kick the foundations out from under the show.

I am honestly no longer confident that this was well-intentioned or that it won’t topple the show. I am holding onto a strong, final thread of trust in this show. But this feels now more like backlash within this show against its own core identity and values. The way they have written Mon-El feels like a gender panic and also a heteronormative panic to me. And it is absolutely NOT the actor. He’s clearly fine. He even seems like he’s probably really sweet in real life while acting like a complete jerk on tv, kind of like when Orlando Bloom tries to play a villain, and it’s like, yeah, no, you buy teddy bears for your girlfriend and one for yourself to match when you do, don’t try to play me here, babe. It’s the character, the caricature they have written. When they could have written ANYONE - a thousand other men instead of this one. So why this one?

They wrote a self-consciously narcissistic, anti-social, sexist guy into this show and then legitimately shipped him with the lead. I would have bet a hundred dollars easy that they would never do that. From the interview I just read that explains the concept behind this character and also the feel of the show, he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. He’s living in Kara’s house and apparently working in the control room at the DEO, both of which are inexplicable. A lot of folks have meticulously catalogued 1) the shadiness of Kara’s expression of consent in this relationship including her saying no several times before saying yes and being told by Alex out of nowhere that she likes him and not agreeing and 2) the continued disrespect for Kara that Mon-El has shown, which only increased after he started admitting to liking her and continued after they got together, and 3) the sheer unbelievability and plugged-in feeling quality of Mon-El’s character in the show.

At this point, I don’t see any good intentions gone wrong. From everything that I can see, Mon-El’s storyline is merely sexist backlash. Mon-El’s entire job in the narrative has been to salvage the intrinsic worth of men who would have no superior status in the previously established value system of this show. He’s there to show that all of this women-centric and “soft-man” backchat against normative stories is not a threat to the fragile egos of sexist men. Kara still wants this man. She wants him no matter what he does. There’s no cost to who he is. The princeling has not been dethroned. Don’t worry, folks. He’ll still be okay and come out on top.

At one point trying to understand all of this, I started to think for a second that Mon-El might be some superhero they’re trying to establish in order to launch a spin-off. But I honestly cannot fathom anyone investing in Mon-El’s stand alone show. He’s as derivative of Superman as Supergirl, and he’s far, far less likable. He satisfies no unique or unrepresented niche in the world of heroes. I simply don’t think he could stand on his own the hero of a show. No, he’s there in Supergirl’s world specifically to be mediocre and weak on his own. He’s there to prove that even the most “undervalued” guy, which in this particular world is a self-centered, privileged, immature guy, still has what it takes to get with Kara and live up to her as a hero. And I don’t get it honestly. We have a whole executive branch of our government currently dedicated to preaching that lie.

Yes, there’s an active demographic that affirms Mon-El’s storyline constantly. And I trust that many of them still believe in the worth of the sexist prat turned boyfriend hero storyline and believe that somehow Kara is getting something valuable from this relationship. Many fans will jump at other fans to defend Mon-El’s worthiness and desirability, whether in defense of the actor, the show, a perplexing defense of Kara, or in defense of the intrinsic and untouchable worth of the fragile white privileged masculinity that Mon-El represents, I do not know. It’s complicated, of course. But unless my ability to Google is just plain broken, Mon-El’s storyline is tanking the ratings and reviews of the show. The more someone genuinely likes the core tenants of this show, the more they dislike what Mon-El’s storylines does in this show.

Given that capitalism itself is saying NO to this, I have to think that the creators will change their minds and let Mon-El go (hopefully not to the dark side or to an early grave, but to space and an unseen hero quest away from us all). And yet, there’s a powerful emotional drive behind this character. You can see it displayed in any social media thread. So my emotional brain is stuck thinking, the decision-makers might let this franchise crash and burn before they let this go. The presence of Mon-El asserting dominance over Kara by lying to her and stepping over her boundaries without consequence, sustaining his desirability to Kara through their sexual relationship, and displaying his legitimacy in standing up to her as a hero that so far remains rhetorical and will no doubt rise symbolically in the coming episodes may be the price that we have to pay to have a woman superhero occupy any space in the mainstream.

I hope that my imagination is not strong enough to see the “twist” that’s coming that will redeem what I can only call an enormous waste of screen time and this actor’s charisma both. Because, otherwise, I am braced for more backlash within this show against its own values. AndI have two specific anxieties forming around two characters that I know many people share: James Olsen and Lena Luthor.

In regards to James, does anybody like the new, weak rivalry between Kara and James in place of the rich solidarity they had before through s1? I keep wondering how far James will drop in the value placed on characters in the show. I keep wondering, will he be gone soon or, far worse, dead? His exclusion from the Valentine’s Day episode and his third wheel status with Winn and Lyra at the bar recently made me worry. His little speech about playing it cool and acting like you don’t like your own girlfriend made me real nervous.

My worry over Lena is far worse. She entered marked VILLAIN, and she has risen into a heroic ally and a great friend. I’d say nearly everyone loves the subversion of the old Super / Luthor rivalry depicted in this character. That fits perfectly with the core identity of this show by individuating this show from Superman and affirming the themes of individuated identity, ignoring stereotypes and prejudices, and being a hero no matter how you were raised. One of the best moments this season was Kara rescuing Lena after she was pushed off her balcony. That iconic image of Superman carrying Lois became Kara carrying Lena -- not only two women, but two rivals made allies, and a character marked as evil written as her own woman. They’ve banked a lot of positive emotions and themes regarding this relationship so far.

Will they have a sudden backlash against their own story here, as well? Their only excuse for Mon-El and Kara’s relationship seems to be that it was inevitable and yet somehow also unexpected, because Kara clearly does not like him. So will this become inevitable and also unexpected, because Kara clearly does like Lena? I’d like to say no, no way, not on this show. But I don’t know anymore. They spent an entire episode affirming Kara’s hero status through her faith in Lena when everyone else would have forsaken Lena outright. So I hope they know that Kara’s status will take another brutal blow if they turn Lena evil now. However, they seem to have written Kara a whole “love” story without considering her at all. So I would not be able to feel genuinely surprised at this point.

#supergirl #kara danvers #lena luthor #james olsen #karlena #supercorp #kolsen

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newagesispage · 6 years

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DECEMBER 2017

*****The Astros win the World series.

*****Jill Kimmel is doing stand up.** Her brother Jimmy’s childhood drawings were turned into flesh super heroes The terrific Ten.** Jimmy is in a twitter war with Roy Moore. After being called out by Moore, Jimmy is heading to Alabama to either fight or talk since he is unsure of what Moore is taunting him to do. He wants to dress like a girl scout since he feels that Moore only notices little girls. Kimmel would really like to talk Christianity because as a Christian he does not understand him.

*****So.. Scary clown has delayed his decision on elephant trophy’s which has angered hunting groups.** It is said that Rex Tillerson is about to be out and Mike Pompeo in. Business as usual!

**** The tax bill is atrocious. It adds a trillion to the deficit and the middle class tax cuts would expire. They are trying to sneak in a caveat in the part about college savings plan. It would not actually change anything for savings now but it a backdoor way to have their way on abortion. It would introduce ‘fetal personhood’ into law which of course would be a short leap to taking away choice.

*****Scary clown 45 is ranting about the jury in the case of Kate Steinley who the jury says was accidently shot by an immigrant named Jose Inez Garcia Zarate. Trump has been ranting about this case for a while now but the San Francisco trial just ended.** And we are really seeing what Trump and his fake news are doing to the world. His yelling about CNN put doubt into other countries about a REAL story they did on modern day slave auctions in Libya. These are real humans that need help and he has others doubting the very story. ** He also put out fake stories about terrorism which were debunked but Huckabee Sanders said it does not matter if the stories are real, the threat is real. The fake news also gave much free publicity to hate group Britain First.

*****The original Conklin’s barn was torn down on November 7. Fingers crossed that the donations will keep coming in so they can reopen by December 2018 as Barn 3. Time for some Days cast members to donate some fundraising time??

*****Patton Oswalt kicked ass in his new Netflix special Annihilation and also just got married to Meredith Salenger.

*****Boo Boo Stewart and Mark Derwin star in Lowlifes out in 2018. Lowlifes is the story of a second chance boot camp who stumble onto a terrorist group.

*****Meghan McCain seems so angry and it seems she wants to tear Joy Behar’s head off sometimes. She is supportive of some liberal agendas but automatically turns off some ideas simply because of who is proposing them. This is the very thing she rails against. I did love her take on sleezy Matt Lauer though, I too never had any respect for him after the Anne Curry thing. And c’mon ET all the Lauer clips you showed seemed to have him in front of Rolling Stones advertising.** Lauer has been accused of many things including exposing himself. Why do these men always think we want to see their dicks? They all think they have something special, they are not that fucking different. Keep it in your pants, most would be embarrassed if they were held up to other men. And I don not believe for a minute that Jeff Zucker did not know about it. I never trusted him either.

*****China says that Trump is proof that democracy does not work. They are benefitting from our misery and zeroing in on being number 1. Besides spreading propaganda, they are making lots of jobs with clean energy that they can sell to the world.

*****Steve Green of Hobby Lobby has finally opened the 500 million dollar Bible museum. The idea of making all guests sign a promise to become evangelicals when they leave was nixed.

*****$15 mil in taxpayer money has been spent on the sexual harassment complaints of congress.

*****James Jagger and Matilda Lutz are the face of Giorgio Armani’s fragrances Because it’s you for her and Stronger with you for him.

*****Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross declared the divestment of his holdings but he’s still part owner in a company. This Russian company has ties to Putin’s son in law.

*****Please Please Conan.. More Butterscotch the clown!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****The UK is having its own political and sexual misconduct scandals including a secretary of state Damian Green.

*****The Mark Twain prize for Letterman was filled with my favorites and was very emotional. Al Franken edited out? Maher is right: The liberals are pussies.

*****The Paradise papers about offshore finances were leaked. The secret financial activities of the superrich show a lot of Russian dealings. There are also questions about Queen Elizabeth’s private estate and other business leaders.

*****The list of those accused of sexual misconduct grows, from Dustin Hoffman to Brett Ratner to Russell Simmons and more to come. Simmons is accused of raping Lena Horne’s granddaughter. We need a special kind of thank you for Ronan Farrow who is working tirelessly to blow the lid off of the Weinstein bullshit. I Can’t wait for his new book. He has exposed many things which have helped feel safe enough to come forward. So many helped in the Weinstein mess , including Dylan Howard, chief content officer of American Media Inc. which publishes The Enquirer. Howard was apparently a helper in the disgusting network of suppression. Sime sticks together like Levin sticks with Trump.** We need a real truth teller, an honest Cronkite type and I see it in Ronan. **Jane Seymour had her own story of sexual harassment with a powerful producer at the start of her career.** Charlie Rose is fired after his allegations. That one hurts.** I am so glad the women are coming forward. The bravery of citizens like in The Keepers is opening up a world of (hopefully) more truth, more justice. ** Are political operatives helping to dig any of this up?** A good portion of people I know are natural flirts. Are there some who don’t even realize that they are offending? Out and out rape and authority figures who try to stop an employee’s rise when they do not get their sexual way is obviously wrong. We are human though and sometimes that line may be crossed unintentionally. I think each story has to be looked at for what it is. We must discern between real and cruel sexual situations and tasteless jokes and bad manners. All is wrong but there are different ways to deal with the accused. Listen fully to the stories from the victim’s mouth. Follow the evidence and force yes or no answers. This political speak of “let me tell you” or “I will say this” is nonsense. People out and out believe that celebs of journalists did the bad deed but politicians receive more skepticism. People take the side of their left or right hero without really listening. If you can’t see the difference I wonder about your ability to reason, about your moral compass. An Al Franken or Garrison Keillor seem to be a bit different from a Weinstein. ** Uma Thurman had a great tweet: Happy Thanksgiving everyone (except you Harvey, and all your wicked conspirators. I’m glad it’s going slowly-you don’t deserve a bullet)** Pelosi could be a little more eloquent and quit getting in her own way defending the left. Just before I put this page out, Pelosi says Conyers should resign.. WOW! complete turn around.** A woman came forward to the Washington Post trying to push some fake news about Roy Moore. She claimed that she was impregnated by him and then it was found that she was meeting with Project Veritas whose purpose it is to set up stings on the mainstream media. Of course there are REAL reporters at the Post so the story was not published. Hmm imagine looking up facts and not getting your news from the 700 Club or online scuttlebutt. ** Isn’t all the money and power enough for these men at the top? Law and order SVU must have enough script ideas for another 20 years.** Is all the women standing up and not taking it anymore what we get for losing Hillary? It is like she had to sacrifice herself and gain liberation for the rest of us. So many can’t believe what got into the White house and real truths need to be out there. WAKE

*****Prince Harry and former Deal or no Deal employee, Meghan Markle are engaged .

*****The governor’s award honored Donald Sutherland

***** Fashion Police on E is over.

*****I watched Ozark on Netflix and wasn’t too sure after the first episode but tried the second and then I was in. There were times when I could not quite suspend my disbelief but then there were so many characters that I seemed to recognize from my real life. Bateman and many deserve some love for this project and I will miss Russ in season 2.

*****Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr story sounds like a great doc.

*****The Grammy noms are out and leading the way was Jay-Z with 8. That was followed up with Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, SZA, Childish Gambino and Khalid. Also on the list of nominations are Lorde, Lady Gaga, Imagine Dragons, Bob Dylan, Kraftwerk, Leonard Cohen, Jason Isbell, Gregg Allman, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Sanders, Carrie Fisher, Dave Chappelle, Queens of the stone age, Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Hart and The Rolling Stones.

*****So glad Search Party on TBS is back!!

*****The Crowns Plaza hotel has a projection on the outside of the building that declares FUCK TRUMP.

*****Don’t take your eyes off this administration and the judges he is putting in place, the rules that he and his cohorts are changing and the rights he is taking away from all of us. We have a lot to deal with now but don’t let his tweets or his slick talkers distract you. Yes we need justice from the Russian probe but somebody is handling that,. I wish the news would let that play out and update us more on what they are taking from us.** If you can’t see what is wtong with a Trump or a Roy Moore, I have to wonder about your moral character.

*****Hooray for Washington Week for 50 years and Meet the Press for 70. Thanks Washington Week for your touching tribute to Gwen Ifill.

*****Dan Rather has a new book, What unites us.

*****Nathan Fillion is back on ABC with The Rookie. The program is inspired by a true story of the oldest rookie in the LAPD from the executive producer of Criminal Minds, Mark Gordon.

*****For the fifth year in a row Michael Jackson has been the top dead celebrity earner.

*****Laurence Fishburne is divorcing Gina Torres.

*****Papa John’s has apologized for blaming the knee taking football players for low pizza sales. C’mon who eats that pizza anyway?.. get a good product!** The alt right has named them their official pizza.

*****Voting has begun for the rock and roll hall of fame. This year we have Bon Jovi, the Moody Blues, Dire Straits, The Cars. Judas Priest, The Eurythmics, The Zombies, J. Geils Band( please finally!!!!!), Depeche Mode and Nina Simone.

*****U.S. court judge Colleen Kollar- Kotelly barred Trump from continuing with plans to exclude transgender people from military service and thinks those who have sued have a good case.

*****So.. What the fuck is the hinky biz going on at Guantanamo? The place has its own rules and nobody can seem to agree on said rules. Brigadier General Baker found good cause for Nashiri, a suspect in the USS Cole bombing, to lose his lawyers. After the lawyers were allowed to quit, a judge ordered Baker to rescind that order but he refused. The judge put the General in jail. The General , a U.S. citizen and the 2nd highest ranking officer in the military claims the judge has no jurisdiction over him. We will have to see how this plays out.

*****James Comey is releasing his story in May with the book A Higher Loyalty.

*****Michael Lewis tells us about all the prep the Obama administration went thru to bring the Trump administration up to snuff in his new nook The Undoing project.

*****Brit Vandegraft married John Witt on October 14 and honeymooned thru Dallas and on to the West.

*****According to the pentagon, America has spent $250 mil a day on war every single day for sixteen years.

*****Donna Brazile’s book Hacks claims the Dem campaigns were offered a chance to bail out the DNC and get much support. The Bernie campaign declined but the Hillary campaign supplied the money. Brazile seemed a bit surprised and rattled about the reaction to her book in the beginning. After a couple of weeks she settled into it and the defensiveness sort of faded. She tells us that she has been in politics for fifty years and if we don’t like it ,we don’t have to buy it. She claims she enjoyed Hillary’s book and backed her all the way. Brazile writes that she got to the bottom of everything when she took over the DNC and was threatened over and over again.

*****Days alert: WTF Adrienne?? Poor Lucas never gets to keep the girl! **Peggy McCay celebrated her 90th.** Keep Hope and Raif together. Damn!

*****So glad to see Katherine Erbe on How to get away with murder.

*****Spot on writing and acting on another level with Jane and Lily and Sam and Martin on Grace and Frankie. What treasures!! Thrilled to see the appearance of Mary kay Place . Craig Welzbacher who played Myron on Days was on there too.

*****Dinklage, Harrelson and McDormand in Three Billboards… can’t wait.

*****This winter, Trump requested 70 foreign workers with special permission from the U.S. labor department for Mar –A- Lago. He also would like some for various golf clubs thru the H-2B visa program. There are currently 5,136 qualified persons in the area ready to work. America first?

*****The second part of Stranger Things just as good as the first.

*****Scary Clown 45 is being sued because he blocked twitter followers. He now knows that since he uses his tweets as an ‘instrument of governance’ blocking is not allowed.

*****Fifty years brings Rolling Stone magazine an HBO doc, a rock and roll hall of fame exhibit and the whole thing up for sale.

*****Rand Paul was attacked by his neighbor as he mowed his lawn.

*****Ok.. I realize that shows like The View have to shift.. well I guess they do.. But I don’t get how they can talk about a shooting and then hey ”view your deal’. C’mon, it just seems so inappropriate to suddenly talk about spending $ on silly things. I always tune out when this shit happens.. can’t this shit be at the end of the show. No offense to those companies but I do not watch for that. .. But good for Sonny Hostin for going to Puerto Rico to tell their story.

*****Sad to see Dale Earnhardt Jr run his last race. Is Chase Elliott the next Mr. popular ?

*****An American woman, Shalane Flanagan won the New York marathon.

*****Manafort had 3 passports and we won’t get to the trial for he and Gates until May.

*****Charles Manson is dead. Writer Phil Luciano still has some letters from him that he does not know what to do with. They are now headed into the Lincoln library in Springfield, Il.** How did Charlie wrangle such good publicity from American Horror story? The timing as usual is impeccable. Charles (Manson) in charge?** The History channel seems to have some unheard recordings from Charlie that will air on December 3 as Manson Speaks.

*****Prince Salmon Mohamed is purging in Saudi Arabia. His crackdown has included about 500 other Princes who have been rounded up. He is consolidating power and getting rid of enemies. Just days before Jared Kushner went for a visit. It seems like so many ego driven men in the world today are grabbing all the power they can.

*****Check out Jeff Ross roasts the border.

*****The recent elections went pretty well for the left including Bill DeBlasio. Congrats to all the newly elected including the first openly trans woman and an African American mayor in Montana. Nobody should get too cocky.

*****The VA says they won’t help the dishonorably discharged per the Trump team. Hmm no help from VA, no universal health care.. I guess soldiers should suffer in silence, beat their families or become addicts.

*****Wow Darrell Hammond was awesome on a Criminal Minds that Aisha Tyler directed.** BTW Did ya see the episode where Mantagna utters the line, “I don’t like a the snakes.’? OMG

*****HBO is making a limited series about the Jonestown tragedy with Vince Gilligan and Octavia Spencer.

***** Watch for Peter Fonda in The Ballad of Lefty Brown coming out December 15.

***** So.. Tiny kitchens are a thing?

***** Pumpkin spice has reached its peak. Pumpkin out: Maple in.

*****Check out Sean Astin as Paul Manafort in Houseguest (on Colbert).

*****I thought my head was gonna explode when Bill Maher had Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Chris Matthews and Sarah Silverman on the same episode.

*****So the People mag sexiest man is stupid anyway but Idris isn’t the man this year? WTF??

*****Jim and Andy: The story inside the story inside the story of Carrey playing Kaufman. This is a great piece of work. Is it wrong to say how hot it is that Jim gets this look in his eye about Andy? Even though he is no longer inhabited by Kaufman, something seems to bubble inside him when he talks about the man.

*****On November 14th Bob Corker held hearings on executive authority to use nuke’s .

*****The Louis CK film I was looking forward to ‘I love you Daddy’ looks like a wash.

*****They say the Pres has no control over fuel prices but Trump in.. prices soaring.

*****Rwanda has offered to host African migrants stranded in Libya.

*****Why do people always say they did not think it would happen to them or their communities when shootings happen? How long does it take to sink in to Americans that mental illness and this obsession with weapons is everywhere? I will agree with a couple of things that the NRA says like we need to enforce the rules in place better a that mental health is a big part of the problem. If mental health is the real issue then where is the universal health care we need to take care of this problem?

*****GQ has named Colin Kaepernick citizen of the year.

*****Just as I am posting this the Mike Flynn charges were announced. They broke into the news with this news. A real reporter must never get any sleep in these Trump times. Apparently he is pleading guilty and cooperating in the Russian investigation. Go Go GO DOJ!

*****Why is the last sketch on Saturday Night Live usually the best?

*****R.I.P. Dennis Banks, Liz Smith, Lil Peep, Malcolm Young, George Young, Brad Bufanda, victims of the Texas church shooting, Gloria Fallon, Roy Halladay, Robert Knight, Chuck Mosley, John Hillerman, Paul Buckmaster, Mel Tillis, Della Reese, David Cassidy, Earle Hyman, Joseph L. White, Jim Nabors and Rance Howard.

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notyouraveragearchitect-blog · 7 years

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HOW TO REALLY ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN’

An Economic Plan Rebuttal to the Trump Syndrome.

If you’re not a supremacist, or a hater of anything that strays from the strictest version of Patriarchal society, or you don’t have an economic annual value over $1 million, and you supported Donald Trump for President, I want to say, I feel your pain. Although I am technically thrown into the societal basket of privileged white males, I live every day in fear of being one bad medical mishap away from economic ruin. I am a self-identified progressive that consciously moved my family to the bleeding edge Bay Area of CA, but my roots are firmly in the rural cornfield lands I like to call the ‘eastern-most edge of the Midwest’; the snowbelt area of southern Buffalo, NY. The mindset is conservative and the economic boon of the auto and steel industry have long since seen the area slowly bled of its vitality and hope. Even so, it has taken me a while to wrap my head around the feeling of economic despair facing white middle America. The Trump Syndrome rocked my word and many in my world. The shock of electing possibly the least caring person I could think of living within the United States left scars that may never fully heal. But because so many people in my life have closed one eye to the horrors of his character, I knew there had to be something real there; something much deeper. It was only through placing myself firmly in their shoes; shoes I too could have worn if I remained in Buffalo, was I able to finally get it.

At one point not long ago, a man [as was typically the case back then] could find a job working in the Bethlehem Steel Mill or the Ford Stamping Plant with or without a college degree, earn a pay check, buy a house, buy a car, raise a family, and have a pension with security for the future. The money spent by these upwardly mobile middle class workers powered the entire economic region. Those jobs are mostly gone now. This is not a new phenomenon as the slow bleed has been happening for many decades and is well documented. What’s new is that the level of despair and the feeling of not being heard or helped has finally come to a head. The cost of housing, daycare, college education for children, health insurance, etc is pushing even modest dual-income families to the brink of what’s physically possible. Stepping backward from middle income into the poverty level is demoralizing and creating a universal feeling of failure amongst working white families, in particular white men. Democrats have fought the hardest for the middle class, but have focused their empathies on minorities and the poor at the perceived expense of middle America whites; which made it easier for conservatives to place the blame on them for that demographics’ economic woes.

The economic revival of the Bill Clinton era was undercut by one major slice of the NAFTA lawn sickle. At the same time, the powerful auto workers’ unions dug in their heels on innovative changes to preserve the generous negotiated pension plans. The rallying cry became ‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’ And thus the barn door was swung open for Japanese and other auto makers to take the reigns as leaders in auto innovation and performance. Whether or not globalization was upon us because of declining belief in American goods or because of the NAFTA agreement was almost irrelevant. It became the scapegoat for all the ills of the manufacturing industry, and Democrats were squarely to blame. The actual truth behind the blame played second fiddle to the perceived lack of compassion by the Democrats to the cries of the middle America whites. The real issue is the direct link between a family’s pocketbook and the feeling of self-worth as a human being by the bread winner. Although it was always clear to me the Democrats cared more about the middle class, they never were able to articulate and fight for a real economic strategy for bringing back those types of jobs. Until Obama.

The feeling of hope and change in the Obama era faltered for many reasons. Ushering in of this era scared the crap out of conservatives. The vision was strong, well-articulated, and with the economic meltdown at the hands of the Bush administration, there was fear that a second New Deal would crush the Reagan conservative agenda for decades to come. To remain politically viable, they had no choice but to clear cut and intentionally dismantle all signs of hope through obstruction of each and every Obama initiative. Coupled with the relentless Fox News negativity campaign, which is the primary news source of middle America, the slash and burn approach by conservatives worked. Obama, the great compromiser, overestimated the goodness of conservatives and squandered a second New Deal vision for a watered down ‘shovel ready project’ version. The New Deal built schools all across the country, dams, bridges, tunnels, and had long term lasting impacts on communities through social good. What was left across the country were physical built reminders of the ‘greatness’ of American achievement. A reminder of the jobs that were created and the pride that came from those built structures. For the sake of expediency and compromise, the Great Recession recovery left no such lasting mark on the landscape. Fixing roads and bridges puts people to work and saved our country from economic ruin, but there were no prideful physical remnants. Obama saved our country, there is no doubt, but did not fight hard enough, did not push back on conservative obstruction soon enough, and did not stick with the real long term projects that would have set us up for the next 30 years of economic growth. Even the achievement of Obamacare fell short of a truly revolutionary vision. Instead of providing health care for all through a single-payer plan similar to the well liked Medicare plan, Obama early in the negotiations scrapped that plan as a way of getting conservatives on board. In the end, none of them came on board and the resulting watered down version left profit-driven insurance companies still in charge our nation’s health care system. We are still the only major first world country left with millions of citizens without health insurance. Now, it’s easy prey for conservative dismantling and is one of the largest contributors to the Trump Syndrome through incessant Fox News negativity.

The Trump Syndrome is a direct byproduct of the economic hopelessness felt by white middle America, and the relief that a candidate was finally feeling their pain and offering a vociferous vision defending them. Unfortunately, the current regime is motivated by two basic creeds, money and power. The economic principals being implemented will give the economy a short term shot in the arm, but will ultimately fail the entire middle class, will further enrich and empower the top 1 percent, and send our country into another recession. The primary reasons are simple. Tax cuts for the wealthy results in greater wealth disparity, more money being hoarded in tax shelters, and less money in the hands of the middle class. Giving more money to ‘job creators’ does not create more demand for products or goods. Putting more money in the hands of the middle class and the poor is the only way to create more demand. Most importantly, the current regime has no vision for HOW to create new sustained jobs for the future. Like Obama, infrastructure projects like fixing roads and bridges create jobs, but once the 'fixing’ is done, those jobs go away. So, the result is a short term bump, and a long term bust. It’s the equivalent of a 5-Hour energy drink for our country for short term political gain with no thought for what happens after 5 hours. It also takes years to undo the ill advised policies that were put in place. What’s needed is a new long term New Deal-like vision, and so far progressives are the only ones embracing the visions I’ve summarized below. All that’s needed is the right orator to sell the deal to the American people.

Although high tech, real estate, and other sectors have powered much of the current urban economic boom, these jobs require highly skilled, educated individuals. So the economic benefits of the recovery has been focused outside the rural areas. What’s really needed are good paying jobs that tradesmen type workers can get for the next 30+ years to power an entire generation of people into the middle class. These jobs do not necessarily require 4 year college degrees to perform successfully. We need industries that transform our country and produce downstream ripple benefits for other investments and other industries.

There needs to be a three pronged approach to the future growth of our country: 1. a new country-wide high speed rail infrastructure [which should be coupled with the electric grid upgrade] 2. an all-in approach on renewable energies and 3. return to belief in sound science and investment in technology.

The auto and oil industry lobbyists have dominated congress for decades. Every politician that mentions high speed rail gets slammed by naysayers who claim it needs to be economically ‘viable’. What they mean is that the dollars generated by passengers needs to cover all costs including construction, operation and ongoing maintenance. This assertion is ludicrous. There are millions of miles of highways and roads across our country, yet only a handful of select toll roads are actually economically self-sufficient. The remainder are 100% taxpayer subsidized. When the highways were built, there was an enormous infrastructure investment by the government, which spurred decades of secondary economic growth and private sector profits. But it took a vision and courage by Eisenhower to sell it, and faith and hard work by the American people to make it happen. Once the roads were built, real estate speculators and developers bought up land which created new wealth, towns were constructed around the highways which created millions of jobs, and entire new industries [like trucking and delivery services] became feasible. Our country did the same with airports. It’s time for high speed rail. Studies have shown each dollar in infrastructure spending results in $10 of private sector wealth. High speed rail lines can run between urban centers, reduce airport congestion by reducing flights between cities 2-5 highway hours apart, create millions of new high paying construction jobs across the country, spur in new real estate market growth at rail stations, reduce highway congestion and pollution, rail cars can be built here in the US, and result in generations of construction in new walkable communities within ½ mile of stations. The country also needs an upgrade to the power grid. The new train lines are electric and ideal locations to couple with a new electric grid upgrade. Because of auto and oil industry lobbyists and conservative obstruction, our country has missed this opportunity and our middle American workers desperately need this vision to get them back to work.

Regardless whether our leaders are science deniers, the rest of the world is not. This wave of green technology and renewable energies technologies is well under way in every country of the world. Except the US. Even if our leaders don’t believe man effects the temperature of our planet, it’s imperative for the economic future of our country that we get on board and start to become a leader in innovation and technologies around these ideals. We’ve spent the last 30 years fighting wars because we lacked control of our energy sources and we’re about to shoot ourselves in the foot again because we’ll be buying our energy products from China and other countries just so we can compete. If their energy sources are built, renewable, and cheap, our manufacturers will be at a significant disadvantage. They will crush us economically in the world marketplace. Our leaders need to lead to a new future, not fight to go backwards to coal and oil and fracking. The first countries to discover cheap new innovative ways to harness energy will be the ones that benefit the most financially from those inventions. The US has never backed away from a challenge, and yet the Trump Syndrome has put us potentially four or more years backwards into the past.

Because most major economic booms start with government investment [i.e. the internet, biomedical engineering, robotics, satellites, air travel, high speed rail, aerospace industry etc] we need to double down on science and technology investment. Like infrastructure projects, [even if only 1 in 10 dollars lead to new innovations] the economic return on those successful innovations is enormous to not only our economy, but to our societal and potential health benefits. This is the obvious reason why investment is the key to our future. We can’t let conservatives that bash government investments that don’t work out [like Solyndra] thwart the progress of investment in our future. This is imperative to ensure the United States remains at the forefront of ALL new world discoveries. Giving this edge away to another country, like the current regime is doing, is the first step in the demise of the US as a world leader.

To make this vision happen, all citizens must reject every aspect of the Trump Syndrome that puts the US at risk for losing its status as an economic leader. We must rally around a progressive candidate that fights for where the US can be in the future with new and innovative ideas and not someone that clings onto old technologies to maximize their own personal profits. And we must focus on a financial vision that benefits urban AND rural America so we can finally rally our entire country behind a common cause again that doesn’t involve a war.

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#howtoreallymakeUSgreat

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