Author: wd

i cant guarantee im always around, but when i am, consequences will never be the same.

let it go

A short story.

“A widower takes audacious measures to overcome his personal guilt over his partner’s death.”

“Did she make you cry
Make you break down
And shatter your illusions of love?
And is it over now?
Do you know how?
Pick up the pieces and go home.”

– “Gold Dust Woman” by Stevie Nicks

*

That night, Trevor watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and the next morning he called-in sick to work. Rachel Brosnahan. She looked just like her, only without the blond hair. He had watched the season from the beginning, and it was funny and painful in equal measure. And then there was the flashback, to when Midge did have blond hair, and it was like he was instantly-transported to his past. He couldn’t even pay attention to the show: he was so transfixed by this celebrity, this actress, out of his reach; a candle to his former flame. An imitation. As the show played, he reclined further in to the couch with his bottle of Wiser’s. He couldn’t remember the last time he touched his glass but he knew he was too-far-gone to reach for it now. From bottle to glass. He took a swig and let the TV carry on while his eyes darted around his living room of their own accord, looking for anything to rest on that wasn’t her. Why was he still watching? Because it was like a photograph he never took. A post he never saved. She was an idea, and then Rachel made her real again. It was coming up on ten years since Liz had died and try as he may there wasn’t any way to get around it. To relax. To take his mind off of her. Elizabeth Greer. Every show he turned to seemed to be a love story. His coffee table was strewn with artifacts from a life he knew before: trinkets from other girls that stood testament to missed opportunities; books he had stopped reading who knows how long ago, when his memory began its deadly choke-hold. That was the only way he was able to remember her now; her face, her manner: through the eyes of people paid to mock him and his affliction, as far as he was concerned. Rachel was beautiful in her own way but paled in comparison to Liz.

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Jay’s Take: Unhinged

A spoiler-heavy movie review.

unhinged

The biggest piece of criticism I can level at “Unhinged” – the Russell Crowe-vehicle that has the dissimilitude of being one of the first major releases after the Coronavirus lockdown – was that there simply was not enough screaming from its cast. Or yelling. Or raised voices at all, really. When I was still in my early-1s (10 or 11), I would lay prone at the top of the stairs that separated the second-and-third floors of our family’s home and listen to the movies that my parents would be watching downstairs while I was supposed to be in-bed sleeping. If you went by my word then, I would have thought all they ever watched were horror movies, because all I heard from my perch was 90% screaming. I don’t even know why I bothered: the volume was never loud enough to actually discern any dialogue, so I would literally only ever be hearing swelling music cues, gunshots, and screaming. I’m blown away just thinking about how many nights I would be there, through how many movies, fascinated by the idea of what they could be watching. And screaming always sounds more painful when it’s out-of-context.

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Capsule Reviews Vol.3

A collection of spoiler-heavy mini movie reviews.

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365 Days

2020 – Director: Barbara Bialowas & Tomasz Mandes

I’ve been wanting to write a review of this dreck since my wife and I finished watching it. It was on the Netflix Top-10 for a good length of time and I assume that a few of her friends recommended it to her because I see no other reason to be attracted to it save for fleeting exhortation (more like extortion). What draws women to this kind of subject matter? The “50 Shades”-style “meek woman who doesn’t understand her own sexual power seduced by an overly-aggressive and socially-distant hunk of man-meat” story is all well-and-good for your dime-store Harlequin romance (and I’ve read a couple of those in my time), but as a movie – to make it work – you have to decide what side of the subject-matter line you toe. “365 Days” is pornography. And it’s hilarious, that right now, you can go on your regular Netflix account without any additional parental lock and watch a movie where there’s a full face-fuck blowjob scene with a fake dick and everything; frequent nudity (male & female); and enough bumping-and-grinding to give Sonny Jim (sic) that first uncomfortable feeling in his pants. And much like pornography, the story takes second-fiddle to the diddling, and what we are left with is a provocative experiment in adult-only content on the platform and not much else. For some, that will be enough.

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a boy walks into a bar

A micro story read in-the-style-of Sam Elliott.

I reckon that’s whiskey you’re drinking there, partner. Me, too. Nothing beats the stuff. Seems to go down smoother each time you drink it. Me, I’ve been drinking the stuff longer than I can recall. Longer than I bet your momma ever been with your pops! Yep, I’ve been around a while. Long enough to see a few things in my time. Things that change a man. I reckon there’s less out there that makes a man a man than the life he already lives. And what’s a life without learning a few lessons along the way, huh? Lessons that I can pass down? That’s right, I’m going to tell you a story…

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Selected Scenes: Stargate SG-1 111

A spoiler-heavy single-scene TV episode analysis.

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Television takes the over-diversification of cinema and amplifies it to 11, with the same plots and the same beats being repeated ad-nauseum by every nation and orientation inclined to make their own show for the platform. Short-of-it: there is simply too much TV to watch. It’s ridiculous! Sure, maybe a cop show filmed in Germany will be a little harder than one from the States but, a cop show is still a cop show, whether it’s a “buddy” cop show or a “traumatized female detective” cop show or a “murder in a small town” cop show, etcetera. Same with sci-fi shows: how many “teen-aged vampires join a secret society in a Magic School to stop the werewolf invasion of an alien planet that secretly controls the fate of mankind” shows can you name? Same with wormhole shows, apparently.

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