Oscars Thread - Nominations are out. Early odds/predictions/thoughts.
Full list of nominations - https://variety.com/2020/film/news/2020-oscar-nominations-list-academy-awards-nominees-1203461985/ Early odds. (UK based so sorry for fractional odds) Best Picture Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - 6/5 1917 - 3/1 Parasite - 7/2 Joker - 7/1 The Irishman - 10/1 Marriage Story - 25/1 Jojo Rabbit - 33/1 Little Women - 66/1 Ford v Ferrari - 100/1 Best Director Sam Mendes, '1917' - 4/5 Bong Joon-ho, 'Parasite' - 5/2 Quentin Tarantino, 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' - 6/1 Martin Scorsese, 'The Irishman' - 10/1 Todd Phillips "Joker" - 50/1 Best Actor Joaquin Phoenix, 'Joker' - 1/10 Adam Driver, 'Marriage Story' - 6/1 Leonardo DiCaprio, 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' - 20/1 Antonio Banderas, 'Pain & Glory' - 100/1 Jonathan Pryce, 'The Two Popes' - 100/1 Best Actress Renée Zellweger, 'Judy' - 1/5 Scarlett Johansson, 'Marriage Story' - 6/1 Cynthia Erivo, 'Harriet' - 18/1 Charlize Theron, 'Bombshell' - 28/1 Saoirse Ronan, 'Little Women' - 33/1 Best Supporting Actor Brad Pitt, 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' - 1/6 Joe Pesci, 'The Irishman' - 8/1 Al Pacino, 'The Irishman' - 10/1 Tom Hanks, 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood' - 12/1 Anthony Hopkins, 'The Two Popes' - 20/1 Best Supporting Actress Laura Dern - 1/5 Margot Robbie - 8/1 Scarlett Johansson - 14/1 Florence Pugh - 16/1 Meryl Streep - 20/1 Edit - Best Adapted Screenplay The Irishman - 8/13 Jojo Rabbit - 5/2 Little Women - 13/2 The Two Popes - 11/1 Joker - 40/1 Best Cinematography 1917 - 1/6 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - 8/1 Joker - 10/1 The Irishman - 10/1 The Lighthouse - 16/1
On Dec 9 2015, a now-deleted account posted about their dreams, predicting The Revenant to win the Oscars (as it did), Trump to win (odds at the time were <10%), and Carolina Panthers to win Superbowl 50 (they lost to Denver Broncos). Topic warns of the dangers of dream-recording tech in the future
Oscars 2014 current odds at Ladbrokes and Paddy Power (UK). Thoughts? Predictions?
Here are the links if you want to see them nicely formatted, or text version below: Ladbrokes Paddy Power For me the dead certs seem to be: Best Picture - 12 Years A Slave, Best Director - Steve McQueen, Best Actor - Chiwetel Ejiofor but the odds are so short that it's hardly worth betting on anything other than Chiwetel Ejiofor at Paddy Power (3/1). I think Michael Fassbender's pretty much a certainty as well. I was surprised at the strong showing for the not-yet-finished American Hustle. Given that the Academy like to contrive at least one surprise in the top 6 categories I would guess Lupita Nyong'o at 3/1 to give 12 Years a Slave an almost clean sweep. Interesting: right at the bottom - Paddy Power is offering a Robert Downey Jr. Special - 9/1 that he wins a Best Actor Oscar before 2017. I'm not a particular fan of RDJ, but I kind of think that's a pretty good bet. Well anyway, here are the current odds in text form if you don't want to follow the links. (Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to format it as a table). Ladbrokes Best Picture American Hustle 2/1 12 Years a Slave 2/1 The Wolf of Wall Street 5/1 Inside Llewyn Davis 7/1 August : Orange County 8/1 The Monument Man 10/1 Saving Mr Banks 10/1 The Butler 10/1 Fruitvale Station 33/1 Nebraska 33/1 Gravity 33/1 Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom 33/1 Captain Phillips 40/1 Foxcatcher 66/1 Before Midnight 100/1 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 100/1 Rush 100/1 The Book Thief 100/1 The Third Person 100/1 Mud 100/1 Best Actor Robert Redford (All is Lost) 7/4 Chiwatel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) 2/1 Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips) 5/1 Leonardo Di Caprio (The Wolf of Wall Street) 7/1 Matthew McConaughey (Dalas Buyers Club) 7/1 Bruce Dern (Nebraska) 14/1 Michael B Jordan (Fruitvale Station) 14/1 Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom) 14/1 Forest Whitaker (The Butler) 16/1 Christian Bale (American Hustle) 50/1 Steve Carrell (Foxcatcher) 50/1 Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) 50/1 Benedict Cumberbatch (The Fifth Estate) 100/1 Joaquin Phoenix (Her) 100/1 Best Actress Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) 3/10 Amy Adams (American Hustle) 8/1 Judi Dench (Philomena) 8/1 Sandra Bullock (Gravity) 10/1 Emma Thompson (Saving Mr Banks) 10/1 Julia Roberts (August: Orange County) 14/1 Naomi Watts (Diana) 25/1 Adele Exarchopoulos (Blue is The Warmest Color) 33/1 Nicole Kidman (Grace of Monaco) 66/1 Kate Winslett (Labor Day) 66/1 Berenice Bejo (The Past) 66/1 Brie Larson (Short Term 12) 100/1 Julie Delpy (Before Midnight) 100/1 Best Director David O Russell (American Hustle) 10/11 Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave) 2/1 Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street) 7/2 Joel and Ethan Coen (Inside Llewyn Davis) 5/1 Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity) 12/1 George Clooney (The Monuments Men) 20/1 John Wells (August: Orange County) 25/1 Alexander Payne (Nebraska) 33/1 Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) 33/1 John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr Banks) 66/1 Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips) 66/1 Jason Reitman (Labor Day) 66/1 Ridley Scott (The Counselor) 100/1 J C Chandor (All is Lost) 100/1 Lee Daniels (The Butler) 100/1 Woody Allen (Blue Jasmin) 100/1 Best Supporting Actor Michael Fassbender (12 Years A Slave) 5/4 Tom Hanks (Saving Mr Banks) 6/4 John Goodman (Inside Llewyn Davis) 5/1 Bradley Cooper (American Hustle) 12/1 Josh Brolin (Labor Day) 14/1 Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street) 16/1 Harrison Ford (42) 25/1 Jeremy Renner (American Hustle) 33/1 Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) 40/1 David Oyelomo (The Butler) 40/1 Matthew McConaughey (The Wolf of Wall Street) 66/1 Chris Cooper (August: Orange County) 100/1 Robert De Niro (American Hustle) 100/1 Channing Tatum (Foxcatcher) 100/1 Alan Rickman (The Butler) 100/1 James Franco (Spring Breakers) 100/1 Best Supporting Actress Oprah Winfrey (The Butler) 6/5 Meryl Streep (August:Orange County) 2/1 Lupita Nyongo (12 Years A Slave) 3/1 Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle) 10/1 June Squibb (Nebraska) 14/1 Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station) 16/1 Margo Martindale (August: Orange County) 25/1 Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine) 50/1 Cameron Diaz (The Counselor) 50/1 Carey Mulligan (Inside Llewyn Davis) 50/1 Alfre Woodard (12 Years A Slave) 66/1 Amy Adams (Her) 66/1 Lea Seydoux (Blue is The Warmest Color) 100/1 Melanie Diaz (Fruitvale Station) 100/1 Vanessa Redgrave (Unfinished Song) 100/1 Paddy Power Best Picture Twelve Years A Slave 13/8 American Hustle 7/2 The Wolf Of Wall Street 6/1 August: Osage County 6/1 The Monuments Men 15/2 Blue Jasmine 16/1 Out Of The Furnace 16/1 Fruitvale Station 18/1 Inside Llewyn Davis 18/1 Saving Mr Banks 20/1 Gravity 20/1 The Counselor 20/1 Labor Day 22/1 Captain Phillips 25/1 Foxcatcher 25/1 Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom 33/1 The Butler 33/1 Grace Of Monaco 33/1 All Is Lost 33/1 Diana 33/1 Philomena 33/1 The Fifth Estate 33/1 The Great Gatsby 40/1 The Dallas Buyer's Club 40/1 Mud 50/1 Rush 66/1 Before Midnight 66/1 42 66/1 The Bling Ring 66/1 The Place Beyond The Pines 100/1 Nebraska 20/1 Best Actor Robert Redford (All Is Lost) 2/1 Chiwetel Ejiofor (Twelve Years A Slave) 3/1 Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom) 4/1 Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf Of Wall Street) 11/2 Bruce Dern (Nebraska) 8/1 Matthew McConaughey (The Dallas Buyers' Club) 10/1 Michael B Jordan (Fruitvale) 10/1 Christian Bale (American Hustle) 12/1 Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips) 14/1 Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) 16/1 Tom Hanks (Saving Mr Banks) 16/1 Steve Carell (Foxcatcher) 16/1 Forest Whitaker (The Butler) 16/1 Michael Fassbender (The Counselor) 20/1 Benedict Cumberbatch (The Fifth Estate) 25/1 George Clooney (Gravity) 25/1 Joaquin Phoenix (The Immigrant) 33/1 Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now) 33/1 Ethan Hawke (Before Midnight) 50/1 Leonardo DiCaprio (The Great Gatsby) 50/1 Best Actress Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) 10/11 Meryl Streep (August: Osage County) 5/2 Judi Dench (Philomena) 13/2 Julia Roberts (August: Osage County) 8/1 Naomi Watts (Diana) 10/1 Emma Thompson (Saving Mr Banks) 14/1 Nicole Kidman (Grace Of Monaco) 14/1 Sandra Bullock (Gravity) 20/1 Elizabeth Olsen (Oldboy) 20/1 Kate Winslet (Labor Day) 20/1 Rooney Mara (Ain't Them Bodies Saints) 20/1 Berenice Bejo (The Past) 25/1 Julie Delpy (Before Midnight) 33/1 Jennifer Lawrence (Serena) 33/1 Marion Cotillard (The Immigrant) 40/1 Adele Exarchopuolos (Blue Is The Warmest Colour) 40/1 Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby) 50/1 Best Director David O. Russell (American Hustle) 7/4 Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave) 7/4 Martin Scorcese (The Wolf Of Wall Street) 11/5 Alfoso Cuaron (Gravity) 8/1 Joel & Ethan Coen (Inside Llewyn Davis) 8/1 Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips) 25/1 Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher) 33/1 John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks) 40/1 Ron Howard (Rush) 40/1 Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) 40/1 George Clooney (The Monuments Men) 40/1 Woody Allen (Blue Jasmine) 66/1 Robert Downey Jr. Special To Win an Oscar for Best Actor before 2017 9/1
Elections Whiz Fails to Predict Oscars; What Went Wrong? "How did the predictor of 130 million American votes fumble when it comes to 6,000 odd members of the Oscars Academy?"
"Why is San Francisco the way that it is?" - A history of pluralistic populism and the urban anti-regime in Baghdad by the Bay, aka the Beachhead of Unintended Policy Consequences
- the_status Discussion Thread, Queen Hillary Publishing, October 15th, 2020
Boy, am I glad you asked!
(but really...am I? I know I said "ask me again on Monday" back in October. I spent a little longer on this than I thought I would...Sorry bud.) A brief note about me and why you should or shouldn't care what I think: I was born in San Francisco*, California in the late 1980s (👴 lmao), and grew up there through the '90s and '00s. \No, not Moraga. Not Mill Valley. Not Sunnyvale. SAN FRANCISCO. You moron. You absolute dolt.) I've worked for small startups and watched them become major publicly-traded tech firms. I've worked for local government and watched planning professionals drive themselves insane from knowing how to fix things but not having the political mandate to act on that knowledge. I've mansplained to more than my fair share of people who didn't really care why San Francisco is the way that it is today. And you can be next! _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction: "The City" as Everything but a City
"It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world."
- Oscar Wilde
"Hey, Georgia! San Francisco just wanted to say "thank you!" We already have Nancy Pelosi as our Congresswoman, now you're gonna give us John Ossoff as our Congressman!"
- Congressional Leadership Fund Super PAC Few cities carry as much symbolism as San Francisco. When you consider that San Francisco is a city of not even a million people, its outsize presence in our cultural zeitgeist becomes all the more notable. For progressives, the city is a besieged bohemian mecca - at once quaint and visionary, and under siege by a looming neoliberal order. For conservatives, it's an anarchic disastrous mess where unchecked liberal policies have produced a petri dish of societal failure and hedonism, all funded by extreme taxation. For liberals, it's a hub of technological innovation paradoxically situated precisely where innovation seems most squandered, where byzantine regulations on business and development stymie America's best opportunity to advance into the next century on the backs of immigrant innovators. All three would likely agree with the assessment of Paul Kanter of Jefferson Airplane:
San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.
But how did it wind up that way?
Part One: Pre-Industrial San Francisco
Prior to European settlement, what is now San Francisco was Ohlone Indian territory. They were getting along pretty nicely until the Spaniards came up from Mexico with all their missionary bullshit, and that involved a lot of not leaving the Ohlone alone...Things kinda went downhill for the California native population from there in a big way. (Like in a genocide way.) In the mean time these American people are super into this Manifest Destiny thing and so Alta California starts to have a big illegal immigrant problem from the United States. The San Francisco Bay is by far the best place to anchor a ship on the West Coast, what with the deep calm water and all, so all these illegal immigrants set up a little town called Yerba Buena*. Eventually they decide they're not content just genociding the native people, but also want voting rights and the ability to own the land they're genociding people on, so they go to Sonoma which is one of the only places the Mexicans have guns and they LARP a revolution. ^(\Funny story about the name change. I can explain in the comments if you're curious.)* It's not the US military doing the LARPing at first but they're definitely super down with it so they decide get in on the fun too and, bingo bango, California's a state now. Again, brief interlude, and I cannot stress this enough...this whole story REALLY sucks if you're an Ohlone Indian. Like, you're basically being shot and raped murdered by everyone else involved. So anyway this statehood thing was perfect timing for the Americans because it was only a couple years later that this guy John Sutter sees something shiny in the water. Turns out people will basically crawl over a mountain range or get scurvy and shit themselves around Cape Horn just to get some of this cool shiny stuff, and that's exactly what they did. So a metric shitload of people came to California starting in 1849. Most were from the Eastern parts of America, but many were from Mexico, Chile, the Philippines, France, and China. (The Chinese came to refer to San Francisco and the surrounding area as "Gold Mountain", and eventually, "Old Gold Mountain") These Forty-Niners were typically blue collar fortune-seekers. Ramshackle types from all over the world who thought they could change their fortunes with a dramatic change of scenery. Basically right from the get-go, San Francisco was a mostly working class, pluralistic, multicultural and diverse place where people sought the next frontier of wealth, prosperity, and freedom. It was distant from the institutions and power structures that had established dominance in the East. A burgeoning independent metropolis and Capital of the Wild West. This way of thinking about San Francisco is important because it basically still defines the San Franciscan identity, from the perspective of the people who actually live there, to this day. TL;DR: San Francisco was:
Ohlone land, until it was...
Spanish land, but still mostly empty, until it was...
American land, but still mostly empty, until it was...
Still American land, but hella crowded all of the sudden, and now it was defined by...
Pluralism
Industriousness
Innovation
Freedom and independence from Eastern U.S. institutions
Being a really shitty place to be an Ohlone Indian despite it being rightfully your land
Part Two: San Francisco as Western Industrial Powerhouse
What we're left with this point is a substantial, rapidly growing port city built around streetcars, horses and buggies, and shipping. It is the jumping-off point for any business endeavor pretty much anywhere in California's interior. And being so distant from the institutions of the East, it starts to develop its own institutions. Banks like Wells Fargo. The Southern Pacific Railroad. Levi Strauss Clothing Company. These dudes were ultimately the only ones to actually get rich from the Gold Rush. Also still a really shitty place to be for an Ohlone Indian. (By the way it was also a really shitty place to be Chinese pretty much from the Gold Rush onwards, too. Like, Supreme Court Case shitty....Not just once, either.) The city caught fire and burned a lot, notably in 1851. This inspired the city to put a phoenix rising from the ashes on its flag. Then it all fell over in an earthquake and burned really good and properly this time in 1906. It rebuilt rapidly in time for the 1915 World's Fair. This set the stage for what San Francisco would be for the next fifty years or so. An industrious, blue collar, capitalist metropolis. The gateway to the Pacific and the crown jewel of West Coast industry and innovation. A city dominated by organized labor, and, accordingly, progressive and sometimes even radical politics. Then World War II happened and the U.S. was hella racist. They were hella racist against the Japanese people, to the point that they put them in concentration camps and made them abandon all their property. They were a little less racist to black people, and let them have jobs building planes and ships and stuff, but still too racist to let them fight in the war or live wherever they wanted. So a lot of black people moved to the Bay Area to help build planes and ships and stuff (plus it was still way better than staying in the South.) With the limited places banks and neighborhood groups would let them live, a lot of them moved in to the existing working-class neighborhoods by the heavy industrial and shipbuilding facilities, and a lot of them moved into the place where the Japanese people had previously lived because, hey, I wonder why all these apartments are empty? Surely that's not a bad omen about how the government will treat minority communities, right? So now the government has a black neighborhood on its hands and it's very inconveniently right next to some important stuff. Not to be racist (by the way just so you know one of my friends is black) but I think that means the neighborhood is "blighted" because of, you know...all that jazz. So they decided to do a Robert Moses all over the place and kick all the black people out and bulldoze their homes and stuff. As you can imagine, a lot of minority community groups have wound up being pretty skeptical as a general rule of the vision laid out by mostly white politicians and urban planners for the future of San Francisco as it pertains to their communities. So, in 1940, San Francisco was 95% white, but right after the war that number started falling steadily. It never stopped, and around the mid-1990s or so San Francisco became a majority-minority city, which it still is to this day. Meanwhile the government was basically subsidizing suburban sprawl, building urban freeways and giving out super lucrative home loans to veterans(minorities need not apply). White people who were TOTALLY not racist but were just CONCERNED about the increasing diversity of inner cities started moving out in large numbers. In San Francisco they were largely replaced by immigrants. Overall the population began to decline around 1950 and wouldn't reach 1950 levels again until 2000. In contrast, the Bay Area was still rapidly growing by way of suburban sprawl. The population of the entire Bay Area almost doubles over this same timeframe, from 2.6 million to 6.7 million. From an economic perspective, by the time the Vietnam War rolls around, the military figures out it can ship things a lot faster and cheaper if it miniaturizes the concept of a warehouse into a weatherized steel box, and then uses trucks and cranes in big lots by the water to load and unload these new "shipping containers" directly on and off ships. Well, the problem is, the San Francisco isn't really set up for this. And it's not exactly a cheap, easy, or even smart idea to try to change that. So they do it in Oakland instead. And in only a few years, San Francisco loses its status as the primary shipping and industrial city of the Bay. American manufacturing declines generally, but even what little of it stays in the Bay Area doesn't stay in San Francisco.
The city of San Francisco lost twelve thousand manufacturing jobs between 1962 and 1972, the years when most of the Edgewater Homeless were adolescents. (Arthur D. Little Inc. 1975). The Edgewater Boulevard corridor, which had provided employment for most of the residents in the neighborhood up the hill, were particularly hard hit. Most of San Francisco's largest factories were located off Edgewater. It was also the hub for the region's transportation, communications, and utility sectors, including the Southern Pacific Railroad and, most important, the shipyards. Throughout the mid-1950s, the Hunters Point navy shipyard was the engine of heavy industry in San Francisco, with eighty-five hundred employees (Military Analysts Network 1998); but in 1974 it closed down. ... Economists have shown statistically that high rents, high levels of income inequality, and low rental vacancy rates are the three variables most consistently associated with elevated levels of homelessness in any given city (Quigly et al. 2001; U.S. Bureau of the Census 2001). From the 1990s through the 2000s, San Francisco County ranked number one in the nation with respect to all these variables, and, predictably, its homeless population burgeoned.
- fromRighteous Dopefiend\, Phillipe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg, University of California Press, 2009*) So the city is pivoting away from being a blue-collar place where people live and work, and transitioning into a white-collar place where people commute to work, and otherwise pretty stagnant and kind of rife for the circumstances that bring the proliferation of homelessness. This defines the political order of the era. Planners and politicians are envisioning a new San Francisco, where it serves as the Manhattan to the Bay Area's New York, but with suburbs this time, if only they could stamp out all that blight. TL;DR San Francisco is changing in the following ways in the middle of the 20th century:
White people are leaving
Immigrants and POC are moving in
The city is shrinking in population overall
The region as a whole is still growing because of suburban sprawl
The city was rapidly losing its industrial jobs
The people who depended on those jobs were suddenly unable to properly care for their families
The city is not defined in any meaningful way as a haven for the rich, but is instead, from a residential perspective, in a state of slow decay and stagnation, populated by blue collar workers, people in public housing, and government bureaucrats
Residential vacancy rates are low and rents are modestly rising but there is nothing at all like the housing crisis that we know of today occurring
The planners and politicians are focused on remaking the city into a regional and global capitalist powerhouse, and using bulldozers and cranes to do it
Conditions are shaping up to be pretty much ideal to drive an increase in homelessness (low vacancy, rising rents, rising income inequality)
It was still a really shitty place to be an Ohlone Indian despite it being rightfully your land
A bunch of weirdos were showing up and doing a lot of drugs. Oh yeah, about that, because it's kind of important...
Part Three: Flowers in your Hair
San Francisco's pluralism, its labor politics, and its independence from the hegemonic economic and cultural institutions of the regions to the East made it a mecca for free-thinking liberals and radicals well before the Vietnam War era. It was a working-class Catholic city, so in that sense it was fairly conservative, but it was also a cultural center of the Beat Movement. So when the counterculture movement gained steam across the Anglosphere in the 1960s, San Francisco was the place to be. On January 14, 1967, a crowd of approximately 20-30,000 people gathered at the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park at what became known as the Human Be-In to suffer for fashion in the frigid San Francisco fog. In hindsight we understand this event to be the kickoff festivities of the Summer of Love.
The Human Be-In was the beginning of the story for thousands of people, many of whom would go on to take primary roles in San Francisco's revolution. ... "When it started out, the city was antiblack, antigay, antiwoman. It was a very uptight Irish Catholic city," said Brian Rohan, [Michael] Stepanian's legal sidekick and another brawling protégé of Vincent Hallinan. "We took on the cops, city hall, the Catholic Church. Vince Hallinan taught us never to be afraid of bullies." By taking on the bullies, the new forces of freedom began to liberate San Francisco, neighborhood by neighborhood.
- David Talbot,Season of the Witch(Free Press Publishing 2012) As Acemoglu and Robinson repeatedly emphasize in this subreddit's bible, Why Nations Fail: Peace, Prosperity, Poverty, and Read Another Book (Crown Publishing Group, 2012), societies prosper when they produce inclusive institutions, and they collapse when they are subject to extractive institutions. But San Francisco progressivism, with its roots in the 1960s counterculture movement, sought a way out of this equation. This movement believed the institutions of American culture at the time were extractive. But they blamed this on the very existence of the institutions themselves*.* They didn't try to replace extractive institutions with inclusive ones. Instead they imagined a society which was basically free of institutions entirely.
In this view one certainly couldn't trust the government or the church to dictate what experiences might be pleasurable or useful, so best to just allow or try everything. Some experiential and psychic explorers had wonderful insights and epiphanies, and they did break through to the other side, and some ended up with Jim Jones and the People's Temple.
- David Byrne,The Bicycle Diaries(Penguin Books, 2009) This way of viewing the city was as a location for small, locally-grounded communities. Where interference from forces larger than the community brought only damage. This was fundamentally at odds with the global capitalist Manhattan-esque powerhouse that city planners envisioned for the place. Where the planners were playing the role of Robert Moses, the new counterculture aligned with Jane Jacobs. They tended to believe, like her, that redevelopment, construction, change, etc...were threats. That in San Francisco's old 1800s construction there was community and culture, and that building over this old-ness would destroy that, as it had in the Fillmore when the city tried to get rid of all the black people...uh...blight. As Jacobs would put it:
Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. ... If a city area only has new buildings, the enterprises that can exist there are automatically limited to those that can support the high costs of new construction. ... If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs of new construction. Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings. But the unformalized feeders of the arts - studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and art supplies, backrooms where the low earning power of a seat and a table can absorb uneconomic discussions - these go into old buildings.
-fromThe Death and Life of Great American Cities,Jane Jacobs, Random House, 1961 From this perspective, there was only one threat to what made San Francisco special, and it came in the form of a planning department permit.
To recapitulate the state of affairs circa 1970, the progrowth coalition had complete command of San Francisco's physical and economic development. The dream of remaking San Francisco into a West Coast Manhattan was rapidly taking solid form as skyscrapers went up, BART tracks were laid, and lands were cleared for redevelopment. ... The progrowth regime accomplished much, for better and for worse. It changed the face of San Francisco. In doing so, however, it fostered resistance among those the regime threatened or whose own dreams of the city were ignored. In dialectical fashion, the progrowth regime created the conditions that gave rise to its nemesis, the slow-growth movement.
-fromLeft Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco, 1975 - 1991,Richard Edward DeLeon University Press of Kansas 1992 So now we've got a lot of different coalitions in San Francisco. There's the new-age hippies, the Chinese immigrants, the black community, the El Salvadorians and the Mexicans. There's a new gay and lesbian community in the Castro. And they're all pretty much okay letting each other have their corner of the city, because the balance of power is split and balkanized. None holds enough power to threaten the other. But they all, to varying degrees, feel threatened by development. So they start to organize their opposition to the pro-growth regime.
Baghdad by the Bay is now the Balkans by the Bay. Everything is pluribus, nothing is unum. Hyperpluralism reigns. The city has no natural majority; its majorities are made, not found. That is a key to understanding the city's political culture: Everyone is a minority. That means mutual tolerance is essential, social learning is inevitable, innovation is likely, and democracy is hard work. Economic change has produced social diversity, and social diversity is the root of the city's political culture. One of the controlling objectives of the progressive movement has been to slow the pace of economic change to protect against threats to social diversity. The economic forces that helped create San Francisco's political culture could also destroy it. The first line of defense is the antiregime. ... The ultimate function of the antiregime is to protect the community from capital. It is a regime with the "power to" thwart the exercise of power by others in remaking the city. The primary instrument of this power is local government control over land use and development. In San Francisco, these growth controls have achieved unprecedented scope in these types of limits they impose on capital. They are used to suppress, filter, or deflect the potentially destructive forces of market processes on urban life as experienced by people in their homes, neighborhoods, and communities.
-fromLeft Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco, 1975 - 1991,Richard Edward DeLeon University Press of Kansas 1992 Since demand for housing in SF proper isn't really rising all that much due to suburbanization and white flight, shutting down this growth doesn't yet manifest in a visceral way in the form of rising housing prices. The paradigm of supply and demand is theoretical to this coalition because it does not have any tangible consequences. So they reject the theory and get to work passing new legal restrictions on development. They build powerful local interest groups to throw their weight around whenever a new development proposal arises for development in their communities. This policy and organizing infrastructure persists to this day. But when suburban sprawl in the Bay Area hits the boundaries of the greenbelt and there's no more room to absorb new housing demand in the suburbs, and as the tastes of the American hipster return to the same kinds of cultural amenities Jane Jacobs described above, the equation shifts in a big way. Starting with the first tech boom in the 1990s. TL;DR: In the postwar era, San Francisco blossoms culturally as an epicenter for radical liberal thought.
In the stagnating ashes of the local manufacturing and shipping economy, the blue collar residences are taken over by a new pluralistic group of people from a vast array of demographics.
Meanwhile, planners and politicians remake the city as an office hub to house the workforce of the suburban Bay Area as a whole.
The radical populist pluralism of the residents of San Francisco proper clashes with this vision for the city and they build an anti-growth coalition to combat it.
Because of the stagnating population this does not yet have consequences on housing costs - suburbanization is continuing to absorb regional demand rather than the city proper.
These consequences are hidden for decades - long enough for these groups to re-write local development law and cement their anti-growth coalition into local institutions, a sort of Maginot Line against growth.
Part Four: The Tech Boom and the Rise of the YIMBYs
A major impediment to a more efficient spatial allocation of labor is housing supply constraints. These constraints limit the number of US workers who have access to the most productive of American cities. In general equilibrium, this lowers income and welfare of all US workers.
- Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti, "Why Do Cities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth," NBER Working Paper 21154, National Bureau of Economic Standards, Cambridge, MA, May 2015 (revised June 2015) Jane Jacobs did a really good job explaining why, strictly from a cultural perspective, suburbs suck and cities are awesome. Weirdly for a long time a lot of people thought it was the other way around, but by the 1990s it wasn't cool to be all suburban anymore and it was way more punk rock to be in a city. So people who worked in Silicon Valley - largely younger people, fresh out of college - started wanting to live in San Francisco and Oakland instead, because the rest of the Bay Area was (and still is) sterile and suburban. When the personal computer became a household fixture and the internet started reaching the mass market, suddenly there was a lot more money to be made in computers. All of the sudden San Francisco's population went from slowly rising to rising pretty quickly again. In 1990 San Francisco's population was lower than it was in 1950. By 2000 it was higher. By 2010 it was a lot higher. Now it's over 20% higher than it was in 1990. San Francisco has always been a pretty expensive place to live, but that was mostly because it wasn't that depressed economically, plus it was beautiful from an aesthetic perspective and the weather was pretty much the tits. All of the sudden, though, it was still beautiful and the weather was still amazing, but it wasn't just "not that depressed economically" anymore. Suddenly it was a straight-up boomtown. And it still only has a fraction of the population - and, crucially, housing stock - that the Bay Area as a whole does. So this entire planning and political infrastructure had spent decades building in one direction, where people moving to the Bay Area for work would live in the suburbs. And in response this anti-growth regime of pluralistic populist left-wing hyper-local community groups succeeded in pretty much freezing development by law in San Francisco proper under the assumption that everyone would just go work in Silicon Valley instead. And then the cultural and economic inertia does a 180 on them. Now everyone wants to live in San Francisco even if they have to work somewhere else. These shifts - some local, some national, some global - have concentrated themselves in an unprecedented way in a city of less than a million people, focused on the tip of a peninsula only 7 miles across. With so little room for these effects to manifest, they manifest with a vengeance. There is nowhere to spread them out across. They hit like a tall glass of Bacardi 151. What this does to the housing prices is totally predictable.
California’s home prices and rents have risen because housing developers in California’s coastal areas have not responded to economic signals to increase the supply of housing and build housing at higher densities. A collection of factors inhibit developers from doing so. The most significant factors are: - Community Resistance to New Housing. Local communities make most decisions about housing development.Because of the importance of cities and counties in determining development patterns, how local residents feel about new housing is important. When residents are concerned about new housing, they can use the community’s land use authority to slow or stop housing from being built or require it to be built at lower densities. - Environmental Reviews Can Be Used to Stop or Limit Housing Development. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires local governments to conduct a detailed review of the potential environmental effects of new housing construction (and most other types of development) prior to approving it. The information in these reports sometimes results in the city or county denying proposals to develop housing or approving fewer housing units than the developer proposed. In addition, CEQA’s complicated procedural requirements give development opponents significant opportunities to continue challenging housing projects after local governments have approved them. - Local Finance Structure Favors Nonresidential Development. California’s local government finance structure typically gives cities and counties greater fiscal incentives to approve nonresidential development or lower density housing development. Consequently, many cities and counties have oriented their land use planning and approval processes disproportionately towards these types of developments. - Limited Vacant Developable Land. Vacant land suitable for development in California coastal metros is extremely limited. This scarcity of land makes it more difficult for developers to find sites to build new housing.
Mac Taylor,High Housing Costs, Causes and Consequences,California Legislative Analyst's Office, 2015 Remember, this is all happening so fast that not only are the institutions built out of the antigrowth regime movement still exerting their power on development, the people who built them are. They're still alive and showing up to community meetings. Remember, if you were 20 in 1975, you're just barely at retirement age now. It's easy to understand why these people aren't responding to the price signals that are ringing alarm bells to everyone else. If they're renting, they're protected by rent control - their rent price is fixed to a modest cost of living increase as long as they don't move. This means they are totally insulated from a rising rental market, even if the direct consequence of rent control is suppressing supply and causing prices to rise for everyone else. And if they own instead of rent, wouldn't they be priced out from rising property taxes? Not in California they won't, thanks to Prop 13!* ^(\Prop 13 does not apply to forcible land transfers of tracts rightfully claimed by Ohlone Indians or their descendants)* These economic incentives ensure that their interests remain the same as they were in 1975 - all upside for them to oppose growth, and no downside. And in the face of this economic incentive, even the Fern Gully fairy tale that developers are inherently anti-environment is hardly necessary to get them to support restrictions which have a negative consequence on the environment and the economy:
Not all change is good, but much change is necessary if the world is to become more productive, affordable, exciting, innovative, and environmentally friendly....At a local level, activists oppose change by fighting growth in their own communities. Their actions are understandable, but their local focus equips them poorly to consider the global consequences of their actions. Stopping new development in attractive areas makes housing more expensive for people who don't currently live in those areas. Those higher housing costs in turn make it more expensive for companies to open businesses. In naturally low-carbon-emissions areas, like California, preventing development means pushing it to less environmentally friendly places, like noncoastal California and suburban Phoenix. Local environmentalism is often bad environmentalism.
-fromTriumph of the City, Edward Glaeser,Penguin Group, 2011 It's been long enough since the first tech boom, though, that today there are a lot of people for whom these incentives do not align. If you have to move apartments for whatever reason, you lose rent control. If you're a newcomer to the city, you never really got it in the first place. If you're an environmentalist who understands how carbon emissions work, you want to see more sustainable infill. Or, like me, if you're a native who has all these advantages but still wants the city to be a place where people can come and live and seek prosperity, regardless of their origins, you simply understand that this status quo must be broken. This is where the YIMBY movement gets its start. The YIMBY movement is nearly global at this point, but the most well-publicized first-movers in the fight got started in San Francisco about 5 years ago.
In San Francisco...things get weird. Here the tech boom is clashing with tough development laws and resentment from established residents who want to choke off growth to prevent further change. [Sonja] Trauss is the result: a new generation of activist whose pro-market bent is the opposite of the San Francisco stereotypes — the lefties, the aging hippies and tolerance all around. Ms. Trauss’s cause, more or less, is to make life easier for real estate developers by rolling back zoning regulations and environmental rules. Her opponents are a generally older group of progressives who worry that an influx of corporate techies is turning a city that nurtured the Beat Generation into a gilded resort for the rich. ... But the anger she has tapped into is real, reflecting a generational break that pits cranky homeowners and the San Francisco political establishment against a cast of newcomers who are demanding the region make room for them, too. ... Many longtime San Franciscans view groups like [the San Francisco Bay Area Renter's Federation (SF BARF)] as yet another example of how the technology industry is robbing San Francisco of its San Francisco-ness. Far from the hippies of the 1960s, many of today’s migrants lean libertarian — drawn by start-up dreams or to work for the likes of Google or Apple, two of the world’s most valuable companies. They tend to share a belief, either idealistically or naïvely, depending on who is judging, that corporations can be a force for social good and change. But BARF members are so single-minded about housing that they can be hard to label politically. They view San Francisco progressives as, in fact, fundamentally conservative. That is because, to the group members at least, progressive positions on housing seem less about building the city and more about keeping people like them out.
- Conor Dougherty,'In a Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to 'Build, Baby, Build',New York Times, April 16th, 2016 All of the sudden a new coalition starts to form, drawing on the infrastructure of the old pro-growth urban regime and the influence of tech companies and young renters fed up with rising rental prices in the face of the demand. SF BARF gives way to less eccentric and more mainstream organizations like YIMBY Action. These groups start releasing voter guides and organizing for pro-growth political candidates. This shift is how San Francisco elected a YIMBY mayor, and how it elected, and then re-elected, the most YIMBY state representative in maybe the whole U.S. Sen. Wiener's success at the state level has been a major turning point in the YIMBY fight. Escalating these reforms to the state level pulls small cities and towns out of their Prisoner Dilemma, whereby each individual city stands to benefit if everyone else builds housing, but stands to suffer a disproportionate amount of harm in the form of demand on their infrastructure and services if only they do. He has built a pro-housing coalition with, among others, fellow Bay Area legislators Sen. Nancy Skinner (D - Oakland/Berkeley), Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco), and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D - Oakland/Berkeley). The YIMBY movement in Sacramento is now largely driven by urban Bay Area legislators, pushing against pro-suburb Republicans and substantial anti-gentrification coalitions from the Los Angeles area. Housing development has accellerated in both San Francisco and Oakland on the back of new-found public support for housing supply growth. I have no reason to doubt this shift will continue as the grip of the old anti-growth regime loosens. It's inevitable once the incentives of the pluralistic components of the political coalitions shift. Eventually the people with Prop 13 protections will stop owning their homes, one way or another. Eventually the people with pre-tech rents will move and the units will be rented again at market rate. And when that happens to a large enough degree, the incentives driving the dominant political coalition will shift in earnest towards the evidence-based conclusions of economists and environmentalists. I'd go so far as to say we're past the beginnings of this, and maybe even past the turning point. But in the mean time, San Francisco is a hotly contested development battlefield. And to top it all off, if this sudden crunch wasn't already a recipe for capturing the national and global imagination, now it's happening right in front of the people who work at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit. This makes the drama rife for all of us to watch unfold. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
[OC] Who's responsible for the rise of "Super Teams?" A look through the Usual Suspects
Fresh off a three-year celebrity tour with the Harlem Globetrotters/Golden State Warriors, Kevin Durant decided he wanted a new chapter. A fresh start. A harder challenge. So naturally, he traveled across the country to Brooklyn to team up with Kyrie Irving. And now... James Harden, too. For basketball purists, the idea of superstars teaming up with other superstars (and then more superstars on top of that) is sacrilegious and an insult to the game. For others, it's an extension of player empowerment and freedom of movement. Regardless of where you side there, the question is: how did we get here? Who's to blame (or credit?) And to do that, we've lined up some of the usual suspects. suspect 1: the status quo We tend to look at "Super Teams" as a relatively new concept, and the older generation of players sniping about it would lead credence to that argument. However, the idea of stacked teams has been going on for quite a while. Superstar Oscar Robertson joined up with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Milwaukee (via trade.) Later on, Abdul-Jabbar would play with Magic Johnson. The Lakers and Celtics have been beating up on the rest of the league for decades. While free agency hasn't been around forever, these super teams still formed due to some unusual circumstances. They weren't all built "organically" through slow development in the draft. The Lakers were 47-35 the season they selected Magic Johnson at # 1 overall (a pick acquired through trade.) The Spurs went 59-23 the season before they tanked and ended up with Tim Duncan at # 1 overall. As in life, the rich get richer. Free agency has exaggerated that, but it's hard to claim this is an entirely new concept. suspect 2: Danny Ainge We'd seen stacked teams before and even superstar pairs before, but Danny Ainge and the Boston Celtics took it another step up when they collected a "Big Three" -- pairing homegrown star Paul Pierce with fellow All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. In a sense, that changed the game and shaped the decades to come. Historically, the NBA had enjoyed a lot of superstar pairs before -- Stockton/Malone, Magic/Kareem, Kobe/Shaq, etc. We'd grown accustomed to a tagteam like that; heck, they even made NBA Jam with that premise in mind. Now, all of a sudden, that number changed to "3." The idea of a triumvirate stuck around and has had a lasting effect, as other stars have attempted to find their own big three. Naturally, that leads us to our next suspect. suspect 3: LeBron James Perhaps the most shocking free agency decision came with "The Decision" itself, when LeBron James decided to join up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami and form his own Big Three to counter Boston. Again, we'd seen superstars join forces before, but it most often happened towards the end of their careers. One of the most hyped examples came with the 2003-04 Lakers. Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal had already won championships, and then added two future Hall of Famers in Karl Malone and Gary Payton. That said, Payton was in his age-35 season. Malone turned 40. They were both clearly past their prime. When Steve Nash joined the Lakers towards the end (to play with Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard), he was already 38 years old himself. When Charles Barkley went to Houston to play with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, the three superstars were age 33, 34, and 34 respectively. That stands in stark contrast to LeBron James joining the Miami Heat. At the time, James was smack-dab in the middle of his prime at age 26. Chris Bosh was 26. Wade had been in slight decline, but was still under 30 (age 29.) We tend to not think of that Miami Heat team as an overwhelming force because they "only" won 2 out of 4 titles together and had to fight hard to get those, but they had been seen as an unfairly-stacked team at the time. Their initial oveunder was 64.5 wins. Their title odds were only +175 (for comparison's sake, the Lakers this year were the biggest favorite at only +275.) Jeff Van Gundy predicted the team would win 75 games. In many circles, their decision to team up was bashed as anti-competitive. Anti the "spirit" of the game. Soft. Lame. However, it set the stage for future pairups to come and set an entirely new status quo. suspect 4: Kevin Durant If LeBron James stacked the deck, then Kevin Durant played with a trick deck when he joined the 73-win Golden State Warriors (the team that had just beaten him in the playoffs.) As true fans we can understand that your regular season win total doesn't accurately reflect your power, but there was no denying that the team was already good enough to contend and win titles. They won 67 games and a championship in 2014-15, and won that record 73 games and made the Finals the next year. The idea that they'd add ANOTHER superstar in Kevin Durant (then in his prime at age 28) felt "unfair." Fair or not, it was certainly a powerhouse like we'd never seen in our lifetimes. When Durant joined the team, their oveunder was 66.5 wins (higher than LeBron's Miami first team), and their title odds were an ungodly -128. Turns out, that wasn't low enough. The Warriors went 16-1 in the playoffs that first season, finishing with arguably the most dominant run of all time. With that decision, Durant made it clear that "fairness" and "competitiveness" came second to winning and dominating, which he and the team did quite well. Fans may not have liked it, but it started to feel like the new normal in the modern NBA. suspect 5: Hulk Hogan Throughout basketball history, we've always seen fans passionately root for their local team and root against their rivals. But the idea of universally accepted "good guys" and "bad guys" hadn't been much of a thing. This wasn't professional wrestling, after all. But then again, professional wrestling used to keep strict lines between the two as well. Hulk Hogan was "the good guy." The baby face. The one kids could look up to. That is, until the Bash at the Beach in 1996, when Hulk Hogan joined with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall and ushered in the "New World Order" nWo. And if Hulk Hogan could become a bad guy "Hollywood" Hogan, then maybe that's what opened the door for LeBron James and Kevin Durant to go "heel" and become public villains. After all, there's a good chance that James and Durant watched wrestling back then (age 12 and 8 at the time). Whether it was the nWo or DX or Steve Austin, it felt cool to be the anti-hero in the 90s. suspect 6: the AAU basketball circuit In the olden days, your high school basketball may have been a collection of lovable oddballs and misfits. Maybe you'd even have a good player or two who were destined for legitimate NCAA ball. These days, those stars have started to cluster together from an early age, partly due to AAU culture and partly due to the rise of basketball academies / pseudo-schools. Did you know the top two picks in 2018 (Deandre Ayton and Marvin Bagley III) were actually on the same high school team for a bit? Same goes for this year's lottery picks LaMelo Ball and Onyeka Okongwu. This trend is only amplifying. Oklahoma State SF Cade Cunningham is the projected # 1 pick in next year's draft. But for him, the Cowboys roster may be a step down. His high school team featured players that are currently ranked # 9 on ESPN's draft rankings (Scottie Barnes), # 16 (Da'Ron Sharpe), and # 19 (Moses Moody.) Moreover, two more of their teammates (Caleb Houstan and Dariq Whitehead) are projected to be lottery pick's in next year's draft. That's 6 future pros, all on the same high school team. Perhaps that's a reaction to super teams gathering in college (like Karl-Anthony Towns + Devin Booker's Kentucky super team) or perhaps that's in response to LeBron James joining Miami. But whatever it is, it's a trend that's likely to shape the relationships between these players and shape the basketball culture they grow up in. suspect 7: the fans and media The fans and media derides superstars for teaming up, but some could argue that they created this monster in the first place. Fans and the media have always been bashing players for not winning, and always used "ringzzz!" as a defining argument in their legacy. Players should care about winning! winning! winning! above all else. That pressure has only intensified in the days of cable news and social media. If a player has a bad game, he's going to hear about on ESPN and on his twitter feed for the next few days. The trolls are storming the gate in a way that must be maddening to defend against. I'd also argue there's a weird "bait and switch" here. The fans and media wants players to care about winning... but not THAT much. You're supposed to seek a title -- but it needs to be a certain degree of difficulty as well? Who's the arbitrator of that line? If Kevin Durant joined a 60 win team, would that have been OK? Is it OK that he paired with Kyrie Irving, but NOT OK that they brought in James Harden too? Who's to say? An insecurity and a desire to appease these unappeasable fans and media may be the reason that we're seeing more superstar mash-ups these days. the real culprit: the collective bargaining agreement At the end of the day, this comes down to -- as most things do -- a matter of money. Quite simply: superstars are joining forces now because the CBA makes that possible in a way that didn't exist before. Obviously, players didn't have the freedom of movement back in the days prior to free agency. But even after that, there were some barriers in place that prevented against superstar pairings. For one, the salary cap. The financial realities of a growing sport. Consider this, in 1997-98, Michael Jordan made $33M in salary from the Chicago Bulls. The salary cap for a TEAM? $27M. The truth is: superstars couldn't leave and join their friends because their teams couldn't afford two giant contracts like that. Bird Rights enabled teams to pay their own stars, but free agents weren't able to squeeze under the cap limits without breaking their owner's banks. As a result, teams would tend to pony up for "their" star -- and in some cases, overpay them for the privilege. We also saw a lot of young players (like Kevin Garnett and Juwan Howard) soak up huge contracts before they had proven to be ready to merit those figures. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes not. But because some teams had been getting burned, the league decided to amend their contract structure. Rookie deals were more restricted, and so were the new concept of "max salaried" players. In 1999, the NBA formally introduced the "max." The problem is: the NBA originally had the max at an artificially low rate. Too low of a rate. When LeBron James joined up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the max salary was about $15M a year, which meant that a team could theoretically squeeze THREE superstars (three of the best players in the league) all on the same team without even going into luxury tax. I don't believe the league intended for that to actually happen, but the players took advantage of that. The same could be said later on, when Kevin Durant took advantage of a cap spike and squeezed onto the Golden State Warriors roster. Over the last few years, the league has been trying to play catch up by increasing maxs and introducing "super maxes," but the issue still remains. Part of this is due to the fact that the league's revenues (and consequently its cap) continues to skyrocket. The salary cap was $75M in 2015-16. Three years later, that had spiked up to $102M. As we can see on several teams, that's still big enough to fit 2-3 superstars under the same roof. TL;DR -- Culturally, we may have seen some shifts that allowed players to feel more comfortable teaming up. But more than anything, the "culprit" is a CBA structure that actually allows them to do that logistically. Because superstars of the past didn't have that same opportunity, we have no clue if they would have done the same or not.
Then, she turned on her heel and left my room, closing the door behind her. I lay there, sat-up in bed, my body too awash with adrenaline to even dream of sleeping or thinking or doing anything. I just waited, wired and awake. I waited for her to come back and kill me.
She never did. The sun rose, and with it came the sound of cars in the street and dogs barking in their yards. I nervously stepped out of bed. My feet were cold against the hardwood, but I barely noticed. All I could think about was my mother, and how she would react this morning. Usually she was full of smiles and affection after she’d slept off the booze, but after last night I wasn’t so sure. Something seemed to have changed in her. When I made my way downstairs for breakfast, she wasn’t there. Normally she was eating her porridge and ready to grab my cereal of choice from the cupboard. This time it was just me. The house felt empty. Lonely. I clambered onto the countertop and opened the cupboard, pulling out a box of Frosted Flakes. I did my best to remember what Mr Gilad had told me the day before. It doesn’t matter what my parents think of me, I thought to myself. I need to forge my own path and listen to my heart. I have to do what I think is right, and not let anybody, my parents or otherwise, get in the way of that. I thought about his words over my bowl of cereal. Even if my dad didn’t love me, and even if my mom wished I’d never been born, I could still find my own path in life. As I ate, I monitored the digital clock sitting on our kitchen counter. It was a habit I picked up because my mom was always very strict about ushering me into the car by 7:15am, so she could drop me off in time to get to work. Right now it read 7:45am. She was nowhere in sight. A minute later I heard the familiar creak of footsteps on the stairs, and my mood picked up. Even after everything that had happened last night, my mom hadn’t hurt me, and I still had my trivia competition with Mr Gilad and Oscar to look forward to. Maybe mom realized she loved me too much to hurt me. The creaking stopped as the footsteps reached the landing, and my dad bustled around the corner, adjusting his tie. He paused, seeing me at the kitchen table. “What are you doing here?” “Waiting for mom,” I said quietly. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice rising. I swallowed. My father always had a way of making me feel smaller than I already was. “Waiting for mom, dad.” He stared at me with something between irritation and disbelief. “Your mom’s not home.” “What?” “I said she’s not home. Do you need a fucking hearing aid now too?” I looked down, eating another spoonful of Frosted Flakes. Where did she go? I wondered. She was here last night. My eyes drifted to the digital display. The clock now read 7:50am. Class was starting in ten minutes, and so was my trivia competition. It took at least ten minutes to drive to school. “Dad?” I asked. “Have you seen my briefcase?” he said, impatiently. “No, sorry.” “Fuck!” he snapped. “That stupid bitch probably took it!” He adjusted his collar and reached for the coffee pot, before realizing it was empty and then flung it across the room, where it shattered on the wall. “Everything I do!” he screamed. “Taken for granted!” Mr Gilad’s words echoed in my head. To believe in myself. To trust in my instincts. To do what I felt I needed to. I cleared my throat. “Can you drive me to school, I have a trivia compet--” “Do I look like your mother?” he said incredulously. I stared at him, feeling tears welling in my eyes. Eventually, I shook my head. “I have a real job,” he said, grabbing his jacket from the wall and opening the front door. “I don’t have time to play at being a parent.” He muttered something about ingrates, and then disappeared through the doorway, shutting the door behind him. I sat at the table for a few more minutes, too stunned to do anything. My mom was gone. My dad was gone. It was just me in the house now. My family didn’t care about me. Nobody gave a damn. No, that wasn’t true. Oscar cared. Mr Gilad cared. I snatched my jacket from the coat rack beside the door and exited after my father. I used the key we hid under the rock in our garden to lock the house behind me, and I started jogging toward the school. Usually, when I walked home with Oscar it’d take us just over an hour. Unfortunately for me though, Hillcrest school lived up to its namesake. My school sat perched atop a large hill, overlooking the rest of Plumberry township. At the top, it was really a spectacular view. To the north you could see most of the local streets, all the way up to the city hall, downtown. To the south, you could see far down the country road, all the way out to Lake Tyler and Gefferson forest beyond. Still, it was uphill. Which meant it would be a longer walk to than from. I was determined though. Mr Gilad’s words recited themselves in my mind like a mantra, pushing me ever forward. I kept my eye on the watch on my wrist, figuring if I could get there before 8:30, I’d be in the clear. In both third grade classes, we did a sharing period from 8 till 8:30, where we talked about our day or new things we found interesting. My sneakers pounded along the sidewalk, my backpack bouncing up and down with my binder, pencils and markers. I made good time getting to the bottom of the hill, and at the distant top I could see the gates that marked the entrance to Hillcrest elementary. I started my ascent. It was slow going. As I went, I kept track of the watch on my wrist. 8:20am. I had ten minutes to reach the top, and I was barely a quarter of the way there. My breath was coming in big heaves and my legs, tired from jogging for so long, burned with soreness. I felt lightheaded and wobbly -- out of breath. I continued to climb, more slowly now. I didn’t have a water bottle, and I was beginning to feel incredibly thirsty, but I knew I needed to get to the top before the trivia competition started. Somehow, even after everything that had happened with my mom and dad, I felt like if I could just win that competition, then everything would be alright. My mom would come home, and she’d realize how smart I was and decide that drinking wasn’t worth it, and my dad would be so proud of me that he’d start taking an interest in my studies. My eyes drifted back to the watch on my wrist, and my heart fell. 8:45am. How had I been walking up the hill for so long already? I stopped, catching my breath and realizing none of it mattered anymore. I was way too late for trivia, and I was probably going to end up in detention besides that. There wasn’t any point in rushing now. My day was already ruined. I took the rest of the hill at a slower walk, and my legs thanked me for it. I hated my mom for leaving last night, and I hated my dad for not driving me to school. I hated both of them for making me miss out on trivia, and disappoint the one adult who seemed to care about me: Mr Gilad. Tears tugged at the corners of my eyes as I considered how ashamed of me he probably was. He went through all the trouble of securing me permission to attend his class this morning, and I gave him my word I’d be there. Then I didn’t show up at all, and my dad didn’t so much as call the school and let them know I’d be late. He probably thought I was just as much of a lost cause as my parents by now. “There he is!” a shrill voice shrieked. “Oh my god, he’s here!” I looked up as Mrs Applefig came stampeding toward me, her lined face filled with concern and her tone thick with relief. “Walter, are you okay?” she wrapped me into a tight hug. “Thank goodness. Thank goodness.” I’d been so absorbed in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed I’d crested the hill and come up in front of my school. Mrs Applefig smothered me with her hug, and all I could see was the blue fabric of her blouse. “I’m fine, Mrs Applefig,” I lied. “I’m sorry for being late.” “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay,” she said, pressing her face to mine. I felt something wet on her cheek. “Gloria, is that Walter Thimby?” a man bellowed, and I recognized it as Principal Patel. She wheeled around, nodding fiercely. “It is, Uday! It is!” Freed from Mrs Applefig’s all-encompassing blouse, I became acutely aware of something very strange: my entire school was staring at me. “Bring him over here,” Principal Patel called out. “Everybody triple check your students and make sure everybody’s accounted for!” Mrs Applefig ushered me into a line with the rest of my classmates, and I plunked down on the grass beside Jessie Wilson, a blonde kid who held the record for most school suspensions in third grade. He leaned over and whispered into my ear. “Whew,” he said. “Gotta say man, for a while there you had us worried.” “Had you worried?” I said, feeling too depressed to chitchat. “Yeah,” he said. He thumbed over his shoulder, back toward the school behind us. “We thought you were still inside.” Still inside? I turned around, and gazed at the school with narrowed eyes. Beyond the belltower in the center, I saw a dark cloud billowing into the sky. Smoke. “The south wing caught fire early this morning,” Jessie explained. “We cleared out all the classrooms, but I guess we’re still missing some students. You were one of them.” I swallowed. The smoke was pitch black, and heavy. It looked like it was growing thicker. “Firefighters are on the other side,” Jessie continued. “They’ve been fighting the blaze for twenty minutes now, but it keeps getting bigger. They’re calling in fire trucks from the next town over.” I stared, transfixed at the pillar of shadow rising from the school. Beneath it, faint in the brightness of the morning sun, I spotted the flicker of flames. The school was burning. Just then, a cacophony of sirens sounded in the distance. A handful of seconds later, and two fire trucks roared over the crest of the hill, through the school gates, and swung around the parking lot toward the south side. I gazed after them in awe. I’d never seen fire trucks in action before. “Mister Thimbly,” Principal Patel said firmly. I blinked, returning my attention to the front of me. He crouched down, meeting me at eye level. “I need to know if you were with Mr Gilad’s class this morning.” “Mr Gilad’s class?” I said, confused. “No, I was late. I was supposed to be but--” “Jesus,” he muttered, shaking his head and standing up. “He wasn’t!” he shouted to somebody I didn’t recognize. They were in a suit and on a cellphone, and their lips were moving fast. “That’s not good,” Jessie said beside me. “What’s going on?” I asked, fear beginning to take seat in my chest. “We’re missing twenty two kids still, and one teacher.” I swallowed, a piece of me already knowing the answer to the question I was about to ask. “Who?” “Mr Gilad,” Jessie said darkly. “Nobody knows where he is, or his class.” “They’re two doors down from us,” I argued. “How can they not know where he is?” Mrs Applefig appeared in front of us, her finger pursed to her lips. “Shh!” she hissed. “It’s important that we’re all quiet. This is a very serious situation and it’s crucial that Principal Patel is able to hear what’s going on.” Jessie and I closed our mouths, nodding in acknowledgement. As soon as Mrs Applefig shuffled out of earshot though, he leaned over and resumed his whispering. “That’s the thing, they cleared the entire school. The fire alarm went off as soon as the smoke detector caught whiff, and Patel himself made sure to double check every classroom to make sure they were clear. All of them were empty.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, defiance leaking into my voice. Oscar was in that class, there was no way Patel would miss Oscar. He was the loudest kid I’d ever met. “They had to have been there. We were doing a trivia competition today.” Jessie shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you man, that’s just what I’ve heard.” My mind raced. Where could they be? Mr Gilad had promised me there would be a trivia competition today. He hadn’t told me to meet the class anywhere special. They had to be here. My eyes scanned the crowd of assembled students. Each class was separated into small ranks, with their teachers standing out front. I went over every single one of them twice, then once again to be certain. No Oscar. No Mr Gilad. Once again I felt my emotions getting the better of me. Tears began welling in the corners of my eyes, but I took a deep breath. Maybe they had met up at the school, and then gone for a walk? I looked up at the near cloudless sky, and the warm sun. It was an uncharacteristically nice day for November. Maybe Mr Gilad took them outside for the trivia competition, so that they could enjoy the weather? A crash sounded behind me, and myself, and every other students’ heads turned in near unison. I watched, transfixed in horror as the bell tower, now almost entirely enshrouded in thick black smoke, sagged, and then with a loud groan fell backwards, onto the blazing south wing. The resultant collision was deafening. The roof of the school caved in instantly, and in its wake exploded an inferno of fire and smoke. Screams erupted from the students. My jaw dropped. I was watching my school, the one place I truly felt at home, be destroyed in front of my very eyes. It felt surreal. Like I was dreaming, and couldn't wake up. It was Mrs Applefig’s crying that brought me back to earth. She had a hand covering her mouth, and she kept muttering the words “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” A moment later a school bus arrived, and all of us whose parents hadn’t picked us up yet were loaded into it. I remember resisting at first, telling Mrs Applefig that I needed to wait for Oscar, but she kept crying and telling me I had to get onboard. “Please,” she said. “Please, Walter.” I relented, and fifteen minutes later the bus dropped me off at home. I used the key in the garden to get back inside, and when I did, I called out for my mom. She didn’t answer, so I went into the kitchen and picked up my phone, calling Oscar’s house. Maybe he was home sick. The ringer rang once, twice, three times and then a voice picked up. “Hello?” it said breathlessly. “Sarah? Matthew? Is Oscar at your house with Walter? Please we need to--” “No,” I said. “This is Walter. Oscar’s not here.” The line went quiet on the other end. “Is he not at home?” I asked. “No,” said his mother’s voice, though it was broken, and filled with sadness. I heard her stifle a sob. “I’m sorry, Walter. I have to go.” “Okay, Miss Cortez.” The line went dead, and I hung up the phone. I looked over to the clock. It read 10:54am. My dad wouldn’t be home for another six hours, so in the meantime I made my way to the living room and turned on the TV, hoping maybe there was something on the news. I flicked through the channels until I spotted a newscaster in front of my school. “-- Here in front of Hillcrest elementary, where a vicious fire has caused the bell tower to collapse upon the South Wing. The blaze has finally been out and overhauled by firefighters, and efforts to locate survivors, as well as fully assess the extent of the damage have begun.” The woman speaking, dressed in a nice business suit, turned her attention to somebody off camera. They exchanged a few words with her microphone down and unable to pick up more than faint mumbles of sound. A moment later, she looked back at the camera and raised her microphone to her mouth. “I’ve just received word from the fire department that several remains have been located within Hillcrest. These remains are suspected to belong to the missing third grade class, taught by Mr Heinrich Gilad.” An emptiness stole through me. The news lady continued speaking, but her words washed over me like white noise. Several remains have been located within Hillcrest. The words haunted me, replaying over and over again in my head. It wasn’t until my father came home that I realized just how long I’d been sitting there. “Walter?” he said, before rushing over to me. He pulled me into a tight hug. “Oh, god, Walter. I was so worried for you. I was in a meeting and I didn’t hear until twenty minutes ago, once I did I came right over--” “It’s okay, dad,” I said, though my voice was void of emotion. It was such an odd sort of feeling. All of my life I had craved this sort of attention and affection from my father, and yet now that I was receiving it, it didn’t mean anything to me. I felt empty inside. My dad took me upstairs, ordered me my favorite pizza and rented the newest Harry Potter movie for me. He sat with me all night. Every so often he would ask me if I was okay, and apologize for yelling at me earlier, but I hardly registered it. My thoughts were consumed with thoughts of Oscar, and Mr Gilad. They were gone. The next morning school was predictably canceled. My father stayed home with me, and put on another rented movie in my room. This one was Monsters Inc. I only watched it for twenty minutes or so before I wandered downstairs. I found my dad on the couch in the living room, his back facing me, watching the news lady I’d watched yesterday. She was in front of the scorched remains of the south wing of my school, and it looked like a windy day, because her blond hair was blowing all over the place. “-- I'm again in front of the wreckage of Hillcrest Elementary’s South Wing, where twenty two children and one man are believed to have lost their lives early yesterday morning, in what can only be described as the greatest tragedy in Plumdale history...” My dad reached for his mug on the coffee table and took a sip. It occurred to me that he must have taken the day off of work to stay home with me. “...Yesterday morning a fire blazed, quickly spreading through the South Wing and eventually reaching the bell tower. An old school, built in the early 1900s, Hillcrest Elementary was built primarily of highly flammable lumber, and the bell tower was no exception. At 10:13am it fell backward, onto the South Wing, collapsing that section of the school and dooming the individuals trapped inside.” She touched her ear, and her eyes looked sideways, as if somebody was speaking to her. “I’m just receiving word that the investigation has determined some rather disturbing details. I… I should caution viewers at home that what I’m about to say is not for the faint of heart.” The news lady cleared her throat, and I drew closer behind my father. “Investigators have located two thick wooden doors in the wreckage. The deadbolts belonging to these doors were discovered in the outward, or locked position. According to blueprints, these doors lead into the basement of the school, where the Hillcrest archive was held.” “Jesus…” I heard my father mutter, leaning forward and setting his mug back down on the table. “The twenty two students and teacher, who we have now positively identified as one Mr Heinnrich Gilad via dental records, appear to have been locked inside the school’s basement at the time of the blaze. Details pertaining as to why are still unknown. The stunning ferocity of the blaze, according to investigators, is due to old film reels located in the school’s archive. These reels contained nitrate, a substance which burns hotter than gasoline...” I swallowed. “One aspect of the tragedy that school Principal Uday Patel is wrestling with, is that he never physically cleared any of the school’s basement areas.” The camera cuts out, and I see my principal giving an interview on the school grounds, but in a different location during a different time of day. “I checked everywhere,” he said, adjusting his glasses and keeping his voice level. “Every classroom was personally cleared by myself, as well as a team of three other faculty members. We ensured to check all of them. I double checked them personally, and suffered severe smoke exposure in the process. Of course, in the interest of protecting my students --” “What about the basement?” the interviewer asked from off screen, and I recognized the voice as the news lady from earlier. Principal Patel's voice cracked as he began his reply. “I saw no need to physically check the basements. It seemed a dangerous task, given the relative size of them, and the speed at which the blaze was spreading. As I walked by the basement areas in each wing, I called down and asked if anybody was down there and needed assistance. I heard no response, and so I continued on. There simply wasn’t any time.” The screen cut back to the news lady, and a small icon in the corner reads LIVE. “Strangely enough, despite Principal Patel’s calls, nobody answered. Given the amount of remains located within the school’s archive, it seems as though such screams would have been loud and plentiful. One theory as to why Patel didn’t hear any of the victims, was that they had already suffered from toxin inhalation due to the nitrate film off-gassing. It's highly likely they'd already passed out --- sorry?” The news lady brought a hand to earpiece again. Seconds ticked by in silence, and I realized somebody must be speaking to her on the other end, because her expression slowly became more and more disturbed. Finally, she cleared her throat and brought the mic to her lips. “For those watching at home, particularly family members of the suspected deceased, your viewer discretion is advised." Her voice trembled and she readjusted her grip on the mic. She cleared her throat. "I can hardly believe I’m about to say this in sleepy Plumdale, but investigators have just determined that, based on observed damage to a child's hyoid bone, their throat is presumed to have been slit." The news lady closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "According to dental records, one Oscar Cortez appears to have died prior to the start of the blaze.” I gazed, transfixed in horror at the television screen. My father was too stunned to notice me creeping ever closer, drawn toward the scenes on the display. “It is now being posited that perhaps this young man was killed in an attempt to scare the remaining twenty-one children into silence.” “Oh my god,” my dad muttered. He ran a hand through his mess of hair, and I can tell by his sleeves that he’s wearing his housecoat. He didn't even bother getting dressed today. I took another step closer and the floorboard croaked. My father turned around. “Walter?” he exclaimed. “Jesus, Walter! You shouldn’t be watching this!” He rushed around the couch, and the news lady's words became muffled against his chest as he lifted me up and carried me back upstairs. “You need to take it easy, alright?” he said, ferrying me through the hallway. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, and I know your worthless joke of a mother abandoned us, but the two of us gotta stick together, okay? And that means you gotta trust that I know what’s best for you. Now I don’t want to see you out of your room again today, alright?” He gently lowered me onto my bed, and hit play on the Monsters Inc movie. “You need to take some time for yourself. Don’t worry about the news. This is all just conjecture right now anyway.” He paid me a remorseful smile and closed my bedroom door behind him. I laid there, staring at my wall and oblivious to the sounds of Sully and Mike from the movie. All I could think about was Mr Gilad’s words, playing on repeat inside of my head. "I never felt fulfilled, because each day I felt like I was a part of a play, or an act. I felt like I was fighting tooth and nail against my instincts, and it was only making me more desperate to see them through." Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes. Thanks to the news lady, I finally knew the answer to my trivia question. Nitrate burned hotter than gasoline. [x.x]
Cinder's backstory is some of the worst writing in RWBY since V7C12
Oh boy, where to even begin with this thing... First, let's talk about the tone. It is clear that writers want to make you feel bad for Cinder. However, because of their lack of nuance and originality is the most bland and predictable backstory i have seen for quite some time. One of the biggest problems with it is how watered down and tame the subject matter of abuse is presented. Now, am I asking for pure Cinder torture porn? No, not at all. What I am asking for is a bit more of a punch to the viewers gut. CRWBY needs to understand that it is okay to make your viewers uncomfortable and slightly squirming in their seats as they watch things unfold, particularly when it comes to the subject of abuse. This is mostly because when this type of thing is handled in this tame matter, it feels as if the writers are babying and coddling the viewer instead of respecting their nerve and intelligence. This is especially odd because in the same episode, we see Oscar being beaten and bloodied by Hazel. It's almost as if CRWBY is deathly afraid of showing any extreme violence towards their female characters. Sure, Weiss was impaled by a spear, Pyrrha shot with an arrow and Yang had her arm taken off. However, Clover was impaled by a sword, Oscar is being beaten ruthlessly by Hazel, Arthur had his face dragged against Light Dust, Adam was double-penetrated and Qrow is stabbed and poisoned. It just seems that CRWBY are more willing to hurt their male characters more brutally and graphically, despite them making up a minority of their cast. This even shows itself in this very episode, not just with Cinder but also with the Stepsisters (who die off screen with no blood) and the Stepmother (who dies from having her neck snapped, despite the fact that it makes no sense why Cinder didn't stab her with the weapon in her hand. Moving on to the dumbest character in this entire episode, and that would be the Huntsman who trains Cinder. Despite having possibly one of the worst character designs I've seen on this show, the mental gymnastics that this man goes through is really something to behold. First he sees Cinder being abused by the Stepmother character and does nothing. In fact, no one does anything despite the fact that this hotel seems to be in Vale, judging from the architecture, and the world at this point should be, by all accounts of the terrible lore of this show, a better place where at least someone would do something about seeing a 10-year-old obviously being abused in public. Then, she steals his sword, but he trains her to become a Huntress just out of the blue. However, he doesn't try to sneak her out of the hotel to adopt her as his own, oh no. Instead, he let's her continue to live through abuse while training her in secret. Despite the fact that he's a Huntsman and the Stepmother only seems to be a hotel owner. By all accounts he should not be afraid of her and in fact should probably be getting the authorities involved to investigate Cinder's abuse. Suddenly, the Stepsisters somehow find the sword and then they and the Stepmother get killed by Cinder. It's already bad enough that we don't see anything to judge whether or not Cinder just murdered them or if it was done in self-defense, but then the Huntsman comes in and DRAWS HIS WEAPONS ON THE GIRL WHO WAS BEING ABUSED THIS WHOLE TIME. This... this is awful writing that makes no sense on any level. It can be assumed by the montage and a later part that Cinder and this Huntsman had grown a bond during her training. So we should be getting the Huntsman trying to console her, or hell, even taking her hand and running away with her before the the please arrive. But nope, shitty fight scene. Despite the fact that Cinder should get absolutely wrecked in this fight, she somehow manages to hold her own. That already doesn't make sense as is, but when the Huntsman breaks her Aura, NOW all the sudden he acts like they have bond, reaching out to her... ... and he gets stabbed and dies. Like... What? And then Cinder looks up to the moon, smiling like she didn't just kill her father figure. So, she's just a murderous psychopath? Great sympathetic backstory that people have waiting for for forever. Seriously, I know of many people who were super excited for this backstory to be revealed and this disappointed even me who literally watches the show for the attractive character designs and making fun of it. Besides that, this episode as a whole was godawful, ESPECIALLY the breach of Atlas and how it makes no sense. But that might warrant its own post entirely. The only good part of this episode was Emerald holding Cinder's Grimm hand, which was legitimately sweet.
A few seconds. I looked down for just a few seconds and I ended up being treated to an experience that has permanently warped my sense of reality. I was driving home after work, I’d had to stay late to help clean up and the sun was already on its way down when I finally got out the door. I’d had a podcast playing on my phone and for some reason it’d randomly paused, so I glanced down for just a moment to see why it’d stopped. When I looked back up, I was faced with a pair of headlights flooding my vision and I couldn’t even hit the horn before I collided head on with the other car that had drifted out of its lane. I strangely don’t remember any of the pain that I had to have felt. I mean, I was in a car accident, and when I woke up from my week long coma I definitely felt pain. Both my legs are broken, along with several of my ribs and my back. My face was so swollen I looked like I’d been used as the personal punching bag of a heavyweight boxer. But no, I don’t remember any pain. Just the light. And then I was walking down a dark hallway, following the light. I can already tell what you’re thinking- a light at the end of a dark tunnel, I’m clearly going to heaven and this is my story of how it’s really like up there. That maybe God’s actually devouring the good souls and maybe hell was the better option, or maybe God’s dead and the angels are coming down to end the scourge of humanity. Um. No. Not really. I didn’t go to heaven. Didn’t go to hell either. I’m not sure if either of those exist anymore. I got the impression this wasn’t quite what I’d been told to expect when I heard a man speaking with a posh British accent. “- Sure, she got to enjoy life to its fullest with her luxury vacations and fine food, but was it really worth it to lose it all at age twenty eight? All because she took a drunk nap behind the wheel of her car.” A softer voice responded to his, feminine and barely above a mumble. “I don’t understand why she’d made such a poor choice at all.” The British man chuckled. “Humanity is known for such things.” I picked up the pace, heading right for the light until I came out in a theater box. I’d never been in one in my life before but it didn’t take long at all to realize that’s exactly what it was, a theater box overlooking a lovely if not nearly bare stage and an uncountable amount of seats, the rows stretching back until they faded out of sight. In the box with me was a petite young woman, probably only a year or two older than me, dressed in a scarlet gown with a tulle skirt and her brown hair neatly pinned up, sitting at a small table and looking down at the scene below. She was the first to look back at me, her eyes widening as she realized I was there. “Oh, I… what? You didn’t roll yet,” She said, brows knitting in concern before she grabbed the arm of the man next to her and tugged on the sleeve of his blue-gray tweed suit. “Irvin! Irvin, I think he’s lost!” The man didn’t even twitch. “It’s just a mistake, sometimes they happen. He’ll leave when he figures out it’s not yet his turn.” Finally he turned, an older dapper looking gentleman with a white handlebar mustache and a pleasant expression. “Come on in, boy, she’s almost done with her roll.” The woman bit her lip before scooting to the chair on the left and patting the one she’d vacated. “Here, take a seat, I guess. I’m Penny.” I don’t know why I listened, it’s insane when you think about it, but I took my seat between the pair of strangers. It was then I realized I’d also been dressed up to the nines, in a black tuxedo that I remember once renting for a friend’s wedding. Said tuxedo had been puked on by a wasted bridesmaid so I’d had to purchase it, but the stains were nowhere to be found now. Once I sat down, the older man gave me a firm handshake. “And I’m Irvin. Pleasure to meet you, Matthias.” I couldn’t even ask how he knew my name before I heard a strangely familiar rattling sound. Irvin just pointed towards the stage and I saw there was a woman standing next to the table, staring aghast at the dice on the table. It was a trio of ten sided dice, d10’s if you play table top games like I do, colored bright red and glittering like rubies. I couldn’t have had a clearer view of them if I was standing right next to the woman who’d just rolled them. I flinched as a disinterested and disembodied voice filled the room. “Final score- 434. Proceed to stage right.” “Let me roll again! That’s not fair!” She snapped, actually stamping her foot on the ground as she tried to pick up the dice. They might as well have been glued to the table, she couldn’t make them budge an inch. “Final score- 434. Proceed to stage right,” The voice repeated. With another stomp and huff, the woman stormed towards the proper direction. At first I thought I was seeing things, but it was not my imagination that her long blonde curls were retreating back into her scalp, the color darkening to off brown. A flawless face with mauve lipstick morphed and changed until it was unremarkable, with a pair of crooked glasses sitting across the nose and acne scars stretching across cheeks and forehead. Glamorous party dress turned into khaki slacks and a clumsily buttoned pinstriped shirt, and now gone was the beautiful girl, replaced by a drab and completely forgettable man. His shoulders slumped as he vanished behind the curtain, head bowed with shame as the life he’d had before was clearly gone for good. Penny cleared her throat and looked over at Irvin. “From socialite to…” She trailed off, unsure of what to say next. “From Brianna Pandilla to Noah Smith.” Irvin chuckled and adjusted his glasses. “Noah won’t really do much in life. Unremarkable in school, will never go far in his career, although he won’t have much in ambition anyway. No, he won’t even marry, and will die in his sleep at age forty three from a brain aneurysm,” He said in a way that he’d seen this all before. I was speechless. What do you even say to a sight like that? Penny shook her head, clearly awestruck as I was but in a different way. “I don’t understand it either, but Irvin has such a talent, he can predict lives like no one else here,” She said. “Oh, such flattery,” Irvin’s eyes twinkled in a grandfatherly way as he looked over at Penny, “But really, it’s a learned skill, not a talent. It’s not about the end score, it’s about the numbers that make it up along the way.” I swallowed, finally remembering how to use my mouth again. “Was she… reincarnated?” I asked. Irvin nodded. “It’s quite the sight, at least at first. Nowadays? It’s hardly interesting, unless someone rolls the chosen score of the day. Speaking of which, ‘tis my turn today for that, so why don’t you help me?” Judging by the fact he was looking right at me and not Penny, I didn’t doubt the question was aimed at me, so I nodded. “Good lad.” Irvin produced a small slip of paper, from where he got it I have no idea. “Pick a number between one and three thousand,” He said. “What?” I wasn’t even sure if I heard him correctly. “Well, really it’s a number between zero and two thousand, nine hundred and ninety seven, but close enough,” He waved his hand. “Come on now, pick.” I stared at the blank paper and decided to just go with what had to be a bizarre fever dream. “One thousand five hundred,” I said. “Oooh, right in the middle, popular choice but popular can be good.” With elegant penmanship Irvin put 1,500 on the paper before letting it drop out of the box. I craned my neck over the edge to look where it went but it was long gone. Penny tugged my sleeve now and pointed towards the stage. “Look, the next person’s coming through!” She whispered excitedly. The theater quietly clapped as an elderly man crossed the stage, helped along by a cane. Once again Penny looked expectantly at Irvin, who adjusted his glasses and squinted before recognition flashed through his face. “Of course, John Davis, rolled a 1622. Lived quite the long, fulfilling life- marriage of sixty years, eight children, twenty-two grandchildren, and even got to see two great-great grandchildren be born. For a family man like John, that was very important to him. Of course there were some ups and downs, but he died happy, surrounded by his family,” He said. I didn’t say anything, just watched John pick up the dice, give them a quick shake, and watched them land across the table. Five. Six. Five. Pleased with this, John took another roll. Zero. Five. Two. Clearly not as happy with that result, judging by his frown. I leaned over to Irvin and whispered, “Do they know what they’re rolling for?” “If they don’t outright now, they have an inkling,” Irvin murmured, eyes watching excitedly the elderly soul downstairs frantically giving the dice another shake. Two. Zero. One. “Final score- 818. Proceed to stage right.” John hesitated for only a brief moment before he hurried away, his receding hairline growing dark and filling out to a strong widow’s peak. His back straightened, shoulders broadened, and the cane dropped to the ground as the elderly man morphed into a near giant, built like a brick wall with a stern face and a wicked scar taking his left eye with it. “Could’ve played out much worse,” Irvin said. Neither Penny or I needed to ask. “Losing his eye in war will send Michael Slattery into a horrid depression, but thanks to the army paying for college he’ll end up becoming an architect. He’ll marry twice, perhaps three times, whether or not those marriages will pay off I can’t say. Sometimes the dice can’t explain everything. But his life will be full and he will die at age seventy-two, cancer, probably of the lungs, since he’ll be addicting to vaping.” Penny looked puzzled at the term ‘vaping’ but I just groaned. “What, that won’t disappear by the time he’s old?” I asked. Irvin laughed, shaking his head. “You’re great fun to have around, Matthias, more fun than Penny,” The girl gasped, clearly offended, “But nothing is that easy. Come on now, have a drink, ask anything that’s on your mind. It’s pretty rare people actually get lost in the audience, and I would like to enjoy your company.” I was about to ask ‘what drink’ when I noticed that a beer glass had materialized in front of me, filled to near brim with a healthy amount of foam on top. I took a sip and saw that Irvin and Penny also had drinks, Irvin a glass of wine while Penny sipped at a milkshake. “Have I been reincarnated before?” I asked. “Predictable, but easy question to answer.” Irvin lowered his glass and held up three fingers. “This would be your third life, boy. And before you even think of asking, I’m not going to tell you your score for this one. That’s a spoiler, and I think you’ll like to experience life as fresh and unknown as possible.” That wasn’t a hundred percent true, but I figured badgering Irvin about it wouldn’t get me anywhere. “What about my previous lives then?” Was my next question. Irvin shifted, uncomfortable for only a second before he relaxed. “Well, I think your second life we can just skip over as it isn’t worth the breath to speak of, but as for life one, well, that was back in the colonial era.” “So long ago?” I asked, absentmindedly noticing a nerdy sort of woman walking on stage and examining the dice now in front of her. “It’s not exactly done in the order of whoever dies first,” Irvin chuckled, “But your first life was wonderful. Just wonderful. A full life, the respect of everyone who met you, a loving husband-” “I was a woman?” I interrupted. Irvin nodded. “Sex and gender is not a consistent thing between lifetimes, you witnessed that with Miss Pandilla. Nothing is consistent between lifetimes at all, really. It’s all down to the numbers you rolled. And before you interrupted me, I was going to state how you lived to the ripe old age of eighty-four, passing within moments of your husband. Old, especially for the era.” “Final score- 1098. Proceed to stage right.” I’d been so focused about hearing about my first life that I’d completely forgotten to watch the dice roll happening below. Irvin whistled, nodding in appreciation as the frumpy woman down below transformed into elegance and the very epitome of beauty, exchanging lifeless brown curls and khaki skirt for waist length shiny black hair and a glittering silver gown, like one you’d see actresses wear to the Oscars. “A high score, impressive,” Irvin nodded and we didn’t even need to ask what her story would be. “Alice Atkins will be a household name by her nineteenth birthday, going from television sitcoms to blockbuster summer films in a matter of years. Her childhood would be happy, her young adult years slightly troubled by anorexia and bulimia, but she will conquer. She’ll marry twice, once to a man that barely lasts a week and then to a woman, who she will stay with until her death at the age of one hundred and two.” Damn. I watched her disappear behind the curtains before looking back to Irvin. “So just getting a high score isn’t enough? You said she’ll have an eating disorder,” I said. “One of her numbers was thirty-three,” Irvin explained, “And no one leads a perfect life, no matter how hard they try. Odds are if they do try, it’ll get even worse.” “What if she doesn’t choose to be an actress?” Was my next question. “What if she wants to be a singer, or maybe she’ll want to become a mailman instead.” Irvin chuckled, shaking his head and looking at me with this gentle ‘oh you silly thing’ expression. “We might not know the smaller strokes in her life, what her favorite color will be, what songs she’ll like, or when she’ll have her first kiss, but the dice are never wrong when it comes to deciding one’s general fate.” Penny gasped, drawing my attention back to the stage. I heard her whisper, ‘He’s so little’ before I saw the next one up on the stage. The boy couldn’t have been more than five years old, more likely he was even younger. He had to keep jumping up to snatch each of the small dice off the table, and in the end he chose to sit on the ground to give them a roll. “Poor Bobby rolled a seventy-three last time,” Irvin said, looking mildly sympathetic as the boy rattled the dice together, “His neglectful parents never gave him the love he’d need to thrive, so when he was offered friendship by an elder, he desperately grasped for it. It cost him his life.” My stomach twisted at the thought. Bobby finally hurled his dice, watching them as they rolled across the stage’s floor. Nine. Nine. Nine. The mostly silent room exploded into excited murmurs. Irvin scooted forward on his seat and Penny held her breath as Bobby scooped up the dice again and rolled them. Four. Three. Three. “Come on boy, sixty-eight, try and get sixty-eight,” Irvin murmured, his eyes so wide I was afraid they’d pop out of his head. “What happens if he rolls that?” I asked. “He’ll get the number you chose,” Penny said, as if that explained everything. I was about to ask for clarification when I was shushed by the pair of them. The whole room was tense as Bobby took a deep breath and rolled one last time. Zero. Six. Nine. “… Final score, 1501. Proceed to stage right,” The disembodied voice said, softer and slightly disappointed. The audience all simultaneously groaned and Bobby’s face went white as a sheet, almost as if he knew he’d done something horribly wrong. Irvin groaned and sat back in his chair, his previous excitement deflated. “Damn. Just one over,” He said. Bobby got up, already getting taller than the table he’d struggled to reach earlier. He grew much taller, turning into a young man. Red curls paled into gold, freckles vanished from his cheeks, and bright hazel eyes turned an icy blue. The new Bobby brushed off his slacks, made sure his fine suit was buttoned, and walked to the right side of the stage. Before he vanished, he looked up at me and the hair on my neck stood right up as the man smirked. He exited the stage and I shivered. “… What just happened?” I asked quietly. “He rolled over the score,” Irvin took his glasses off to clean them on his shirt, “But only by a little. The pain he’ll cause will be horrible, but he will suffer for his sins in life.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “What- what will he do?” I asked. I could see Penny out of the corner of my eye, her lips pressed firmly together as she too awaited Irvin’s answer. Irvin was quiet for a little more. “… His victims will be no older than ten. The youngest will be seven. Due to his family’s wealth and status, he’ll be able to cover up his morbid nature, but as the bodies pile up, the suspicions will grow and grow… until one of the fathers personally tracks down the perverse bastard and kills him. Slowly. Painfully. Just like he did to those boys.” I just froze. I heard Penny start to gag behind me and turned just in time to see her vomit all over the floor, chocolate milkshake splattering on the ground mixed with the yellow of stomach bile. My head just wouldn’t stop spinning and my vision swam for minutes before I finally managed to get control of myself. “Why?” I managed to get out. “What did he do in his last life to make him turn into that?” “Nothing.” Irvin picked up his wine glass, not drinking it, just swirling the deep red liquid in the glass. “Nothing at all. Each life is a clean slate, and for that, you certainly should be grateful. If you were living according to your second life, well, you wouldn’t be near as fortunate as you are.” My heart sunk into my shoes. “What did I do?” I finally asked the question that Irvin had purposely not answered before. “What did I roll?” Irvin sighed. “On that day, I picked the number two thousand, three hundred and four. Random, I am well aware, but it’s difficult to roll that high. Meaning it’s even harder to roll above it. But you, my boy, rolled a two thousand, seven hundred and fifteen. Your sins outnumbered the ones the man you just saw, and you never paid for them. Not at all. The people that suffered by your hand were men and women, children and the elderly, and when I say they suffered, I truly mean they begged for the death you were hesitant to give. You never paid for these crimes. You died old, surrounded by loved ones, and with not a single guilty thought on your conscious.” What are you supposed to do when you’re told that? I tell you what I did. I sat there, staring out at the crowd who’d already seemingly forgotten about the horrid person that was going to be born into the world, now focused on the next soul on the stage. Even Penny, who’d puked at the thought of it, had cleaned herself up and was now having a glass of ice water. “Why is it like this?” I shook my head. “Why does it not matter? People like that kid- people like I was- shouldn’t it matter what we did before?” At this point Irvin smiled almost condescendingly at me. Like I was a stupid child, asking why’s to questions that should’ve been obvious. And then he responded. “What would be the fun in that?” I leaped out of my chair once the horribleness of it all sunk in, looking to Penny for any sort of back up, any sort of criticism of this genuinely fucked system, but she couldn’t even look me in the eye. I backed away, back down the way I’d come. Irvin raised his glass and waved goodbye. “See you when it’s your time, boy. I’ll be sure to save you a seat if you roll the chosen score that day.” I ran. I ran back into the darkness, tripping over my own feet as the light behind me faded away to a small dot, and then nothing. And then I awoke in the hospital, screaming through the tubes and thrashing about as much as I could in the bed with all the casts on my body. Believe me, I felt the pain from all that when the shock died down. My parents were there, so was my girlfriend. My sister video called me the moment I was able to have a conversation that was more than two words at a time, calling me ‘stupid lucky’ for surviving. She wasn’t wrong, my car was completely destroyed. I shouldn’t have lived, much less lived with the likelihood I’ll be walking and living life to the fullest after several months of physical therapy. The bereaved fiance of the woman that hit me came to visit me too and actually apologized to me about what happened. Her autopsy confirmed what he’d already known, she’d been drinking and driving once again. And because of her mistake, I could’ve died. I wished him the best and told him not to blame himself. After all, in the end, it was all decided by a roll of the dice.
I lay there, sat-up in bed, my body too awash with adrenaline to even dream of sleeping or thinking or doing anything. I just waited, wired and awake. I waited for her to come back and kill me.
She never did. The sun rose, and with it came the sound of cars in the street and dogs barking in their yards. I nervously stepped out of bed. My feet were cold against the hardwood, but I barely noticed. All I could think about was my mother, and how she would react this morning. Usually she was full of smiles and affection after she’d slept off the booze, but after last night I wasn’t so sure. Something seemed to have changed in her. When I made my way downstairs for breakfast, she wasn’t there. Normally she was eating her porridge and ready to grab my cereal of choice from the cupboard. This time it was just me. The house felt empty. Lonely. I clambered onto the countertop and opened the cupboard, pulling out a box of Frosted Flakes. I did my best to remember what Mr Gilad had told me the day before. It doesn’t matter what my parents think of me, I thought to myself. I need to forge my own path and listen to my heart. I have to do what I think is right, and not let anybody, my parents or otherwise, get in the way of that. I thought about his words over my bowl of cereal. Even if my dad didn’t love me, and even if my mom wished I’d never been born, I could still find my own path in life. As I ate, I monitored the digital clock sitting on our kitchen counter. It was a habit I picked up because my mom was always very strict about ushering me into the car by 7:15am, so she could drop me off in time to get to work. Right now it read 7:45am. She was nowhere in sight. A minute later I heard the familiar creak of footsteps on the stairs, and my mood picked up. Even after everything that had happened last night, my mom hadn’t hurt me, and I still had my trivia competition with Mr Gilad and Oscar to look forward to. Maybe mom realized she loved me too much to hurt me. The creaking stopped as the footsteps reached the landing, and my dad bustled around the corner, adjusting his tie. He paused, seeing me at the kitchen table. “What are you doing here?” “Waiting for mom,” I said quietly. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice rising. I swallowed. My father always had a way of making me feel smaller than I already was. “Waiting for mom, dad.” He stared at me with something between irritation and disbelief. “Your mom’s not home.” “What?” “I said she’s not home. Do you need a fucking hearing aid now too?” I looked down, eating another spoonful of Frosted Flakes. Where did she go? I wondered. She was here last night. My eyes drifted to the digital display. The clock now read 7:50am. Class was starting in ten minutes, and so was my trivia competition. It took at least ten minutes to drive to school. “Dad?” I asked. “Have you seen my briefcase?” he said, impatiently. “No, sorry.” “Fuck!” he snapped. “That stupid bitch probably took it!” He adjusted his collar and reached for the coffee pot, before realizing it was empty and then flung it across the room, where it shattered on the wall. “Everything I do!” he screamed. “Taken for granted!” Mr Gilad’s words echoed in my head. To believe in myself. To trust in my instincts. To do what I felt I needed to. I cleared my throat. “Can you drive me to school, I have a trivia compet--” “Do I look like your mother?” he said incredulously. I stared at him, feeling tears welling in my eyes. Eventually, I shook my head. “I have a real job,” he said, grabbing his jacket from the wall and opening the front door. “I don’t have time to play at being a parent.” He muttered something about ingrates, and then disappeared through the doorway, shutting the door behind him. I sat at the table for a few more minutes, too stunned to do anything. My mom was gone. My dad was gone. It was just me in the house now. My family didn’t care about me. Nobody gave a damn. No, that wasn’t true. Oscar cared. Mr Gilad cared. I snatched my jacket from the coat rack beside the door and exited after my father. I used the key we hid under the rock in our garden to lock the house behind me, and I started jogging toward the school. Usually, when I walked home with Oscar it’d take us just over an hour. Unfortunately for me though, Hillcrest school lived up to its namesake. My school sat perched atop a large hill, overlooking the rest of Plumberry township. At the top, it was really a spectacular view. To the north you could see most of the local streets, all the way up to the city hall, downtown. To the south, you could see far down the country road, all the way out to Lake Tyler and Gefferson forest beyond. Still, it was uphill. Which meant it would be a longer walk to than from. I was determined though. Mr Gilad’s words recited themselves in my mind like a mantra, pushing me ever forward. I kept my eye on the watch on my wrist, figuring if I could get there before 8:30, I’d be in the clear. In both third grade classes, we did a sharing period from 8 till 8:30, where we talked about our day or new things we found interesting. My sneakers pounded along the sidewalk, my backpack bouncing up and down with my binder, pencils and markers. I made good time getting to the bottom of the hill, and at the distant top I could see the gates that marked the entrance to Hillcrest elementary. I started my ascent. It was slow going. As I went, I kept track of the watch on my wrist. 8:20am. I had ten minutes to reach the top, and I was barely a quarter of the way there. My breath was coming in big heaves and my legs, tired from jogging for so long, burned with soreness. I felt lightheaded and wobbly -- out of breath. I continued to climb, more slowly now. I didn’t have a water bottle, and I was beginning to feel incredibly thirsty, but I knew I needed to get to the top before the trivia competition started. Somehow, even after everything that had happened with my mom and dad, I felt like if I could just win that competition, then everything would be alright. My mom would come home, and she’d realize how smart I was and decide that drinking wasn’t worth it, and my dad would be so proud of me that he’d start taking an interest in my studies. My eyes drifted back to the watch on my wrist, and my heart fell. 8:45am. How had I been walking up the hill for so long already? I stopped, catching my breath and realizing none of it mattered anymore. I was way too late for trivia, and I was probably going to end up in detention besides that. There wasn’t any point in rushing now. My day was already ruined. I took the rest of the hill at a slower walk, and my legs thanked me for it. I hated my mom for leaving last night, and I hated my dad for not driving me to school. I hated both of them for making me miss out on trivia, and disappoint the one adult who seemed to care about me: Mr Gilad. Tears tugged at the corners of my eyes as I considered how ashamed of me he probably was. He went through all the trouble of securing me permission to attend his class this morning, and I gave him my word I’d be there. Then I didn’t show up at all, and my dad didn’t so much as call the school and let them know I’d be late. He probably thought I was just as much of a lost cause as my parents by now. “There he is!” a shrill voice shrieked. “Oh my god, he’s here!” I looked up as Mrs Applefig came stampeding toward me, her lined face filled with concern and her tone thick with relief. “Walter, are you okay?” she wrapped me into a tight hug. “Thank goodness. Thank goodness.” I’d been so absorbed in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed I’d crested the hill and come up in front of my school. Mrs Applefig smothered me with her hug, and all I could see was the blue fabric of her blouse. “I’m fine, Mrs Applefig,” I lied. “I’m sorry for being late.” “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay,” she said, pressing her face to mine. I felt something wet on her cheek. “Gloria, is that Walter Thimby?” a man bellowed, and I recognized it as Principal Patel. She wheeled around, nodding fiercely. “It is, Uday! It is!” Freed from Mrs Applefig’s all-encompassing blouse, I became acutely aware of something very strange: my entire school was staring at me. “Bring him over here,” Principal Patel called out. “Everybody triple check your students and make sure everybody’s accounted for!” Mrs Applefig ushered me into a line with the rest of my classmates, and I plunked down on the grass beside Jessie Wilson, a blonde kid who held the record for most school suspensions in third grade. He leaned over and whispered into my ear. “Whew,” he said. “Gotta say man, for a while there you had us worried.” “Had you worried?” I said, feeling too depressed to chitchat. “Yeah,” he said. He thumbed over his shoulder, back toward the school behind us. “We thought you were still inside.” Still inside? I turned around, and gazed at the school with narrowed eyes. Beyond the belltower in the center, I saw a dark cloud billowing into the sky. Smoke. “The south wing caught fire early this morning,” Jessie explained. “We cleared out all the classrooms, but I guess we’re still missing some students. You were one of them.” I swallowed. The smoke was pitch black, and heavy. It looked like it was growing thicker. “Firefighters are on the other side,” Jessie continued. “They’ve been fighting the blaze for twenty minutes now, but it keeps getting bigger. They’re calling in fire trucks from the next town over.” I stared, transfixed at the pillar of shadow rising from the school. Beneath it, faint in the brightness of the morning sun, I spotted the flicker of flames. The school was burning. Just then, a cacophony of sirens sounded in the distance. A handful of seconds later, and two fire trucks roared over the crest of the hill, through the school gates, and swung around the parking lot toward the south side. I gazed after them in awe. I’d never seen fire trucks in action before. “Mister Thimbly,” Principal Patel said firmly. I blinked, returning my attention to the front of me. He crouched down, meeting me at eye level. “I need to know if you were with Mr Gilad’s class this morning.” “Mr Gilad’s class?” I said, confused. “No, I was late. I was supposed to be but--” “Jesus,” he muttered, shaking his head and standing up. “He wasn’t!” he shouted to somebody I didn’t recognize. They were in a suit and on a cellphone, and their lips were moving fast. “That’s not good,” Jessie said beside me. “What’s going on?” I asked, fear beginning to take seat in my chest. “We’re missing twenty two kids still, and one teacher.” I swallowed, a piece of me already knowing the answer to the question I was about to ask. “Who?” “Mr Gilad,” Jessie said darkly. “Nobody knows where he is, or his class.” “They’re two doors down from us,” I argued. “How can they not know where he is?” Mrs Applefig appeared in front of us, her finger pursed to her lips. “Shh!” she hissed. “It’s important that we’re all quiet. This is a very serious situation and it’s crucial that Principal Patel is able to hear what’s going on.” Jessie and I closed our mouths, nodding in acknowledgement. As soon as Mrs Applefig shuffled out of earshot though, he leaned over and resumed his whispering. “That’s the thing, they cleared the entire school. The fire alarm went off as soon as the smoke detector caught whiff, and Patel himself made sure to double check every classroom to make sure they were clear. All of them were empty.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, defiance leaking into my voice. Oscar was in that class, there was no way Patel would miss Oscar. He was the loudest kid I’d ever met. “They had to have been there. We were doing a trivia competition today.” Jessie shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you man, that’s just what I’ve heard.” My mind raced. Where could they be? Mr Gilad had promised me there would be a trivia competition today. He hadn’t told me to meet the class anywhere special. They had to be here. My eyes scanned the crowd of assembled students. Each class was separated into small ranks, with their teachers standing out front. I went over every single one of them twice, then once again to be certain. No Oscar. No Mr Gilad. Once again I felt my emotions getting the better of me. Tears began welling in the corners of my eyes, but I took a deep breath. Maybe they had met up at the school, and then gone for a walk? I looked up at the near cloudless sky, and the warm sun. It was an uncharacteristically nice day for November. Maybe Mr Gilad took them outside for the trivia competition, so that they could enjoy the weather? A crash sounded behind me, and myself, and every other students’ heads turned in near unison. I watched, transfixed in horror as the bell tower, now almost entirely enshrouded in thick black smoke, sagged, and then with a loud groan fell backwards, onto the blazing south wing. The resultant collision was deafening. The roof of the school caved in instantly, and in its wake exploded an inferno of fire and smoke. Screams erupted from the students. My jaw dropped. I was watching my school, the one place I truly felt at home, be destroyed in front of my very eyes. It felt surreal. Like I was dreaming, and couldn't wake up. It was Mrs Applefig’s crying that brought me back to earth. She had a hand covering her mouth, and she kept muttering the words “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” A moment later a school bus arrived, and all of us whose parents hadn’t picked us up yet were loaded into it. I remember resisting at first, telling Mrs Applefig that I needed to wait for Oscar, but she kept crying and telling me I had to get onboard. “Please,” she said. “Please, Walter.” I relented, and fifteen minutes later the bus dropped me off at home. I used the key in the garden to get back inside, and when I did, I called out for my mom. She didn’t answer, so I went into the kitchen and picked up my phone, calling Oscar’s house. Maybe he was home sick. The ringer rang once, twice, three times and then a voice picked up. “Hello?” it said breathlessly. “Sarah? Matthew? Is Oscar at your house with Walter? Please we need to--” “No,” I said. “This is Walter. Oscar’s not here.” The line went quiet on the other end. “Is he not at home?” I asked. “No,” said his mother’s voice, though it was broken, and filled with sadness. I heard her stifle a sob. “I’m sorry, Walter. I have to go.” “Okay, Miss Cortez.” The line went dead, and I hung up the phone. I looked over to the clock. It read 10:54am. My dad wouldn’t be home for another six hours, so in the meantime I made my way to the living room and turned on the TV, hoping maybe there was something on the news. I flicked through the channels until I spotted a newscaster in front of my school. “-- Here in front of Hillcrest elementary, where a vicious fire has caused the bell tower to collapse upon the South Wing. The blaze has finally been out and overhauled by firefighters, and efforts to locate survivors, as well as fully assess the extent of the damage have begun.” The woman speaking, dressed in a nice business suit, turned her attention to somebody off camera. They exchanged a few words with her microphone down and unable to pick up more than faint mumbles of sound. A moment later, she looked back at the camera and raised her microphone to her mouth. “I’ve just received word from the fire department that several remains have been located within Hillcrest. These remains are suspected to belong to the missing third grade class, taught by Mr Heinrich Gilad.” An emptiness stole through me. The news lady continued speaking, but her words washed over me like white noise. Several remains have been located within Hillcrest. The words haunted me, replaying over and over again in my head. It wasn’t until my father came home that I realized just how long I’d been sitting there. “Walter?” he said, before rushing over to me. He pulled me into a tight hug. “Oh, god, Walter. I was so worried for you. I was in a meeting and I didn’t hear until twenty minutes ago, once I did I came right over--” “It’s okay, dad,” I said, though my voice was void of emotion. It was such an odd sort of feeling. All of my life I had craved this sort of attention and affection from my father, and yet now that I was receiving it, it didn’t mean anything to me. I felt empty inside. My dad took me upstairs, ordered me my favorite pizza and rented the newest Harry Potter movie for me. He sat with me all night. Every so often he would ask me if I was okay, and apologize for yelling at me earlier, but I hardly registered it. My thoughts were consumed with thoughts of Oscar, and Mr Gilad. They were gone. The next morning school was predictably canceled. My father stayed home with me, and put on another rented movie in my room. This one was Monsters Inc. I only watched it for twenty minutes or so before I wandered downstairs. I found my dad on the couch in the living room, his back facing me, watching the news lady I’d watched yesterday. She was in front of the scorched remains of the south wing of my school, and it looked like a windy day, because her blond hair was blowing all over the place. “-- I'm again in front of the wreckage of Hillcrest Elementary’s South Wing, where twenty two children and one man are believed to have lost their lives early yesterday morning, in what can only be described as the greatest tragedy in Plumdale history...” My dad reached for his mug on the coffee table and took a sip. It occurred to me that he must have taken the day off of work to stay home with me. “...Yesterday morning a fire blazed, quickly spreading through the South Wing and eventually reaching the bell tower. An old school, built in the early 1900s, Hillcrest Elementary was built primarily of highly flammable lumber, and the bell tower was no exception. At 10:13am it fell backward, onto the South Wing, collapsing that section of the school and dooming the individuals trapped inside.” She touched her ear, and her eyes looked sideways, as if somebody was speaking to her. “I’m just receiving word that the investigation has determined some rather disturbing details. I… I should caution viewers at home that what I’m about to say is not for the faint of heart.” The news lady cleared her throat, and I drew closer behind my father. “Investigators have located two thick wooden doors in the wreckage. The deadbolts belonging to these doors were discovered in the outward, or locked position. According to blueprints, these doors lead into the basement of the school, where the Hillcrest archive was held.” “Jesus…” I heard my father mutter, leaning forward and setting his mug back down on the table. “The twenty two students and teacher, who we have now positively identified as one Mr Heinnrich Gilad via dental records, appear to have been locked inside the school’s basement at the time of the blaze. Details pertaining as to why are still unknown. The stunning ferocity of the blaze, according to investigators, is due to old film reels located in the school’s archive. These reels contained nitrate, a substance which burns hotter than gasoline...” I swallowed. “One aspect of the tragedy that school Principal Uday Patel is wrestling with, is that he never physically cleared any of the school’s basement areas.” The camera cuts out, and I see my principal giving an interview on the school grounds, but in a different location during a different time of day. “I checked everywhere,” he said, adjusting his glasses and keeping his voice level. “Every classroom was personally cleared by myself, as well as a team of three other faculty members. We ensured to check all of them. I double checked them personally, and suffered severe smoke exposure in the process. Of course, in the interest of protecting my students --” “What about the basement?” the interviewer asked from off screen, and I recognized the voice as the news lady from earlier. Principal Patel's voice cracked as he began his reply. “I saw no need to physically check the basements. It seemed a dangerous task, given the relative size of them, and the speed at which the blaze was spreading. As I walked by the basement areas in each wing, I called down and asked if anybody was down there and needed assistance. I heard no response, and so I continued on. There simply wasn’t any time.” The screen cut back to the news lady, and a small icon in the corner reads LIVE. “Strangely enough, despite Principal Patel’s calls, nobody answered. Given the amount of remains located within the school’s archive, it seems as though such screams would have been loud and plentiful. One theory as to why Patel didn’t hear any of the victims, was that they had already suffered from toxin inhalation due to the nitrate film off-gassing. It's highly likely they'd already passed out --- sorry?” The news lady brought a hand to earpiece again. Seconds ticked by in silence, and I realized somebody must be speaking to her on the other end, because her expression slowly became more and more disturbed. Finally, she cleared her throat and brought the mic to her lips. “For those watching at home, particularly family members of the suspected deceased, your viewer discretion is advised." Her voice trembled and she readjusted her grip on the mic. She cleared her throat. "I can hardly believe I’m about to say this in sleepy Plumdale, but investigators have just determined that, based on observed damage to a child's hyoid bone, their throat is presumed to have been slit." The news lady closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "According to dental records, one Oscar Cortez appears to have died prior to the start of the blaze.” I gazed, transfixed in horror at the television screen. My father was too stunned to notice me creeping ever closer, drawn toward the scenes on the display. “It is now being posited that perhaps this young man was killed in an attempt to scare the remaining twenty-one children into silence.” “Oh my god,” my dad muttered. He ran a hand through his mess of hair, and I can tell by his sleeves that he’s wearing his housecoat. He didn't even bother getting dressed today. I took another step closer and the floorboard croaked. My father turned around. “Walter?” he exclaimed. “Jesus, Walter! You shouldn’t be watching this!” He rushed around the couch, and the news lady's words became muffled against his chest as he lifted me up and carried me back upstairs. “You need to take it easy, alright?” he said, ferrying me through the hallway. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, and I know your worthless joke of a mother abandoned us, but the two of us gotta stick together, okay? And that means you gotta trust that I know what’s best for you. Now I don’t want to see you out of your room again today, alright?” He gently lowered me onto my bed, and hit play on the Monsters Inc movie. “You need to take some time for yourself. Don’t worry about the news. This is all just conjecture right now anyway.” He paid me a remorseful smile and closed my bedroom door behind him. I laid there, staring at my wall and oblivious to the sounds of Sully and Mike from the movie. All I could think about was Mr Gilad’s words, playing on repeat inside of my head. "I never felt fulfilled, because each day I felt like I was a part of a play, or an act. I felt like I was fighting tooth and nail against my instincts, and it was only making me more desperate to see them through." Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes. Thanks to the news lady, I finally knew the answer to my trivia question. Nitrate burned hotter than gasoline. [x.x]
Which Oscar nominees are most likely to take home one of the coveted Oscars 2020 predictions: latest winner odds for all and made a note of the best odds we could find on The 91st Academy Awards should prove to be an amazing night for 'Roma' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' What betting pools predict will happen Sunday night. Odds: +6000. DiCaprio finally snagged his elusive first Oscar back in 2015 for The Revenant, and he's back in the race this year.He earned high marks for his turn as Rick Dalton in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and did excellent work that was equal parts heartfelt and humorous. But the Academy isn't ready to give DiCaprio a second Oscar just yet. Oscars Betting Odds. View all available outright and match odds, plus get news, tips, free bets and money-back offers. All you need to bet. The 2020 Oscar season is shorter than ever; winners are set to be announced this weekend on Sunday, February 9. So who will win? Scroll down for our predictions in all 24 categories from Best Pictu… 2020 Oscar Predictions & Betting Picks. Odds as of Friday and via DraftKings, where Action Network users can get 10-1 odds on any nominee to win Best Picture. New Jersey and Indiana only. Oscar Locks Best Director: Sam Mendes, 1917 Here it is. The moment you have been waiting for. All 24 categories for the 92nd Oscars analyzed and predicted just in time to enter your office pools (just don’t blame me if you don’t … Oscars predictions: 2020 Oscar picks and odds for Academy Awards betting. Commercial Content. 21+. T&Cs Apply By Neil Bisman | Better Collective for nj.com. 2021 Oscars Predictions for the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony, along with predictions for the Golden Globes and SAG awards. Oscars 2020 Predictions: The Odds on The Winners from Joker to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 2020 Oscar nominated films have some stiff competition this year at the Academy Awards.
2020 Oscar Predictions: How To Win Your Ballot Rotten ...
Let's discuss my Final Oscars Predictions as well as the betting odds for the Oscars. The 92nd Academy Awards, or the Oscars, celebrating movies from 2019 takes place this Sunday, so I dissect ... Jessica Welman breaks down her free sports betting picks for the 2019 Oscars Best Picture award, the best Oscars betting odds, some contenders who might be a... http://www.betdsi.euYou can bet on who you think will win the Academy Awards right now at Diamond sportsbook. A number of categories have odds posted includi... Download your Rotten Tomatoes ballot here: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/your-2019-oscar-ballot-print-your-ballot-complete-with-tomatometer-sc... Hollywood's biggest moment has arrived: The Oscars! Wether you're playing along at home or need that extra edge for your office pool, Rotten Tomatoes has the... 2019 is here and we got the best Vegas odds breakdown of the Academy Awards at the Oscars! Here we will breakdown how odds work so you can win your predictions pool. From GREEN BOOK to ROMA. Who ...
