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bread-elf · 4 years

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DWC 2020 - Day 29

Hallow’s End

Post invasion of N’zoth

It had been a long time since there was so much peace able to be achieved, especially with something as devastated as the assault from the Black Empire. With the change of season just around the corner, nearly the whole world focused on the festivities of fall, and Jiroki is no exception.

A distraction of the mind was greatly needed, and she knew many of her own people could use it as well. And so, she decided to reach out to those that she knew who had children, to see if perhaps they would be interested in a gathering for trick or treating in Elwynn Forest, and some had attended.

Jiroki of course had brought her family. Her sister, Estal'anar, is currently taking her turn walking with Jiroki's twins. She knew her children did wonders for Estal's mental health, and even her human 'boyfriend' Szadek walked along with them. Both of the twins dressed like faerie dragons, in hoods and having little wings attached to their costume, holding hands together and with the couple as they walked. They almost looked like their own family, and Jiroki wondered when in the fel Szadek would man up and take the next step with her sister.

Aridren, their uncle, carried Jiroki's littlest one, Taldreath. The small boy still small enough to be cradled, a bit small for Kaldorei babes as is. The boy wore a warm hoodie designed to look like a Murlock, keeping him cozy in the chilly air as his great uncle carried him in his arms while bouncing lightly. Aridren followed behind Estal and Svadek and the twins, going up to a house to get some candy. Jiroki's dear friend, Relliea "Moon" Wilder, walked alongside the red headed human Nathiria Vetrose. Their sons had taken a liking to each other, Nathiria's boy Jaxon dressed like a green dragon whelping, and Andorus a warrior with a color scheme similar to a Blood Knight. They played and pretended to fight against one another as they ran off for more candy. Moon carried her youngest born in her arms, a darling little elf girl with bright silver eyes, yet brown hair and slim ears similar to a Sin'dorei. As the two mothers chat Sheamus stood with them, a worgen in his human form as he carefully watched over Jasper from afar, anxious and wanting to impress his love interest Nathiria. But beside him his attention kept getting drawn, Eric Parthilan, a human priest of balance, chatting away as his wife Ilysaraeth stood nearby, and both carried their newborn twins. Ilysaraeth also walked the path of a Demon Hunter, but took recommendation from Jiroki of her own Azerite treatment she got in order to attempt to have a child. By a miracle they successfully conceived and now the haflings babbled happily in their parent’s arms. The couple named the boy Galadend, and they even had decided to name the little girl Jiroki. The Darkstars and Moonshadows walked together up ahead. Ia and Zanheaaen Darkstar had brought their toddlers Eylennia and Zevris, halflings between humans and Quel'dorei. Though the stoic couple had never really participated in Hallow's End before, and their children wore just plain orange onside. But Kengah Moonshadow found them endearing, much more so than what her partner Cylan Moonshadow had dressed up their children. Nina and Zorba, as well as halflings of humans and Kaldorei, the little children had been dressed up as puppies, Cylan playfully trying to irk his Worgen wife. Even now she glared at him as he hurried along with their 'puppies', making a fool of himself and walking while in a low squat, squirming his arms like waves as he matched forward, his children laughing behind him and trying to catch up to their silly An’da. Merli'neath P.P. Glaivefall dressed as a fantasy fairy princess. Pink wings sparkled on her back while little sticker stars dotted all over her the bridge of her nose and high cheekbones, a tiara crowned on her while her lovely long hair cascaded down. Allerian Windspyre is with her, a young Kaldorei that Jiroki had a bit of a fondness for, almost like a son. Though at an age to be considered a young adult in their culture, the young monk-in-training dressed up as well, as a member of the Shado-Pan. But both Merli and Allerian were occupied trying to assist a frail old Kaldorei. Rather large for an elf, hunched over even and using a crane to help walk. A long white beard nearly touched the floor as it swayed side to side, and the man wore a mask similar to what Shadow Hunters wear. He wore large mittens to keep his hands warm, his ears rather short and looking rather strange for a Kaldorei. Merli and Allerian helped the man walk and take his stroll for candy as well, but Jiroki had suspicions as she saw a chicken walking after the ‘old man’. Daniel Farington the death knight enjoyed partaking in the seasonal events that occurred around the world. His memory has been lost years ago, every year he always experienced something new, and he enjoyed it the most with his beloved. A young human druidess, given the name Fawn’s Step in the Willow, a woman with tribal markings from the Furblog tribe who had named her, walked together in silent steps with him. Daniel wore a cut out mask with the face of a human man on it, pretending to not talk as himself as Fawn carried what they considered to be their child. A black kitten, wearing a little headband with antlers of a stag on them, though the kitten didn’t seem to look to enjoy it much as it’s carried around. Sharpen Jadescythe had heard of parents in the Greyshields coming to hang out, and he brought along his little moose pet he named Venidaughter. Once he had seen that a couple actually had a small animal they considered their child, the sweet himbo immediately attached himself to them, getting to know them and trying to make plans for a ‘play date’. Jiroki herself attended all this as well, watching everyone mingle with one another as children played and were stopped from gorging on candy. She had dressed up as well, in her Saurok costume that she had worn for a few events as is. But in the moment, she stood off at the side of the road, having a wardrobe malfunction that she had her mate Aztook try to assist with. The demon hunter wore a large carved pumpkin on his head similar to the Headless Horseman, she wondered if he could even breath with that thing on. But thankfully he didn’t have need of his eyes, his hands trying to fix the buckles on the back. As annoying as the malfunction is, that wasn’t the most annoying thing on the forefront of her mind. The most annoying thing is in front of her, in fact. Four of them. Drake Duskrunner leaned against a fence post with his arms crossed as he chatted with others. Fa’don Blackshade stood next to him, another Kaldorei wearing a druidic garb of an owl mask as a costume, though he’s nearly quite the opposite of a druid. Two Ren’dorei stood by them, both males. Ianasril Azureflame dressed like a pirate, a large hat and an eyepatch, but currently had the eyepatch moved aside while talking with the other two. Sol’athen Dawnvale didn’t even bother to dress up, standing there with a rather grim look on his face, sighing to himself as he looked to have been dragged along by Ian to yet another outing. All four of them just chatted idly with one another, having followed Jiroki the entire time this night thus far, even waiting for her as Aztook tried to help with her costume. “I know why you’re here.” Jiroki butts in the conversation, making a motion at Drake. “But I don’t know why you three are here. Don’t you have anything better to do?” She says as she looks at the three stooges. “No. I mean- hoot.” Fa’don answers. “Arrg, Shield Mother!” Ian once more starts up his fake pirate accent. “We ‘ere fer de booty!” Raising up his bag of candy. “Hurry up, scallywag, or ya’ walkin’ the plank!” “I really wish I wasn’t here.” Sol’athen laments with a grim expression. Drake just shrugs, giving a smirk towards Jiroki. “Then why are you loitering here if you’re collecting candy?! Go somewhere else- OW- watch the claws!” Jiroki turns her head back towards Aztook. “Sorry!” Though Jiroki could hear the grin on Aztook’s lips. “Just so many buckles and the like. I’m- more used to taking them off…” His voice dips lower at that, genuinely having trouble trying to fix her buckles with his leathery and clawed fingers. “Ugh.” Jiroki rolls her eyes and looks back towards the group. “Well you’re embarrassing me with your stupid costumes! Just go already!” “Hey we’re not that stupid!” Fa’don says in rebuttal, thinks on his words, then realizes his flaw. So, in retaliation, he turns to Drake. “Hey Drake, you know Rebbecane, right? From the Wandering Exchange? She used to be in the Greyshields, right?” “Huh? Yea?” Drake turns his head towards the other male, a brow raised as he gives him his attention. “Oh you should have seen it! Jiroki thinks our costumes are bad, but Rebbecane was teasing her for hers!” “Hey don’t tell him about that!” Jiroki immediately starts to blush stubbornly, taking a step forward, but Aztook yanks her back as he still is trying to fix her costume. “Oh yea? What she say?” Ian gives a gnarly grin, very much anticipating the mischievous deed Fa’don is beginning. “Heh, she kept trying to make Jiro curl her arms up like a dinosaur.” Fa’don rears his hands back in demonstration. “And to ends her sentences with a ‘rawr’! I totally heard her play along, too!” “H-Hey!” “That wasn’t even the funniest thing; she even said someone should put a leash on her! Ho ho, that got a reaction out of some of the security!” “Oh really now?” Drake glances back at Jiroki with a wide and devilish smirk, ideas dancing in his head as he gives her a wink, and Ian just laughs at the story Fa’don shares. Sol’athen sighs with a roll of the eyes; at times, Jiroki could relate with Sol’athen on a spiritual level. Jiroki growls, clearly getting angrier, but Aztook holds her back. “Just a minute deary.~” Aztook has a chipper tone in his voice despite the taunts given at his wife. But she could feel his sightless gaze on him, enjoying her reactions, thriving for them, waiting until she’s riled up just enough before setting her loose. “You think you can so brazenly talk about me like that right in front of me?!” Jiroki hisses. “I just don’t think you should call our costumes stupid when you’re the one that should be on a leash!” Fa’don crosses his arms, head tilted back as if triumphant in the discussion. “Maybe I should call Sharpen over here!” Jiroki blushes immediately, Ian continues to erupt in laughter. “She’s going to kill you.” Sol’athen shakes his head at Ian, giving a sigh. “Done.~” Jiroki clenches her hands, itching to move. Just as she hears her mate finished helping she turns back and looks at him, then does a double take at the pumpkin mask he wore. “... Let me borrow that.” As the others continue to laugh and mock their boss Jiroki grabs the pumpkin off of Aztook’s head, shoving her own Saurok mask into his hands, and Aztook has one of the widest grins he’s had in a long time as he carefully watches his wife. “Prepare yourselves, the bells have tolled…” Jiroki starts, causing the others to look at her. “Shelter your weak, your young, and your old.” Bringing up the helm, she dons the mask of the Headless Horseman. “Each of you shall PAY the final sum!!” Whirling around she faced the four, her face covered entirely by the mask. “CRY for mercy! THE RECKONING HAS COME!” Drake, being the former mate of Jiroki, knew very well just how his ex could get. Giving Aztook a look, he throws up a peace sign, takes a few steps away, and then melds entirely into the shadows. The other three are left startled, giving their Shield Mother a few strange glances and looking amongst one another, and Ian is the one who manages to let out a loose laugh. “Haha, that’s a great impersonation Jir-” A thrum of magic in the air, and Jiroki’s glaive is summoned from mid air, the weapon soul bound to her. “We’re fucking dead, RUN!” Ian quickly pats Fa’don’s chest and starts to move back, the taller elf doing the same and the pair quickly bolt it down the path. As Jiroki begins to run, Sol’athen just stands there, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping upon hope not to get in the crossfire of Jiroki’s wrath; maybe she wouldn’t see him if he stood still. He’s left to wonder that fact as Jiroki just barrels past him, running after Ian and Fa’don. “How mad do you think she is?!” Fa’don asks mid run. “I don’t know-” Ian begins to respond, only to hear a swishing sound in the wind, and suddenly her glaive shoots past them and slams into the ground a bit ahead, causing Ian to jump out of the way. The Void elf lets out a high pitched shrill of a scream, and in his haste is consumed in his shadows and vanishes from sight. “That little shit- TRAITOR!!” Fa’don calls out as he’s left alone to run away from Jiroki, the she-elf still hot on his tail as they run into the forests of Elwynn. There’s a taunting laugh that echoes, Ian doing so from whatever depths of void he disappeared to, then silence follows as now it’s just the Kaldorei. “Kiki I’m sorry!!” Fa’don begins his rushed apologies, still running like the wind as Jiroki runs after him. “Can I take you out?! We can go to Dalaran! Boralus?!” He’s suddenly nailed in the back of the head by the pumpkin mask, nearly making him stumble and offsetting his own mask a bit, having to yank it off and shake his black hair out while running, almost ripping out his snake bite piercings in the process. “KIKI STOP!!” “GET BACK HERE!” (( @daily-writing-challenge ))

#stories

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dearyallfrommatt · 4 years

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Hotel Anchovy 1934 {B&W Classic Comedy Short}

The Ritz Brothers were a comedy team operating predominately in the 1930s and ‘40s, peers of the more recognized Marx Brothers. While the Marxes were notable for their various differing personalities playing off one another and whoever was unfortunate enough to be their target, the Ritzes went about things like three rapid-fire versions of the same screwball, a dancing, silly-voiced three-man tornado.

The above is the first picture they made, the 1934 two-reeler Hotel Anchovy. Harry played the hotel manager and eldest brother Al the hotel detective while baby brother Jimmy played a bellhop. They come together to, basically, screw with guests at a hotel until the owner can get it sold. Unlike the Marx Brothers, who would’ve been cast as “legitimate” operators that indulged in farce, probably because they were all conmen, the Ritz Brothers were hired (in the short) to be wacky and zany, which they pull off with aplomb. This is seriously one of the funniest things ever put to film.

Three of four brothers (brother George was their manager) and a sister (Gertrude) born to a couple in Newark, NJ, to an Austrian-born Jewish haberdasher and wife named Joachim, Al was the first to enter showbiz as a vaudeville dancer. Seeing “Ritz” on on a laundry truck, he took it as a stage name. Harry and Jimmy eventually joined, and the brothers soon incorporated comedy bits into their dancing routine. Unlike the Marxes manic wordplay or the Three Stooges (which included brothers Moe, Curly and Shemp Howard along with Larry Fine) outrageous slapstick, the Ritzes specialized in precision-timed jokes and rampant silliness, drawing on their considerable skills as dancers to compliment the vocal gags. Rubber-faced Harry acted as leader with Al and Jimmy following along in his wake. Starting out on vaudeville and working nightclubs in the ‘20s, by the early ‘30s they were headliners

After making Hotel Anchovy in 1934 for Educational Pictures, the home of stone-faced funnyman Buster Keaton, the Ritz’s signed a picture deal with 20th Century Fox, playing usually in musicals using their boisterous zaniness to liven up some rather pedestrian pictures. Their first film was 1936′s Sing, Baby, Sing with no one you’ve probably heard of, and they got their first staring role with 1937′s Life Begins At College.

Unfortunately, the Ritz Brothers never got the good writers and top gag men the Marx Brothers (initially) got, and their films are, well... pretty dull. Their scenes are always a treat but the rest is usually a slog. One rare exception is the 1939 take on Alexander Dumas’ well-worn The Three Muskateers staring Don Ameche (Trading Places and Cocoon). Staging a walkout over the low-quality scripts they were being given, particularly 1939′s woeful The Gorilla featuing an already slumming Bela Lugosi, and Fox basically told them to get stuffed. They made one more picture before signing with Universal.

Unfortunately, Universal didn’t treat them much better, regulating them to B-movies and cameos. The Brothers stuck it out until 1943′s Never A Dull Moment, which actually wasn’t that bad comparatively, before quitting the movie business. They went back to working mostly in nightclubs with the odd appearance television appearance for the next 20 years.

In 1965 while appearing at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans (which is still in operation in the CBD) Al Ritz died of a heart attack. Always very close, the two surviving brothers were devastated but carried on the act for a few more years. They appeared in a pair of ‘30s B-movie homages in the mid ‘70s, Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood and Blazing Stewardesses. The later movie they replace the Three Stooges, as an aging Moe Howard was too sick to participate. Harry also cameoed in Mel Brooks’ 1976 paean to classic Hollywood Silent Movie.

Eventually retiring, Jimmy Ritz died in November 1985. Brother Harry’s own health was too delicate and he was never told of his brother’s death. He passed away five months later.

While they’re often compared to the Marx Brothers, who would occasionally turn on the speed-of-light tomfoolery like the examination scene in A Day At The Races, the comparison really wasn’t fair. The Ritz Brothers never really let the pace down long enough to engage in the sort of deadpan give-and-take double-talk humor Groucho and Chico excelled in. Indeed, it was rare to see a scene where one sole Ritz engaged with anyone else, a la Grouch’s insult-laden flirting with Margaret Dumont or Thelma Todd. And up until Irving Thalberg’s death at least, the Marxes just flat out got better scripts and jokes.

But as Hotel Anchovy proves, with the right material the Ritz Brothers were as funny as anyone in the golden days of Hollywood. They influenced everyone from Jerry Lewis and Sid Caesar to George Carlin and the TV show M*A*S*H. Harry Ritz was said to be the “funniest man in Hollywood” by many, including Norman Lear. The Brothers got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987 in response to a campaign led by Milton Berle and Phyllis Diller.

Their movies are hard to find but to be frank, they’re for the most part not worth the effort. However, Hotel Anchovy is a scream, a lost nugget of Hollywood. Check it out.

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vagabondretired · 6 years

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Moe and Larry had their pluses, but The Three Stooges weren't worth a poke in the eyes without Curly, aka Jerome Howard. He was hilarious while interacting with his co-stooges, but I think he was funniest during his more intimate solo comic moments, where he focused like a laser on achieving a simple task that nevertheless always remained just out of reach, like, say, eating oyster stew. Enjoy: Happy 115th birthday Sunday, Curly, wherever you are. Can I get a N'yuck N'yuck?

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namelesslake · 6 years

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The Death of Stalin

4/5

There’s no tougher comedic tightrope to walk than satire. Too heavy on the story, and the jokes are lost much like David Michod’s War Machine. Forcing the message feels like a hard nudge in the ribs. Too often is the humor in satire found early in the premise but screenwriters have a hard time bringing the message full circle without being cloying. The jokes are thrown often and effectively in Jason Reitman’s Thank You For Smoking but the clunky third act misses the mark once Reitman wants to force a conscience into its protagonist. Often the source of satire is found in commenting on an industry (specifically Ben Stiller’s duo of Hollywood/studio system in Tropic Thunder and fashion/celebrity in Zoolander) but tackling history merely ratchets up the challenge. Choosing a particularly depressing moment in history, Armando Iannucci swings for the fences detailing the power struggle of Russia’s highest ministries following the death of the red tsar.

Unlike Dr. Strangelove, Iannucci keeps his ensemble of government agents lean but stacks the deck with a can’t miss cast. At its core, the three stooges swirling to clean up past misdeeds and position themselves at the top are played by Steve Buscemi, Simon Russel Beane, and Jeffrey Tambor respectively. Immediately following Stalin’s demise, Tambor’s anxious Malenkov assumes the reigns of the government sending him into a self conscious, dictatorial tizzy. The vultures buzzing whispers into his ear are Beale’s Beria, also responsible for government’s prisons and master of secrets, and Buscemi’s slimy Khruschev born with the gift of never letting his lips cease flapping while simultaneously saying nothing. But Iannucci has been blessed with an entire supporting cast just as talented at keeping the baton in the air.

The inane hilarity of government has long been Iannucci’s specialty, previously helming the riot Into the Loop as well as serving as the show runner for the multi-season awards juggernaut Veep. In each, his government agents are poised and adept at supporting governmental decrees one minute, then trying to tear them apart the next once they find a new angle that better serves their selfish ends. While Iannucci succeeds in scene after scene in Stalin of getting laughs, a rare accomplishment in any right, he never secures the gut check belly laughs from the best of Veep or Loop. Perhaps because his historical source fills every moment with bleakness the second the viewer remembers the close to the truth it is. While never nudging too hard, the film lands some key moments connecting pointing to our administration and the price of truth. Without hesitation, nearly everyone at one point or another advocates for the death of millions. The absurdist, tragic world depicted in Iannucci’s Russia is as devoid of soul as any could be. A doctor is needed to examine Stalin’s body as everyone laments that all the best doctors have already been murdered or exiled at their own bidding.

Outside his madcap center, Iannucci fills out his story with a lively, game set of clowns. Everyone plays into the paranoia to its zenith particularly Paddy Considine as a state radio manager Andreyev. After his audience applauds and files out of the concert hall, Andreyev receives word from on high for a recording of the previously unrecorded concert. Deftly blending slapstick, quick wordplay, and Iannucci’s trademark verbal jousting, Considine rises above the stellar cast as a standout. It’s in the effortlessness that everyone makes what is actually tremendously difficult that so impressive upon reflection. Holding her own as nearly the only female role in the ensemble, Andrea Riseborough delivers scene after scene recalling Chekhov’s Masha

As everyone fights for the throne, their double crosses and backfires hurl the country into insanity and to the brink of chaos. While this presents plenty of connections to our current political landscape, the reminder of government regimes worse than even our own makes our fight for democracy all the more important. The Death of Stalin neither proves to be Iannucci’s crown gem nor does it remove him from his deserved place as Europe’s funniest writer still very much in control of his voice. The absurdity has never been higher, but has it ever been for us either?

#film #film reviews #movie reviews #criticism #film criticism #the death of stalin #armando iannucci #steve buscemi #jeffrey tambor #comedy #movies

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 6 years

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Life Story Part 70

I quickly grew accustomed to living at Maria's, and for the most part, even though I had been psychologically enslaved, I managed to grow and develop as a person at Maria's. Perhaps slave is a bit strong. Slave implies physical restraint. There was technically no physical restraint. But that household would have fallen to bits without me, and it was hard to say no considering there was nothing else for me to turn to. Going to either parent's house seemed like a terrible chance to take at the moment. I had a little bit of freedom at Maria's in the off chance that I was not babysitting, which was seldom. Maria had me feeling pure guilt over anything I did wrong. It was funny, because she herself was not a perfect housekeeper, but she made sure that I did a perfect job. I was the one who cooked, did the dishes, scrubbed the floors and toilets, do the laundry, and anything else that needed doing. Any sort of sense of structure or discipline came from me. Maria worked or slept or watched romantic comedies, and if she was home her children acted atrociously, breaking things, attacking one another, making it impossible for anything to go smoothly. And I just tried to ignore them when Maria and her kids were being toxic. It was hard sometimes, but I had to hold back.

This had been the first time in my life that I adhered to a structure. I've often been known to be terribly lazy for one and for two I think generally, excluding specific situations, it's more important for people to keep in touch with their own wants and inner workings than it is to follow some societal clock. But at Maria's, I just sort of fell into it. Perhaps having been out of school for so many years with nothing meaningful to take up my time, I needed that structure. I had few belongings, three shirts, two pairs of pants, and about forty paperbacks that I read through vigorously. I woke up each morning and did a certain range of chores. By around noon I would sit down and play Innocent Life Harvest Moon for three hours and then I would get up and start dinner. The kids were picky, so I essentially had to cook two-four separate dinners for each of them. After dinner I mopped the floors and did the dishes and got the kids ready for bed. Then I would read until I was tired.

Some days the Mormons would come and talk to the kids. They talked to me a bit – but they looked taken aback and hurt when they discovered I didn't really believe in a conceivable knowable benevolent God with a human essence, so they mostly left me alone, hoping I might catch their drift second hand.

Kurt Vonnegut became my new favorite. His ideas were easy for me to grasp, easy for me to relate to and he was/is probably the funniest writer I know of. I feel like I owed Kurt Vonnegut direct thanks for helping me cope with a difficult life with a smile on my face. He taught me how to laugh at my own expense, and to avoid the temptation of taking myself too seriously, and that life is fleeting. His wrote about dark things at this sociological perspective of seeing society for the first time, and finding great humor in it all. And he didn't intentionally write in a way that was difficult to understand like many writers do – which is ultimately why I think he became so popular. This isn't to say that a word-heavy book isn't worthy of getting through, but I often times feel like there are writers who intentionally try to make their novel seem deep by being wordy to make up for hollow characters that represent very little. If Kurt Vonnegut's characters were hollow, they represented something and had a clear – if not bizarre purpose. Everyone in his book lead you to some perfect representative of ideas from life. I feel like writers who try too hard to be obscure and impersonal, and yet wordy, end up failing to convey a real feeling to most of their audience. I feel like it makes for very detached reading and causes people to lose interest. Of course, there are exceptions. Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' was a great example of a novel that was pain-stakingly thorough and articulate to every minute detail and at the very same time succeeded in pulling you very deeply in.

I would sometimes make Maria read one of Kurt Vonnegut's humorous short stories from Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, only to watch her face contort in confusion. She had no idea what she was reading.

I eventually discovered that the apartment units that I was now living in had a computer lab that anyone could use. It was in a very weird side building. I found it extremely satisfying to sneak in late at night and have the empty lab all to myself. I certainly spent a lot of time in the computer labs, which were almost always empty and had an eerie vibe to them at times, the way empty buildings with long government building lights and carpeting can sometimes have. There was a table in the middle, with a stack of Jehovah's Witness Watchtower magazines, which I began collecting for fun. I liked looking at the depictions of heaven on earth, of families of different races all walking among African carnivores affectionately – the men all wearing Hawaiian or polo shirts. I couldn't help but wonder if the artist or whoever's idea this was harbored a secret wish to snuggle with lions and feel safe – Jesus coming back being the only way for their dream to come true, not that I could blame someone – I wish lions were snugly and safe, but it seemed to be such a common theme in the art that I felt this key element of heaven on earth was centering itself around.

Zack joined a MySpace. I would often times go there to listen to it and to listen to a few of his personal demos on his page. But lately I noticed when I snuck over to his MySpace to spy, he for some reason had decided to grow a beard – a very dirty looking one. And that former twinkle in his eyes that I remembered so well, it wasn't there in the pictures. I couldn't help but notice that he really seemed to be somewhat transformed into someone else – very hillbilly whereas before he had been very Sonic Youth. He quoted Kid Rock, and he made a comment in all caps that pertained to Jesus and Hell – and dare I say it, it made absolutely no sense to me in any way and had I not suspended my judgment for his sake I would have admitted to myself that it was incredibly dumb. Surely the Zack I knew was still there somewhere. I really didn't understand. I was confused, and besides myself. I even wondered if he had somehow made those statements and grew that dirty beard as a joke? But I let it go. Obviously, I knew that there was a lot more to Zack as a person then a few pictures on MySpace and people were allowed to go through stages. Who was I to judge him, looking at my own self? It was shallow and silly for me to expect someone else to not change, someone I never even talked to no less. I guess I had just harbored this fantasy that Zack would be different. He would become more driven intellectually, and by his poetry and a certain ere of individualism more like me I guess. I had hoped he wouldn't culturally conform to the hillbilly culture of the town we both grew up in. I was becoming more comfortable with a more lucid understanding of gender as well. Of course, this isn't to say that I wanted to see Zack embrace being highly effeminate, which he wasn't. But there is a sort of complexity and openness that I always hope men will do more to embrace, but often times won't because they are afraid they would be seen as feminine. I had become more accustomed to the idea of men being vulnerable and complex, but perhaps it was due to the sort of music I liked, like Bright Eyes. I was hoping Zack, more than anything would be swayed by my thinking about him, and as crazy as it sounds, I would search his page to see some minute indication that he cared about me till, or that I had left some kind of mark of my existence etched into his soul in some way that could be seen. But there never was much.

One day in the computer lab, this young guy about my age came in and sat down two computers away, which instantly made me absurdly nervous. He instantly struck up a conversation with me in this incredibly cordial upbeat manner. He didn't seem to judge me at all, or see me a someone who shouldn't be talked to which I found strange. He was very nice, and I wasn't used to that obviously. So as soon as he started speaking to me, I started having extreme inner conflict. He immediately asked me if I liked music, and I reluctantly told him I did. I felt like there had to be some sort of joke revolving around him talking to me. He wanted to tell me about how much he had come to love Van Morrison, which at the time I didn't know too much about. He started telling me that he had a band and they were continuously getting warnings from the landlord for practicing and they were just in the next building over. He told me about how much he loved The Stooges, as well as a bunch of other older bands. Obviously I loved The Stooges as well, but I was afraid to tell him so for some reason. In self defense I guess, I painted him in my mind that he was a creep, and I wanted to mock him for his interests and ambitions and his appearance, which there was nothing wrong with. Mind you, I didn't actually utter anything mean to him or about him to anyone else. It was just this wave of anxious frustration that suddenly came upon me. Eventually I sort of shut down emotionally and the conversation died. I think he printed out some sheets of tablature and left.

Later that night, I heard his band playing a few units down in the distance, or at least I am fairly certain it was his band. It had that eerie far away vibe to it. They were actually extremely good. I would have listened to them if I had a cd. They sounded a bit like The Kinks, had elements of The Stooges and elements of The Velvet Underground. It was late at night when I heard them play, and listening to them play reminded me that I had once had goals not unlike him. I felt this strange longing to go where the music was coming from, and this sadness and knowing that something very cool was happening, and I was on the other side of that thing. Perhaps what I resented about this nice young stranger was that he was ambitious and vulnerable and passionate about what he loved, and I had become everything opposite to that. It's hard to look back and blame myself at all, I mean, look where I was? But I had let my ambitions die because I was too afraid to take steps, both due to an underlying extremely low sense of self worth, an innate shyness and fear of being misunderstood, which would have been inevitable for me obviously – but it would have been failure that I would have had to push myself through anyway to succeed, and the underlying knowing that even if I did try to do something cool or stand out, my family would knock me down to size immediately. Besides, my function was mostly to babysit. I couldn't even think about doing things that I had no money for. And in order to just get by I had to turn myself to stone. If I let myself feel things now, I was afraid it would have sent me over the edge.

If I was then who I am now, I would have carried out the conversation to see where it would lead, as awkwardly as it made me feel or however long I stumbled in my words. I would have befriended this person, at least initially until I found a good reason to not be friends. It would have been fun if nothing else, an adventure of sorts, and possibly I could have made long lasting new friends that way. This person with very similar interests in me who seemed caring enough to want to make a connection with me, a complete and total stranger had just walked up to me and talked to me, and it felt to some degree that I may have disregarded an opportunity that the universe had somehow provided. But I just wasn't capable of speaking up or feeling comfortable enough in my own skin then. And it all happened too quick for me to reach that conclusion in that moment had I been able to process it. I really questioned myself for the next few months about how and why I became so mean in my thoughts when he had been so friendly towards me. It struck me that perhaps I had been so saturated in the casually judgmental and discourteous chaotic environment of my own family for several years by then, that it was beginning to seep through my castle walls a bit and I was beginning to embody that ugliness even as I did everything I could to see myself as an orphan excluded from the influence of my family and upbringing. The thought of that was quite disturbing to me.

Maria's house could pick up about four channels. I would sometimes watch them just for the sake of it, or listen to the television from the other room when I was doing the dishes. I remember hearing this very clear and charismatic voice one evening coming from the television in the other room. It was Barack Obama, campaigning for presidency. I didn't know that this was necessarily political. For the few years I had been out of school, my thoughts had been more about self preservation and self analysis, and fantasy. I did feel a very strong sense that I liked this guy coming from a place of having zero political agenda or knowledge. I had no idea who he was or even what he looked like. He didn't talk with the same rhetoric and empty sanitized voice that you might typically hear from one of the Bush's.

I would sometimes try to write to Sarah about bigger things beyond our life, mostly my ideas about how I thought the world should run. Sarah had taken a job as a cook in a very busy and very rudimentary kitchen in a restaurant called The Red Rooster. They didn't have a professional flattop of anything like that. They had the same kind of kitchen stove you would use in a household and some of the burners were broken. Which, if you have ever worked in a kitchen you will know is akin to abuse towards your workers in the restaurant industry. She would have to fill forty orders herself, and she worked six days out of the week. It was interesting to hear how hard Sarah was getting beaten up by her job, mostly because Sarah had never been a fast-paced person, she hadn't enjoyed holding positions of responsibility either in her personal life or professional. She didn't enjoy any kind of pain or sacrifice. And she had essentially been thrust into a work environment that was hell on earth for her, and it was changing her a lot, much like the military changes people. Certain weaknesses and avoidant attributes in Sarah were being chiseled away. She was becoming far more leaderly than I could have imagined, and far more bold. She didn't have as much time to write or to question why she was working, or what her living in Texas had even been for. She was just working or sleeping, and was constantly overheated and sweaty. I would try to write her my ideas about class warfare and the type of slavery that we both lived in and suppressed technology and any other ideas I had, many of them being a somewhat well meaning and idealistic, albeit confused version and mixture of socialism and libertarianism. Sarah didn't really want to think about this stuff though. She was so caught up in working and not emotionally letting herself think about why she was doing anything anymore that me trying to put things into some sociological perspective was not well received.

Allison came to visit me for much of the time that I stayed in Moscow. Allison had sort of woken up into a stage of early adulthood where we could suddenly relate with one another again. She and I became even better friends that summer. I felt less and less like her older sister and more like her good friend, though we were clearly still very much sisters. Being as we came from the same place and had the same genetics, it was actually very easy for us to relate to one another. Allison was very much fresh air to me. She was generally enthusiastic, very optimistic and excited about studying the interrelatedness between people and their dramatic encounters. Allison's favorite things were InuYasha and Naruto, and she had started creating her own manga story, much like I had at her age. We spent a long time talking about anime characters and with my knowledge of character building in books and movies, I was able to give her insight on how to create a more original story for her characters who I helped her develop into having more depth, while still giving her room to put her own spin on her own inner universe. When she came to visit, her and Jasmine would go into the computer lab and watch InuYasha until the sun rose again. I never watched it with them, but I became very accustomed to the dubbed American voices crying out during battle scenes for some sliver of a jewel shard or demon related thing, and I can still hear the faint cries of 'KIKIO! When I think about it.

What I couldn't quite grasp was why she loved Twilight so much. It was trying to be supportive, but it seemed like every young girl or woman and their mother had read these books, which seemed even on the surface, totally banal. Allison would talk on and on about the characters from this book series and their relations with one another. I tried asking questions about aspects that didn't add up to me. For one, the main character seemed to have no defining personality characteristics. Bella just seemed really vacant. I didn't really get it. I had the same criticism of the series that a million and a half other people had so a great deal of my ideas about Twilight aren't exactly original content. And honestly, I didn't like Harry Potter either, and many people adored the Harry Potter series so I took into account that I might have been too harsh in my criticisms. Most of the times, I just shut my brain off while Allison went on and on about Twilight. Allison would talk on and on in support of team Jacob, and I just knew when to insert the right 'mmmhmm's. She didn't seem to think I was ignoring her and I know that the Allison of today would endorse my decision to ignore most of what she talked about repeatedly. I even tried to read the books myself. I got through thirty percent of the first book, but the moment that the vampires all started to play baseball, I just couldn't.

Sometimes Maria would randomly pay me. Once a fifty, another a one hundred and once when she got her taxes back two-hundred dollars. I blew this money to enjoy my time with Allison. I would tread in the summer with Allison up this several mile meandering bike path to Hastings to buy books and hang out there drinking the coffee. It was all day walk to and back and it left me breathless. I sometimes would walk by the old alternative school, not to be a creep exactly but to see myself in a different perspective of being on the outside of that school, where somewhere in that building Mike was tutoring on the finer points of southern gothic fiction, or teaching his students about the rise of the Mongols. On the outside there was me, basically looking and feeling like a street person who was worlds now separated from that other world. People who saw me walking around looked at me like I was a bum. The girls my age always seemed so much prettier than me, so much more well kept. I wondered what I even was sometimes. I didn't feel like I demographically belonged anywhere.

I read Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck, which I really appreciated the complex characters who seemingly seemed simplistic. What I appreciated about that short novel was the fact that high quality drama can and does take place with every walk of life, and at the same time, I was all very funny. The characters were simultaneously simplistic and would sometimes contemplate philosophy in a very real way without realizing. And I thought this was a beautiful notion and holds more truth to it. Complex ideas are not isolated to only the educated and rich. This stuff effects the poor just as much, even more so in some ways. Cinematic operas and romances of a lifetime take place in dingy bars in run down parts of town, in poorhouses, in trailer parks and huts and villages. Hollywood would have you believe that certain feelings and ideas are only explored in middle to upper class society. I read the book to Allison and sometimes just for fun, we would walk around with a jug of diet green tea in a big jug (the Arizona kind with the geisha on the front). And we would pretend that we were drinking the wine they drank all the time in Tortilla Flat. We would occasionally visit all-night gas stations and buy big liters of soda and talk until the sun came up.

I also read Lady Chatterley's lover. What drew me to this book was the front cover of this particular copy they were selling at Hastings that was a bit more expensive but the front cover was like a comic book sort of with the main characters lying in bed and from what I remember, discussing how their forbidden sexual meet ups were very interrelated to class warfare and the bourgeois. It was hilarious as it was intriguing and worth throwing a twenty dollar bill at. The books itself is a bit dry, but overall, when you get into the thick of it, it was actually pretty good. I think books in general are very interesting on how they reflect, narrate and follow the main characters and how they base the books. Sometimes you live deeply inside the narrator's mind. Sometimes you hear their recollections in a shallow way, and sometimes it's like they aren't really attached to their body at all, and they tell you only bits and pieces of what is happening around them and how they are feeling. D.H. Lawrence was likely a misogynistic ass (so many male writers of his time were), but at the same time he reflected on his main female character, Constance, in a way that expressed her as having a certain needs and desires and feelings about herself and the world around her individual from what men perceived her and her role in society. I thought it was very interesting that this book gave Constance some individuality, though in the end she did just switch from one man to the next. As for the things about the books that caused it to be banned. It was mostly softcore porn scenes where they intertwined flowers in one another's pubic hair and other rather innocent gestures that I am sure the people of the time thought was beyond vile.

When Roxanne and Jeremy received their tax money that year, they decided to of course spend it on all the meth and coke and pills and alcohol they could get their hands on, but also go on a camping trip with their drugs on hand. They bought a bunch of camping gear as well, and told Allison and David to come with, that it would be a lot of fun. Not realizing what this was going to look like for them, they went along. The trip would take about three days, and the camp grounds were about ten miles out of town. The offer had been extended to me as well, but I had to babysit. Initially I felt left out a little bit, though later I was incredibly relieved I didn't have to go. This is how the trip went, according to how I remember it. Of course, it's second hand so some of the events and specific details might be slightly off.

This trip soon became a nightmare to everyone minus Roxanne and Jeremy. Roxanne and Jeremy took all the blankets and had their own tent and kept Meliah who was a toddler by now, with them. Everybody else had to share a tent. This meant Roxanne's four kids and Allison and David had to somehow stuff themselves into a tent and sleep in it, which of course nobody fit. There wasn't enough blankets to go around. Jeremy and Roxanne were mostly interested in drinking and doing drugs. Most of the snacks and drinks they did buy went for Roxanne and Jeremy. There were no rules anymore, save what Jeremy had to say. By day one, all of the kids were starving and thirsty, Allison and David being included. Jeremy had Sagen and Roxanne massaging his feet in his hair at all times, and he tried to force Allison to fan him. There was clearly something very sexually inappropriate about the way he made his stepdaughter and tried to force Allison to do this for him.

Allison is a much more forward person than me, and she never did get enough credit for her depth. People have always seen her as chatty and sometimes superficial in her interests and didn't care to see her hardcore leadership potential or her ability to read the situations she was in. David, having no rules began to instantly take to a very Lord of the Flies approach and started acting horrendous, randomly deciding to side with Roxanne and Jeremy. He started calling Allison a slut, a cunt, and a bitch whenever he could. He had this look of stressed confusion on his face. I think attacking Allison was his way of feeling like he was in control. Jeremy and Roxanne were completely out of it drunk for much of the time, and would come back to the tent screaming hysterically at one another in a frightening manner. At one point another camper punched Jeremy in the face. By day two there was no more water for the kids, and Jeremy refused to go into town to buy anymore or share any of the supply that he had. Allison was very headstrong in this situation. She shared what she had with the kids, and demanded that Jeremy do something, but he wouldn't of course. Jeremy started making comments about how he was going to fuck Allison. It was beyond disgusting and had I been there I would have lost it. He said it in front of Roxanne who did nothing, and the kids. Allison called him a disgusting ugly pervert and that she couldn't wait till he went back to prison. Which enraged him and she could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted to beat her to death. Allison is a very brave person.

David was desperate too, but given the situation he had pretty much lost his mind completely, either because he felt he was free to act out as he wanted, or because he too was starving and thirsty. In any case, the entire camp by the end of day two was totally hostile to Allison, as though she was now the cause of sleeping cold at night, and the shortage of basic food and water. Everyone was mosquito bitten and sunburned. There was no way for my siblings to get a hold of our father. It was far too out in the middle of nowhere for reception to work, and besides nobody had a cellphone anyway. Some neighboring campers who were also sort of lousy human beings, but at least willing to act like human beings, gave Allison and the kids what they could for water. They looked very concerned about the camp and though didn't quite want to ruin their own camping experience by calling the police or at least getting a hold of my father, they did seem to be considering it. It felt like something really bad was going to happen even to people who weren't directly involved.

David started acting out aggressively to Allison. They were by the lake, and when Allison refused to listen to him about something or other, and he decided to attack her. He started screaming in psychotic rage that he was going to murder Allison, and he began to chase her. Visions of Lord of the Flies come to mind so hard. Allison had to run for her life exhausted starved and thirsty. She ran for miles until David didn't chase her anymore, and she was exhausted. She decided she had to get out of there. Jeremy and Roxanne were acting as though they were going to tie her up or something, and David promised to bludgeon Allison to death or drown her. Eventually, she saw their van coming down the road, and she hid behind some bushes. They were screaming her name, and they looked raving mad. When she could, she started heading to the small store again. She had about three dollars, and when she eventually got there she asked to use their phone, but they refused. So she bought something to drink and she siphoned it down in one setting. She sat down, so exhausted she couldn't move anymore.

Jeremy and Roxanne eventually drove up to her, and when she refused to get into the van, they grabbed her by her arms and legs and shoved her back in against her will, David being a key helper. Everyone was telling Allison she was crazy and that she had ran away for nothing and that they had all been very nice to her. Jeremy seemed to still be fuming about how she had called him a gross pervert. He wanted some kind of revenge. But my father was supposed to pick Allison up that very same day, in fact they could have left Allison there to wait for him. They dragged her back to the camp and forced her to stay put. Jeremy acted as though he didn't now want to let Allison go back to our dad, as though he wanted to extract some additional revenge upon her. She started getting the feeling that he wanted to rape her.

In the end though, they delivered Allison and David back to my father at the appointed time and place. Allison was shaking and delusionally frustrated by this time and fatigued, and as soon as she saw my father she ran up to him crying and held onto him like a small child. Roxanne gave some half ass remark about how there had been problems and then drove away. David looked confused and frightened, so much like the boys at the end of Lord of the Flies once they had gotten themselves into that fervor. He made some mental pact with himself that the entire thing had never happened. Allison told my father about all of it. He believed it and though he knew he would never be letting Roxanne take any of his children again, he at the same time was up to his eyeballs stressed about trying to set up the pedicure shop with Trish, who was already losing interest in their relationship and was making notions that he should now just give her the shop.

When I heard about Allison's nightmare camping trip and heard about the extent that everyone had basically gotten to, I decided I never wanted to see Jeremy Frye again. I would never visit. It was too much. I would still talk to Roxanne and her kids, but if Jeremy was present I didn't want to be around. I started thinking it might be best if Roxanne lost her kids. I hated to think that, but given just how horrific things had gone to, I didn't know that there was any way I could see it differently. I wanted Roxanne to get clean and leave Jeremy, but if she wasn't going to do that immediately, I thought it would be for the best if she lost her kids. Jody was a shitty father and not my favorite person, but I didn't really worry about him killing anyone. I began talking to my mom about calling CPS on Roxanne and Jeremy. My mother is not a great person, but somewhere in her chaotic little brain, she had boundaries. She certainly didn't want to see any of her grandchildren violently murdered, or Roxanne for that matter. Roxanne and Jeremy had recently gotten into another low income apartment, and we both agreed to see what happened next.

As for David, I just didn't feel like I could trust him anymore. I felt like there were two David's. One of them I knew and the other I didn't at all. When things were good with David, they were very good. He was considerate, thoughtful careful about being fair, and smiling and happy. And then he wasn't any of those things. He was violent and wanted to really hurt you. He must have been tackling some intense emotional issues. He went farther than I ever went when I had been messed up at his age. But I did see the comparisons between him and I and I had to take it into consideration. Cruel and sadistic human behavior gets a little more confusing when you exclude the notion that someone is a sociopath. But as for day to day living, I no longer trusted David. I believed that he was capable of extreme violence and believing his own lies. I wanted him to get help, but as I have mentioned, neither one of my parents were willing to face what was happening to him to get him the help he needed. This left me in a state where I had to distance myself from him and stop seeing him as someone I could trust. I feared for Allison whenever she was alone with him. You never knew when he might snap. And once at Maria's house, he ended up shoving Allison down and trying to choke her in front of Maria's kids when I happened to not be there one day. When Allison told me stuff like this, I could feel these chills of instant rage go across my skin.

I was very attached to Maria's kids. I could tell that the kids really needed me. And yet, I felt like I had to go. I didn't feel very free and the fact that I was so relied upon was making me feel even more trapped. I tried to talk to Maria about it, but she started screaming and crying when I did that. I asked her to ask the Mormon church if they knew someone who could help. It was difficult, but they found a woman who was willing to stay at Maria's house overnight to watch the kids. She had a license and was trained by the state to babysit, so it would have been relatively cheap for Maria to pay this woman. But Maria said no. The reason that Maria refused this woman's rare and generous position to help Maria and be employed in the process was because this woman was black, and Maria is a racist and she didn't want her children to be 'exposed'. Which soured things for me, and my compassion for Maria's situation went south. Maria was in no position to be choosy, but apparently she would rather lose her home and let her life fall apart than have a black person working in her home with her kids. I fucking hate racism, and a part of me didn't want to see Maria at all after that. If her kids hadn't have been involved, I might have quit then and there.

I tried once again to tell her I was done. I had worked for about four or five months at her place. She refused to acknowledge my resignation however and pretended that it never had occurred, and I felt weird about just leaving the kids. I had brought so much stability to their lives. Ian wasn't getting any better, but I never suspected he really would. I loved little Chantelle. Jasmine and I had always been close. During my summer at Maria's, I had watched just about every episode of Little House on the Prairie, the theme song blasting in my psyche as I write this. JT was kind of an odd little boy, but I liked him well enough and had to be treated a special way as he seemed to be having some developmental issues. But Maria was taking advantage of me, like she does everyone around her. Eventually, my father agreed to tell her for me. I knew she would see my father as a position of authority, and since she didn't respect the authority I had over myself, I had him do it. Maria got the picture then. I told her I would babysit for one more month for her, just to give her some extra time. She'd already had plenty of time, and hadn't had any problems turning someone away already, so I wasn't going to be any easier on her than I had to be. Naturally, she lost her mind on me. She told me I was the reason her dreams never would come true, that I had ruined her life. She then walked to the window, and looked out forlorn, and lamented her future in a way that I coyly noted was contrived and meant to convey some theatrical sadness.

Over that last month, Maria stopped buying me food as punishment for my departure, and I lost twelve pounds. Allison would come to visit, and I would share one small box of riceroni with her a day, which I didn't mind doing because I truly enjoyed her company. I didn't know what life would bring me next. I guess I just felt this sense that none of this stuff could last forever. One evening, after Maria had taken part in this very immature back and forth with Ian in which they all threw shoes at one another (it was embarrassing seeing Maria getting drawn into this childish exchange), Maria told me she didn't want her kids anymore and she was going to find a way to get rid of them. I didn't know if she was to be taken seriously or not. I just listened and said nothing. But it really stuck with me.

Eventually, I got out of Maria's. My father helped me move out of there. Roxanne was gone from the house now, so I figured I could resume my life at my mother's for whatever that was worth. I was told however, that David kind of ran the show now, and if I lived there I would have to steer clear of him. My mother told me that, and so did Allison. It seemed strange to me that a twelve year old boy 'ran the show', and I mostly dismissed it, though I knew it was definitely true. As for steering clear of him, I already did that.

I stayed in Kendrick for a few days at my father's that late summer/early fall. I decided to take an evening stroll downtown for some exercise. Just as I was turning the corner of the sidewalk below my house I bumped into Jason. For those who don't know or remember, Jason had been one of my friends in high school. He had gotten kicked out for drugs and theft. And when I had been a lot younger, Jason had meant a lot to me. I had seen him around off and on since high school, as he occasionally did work for Sarah's mom in her garden area. I also happened to know that he has stolen my father's kayak from his property the year before, which ended up being found down the creak somewhere downstream. Jason had probably stolen it while drunk in an attempt to have some kind of fun boating experience that went terribly no doubt once he got in the boat and found it was not capable of getting through shallow rapids and he just abandoned it and waded out.

I had known Jason had been doing drugs like meth. But from what I had heard, he had been doing a lot better. He was on probation again and his girlfriend helped him stay relatively clean – minus marijuana of course. The moment Jason saw me he came up to me and gave me a warm heartfelt hug. His eyes were gleeful, and he was so genuinely stoked and very glad to see me. It was strange being in the presence of someone who was that happy to see me. He laughed at everything I said, and wanted me to tell him all about what I had been up to. He told me I looked happier than I had in school. This might have been in part because I was now blonde rather than dark haired, but even with all the fatalistic depression I felt, I guess nothing really had compared to the misery of being fourteen in the Kendrick high school, when I had been too young to reflect on what I was feeling and why. I had learned to smile more, perhaps even in self defense against what life threw at me. We talked for about ten minutes before Jason told me he had a bowl of weed he couldn't wait to smoke with his girlfriend, and he went on up the hill.

I never saw Jason again. He blew his brains out four months later. Nobody knew if it was a suicide or not. On one hand, he had been at times morbidly depressed, even in the times I knew him he had acted out and said very suicidal thoughts that he had. Everyone knew he was a risk. And he had just gotten in a fight with his girlfriend. On the other hand, it didn't seem like it was done on purpose entirely. He was in the yard messing with his rifle, drunk, and perhaps it had been loaded and he had not realized it as he made the fatal error of pulling the trigger. Either story seems equally plausible, but considering he was in front of both his girlfriend and Tammy (my father's local ex)'s now ten year old son Troy out in the front yard, it seems to me like it might have been more of an accident.

In any case, after Sarah called me up with the bad news, I cried myself to sleep. Jason had once been a friend that I valued very much. It seemed weird to me that he had died. I didn't end up going to his funeral. His funeral was filled with a lot of locals who had always hated him and whom he had always hated. It seemed really phony and put on because he died when he was twenty-two so everyone felt incensed to see themselves in the story somehow. I didn't want to go to something like that. Instead I took a walk.

PART 69 - https://tinyurl.com/yb7d8van

PART 68 - https://tinyurl.com/y8faedzp

PART 67 - https://tinyurl.com/y9lfdsop

PART 66 - https://tinyurl.com/y87dzx7z

PART 65 - https://tinyurl.com/yb22o6rv

PART 64 - https://tinyurl.com/y98zxljs

PART 63 - https://tinyurl.com/ybosu235

PART 62 - https://tinyurl.com/ybjrvccn

PART 61 - https://tinyurl.com/ybm99k8o

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-60

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wvss61 · 5 years

Video

The Three Stooges Funniest Moments Curly, Larry, Moe

#The Three Stooges Funniest Moments Curly Larry Moe

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ultraericthered · 4 years

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Anime Update 31

CLANNAD After Story - Well Tomoya and Nagisa are still living together and Tomoya is still working his job, but two very distressing things ended up happening here. First of all, a good chunk of the episode was spent on Yusuke Yoshino sharing his shockingly dark and depressing backstory to Tomoya. “He completely lost his way. He made a mistake that he could never take back. When word of his crime reached the public, he was thrown out like old garbage. He’d hit rock bottom with nowhere to go and nothing to cling to.” These words spoken by Yoshino about himself are super uncomfortable to hear out of his voice in the English dub since (as I recently learned) he’s voiced by Illich Guardiola, who lost his career due to getting caught sexually abusing and grooming an underage girl. I loved the deeper look into Yoshino’s character and I like the way Guardiola voiced him, but the real life subtext put an unwanted stain on the whole thing. In the second half of the episode, Tomoya loses a great potential job offering due to his father choosing that time to land himself in jail. Apparently Naoyuki Okazaki was a more miserable wreck of a man than I’d been led to believe, having trouble with drugs and gambling ever since he got depressed over the injury he gave his son. Tomoya disowns his old man to his face when visiting him in the detention center with Nagisa and then once outside, almost breaks down in rage and anguish, which just hurt to watch. Somehow this tragic moment turns into a joyous one when Tomoya asks Nagisa for her hand in marriage, and she accepts. Hoh boy...

Dragon Ball - And here we had one of the earliest big shocker moments in Dragon Ball history...Goku LOSES his fight with Tao. Before this the only fight Goku ever “lost” was against Master Roshi at the 21st Budokai, and that was decided only by the technicality of Roshi getting up first. This was both his first serious fight that he lost and his first true loss. Normally the Kamehameha wave would be enough to either finish an enemy or do serious damage, but the most it accomplished against Tao was dissolving most of his clothes off him...which is immediately followed by Tao calling out “DODON RAY!” and shooting Goku through the chest with his beam. When this happened back in it’s day, it had to have been the equivalent of Bane breaking Batman. See, THIS is what I meant when I said Tao was on another level compared to Blue. He doesn’t just have mastery over ki techniques, he’s had training and learned techniques comparable to those of Master Roshi’s, and since he’s been at it longer than Goku, he’s naturally stronger. Goku lucks out not only by surviving this fight but by keeping hold of his four star Dragon Ball, but Tao makes off with the other three. Amusingly, he’s not about to deliver them to Commander Red immediately because he first needs to have a new outfit made and it’ll take the tailor three days to complete it. I really like the dark humor that Toriyama got from Tao - he’s delaying the completion of the task he was hired for because he prioritizes his fashion sense so much. That’s pretty funny. He all but threatens a tailor to make him a new outfit in a village that’s terrified of him. That’s pretty grim. And it shows us what’s so dangerous about Tao: he’s no one’s stooge. He cannot be controlled. He does things his way, and if he wants to take a three day pause in his work just to wait for a new outfit to be made, he is damn well going to do it! Even Tao’s voice reflects the character and I must give credit to Kent Williams for how well he replicates what Chikao Otsuka did in the original Japanese version - his voice is very Saturday Morning Cartoon Bad Guy (even sounding like an evil Don Adams at points), but his delivery is completely straight, and that’s the character in a nutshell: a silly caricature of a villain who takes himself so dead seriously that it works on us and we take him dead seriously. Though the funniest bit with Tao was a total accident - he tells Red over the phone “I don’t take orders from you - I’m not one of your soldiers!” This is hilarious when remembering that the earlier FUNimation dub of DBZ had lied to us by telling us Tao was a general in the Red Ribbon Army. By the episode’s end, Goku is climbing up Korin Tower, determined to reach the top and gain strength from the fabled water. Amazingly, it’ll be a short climb compared to running on Snake Way.

Love Live! - The eighth episode in this season was mostly a set piece for the following episode, but it had it’s moments, particularly towards the end where we got to delve deeper into Nozomi and see why she’s done the things she has, and what her personal dream for µ's has been the whole time. Her being someone who was routinely lonely and never able to keep friends due to always moving around and changing schools makes a lot of her previous actions and how much value and importance she places on µ's make sense. Also, she and Eli are totally OTP-worthy as a pair: Nozomi fell for Eli pretty much at first sight when Eli first joined her class, back when Eli was still a bad person, and I don’t think Eli would’ve kept to a good path were it not for Nozomi’s friendship. The other most memorable part of the episode was Umi’s absolute panic and terror over having to watch a kiss scene (I know what that’s really about - it’s not due to secondhand embarrassment and fear of romance like she made it out to be, it’s because it was a kiss between a woman and a man, and Umi can’t comprehend the very idea of this since men are so barely existent in this series’ world. Romance between girls is the natural order of things here!) Nozomi vocalizing her heart’s desire leads to µ's uniting to make it a reality, all 9 girls to write a song together that they can all sing as one, which is to be the song they sing in the final Love Live Preliminary. And then it starts snowing... Which leads us to the next episode and....uh....just...WOW. Y’know how I said, just last week, “legends really are made rather than born” in regards to µ's? This episode is the exact point where µ's makes themselves legendary. This was the best episode not just in the season, but in the show thus far, as it not only upped the stakes with both a roadblock to the final preliminary (this is the big decider here - not passing this = no Love Live) and a surprising moment of peril (the second year trio has to brave a snowstorm they weren’t properly prepared for on a potentially dangerous path), but for the first time in ever, the show fully delivered on the drama! Umi and Kotori loudly declaring their desire to make it to Love Live and refusal to back down when they’ve come this far while pushing through the blizzard with Honoka, all the students mobilizing to clear a path for the trio, Honoka just bawling into the arms of her senpai due to how tough and scary the ordeal had been for her...all of it was actually effective and moving. And then as µ's goes to take the stage, the credits start to roll while the episode is still playing. I immediately took notice of this. If the episode’s run time left no room for the regular ED credits, that was the tip-off that something huge was about to happen. Honoka makes her little speech, each girl thinks about what they love most and what inspires the most passion and feelings in them...and it happens. Snow Halation. That I had to link to the song right there is indicative of it’s greatness. It’s arguably µ's most well known song. If you are or were a fan of the SiIvaGunner Youtube channel, it was probably the bane of your existence. But it’s just on a very noticeably higher level than any song they sang up to this point. It’s both insanely catchy and carries about this wondrous, magical feeling that makes all the love and passionate feelings that were poured into it so palpable. The episode comes to an end immediately after the song and dance is done (at which point I was just kinda sitting there in stunned silence for a while trying to process what I’d just seen) because there’s no need to show us anymore. That was it - the moment where µ's truly rose to stardom. The moment where they beat A-RISE. µ's has this in the bag. They’re headed to Love Live!

My-HIME - So it’s not just Orphans we’re dealing with anymore - now we’ve got Vampire Orphans! Yeah, really. Mothersucking vampires. But it is a pretty creative take on vampirism - rather than biting young women to leave marks, this vampire is trying to find marks that identify one as a HIME. Pretty unsettling, especially when the leader of the local church is the culprit. Seeing Haruka in action as a leading member of the student executive committee is always a treat, and the talk between Mai and Nagi where the little shit gave Mai some much needed details about the HIME situation was welcome. Apparently a HIME is meant to use their powers only for their own benefit and self preservation rather than to defend others, which puts Mai off the whole concept even more. The best part, however, went to Nao completely owning that interrogation in church by confessing to her naughtiest deeds (none of which we actually heard) to the point where Sister Yukariko couldn’t bear to hear anymore and let her walk on out of there. That was priceless. But Sister Yukariko was also involved in the lesser parts of the episode, with her continued fraternizing with the skeevy art teacher. I don’t see what the purpose of this subplot is but it’s making me uncomfortable, and I’m sure we’ve got it to blame for why Yukariko ended up killing someone!

Ace Attorney S2 - Started “Bridge To The Turnabout” with it’s first episode, and surprisingly it did not grab me the same way the anime versions of “Turnabout Goodbyes” and “Farewell, My Turnabout” did in their first episodes. Part of this might be because the dramatic tension of Phoenix falling off the burning Dusky Bridge wasn’t executed as well in the anime. Part of it might be because I already know who Elise Deauxnim really is, who Sister Iris really is, and even who Elise’s killer is, so there’s no mystery here. But by far the most offputing part of all? What the Hell happened to Pearl??? She was last seen with Elise and then just disappeared from the episode. Elise is found murdered, Sister Bikini’s been knocked out, the bridge is on fire, Pearl is nowhere to be seen...and there’s absolutely no concern expressed. Nick only focuses on Maya and the fact that she’s stuck inside the shrine without a way back now that the bridge is gone, or on Iris who’s been taken into custody under suspicion of murder. Pearl is not anyone’s priority, which left me dumbfounded at such an oversight because in the original version, Pearl disappearing was the catalyst for the entire case. In the anime, all events and interactions that took place when Nick was looking for Pearl just kind of happen for no reason. The saving grace, naturally, came in the form of Miles Edgeworth. It was great seeing Nick give his Defense Attorney badge over to him to fill in for him while he’s recovering, and then seeing Edgeworth go speak with Iris in the Detention Center. Next week I’ll be seeing him conduct investigations and defend Iris in court! Guess we know where the Investigations spin-off came from!

Nadja of Tomorrow - The preview for this one didn’t get me much looking forward to it because I saw it was going to be another Christian Strand episode. Thankfully it was the episode that his whole character was building up to from the start, set in Egypt. But the episode still did itself no favors by opening up the way it does, with Rosso and Bianco turning up at the Gonzales Estate in Granada where we’d been just a few episodes ago. (It’s been how long since we last saw those guys?) Nadja, of course, is no longer around, but Rosemary tells the men about the Dandelion Troupe. Bianco then lets slip that Nadja is nobility by birth, prompting a great “Oh God, it’s worse than I thought!” reaction from Rosemary. And as the two men turn to leave, Rosemary is quick to halt them and offer her services to their boss’ plans (Damn, this girl saw her opening to dive headfirst into a life of crime, treachery and deceit, and she fucking took that dive!) And then the episode title comes up...and we don’t follow this plot development for the rest of the episode. I wouldn’t mind this if it hadn’t been the literal first scene of the episode, ‘cause when you start it with one thing but then dedicate the rest of the episode to something completely different, that first thing is going to weigh on my mind and distract from what’s going on in Egypt. I did end up enjoying the Egypt stuff more than I thought I would, especially the hilarious “But this is only the [insert number] excavation site!” gag from Nadja early in, and there was some nice historical trivia about what a hot spot Egypt was for adventuring Europeans during this time period. It also ended up being an extremely important episode when Christian confirms to Nadja that the ring inside her brooch is of the Ducal House of Preminger in Vienna, finally getting Nadja closer to where her mother lives. Alas, even with this being the best Christian episode...it’s still Christian. He’s just not very interesting. so I was totally on the same page as Kennosuke in not caring to see him. Why characters like Raphael, John Whittard, Oliver, and Zabbie haven’t been seen again since their episodes yet this doof shows up three times is beyond me, but I’m pretty relieved to be done with him.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - Of all episodes, why is this the one I best remember from when I saw this show on Cartoon Network as a kid so many years ago? Domon needing to be helped out with winning his next match by a bunch of kids struck me as very “I’ve Got Batman In My Basement”, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that the kids in question were hooligans being led by a complete bully who wanted so badly to get inside Burning Gundam just ‘cause of how cool it’d be even when it nearly gets him killed and directly leads to Domon getting a shoulder injury. I felt really bad for the old man’s grandson being forced to go along with this. And then there’s Sijiema or whatever his name was...what the fuck was he? The opponent from last week was a literal giant and that felt more believable than a snake charmer with green skin and a ridiculous filter in his voice. When put next to all the other human characters, he looks out of place and could even be considered a racist caricature of an uncouth Indian man. And the fight’s resolution was nonsensical - Domon loses fighting efficiency due to a shoulder injury, but wins because he willingly injures his shoulder even more? All because the kid who victimized him tells him he has faith in him? Was I just not following this right? It was a very strange episode, but I enjoyed it all the same.

AND

SSSS Gridman - OHMIGOD! SHE DID NOT! SHE DID NOT JUST DO THAT! AKANE STABBED YUTA! YUTA’S DEAD! IT’S GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER! YUTAAAAAAAAAAA! --- Actually I’m not that torn up about this. He was a boring lead character anyway. We’ll manage just fine without him. It was a pretty shocking way to end the episode, though. And all that transpired before it was great as well. Rikka telling about her disturbing encounter with Akane on the bus naturally led to some existential introspection among the cast, with Utsumi taking it particularly hard to the point of retreating into his studies to keep distance from all that kaiju business. Speaking of, this episode featured hands down the scariest kaiju we’ve seen yet. Understandable since it represents Akane’s heart and all the hatred she’s long had festering inside it. Like Akane it looks bright, silly and harmless in a very fake way only to reveal a dark, cackling, psychotic murderous creature on the inside. But if this kaiju is symbolic of the most monstrous part of Akane, Anti is symbolic of her humanity and vulnerability. The scene between the two at the now destroyed restaurant where they ate together in episode 3 was very insightful to their connection - Akane claims preference to kaiju that are wholly non-human, larger than life, and exist for nothing but reeking havoc and destruction to make life miserable for others...because that is what she’d like to be and is trying to be. To her, those kaiju are perfect. She tells Anti she doesn’t like him because he’s too human, both in appearance and in characteristics...too much like who she truly is. And that’s what makes Anti a “failed creation” to her. But when she allows Anti to go his own way, the remark she makes seems directed at herself more than it is at Anti. She wishes she could be perfect like a god or a monster, but she’s still only human, and to her, that represents failing. And ever since Gridman appeared, she’s been doing nothing but failing, which provides perspective to her current depression, along with the fact that deep down she does feel guilt over the lives she’s taken as exposed by her brief dream at the start. Anti, meanwhile, has become Gridknight and is on the good guys’ side now, but the city is in shambles due to the fixer kaiju having been taken out in Akane’s last rampage. By the end, Akane has hit her lowest point. Gone is the cheery, flippant, easily frustrated and charmingly demented oddball villainess we’ve known and loved all this time - she’s a detached, miserable wreck of a person now (and Lindsey Seidel is just killing it - I actually far prefer her Akane to Reina Ueda’s despite the latter being a closer match to what Akane is) and she’s gone from gleefully committing murder via kaiju attacks to joylessly directly killing someone with a knife. I’m sure most people would deem Akane a lost cause at this point...but Rikka ain’t most people. Neither is Anti or Gridman. Even Utsumi would probably not want things with Akane to end badly. Akane is half awake already even if she doesn’t realize it - she can still be pulled out from the darkness of her mental prison if the Gridman Alliance is willing to fight for it. Normally I’d wait a few weeks before returning to this show. However, just like in real life, there’s a virus that must be eradicated before someone is able to go outside again. Let’s do it...

(One last thing, though - how mind blowing is it that Akane was literally the Gridman Alliance’s next door neighbor this entire time?)

#Anime Update

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sergeantdias · 5 years

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Curly's Funniest Moments from 'The Three Stooges'

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thrivingwithourhearts · 5 years

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Smoking In The Boys Room, Yes Indeed!!

Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut? He just needed a little space.

What kind of exercise do lazy people do? Diddlysquats

What do you call a fake noodle? An imposter.

What do you call a pony with a little cough? A little horse.

What did one hat say to the other? You wait here. I’ll go on ahead.

The other day I read these corny jokes from Reader’s Digest in the Laughter the Best Medicine section. Did I ever mention that I like jokes? Yes, corny jokes, knock knock jokes, sarcasm, and good natured practical jokes!! Who doesn’t enjoy a good guffaw? I mean I do not know when I might find the perfect joke that would turn my giggle box upside down.

When my brother and I were young we read corny and knock-knock joke books and shared the laughter (or groans) from these jokes with our friends and family. Not only did we glean smirks from books, but we learned from the King of Practical Jokes, our Dad. I can still hear his chuckle today when he successfully observed a reaction from the one being tricked with a non-degrading practical joke.

One of my first experiences with a practical joke happened on one particularly overcast Saturday in Bolivar, Missouri our parents took us to Dairy Queen to enjoy a flavorful soda pop. While we sat in the car sipping our sodas, my Dad was driving with my Mom in the front seat and my brother and I in the back seat. Suddenly, my Dad lifted is soda drink to the oncoming driver who was a stranger as if to toast them. This brought my brother and I out of our carbonated beverage stupor. The next oncoming car my brother and I joined in toasting the stranger. No reaction. The next oncoming car my Mom joined us in the toast. This time the oncoming driver reacted. She lifted her eyebrows and her jaw dropped in surprise. She didn’t know whether to wave at us or keep staring as we drove by. She was trying to figure out just who these strange people were. We all cackled. Ever since then I was fond of practical jokes.

Over time my brother and I became quite proficient at practical joking.

On another particularly overcast and cool fall Saturday in Bolivar, Missouri my Mom parked the car in front of the cleaners. She said, “I will be here for only a short time. I want you to sit here quietly until I return.”

My brother and I sat there in the car watching cars drive by talking about different things and feeling bored. The cleaners must have been busy, because my Mom was taking a longer time to return than expected. Suddenly, I was hit with a light bulb moment practical joke idea. “Let’s smoke our candy cigarettes that we bought from the five and dime! We can try to trick the drivers of the cars passing by making them think that we are actually smoking a real cigarette!” Now, mind you, this was over 50 years ago. No big deal - leaving young children unattended in vehicles and smoking candy cigarettes.

As we propped ourselves up on our knees in the backseat, we placed the candy cigarette between our lips, sucked on the cigarette, and exhaled powdered sugar smoke so the car driving by could see us through the back seat window. No reaction from the first car. We tried again with the next car with still no reaction. And we tried again with no response. “We are going to have to put our heart into this smoking.” I said.

We became more dramatic with our cigarette smoking making big sweeping motions. The next driver took the bait. When she saw too young kids puffing on cigarettes, she was shocked. I could actually read her lips. She said to her passenger, “Look at those young kids! They are smoking cigarettes!”

My brother and I lay in the seat laughing and laughing. Our ribs were aching. Finally my Mom returned to the car. She could hear us laughing even with the windows rolled up. She said, “I heard you laughing all the way from the front door of the cleaners. What are you doing?”

I still find these two practical jokes hilarious? Do you? Perhaps, but probably not as much as I do. Why? Could it be that it is a part of my family history in collecting great memories? Could it be my story telling needs more practice? Or could it be another reason? For instance an online article stated that a 4 year old kid laughs 300 times a day while a 40 year old adult laughs only 4 times a day?

Other online studies reveal that laughing for 10 minutes a day enlivens us. Some of the enlivening benefits are: reduces stress, increases endorphins (health enhancing hormones), increases infection fighting antibodies, improves blood flow to the heart, and improved mood (positive outlook).I believe Reader’s Digest is correct with Laughter being the best medicine.

With all these great healthy reasons to laugh how can we laugh more? There are a plethora of means to tickle your ribs. Watch the Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers, Candid Camera, Funniest Home Videos, and all sorts of joke books to have some fun. Go ahead. Laugh. Turn your giggle box upside down.

Don’t stop there! Share the laughter with others. Laughter is not restricted to you. Reach out and be brave, put others in stitches. Turn their giggle box upside down over a witty joke. This laughter is contagious. You both will be laughing.

Oh wait a minute. I have to share more joke just for grins and to smirk at.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To BOLDLY go where no chicken has gone before.

#laugheveryday donotsmoke

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letssubah-blog · 5 years

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Curly's Funniest Moments from 'The Three Stooges'

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thomasroach · 5 years

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The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages

The post The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages appeared first on Fextralife.

The following post is this author’s opinion and does not reflect the thoughts and feelings of Fextralife as a whole nor the individual content creators associated with the site. Any link that goes outside of Fextralife are owned by their respective authors.

This started out as just a Steam review but I wanted to post due to the fact I enjoyed the game so much. But after the second paragraph, just after finding out that the Devs are releasing Season 2 in the coming year after a successful kickstarter, I realized that this is a game I want as many people as I can tell to know about. Just adding another positive rating to the already existent mass of them would be as helpful as getting a windmill to spin by blowing on it. So let’s do a full review, published courtesy of Fextralife so I can waste your time tell you about a pixel styled, point and click adventure game, so you can waste spend your money on it.

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages

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Genre: Adventure/Point & Click Developed by: Spooky Doorway Published by: Spooky Doorway Release Date: July 27th, 2017 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (Review Platform), Mac, Linux, Windows Price at the time of the review: $12.99

This is probably one of the funniest adventure games I’ve ever played and has got me back into occult fiction and fantasy. This is a mix of Ghost Busters and the X-Files, added with two thirds of the three stooges. It’s silly, spooky, laugh out loud fun and deserving of more investment, and no I am not a member of the dev team or affiliated with them in any way, but yes you should give them lots of money. If you have little to no interest in occult fantasy, buddy cop comedies, pixel graphics, or point-and-click adventure games, then I’m sorry to say you have lost approximately fifty seconds of your life reading the introduction to the review of a game you probably won’t want to get anyway. If you do, then let’s begin.

Story & Setting

The Darkside Detective tells the story, or rather many stories by Francis McQueeen, a seeker of the occult and eldritch as well as an investigator of all things paranormal and supernatural. Teamed with his goofy cop sidekick, Officer Dooley, Detective McQueen investigates multiple cases dealing with some form of ghostly apparition, crazed cultist, demonic entity, or cryptic creature. Despite its many horror themes and monsters, this game is a satire through and through, making fun of everything horror B-movies have tried to scare audiences with. It’s filled with parodies of various popular horror flicks and myths.

The satire, however, is really only a small facet of the comedic hilarity, as The Darkside Detective excels with its writing of ridiculous characters, situations, with plenty of jokes and jabs, that revolve around what is terrorizing New Yor-I mean Twin Lakes at the time being. Twin Lakes is a city rife with crazy paranormal encounters, and equally crazy (if not more so) people to deal with. Its a bevy of kooks and weirdos who range from a pyromaniac eight-year-olds, a paranoid anti-government sea monster, An occultist train engineer, a rival detective so douchy he literally takes candy from babies (then fines the baby for crying about it) and more.

It’s just…a mess, a beautiful mess of madness that makes progressing through each story a treat, with dialogue so funny that I want to interact with every possible thing just to hear it all, and everything seeming to have some kind of oddity or quirk just to make it all that much stranger. I could go into further detail on each individual story, but honestly the best experience with this game, is going in blind. Truly it’s the storytelling and writing that makes this game fantastic, as it seems to be for the most part of these classic adventure games.

If my mother had that much storage space in her closet, she’d still run out of room by the end of the month.

It’s the major selling point, and what I most loved about The Darkside Detective. I wish I could say more, but unlike thoroughly explaining gameplay, visuals, audio, and all other more technical components of a game, story and humor are some things you can’t go into full detail without spoiling the plot, or weakening the experience compared to a first time playthrough. Again, if you enjoy buddy cop comedies, Ghostbusters, and horror movie satire, this is a sure thing, heck, even if you don’t like point-and-clicks, I would still say get a guide and play through it like that, cause the humor is top notch. Simple at times, witty at others, but splendid all around. Not every joke was equally funny, but there wasn’t a single one that didn’t at least put a smile on my face.

Audio & Visuals

Simplistic, is one word I could use to sum up the pixel art style and colorful is another. Blocky, square, and geometrically appealing are a few more. “The Darkside Detective’s pixel graphic style lends a nostalgic return to classic point and clicks of old, that is reminiscent of titles such as Monkey Island and Dark Mansion” is a pretentious sentence I could also use to describe the art style. However, when it comes to pixel art, there only three things I, and likely what most people care about.

There are no words to describe how I feel about this.

Does it look nice? Can you tell what’s going on and what’s what? And will it possibly give me an epileptic seizure? To all these questions I can pretty much answer yes, yes and you may want to consult your doctor about that. Really though, given the decades of practice game development has had in 2D pixel art, I think it should be the basic standard for any pixel game to look “nice”, decent at least, and The Darkside Detective has certainly accomplished that.

Though simplistic to the point of not having facial features for most characters outside of facial hair, and hardly any dynamic animations, the game looks vibrantly colourful, and is especially beautiful at certain points in the story. It’s…like a child’s drawing actually, made into pixel form. Lots of strong, crayon colors, simple details, and some cartoonishly designed characters. which is quite fitting given the game’s comical nature.

But this is a quite an important feature that can damn a point-and-click pixel game into the nine circles of game development hell. If a pixel game’s standard is to look attractive, then knowing what anything and everything is at a glance should be the barest minimum. This is so I can tell the difference between a baby rattle and a bomb so I don’t accidentally recreate a morbidly dark version of a loony toons skit. So, how hard is it to tell what the hell I’m looking at and clicking on? I’m happy to say, hardly difficult at all. Unlike some point-and-click titles, this is one where I can tell exactly what’s what and who’s who.

Pretty much everything of interest is definable from the background and usually large enough and colorful enough to catch the eye. Anything that doesn’t easily stand out can be found with a little mouse waving. The point is, I never had a “What the $&%! Am I looking at?!” moment, or ever got stuck because the thing I needed to find was so obscurely hidden in a mess of visual clutter, so that it ended up being a hidden object game on top of a logic puzzle.

Finding things was fairly easy, and the game hit that sweet spot of being visually interesting and fun, but not so much so that I ever got sick and confused from looking at it. The game’s visuals are neither boring nor over stimulating, and the valuable items are easy to distinguish with a little looking at the most, giving the Darkside Detective a pass and thumbs up in its visuals department. While I do admit some more dynamic animations would have be welcomed, I can’t say there was any point in the game when I didn’t enjoy what I saw on my screen.

When it comes to audio, yeeeeah, don’t expect award winning vocal performances because as well as having no mouths, no one has voices either. Does this bring down the game? Well if you hate reading of all kinds, then yes, yes it does. However, if you do enjoy the written word as well as or even more than the spoken, then you’ll have no problems here. For me, the silence is actually preferable in this case. The lack of vocal sound leaves one in a quieter atmosphere, as well as it draws more focus on the music, which I’ll get to in a minute. Also, personally, I would bet that the voices the devs would get for the characters if they did, wouldn’t be as good as the ones imagined in my head.

Sound Effects

As for sound effects, they do their job, quite minimal and only occur during certain events such as putting out a fire but are well used as they do add to the scene or action. I can’t really complain about nor commend the sound effects, but given how little significance they have to the game as a whole, I don’t think it really matters. In a more action focused game, this would be a problem, but in an adventure title having sound only when something’s happening is probably for the best. Having constant, distracting noises would probably just get annoying over time, and like I said, when they do occur, the sound effects do add something, so they’re not a waste.

Soundtrack

Finally and most creepily, you have the music. If the voice and sound effects were largely ignored to focus on the music, then I have to say it was a smart choice. Simply put, the music for this game in fantastic, a beautifully fitting soundtrack of creepy and spooky pieces, paranormal and ghostly in tone and execution, amplifying the horror side of this horror comedy. Each song a similar yet unique brand of subtle horror, not truly scary or spine chilling in the sense of wandering around an empty house with Michael Mires walking in pace right behind with that classic Halloween music playing. It’s more on the side of what you would hear in say a supernatural mystery documentary, or a ghost story narrative such as tales from the crypt.

The Darkside Detective Soundtrack by Ben Prunty

It’s whimsical, with a good deal of creep factor, not to cause terror, but to draw one into a state of calm eeriness. It’s somewhat enchantingly haunting all at the same time, more serene than disturbing, in a way that soothes the nerves rather than putting them on edge like the aforementioned Michael Mires theme music. It also gives the feeling that something’s not quite right, that proper paranormal vibe like a specter may be looming over you.

Gameplay

As a point-and-click adventure game, the biggest thing you would want to know is this “how hard is the gameplay?” Because when it comes to games like these, difficulty can range from being fairly easy, just click the big shiny red button with “press this” in big, bold letters. To being more challenging in terms of gameplay with “you better have a detailed walkthrough on hand cause this will be like figuring out the Divinci Code, upside down, in a bad translation of J.R.Tolken Elvish speak…………and the paper’s on fire”. Thankfully, the Darkside Detective is not the latter and far from it.

The answer to this conundrum is easier than you think, though it does require extensive understanding of fourth dimensional quantum physics.

Puzzles

The puzzles are on the easier side of the scale, with the majority of puzzles giving strong hints as to what you need to do and what does what, as well as being largely involving “use this on this” style of puzzle solving. A staple of point ‘n’ clicks, with a few fun little mini games such as clear the tiles, make a pipe chain, or connect the wires without crossing them. Most of the use this on this puzzles usually took but a minute to put two and two together, after finding the needed objects. The only times I ever got stuck was because I didn’t know exactly how to use the items and on what. This was largely due to not knowing what order certain things had to be done in, but even then, that was only during a few problematic minutes.

Only once did I ever run into a situation where felt particularly stuck which I feel is worth mentioning. This happened due to an arbitrary order of operations where in this particular instance I had actually worked out what I had to do, before clicking on the hint that would lead me to the action.

Aaah, if gamers of the past could see us now. Futuristic graphical technology that can render beads of sweat dripping off of a realistic swimsuit model, and we’re still playing games you could run on a calculator.

Aside from that, the gameplay is, admittedly pretty average, though I did find the occasional mini game quite colorfully fun and a welcome exception to the standard point ‘n’ click affair. The puzzles that had logical solutions were in no way hard, and any puzzles whose sensibility and reasoning deviated from common logic were clearly explained. I never really encountered a situation where I’d solve a puzzle and then say “how the hell does that make any sense?!”, or, “how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?!”, or “how many drugs were these developers taking to think this up?!” And you know what? That’s the way I like it.

The puzzles are easy but not too easy, thus giving quite entertaining and not too frustrating obstacles between plot segments or events. The short length of each case (level as it were) makes it so that they don’t get stale before the next case, and helps change things up a bit.

Final Thoughts

The Darkside Detective isn’t revolutionary, it isn’t mind blowing and it isn’t a brain buster. However it succeeds where it matters most, it’s fun. It’s fun to look at, it’s fun to listen to, it’s fun to watch, it’s fun to read, and it’s fun to play. From start to finish, I had a great time playing this wacky little game and enjoying all the humor, mystery, and added spookiness that it had to offer. While I can definitely see room for improvement, this is still a solid experience as it is, and I wholly recommend it to anyone who wants a light-hearted adventure into the world of the supernatural and occult.

However, though the find and use puzzles are a common staple of the point-and-click genre, I do genuinely think they’re becoming too common place in gameplay in these games. I would rather see more of the kind of puzzles that diverge from the well-treaded design. In The Darkside Detective these worked well to a certain extent, but it was the puzzles that didn’t have them, that really stood out for me, even if they were ones not completely original.

I much prefer adventure games with clear, simple, logical puzzles rather than the extremely obscure moon logic puzzles the “classic” adventure games present me with, and you know why? Cause that’s not what I playto adventure games for. I come to them for enjoyable, entertaining stories as well as characters with clever dialogue, colorful plots, and interesting worlds to explore. That’s exactly what The Darkside Detective gives players.

If you enjoyed this review be sure to read more with our latest thoughts on action shinobi Sekiro Review: Shinobis Die Many Times. Or you can check out Capcom’s demon hunting title Devil May Cry 5 Review: Ssstylish Perfection.

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