There’s no way that EVERYBODY was Kung Fu fighting.
As a survivor of the 70s, i must inform you that, in fact, at Peak Kung-fu, literally everyone on Earth was Kung Fu fighting, even babies, who came out of the womb able to assume crane stance and kicking doctors through walls if the doctor tried to slap them.
The Reign of the Demon Emperor Nixon exerted karmic influence through time, ensuring the rise of martial artists able to take him on and destroy him. The Greatest Generation’s name is really a description of their kung fu skills. The Baby Boomers came out of the womb able to make things explode with their chi. Generation X is so known because our real name was destroyed in the final battles against Demon Emperor Nixon; the reason we are half the size of the other generations is because Demon Emperor Nixon tried to kill off all those born after 1965, as one of us was prophesied to slay him.
Entire countries were destroyed at the height of the fighting; Lemuria cracked in half and sank. Ninety-five percent of the Netherlands was destroyed in an infamous battle between Stone Cold Jane Austen and Charles Dikkens (the famous Dutch author) which flooded most of it; what we call the Netherlands now was only a tiny chunk of the original. National boundaries changed, cities burned, and we lost the second moon; no one remembers it now.
At its height, punches were destroying entire cities, kicks destroying entire concepts. The US used to have 75 states and 25 of them are gone.
No one knows for sure who threw the final punch, only that the Beatles stumbled out of the flaming wreckage of the Demon Palace covered in purple blood and then in the morning, everything had changed; kung fu itself had lost its power and the world faded, becoming mundane.
But maybe that’s for the best. The world was nearly destroyed by Kung Fu; humanity could not handle its power. Even now, I can only remember the truth when that song plays and reminds me of a time of glory and wrath which can never come again.
For even older recipes, check out Gode Cookery. They list medieval and Renaissance cooking instructions and translate the recipes for you into measurable amounts and all.
I have have have to mention Miss Leslie. I learned so much about cooking from that book, even if a lot of it is outdated.
Also, Forme of Cury is great fun, if you can muddle through the Middle English (Gode Cookery has translations and adaptions of some of the recipes from this).
Not nearly so old, but Mid-Century Menu is great for all your 1940s-70s weird cookbook needs. The girl who runs it tests the old recipes on her husband and it’s pretty great.
I love old cookbooks 😀 I have a copy of Apicius around here somewhere. I don’t use cookbooks much – I tend to google for the simplest version of a recipe and then add my own twists in – but they’re still such fun to look through.
winter: blood red stained lips, landlocked sirens making desperate attempts to get home, half-empty cups of camomile tea that have gone cold, unwashed hair, sharp masculine colognes sprayed directly onto velvet lingerie, lana del reys ‘music to watch boys to’ plays as you realise boys are no longer a threat to you or in fact anyone
spring: you dont know how you can be cursed but you dont know how you can possibly be anything else, impromptu picnics on cobbled roads, milkmaid plaits, old fashioned bicycles, tear tracks on filthy skin, honey by the spoonful, listening to five different covers of radioheads ‘creep’ while getting ready for a night out, you look in the mirror and realise you have become the girl you were afraid to look in the eye at school but still always wanted to kiss
summer: you have become the city and all you want is to sleep, broken champagne flutes, taylor swifts ‘1989’ when you dont want to go outside because her words taste like sunshine on your tongue, dark tired eyes, that first fizzing sip of lemonade after a period of near dehydration, black satin slips paired with paint-splattered doc martens, palm readings at street fairs, an annual death of love
fall: broken promises are all that make sense to your broken heart, rose pink lips and mascara fat eyelashes, skipping lectures in favour of wandering around museums, the neighbourhoods ‘single’ on repeat, flasks filled with white chocolate liqueur, unsent love letters to fashion models and late night calls to ghosts, you hold back your hair with silk ribbons, it hits you that you no longer live in a story about a girl. this story is about a wolf.
Sleek, shiny, and sexy as Hell, Dean Winchester’s 1967 Chevrolet Impala is indeed, as Erik Kripke once put it, as pivotal a character on the show as any. Over the course of 10 seasons she has become inextricably linked to her owner’s identity and state of being. Bashed up when John ordered Dean to kill Sam if all else failed, abandoned and overgrown in Endverse as 2014!Dean had become a shell of his former self, trash-filled and mud-covered while demon!Dean gave up on the world; whenever Dean goes through great emotional turmoil, Baby is a painful mirror of his emotions.
As we flash across the iconic features that make Baby the Winchesters’
home -the tiny soldiers symbolising their lives, the Lego blocks that
still rattle when the ventilator is on, the initials DW and SW scratched
into her in as much a claim of family as anything- the beginning of the episode reveals she
has been wrecked, shattered, and is covered in blood. The relative
innocence of Sam and Dean’s childhood is intercut with the brutal
reality of their adult lives.
Season 11 started with the Darkness having
snatched Dean from his trusted place behind the wheel of the Impala.
Without either control or memory, apart from a vision, it is the opening
shot across the bow that regaining control of his life after having had
limited say in it for …well…ever will likely be an important story-arc for
Dean. The cold open of episode 11×04 Baby starts with that same empty seat. Not only that, we
find Dean chained up in cuffs in the back seat, completely out of
control in his beloved Impala.
In fact, the episode started with a deceptively calm pan down the eponymous car’s driver’s seat from the audience’s perspective. It is a wonderful shot, which makes me want to grab the wheel and drive off. And that is the frame of the episode. It’s amazing the number of people who actually drive Dean’s beloved girl over the course of 45 minutes. And each of them represents an aspect of Dean himself, all of them aspects that might prove vital in defeating the Darkness.
First there is not-John Winchester. Appearing in Sam’s dream in Dean’s customary seat, one way to read it is to see him as an allusion to Dean’s role as a father-figure to Sam; the bond that lies at the heart of the shit-storm the Winchesters currently find themselves in. But rather than appearing as the John Sam knew, he appears as young John Winchester, whom we last saw not as John, but as Vessel to Michael. So, the first person to drive Baby besides Dean is one who not only represents Dean’s role in raising Sam, but also reminds us of Dean’s formerly destined role as True Vessel to Michael.
While gut-instinct tells me who we are really looking at here is Lucifer (or maybe, maybe Gabriel) given the uncertainty which of the three beings trapped in The Cage it was that screamed, this only goes to feed my conviction we will see Michael again and perhaps also that Dean will once more be faced with the choice of whether or not to become an angel condom.
To further cement the connection between not-John and Dean,
immediately after Sam wakes up, Dean shares his dream of being in the
driver’s seat with John next to him, leading a civilian life. While I am
not a dream analyst, it sure feels like a wish for control. Control
over the way he leads his life, control over the influence his father
still has over him. Simply a dream to be in control of his life.
Moreover, Dean finishes his story with a description of how proud John was of him for driving well dream!John says
perfect landing
a reference to flying that should ring alarm bells all over, both because of Dean’s fear of flying, but also because of Michael being an angel. (for a much more elaborate analysis of this scene, check out @dustydreamsanddirtyscars ‘s awesome meta)
Next we have Jessie. While driving up to Aunt Mel’s and seeing that there’s valet parking Sam notes
Come on, live a little.
when seeing Dean’s agitation. And sure enough, Dean puts control of Baby in her hands and off she is to live a little. I love her words to her friend here a lot. “Spider’s caught a fly” is a very predatory description that evokes a sense of cunning that comes with waiting long and patiently, kinda like the Darkness. Not for nothing I did a double take when she first got in the car thinking she might be Amara further grown up.
Set to M.I.A,’s Bad Girls, the lyrics
live fast, die young, bad girls do it well
I can’t help but imagine Dean
taking Sam on a joyride in Baby at 16, doing wheelies and being shit-scared thinking about
John catching them. In fact, when Dean calls Jessie to get the car back, she responds with a “ Yes, sir.” which is exactly the way Dean would have addressed John, once again alluding to that part of Dean.
It is the symbolism in doing wheelies that really makes the scene a perfect symbol for the Winchesters. It’s fun, but they are for ever going
around in circles and while eventually have to come out of it; exactly what was stated by Sam in Out of the Darkness Into the Fire.
Mrs Markham – Your family. You do anything for them, don’t you?
Dean- Absolutely. But not if it costs too much
Mrs Markham – No. You’d do anything for them. Everything else is meaningless. But I did it wrong. now I’ve ruined everything.
The parallel here is so clear and so heart-breaking. Having killed her romantic love for the sake of family, Mrs Markham represents the monster/human struggle we have seen time and again on SPN. Grabbing the wheel and chanting over and over again
I can makes this right. I can make this right.
in trying to fix the consequences of what she considers her irresponsible behaviour, she is perhaps the most obvious representation of Dean in the entire episode. What is even more intriguing is her question
what did you do with the Maker’s body?
While she is referring here to pack alpha Deputy Dumbass, once again we a potential allusion to Dean “I kill Gods” Winchester’s ultimate objective.
And it is Mrs Markham’s help that gets us to the last driver.
The pack alpha reveals himself to be a military leader creating an Army to fight the Darkness, to fight a battle Dean was earlier this episode told by Sam only they could fight. And most likely, it is what will need to happen over the course of the season. But an important aspect of what Dean needs to do is foreshadowed here. The fight with the deputy reveals that Dean will be required to forego the usual hunter approach of machetes, hacking, and bloodshed. The alpha is slain because Dean reaches into a pink Hello Kitty bag, by thinking before acting, by being in the backseat rather than the front of the charge. This again could foreshadow Michael’s involvement, but like with much of the exposition this season, I love it could go many ways.
To conclude, over the course of Baby Dean goes from being chained up in the backseat to finding the solution to killing the Monster of the Week there. By symbolically breaking the chains of his father’s teachings, in all the different ways it is presented to us this episode, he ends up saving his own life and the lives of the humans in this episode. Expand that to a seasonal narrative, and truly, those who help themselves by letting go of the ties that restrain them, might receive help from God, whose voice, after all, introduced the episode.
kototyph 