“Brah, I’m glad that shift was over. ‘Tang ina can’t believe we gotta head back in 12 hours. Can’t take anymore night shifts. It’s killing me.”
“Migs brah, relax. It’s hardly the night shift.”
“ ‘pre, it’s midnight.”
“Yo, be glad we get to go home. Marcy, Ting, Lim, those poor fucks just clocked in.” Anthony glanced over at the whiteboard with a handwritten menu:
Meal A
Bisteak and Rice
Meal B
Pansit Canton with hot dogs
Meal C
Menudo Rice + 1 Lumpia
Special
Beef Pares (Beef Stew)
“Yo, so what you having, my turn to buy.”
“Yah, it’s always your turn to buy when we end up at a cheap diner like this.”
“Ok, you get your own..”
“Joke lang ‘pre, relax. I’ll have the Special. Sorry, been a long shift.”
“Manong, dalawang Special ho.” two specials please.
The old man behind the carinderia finished ringing up the customer that was ahead of Miguel and Anthony. Another shift worker, a woman in scrubs heading home from a long shift at the hospital.
The old man walked over to the back wall, grabbed two plates two bowls and began filling in the order for two specials which consisted of a plate of white rice and a bowl of oily pares (beef stew, street vendor style).
Miguel and Anthony frequented Robinson’s almost every night shift. It was a bare bones type of carinderia with green tile walls andSan Miguel Beer poster ads. One wall had a large corner to corner mirror that made the place look bigger than what it actually was. The tables were cheap foldable picnic tables draped with thick see-through plastic. The front windows were ceiling to floor like most of the restaurants on the strip except for some reason, they were tinted. Food was also cheap but portions were big.
Taste was another story. To the pair of them, the food tasted alright. There were definitely other options in the vicinity. A lot of restaurants and diners in the area stayed open late to feed the influx of commuting shift workers in the neighborhood. Some even stayed open 24 hours to capitalize on the breakfast crowd coming in from a graveyard shift.
Miguel and Anthony certainly weren’t lacking in options, but something about the food kept them coming back. There was a certain flavour to the ulam which oddly enough, energized them a little bit. They had the feeling of life returning to their tired over worked bodies. Over the months, both of them had certainly tried checking out the other carinderias, but they never had the sense of satiety that they would get from Robinson’s. Satiety was the word they could best describe their end of meal feeling. It wasn’t a satisfying meal, but it did leave a particular taste at the end. The kind that makes you want more regardless of how full up you felt.
They couldn’t quite put their finger on what that flavour in the food was; that strange but tasty flavour. Some of the dishes that Manong served tasted plain, even bland but with a hint of that… something. It was strongest whenever Manong had a special for the day. His specials were random and there was no way of knowing when he’d have a special dish prepared. You just had to be there at the right time.
For tired shift workers like Miguel and Anthony, they never really put too much thought into why they liked the food. They just did, but at the same time they didn’t. And like most people in their situation, they just decided to brush it off as routine, habit, perhaps a familiarity of the homeland.
Manong, who served them was not Robinson. No one knew who Robinson was. Just like every other store on the strip named Aleng Rosa, Marites Bakery, Tita Lidia’s Panderia. Rosa, Marites, Lidia, Robinson, all could have just been names pulled out of a hat and whoever worked at the establishments didn’t think too much of the history of the store names or who they were. To everyone on the strip, work was work, and a business was a business.
Manong was just Manong. He was an old sinewy man with a lazy eye and white oily hair. Old as he looked he, moved like someone half his age. He would float between the front carinderia and the back kitchen like a silent wraith, often times carrying refills of food trays with ease.
“Brah, so did you hear about Marcia’s aunt. Tita Neng?” Miguel asked as they sat down at their table, positioned across from the television that played local Filipino news.
“Yah, dude, that’s rough,” Anthony replied as he drizzled spicy vinegar over his beef stew.
“Thank god their insured right?”
“Dude what’s wrong with you? That shit was fucked up! In broad daylight too. Like great they can afford the hospital, but she didn’t have to be in that situation you know? It’s not like she got hit by a car or nothing. Dude went savage on her, for no reason!”
“Yah…” Anthony reflected. “That was fucked up.”
“Things are getting bad. I mean used to be hard just getting around at night. Who know’s who you’ll run into. But tang ina man, these fuckers attacking us during the day now. And for what fucking reason?” Miguel began to chomp down on his food a little bit faster now.
“They hated us from before pare. But back then they ignored us. Shit talk here, shit talk there, but that’s all it was, shit talk. They left us alone. We kept to our side of the line. But now they full on hate us! They blaming us for takin jobs, bringing the fucking virus. Dude doesn’t matter if you’re Chinese, Viet, Filipino. We all look the same to them. Fuck this world bro.” Anthony felt himself getting worked up. He realized if he kept going like this, it would be hard for him to sleep later.
He decided to steer the conversation back to Tita Neng and Marcia. No point in getting worked up so late. “So how’s Marcia anyway? She ok?”
“Yah, she’s with Tita Neng. She’ll be there a while till Neng’s out. Probably be a few days to a week, seeing how that asshole got her.”
“Wow, a week, how’d she score a whole week off?”
“I dunno brah, but company told her take as much time as she needed to take care of her aunt. I never asked though if it was paid. Who knows. You know if this shit never made the news, they probably wouldn’t have given any time off at all you know. These fuckers won’t give a damn until all of the sudden there’s a camera on them.”
Anthony choked a little bit. “Fuck that’s true. They only care if people got eyes on them. Imagine, if this news didn’t go public, they probably would’ve wiped their hands and said not their problem.”
Miguel grabbed the vinegar from Anthony’s side of the table and started adding more to his broth. He was getting a little heated up as well but wasn’t sure if it was the topic of conversation or the food giving him a second wind.
“Brah, the pares is good today,” he mumbled.
Anthony nodded in agreement, “mmhmm.”
“There’s a donation going on if you wanna contribute. Again we don’t know if Marcia’s getting time off with pay, but everyone’s just assuming she isn’t. Hard to ask with her being in her state, taking care of Neng at the hospital. So we just gonna collect some stuff, food, cash, you know. Help with the rent and all.”
Anthony nodded as he looked up at the television. It was a repeat news story of Tita Neng’s encounter.
“…Melinda Torres, a 58 year old, Filipino shift worker who was assaulted while walking home in the morning is now recovering at St. Joseph’s hospital. Police have surveilled CCTV footage of the incident Police Investigators have identified the attacker as Anthony King, 42, who is now facing charges of a hate crime on top of assault and battery. Anthony King is still at large and police are urging anyone with information of his whereabouts to contact them or CRIMESTOPPERS…”
“Fucked up,” Miguel says as he turned over to yell at Manong, “be careful when you go out. You never know what these fucks will do these days. They’re just hating on all of us, but what’s worse is they hitting the old ones like you, and Tita Neng over there.”
Manong just stared at the tv, with the same blank look he had every night, and all day for all they knew. He stood there silently, stoically with his one lazy eye unblinking, unphased by either the news report or Miguel’s sudden attempt at conversing with him.
Miguel meanwhile, stared at him for a few seconds, then slowly turned back to his food. Anthony replied, “you’d think he’d be a bit concerned for himself eh. I mean, even though he’s got kababayan (countrymen)all around here, who knows who’s walking down these streets these days.”
“Brah, I don’t think he leaves this place,” Miguel chuckled.
“Yah I guess you’re right.”
“Ingatan mo ang saril nyo”. (watch out for yourelves)The both of them suddenly heard from behind the counter. The both of them turned to look back, but Manong just stood there in the same position as always. Sometimes he was watching TV, sometimes he was just sitting down staring at the wall, and sometimes, he was at the back, disappeared behind the kitchen, doing what the both of them thought people did behind the kitchen. Cook, chop, clean, or maybe in Manong’s case, just a whole lot more staring into nowhere.
“You know, I don’t think I ever heard him talk,” Anthony said.
“Nah, don’t think so brah.”
After a few seconds, he turned back around over to their food and began eating again.
“Yo Ton,” Miguel whispered, “we’ve been coming here for months now, I haven’t seen anyone else work here except old Manong over there.”
“Yah same, I think he run’s this place all on his own”.
“You mean he does the cooking, cleaning, cash, everything? Nah he’s gotta have some help.”
Anthony thought back and tried to recall how the other businesses in the area operated. There were typically two people at least at every store. Even if on a certain hour you’d see one person at cash, or one person at a desk, there would always be another one out back, or out somewhere doing errands. Running a business, no matter how small on the strip was never a solo operation.
It was possible Anthony thought but moving inventory, getting supplies, cleaning the shops, all required some help. And as tight knit as the community was, there was only ever so much favors one could pull from the neighbors before they start declining.
He thought back to when he came to Robinson’s during the day and tried to remember if there was anyone else running the shop or if there was help. Him and Miguel usually just came there after their night shifts, but he recalled swinging by a few days on the weekends on his own when he didn’t feel like cooking, or he felt he needed something quick and cheap to eat. He couldn’t remember at all if old Manong had a helper.
Miguel broke his chain of thought, “You know I heard he was an ex merc from the Marcos era. Body guard or some shit.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Anthony snickered. “You believe all the tsismis huh?”
“Nah man, well, yah sure, tsismis is tsismis, but you know how rumors go? If it’s the same story, it’s gotta be true. And everyone sayin’, Manong over there is an ex merc.
Anthony chuckled as he spooned the last bits of sabaw (sauce)over his rice, “Dude, your logic”
“Yo just look at him. Stiff as a board, always looking silent and deadly. You see the dude ever slouch or anything? My titos and shit were all in the army, and you know, posture, it stays with you.”
“Even an ex soldier can’t do things alone man, specially at his age.”
“Huh what?” Miguel retorted with a puzzled look. “Oh shit yah, ok hear me out. He’s probably like super strong and shit. Ex merc you know, probably seen stuff. Specially back in those days you know. Fucked up shit. Figures why he’d do things on his own. Probably can’t trust no body. Look at that lazy eye of his too. Probably got stabbed or shot. Tang ina’s astig (badass)bro.”
“Dude, you even know what you’re talking about? Like Marcos era? You know how long ago that was? Manong over there’s probably gotta be over a 100 years old to survive the Marcos era.”
“Well”, Miguel shouted, but suddenly remembered where he was and who he was talking about, and where that person was, “Well,” he hushed down “he probably is a 100. Look at him.”
“Migs, I am looking at him, and there’s no way. No way pare. I mean yah, he looks old, but dude moves like he’s 20. He can’t be that old.”
The door of Robinson’s suddenly opened and the two of them stopped their conversation to have a glance. Normally there’s always the quick glance and stare when someone walks through, especially at that time of the night. It would be a mix of curiosity and hopefulness. Curious to see who would be walking in so late at night, and hopeful to see if it was someone they knew so they could start a late night gossip session. But at this particular moment, the stares gave way to a rapid hint of caution which triggered the two of them to immediately look away and back down on their food.
He was a tall, hefty man with big arms, thick thighs, and a big thick belly. He was wide and just plain big. Not the slow and soft kind of big, but the sort of big that can do damage, like a truck or a wild boar. He even grunted a bit as he surveyed the restaurant, eyes meandering Robinson’s with a cynical gaze.
“I thought I smelled something off,” the stranger snorted as he slowly walked, more like staggered, to the counter of Robinson’s. It wasn’t the drunk or high kind of staggering but more so of a bravado step with an air of arrogance behind the walk leaving behind a strange cloud of hate.
“Wha d’you gotta eat in this kinda place pops? I smell fish heads, you fryin’ fish back there?”
Anthony and Miguel gave each other a cautionary glance. They both knew Manong never served seafood, and they both knew what the stranger meant when he referred to the smell of fish heads.
Manong glanced at the customer, with his usual look; unchanging, stoic, emotionless. He took both of his hands and fanned them outward towards the counter of food laid out: the beef stew, fried noodles, and beef steaks.
“God damn old man. Food inspector come by and check your place out yet? What is this shit? You leave this out in the open like this? Probably not even warm?”
He stared at Manong as he mouthed the word warm, and while doing so he took his index finger and dipped it into the pan of beef stew, stirred it around for
1…2…3… seconds, lifted it off and stuck his finger in his mouth.
“It’s warm I’ll give you that much, but it’s fuckin disgusting. What the hell is this pig slop” He spat out onto the floor. Manong just continued to stare.
Miguel turned around when he heard the stranger spit on the floor. Something started to boil up inside of him. Anthony sensed this and grabbed him by the forearm, “psst, huy, relax lang pare”
Miguel turned slowly back to his place, torn and feeling helpless. He knew the stranger with the arrogant walk was up to no good. Miguel just kept getting flashbacks in his head about the news report and his conversations with Marcia about Tita Neng in the hospital. What panicked him most among all the ideas and scenarios running through his head was, this was not Anthony King, the suspect that had attacked Tita Neng in the streets. This was someone else completely. The feeling of being trapped and helpless choked him.
In a hushed tone, as if he could read his thoughts, Anthony whispered, “I know brah, but let’s wait. Relax lang. Maybe he’ll leave. Maybe he’s just all talk. Relax, chill”
The stranger sensed movement behind him, looked back with a smirk, then turned his gaze back at Manong. With the same finger that he just licked the stew from, he went and poked at the fried noodles, and began to stir just like he did with the beef stew.
Anthony was still holding on to Miguel’s forearm and as he watched the stranger stir at the noodles, his grip got harder, and sweat started to pour down his forehead.
“Y’all come here, serve this shit,” the stranger talked as he continued to stir the noodles with his finger. “And don’t even have the decency to greet your customers. Where’s the service old man?” His finger pushed deeper into the pan of fried noodles, submerging his knuckles, his palms, then his whole fist.
“You just gonna stare at me old guy? Or you gonna serve me? Or do I gotta serve myself?”
Manong broke his stare, calmly turned around, and grabbed a plate from the back counter, hardly un-phased by the stranger’s words and actions. He turned back around with the plate, grabbed a serving spoon and began to spoon the plate with fried noodles.
The stranger laughed, the arrogance and the cloud of hate that trailed behind began to rise, and fill the room with it’s invisible aura. He looked left, right, looked back at Miguel and Anthony sitting at the table. At this point Miguel had turned around to watch the stranger again so the two of them were now transfixed at the scene.
The stranger smile turned sharply into a grimace. He spun back to face Manong, lifted his hand out of the plate of noodles, and flicked them at Manong’s face. “FUCK. You can’t get the hint can you? I don’t know how you got into this country. But you know what old man?”
The stranger turns around to face Anthony and Miguel, “And this goes for you two pricks as well”
The stranger turns back to face Manong, “stop serving this slop and go back to your fucking country, you mother, fuckin…”.
And with that last word the stranger grabbed hold of another fist full of noodles and smeared them over Manong’s face. 1 second…. 2 second… 3 seconds… 4… seconds… he continued to smear. He pulled back his hand, turned around gave a grim smile to Anthony and Miguel, who were now standing up. Faces full of shock, anger, fear, desperation, anxiety, sadness, a mixture of emotions that kept them frozen in place. Fight or flight, both actions were being cancelled out with too many thoughts, too many countering emotions, too many what if scenarios floating in their heads.
The stranger glared at Anthony and Miguel, “This is what we do to your kind. You’re not welcome here no more,”
The stranger turns around and begins to punch Manong in the face with the same noodle smeared hands.
That was all Miguel could handle. Anthony stood there still in shock, but Miguel rushed over to the stranger and tried to wrestle his punching arm back to stop the barrage of fists landing on Manong’s face.
“Get the fuck off him you prick. Why you gotta go and hit an old man for you fucking piece of shit!”
The stranger had size over Miguel, though Miguel was able to hold back his punches, his other arm was free and strong enough to elbow Miguel hard in the ribs which made Miguel immediately let go.
“You all are everywhere, like god damn roaches”, he spat at Miguel.
Miguel furious took a deep breath and launched himself at the stranger. With no real experience in fighting, all he could do was grab hold of the stranger with a bear hug to the waist, which was unfortunate for Miguel as with the stranger’s reach, he was able to pummel him with both arms. Elbows to the back. Punches to the ribs.
Miguel held on tighter, frustrated, in pain, tears rolling down his face while the stranger continued his barrage of elbows, punches, and insults. Anthony stood frozen mouth gaped, shock and fear rooting him in place.
“You fucking pieces of shit, take every god damn street and store in our country, take every fuckin’ business, and all you do is ruin things for everyone.” The stranger continued to beat down, Miguel’s strength fading, his grip on the stranger loosening as he took multiple punches to the ribs and back.
“You come here with your shit food, your shit way of life, ruining MY country. First you bring drugs, then you bring the fucking virus, then you take all our fuckin money living off our welfare system. I should call immigration on the lot of you. You got papers boy?”
Miguel dropped to his knees. Hurt both physically from barrage of punches and elbows and hurt emotionally from the insults and the slurs that were flung with every hit.
“If you won’t go back to where you came from, I’ll kick you out myself” the stranger smiled. Be balled his hand into one giant fist and raised it high over his head, while his other hand grabbed hold of Miguel’s hair, holding him steady for the final blow.
Both Miguel and Anthony saw the fist raised. They both knew what was coming, but neither could stop it. Miguel was too weak from the beating and Anthony was still too frozen with fear to move. They both thought of Tita Neng in the hospital. Miguel was next. He’ll be in the hospital at St. Josephs with her, that is if he survives the final blow.
At this point, Miguel began to experience what most would describe as the slow motion of the last moments of life. Or at least what he thought would be his last moments. They were filled with dread and fear. He could feel the hatred pouring out of the stranger. How could anyone have so much anger and hatred towards anybody?
The aura of hate filled the room and engulfed him entirely. He felt as if his entire being was becoming smothered and about to be wiped out. He could feel all that hateful energy wrap him like a thick heavy net and the anger collecting into a single point in the stranger’s fist. All that hate bottled up in one fist would be crashing down on him soon. Miguel passed out from exhaustion. Anthony fainted from shock.
And then a darker energy entered the room. Originally it was just the stranger and his anger filling up the space. But then, something else emerged. It was darker than black. It was primal. It was old. And It, was hungry.
…
Miguel and Anthony woke up both groggy un aware of what was going on. It took a few seconds for them to regain their senses. They both assumed they had blacked out, but how?
They sit back. Miguel’s ribs and body ached. Luckily the stranger had only been hitting him in the back and ribs, and not the face.
Wait a minute he thought. The stranger must have hit him in the head, otherwise why would he have blacked out?
But then it occurred to him that his head wasn’t hurting. He did have a headache, but not from a punch to the head. More of a groggy, hung over feeling headache, the type one gets from sleeping in a strange position and getting a stiff neck.
Anthony opens his eyes, how did I black out he thought? Did the stranger go after me after finishing off Miguel? He felt no pain in his body, nothing hurt but his head, but it was the same groggy stiff necked pain that Miguel was experiencing.
“Bro, what the fuck happend” Miguel asked
“Pare I don’t know, pare. Fuck. My head hurts.”
“All I remember was I thought I was done for. I remember thinking that I was either going to see Tita Neng in the hospital or see my dad up in heaven.”
“Bro, I’m sorry I couldn’t step in, I tried, I mean, I wanted to, fuck I dont know I’m so sorry bro”
“It’s alright pare. Ok lang, we’re both ok, somewhat. I dunno. Dude where are we?”
They both looked around. There were green tiled walls with posters of San Miguel Beer, one wall with corner to corner mirror to make the place look bigger, foldable picnic tables draped with thick clear plastic, a TV playing local community news, this time playing the morning weather and traffic report. Hazy sunlight was shining through the tinted glass windows of the front of the restaurant. They were at Robinson’s.
Manong was in front of the kitchen counter with a mop and bucket cleaning the floor. His face, blank, stoic, emotionless. He swished the mop with strong, wide strokes, and when he rung the mop into the bucket, his sinewy arms tightened into coils of hard leather. For an old man, he moved like a teenager, albeit slow and methodical.
“Manong,” Miguel asked
“Ok lang kayo? Anong nangyari ka gabe? Where did that asshole go”
Silence.
Manong did one last swish of the mop into the bucket and wheeled them both back behind the counter and into the kitchen. Miguel and Anthony just looked at each other, confused, baffled, and stiff.
“Dude” Anthony grimaced “Like what the hell happened last night?”
“I don’t know, but I feel like shit right now. Do you think we should go to the police?”
Anthony sat in silence not knowing what to say or do. As he became more and more awake, the memories of the night before became more and more clear, but the gap between now and the moment the stranger was about to hit Miguel in the face was a huge black hole.
“Dude, what time is it?” Miguel asked.
Anthony looked at his phone, “6am”
“Alright, ok so we got 6 hours before clocking in to figure out what we’re going to do”
“Or figure out what happened last night bro”
The kitchen door swung open and Manong walked out with a big tray of food for the carinderia counter. Face emotionless as ever, not even showing signs of strain as he lifted the tray into the heating spot of the counter. After placing the tray in it’s slot, he turned around to the white board menu above the kitchen counter and began wiping the old menu out and replacing it with the days and evenings options.
Meal A
Bisteak and rice + 1 lumpia
Meal B
Pansit canton with beef slices
Meal C
Pork adobo and rice
Special
Lechon Kawali
Glossary of terms:
‘tang ina: short for putang ina. Mother Fucker.
‘pre: short for Pare. Colloquial term for Bro.
Brah: another term for Bro. Evolved from the word Brad.(Br-AH-d) or Brother.
Manong: A term reserved for an older male person. Typically males, family or strangers would be referred to as uncle or Tito. Manong is an older Tito.

Wednesday May1

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Brooklyn Paramount	Belle & Sebastian + The Weather Station	8pm, SOLD OUT
Main Drag	Locations x Anthony & Sons Sandwiches Residency feat. Warpark + Locations + Le Boss	8pm, $25 (+ free sandwiches from Anthony's at 7pm)
Baby's All Right	Porridge Radio (solo)	10pm, $15

Thursday May 2

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Baby's All Right	Lime Garden + Starcleaner Reunion	7pm, $20
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Dustin Kensrue ^{of Thrice} + The Brevet + Brother Bird	8pm, $30
Our Wicked Lady	Show Brain presents a benefit concert for Punk Island feat. T!LT + Abbie Roper + Caitlin Starr + Crusasis	8pm, $15
Purgatory	Puppy Angst + Trinket + Bummer Camp + Dogs on Shady Lane	8pm, $15
The Sultan Room	Owen + Lily Seabird	8pm, $20
TV EYE	The Lemon Twigs + Thee Smashing Times	8pm, SOLD OUT
Union Pool	A Benefit for UNRWA feat. Sidney Gish + My Wonderful Boyfriend + Pearjuice	8pm, SOLD OUT

Friday May 3

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Washington Square Park	Vincent Blackshadow + Mary Shelley + Maya Lucia + Caitlin Starr	3pm, FREE
Baby's All Right	PACKS + Why Bonnie	7:30m, $20
Bowery Ballroom	SINKANE + Midnight Magic	9pm, $35
The Broadway	Pamphlets ^{Take Your Place} ^{album release show} + Colatura + Sharkswimmer	8pm, $15
Brooklyn Paramount	The Decemberists + Ratboys	8pm, $61
Brooklyn Steel	Panchiko + Weatherday	8pm, $35
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Slothrust^{Of Course You Do} ^{10 yr anniversary} + Weakened Friends	9pm, $25
Our Wicked Lady	Rights of Spring ^{Day 1/3} feat. Bitterjoyride + Eevie Echoes (& The Locations) + High Waisted + Abbie Roper + Wetsuit + Avatareden + T@b Grrrl + Iceblynk	7pm, $25
Union Pool	Chastity ^{trilogy tour - 3 records in 66.6 minutes}	8pm, $15

Saturday May 4

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
18th Ward Brewing	The New Colossus Festival Presents Summer Saturdays feat. The Answers In Between + The Overhead Bins + yael s. copeland + Rat Palace + The Fictionals	2pm, FREE
Brooklyn Steel	Ra Ra Riot + Low Hum	8pm, SOLD OUT
Forest Hills Stadium	SESSANTA: A 60th Birthday Celebration for Maynard James Keenan feat. Primus + Puscifer + A Perfect Circle	6pm, $70
Knitting Factory @ Baker Falls	Maxband record release show + Landowner + Docents	8:30pm, $15
Our Wicked Lady	Rights of Spring ^{Day 1/3} feat. Gocco + The Canvas Collective + SORRYNOTSORRY + Debbie Dopamine + Wifeknife + The Martyr + Sex Fixx + Barnaby + Kalen	7pm, $25
The Rooftop at Pier 17	Social Distortion + Bad Religion	SOLD OUT?
Purgatory	Spite Fuxxx + Nihiloceros^{Dark Ice Balloons} ^{record release show} + Two-Man Giant Squid + Brook Pridemore	7:30pm, $15
Racket	Feeble Little Horse + The Dallas Cowboys	8:30pm, $25
Rough Trade	Mannequin Pussy Performance & signing	SOLD OUT
Terminal 5	Bayside + Finch + Armor for Sleep	8pm, $35

Sunday May 5

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Our Wicked Lady	Rights of Spring ^{Day 2/3} feat. Gold Casio + Femcel + Shadow Monster + Frida Kill + Julia Pierce + DethRok + The Rizzos + Catty + Proprietary Energy Faggots + Just Fabulous + Majorette	4pm, $25
Arlene's Grocery	Bands do BK presents The Music Matters ^{Day 1/3} feat. TVOD + Tetchy + A Very Special Episode + Tilden + Big Girl	7pm, $15
Brooklyn Paramount	Sum 41 + The Interrupters + Joey Valence & Brae	7pm, $70
Roulette	Long Play Festival feat. Deerhoof + The Eileen Myles, Steve Gunn and Ryan Sawyer Trio	8:30pm, SOLD OUT
Trans-Pecos	Plight + In Blue + Glimmer + The Twin	7:30pm, $15

Monday May 6

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Arlene's Grocery	Bands do BK presents The Music Matters ^{Day 2/3} feat. Mary Shelley + Two-Man Giant Squid + partygirl + Nevva + O. Wake	7pm, $15
Brooklyn Paramount	Sum 41 + The Interrupters + Joey Valence & Brae	7pm, $70

Tuesday May 7

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Arlene's Grocery	Bands do BK presents The Music Matters ^{Day 3/3} feat. SKORTS + Night Spins + Go Home + Jelly Kelly + Avatareden	7pm, $15
Baby's All Right	Babehoven + Knifeplay	7pm, $20
The Bowery Electric	Geoff Rickly ^{of Thursday} + Common Sage + Sharkswimmer	pm, $15
Hart Bar	Harla + Grasping Straws + watergh0st + Rest Ashore	8pm, $15
Purgatory	Marblemouth + Options + Theadoore	8:30pm, $15
Warsaw	Chastity Belt	pm, $20

Wednesday May 8

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
The Rooftop at Pier 17	Social Distortion + Bad Religion	SOLD OUT?
Warsaw	Fontaines D.C.	8pm, SOLD OUT

Thursday May 9

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
ALPHAVILLE	The Wants ^residency + S.C.A.B. + QIRL	8:30pm, $15
Bowery Ballroom	L'Rain	9pm, $30
(le) poisson rouge	Cloud Nothings	7:30pm, $30
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Sweet Pill + Equipment + Taking Meds	8pm, $20
Rough Trade NYC	Say Anything (acoustic)	6pm, $20
Trans-Pecos	Trauma Ray + Kraus + Mx Lonely + Bedridden	7:30pm, $12

Friday May 10

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Bar Freda	Waterfall Strainer + Endearments + Phantom Signals + Moon Sand Land	8:30pm, $12
Brooklyn Paramount	Say Anything ^{Is A Real Boy} ^{20th Anniversary Tour} + AJJ + Greet Death	pm, SOLD OUT
Gold Souds	Upper Wilds + Hallelujah the Hills + KATIEE
Knitting Factory @ Baker Falls	Sofia Zarzuela + Mila DeGray + Glimmer + Moxie Pocket
Main Drag	Mahogany ^{vinyl release show} + Mahogany + My Favorite + Honeycrush + Minaxi
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Cheekface + yungatita
Our Wicked Lady	Laura Galindo + Stello + Big Honey + Fish House
Purgatory	Trace Mountains
Saint Vitus	The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die + Chained to the bottom of the Ocean + Burr + Common Sage	8pm, $25
Trans-Pecos	Woolbright + Cold Wrecks + Figure Eight + Anxioushum	7:30pm, $15
Webster Hall	Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Saturday May 11

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
18th Ward Brewing	The New Colossus Festival Presents Summer Saturdays feat. School of Rock Williamsburg	2pm, FREE
Brooklyn Paramount	Hot Water Music ^{30th anniversary tour} + Quicksand + Modern Life is War + The Ergs	pm, $40
Mercury Lounge	McKinley Dixon	7pm, $17
Mercury Lounge	Alex Orange Drink + Tall Juan + John Gallagher Jr. + Greensleeves	9:30pm, $18
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Bad Bad Hats + PRONOUN + OK Cowgirl	8pm, $18

Sunday May 12

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Brooklyn Steel	Holly Humberstone + Carol Ades	8pm, $30
Palladium Times Square	Blind Guardian + Night Demon	8pm, $50

Monday May 13

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Carnegie Hall	The Music of Crosby, Stills & Nash feat. Todd Rundgren + Grace Potter + Taylor Meier ^{of Caamp} + Iron and Wine + Rickie Lee Jones + Shawn Colvin + Real Estate + Aoife O'Donovan + Neal Francis + Sammy Rae + Yola + Joseph	8pm, $60+
TV EYE	King Bug + Big Spirit + Shadow Monster	8pm, $15

Tuesday May 14

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Forest Hills Stadium	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	7:30pm, SOLD OUT
Union Pool	Climax Landers^{Zenith No Effects} ^{record release show} + Esther's Lab + Penny + Danny Christmas	8pm, $15

Wednesday May 15

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Bowery Ballroom	Helmet + Cro-Mags	8pm, $30
Brooklyn Steel	Amen Dunes + Billy Woods	8pm, $30
Forest Hills Stadium	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	7:30pm, $125+
Heaven Can Wait	The Upstart Crows + TV Moms + The Last Word	7:30pm, $12
Irving Plaza	Sunny Day Real Estate ^{30th Anniversary Tour} + Rocket	7pm, $50
Our Wicked Lady	A Very Special Episode + Toward Space + Desert Sharks + Blood of the Bull	8pm, $15
Public Records	AdHoc presents Kara Jackson + Mei Semones	8pm, SOLD OUT

Thursday May 16

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
18th Ward Brewing	No Jersey + Perfect Saturday + Dan Flashes + babyfang	7pm, $15
ALPHAVILLE	The Wants ^residency + Terminator + Pisha	8:30pm, $15
Brooklyn Made	Loosey + Miranda and The Beat + Dog Date + Sliders	8pm, $20
Brooklyn Steel	Mannequin Pussy + SoulGlo	8pm, SOLD OUT
Elsewhere - Hall	Mk.gee	8pm, SOLD OUT
Irving Plaza	Sunny Day Real Estate ^{30th Anniversary Tour} + Rocket	7pm, $50
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Les Savy Fav + Public Practice	8pm, $25
Our Wicked Lady	QWAM + Debbie Dopamine ^{single release show} + Anna Altman + Krissanthemum	8pm, $15
Public Records	AdHoc presents Kara Jackson + Anastasia Coope	8pm, SOLD OUT
Racket	Swans + Kristof Hahn	8pm, $42
Baby's All Right	Fazerdaze (solo) + Mei Seimones	10pm, $15

Friday May 17

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Bowery Ballroom	Narrow Head + Dazy + Wishy	8pm, $25
The Broadway	O. Wake + Endearments + hiFi	9pm, $15
Brooklyn Steel	Echo & The Bunnymen	8pm, SOLD OUT
Forest Hills Stadium	The Avett Brothers + Sierra Ferrell	7pm, $60+
Irving Plaza	Mk.gee	8pm, SOLD OUT
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Swans + Kristof Hahn	8pm, $42
Union Pool	Heavy Feather & The Magic Word + Boyscoutmarie + Rat Palace	8pm, $15

Saturday May 18

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
18th Ward Brewing	The New Colossus Festival Presents Summer Saturdays feat. The Answers In Between + The Overhead Bins + yael s. copeland + Rat Palace + The Fictionals	2pm, FREE
2 Wyckoff Avenue	Sound Mind Music Street Festival for Mental Health feat. Kevin Morby + MisterWives + SHAED + Bailen	2pm, FREE
18th Ward Brewing	Di Ivories + BEND + North by North + LEONE	7pm, $15
ALPHAVILLE	STUY + Chronic + Exit Seraphim	8:30pm, $15
Berlin	Ringo Deathstar + Ovlov + The Veldts	7pm, SOLD OUT
Main Drag	New Vision + T!LT + Spite FuXXX + Broken Demeanor	8pm, $15
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Swans + Kristof Hahn	8pm, $42
TV EYE	Theophobia + Royale Minks + OK King	8pm, $15
Union Pool	Couvo + Big Girl + Reclining Nude	8pm, $15
The Windjammer	Jeerleader + Alphabet City + Marinara	9pm, $15
Aboard (some boat) via Skyport Marina	Rocks Off Cruises presents Ringo Deathstar + Ovlov	Boat leaves at 11:30pm, $35

Sunday May 19

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
ALPHAVILLE	King Bug + The Wizard + Shira + Onward Debacle	8:30pm, $15
Bar Freda	Dollar Signs + The Big Easy + Perennial + Good Looking Friends + Strawberry Glass	8pm, $15
Berlin	Ilithios + Project Diem + Lukka + To the Wedding	7pm, $12
Brooklyn Monarch	Beach Party feat. Drain + Madball + Terror + Scowl + Regulate + End It + Trail of Lies + Private Mind	5pm, SOLD OUT
The Sultan Room	Ron Gallo (solo)	7pm, $20
Sundown	Radiator Hospital (solo) + Noun (Marissa Paternoster solo)	8pm, SOLD OUT

Monday May 20

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Baby's All Right	GUPPY + Kenneth Takanami	7pm, $15
Bowery Ballroom	Drain + Teenage Wrist + Stand Still	8pm, $27
Sundown	Radiator Hospital (solo) + Noun (Marissa Paternoster, solo)	10pm, $25

Tuesday May 21

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
The Broadway	Gladie + Shit Present + Talking Kind + Crush Fund	8pm, $15
Purgatory	Palestine Benefit feat. Katy Kirby + Helenor + Jules Olson	8pm, $15+
Racket	CKY + Crobot	8:30pm, $30
Sony Hall	Buckethead	8pm, $45
The Sultan Room	Tredici Bacci + Ryan Power + Jolee Gordon	8pm, $20
Union Pool	Squirrel Flower (solo) + Merce Lemon	8pm, $20

Wednesday May 22

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
The Broadway	Decent Criminal + The Dracu-Las + Bummer Camp + Wifey	8pm, $15
Brooklyn Bowl	Teenage Halloween + My Son The Doctor + Tony & The Kiki + Skorts	8pm, $15
Brooklyn Paramount	Amos Lee + special guests	7:30pm, $40
Elsewhere - Zone One	Empress Of + DJ_Dave	8pm, SOLD OUT
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Saint Vitus + The Bowery Presents present Fleshwater + Modern Color + 9Million	8pm, SOLD OUT
National Sawdust	Julia Jacklin^residency + Squirrel Flower	8pm, SOLD OUT
Radio City Music Hall	Sleep Token	8pm, SOLD OUT
Sony Hall	Buckethead	8pm, $45
The Sultan Room	Another Michael + Tenci + Raavi	8pm, $20

Thursday May 23

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
ALPHAVILLE	The Wants^residency + Activity + Nara's Room	8:30pm, $15
Arlene's Grocery	Yeah Baby + Coral Grief + Brother Language	7pm, $15
Bowery Ballroom	Hairpin + Bec Lauder + Kitten	8pm,
Mercury Lounge	Ben Katzman + Colleen Green	9:30pm,
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Gustaf + Edy Modica + Dead Tooth	8pm, $17
Purgatory	Sweetbreads + Slight Of + Majorette	8pm, $12
Sleepwalk	Twin Shadow ^performing ^Forget + Wynne Bennett	8pm, SOLD OUT ^{rescheduled from March 14}
Trans-Pecos	Harvey Waters + Silvia K. + S.C.A.B. + Many Shining Windows	7:30pm, $15

Friday May 24

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
ALPHAVILLE	Strange Neighbors + Sweetbreads + Wish Queen	8:30pm, $15
Baby's All Right	Motherfolk + Kevin Devine	8pm, $30
The Broadway	Rat Motel + partygirl + This Holy Rodeo + Uncle Skunk	8pm $15
Elsewhere - Zone One	Empress Of + Petal Supply	8pm, SOLD OUT
Main Drag Music	Dad + Wifeknife + Lost Children + Other Problems + Faiders	8pm, $15
Mercury Lounge	Washer + No Lights	9:30pm, $15
Sleepwalk	Twin Shadow ^performing ^Forget + Wynne Bennett	8pm, SOLD OUT ^{rescheduled from March 15}
Union Pool	Ok Cowgirl ^{"Little Splinters" single release show} + Charlotte Rose Benjamin + Hank Heaven	8pm, $15

Saturday May 25

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
18th Ward Brewing	The New Colossus Festival Presents Summer Saturdays feat. TBA	2pm, FREE
ALPHAVILLE	SKORTS + Boyscoutmarie + Genuine Connection + First Sex	8:30pm, $15
Brooklyn Made	Habibi ^{album release show}	8pm, $25
Elsewhere - Zone One	Empress Of + GIRL_IRL	8pm, SOLD OUT
Knitting Factory @ Baker Falls	Pearla + Yours Are the Only Ears	7:30pm, $16
Public Records	Salt Cathedral + NOIA	8pm, $20
Purgatory	Cardiel + Aux Blood + Laurel Canyon + Le Bang	7:30pm, $12
The Rockaway Hotel	The Heavy Heavy + Sid Simons	7pm, $30
Trans-Pecos	Leaving Time + Hollow Suns + High.	7:30pm, $15
Knockdown Center	Fatboy Slim	10pm, $30
Baby's All Right	ANTICS fundraiser feat. Shallowhalo + Kassie Krut	11pm, $20

Sunday May 26

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Sleepwalk	Twin Shadow ^performing ^Forget + Wynne Bennett	8pm, SOLD OUT ^{rescheduled from March 15}

Monday May 27 - Memorial Day

None.

Tuesday May 28

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Irving Plaza	Passion Pit	7pm, SOLD OUT

Wednesday May 29

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Bowery Ballroom	Head Automatica + Thoughtcrimes	8pm, $37
The Broadway	Shred Flintstone + Diet Lite + Pamphlets	8pm, $15
Irving Plaza	Passion Pit	7pm, SOLD OUT
National Sawdust	Julia Jacklin^residency + special guest	8pm, SOLD OUT
TV EYE	Magick Potion ^{single release show} + Indigo Fuzz + Certain Death + Duel Ferns	7:30pm, $15
The Sultan Room	Shop Talk + Sleepies + Frida Kill	10pm, $15

Thursday May 30

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Brooklyn Steel
Knitting Factory @ Baker Falls	The New Colossus Festival x Super Bock Stock present Lio & Stever's Colossal Birthday Bash feat. Nino Disco + Dead Tooth + Balaclava + Starcleaner Reunion + Pippy	8pm, $15
Mercury Lounge	Glom	6pm, $15
Music Hall of Williamsburg	Kacy Hill + May Rio	8pm, $22
Our Wicked Lady	Pons ^{single release show} + Wince ^{tour kick-off show} + Pop Music Fever Dream + Tea Eater	8pm, $15
Rough Trade NYC	Habibi	6pm, FREE
Trans-Pecos	Johnny Dyamite & the Bloodsuckers + Snoozer + Public Circuit + 54 Ultra	7:30pm, $15
TV EYE	Raisalka + Baked + The Zells + Dropper	8pm, $15
Union Pool	Slow Ficiton ^Crush ^{EP release show} + Patiently	8pm, $15
Warsaw	Shannon and the Clams + Tropa Magica	8pm, SOLD OUT

Friday May 31

VENUE	EVENT / LINE-UP	TIME / DOOR PRICE
Gold Sounds	Richard Papiercuts + Onesie + Momsomnia + The Roulettes	8pm, $15
Market Hotel	HEAVENLY + Lightheaded	8pm, SOLD OUT
The Meadows	Bad Rabbits + Proper. + Origami Button	7pm, $25
Music Hall of Williamsburg	A Place to Bury Strangers + Suuns + JJUUJJUU	8pm, $25
Our Wicked Lady	RADAR + Substitute + Heavy Lag + The Follies	8pm, $15
The Rooftop at Pier 17	Needtobreathe + Judah & the Lion	7:30pm, $50
Rough Trade	Arooj Aftab	6pm, SOLD OUT
The Sultan Room	Finom + Frances Chang	8pm, $20
Terminal 5	Knocked Loose + Show Me the Body + Loathe + Speed	8pm, SOLD OUT
Warsaw	Passion Pit	8pm, $70

^{last updated} ^{May 5 at 4:38pm}

What's up guys? The first-ever Reddit X Scott Fish Bowl NFL Draft Contest was a HUGE success, raising a ton of money for Fantasy Cares (which will go to Toys for Tots)! The original goal was set at $2,000 which was crushed in less than a week with the lofty $5,000 goal reached just before the start of the draft (shoutout to u/lblacklol for dropping the biggest donation of the event at the last minute to get us over the top!) As we hit more milestones, more prizes were added like #SFB14 invites and an autographed Bijan Robinson jersey (courtesy of Pristine Auction). Doesn't get much better than that!
The contest winners will be officially announced on the Fantasy Cares YouTube Channel today at 12:30 PM ET and they will be spinning the wheel for some of the random prizes as well (including the extra #SFB14 invite!). Here is the link to the live announcement show - make sure you subscribe as they give away invites over there all the time. After the show, I will come back to update this post with the winners. As a reminder, here is the original post with the full list of prizes which included invites to THIS YEAR's Scott Fish Bowl, autographed jerseys, draft guides, fantasy trophies - you name it!
Lastly, I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone who got involved and showed what this place is all about. Even with 2.5 million members, this still feels like a tight-knit community of sharp, like-minded people. And this year I hope that the winners of this contest can represent this community well and place high in #SFB14 - or maybe even win the whole thing!

LIVE ANNOUNCEMENT SHOW LINK
Full List of Winners and Prizes (coming soon below)

So I am doing a couple long term/ planned out build challenges and thought I'd share! I'm sure i'm not the first one to do these just want to inspire other newbies.
1. Build on Every Lot Challenge - this one is kinda explanatory, Only rules are you have to number your builds in order you create them, and you have to do one world at a time! I am choosing to do them in order of the pack releases. I am personally doing the vacation worlds (minus batuu), but thats not required since they're non residential. You can choose whether or not to do the Secret Lots in the game, I am still undecided myself. I am not doing the apartment lots but you can hahaha All together, not including secret lots, apartments, and Batuu, there are 284 Lots in the world (as of For Rent)
2. Perfect Pairs Challenge - This is something I am doing within my BOEL challenge, and the concept here is to pair up 1 of each pack type that you think goes together, and build with only those plus base game. Right now, there are 15 EPs, 12 GPs, 20 SPs, and 16 build Kits (didn't count bust the dust). But that means you have only 12 full matches you can do. I like multiples of 5, so I am only doing 10 matchups. (Mainly Batuu is just hard to pair and use any of it, and Dream Home Decorator has items I can use across all designs) Some I take away as options and apply it to the "base game" part of the build arsenal i can use across all of these build pairings. Here's my pairings and "base game" as an example :

The Mega Mall: Get To Work - Dine Out ~ Moschino = Country Kitchen
Blood Money : City Living - Vampires ~ Vintage Glam = Modern Luxe
Retro Revival : Get Famous - Strangerville ~ Bowling Night = Decor to the Max
Ruins Resort : Island Living - Jungle Adventure ~ Perfect Patio = Castle Estate
Serene Sauna : Snowy Escape - Spa Day ~ Fitness = Courtyard Oasis
Witch of the Wood: Cottage Living - Werewolves ~ Paranormal = Greenhouse Haven
Mystic Apprentice : High School Years - Realm of Magic - Crystal Creations - Pastel Pop
Family Matter's : Growing Together - Parenthood ~ Toddler = Basement Treasures
Great Outdoors : Horse Ranch - Outdoor Retreat ~ Backyard = Little Campers
RainBoho : For Rent - Wedding Stories ~ Movie Hangout = Desert Luxe
"BASE GAME" : Base Game - Get Together - Cats&Dogs - Seasons - Discover University -Eco Lifestyle - Dream Home Decorator - Batuu ~ Spooky ~ Romantic Garden ~ Kid's Room ~ Laundry Day ~ My 1st Pets ~ Tiny Living ~ Nifty Knitting = Industrial Loft = Blooming Rooms = Everyday Clutter = Bathroom Clutter = Party Essentials.
I don't own Luxury Party, Cool Kitchen, or Home Chef Hustle

I paired these based off of Aesthetics of the BB, plus if there are matching swatches like in Island Living and Perfect Patio. But I think everyone uses pack differently and could come up with a ton of different pairings.
3. Chaotic Pairings Challenge - Same as the above, except you must use a random pack of each type, and this you must do 12 pairings, since its supposed to be chaotic haha.
I am sure others have done this, and there are real names for them, I am still kinda new and only just been trying to be active in the sims community more. If you decide to do it too, share what your pairings are! Any builds you might create would be cool too :) Happy Building!

When I was a baby, I had borderline insomnia. On the nights my mother was desperate, she would bring me out onto the porch, and within minutes of basking in the starlight, I would be asleep. That’s how she used to tell it, anyway.
It explains why every time I stand on this porch, even during my watches, I feel some level of comfort. Parts of myself are so deeply ground into this house that I can feel it beneath my skin when the old wooden bones creak in the night.
It had been a few days since I’d first met the beast that haunted my dreams and also that weird cow thing. The rain earlier in the week had somehow left the ground much drier once it all evaporated, and the animals were dustier than tofu in an abattoir. There wasn’t a cloud in sight that morning. As much as I would’ve liked to waste the day away on the porch with a glass of Aunt Jean’s anomalously acquired lemonade, it was Barnyard Bath Day.
I put the chickens in Bath Jail (a puppy pen placed nearby so I could keep an eye on them, with Bath Jail scrawled on a cardboard sign and a shallow pan of warm water inside) and tried to decide who would be my first victim. Either Aunt Jean or a very ineffective cow thief had already brought Milkshake and Dairy Queen to the barn. I ultimately gave in to the fact that it would be best to do the most difficult of my clients first.
It took three sugar cubes just to get Hephaestus out of the barn and another to keep him from running off when I turned on the water nozzle. He wasn’t scared by any of it; I would’ve found a less obtrusive way to bathe him if he had been. He was just annoyed, like he was with pretty much everything. A bastard, for sure, but a bastard I couldn’t imagine life without.
Hephaestus, nothing if not predictable, took a solid hour and a half to bathe and another hour to brush out, mainly because whenever I lifted the brush and started to walk off, he would grumble at me. When he was clean, I walked him to the pasture to get some of his energy out and dry off. Then, it was time to reopen the car wash.
Sally, seeing clear evidence that it was Bath Day through the open barn door, stood in the doorway, bleating at me. I knew that the cobwebs on the barn ceiling were a menace, and she was always keen to get her orange hair scrubbed out and brushed.
“Do you want to go next, Miss Sally Ann?”
Bleat.
“Oh, I bet you do. You’ve been visiting the roofboards more than usual. I bet you’re Dirt City.”
Bleat.
“Come on over here then, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind.”
She yelled at me one more time before trotting over. She enjoyed Bath Day the most and would even let me polish her hooves. Her husband, though… he was an entirely different story. Davy Crockett was big and bad enough to send Black Phillip running back home to his Lake of Fire. And he wasn’t afraid to tell me how much he hated his bath. I almost got a foot right to the face.
When they were done, I sent them out to the pasture with Heph. Milkshake and Dairy Queen always had to be bathed together. I had never thought that cows could have such extreme separation anxiety before I bought Milkshake. Cows need companions, and my steer French Fry had passed away from old age. I’d gotten her in town for ten dollars, and when I asked why she was being sold for such an insanely low price, the man simply replied with “cow broke” and invited me to lay a hand on her. She was constantly emitting gentle vibrations like she had an engine inside of her. But if she was a robot, she was a convincing one. I named her Milkshake.
If you saw Dairy Queen, you saw Milkshake, no exceptions. They were inseparable. Maybe they were best friends, maybe something more. I was in no place to judge a lesbian cow.
The last two to be bathed were also a unique challenge. My sow, Hermia, was old and patient enough. But her son, Hamlet, couldn’t stay still to save his life. The little piglet had always been a piglet.
I asked my dad about it once when we’d kept more pigs. He’d just said, “Little hen, he can’t change who he is any more than we can change who we are. Maybe he just can’t bear to get old.” That was enough of an explanation for me. Not everything needs a reason. Sometimes things just are, and that’s alright in my book.
Getting Hamlet bathed always ended with me drenched, and that time was no different. When mother and son were finished, I looked like I’d taken a leisurely stroll into the Amazon Rainforest. Hamlet gave me the most generous thank you of burping in my face before getting the zoomies the second I put him down.
Once everyone was clean, the sun was already half-hiding behind the treetops. I ensured the Girls were warm and dry after their stint in the bath pan, then cleaned the coop. Hairy had the decency to respect the sanctity of Bath Day, and back in the hens went once it was tidy. I got all the animals back to their designated places, made sure they were fed and comfortable, and then I went to take a bath of my own. Dawson was coming over, and I’d be damned if I let that asshole call me smelly.
I ran the water as hot as it would go and scrubbed until my already-aching hands cried out ‘no more.’ When I got out of the bath, I was a little wobbly. Instead of realizing how dehydrated I was, I chalked it up to the usual fatigue of a hard day’s work and went to the porch.
The sun sank behind the pines. Dawson would be here any minute, so I sat down to wait for him. I’d invited him over to watch something with me. I’d meant to start it, but I didn’t trust myself to finish shows on my own. Almost immediately after I sat, everything started to turn bright yellow, and I passed out.
At some point, lost consciousness turned into groggy half-awareness, then dreamless sleep. The memories of being awake were vague: someone forcing my mouth open, water and oatmeal, and a knitted blanket thrown over me. It wasn’t hard to guess later who it was; only one of the likely suspects was present.
When I woke up, it wasn’t on the porch or even in my bed. I was lying face down in the dirt, and a worm was putting its blood, sweat, and tears into trying to crawl into my nostril. I tugged it out and flung it somewhere into the cornfield surrounding me on all sides.
A strange smell clogged my mouth and nose, and it wasn’t just worm. It also wasn’t the bloody footprints surrounding where I’d woken up, the massive kind with only one definitive source, even though I could definitely smell the sweet iron. No, the foul smell plaguing me came from the corn itself. On close examination, I could see where the bottom of some of the stalks had turned withered brown and even gray. The sight and smell both meant one thing: death was sure to follow.
I got to my feet, panic slowly building in me. All I could think of was losing most of the crop. Sure, I got what I needed to survive from the Landlady. But the farm couldn’t function without the money I earned from the harvest each year. Just as I’d decided that was my biggest problem, it was immediately dethroned.
In the moonless, faint dark of early morning, I saw a wave of grimy black mold sweeping across the ground toward me. I nearly tripped on my own feet as I stumbled back through the row. It followed me until I reached the edge of the field, and then it stopped. I thought that maybe it wouldn’t leave the cornfield. Maybe it couldn’t.
I took a shaky backward step toward the house. The black began to burble like bogwater, almost as if I’d made whatever it was angry.
“Oh, you don’t like that do you? Well I’m gonna go get in my comfy bed and you can stay out here with the Pigman. How about them apples?”
The bubbles solidified as something crawled out of the ick.
This is probably one of the worst times to step back from the action, but I have to share a memory first. When I turned double digits, my mother had a brief but intense “aliens are real” phase. She had a lot of special interests like that. I remember sitting in our living room, patching one of my favorite pairs of jeans, while my mom watched a documentary about Roswell and alien sightings in the Midwest. My mom changed the channel when they started talking about cow mutilation, but I’d seen enough.
What I saw crawling out of the black was reminiscent of the foggy, gruesome images that memory conjured. Its lower jaw hung loose and broken, missing most of the skin. The right side of its face clung to its skull in bloody shreds, and it had only one cloudy, cataract-filled eye. It huffed as it moved jerkily toward me as if every step caused it great pain. The white speckled along its black coat was not bicoloration but large patches of pale mold.
I was honestly a little pissed that I was in a standoff with this thing when I could be fast asleep in my cozy bed. Zombie cows were not a planned part of my hot gender-fluid summer.
“Nice… nice cow. I don’t want any trouble. I bet you’d like some corn, wouldn’t you? Why don’t you just stay out here and have all you want? And I’m going to go back in the house!”
I was about to turn and run for the porch when my foot caught a pothole. I fell right on my ass into the dirt driveway, and then that was when the buzzing started. I could hear flies and feel them trying to crawl in my mouth and nose, even though nothing was actually there.
“Get the fuck away from me! Go back to Hooven Hell or something!”
The rotten thing moved much faster now that I was down, and its breath smelled like moldy milk carpet. I held my breath, kicked my leg up as hard as I could, and was rewarded with a shower of cold cow intestines all over my knees as its stomach burst like a water balloon. Somehow, it didn’t seem to mind being gutted. It thumped a hoof down hard on my chest, and the air shot out of my lungs with a hacking gasp.
Its own intestines snaked up and out of its open mouth, snapping around my throat, and whenever I ripped one off, another took its place. I kicked and thrashed and finally realized that maybe I should be screaming for help, so I did. If this thing wanted me as its girl dinner, I wouldn’t make it easy.
Just when my vision was darkening, and I could feel its flat, cracked teeth against my nose, we were both bathed in harsh light. I turned and saw a truck barreling down the road toward me and my new friend. It closed the distance at full tilt, horn blaring, and the cow thing released its grip on me and sprinted back into the cornfield.
I collapsed back onto the ground, and the tires of the red Ford stopped about a foot from my face. My unlikely savior jumped from the truck, with it still running, and scooped me up out of the dirt. Without a word, Dawson threw me in the passenger seat and got back in on the other side, locking the doors.
“Are you okay?!”
I was. I mean, I was definitely a little worse for wear. I couldn’t think of a time I’d ever smelled this bad. But I was alive. And if Dawson hadn’t shown up, I probably wouldn’t have been. As much as it annoyed me to admit, if this had happened even a week ago, I would’ve been burnt toast. But I didn’t tell him that. He probably already knew anyway; it was so stupid how smart he could be sometimes.
“I’m fine. I probably would’ve been a lot more fine if I’d fallen asleep watching Good Omens last night with someone who was supposed to be here sooner!”
Dawson sheepishly drove us the short distance back to the house.
“I know, I know. I didn’t just ditch you, I swear! I was coming to apologize, actually. I brought breakfast.”
That’s when I realized what the smell that was slowly invading my nostrils and replacing all the bad ones was. There were few things that could smooth over anger like a greasy McDonald’s breakfast.
“Well, you’d better have a good excuse.”
Dawson looked around nervously and turned off the truck.
“I’ll tell you all about it, let’s just… get inside. I don’t know if that thing is gone! Oh god, my mom is going to kill me when she finds out I didn’t turn around and speed out of here with you.”
I glanced around before opening the door and making a beeline for the house. Dawson followed with the food, and I let him in first before slamming the door behind us. I wasn’t too worried about anything going after the animals, not yet, anyway. Davy Crockett had enough old man rage to level a building.
“Do you… do you have any idea what that was? Because I don’t. All I’ve got is an undead cow, which… doesn’t feel right.”
Dawson shook his head.
“Bad news is what it is. I’ve only ever gotten the feeling I got seeing that once before. It’s something evil.”
I sat down as Dawson laid out breakfast. Even after what I’d just been through, my appetite was still very much there. I swallowed a mouthful of half-chewed pancakes.
“What did you see?”
He got this deer-in-the-headlights look.
“When I was little, my family and I were visiting relatives on the Res. I saw something one night, something I shouldn’t have— something evil. My mom doesn’t really like me talking about it with strangers… or with anyone, really. It’s not that I don’t trust you, of course; it’s just…”
“No, no. I get it. We all have to have some secrets. Sometimes, it’s safer that way. Do you think this is the same kind of… thing?”
By now, dawn was breaking, and seeing the first light made me feel worlds better. I had never seen the Pigman during the day, and even if the two weren’t related, it inspired some confidence in me. Monsters didn’t like daylight, right?
“I don’t think so, but it’s nothing good either way. Could we… maybe change the subject, though? At least for a little while?”
“Well,” I said, moving onto the impressive amount of hash browns he’d brought, “we could talk about how you stood me up last night?”
Dawson sighed and drenched his pancake in syrup. After we finished eating, I would have to do my rounds. Even if I was a little angry at him, I was glad to have him here for when I had to go back outside.
“I was just getting ready to leave when my dad called me to the barn. One of our ewes went into labor, and I… I spent the night elbow-deep in sheep vagina.”
“Sheep vagina?”
Dawson laughed, but it was nervous.
“Yep. I would’ve much rather been elbow-deep in a bowl of popcorn.”
I laughed, too, but for much longer. Then I realized I couldn’t stop. I threw my hands down on the table and cackled until tears sprang up in my eyes, and they decided that this was their party now. The massive hoofprint bruise hiding beneath my shirt ached as I sobbed.
“Oh, Newport. It was a rough delivery, and by the time mom and baby were situated, and we were done, I went inside and passed out on the couch. I should’ve at least texted. All this is on me. Fuck, I’m really sorry.”
I shook my head and got up from the table. Dawson followed me as I grabbed my shotgun and walked out onto the porch, still unable to stop the tide of tears.
“It’s not that, Dawson. I don’t care about you playing ovine obstetrician. It’s just…”
It was just that I was terrified for the well-being of myself and of my home. It was just that this rot creature didn’t fit in with any of the usual oddities on the farm— it was dissonant and evil and I could feel in my bones that it wouldn’t be gone for long. It was just that I’d come close enough to death to feel its maw against my face.
It was just that Dawson had saved my life.
“I’m just worried. Really worried.”
Dawson had been following me around like a puppy, but I heard his footsteps distinctly stop then.
“Hey.”
I turned and looked back at him. He had an expression I’d never seen on him before: stony seriousness.
“It’s okay to be worried, but it’ll be alright regardless. I can tell this place means a lot to you, and we won’t let anything threaten that— or you.”
Dawson put both hands on my shoulders, and in the firmest, no-nonsense voice, he said:
“Fuck that zombie cow. He’s a little bitch.”
Just like that, he had me laughing again, and this time, the tears didn’t come back. He dropped his hands and smiled.
“Knew I could get you to laugh.”
“Oh my god,” I said, wiping my eyes, “just walk with me. I need someone to share my last cigarette with before I roll some more, and I’d rather not find out if Mr. Night of the Living Beef is a smoker.”
Dawson started following me again, but this time he kept pace. I lit the cigarette and offered it out to him first. By the time we circled back to the porch, all that was left was smoke on our breaths.
I heard him walk into the house, but I stayed, making sure the shotgun was loaded and looking out over the path. I could still see the deep tire tracks from when Dawson slammed on his brakes if I squinted.
“What’re you doing?”
I didn’t take my eyes off the road, but a smile crept over my face.
“You’ve got your secrets. I’ve got mine.”
I gave it exactly ten minutes before standing and turning back. Dawson was watching me, and he probably had been the whole time.
“Keep your secrets,” he said with a dumb grin, “just come finish breakfast with me.”
So we sat in the kitchen together and finished our McDonald’s on chipped china. It wasn’t often that I got fast food like this, and even with it having grown colder than a banshee at her ex’s wedding, I still ate every bite of it.
“So, I’m going to make us some coffee if I can figure out the caffeine dinosaur you’ve got over there.”
He was right. That coffee machine looked like it jumped out of the fifties, but I’d never gotten a better cup anywhere else.
“And then we’ll figure out what we should do next. I would call my mom and ask her, but… I don’t feel like the Mom Voice this early.”
I picked up our plates and looked over where Aunt Jean stood by the hissing coffee pot.
“Someone beat you to it.”
Dawson caught my gaze and jumped a little when he saw her.
“How did she get down here? I didn’t see her or hear her come down the stairs. Did you?”
“Nope. If you’re hanging around here, you might as well get used to it. Sometimes she’s just… there. And then she’s somewhere else. But her teleportation has never been particularly malicious.”
Aunt Jean walked over and handed him two things. The first was a cup of coffee, which I was expecting. If she had spoken, she would’ve said something like, “Guests always come first in this house, chickadee.” The second was an ice pack.
“Thank… thank you, Aunt Jean. It’s really nice to meet you properly.”
Aunt Jean took on a serious look. She gestured to the ice pack, then to me, before holding both wrinkly hands on her chest. It took Dawson a minute to register the message, but once he did, he came over quickly and with visible concern.
“That thing hurt you bad, didn’t it?”
The soreness and pain that I’d been trying to ignore for the past hour flared up at his words, but I did my best to deny it.
“I’m fine, I swear. Just some bruises and things I’d have to talk to my therapist about if I had one.”
“I don’t believe you. Take it.”
I stared at Dawson, and he stared at me. Neither of us was backing down— that was until Dawson cheated.
A hard poke in the chest was all it took for me to wince and mutter “fuck,” and Dawson shoved the ice pack into my hands.
“That was totally unfair, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know. Now ice that.”
As uncomfortable as the chill was, I gave in and stuffed the ice pack into my binder. Seeing that Dawson had won the Ice Pack Battle, Aunt Jean walked over and pinched his cheek like he was an adorable baby. Then, for the first time ever, Aunt Jean spoke.
Well, that’s not totally right. Her mouth formed the words, but the voice that came out of it definitely wasn’t hers. It was a little girl’s, spoken like a child would talk to a dog.
“Good boy!”
I watched Dawson’s cheeks tinge slightly red.
“Yeah, I… I do my best. Someone’s gotta make sure they take care of themself.”
Aunt Jean’s smile widened before she approached me and placed a steaming mug in my hand.
“So we’re feeling talkative today, Jeannie?”
She reached out and gently patted my cheek. I caught the scent of Dove soap, and then she was gone.
“She’s… quite the character, isn’t she?”
Dawson turned to me and grinned the same dumb grin he got whenever he was proud of himself. It annoyed me how easily I’d come to recognize it in the short time we’d known each other.
“She really is something. I think she likes me.”
I took a sip of my coffee. It was burning hot, but I was still shivering from the ice pack, so a warm stomach for a scalded tongue was a fair enough trade.
“Don’t get a big head over it. Aunt Jean likes everyone. Well, most everyone.”
Like the bastard he was, Dawson walked over and started washing our dishes from breakfast. It was only two plates, but I was still ready to kick his ass over it.
“I see where you’re coming from. But let me ask you this. Has she ever spoken to anyone else besides you?”
I wasn’t about to tell him she hadn’t spoken to me. I would’ve been jealous, except for the fact that I wasn’t. Aunt Jean and I had a special bond, and I almost always could sense what she was thinking. Words are loud and unwieldy sometimes, and there’s a certain dignity and comfort in quiet companionship.
“Touche, asshole.”
“Maybe she likes me better,” he says, using that tone of voice that tells me he doesn’t actually believe that but wants to annoy me.
“Maybe you can take a nice, long walk right into the Grand Canyon.”
“I bet I’d do a good job being you. Couldn’t be that hard, though I might go bankrupt on overalls alone.”
For a moment, I actually wondered if Dawson would do a good job running the farm. All signs pointed to no, but I didn’t necessarily see it as a bad thing. Keeping this farm from going to shit is a difficult job, and it’s made me a hard person. I wouldn’t want that to happen to him. Plus, there’s not much McDonald’s breakfast out here. Or that cereal he really likes. I wasn’t sure I’d like the person Dawson would become if he spent that much time around here.
“Oh, please. You’d be running out of here in less than a day with your tail tucked between your legs and Davy Crockett hot on your ass.”
“Oh, really? Well, I’ll have you know that your horse likes me better!”
I gasped in mock outrage. I was almost certain that wasn’t true, but I respected the spirit of dramatics.
“How dare you! A curse on you! A curse upon your house! A curse upon your cow! A curse upon your—“
I was interrupted by a marimba. Dawson and I glanced at his phone, which lay on the table. The screen lit up with the word “Mama.”
“Looks like your curse worked,” Dawson said with a dry laugh, “oh, she’s going to kill me.”
Then he answered it. The yell that came out of that tiny speaker could’ve been heard clear across the state. There’s no force greater than a worried mother. Other than her yell, all I heard was Dawson’s side of the conversation.
“Yes Mama, I’m fine. No, I’m not outside. I know there’s something bad out there. Yeah, I know, you always feel things like that.”
I snuck into the next room, far enough to be out of the way but close enough to still hear.
“No, Mama, I don’t have it, but— I can’t just leave! Newport will be here all alone and that thing might come back and— no, Mama, it’s not like that! They’re just— Mama, I can’t leave them like that, and... fine. I’ll… I’ll try. But I don’t think it’ll work. I know Mama, I know you’re looking out for me. I love you too.”
After a few minutes of silence, Dawson joined me in the living room.
“Heyyyyy. So—“
“Not a chance. I’m not leaving this farm while that thing is out there somewhere. I don’t think Davy can hold his own for that long.”
Dawson sighed.
“I knew you’d say that. I tried to tell her. But she’s going to have my ass if I don’t go get some sort of protection from her. I usually have my necklace, but I was rushing out, and I forgot it today.”
I picked my shotgun up again from where I had laid it and peeked outside. The sun was warming up the fields, a gentle wind blew through the cornstalks, and I could hear the yellowhammers as they went chee-chee-chee-squeeeee amongst the trees. It was turning into a deceptively beautiful day.
“She said if I want to stay with you, she won’t stop me as long as I get something to protect us. But I’m not leaving you here without a way to go. You can keep the truck, I’ll… well, I’ll walk.”
A gruesome picture invaded my brain at Dawson’s words: him walking down the path, and before he could even make it out of sight, a black and rotting blur tore out of the cornfield and slashed into him, spraying bright red blood everywhere and putting on a gory horror show worthy of an A24 flick.
“No. You’re not walking. If you want to leave me the truck, fine. I won’t argue with you on that. But we’re going to find you a better way out of here.”
I didn’t give him any time to disagree. I just snatched his wrist and pulled him out toward the barn.
“I already know my truck isn’t going to work. It needs a new radiator and I can’t get one until next month. The four-wheeler has been slow lately, and I don’t think we should take that risk. Um…”
Dawson walked over to the horse stable, just like I was afraid he would. I would’ve rather he rode Beelzebub.
“What about your horse? I’m sure he’s fast enough.”
I scratched the back of my head. Hephaestus could be pretty rough when he wanted to be.
“I don’t know…”
Hephaestus narrowed his eyes at Dawson, but he reached out to scratch his snout.
“Alright old man, I know you don’t like me. But let’s have a truce for now, okay? I’ve gotta get where I’m going.”
To my surprise, instead of shooting out and snapping at him like the feral dog he was, Hephaestus closed his eyes and sighed. If you’ve never heard a horse sigh in content, I feel sorry for you and recommend you go find a horse at your earliest convenience.
“You do like him better, you bastard!”
Heph actually rolled his big horse eyes at me, like I was the dramatic one out of the two of us.
“I wouldn’t take it personally. I’m just the cool uncle.”
I walked over and grabbed the saddle, thrusting it into Dawson’s hands.
“Well, let’s see if the cool uncle can get his saddle on with all his fingers intact. Do you know how to ride a horse?”
Dawson gave me a tilt of the hand that inspired so little faith.
“I know all the basics, but it’s been a while since I’ve actually used them— like… years.”
I pulled a carrot I’d forgotten in my pocket and had him give it to Heph, hoping we could buy his patience.
“Well, all I can tell you is good luck. You’re probably going to need it. Time for the saddle.”
To my surprise and continued annoyance, Dawson got it on pretty easily. He’d passed the Horse Test now, too. In fact, all the animals besides me had adjusted to his presence like he’d always been here. Having him around still felt so weird, but the idea of him leaving felt worse than that. It felt bad. I didn’t like to think about it for long, because then the questions I didn’t want to answer started to surface.
“Look at me, I’m a natural!”
I was brought out of the haze that was beginning to consume me by Dawson trotting around the barn on Heph. Both looked very pleased with themselves. I could tell Dawson was expecting me to come back with some smartass remark, and honestly, so did I. But whatever I would’ve said stayed lost in the useless hunk of meat that was my brain at the moment.
“Come back, okay?”
Dawson pulled Heph to a stop and stared down at me.
“Because… if you or Heph get splattered across the dirt road up here, it’s going to attract crows, and they’re totally going for the corn next. And that would be… super lame.”
I hated the way Dawson’s expression changed. It got softer, and his eyebrows pinched together.
“I’ll be alright, Newport. I promise.”
I just shook my head and looked away.
“Who else is gonna make you pull that annoyed face you’re pulling right now?”
If he had been beside me then, I would’ve for sure taken his tree branch elbow to my ribs. As I turned back to him, I almost felt it telepathically.
I gave him what some might’ve called a smile. I hated how it sat on my face; it reeked of worry. And my concern for his well-being was none of his business.
I led Heph out of the barn door, stopping just short of it. The sun was hot, and the air was filled with the noise of Mother Nature, totally unbothered. But with the feeling in my stomach, it might as well have been the deepest depths of night.
“Nobody would do it better. Keep your eyes out for… that thing. I don’t think it’s scared of the daylight, Dawson.”
He nodded, and I laid my hand on Hephaestus’ flank, silently pleading for the old stallion to keep his cargo safe. Then I slapped him on the behind with a ‘hiyah,’ and he tore down off the dirt road with Dawson.
“Look at me,” I heard him yelling as they rode away, “I’m riding a fucking horse!”
I had a sneaking suspicion that he had lied about his history with equestrians, but it seemed like he was managing regardless.
“Don’t yell like that! You’re ringing the damn dinner bell!”
It was hard to tell from how far down he had made it, but I swear he turned back to look at me and winked. I sighed, shook my head, and went back into the barn.
Usually, the animals ate before me, but today hadn’t been a usual day thus far, and my money was on it staying that way. Still, I could tell Davy was getting crankier than an old man who hadn’t gone to bed by seven.
After everyone was fed and seen to, I went inside and made sure all the doors were locked. Then, I treated myself to a decadent lunch of a handful of Cheetos from the bag I picked up in town. The Landlady rarely brought me anything besides healthy food and fresh ingredients, so it was my duty alone to treat myself. Then, I went to shower. I was only just remembering that there was still dried cow gunk all over me.
When that was done, I busied myself with household chores as best I could. I kept Kurt Cobain’s voice rattling out of my stereo as high as it would go, trying to fight off the nervous something that was threatening to crawl up my back in every single moment of silence. I dragged my dustbuster all over the house, glad that I’d finally broken down and gotten Two Tooth Steve to order myself a Dyson using just a little of the liquid cash I kept in the lockbox. I tried to be very careful with what I used that money for, but a man can only bust the dust for so long. My days of bunnies under the bed would soon be no more.
Afternoon crept into evening, and something in me knotted up when I had to flick the porch light on. I’d gotten no word from Dawson, not even a text. Not that there was much service out here. Aunt Jean stood by the kitchen window, staring into the gathering darkness. It was hard not to join her, but a nagging feeling in my gut told me that’s what it wanted.
It all suddenly made no difference when I heard Dawson calling my name outside. I was too relieved to think straight for a few seconds, and that was all it took. I threw open the door and raced off the porch like there were springs in my feet. I scanned down the long, lonely path to the main road. Dawson was nowhere to be seen, but I did hear footsteps behind me. They were slow and disjointed. One, two, onetwo, one… two… onetwo, onetwo, one, two… one…... onetwoonetwoonetwo—
I wheeled around as the Rot picked up the pace, sprinting toward me as much as a festering cow carcass could. Broken bone shone white in each of its legs. I staggered backward, with my mind screaming all the while to turn around and run like hell. But everything felt like jelly. The Rot’s gory jaw fell open, letting loose a death wail. Then it closed in on me, coming in for the kill. I shut my eyes tight.
I expected to hear the squelch of my flesh being ripped off or the wheeze of its breath right against my ear. I wish I had, because what I actually heard was a million times worse. There was the sound of broken footfalls passing me by and Dawson yelling my name. This time, it was actually him.
I watched his smile fall into a look of unabashed fear in real-time.
The world was suddenly on fire. The feeling of slogging through a jam jar was gone, and suddenly, every move was at warp speed. I was on the porch, off the porch, halfway down the road, sprinting so hard my legs stung. My shotgun was in my hand. When did I grab it?
I was getting there, but not fast enough. Heph let out the most terrified whinny I’d ever heard, and from where I was, I could see the panic in Dawson’s wide eyes. The Rot was a few more strides and a claw swipe from going all ominous unknown killer on my horse. Everything was a blur of motion after that. The WiFi signal to my consciousness must’ve been extra shitty that day.
There was a loud crack and Dawson was on the ground and Heph was running back toward the barn without him and Dawson was clutching his wrist to his chest and I was lifting my gun and the Rot was leaning over him and its intestines were wrapping around his neck and BANG.
Time jerked to a halt. The Rot wobbled slightly, a massive hole blown into its meaty skull. I didn’t move or even breathe while waiting for it to fall. The only sound was Dawson whimpering quietly.
I shot it, and now it was over, right? Right?
Instead of collapsing dead into the dirt, the bastard melted into a puddle of mold and shot back into the woods out of sight. I knew it would be back; it was only a matter of time.
“Dawson,” I rushed over to him, “Dawson, what the fuck?!”
I pulled his wrist gently away from his chest and took in the damage. The bones weren’t in the right place, and the skin was beginning to swell and turn purple. It hadn’t broken skin, though, and as far as broken bones go, I’d seen much worse. The only other visible injuries he had were a rising swath of bruises on his left side, a swelling knot on the side of his face, and a bloody nose. Any way you looked at it, he needed a hospital, and he needed it now.
“Is Heph okay?” He said through heavy breaths. I could tell he was trying to be tough about the pain, but I could feel a vague ache in my own wrist just looking at it. I was surprised he hadn’t gone into shock.
I risked a single glance back and saw Hephaestus standing by the barn, wide-eyed and spooked, but alive and unharmed.
“He’s fine! You’re not!”
“I’ll walk it off,” Dawson said, pulling his wrist back to his chest and gritting his teeth.
I helped him to his feet and rushed him toward his truck. The only walking he would do was into an emergency room.
“That’s never been good advice! I’m taking you to the hospital!”
I didn’t give him a chance to argue with me. I helped him into the truck and screamed out toward the house for Aunt Jean to see about Heph, hoping it was loud enough to be heard. Then I hopped in the driver’s seat and left a mini dust storm in my wake as I zoomed off the property.
“Why did you do that?!”
Sweat rolled down Dawson’s brow, mixing with the blood still dribbling slowly out of his nose. His breathing had slowed a little, but not enough to be concerning. The cool air blasting out of the conditioner seemed to calm him down but also keep him lucid.
“That thing would’ve torn through Heph to get to me. We both had a better chance of surviving if I jumped ship.”
I shook my head because although the logic made enough sense, I still didn’t like it.
“It’s alright, Newport. You’re probably happy we’re even again.”
I side-eyed him so hard I almost went off the road. Despite it all, he wore a weak smile when our gaze met.
“What the hell do you mean?!”
He exhaled and looked around like his eyes were made of water, and we were stuck in an oil spill.
“I saved your life, and now you saved mine. We’re even. The universe is in balance, and you don’t owe me anything. Not that you did before, but I feel like you think you did.”
I knew getting to the hospital was urgent, but sometimes, there are those moments you know will have a lasting effect on the rest of your life. There’s an unnameable something you can feel— I think people much cooler than me would refer to it as a ‘canon event.’ That’s why I jerked the car to a stop in the middle of Silver’s Curve. Thank god we were both wearing our seatbelts.
“Dawson.”
The dumbfounded look on his face was almost what some might’ve called cute if his face wasn’t covered in blood and bruises. I stared him down more than I had ever stared at anyone before.
“I don’t give a fuck about any of that. I don’t want us even. I WANT YOU ALIVE! I want us alive!”
Dawson didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to; I’d made my point and he understood. He just nodded, and I nodded back.
Neither of us spoke after that, both lost in our own minds. But every thirty seconds, I glanced over to make sure Dawson was still breathing. It didn’t seem like he had brain damage, but I couldn’t be sure. I sped the rest of the way to the hospital in the next town over. I didn’t trust the one in Battleman ever since they told me at twelve that my ruptured appendix was period cramps and also anxiety.

First off I would like to thank the Bengals mod team for allowing this post. The 47th season of the International Simulation Football League is wrapping up, which means this is a perfect time to create a player and jump into the fray!
The ISFL is a free online sim league where you create a professional football player and control their journey through the pros from pre-draft to retirement. With every position available and multiple archetypes per position there are more than 30 unique player types available, anything from a ball hawk safety to a receiving running back and even a strong legged kicker. The options are endless.
Your player will compete in games (simulated in Draft Day Sports Pro Football 2021) three times a week for the duration of each season, culminating in playoffs and hopefully a chance to win the coveted Ultimus Championship. Each game premieres on our Youtube Channel nightly, Monday-Friday and hosted live with commentary through our Discord server. Each 16 game season lasts approximately 6 weeks, including playoffs. Following playoffs is a 2 week offseason. The offseason culminates in the DSFL and ISFL drafts setting the stage for the next season.
Complete stats are recorded in our league index, players are encouraged to create and develop their own wiki page within the league wiki and we even have tools for tracking historical stat records and our own Hall of Fame.
With 22 teams across the developmental and major leagues the ISFL is also a floruishing community of active users. Joining a team not only gives you the opportunity to live out your dreams as a professional athlete but as get the opportunity to engage with like minded people who enjoy getting a bit nerdy about football. Form tight knit bonds with your teammates and a hosts of former players as you root for your team to go all the way!

Sounds great, how do I start?

If you want to jump in right away our Rookie Discord Server is the perfect place. Our team of Rookie Mentors and active user base will not hesitate to answer any questions and steer you in the right direction. If you want to read more before you dive in, check out our text Rookie Guide or our Youtube Video Series. Both are great resources to guide you through the onboarding process.

What happens after I make my player?

After making your player you will be scouted by teams that are entirely run by other users in the league and drafted to a developmental team during the DSFL Draft which will premiere on Thursday May 16th. In the meantime you will participate in the Prospect Bowl where you will show off what you got to all the scouts. You will also be able to tune in to watch the current race for the S47 Ultimus Championship.
During your player’s career, you can improve their attributes by spending 10-15 minutes completing optional tasks each week, like predicting the winners of each game or mocking the 1st round of the draft. The league is 100% free - there is no "pay to win" and nothing costs real money to unlock. You will earn fake league currency through your player's contracts or through creating content like written articles, graphics, or podcasts. You can use it to further upgrade your player and do fun things like collecting trading cards of ISFL players!
Thanks for reading and feel free to post any comments under this post or in our rookie discord server.

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From Texas Monthly:
The Battle of Big Taco
With their anything-goes approach to ingredients—and deep-pocketed investors—Torchy's Tacos and Velvet Taco have ambitious plans to expand nationally.
Something stops Clay Dover cold as he strolls behind the restaurant’s counter. The CEO of Velvet Taco has been all smiles and high fives since he entered the chain’s location in the Grandscape shopping center, amid the suburban sprawl north of Dallas. But now, staring at a few chicken strips in a bin under a heat lamp, he cuts off his friendly patter midsentence and pulls out one of the little brown hunks. He turns it over in his hand, tears it apart, takes a bite, and throws the rest in the trash with a faint trace of a pucker on his face. He’s not going to call anyone out on the spot, but he’s clearly not pleased.
Dover happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on chicken strips. As a former executive with Raising Cane’s, a Plano-based restaurant chain whose entire menu revolves around chicken strips, he knows instantly whether they’ve been made with tenderloins, a narrow cut found on the underside of the breast—“It’s the filet of chicken,” he says—or from an oversized breast that’s been sliced. He can detect whether a strip is crispy on the outside and moist on the inside or has devolved into a bumpy slab of rubber.
Today the strips in question were too small and too bready, suggesting that the crew had been serving customers the better pieces out of a batch and leaving the remains too long under the heater. The chicken didn’t pull apart with the telltale ease of a fresh tender. “Thirty-five percent of the protein in our tacos has chicken tenders in it,” he explains. “So if it’s not hot and juicy on the inside, if it’s not perfect—if you screw up the chicken, you’re done.”
Velvet Taco, which launched in Dallas thirteen years ago and now runs 46 locations in seven states, numbers among a handful of chains with the potential to redefine what a fast-food taco looks and tastes like. Sixty-plus years after Taco Bell turned a regional staple into a cheesy drive-through treat, there has yet to emerge a serious challenger with national reach, besides Chipotle, where tacos are a menu afterthought. But Velvet faces stiff competition for that prize position, and nowhere more than at home in Texas.
A few days after Dover’s Grandscape chicken-strip discovery and 220 miles south, Mike Rypka pulls on a fashionable knit blazer over his black T-shirt and heads into a conference room at the headquarters of Torchy’s Tacos, in East Austin. It’s headshot day at the chain Rypka founded in an Austin food trailer, in 2006, and which now operates 127 locations in fourteen states. “Sometimes I have to look professional,” he mutters, before stepping in front of the camera and transforming instantly from a 48-year-old tattooed dude into a corporate executive with thousands of employees.
Torchy’s started as the kind of lovably quirky local outfit whose devoted followers treat it like an extension of their personalities. But as the chain conquered city after city, it began to mirror the experience of a beloved local band that signs with a major label and lands a radio hit only to see its fans cry “sellout.” Rypka at one point stepped aside to make room for a seasoned CEO, but then he stepped back in to lead a changed company—one that’s poised to become a household name in every part of the country.
In phrasing that many taqueros might take umbrage at, Velvet’s and Torchy’s offerings have been described as “elevated” takes on the taco. What that means exactly differs quite a bit between the two chains, but each offers creative combinations of ingredients and an irreverent brand identity that trades on hedonism. Both have taken large investments—hundreds of millions of dollars—from coastal private-equity firms aiming to grow them into enormous publicly traded companies.
Mexican restaurants are on a tear in the U.S., recording some $50 billion in sales in 2022 and growing by more than 9 percent annually, far outpacing the overall economy, according to food-service consultancy Technomic. Meanwhile, Latinos have grown into the second-largest ethnic group in the country, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the population (and double that in Texas, where they constitute the largest ethnic group). As the U.S. absorbs the effects of changing demographics, opportunities for multiple national taco chains will only increase.
To be sure, other players are scrambling to claim a piece of that emerging mega industry—call it Big Taco—but Velvet and Torchy’s share an important advantage in being headquartered in Dallas and Austin, two of the best places anywhere for building food brands. “Both companies are expected to grow much faster than their competitive set,” says David Henkes, a senior principal with Technomic. It’s not surprising that the future of the taco business is being invented in Texas, but the reason has less to do with the state’s Mexican heritage and 1,200-mile international border and more to do with its proclivity for shrewd business.
Turning tacos into cash has been a Texas tradition since the late nineteenth century. Though tortillas emerged as far back as 10,000 BC, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century, according to the prevailing theory, that a stuffed tortilla became a “taco”—a word that Mexican silver miners also used to describe the little explosive paper-and-gunpowder wraps that they stuck in rock walls. When a group of women who came to be known as the Chili Queens of San Antonio started selling food from pushcarts and colorful stalls in the city’s plazas in or near the 1880s, they ushered in a blending of Mexican and American flavors that grew into Tex-Mex cuisine. Among the dishes that took off as a result—chili con carne, enchiladas, tamales—the taco was the most convenient.
It took a Californian, though, to build the first big brand around the taco. Into a crisp-fried tortilla, Taco Bell founder Glen Bell essentially stuffed a deconstructed cheeseburger—ground beef, iceberg lettuce, and shredded cheese. It was 1962. McDonald’s had revolutionized restaurants just a few years earlier with a quick-service concept that Bell adopted for his chain. By 1978, Taco Bell had nearly one thousand locations—including stores throughout Texas—thanks to an aggressive franchising model also borrowed from McDonald’s. With Mexican food still considered somewhat exotic in much of the United States, Taco Bell didn’t face as much competition as its burger brethren. But after it helped usher tacos into the mainstream, the differences between its food and that of mom-and-pop taquerias suggested an enormous opportunity to build something fresher and more authentic.
Enter Felix Stehling, the owner of a bar called the Crystal Pistol, who opened the first Taco Cabana in a decommissioned Dairy Queen in San Antonio in 1978. While Taco Bell emphasized assembly-line speed and precooked ingredients, Taco Cabana offered house-made tortillas, sizzling fajita plates, and a salsa bar. Taco Cabana’s success prompted a Minnesota entrepreneur to copy its formula almost exactly, in a Houston-based chain called Two Pesos. The resulting trademark lawsuit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1992. Taco Cabana prevailed and eventually bought Two Pesos. But after Stehling handed the CEO reins to a former Fuddruckers executive, the emphasis on fresh ingredients began to slip, and ultimately, so did sales. The chain, which had at one point expanded to seven states, has 149 locations today, all but six of them in Texas.
As Taco Cabana’s fortunes waned, a new entrant called Chipotle was rising in Colorado with a message about ethically sourced ingredients and an investment from McDonald’s. Chipotle was the first Taco Bell challenger to take a serious bite out of the market. By the time it went public in 2006, the chain had nearly five hundred locations in 21 states. Today it has more than three thousand, compared with Taco Bell’s eight thousand, and hauled in about $10 billion in 2023. By emphasizing the quality and freshness of its food, Chipotle popularized the fast-casual dining concept and ignited an industry revolution, an upscaling of fast food without sacrificing the “fast.” Workers chopped onions and lettuce by hand every day. Customers could see raw chicken being grilled on a flattop in the back of the kitchen. Some Chipotle items—such as carnitas and barbacoa—are prepared in a central kitchen and show up in big plastic bags, but none of it arrives frozen.
Amid the stampede of restaurant concepts that then attempted to re-create the Chipotle phenomenon in countless other formats in the first two decades of this century—burgers, grain bowls, pizzas, salads, sandwiches—Shake Shack stood out. Not only did the chain started by New York fine-dining impresario Danny Meyer create a better burger—a melty pile of guilty pleasures packaged in a spongy potato roll—but it charged two or three times as much as McDonald’s for a meal. While McDonald’s and Chipotle report some $3 million in annual sales per location, Shake Shack pulls in $4 million or more.
Shake Shack also showed how an aggressive private-equity investment could grow a restaurant brand as if it were a tech firm. Leonard Green & Partners, based in Los Angeles, had funded the expansion of other companies, such as the Container Store, based in the Dallas suburb of Coppell. It invested in Shake Shack in 2012, when the company operated only a handful of restaurants, and took it public less than three years later, with 63 locations. By then the goal for investors had shifted from finding the next Chipotle to finding the next Shake Shack—and it did not go unnoticed that in the taco space, there were fewer large competitors than in burgers.
Taco Bell delivered lower annual sales per location—about $1.6 million—than burger chains. And as much as Chipotle had changed the game, its menu emphasized burritos, not tacos. Meanwhile tacos were becoming a national obsession, with tiny trailers turning out Mexican-style street tacos, Netflix commissioning taco shows, and one storied magazine even hiring a dedicated taco editor (ahem, Texas Monthly; ahem, the James Beard Award–winning José R. Ralat).
The door was open for a new taco giant—if it had a novel concept.
There may be no metro area in America with more headquarters of mass-market restaurant chains than Dallas–Fort Worth (though Orlando offers stiff competition). It only makes sense, considering DFW’s low $7.25 minimum wage and dearth of natural or political barriers to suburban development. Chili’s, Cici’s, Which Wich, Wingstop—Big D dining concepts go on and on, their towering signs punctuating the view from North Texas highways while mirrored office buildings just beyond house their executive suites. Before Clay Dover took over as the CEO of Velvet Taco, the company was run by its founder, Randy DeWitt, among the most prolific Dallas restaurateurs.
A former commercial real estate salesman who developed strip centers around Walmarts and other national retailers, DeWitt has arguably passed even the late, legendary Norman Brinker as a restaurant savant. (Brinker brought the world Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale—brands that not only created the casual-dining category and established Dallas’s dominance but also ushered in lasting innovations, such as the salad bar.)
DeWitt, 65 years old with an eye-crinkling smile and a flourishing head of politician hair, first fell in love with restaurants as a bartender in Waco while he was a student at Baylor University. He got his start in Dallas in the nineties with a coffee bar and then a seafood chain called Rockfish, whose expansion was financially backed by Brinker’s company, Brinker International. In 2005, DeWitt came up with the concept for a racy sports bar called Twin Peaks. The now infamous chain, he says, unapologetically, would “do everything better” than breastaurant pioneer Hooters, from its double entendre menu items to the acreage of skin displayed by its all-female waitstaff to the not-so-subtle innuendo in the brand name.
By 2013, Bloomberg described Twin Peaks as the fastest-growing chain in America, and DeWitt was an abundantly wealthy man. He moved a few years ago from exurban Frisco to exclusive Highland Park, where he rebuilt a home to include underground parking, a turret, and various Spanish-inspired architectural details that match those of the glittering Highland Park Village shopping plaza a few steps away.
As his empire took shape, DeWitt determined that his strengths lay in spinning up new restaurant concepts and getting them started, not in operating vast chains. So he built his company, Front Burner Restaurants, as a kind of incubator aimed at selling its creations once they proved viable. At the Ranch at Las Colinas, a Texas-themed restaurant he’d opened in Irving in 2008, he noticed the line cooks were experimenting with tacos at the end of each week, combining unexpected ingredients and feeding the staff. DeWitt began looking forward to tasting their latest creations: a rotisserie chicken taco one night, a shrimp-and-grits taco the next.
Light bulb. He’d seen plenty of new and old taquerias that focused on traditional street tacos or Tex-Mex flavors. But what if he could build a restaurant around the idea of the “liberated taco”? He originally planned to call the chain Taco Libre, but when that name turned out to have been taken by a caterer in California, he settled on Velvet Taco—“implying this is luxury and refined and something more upscale,” he says now. On the menu: a fried-oyster taco (since discontinued), a chicken tikka taco (still the chain’s best-seller), and a smashburger taco that one-ups Taco Bell’s deconstructed cheeseburger by reconstructing it.
For the logo, DeWitt chose a design that evoked a royal medallion. Or perhaps both the name and image slyly evoke a part of the female anatomy that Twin Peaks hadn’t. He has a hard time denying that. “We like playful names,” he says with a shrug, before insisting that any innuendo is accidental.
Clay Dover, boyish at 52, has the ambiguous logo embroidered into nearly every piece of clothing he owns, including shirts he wears out for date nights with his wife. He joined Velvet Taco in 2017, when it operated just four locations—in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Chicago. DeWitt had just sold a majority stake to a private equity group called L. Catterton that’s based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and affiliated with the family of Bernard Arnault, the French luxury kingpin who runs the LVMH conglomerate and regularly trades places with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person.
Before his seven years at Raising Cane’s, Dover led a Dallas restaurant group that owned a passel of once successful chains that had lost their edge—Norm Brinker creations Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale, along with steakhouse rivals Bonanza and Ponderosa. He’d met DeWitt, and they’d talked about working together (though not at Twin Peaks—“My wife would kill me,” Dover says), so he’d watched the early growth of Velvet Taco with great interest. The idea was fresh. It reflected a changing Dallas—and a changing country. The restaurant kept its purple neon lights on until four in the morning, to serve revelers in need of taco therapy before calling it a night. Dover spent a full day and night watching the scene at the Fort Worth location before he agreed to join. “It’s a rockin’ place,” he concluded.
Private equity investors tend to come in two flavors: the ones that strip a company for parts and sell them off and the ones that help a promising brand grow to the next stage before selling it to an industry giant or taking it public. Catterton is the latter, and in the five years that it was the majority owner of Velvet Taco, it expanded the chain from 4 locations to 31—before selling it in late 2021 to another private equity company, Leonard Green & Partners—the same $70 billion fund that took Shake Shack public in 2015.
Velvet’s headquarters occupies 10,000 square feet on the second floor of a building overlooking the Dallas North Tollway. There Dover oversees a staff of several dozen who work on everything from marketing campaigns to real estate development. The business end of a taco brand that aims to conquer the world looks more like a 2010s-era tech startup than your typical taqueria. In the Velvet office, a Ping-Pong table stands amid a row of cubicles near a mural of Marie Antoinette sensually eating a slice of the brand’s signature red velvet cake.
When Dover joined Velvet, he was the sole corporate-level employee; everyone else worked at one of the restaurants. Rather than tinkering with the menu, he took his first year to “understand the brand and what it means to consumers”—which involved developing a kind of handbook of catchy slogans meant to encapsulate the culture and principles of the workplace and the food the company hoped to offer. Out went “temple of the liberated taco,” for instance, and in came “tacos without borders,” a more sensitive phrasing that avoided the suggestion that the taco’s Mexican heritage was somehow holding it back.
Today the corporate team’s priorities are more tangible, including how to maintain quality standards at Velvet’s first airport outpost at Houston Hobby. Self-service touchscreen-order kiosks are another priority, but where to place them in a restaurant is a big debate. It’s one thing to figure out where they’ll get the most use, but will cost savings on labor come with trade-offs? How will average order size change? Will diners be more or less likely to explore the menu?
Perhaps most important, there’s the matter of where to expand. Dover plans for eight more locations in 2024, and then a growth acceleration in 2025. In September, Velvet opened its first restaurant in Florida—in Fort Lauderdale. Arizona is next. At some point they’ll likely expand to Southern California, home to the headquarters of both Chipotle and Taco Bell, along with a million tiny taco stands that measure up just fine against their Texas counterparts.
A team from Velvet that included DeWitt recently spent several days scouting SoCal locations and testing tacos from local chains. One restaurant served “almost exactly the same taco” as Velvet’s popular chicken tikka, DeWitt says with a nervy grin. “We know they were inspired by Velvet Taco. But what are you going to do? I came away reassured that if and when we go to that market—” he stops himself. “I shouldn’t say ‘if.’ When we go to that market, we are going to be very successful.”
On a busy weeknight near the southern end of the hypergentrified South Congress shopping district, in Austin, a steady stream of families and teenagers and a single pair of old South Austin hippie types fill the tables of an architecturally ambitious Torchy’s location designed to evoke a fifties roadside attraction. With a ridged metal roof and a series of bright red X-shaped support structures lining the front, the restaurant functions as something like a flagship location for Torchy’s—its most distinctive building, on Austin’s most iconic avenue. Runners scurry about delivering trays of tacos with names such as the Democrat (brisket, avocado, and onions on a corn tortilla), the Republican (jalapeño-cheddar sausage and pico on flour), the Tipsy Chick, and the Trailer Park, along with beers and ranch waters.
If Velvet Taco is the consummate Dallas chain—from its flashy branding to its corporate lineage—Torchy’s is as Austin as it gets. Rypka’s original Torchy’s trailer anchored a gravel lot just a few blocks from today’s flagship, on a then-scruffy stretch of South First Street across from a ramshackle botanica.
Rypka grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs amid the eighties punk scene—an only child of divorce whose dad, a celebrated photojournalist, was living on another continent. He picked up drugs and alcohol by age eight, developed a crack habit by fourteen, and spent two years in and out of rehab before getting clean at seventeen. Less than a year into community college, where he’d hoped to train to become a drug and alcohol counselor, Rypka woke up one night with a bolt of inspiration to drop out and become a chef.
By the time he finished culinary school a couple of years later, he knew all too well how rampant substance abuse was in professional kitchens, so he sought a straitlaced job with a company that ran in-house dining halls for large corporations. He started at the World Bank, in D.C., before working at Enron, in Houston (“I literally served the last supper there,” he says), and then at Dell, where he fell in love with Austin and decided to stay. Then an opportunity arose to repurpose a friend’s old barbecue trailer.
In 2006 food trucks were still a novel concept, but Rypka envisioned a path from those humble beginnings to a proper restaurant or even a small chain. He just needed the kind of bold flavors that make a lasting impression. From his World Bank days, where he’d run a food court with stations representing various global regions, he’d developed a wide palette of preparations to experiment with. And when he took a tour of Texas taco joints to assess the competition—in San Antonio, in the Rio Grande Valley, in Houston and Dallas and the east side of Austin—he saw his opportunity. “They were all good, but they were kind of in the same genre,” he says. “They weren’t doing anything to sort of flip it on its head.”
Authenticity wasn’t what he was after; he was a suburban East Coast white guy with a creative streak, so he built a menu accordingly. “Not everybody in the world uses serrano peppers the same way they use them in Central America,” he says, “so you can take ingredients like that and do fun things with them. Our playground is kind of limitless when it comes to food.” Each month Torchy’s offers a different limited-time special. Its first was the Trailer Park, which put hunks of fried chicken in the starring role, alongside pico de gallo and green chiles. Ordering it “trashy” style meant dousing it in queso, turning it into a celebration of gluttony that would make Guy Fieri proud. It was a home run that soon joined the regular menu.
The early years of Torchy’s coincided with the peak of Austin’s capitalizing on its “weird” image. The city hadn’t fully succumbed to the forces of Big Tech, and it still represented a kind of laid-back lifestyle mecca, even if the old-timers were already fearing a corporate takeover. Torchy’s fit right in, with graffiti-inspired bubble letters in the logo and a little red devil mascot flanked by the words “Damn Good.” Austin was a party town, and this was indulgent party food. With taco names like the since-discontinued Dirty Sanchez (a reference to . . . well, you can look it up), it also flirted with the bounds of decency (or gleefully trampled right over them).
After the taco trailer took off, Rypka opened a brick-and-mortar shop down the street, and then another location, and another, and by 2010 the chain had expanded to Dallas. Torchy’s hadn’t just drafted on Austin’s vibe; it had become something of an Austin icon itself, popular enough that even then-president Obama stopped at the South First restaurant on his way downtown from the airport before attending an event in 2016. The company had just opened its first location outside Texas, in Denver. The world awaited.
Rypka, who shaves his head and road trips in a lowrider Volkswagen bus, tells his story in a hexagonal sitting room that juts off the back of his three-story home built into the side of a steep slope above Lake Austin. In the past decade plus, the start-up boom that accompanied Austin’s explosive growth transcended tech and began to turn out trendy new consumer brands. Some of these have blown up into international icons—Kendra Scott, Tecovas, Yeti—but most of the restaurant chains born in the capital—including another beloved taco shop, Tacodeli—have remained local or regional cult phenomena.
In the far more populous Dallas–Fort Worth area, by contrast, where new chain eateries can draw from a large pool of back-office talent with deep industry experience, growing quickly by running a proven playbook is more readily achievable, even if the results don’t always inspire a passionate following.
As Torchy’s began to expand beyond Texas and exceeded forty restaurants, it needed money to fund its next phase. General Atlantic, a New York–based private equity group, bought “a significant minority stake” in 2017—and three years later added to its stake with a $400 million second investment. Among the first moves when GA came on board was to bring in the professionals—big-time executives with big-time experience who could turn Rypka’s promising little project into a global giant.
Rypka stepped aside, while G. J. Hart, who had most recently served as the CEO of California Pizza Kitchen, took over. Hart had made his name in the industry overseeing the expansion of Texas Roadhouse from $63 million to more than $1 billion in annual revenue. (Texas Roadhouse, alas, is not a Texas brand; it’s based in Louisville, Kentucky.) During Hart’s four years in charge, the Torchy’s restaurant count shot up from 45 to 96, even though the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the office lunch rush and dine-in traffic in general.
Meanwhile, Rypka, who had been eager for a break from the business, grew frustrated by what he regarded as the new management’s unforced errors. Some of the new expansion cities, he felt, were questionable choices. “They’d pick markets where Roadhouse did well,” he says. Shreveport, Louisiana. Wichita, Kansas. “But we’re not at all the same customer as Roadhouse—which is a pretty blue-collar, red-state type of deal. I mean, I’m not afraid to say that we’re a f—ing liberal brand. You know what I mean?”
The corporate playbook that might make sense when Torchy’s has hundreds of locations didn’t work for a brand that was still relatively unknown outside Texas and Colorado, Rypka reasoned. Bloomberg reported in early 2021 that the chain was exploring an initial public offering that would value it at $1 billion in its stock market debut. But by the end of that year, the IPO had failed to materialize, some of the new locations were underperforming, and the staff at headquarters had ballooned to nearly two hundred. Hart stepped down.
Tired of what he terms “farting around at the lake,” Rypka returned as CEO with a newfound energy and focus. The company needed to get scrappy and entrepreneurial again, and that was his comfort zone. “I always do better when things are a little bit on fire,” he says. He laid off 65 employees at headquarters, closed three restaurants (including the two in Wichita), and started upgrading some ingredients— making fresh tortillas in the restaurants, for example. Now, from a one-story, metal-sided headquarters building in East Austin, he’s back to fanning out across the country, this time aiming to expand to cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville—and his old haunt, D.C.
It’s hard not to notice that the founders of both Torchy’s and Velvet Taco are non-Hispanic white men. So are the industry-veteran CEOs each company hired. So was the founder of Taco Bell. And the founders of two long-established, Texas-based Taco Bell copycats: Abilene-born Taco Bueno and Fort Worth’s Taco Casa. And the founder of Irving-based Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, a fast-growing franchise that’s aimed at a lower-priced tier of the market than Torchy’s and Velvet. Add Chipotle and California-based Del Taco to the list, for that matter, and on down through the ranks of Big Taco giants and aspirants.
Even the founder of San Antonio–born Taco Cabana fit the Anglo profile—and if there’s one large city in Texas that ought to be the birthplace of a Latino-founded taco giant, it’s San Antonio. Taco Palenque, which began in Laredo and has started to spread north into other parts of Texas, is an exception [see sidebar], but so far, it’s still a regional play. (Its founder, Juan Francisco Ochoa Sr., also started California-based El Pollo Loco.)
The taco has become as much an American staple as pizza, so it’s not surprising that its mass-market brands reflect corporate America’s boardrooms more than the culture that gave rise to the food in the first place. As Texas Monthly’s taco editor, José R. Ralat, puts it, “I’m not going to say that so-and-so shouldn’t open a business because it might represent cultural appropriation. But it’s worth noting that a popular food is always going to attract the type of entrepreneurs who already have the wealth or connections to gain access to investor meetings or consultants. And who is that? Not an immigrant.”
Ralat notes that Taco Cabana might be the one chain that historically “got it right”—by which he means emphasizing fresh ingredients, at least at first. Some of its locations still do an excellent job, he maintains, such as the one near where he lives, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. But the chain’s history is a cautionary tale, as it eventually prioritized growth over maintaining its standards. It became a publicly traded company, beholden to shareholders above all. Then it was acquired by a large New York–based restaurant group, then spun off into another outfit, the Dallas-based Fiesta Restaurant Group. Over the past several years, Taco Cabana’s sales plunged 20 percent, and the chain closed 23 restaurants. Now it’s poised to grow again, but with a new risk factor.
Taco Cabana was purchased in 2021 by a company called Yadav Enterprises, a Northern California–based operator of hundreds of franchise locations of Denny’s, Jack in the Box, TGI Fridays, and a few other brands. Franchising is a risky business model but a common one in the fast-food industry. It can enable rapid expansion because the franchisees—independent operators who buy the rights to open locations—take on the financial burden of building out new markets. But no matter how stringent a chain makes the process and guidelines for its franchisees, it inevitably loses some control over quality and branding.
Franchising tends to work best with the simplest operations, such as Taco Bell—or more recently, Fuzzy’s, where a whopping 98 percent of its more than one hundred locations are franchises. Anil Yadav, the owner of Taco Cabana’s new parent company, announced that he hoped to expand the chain to one thousand locations all over the country—naturally, by franchising.
Both Velvet Taco’s Clay Dover and Torchy’s founder Mike Rypka say they understand the hard realities of the franchise model and vow to keep their chains growing at a more measured pace, with the companies owning every location they open—much as Shake Shack and Chipotle have done. “We’re going to keep it real tight and ‘core’ because we want to maintain the control,” Dover explains. “The details, the quality of the ingredients, the prep that goes into things ahead of time—it’s hard to go, ‘Hey, we’re just going to whip out fifty of these.’ ”
As Torchy’s and Velvet continue their national expansions, they will bump up against other challengers. Ohio-based Condado, for instance, has locations in several Midwest and Southeast states, with a creative-tacos concept that sits roughly at the culinary midpoint between those of Torchy’s and Velvet, with Korean gochujang sauce and Thai chiles mixed in among more traditional Mexican American flavors. Florida-based Capital Taco has begun selling franchises to operators in other states eager to serve its self-described “Tex-Mex” menu that oddly includes a cheesesteak taco and something called the South Beach Hot Chicken.
At some point, the word “taco” can become a questionable description of the items on these menus. Velvet, for instance, serves a chicken-and-waffle taco that involves fried chicken wrapped in, you guessed it, a waffle, topped with maple syrup; it makes Taco Bell’s Doritos Cheesy Gordita Crunch taco look like a Oaxacan street-food classic. “The tortilla is just the vessel,” Dover told me one afternoon over a tableful of his tacos. “You can do anything you want”—including, apparently, replacing the tortilla.
In any case, the caliber of investors and number of dollars that have backed Torchy’s and Velvet make it obvious to anyone in the restaurant industry that they’re onto something big. “Tacos Are Poised to Take Over Fast Casual,” the trade publication Restaurant Business declared last year. Can Torchy’s or Velvet ever equal Taco Bell’s 8,000 stores? Not a chance, say the leaders of both companies. The menus are simply too complicated to work in that many locations, because lower-traffic spots just wouldn’t be able to turn a profit—whereas Chipotle and Taco Bell can because they require far fewer ingredients and employees. But 1,000 Torchy’s restaurants, or 1,500? “That’s the fully mature version, yeah,” Rypka says.
Early in a restaurant chain’s growth, the executives will choose expansion locations based largely on gut instinct and what’s available. But at a certain point, companies begin to rely on real estate consultants who weigh a complicated matrix of factors. A Taco Cabana might make sense in a Walmart parking lot, for instance, whereas a Torchy’s or Velvet works better in the shadow of a Target. They look at satellite images to understand whether an area’s crowds coincide with a chain’s top selling hours. They look at cellular data to profile demographics that match a chain’s strong suits. At Velvet Taco, a concentration of Indian Americans is a positive indicator—perhaps explaining the popularity of the chicken tikka taco, Dover suggests.
When all of those factors come together, sometimes the result is a Torchy’s and a Velvet sharing the same parking lot. In Lubbock, in a shopping center one short block from the campus of Texas Tech University, the two direct competitors sit not one hundred yards apart, with nothing but a Potbelly Sandwich Shop between them. In North Dallas, Torchy’s and Velvet occupy kitty-corner strip malls at the intersection of Preston Road and Forest Lane. The future of Big Taco might not be Torchy’s or Velvet, but both.

Typo aside, First off I would like to thank the OhioStateFootball mod team for allowing this post, go Buckeyes. The 47th season of the International Simulation Football League is wrapping up, which means this is a perfect time to create a player and jump into the fray!
The ISFL is a free online sim league where you create a professional football player and control their journey through the pros from pre-draft to retirement. With every position available and multiple archetypes per position there are more than 30 unique player types available, anything from a ball hawk safety to a receiving running back and even a strong legged kicker. The options are endless.
Your player will compete in games (simulated in Draft Day Sports Pro Football 2021) three times a week for the duration of each season, culminating in playoffs and hopefully a chance to win the coveted Ultimus Championship. Each game premieres on our Youtube Channel nightly, Monday-Friday and hosted live with commentary through our Discord server. Each 16 game season lasts approximately 6 weeks, including playoffs. Following playoffs is a 2 week offseason. The offseason culminates in the DSFL and ISFL drafts setting the stage for the next season.
Complete stats are recorded in our league index, players are encouraged to create and develop their own wiki page within the league wiki and we even have tools for tracking historical stat records and our own Hall of Fame.
With 22 teams across the developmental and major leagues the ISFL is also a floruishing community of active users. Joining a team not only gives you the opportunity to live out your dreams as a professional athlete but as get the opportunity to engage with like minded people who enjoy getting a bit nerdy about football. Form tight knit bonds with your teammates and a hosts of former players as you root for your team to go all the way!

Sounds great, how do I start?

If you want to jump in right away our Rookie Discord Server is the perfect place. Our team of Rookie Mentors and active user base will not hesitate to answer any questions and steer you in the right direction. If you want to read more before you dive in, check out our text Rookie Guide or our Youtube Video Series. Both are great resources to guide you through the onboarding process.

What happens after I make my player?

After making your player you will be scouted by teams that are entirely run by other users in the league and drafted to a developmental team during the DSFL Draft which will premiere on Thursday May 16th. In the meantime you will participate in the Prospect Bowl where you will show off what you got to all the scouts. You will also be able to tune in to watch the current race for the S47 Ultimus Championship.
During your player’s career, you can improve their attributes by spending 10-15 minutes completing optional tasks each week, like predicting the winners of each game or mocking the 1st round of the draft. The league is 100% free - there is no "pay to win" and nothing costs real money to unlock. You will earn fake league currency through your player's contracts or through creating content like written articles, graphics, or podcasts. You can use it to further upgrade your player and do fun things like collecting trading cards of ISFL players!
Thanks for reading and feel free to post any comments under this post or in our rookie discord server.

Quick Links

Rookie Discord
Create a Player Tool
Youtube Rookie Starter Guide
Text Rookie Starter Guide

First off I would like to thank the falcons mod team for allowing this post. The 47th season of the International Simulation Football League is wrapping up, which means this is a perfect time to create a player and jump into the fray!
The ISFL is a free online sim league where you create a professional football player and control their journey through the pros from pre-draft to retirement. With every position available and multiple archetypes per position there are more than 30 unique player types available, anything from a ball hawk safety to a receiving running back and even a strong legged kicker. The options are endless.
Your player will compete in games (simulated in Draft Day Sports Pro Football 2021) three times a week for the duration of each season, culminating in playoffs and hopefully a chance to win the coveted Ultimus Championship. Each game premieres on our Youtube Channel nightly, Monday-Friday and hosted live with commentary through our Discord server. Each 16 game season lasts approximately 6 weeks, including playoffs. Following playoffs is a 2 week offseason. The offseason culminates in the DSFL and ISFL drafts setting the stage for the next season.
Complete stats are recorded in our league index, players are encouraged to create and develop their own wiki page within the league wiki and we even have tools for tracking historical stat records and our own Hall of Fame.
With 22 teams across the developmental and major leagues the ISFL is also a floruishing community of active users. Joining a team not only gives you the opportunity to live out your dreams as a professional athlete but as get the opportunity to engage with like minded people who enjoy getting a bit nerdy about football. Form tight knit bonds with your teammates and a hosts of former players as you root for your team to go all the way!

Sounds great, how do I start?

If you want to jump in right away our Rookie Discord Server is the perfect place. Our team of Rookie Mentors and active user base will not hesitate to answer any questions and steer you in the right direction. If you want to read more before you dive in, check out our text Rookie Guide or our Youtube Video Series. Both are great resources to guide you through the onboarding process.

What happens after I make my player?

After making your player you will be scouted by teams that are entirely run by other users in the league and drafted to a developmental team during the DSFL Draft which will premiere on Thursday May 16th. In the meantime you will participate in the Prospect Bowl where you will show off what you got to all the scouts. You will also be able to tune in to watch the current race for the S47 Ultimus Championship.
During your player’s career, you can improve their attributes by spending 10-15 minutes completing optional tasks each week, like predicting the winners of each game or mocking the 1st round of the draft. The league is 100% free - there is no "pay to win" and nothing costs real money to unlock. You will earn fake league currency through your player's contracts or through creating content like written articles, graphics, or podcasts. You can use it to further upgrade your player and do fun things like collecting trading cards of ISFL players!
Thanks for reading and feel free to post any comments under this post or in our rookie discord server.

Quick Links

Rookie Discord
Create a Player Tool
Youtube Rookie Starter Guide
Text Rookie Starter Guide

First off I would like to thank the MiamiDolphins mod team for allowing this post, fins up. The 47th season of the International Simulation Football League is wrapping up, which means this is a perfect time to create a player and jump into the fray!
The ISFL is a free online sim league where you create a professional football player and control their journey through the pros from pre-draft to retirement. With every position available and multiple archetypes per position there are more than 30 unique player types available, anything from a ball hawk safety to a receiving running back and even a strong legged kicker. The options are endless.
Your player will compete in games (simulated in Draft Day Sports Pro Football 2021) three times a week for the duration of each season, culminating in playoffs and hopefully a chance to win the coveted Ultimus Championship. Each game premieres on our Youtube Channel nightly, Monday-Friday and hosted live with commentary through our Discord server. Each 16 game season lasts approximately 6 weeks, including playoffs. Following playoffs is a 2 week offseason. The offseason culminates in the DSFL and ISFL drafts setting the stage for the next season.
Complete stats are recorded in our league index, players are encouraged to create and develop their own wiki page within the league wiki and we even have tools for tracking historical stat records and our own Hall of Fame.
With 22 teams across the developmental and major leagues the ISFL is also a floruishing community of active users. Joining a team not only gives you the opportunity to live out your dreams as a professional athlete but as get the opportunity to engage with like minded people who enjoy getting a bit nerdy about football. Form tight knit bonds with your teammates and a hosts of former players as you root for your team to go all the way!

Sounds great, how do I start?

If you want to jump in right away our Rookie Discord Server is the perfect place. Our team of Rookie Mentors and active user base will not hesitate to answer any questions and steer you in the right direction. If you want to read more before you dive in, check out our text Rookie Guide or our Youtube Video Series. Both are great resources to guide you through the onboarding process.

What happens after I make my player?

After making your player you will be scouted by teams that are entirely run by other users in the league and drafted to a developmental team during the DSFL Draft which will premiere on Thursday May 16th. In the meantime you will participate in the Prospect Bowl where you will show off what you got to all the scouts. You will also be able to tune in to watch the current race for the S47 Ultimus Championship.
During your player’s career, you can improve their attributes by spending 10-15 minutes completing optional tasks each week, like predicting the winners of each game or mocking the 1st round of the draft. The league is 100% free - there is no "pay to win" and nothing costs real money to unlock. You will earn fake league currency through your player's contracts or through creating content like written articles, graphics, or podcasts. You can use it to further upgrade your player and do fun things like collecting trading cards of ISFL players!
Thanks for reading and feel free to post any comments under this post or in our rookie discord server.

Quick Links

Rookie Discord
Create a Player Tool
Youtube Rookie Starter Guide
Text Rookie Starter Guide

A bit about myself….
I’m 38 from the northside of Brisbane and I work in the city.
Looking to make new mates (specifically more millennial and lgbt friendly). Looking to make more Queer friends within the local area.
Sports and hobbies: I work as a chef, because of that I do a lot of yin yoga, meditation yoga and I like traditional Korean bathhouses. Because of the physical chef lifestyle, I do avoid weight lifting and sports. Because I’m constantly in recovery mode from work.
Looking to make more friends, who are open minded to hangout on weeknights.
My favourite hangout spots are: The Burrow in West End, Netherworld in the Valley, Sasquatch in Chermside and the Wickham in the Valley. I also enjoy craft sour beers and Jazz piano bars in West End.
Books: more into fantasy and I love playing dungeons and dragons. If you’ve ever read a fantasy book series or watched a fantasy tv show, more than likely I know of it.
I really enjoy podcasts, specifically supernatural and true crime. And with tv shows, I lean more towards the spooky stuff.
Hobbies: I play electric guitar, I really love tattoos and thinking about getting into knitting. Can I play electric guitars? Not very well, but I like to buy them and collect them.
Politics: I’m a little bit more left wing than the average person; but I don’t make it my entire personality and I don’t enjoy debating or arguing with people.
And I don’t like conspiracy theories (unless it’s about true crime or ghosts). I love a good ghost story.
The older I get, the more I’m into True Crime documentaries and fantasy fiction.
Favourite tv shows: Buffy, Charmed, Sabrina, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, X-Men, Horror Movies, anime and True Crime. I use to love Marvel (the MCU), but feeling a little bit burnt out from the super hero genre.
And I’m not a huge fan of sports; but I would like to drink beer one day and watch women’s roller derby. And I’m a fan of mini golf, bowling and escape rooms.

I wanted to throw out a bunch of ideas for a future spinner wheel! I feel like the more options James starts with, the more likely the wheel lands on something that actually sounds fun. Here is a HUGE list that has one action inspired by each pack that included gameplay. I tried to keep the suggestions low skill and free of the need to be a certain age stage or occult status so that they could be completed without much of a headache. Hopefully this inspires
Expansion Packs

Visit Sylvan Glade (BG)
Decorate Baked Goods (Get to Work)
Throw a Dance Party (Get Together)
Attend a Festival (City Living)
Visit the Pet Cemetery (Cats & Dogs)
Alter the Weather (Seasons)
Get a Celebrity's Autograph (Get Famous)
Collect a Seashell (Island Living)
Tutor a Skill (Discover University)
Dumpster Dive! (Eco Lifestyle)
Swim in Wakaba’s River (Snowy Escape)
Take a Selfie with Sophie the Snail (Cottage Living)
Throw a Football (High School Years)
Build a Puzzle (Growing Together)
Go Horseback Riding (Horse Ranch)
Purchase a Specialty Item from the Night Market (For Rent)

Game Pack

Tend the Hermit’s Garden (Outdoor Retreat)
Get a Pedicure (Spa Day)
Feed a Bite to a Friend (Dine Out)
WooHoo in a Coffin (Vampires)
Teach a Child to Swim (Parenthood)
Buy or find a souvenir (Jungle Adventure)
Eat the Bizarre Fruit (Strangerville)
Make a Cauldron Full of Mac & Cheese (Realm of Magic)
Get Apprehended by a Member of the First Order (Journey to Battuu)
Change the Color of Any Wall (Dream Home Decorator)
Enjoy a Slice of Cake by the Fountain (My Wedding Stories)
Catch a Luna Fish in Moonwood Mill (Werewolves)

Stuff Pack

Have a Chocolate Covered Strawberry from the Chocolate Fountain (Luxury Party)
Chat in a Hot Tub (Perfect Patio)
Eat Ice Cream (Cool Kitchen)
Carve a Pumpkin (Spooky)
Watch a Film (Movie Hangout)
Make a Wish at the Wishing Well (Romantic Garden)
Find a Voidcritter Card (Kids Room)
Slip & Slide! (Backyard)
Put on Makeup (Vintage Glamour)
Go Bowling (Bowling)
Climb a Rock Wall or Machine (Fitness)
Find a Toddler and Crush their Dreams (Toddler)
Search a Hamper for Spare Change (Laundry Day)
Adopt any Pet (My First Pet)
Wear the Moschino Ringleader Outfit to a Nightclub (Moschino)
Sleep in a Murphy Bed (Tiny Living)
Buy something from Plopsy (Nifty Knitting)
Flirt with Guidry (Paranormal)
Make a Pizza (Home Chef Hustle)
Plant a Crystal Tree (Crystal Creations)

BONUS KIT SUGGESTION: Feed a Dust Bunny (Bust the Dust)

I lost my grandmother and my dog weeks apart. The loss is devastating for me to say the least and I feel adrift. Doesn't help that my pain is wildly out of control too. So I want to do something positive. I want a list of best your best comforts I could try during this time. I'm usually a creature of habit but now, with this diagnosis, I'm trying to be more open.

I changed the post a bit so the picture of the game doesn't show.

My best comfort games: Our Life: Beginnings and Always (Steam, base game free)
Favorite YT Music: Healing Vibrations - Nature Sounds Crystal Healing Bowls
Marc Rebillet - Breathe (YouTube)
If anyone's got a good beginners crochet or knitting yt channel I'm down for it. Would be nice to do while waiting 3 hrs for appts.

My colleague asked me this afternoon to summarize our batting performance thus far. Unnerved, unapologetic, and unbiased—that's how I explained it.
🔆 I'm slowly losing words to describe these two. The Yin and Yang. No, scratch that. The Yin and Yin. The conventional opening duos usually have complementary styles of batting. They go about it in one of these following three ways. One takes a backseat while the other accelerates, and after the accelerator falls, the anchor becomes the accelerator. Warner-Bairstow was the example for it. The other way is where both batsmen alternate between the anchor and aggressor roles, which maintains a healthy strike rate as well as minimizes risk. Faf and Ruturaj were one such duo. The last one consists of one outright aggressor and one cautious anchor. The perfect template for that was Warner and Dhawan. All these types of opening approaches are adopted more or less to accommodate some sort of weakness in the middle or lower order. Fine, but what if you don't have any weaknesses down the order? What happens then? SRH answered that. Two purebred aggressors just feeding off each other relentlessly without a care in the world. This approach won't work always, even less so on sluggish pitches. It's a given, but when it works, it just works. This approach from the top two is just blowing away the oppositions from the get-go and setting up SRH in the driver's seat from the very first phase of the match. Sure, apart from pure batsmanship, what has helped our cause are the tiny pitches and concrete roads. But we've been on the receiving end of the bashing enough to enjoy this batting performance from the top guilt-free.
🔆 Sauce needs to set himself straight. This is the second time he has had a soft dismissal against the momentum of the game, which almost derailed our innings' progression. The ball did stop a bit, but the onus was on Sauce not to play a backfoot shot so far away from his body. It was a common pattern with Kanos back in 2022 and usually is a sign of a batsman who's not entirely sorted in his head regarding his shot choices. Klaass was the victim of the ball staying low, but he did miss the line trying to hoick it across the line. It was an ugly shot, yes. But if we can't excuse our best batter for a moment of brain fade, where do we even stand! SFAR, for whatever brief moment he stayed on the crease, played a couple of beautiful strokes which show his growth in confidence in his own abilities of range hitting. Only if he can replicate these when we start chasing matches eventually...
🔆 That Shahbaz-NKR partnership was the highlight of this match for me, even more so than the record-breaking opening partnership. There were two youngsters playing their first season for our franchise, completely free of the middle-order ghosts from the past. So, as I said at the start, they were unnerved. They knew they had a solid start provided by the openers and they stuck to just preventing a collapse. Shahbaz, who is notoriously weak against spin, was shielded well by NKR, and NKR was kept in check by Shahbaz from having a brain fade. In that context, when NKR, early into his innings, tried an ugly slog against the line and missed completely, Shahbaz made sure to go to him and make the young guy understand the priority at that point. Since that very moment, both of them not only ensured to keep the run rate ticking but also used some clever, high-percentage shots to play risk-free cricket. At one moment, it was the uppercut by Shahbaz, and the other moment it was the reverse sweep by NKR. The duo's maturity on display was something I always missed in our middle order in the previous years. It was beautiful to witness how the tables have turned in that regard.
🔆 I came into this match with the thought of vindicating the bowlers, as I have a very low opinion of the FSK Stadium thanks to the boundary length and the dew situation in Delhi. For the first time this season, I managed to maintain my composure throughout the bashing of our bowlers. Cummins had a really off day with his captaincy, as most of his gambles paid off with mixed results. He tried Washi first up to negate Warner, only for Shaw to start bashing him. Now, less than Cummins, it had more to do with Washi, who erred in his length again and again while occasionally serving up width. The only time he corrected his length and bowled a tight line against Shaw, he managed to draw a mishit out of him. Bhuvi made sure not to let an out-of-form Warner slip out of his pocket, and his wicket theoretically should have triggered a collapse for DC. It didn't, and even more so, it was paired with the dreadful decision of Washi bowling his second over in the powerplay. Granted, it's never easy to come back from consistent injuries and a lack of match practice and then perform straightaway. But Sundar's lack of control with the new ball has been a constant theme since 2022, and it's criminal how the SRH think tank still considers him a powerplay bowling option. Now, Cummins gambled on giving Washi an over because of the Shaw wicket, over himself despite the proper display in the PBKS match where it ideally should've established that the Cummins-Bhuvi opening partnership is the way to go if we hold any hopes of maximizing the bowling powerplay. As we won this match, these momentary lapses would be forgotten and brushed away. But I vehemently wish that the coach and captain would make sure to not get too carried away by match ups and focus more on efficiency(especially in the poweplay).
🔆 Unlike the previous matches, the middle-over bowling brought us into the match rather than taking it away from us for a change. Mayank remained brave with his line, trying to keep it away from JFM (what a knock it was though!), and got rewarded for it. Cummins had another brain fade for a moment when he decided not to bowl Nattu or himself against the fidgety Porel and instead fed Shahbaz to him, who, despite not bowling as badly as Washi, was punished properly thanks to Porel's nifty shot-making. Of all the gambles that didn't work, the one that did was giving NKR the 13th over (which I thought was a huge mistake given they had both Stubbo and Pant at the crease). Interestingly, our bowlers had figured out how to bowl on this pitch by then, thanks to the rare disappearance of dew from the FSK. Bowl slowly, into the pitch, and at a good length. Bhuvi and Cummins made sure to follow that template in their second spells and were assisted by a very poor Rishabh Pant (what was he even doing?), who struggled mightily to adjust to the pitch slowing down. Nattu, on the other hand, stuck to his absolute strength and came out with the best bowling performance by our bowlers this season.
🔆 I always wanted a big win in these high-scoring matches, and this match completely satiated my appetite. Good bowling by our bowlers was complemented well by the equally poor batting by DC, who never seemed to believe in themselves unlike MI or RCB(after JFM got out). This squad feels more and more like a close-knit group with every passing game(Winning does that, yes). The dynamics is not to the level as seen in a long time stable environment as in RR. But this is a drastic change in mood and dynamics that have been brought about by the leadership group, which seems to have been amiss since that dreadful 2021 season. Having selfless, non toxic and team centred individuals like Trav, Pat, Sauce, and special mention to Mayank(who despite losing his spot in the playing XI is supporting his teammates as enthusiastically as ever and doing the 12th man job without any fuss) has definitely helped in that regard. What a time to be a SRH fan, isn't it! More clinical performances like these would not only bring the players together but also allow the fans to bank on this team's ability to win comprehensively. Onward and upward from here only.

Someone told me I should write up my sensory processing disorder issues and how I handle them. It turned out to be a lot of text.
So I'm plopping it here in case it might help others.
Sensory Processing Disorder, sensory aggravants, how I deal
What increases physical effects of sensory aggravants Stress, physical or emotional. Being rushed. Pregnancy. Accutane/other medication for acne. Antibiotics. Job interview. Harsh criticism. Being shouted/screamed/yelled at/shamed. Being hit/spanked/shamed as a child, especially by adults who accused and did not listen to my impressions of what happened because “talking back is disrespectful”. Inability to communicate personal needs or traumatic personal events due to lack of descriptive words/understanding/communication barrier. Recent loss, breakup, death of human or pet. Permanent loss of valuable objects/needs, whether monetary or emotional (ex: only inherited heirloom of stolen, house burned down). Housing/food instability. Physical illness. Recent medical procedure. Recent dental procedure. Dilation of eyes. Recent immunization. Multiple sensory aggravants at once. Being unable to stop or escape sensory aggravant. Having my period. Clutter.
Skin aggravant
aggravant: Coarse hair of any length, especially stubble, especially where skin folds in on itself. On my body, that is underarms/vulva/between breasts/hair on back of neck.
Physical reaction: Each individual hair feels like small sharp bristles.
What happens if I ignore it: I want to scream or cry. Visible red marks on skin, often. Full body shudders, as if experiencing forced tickling. Burning, itching sensation where the hair stubble is.
Solution: shave, wax, epilate frequently. Shave armpits daily. For me, the hair between buttocks is not a sensory issue if it is left to grow untrimmed.
Aggravant: Stubble on legs
What I feel: each individual hair catches knits, tighter clothing, rayon, leggings, tights, gets pulled. When I kneel or lay in bed, stubble against legs feels like sandpaper.
What happens if I ignore it: I want to punch something. It gets itchy. Usually red substantial red marks on lower legs. I have screamed.
Solution: hair removal frequently, wear looser pants, palazzo pants, bell bottoms, jeans. Never, ever wear leggings, tight pants, fitted pants. Never wear hose, tights, nylons. Keep razor and tweezers on hand for hair removal. Apply Gold Bond healing lotion to itching areas. When I find comfortable clothing, I buy them in all the colors. Epilation pulls hair out by the roots so it is less irritating as it grows in, however epilation hurts quite a bit to begin with. I do it in stages and take long breaks when my body starts shaking from the pain.
Issue: Dry Skin
What I feel: My dry skin cracks and catches on textiles/floochairs/socks/whatever. It hurts.
Solution: Gold Bond healing lotion. Also Cerave products and unflavored, unscented lip balm.
Issue: Scented things, basically all, but for some odd reason fresh or dried food products usually are fine. Essential oils, nope.
What I feel: Sprayed air freshener and car air fresheners make me nauseous. When I was pregnant, everything stank and everything made me throw up.
Solutions: Avoid air fresheners. Open windows, if air outside is fresh. There are phone apps that people use to decide when to run outside. Usually if the air quality is marked as “good” on those, it is safe to open windows. Use unscented soap/deoderant/personal products. When I find a candle that does not make me nauseous, I buy plenty of them. During pregnancy, all trash had to be taken out as quickly as possible. Food was generally eaten cold, as heat spreads the smells around. Heating a bowl of vinegar in the microwave then letting it sit out cut lots of smells. Cat litter needed scooped immediately and changed at least twice a month. There is some kind of spray thingie that I forget name of, a friend got it at a smoke shop. It cut smells from neighbor’s smoking cigarettes/weed. Using an enzymatic cleaner on pet stains helped.
Aggravant: Hair on head long enough to curl under and touch forehead or back of neck
What I feel: Individual hairs touching forehead itch. I scratch it.
What happens if I ignore it: I will scratch area until it hurts to make it stop itching. As a child, I cut my hair very poorly, very short to stop the itching. I will scratch it until it bleeds.
Solution: I maintain a short pixie haircut. Personally I hire a good hairstylist, find one, and stick to them. Others simply buzz-cut their hair.
Aggravant: Textures and fiber
Specific textures: velvet, all types. Cotton balls, all. Pipe cleaners, all. Most polyester fleece. Most tags. Most thick seams. All overlapped leather seams. Some printed on fabric tags, especially on older well-worn clothes where the paint-ink has melted into a rough texture. All non-cotton and non-rayon laces. Most ribbons. Most fuzzy things. Serged/overlocked seams, if done with polyester thread (In general, the thread is polyester if it does not exactly match the color of the clothing. Polyester thread is difficult to dye. On other clothing, feel the seams to see if they are a little bit rough, and look for threads that are one solid color). Wool, all. Seams in stiffer jeans, all. Elastic, all. Small bits of rubber, elastic poking through covered covered seams. Smocked outfits, all. Most ruched outfits, those with covered ruching seams and nothing poking through excepted. Nylons, hose, tights, all.
What I feel: Velvet, cotton balls, polyester fleece, pipe cleaners cause a “nails on chalkboard” shudder. Seams, rough texture, wool, ribbons, laces, small bits of elastic or rubber sticking through causes a burning itch. Nylons, hose, tights cause a burning heat that alternates with cold prickles through my lower legs. Toe seams on socks. During pregnancy, most sheets felt like sleeping on sandpaper.
What happens if I ignore it: I will scratch area until it hurts to make it stop itching. I will get red or bleeding marks on skin. I will have difficulty focusing on anything. I have cried uncontrollably. I have screamed. I unconsciously reach to where tags/seams/rough areas are and scratch. I will scratch the skin under that areas that itch until my skin bleeds, because I prefer the sensation of pain over the sensation of itching.
Solution: I buy my clothes with feel and by fiber. Rayon, bamboo, viscose, cotton, silk, and linen are usually safe. Looser clothes. Drawstring closures instead of elastic. Avoid ruching, lace, ribbons, nylons, hose, tights, wool. Buy underwear with covered elastic. Wear underwear and clothing with rougher seams inside-out. Complete removal of tags from all clothes—I have to cut open seams by removing the stitches, remove every last bit of tags from clothing and stitch it back up. Simply cutting the tag flush with the seam still leaves a bit of the tag touching my skin, causes redness/itching/sores. Use camisoles of at least 95% cotton or other natural fiber, worn seam-side out, for bra. Look for clothing recommended for people undergoing chemotherapy or radiation. I look for softer stretch jeans without a thick waist band and wide/boot cut/bell-bottom cut. For bedding, I use 100% cotton sheets with 300 thread count and preferably long staple cotton. For jewelry, I look for anything I can wear and forget that I am wearing. Soft leather cuff bracelets, solid sterling or solid gold pieces or solid brass pieces. My body is sensitive to the rest.
Aggravant: Hyperhydrosis, also known as “I sweat more than most people”
What causes it: my body has always sucked at regulating its temperature. When I hiked in the woods as a kid, I would come back soaked in sweat while other kids wearing the same kinds of clothes as me had no sweat. When participating in winter sports, my body sweats and the sweat freezes into ice against my feet/core/hands/face. Every day, palms get soaked while holding hands or objects, often wet enough for phone/tablet/objects to get dropped. The soles of my feet sweat so much they slip off yoga mats, slide off flip-flops and sandals. Armpits sweat, dripping sweat within hours of waking up. Sweat drips down chest/back within 60 seconds of exposure to temperature greater than 80 Fahrenheit.
What happens if I ignore it: People holding my hand let go and wipe their wet palms off, making an “ew” face. Phones have been destroyed by dropping. I’ve slipped/fallen from wet soles of feet sliding off footwear. Shirts soaked by sweat within minutes. Huge armpit sweat stains. Looking unprofessional in professional settings. Social awkwardness when I am supposed to shake hands. Yellow armpit stains on lighter colored clothing. Solutions:
Armpit sweat—use of Certain Dry antiperspirant daily after showering. Drying off wet armpits throughout day. Washing armpits with strong soap, occasionally alcohol hand sanitizer. Mitchum deodorant, several applications throughout day. Frequent covert sniffing armpits to see if I stink. Post-Covid destroying my sense of smell, asking trusted friends/family occasionally to see if I stink. Daily/twice daily showers. Purchasing tops with larger armscythes/armpit holes/one size up so fabric does not touch sweaty armpits. Wearing loosesleeveless tops in summer. Minimizing light colored clothing because sweat stains are real. Frequent scrubbing of armpits because build-up of deodorants is a thing. Avoiding roll-on deodorant, as that stuff feels like I dumped honey on my armpits. I tried the hippie crystal deodorant thingie all the ways, it does not work for me.
Overall body sweat in general: Limiting clothing to natural fibers—cotton, rayon, bamboo, viscose, linen, silk. Wool works well for some, not me. Long staple wool works for others, too, not for me. Avoiding all polyester mix fabrics as a base layer unless specifically woven to wick. Polyester makes natural fibers warmer, causing more sweat. I choose polyester-cotton mix for hoodies because warmth. Using a jacket or cardigan that can be removed as needed. Applying cornstarch powder, thin layer, to folds before sweating. Applying Certain Dry antiperspirant immediately post-shower to skin folds if I will be outdoor in heat in a professional setting. Otherwise tucking t-shirt into camisole to absorb sweat dripping down my back/stomach. Yes, I look weird. If I pretend I do not care, others pretend they do not care and we get along fine. Avoiding wearing layered tops, with the exception of a jacket/cardigan. Avoiding/minimizing clothing that is fitted and light-colored. Avoiding outdoors during heat of day. Was unable to feel comfortable with heat/sweat/etc., so did not attain my dream career. Instead pursued career that has me working air-conditioned settings. Some people get Botox injections to stop sweat. I have tried prescription strength deodorant on hands to stop hand sweat, this did not work for me.
Foot sweat: Summer footwear—Chaco sandals with the toe strap, have to frequently adjust toe strap to minimize strangling of big toe. Sandals made of leather with zero man-made/”vegan leather” facing of leather work well, too, as leather absorbs sweat. I read ingredients tag on shoe, avoid any sandals that say “man-made leather uppers”. Moccasin with real leather sole inside that does not have a “ledge” of leather on the foot sole. Etsy shop TreadLightGear product Raw Cut Inca Moccasin with Vibram Sole has been my go-to, the product is pricy at $270 for a pair. My pair was purchased four years ago, remains working well. Requires leather cleaning products/leather conditioning care about twice yearly. I had to send my pair back to have sole shortened. Lightweight mesh shoes for sneakers. Grippy foot socks and hand mitts when doing yoga. Have tried multiple allegedly wicking socks, so far socks with over 65% cotton work best for me. Wool socks do not work for me due to wool sensitivity. Have not found hiking boots that work for me.
Outdoor winter activities leaving me soaked in sweat, have not found a solution. Possible solution could be wicking silk underwear. Dharma Trading Company has silk knit underwear starting at around $15 per item for tops, I have not yet tried their products.
Hand sweat: I minimize holding hands, found a significant other who is cool with breaks to wipe sweat off during hand holding. I covertly wipe my hand prior to shaking hands.
Sounds Aggravants: Loud music/concert/noise I cannot escape or turn down or shut off. Constant background noise with words that I cannot understand, such as a radio turned down low in another room. Crying/fussing/calls of distress from any human or animal. Constant whooshing noise, such as toilet running, ceiling fan. Anything with a heavy beat I can physically feel in my body. Most white noise. Any high-pitched constant squeak such as comes from an older TV/computer monitor. Repeated higher-pitched unvaried bird/bug calls. Cicada chirps. Shouting/yelling/screaming. High pitched, strident voices. Loud voices. Voices at full-volume near my ear. Loud speakers. Alarms, all. All sound sensitivity is increased when I have earaches/ear infection/itchy ear canals, all of which are common with my body. With an ear infection in front of a loud industrial speaker during a calmly spoken sermon at church, it felt as though someone hammering my internal eardrums. With changes in altitude, it feels as though someone is shoving chopsticks into my ears, worse if active ear issues. Sharp sounds in echo-ey locations, gives the chopsticks-jamming-into-eardrums sensation. Tinnitus, which I have continuously in both ears. There are two different pitches, one in each ear. Sitting in a silent room makes the tinnitus louder.
What happens if I ignore it: After ten to fifteen minutes, I become jittery and must fight against yelling, screaming, or snapping. I begin to physically shake. After around 30 minutes, I have intrusive suicidal thoughts. I have screamed with extended exposure. I have taken apart particularly malfunctioning radios that made terrible sounds, and used the speaker magnets like so many hunting trophies on my fridge. I have smashed things satisfyingly, very carefully, only things that can be replaced. With whooshing sounds, I get an uncontrollable random full body shudder. Once this happened during a haircut, and the hair stylist treated me like a pervert afterwards, so now I warn stylists that I get full body shudders.
Solution: For constant background noise I cannot escape, one earbud in my ear playing music/podcast/audiobook I can focus on helps a lot. Lacking that, one foam ear-plug squished long and thin lengthwise then pushed into ear canal leaving a bit out, and left to expand makes noise tolerable. There are specialized ear plugs used by musicians in orchestra pits, I have not tried these yet. On earbuds, I listen to BBC radio. The most soothing podcast for me personally is “In Our Time” by the BBC. I also use Audible and library card with app Libby for free audiobooks, and search social media/Reddit/blogs/web search for deep voiced/lower pitched/soothing narrators. The Vaughan Williams Academy of St Martin-in-the-fields Neville Marriner 1972 album is particularly calming. I do not know why the higher pitches on it are not sensory aggravants.
Using a portable bluetooth speaker for watching movies at home so I can turn the volume up and down minimizes migraines from sounds. Hanging tapestries in echoey rooms at home minimizes painful echoes. I avoid concerts, crowded loud places. Turning down middle and high pitches on car radios helped. Take ear plugs to movies, or just plug my ears during the loud parts. In one particularly echoey room taught by a teacher with a strident voice, I used one ear plug or wore a thick large-hooded jacket to minimize the sound waves bouncing back into my ears.
Very high-pitched frequencies interfere with my constant ear-ringing (tinnitus) with what seems to be sound-wave interference. There are varying beats inside my head depending on what high-pitched frequency I am hearing.
If the noise is a cry of help, I figure out why the human or animal is crying and help them. Stray animals, to the humane society. Sick pet, to the vet. Crying baby, hold them or change diaper or bottle. If that is not possible, I go to another room and shut doors between us. Noise canceling headphones or earbuds can help. Personally, my ear canals are sensitive so I require earbuds with interchangeable rubber ear thingies. I always use the smallest size of ear thingies.
Pain and gut and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS, stupidest acronym ever) issues:
Issue: abdominal pain
What the aggravants are: I have medically diagnosed (after surgery, endoscopy, cystocopy, et al.) interstitial cystitis, endometriosis, and irritable bowel syndrome. This means I frequently have urinary tract infection symptoms while testing negative for an infectious agent in my urine, slow gastric motility, frequent nausea. Combined with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (dizzy when stand up, pulse increases 30 beats per minute upon standing), I get nausea upon standing. I get bloating. Any pressure on my abdomen is painful (clothing, pet or kid tromping on my belly, hand of significant other resting on my belly while we snuggle before sleep, etc.). I get increased dizziness after eating a large meal. There is frequent stabbing gut pain, sudden unpredicable urges to have a bowel movement or urinate. There is unpredictable constipation interspersed with liquid diarrhea. I have intense sensitivity to food poisoning, new food types must be introduced gradually or severe constipation or liquid diarrhea will occur. Frequent straining to evacuate bowels plus pregnancy has resulted in constant external hemorrhoids. I am in ongoing consultation with gut doctors to manage this whole shebang.
What happens if I ignore it: I wind up doubled over in agony.
Solution: I found a career that does not micromanage my bathroom breaks. Generic Miralax daily per gut doctor’s recommendation. Occasional writing all the foods and gut reactions down, exhaustively, has only shown that eating oatmeal is likely to cause a bowel movement soon. Testing for gluten allergy has been negative. Largely avoid new food groups from new restaurants, prepare most foods at home. I feel better with higher protein intake but a keto diet makes me feel angry. I live on rice, beans, frozen and seasonal fruits and vegetables, chicken, and an embarrassing amount of protein bars. I eat when I am hungry, and pay attention to food cravings. If the idea of eating a food makes me nauseous, I do not eat that food, for I will puke it up. Frequent use of anti-nausea medications, especially zofran. I try to eat smaller meals. I do not eat large meals while at work. I always take medications with food unless specifically contra-indicated.
Increasing salt intake helps decrease the dizziness with standing. A Mexican salted plum treat called saladitos helps with salt. I like the lemon flavor ones, but in general the salted plum is an aquired taste. Drinking pickle juice helps some. Eating salted pickles helps.
Gut issues and clothing: I cannot wear typical thick jeans because seams and the one-button closure irritates my skin and puts pressure on my bladder. I must wear stretchy denim with thin waistband, and preferably two-button, pull-on, or snaps for closure. I tend towards drawstring linen or palazzo pants without elastic, as any stretched elastic on my waistband causes painful abdominal pressure.
Specific brands and styles and clothes stuff brain dump:
I find traditional clothing styles such as cotton kurtas from India work well. Well-worn often-washed cotton clothing such as 100% cotton scrubs from the thrift store worn seam-side out on terrible sensory days is nice. Oddly, the cotton-polyester drawstring scrub pants at all the hospitals works well. Shopping for clothes at a thrift store and feeling for rough seams, soft fiber helps. Read tags for fiber content (then cut open the seams carefully and remove that itchy tag). Avoid decorations that touch skin such as non-cotton lace, non-silk ribbons. If in doubt, test inexpensive soft things you’ve purchased by burning a bit of a hidden seam. If the fabric burns instead of melting, you have a natural fiber. A crunchy or hard little melted plasticy ball or tar-like smell indicates polyester or other synthetic oil-based synthetic fibers. Target and Walmart frequently offer tag-free clothing. That is great. Expect the printed tag on clothing to melt in a hot dryer over time and become rough and itchy. Replace item or wear it inside out when that happens. There are hippie style clothes sewn with visible seams on the outside. I collect those kinds of clothes. I buy underwear that is cotton, silk, or linen. I look for covered seams, no lace or ribbons, and I usually wear it inside out. I often wear older-fashioned or vintage clothing or SCA/LARP kinds of clothes. Tap pants are nice. Bloomers are nice.

Knitted bowls

Aswang. A Filipino Scary Story

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