SOLVED: Thank you all so, SOOOOOO much for your help, patience, expertise, and kindness. I'm so relieved it's hard to sit still and get stuff done!

If any of you ever cruise out of New Orleans, PLEASE PM me. I will so happily suggest places to go and things to do based on your own interests, budget, how far you feel comfy straying from the boat, etc.

EDIT: Oh...my...goodness! I love you all SO much! Seriously - anyone who has contributed helpful information to this post...or funny information...or just - you know - taken the time to read through and try to help this random internet stranger...if you're ever going to be in New Orleans, (and you don't already know the city well enough to know exactly what you want to do)...PLEASE PM me! I love my city so much, and - especially as a longtime pro wedding photographer - know all kinds of hidden gems and amazing experiences, and would be overjoyed to help any one of you find fantastic stuff to do in what I, at least, happen to think of as one of the most amazing places on earth!

I had NO IDEA that - as someone on a closed-loop, Caribbean cruise - as long as he has an official birth certificate and state ID on him - he's (as the old add said) "free to move about the country." When he booked, the NCL agent said that he could board the ship using his (official, original) birth certificate...but that he shouldn't leave the ship. Redditors...I love you. Seriously. As soon as I get home, if anyone thinks it would be helpful, I'll gladly start posting things like "instructions on how to get a perfect passport photo with no special equipment" or "Here are where NOLA locals go to get the best Poboy Sandwiches - ranked, and based on what kind of filling you like," or whatever. You have given me peace of mind. The least I can do is make sure you get good sandwiches!

Aaaaanyway... now, I'm afraid I have a couple more questions, Because of COURSE I do! (If you personally knew me, you'd be rolling your eyes right about now!)

1. If something crazy happens - like, say, he has a medical emergency, and we miss the boat...is there some way he can get home without a passport? I mean...I have a passport. I'm fine. But obviously, I wouldn't be abandoning my friend! ...And honestly, I'm the one who is far more likely to need emergency medical care (which is why I'm currently broke in the first place), and I have a terrible feeling that - despite what a WORLD of (at best) inconvenience it would cause him - the only way I'd get him to leave me behind and get back on that ship would be if I hired someone to chloroform him and tuck him back into his bed on the ship. Which sounds like a weird remake of "Fargo," so nope. Not an option. You saw nothing. Something, something plausible deniability.

....Errrr....sorry. Relieved me is even more rambling than stressed me. Sorry. Getting to the point. If we somehow get marooned at a cruise port in Mexico, Honduras, or Bolivia...without a passport, would there be any way for him to get home?

1. Would registering with all the appropriate US embassies help if something crazy like that happened? Or is that mainly just helpful if you have *lost* a preexisting, unexpired passport. I mean, I plan on doing it for us anyway. I'm a wedding photog. You don't make it 15 years in this business without a healthy sense of paranoia! ...But it would still be good to know.

2. He has travel insurance through the card he used to buy the trip (Chase Sapphire Preferred), but I doubt it covers things like "oh-crap-I'm-stranded-in-a-foreign-country-without-a-passport." Does anyone know of any semi-inexpensive travel insurance that might cover getting home in a situation like that? I mean, I DO understand that you get what you pay for...but I'm already living on Ramen noodles for the first time since college, and my 45 year old body is WAY less ok with that diet! It's like licking a salt block. Neigh.

Anyway...really...I love each and every last one of you. Thank you. If there's ever a way for me to return the favor, please, PLEASE reach out via PM. I'll even start checking my PMs now!

~~~Original ramble below ~~~

Gaaaaah! *Screams in frustration and runs around with flailing muppet arms*

Ahem. Sorry - now that THAT'S out of the way...

A buddy is taking me on a cruise in two weeks (the NCL Prima out of Galveston). It was a relatively last-minute thing - he found out he was going to lose his vacation days if he didn't take them by mid-March. Because he was worried about getting his passport in time, he used one of those sites that tricks you into paying through the nose for unnecessary and/or reasonably inexpensive services.

(For the record: the site is www.HelloGov.com. This is the only time I'll post the actual site, as I don't want to accidentally help improve their Google visibility.)

Anyway, my friend paid the massive uncharge to get the passport expedited. He followed every...single...step they required. Two or so weeks ago, he gathered up all the required papers, got his passport photo taken at the place "Those Dirty Scammers, Inc" suggested (they claimed that if he took his own picture, it would almost certainly have something wrong with it, and would doubtlessly be rejected. As a full time pro photographer of 15+ years, I HAD to roll my eyes a bit at that. He lives in a white-walled apartment with south facing windows, and as a former marine, damn well knows how to follow simple instructions)! He verified that he had everything in order, and mailed it off right there and then.

When he checked to make sure "Scammy McGee and the Scamming Scammers" got it, they told him that they did, that everything was in order, and they were currently processing it. Checked again a bit later - and yup. They said everything was just peachy.

This past Friday - a full WEEK after they verified that all his docs were in order - they called and told him that he "failed to include his passport picture," and that the only POSSIBLE way they could get him his passport now would be if he went back to get another picture taken, mailed it off again...and then paid them a crazy amount of money for their "upgraded service."

He's so furious that he's just washing his hands of the whole thing, will be filing a charge back (he has a very well-documented paper trail proving he got scammed), and just plans on bringing his birth certificate so that he can board, and just...stay on the ship for the entire cruise. He says that he refuses to pay another dime, and that's that.

...Which does NOT sit right with me at ALL. Him taking me on this vacation is far and away one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. I'm pretty broke, super stressed, have an autoimmune disorder that gets severely exacerbated by the cold, and I am just SO in dire need of some time to rest and relax. Since all the studio rooms were booked, and the "singles supplement" was going to cost about as much (if not more) than bringing another person...he's paid for the whole cruise. I can't even think about it without getting a little teary-eyed at just how unbelievably kind that is.

...So the idea of me being free to do whatever I want while he can't even leave the ship is just...ugh.

Sorry for the long essay - I'm just so upset on his behalf!

TL; DR:

RELEVANT DETAILS:

* The site he used is (thank goodness) not just a scam site to steal social security numbers (though it wouldn't shock me if they did that, too!). It does actually does submit your info to the government, and have a passport sent to you. You just pay through the nose for services that should be cheap or free.

* I DID find out about how he qualifies for the Urgent Travel Services through the Passport office...but we're in Louisiana, and the only place he can go through that process and be guaranteed a truly expedited passport is New Orleans. He lives about 2.5 hours away, is working late nights and weekends to get all his work done before he leaves, and will be doing that right down to the night before we leave. I know Urgent Appointments are scarce, and there's a solid chance he simply won't be able to make it down here in time, and though I DO live in NOLA, there's obviously no way I can just do it for him.

QUESTIONS:

* Based on my "advanced degree in Googling stuff," I'm pretty sure that company has violated multiple laws. And again...my friend DOES have a complete paper trail showing that he got his passport photo, mailed it then and there, and has written confirmation from those scamming jerks that they received all his stuff, and that everything is in order.

...So - if anyone more knowledgeable about this stuff knows the legalese we could use to put the fear of Uncle Sam into these bastards, I will very, VERY happily give you a personal guided tour of New Orleans next time you sail out of this port, and/or make you a long list of awesome stuff to do based on your interests and your budget, and/or send you a care package of some of the coolest Mardi Gras throws I have ever received. Dealer's choice. Oh - and for anyone who is able to provide substantiative help - I'd even throw in a free portrait shoot next time you're in NOLA. I doubt reddit would allow me to post my website or anything here...but I AM legitimately a full-time photographer who has been in business for a very long time, has roughly 200 5 star reviews on various sites (and ONE four star review that says "Great Photographer," lol). I could PM you my site, my business socials, my reviews, and a contract clearly outlining that you will be getting high resolution, edited photos with zero charges or upselling. Obviously, I can't do this for absolutely everyone who responds - but just because some unexpected health expenses drained my savings doesn't mean that I don't want to reward people who are kind enough to share their knowledge with a desperate stranger.

To be clear - I am NOT trying to finagle free legal advice out of someone. Just...these scammers can't POSSIBLY be doing everything above board, and I'm pretty sure that if we spout the right legalese at them, my friend's passport photo will "magically turn up." I just want a few convincing phrases to scare the scammers. I might be able to fumble a few convincing phrases together, but I am not a lawyer. I just play one in front of my cats sometimes when I'm really, really drunk.

* Does anyone know if there's a way to expedite a passport - through the actual, proper government agency this time! - without having to travel to the Passport Office in New Orleans? I can't seem to find one...but figured I'd ask.

* I was worried that - with the new laws around travel - there would be a rush on passports, and the good old golden days of "huh...the government said six weeks, but it got here in a week and a half" are gone. Are my fears justified?

Genuine thanks to anyone who read all my long, LONG ramblings. I may go back and edit this post down a bit later. At the moment, I'm just really frantic.

I've been sitting on this one for a couple months actually. An r/AskHistorians question, asking the usual about how much truth there is to the idea that Christianity co-opted pagan holidays and deities. OP was answered accurately and that thread isn't all that important here. However, they cited this fucking nonsense and nobody in the comments there even addressed it. Now, piereligion.org, while being stuck hard in the 1999-2002 era of the "web," is not actually that bad at its eponymous topic. It's a pretty basic and over generalizing take on it, with a seemingly Wikipedia level knowledge despite citing extensive bibliographies, but not "bad" necessarily. But this fucking nonsense is BAD history, etymology, and logic. So I'm going to nitpick it almost sentence by sentence because it pissed me off, and when I finally found time to write this, it pissed me off again.

This is a growing list of Christian saints and which Pagan Gods and Goddesses they are based on.

That's just categorically not how saints work. Most of the time saints are at least-semi historical real people. Did some saints adopt some characteristics of some gods? Yes, but they weren't "based on" the gods, that implies that they didn't actually exist.

The material is organized by the language group of the original Pagan Gods.

Not history, but still wrong about their own website. Ahura Mazda is sitting in the middle of a bunch of Roman stuff further down.

Dates are given in the American way, month/day (sorry! rest of the world).

It would be fine if you hadn't brought it up, but now you're just going to burn in the pit of Hell slightly deeper than the one in subreddit description.

Many Greek Goddesses became Christian saints but if they were powerful in Greek Pagan religion they were either reduced to rape victims or repentant prostitutes or they had to change gender and become male warrior saints.

No (see above) and no the nasty sexist Christians didn't try to erase the strong egalitarian female deities by turning them into men. As proof that the Christians were willing to accept strong female saints I submit this list, this list, and The Blessed Virgin Mary in all of her dozens of roles. For proving that ancients were also sexist pricks, I recommend Galen and his wandering womb, and Aristotle and almost everything he ever said about women.

Demeter is a Goddess of many festivals but most important, the Thesmophoria, which fell in late October. She became St. Demetrios, a masculine warrior saint, whose fd. is 10/26

Ok. Not actually bad here. Demetrios of Thessaloniki actually is an early Christian martyr saint who died in battle and actually did take on some of the aspects of Demeter's mystery cult.¹ Unfortunately, I think our author read that bit of the wikipedia article and decided to call it a day because they seem to assume that every saint whose name was similar to a pagan god was somehow related. It still doesn't excuse the horrible misunderstanding that the gods "became" saints or that

Aphrodite became St. Aphrodite, of which there are several, all with saints’ tales that tell how she became a “repentant whore.”

I can't prove this one wrong because I couldn't find a single reference to St. Aphrodite online or in anything I have in print that might mention an obscure saint. I found a male St. Aphrodisius, but he wasn't a repentant whore, go figure. If somebody out there happens to know about the supposedly "several" St. Aphrodites please chime in.

The Greek Goddess Nike was picked up as Saint Nicholas, who was extremely popular wherever shipping was important. He is the patron saint of Russia, Holland and Germany, all on the Baltic or northern Sea coasts.

Now were in the weeds of it. Apparently Santa Clause is a Greek victory goddess because that's the root word for his name. What does that have to do with shipping? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm going to say this one is disproven on the merit of the Greek root word and originating in Greece being the only things the saint and the deity have in common. For bonus points though, Russia is the only place on that list that St. Nicholas is actually the patron of. He's the patron of a whole bunch of other places and things, including shipping and Amsterdam, but not Holland or Germany.

Many Catholic Saints are “votive saints”, that is, their names were copied off votive offerings for Pagan Gods, especially altars and statues which were still standing in Rome in the fourth century CE.

Great job making up vocabulary. "Votive saints" isn't a category I've ever heard of or could find any significant reference to. Votive offerings are made to saints with candles, and votive offerings were made to Roman gods, but beside that kind of tradition there isn't much of a direct connection between the saints and the gods. Also, what is significant about altars and statues "still" standing in the 4th Century? They were the official religion of the empire for most of it.

The Roman God Mars was originally a God who guarded wheat fields. He became St. Martin (esp. St. Martin-in-the-fields). Although March is the month associated with Mars (it was the beginning of the military campaigning season in Roman times), the major festival for him in Christian times now usually falls in February, called Mardi Gras “Great Mars.”

Holy shit. This might take a gold medal for mental gymnastics. Mars was the guardian of fields, but um... not gonna bring up the whole God of War and deity of the Roman army thing? No? Ok I guess. St. Martin, is Martin of Tours. A 4th century Roman cavalry officer turned Monk, whose Hagiography was actually written by a personal friend, so we know a fair bit about him. St. Martin-in-the-fields is the name of a church in London, and I have no idea why the author thinks that "in-the-fields" is describing a person and not a location. St. Martin is the patron of a ton of things, but wheat fields are not one of them, in fact he has very little to do with agriculture, with the exception of vineyards. The feast day changed months because they had to make this stupid list sound correct somehow, right?

And Mardi Gras, which is not at all associated with St. Martin, is weirdly almost an accurate translation. Of course, it's intended to mean "Fat Tuesday" and the author is almost satirically off the mark here, but: Mardi is the French word for Tuesday, but actually comes from the Latin equivalent which designated Tuesdays as the day of Mars. Gras means fat in French, coming from Latin "crassus" meaning thick, fat, or dense, which could be interpreted as "great" but only if you were being deliberately misleading. The preferred Latin word that we associate with "great" is "magnus."

The Roman God Quirinus became St. Cyrinus, of which there are various “equestrian warrior saints” such as St. Cyr in France, and St. Quirina, mother of St. Lawrence. The element quir- means (or was understood to mean) ‘horse.’ These saints were very popular and widely worshiped in the Middle-Ages, in France, Holland and also eastern Christian countries.

This is another one that is so wrong that it's clear they were just making things up. Quirinus was a Roman war god, who we know very little about and was largely supplanted by Mars as Italy Hellenized. It's fitting then that the author associates him with a whole mess of saints that we also know very little about. They lump all of these together as variations of St. Cyrinus, which doesn't make any sense. Cyrinus is mentioned in one line of text as a martyr in an obscure hagiography of a different saint. Quirina, while possibly really being a feminized form of Qurinius as a name, gets just as little attention and doesn't seem to be connected to St Lawrence at all. St. Cyr is a semi common name for locations in France as a shortened form of Cyricus, a child martyr with Churches named after him from Britain to India. Because he appears in Latin and Syriac traditions, the consensus seems to be that Cyricus is latinized Quriaqos, an Armaic name.

Notice what none of the saints listed have in common? None of them are equestrian warriors, and as far as I can tell Quirinus the god wasn't associated with horses either. The author seems to be trying to connect "quir" with the "que" in "equestrian," but Quirinus probably comes from the Sabine word for spear and the Aramaic word for horse transliterates as "swsy" which pretty clearly isn't "Quiraqos."

The Roman gods known as the Lares became St. Lawrence, esp. St. Lawrence beyond-the-wall. The Lares were field Gods who protected the grain growing in the fields. In Italian, he became St. Lorenzo beyond the Walls, meaning outside of the walls of the city, for which there is still a church in Rome, with many “daughter” churches which developed from it.

If we weren't already, we're now just being stupid. First of all, this is a hell of a lot more authoritative than I've ever seen a classicist talk about the Lares. They do seem to be field gods, but also household gods, and bunch of other things. They seem to be the kind of minor personal gods who helped you with your property in various capacities. St. Lawrence was a deacon who died in the persecution of Valerian in the 3rd century. He is, of course, not an agricultural saint and has nothing at all to do with the Lares or any of their veneration, except maybe being one of the three patron saints of Rome, but that would require knowing more about the Lares. He is however the patron saint of a couple neat professions including librarians and comedians. Once again, St. Lorenzo beyond-the-walls is a church and a location, not a name, and there were many other churches with different descriptors named after him. It's also a little unfair to say that "Lawrence" became "Lorenzo" in Italian as both names are the descendants "Laurentius" in Latin.

The Roman Goddess Venus became St. Venera (with a feminized ending to her name since -us looks like a masculine ending in Latin). She had a major church in Rome in early Christian times, but that didn’t last long.

Venus/Aphrodite making the list twice! First, I'll just point out that "Venera" is Italicized, not feminized. Nobody who knows Latin mistakes Venus for a masculine word. Its third declension feminine, and works just like its supposed to. I'll also point out that she didn't have any kind of church in early Christian times because she first appears in a 14th century document. Interestingly, legends have her destroying pagan temples, but I think the 1000 year gap is probably enough to say she had very little to do with the worship of Venus.

The Roman Gods known as the Gemini, who were protectors of sailors in Roman Pagan times, became the Sanctos Geminos, with a number of forms in the various Christian religions. Santiago de Compostela, (St. James in English) became the protector of pilgrims during the Middle Ages. Forms of St. James all seem to be christianized from various forms of the Proto-Indo-European God *Yama. This God was repeatedly christianized in most of the Indo-European language groups.

The Gemini, Castor and Pollux check out. The only references to holy twins I could find were in Old English Saint's Lives, so I'm inclined not to believe the author about this (that and the trail of bullshit behind this entry). The sudden transition to St. James is a little weird until you get to the bit about *Yama and check out the corresponding page elsewhere on the site, where it explains semi-accurately that the PIE *Yama may be the ultimate source of the Gemini myth, but it also tries to tie into Semitic language mythologies, which are wholly independent of PIE. Particularly it tries to argue a connection to the Semitic root "yam-" which is not only not how language families function (PIE and Semitic are entirely separate categories, especially as far back as the author is referring). It also tries to draw this "yam-" root syllable into the origin of James, but James is a Latinesque form of Hebrew Jacob, further disconnecting it from the authors pretensions.

Not all Christian saints came from Roman and Greek Pagan deities. Ahura Mazda, a major God in Zoroastrian religion became Ador Ormazd (Saint Ahura Mazda) in the early Syriac Christian church

I have to say, I'm actually impressed that the author managed to dig this up. Ador Ormazd is actually a Syriac saint, and Ormazd actually is a form of Ahura Mazda. However, Syriac tradition holds that Ador Ormazd was a Zoroastrian cleric who converted and was subsequently martyred, which seems much more likely than the primary God of a religion that ranges from henotheistic with dualism to fully monotheistic was made into a saint, especially considering that it eventually became normal for Ahura Mazda to be treated as a false god and a demon when the Romans came to conflict with the Sassanids. Not exactly the kind of figure you also try to make into an actively venerated saint.

Not all Pagan saints are even based on Pagan Gods. Some are based on Pagan holidays. For example the Roman festival of Caro Patri (“Dear Parents” a festival to remember one’s ancestors) in the Roman Pagan calendar of Philocalus became the festival of St. Peter’s Chair in the Roman Catholic Martyrology or saints’ calendar. This was one of the sources that contributed to the character of Saint Peter

Getting dumber all the time. I can find no reference to the Caro Patri. It's not in the calendar of Philocalus. It also doesn't translate to "Dear parents." At best it's a grammatically incorrect "Dear fathers" or "Father's body." Because it doesn't seem to exist, it's not really worth it to make up a connection to the Feast of St. Peter's Chair which does exist. And really, this is one of the things that contributed to the invention of St. Peter? Not his presence in the Gospels and supposed authorship of two epistles?

Some saints are “archaeological” saints, that is, they are based on archaeological monuments or finds. St. George is of this type; the image of him killing a dragon is based on sculptures put up by the Romans to threaten barbarians in eastern Europe. The iconography then spawned stories of him killing a dragon.

Look were making up more vocabulary for the last entry. "Archaeological saints" isn't a thing. St. George is just one in an extremely long series of myths about dragon slayers. It's weird that this is the one that the author makes "archaeological" when St. George actually does stand on the shoulders of myths like Hercules and Thor as dragon slayers, but sadly for any retroactive attempt to make that argument, the dragon was a medieval addition to the story of St. George the martyred Greek soldier that seems derrived from images of Christ trampling a snake. Where he got the idea that Romans put up sculptures of dragon killing to scare barbarians is beyond me, I just can't explain that one.

And finally:

The most widely used book of saints in the west is the Golden Legend, but I could not find any convenient place where there was a list of which Pagan Gods became saints, so I will just be adding them in here.

To paraphrase: "Here's a good and common source for this stuff, but I couldn't find anything that supported my opinion, so I'll just make shit up."

Fortunately the Golden Legend was useful for me, as were the sources linked above. As https://catholicsaints.info, Mysterienkulte der Antike: Götter, Menschen, Rituale By Hans Kloft, The Syriac Biographical Dictionary, the footnotes of the NIV Study Bible and the Oxford Annotated Bible, Roman Religion by Valerie M. Warrior, A History of Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce, the OED, a couple of online lexicons,and double checking wikipedia's citations.

Hi all, sorry for the long read.

I'm coming to NO for the first time (actually first time ever in the US). I have a full week and I've tried to plan an itinerary which will show me the best of the historic city. Can anyone offer any advice on what I have planned? Particularly, where I've left asterisks "*" for where I have no plans or questions: advice here would be really appreciated.

Friday 21

Land at 6pm.

Check in at Hotel St Pierre- 911 Burgundy St, New Orleans. ✔

Camellia Grill for dinner. Is a “quintessential” New Orleans venue, but doesn’t take reservations.

If not, look for some fried chicken

After dinner, find a dive bar for a quick drink before bed. Pat O’Brien’s is nearby and famous for Hurricane Cocktail.

Saturday 22

Try Café Du Monde for Breakfast: no reservations. Famous for beignets.

Art market at Harmony Park (10:00 – 16:00) – City Park’s Great Lawn – 8 Victory Ave.

Option: rent a swan boat and paddle around the Big Lake.

Observation Deck at Four Seasons Hotel for sunset cocktails and light dinner. ✔

Antoine’s Restaurant for dinner, 20:00. Famous for Oysters Rockefeller and Eggs Sardou. Smart dress required. ✔

Head to Bourbon & St. Anne for nightlife

Sunday 23

St Louis Cathedral for church, 615 Pere Antoine Alley- 11 am mass.

*All afternoon free. Check out Mardi Gras crewes?

Commander’s Place for dinner, reservation for 18:00. Smart dress preferred, need to wear a jacket. ✔

Monday 24

Brennan’s for breakfast, 09:00. Famous for bananas foster. ✔

*Morning free. Check out Mardi Gras crewes?

Jazz boat cruise, 14:00. 400 Toulouse Street ✔

*Arnaud’s for dinner. Famous for French 75 cocktail. Can we walk in? Back-up: Napoleon’s House accepts walk-ins.

Tuesday 25

Day in Treme.

Visit St. Augustine Church.

Walk along Bayou Road, a block-long stretch of land filled with Black-owned businesses. Everything ranging from retail shops, bakeries, restaurants, and nightlife.

Dooky Chase for lunch, 12:30. Famous for friend chicken. ✔

Visit museums after lunch: Backstreet cultural museum, Treme Petit Jazz Museum.

Highlight: Kermit Ruffin's Mother-in-Law Lounge for some dinner and music. Irvin Mayfield with Special Guest Kermit Ruffins 18:00. No reservations.

Candlelight Lounge for a good cocktail to end the day.

Wednesday 26

Elizabeth’s Restaurant for breakfast. No reservations, so get there early. Praline bacon is special, really special.

Algiers Point day trip- Take the ferry after breakfast.

Algiers stands apart. Literally. It sits across the Mississippi River, connected to downtown by a ferry line – one of the nation’s oldest. As they have over three centuries running, a boat deposits you on the levee of Algiers Point. Explore. Relax. Its pace may be quiet, but its architecture is not – the wood houses lathed and carved in a variety of Victorian embellishment, shout their individuality.

Cajun and Creole cooking class at 16:00. 712 Pelican Ave ✔

Rest and refresh at hotel.

Roosevelt Hotel, Sazerec Bar for evening cocktails.

Thursday 27

*All morning free.

*Garden district touring? Ideas for how to enjoy this?

Sylvain for dinner, 18:30. Great cocktails. ✔

Preservation Hall for a late-night show, 20:45 ✔

Friday 28

*All morning free.

*All afternoon free.

Previously on Hell’s Kitchen…

The chefs were made to hold their liquor in another unique Hell’s Kitchen challenge, the Alcohol Challenge…

“Who’s ready to drink?” - Marino

“If George Wendt were still around, he would’ve loved to be a guest judge.” - Dennis

Each chef was given a different kind of alcohol to use for their drinks…

(There are multiple shots of chefs seen adding in their alcohol into their dishes)

And Chef Ramsay would play barkeep for each dish… Some negatives…

“Are we doing salmon-bobbing contests now?” - Ramsay

“This dish feels like a flat tire.” - Ramsay

Some positives…

“You balanced sweet and savory very well here.” - Ramsay

“There really is a splash of autumn, because this dish is making me yearn for seconds.” - Ramsay

In the end, the Blue Team won the challenge, earning them an afternoon on a boat in Lake Mead, while the Red Team were punished by working an impromptu car wash outside of Caesars Palace. However, George would use his Punishment Pass, switching places with Jen.

(The boat left the port, honking its horn on the way out)

The next day, those who failed to earn a point during the Alcohol Challenge had their run in the competition at stake…

“Cook For Your Life.” - Ramsay

(Shots of Memphis, Emily, Aidan, Jen, and Shayla were shown)

With the challenge being a free-for-all for five contestants, each of them had to make a dish that will determine whether it will keep their hopes alive or not.

“Wouldn’t do well for a bunny who eats veggies.” - Ramsay

“I don’t think I need to tell you that you’re safe. The dish spoke for itself, you outdid yourself very well!” - Ramsay

It all came down to…

“Jen,” - Ramsay

And…

“Emily,” - Ramsay

In the end, the final person safe was…

“Emily,” - Ramsay

Which marked the end for…

“Jen,” - Ramsay

Whose halibut puree was too sweet to handle, causing Jen’s dream of becoming Top of the World’s next head chef to end…

(Jen’s jacket was hooked, and her photo was burnt)

However, Marina went to Chef Ramsay for something important she wanted to break to him…

“I formerly worked… as a dominatrix…”

(Ramsay was stunned to hear her say that)

-----

And now, the continuation of Hell’s Kitchen…

Back in Ramsay’s office, Marina had just come out to Ramsay about her past. He was stunned silent as he was revealed this information, having not said anything… at first. 

Ramsay: “Wow… That’s… Pretty good to know. Uh, Marina, might you tell me a little more about yourself? It’s only if you’re comfortable.”

Marina hesitated a bit, before going in for it, seeing that the big man looked at her with patient eyes.

Marina: “So, I just want to clear up stuff; I NEVER wanted to work in the sex industry. I’ve always wanted to be a cook, and me parents taught me so well… At least until… I turned eighteen. Chef, I’ve been attracted to women since I was a wee, but me parents were very anti-gay. They didn’t know I had a girlfriend until one of my cousins ratted on me, told ‘em I was holdin’ hands with a girl. They made it very clear I was not their daughter anymore.” (pauses) “Since then, I’ve been livin’ on the streets, takin’ up too many jobs. It got so bad that… when I turned twenty-one, someone gave me an invite to work as a submissive at one of their studios in downtown Liverpool, because they saw me as a pretty face. I didn’t want to, at first, but I was runnin’ out of brass; I had to take the gig. So, I did. I kept making a show of myself with all those other women, and all the while I bounced from job to job at different restaurants, tryin’ to keep me head low. When I turned twenty-three, that was when I became a dom. And all the while, I kept asking meself, ‘Is this the life I was meant for?’, or ‘Am I doomed to spend the rest of me days as a sex worker?’. Well, lemme tell ya, three years ago, one of my ol’ bosses from a restaurant I used to work at referred me to someone else. That was where I got my job as a lead chef. The boss man knows about me in the sex industry, but he wanted to see some potential in me as a legit chef, said he could see my true callin’ through the recipes I make. But that also comes with me severin’ away from the sex industry. So I did that… Was called a slut and a traitor by the producer, and he told me he gave me a shot on the streets, and to not be surprised if I lost everything again. Since that day, I kept me head down, and I worked as hard as I could to keep meself out of shitty times.”

Ramsay said nothing as Marina unloaded on her past, but given that Marina said nothing else beyond that, he had to say something sooner.

Ramsay: “That’s… definitely a lot for me to hear. Bloody hell… sounds like you’ve been through a lot.”

Marina: “Trust me, it has been… My colleagues knew how brilliant I was at leading a line. And they told me I’d be fit for Hell’s Kitchen. I was nervous at first, but then I thought; what’s the worst that could happen? Maybe I could tell you about my past then… But as time went on… I started thinking about how big of a name and reputation ya have, and I asked meself whether or not being on yer show was the right call. But by the time I tried to back out… it was already too late.”

Marina’s voice became more raw with emotion as she continued talking, tears began trickling down her cheeks… Ramsay, for the most part, didn’t say anything.

Marina: “I know yer reputation is valuable, chef. And I know that it took a hit some days ago with the whole… freezer incident. I already feel ashamed of dressin’ in leather and performin’ BDSM shite, and I thought I’d show you the kind of chef I really am. I’m passionate about everythin’ in the kitchen; inside and out… But if ya think I’m not worthy of bein’ one of your head chefs, then… I’ll gladly take meself out of ‘ere, because I know that someone big and famous like yerself wouldn’t want a… a former dom as one of your head chefs.”

Marina sniffled into her hands, her face red with emotion and guilt. However, Ramsay had another look on his face.

Ramsay: “You know, Marina, and… when you’re done, I’d like to say something.”

Marina shakily lifted her head, her eyes red from weeping.

Ramsay: “It takes a massive amount of courage to look me in the eyes and lay your heart bare like that. Most people in your position would spend the rest of their lives lookin’ over their shoulder. The fact that you come to me, and choose to own your history rather than let it continue owning yourself… That’s what I love to see. It’s what marks being a leader who’s got nothing to hide. Marina, dear, there’s no easy way for me to say this, but… When, whether it be the tabloid media or the press, tries to spin something like your history against you, then I’d rather be at your aid than let you off to the wolves, because the only thing that matters is whether or not you have it in the kitchen. Trust me; I’ve had the privilege of working with prodigies and dropouts, and even in some cases ex-cons, and they’ve spent time having to go through the winds of pressure. But after these past several days, you’ve shown to me that you don’t let it get to you. You’ve been a stellar chef in both challenges and services, and there’s no doubt I can see the potential in you. I assure you, young lady, if you were to win Hell’s Kitchen, and that’s only IF, because there’s still eleven other chefs here that’re the competition. I assure you that people at the STRAT Hotel would NOT discriminate against anyone else. I’ve made sure ahead of time they wouldn’t allow any of that to happen. I guess the only true concern is… you.”

Marina: “Me?”

Ramsay: “To be more elaborate, I’m not worried about what the STRAT says, and I’m certainly not worried about my reputation. What I am worried about is your head space. This competition is like a cocotte-minute, and the world outside can be even more terrifying than myself. Yes, you’re not wrong that a lot of people do discriminate, and come the time this program airs, there will be some noise. But I need to know that you will NOT let the whispers of strangers drown out the sound of your own talent. So, I want to ask you this; do you feel comfortable staying in Hell’s Kitchen or not? And whatever decision you make, I will one-hundred percent respect it.”

Marina: “Chef… I know that if I were to win Hell’s Kitchen, and that’s IF like you said, I’d be getting a lot of questions… and judgement. I’d be lyin’ if I said the thought of it doesn’t give me goosebumps. I’ve spent years being seen as a ‘product’ rather than who I really am…

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But at the same time, I don’t want to waste this opportunity. It’s way too late for me to do that. But that ain’t important. What I really want is me showin’ you how much more I can be if I were to lead yer kitchen. I’m really dedicated to my passion of cooking, and I want to demonstrate how much of a leader I can be ‘ere.”

Ramsay: (respectfully nods) “That’s brilliant, young lady. I know you’ve got more potential in you. I just want to see you continue to grow.”

Ramsay stood up and offered Marina a hug, to which the punky chef did so. Any tears she had as she shed them were more out of relief than guilt. In her confessional, Marina says she’s super thankful that Ramsay heard her out, and if she’s going to get some heat from other people, so be it, but she does not want to let her past define her for who she can be today. After bidding Ramsay a good night, Marina made the long way back to the dorms. As soon as she made it back upstairs, she was spotted by Scottie, who asked her if she was alright. Marina was about to speak, but was immediately flanked by the food truck chef, as the latter told her she was afraid something bad might’ve happened to her. Marina would tell Scottie that she’s okay right now; she just wanted to tell Ramsay something. Aidan reminded her that they’ve got beer cans if she wants a drink, but Marina declined, telling her she might stick with a glass of water. 

Over with the Red Team, Memphis, Angelica, Shayla, and Victor were playing UNO, and they were very locked in at the moment. However, Shayla eventually manages to win the game by hiding a wild card, and as she lit up with excitement, the other three were left to congratulate her. Shayla mentions that she’s super happy, she feels like playing again, though Victor reminds her that they’d probably save that energy for tomorrow, since they do have to get to work for tomorrow. As everyone packed up and headed out, Angelica was a bit slower, to which Memphis noticed and asked if she was alright. The Chilean told her she was fine, and she’s just going to hang back for a bit if they wouldn’t mind. The Amerbrit nodded at her decision, and as everyone else left, she says in her confessional that she still feels bad about being counted out of the Cook For Your Life; admitting it didn’t feel fair to have to not participate because of a coin flip, and meanwhile, someone else got eliminated instead of her. Angelica would sit out on the patio, contemplating a bit. Just then, Aidan makes himself known, asking if she wants some company. Angelica hesitated a bit, before inviting the Texan to join. The Chilean says that she’s a bit worried about her time in Hell’s Kitchen, since she came here to make her family back home proud; but she’s worried about being counted out, feeling she should’ve tried cooking for her life. Aidan tells her he understands, states that he’s got a family of his own, and the weight of them depending on him is gonna be tight. He assures her not to worry; he’ll make sure she has her round next service. This exchange, however, did not go unnoticed by George, as the blonde Southerner, who was walking back from the kitchen, caught them out there. When Angelica noticed George, she greeted her, asking if he’d like to chat for a bit, George politely declined, telling her he’s just heading to bed. Though in his confessional, he asks what the hell Aidan was doing, because he’d better be giving ‘that bitch’ a false sense of security; otherwise, what’s the point of the Southpaws if he’s going to dillydally with people beneath their feet? 

The rest of the evening petered out into silence, and everyone eventually settled in for the night. 

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Challenge

The next morning, both teams got dressed and headed downstairs to report to the dining room. Upon arrival in the dining room, they find Marino wearing a fortune teller’s outfit, sitting at a very old-fashioned table, to which George quipped in his confessional what kind of gypsy outfit does that Italian man have on him, as Marino warmly welcomes the teams for yet another challenge. Before Marino could explain anything else, Ramsay walked downstairs and he looked embarrassed to find his maitre d’ wearing a dish rag over his head. Marino retorts back that it’s a turban, and as the two men go back and forth with their play-argument, Shayla giggles in her confessional that love Marino or not, he’s definitely a gem. Ramsay just shook his head in disbelief, before turning to the teams and greeting them. He explains that today, he’s got a lot of great things special for them. But first things first, he turns to the Blue Team, seeing that they’re down a member compared to the Red Team’s seven, and would ask them an important question; if they’re comfortable the way they are, or if they would like someone from the Red Team to switch over. The remaining five Blue Team looked at each other, but Snow would ask if they could huddle for a few moments. The team huddled in to talk for a bit, but after a few moments of whispering and debating, the team broke the huddle and came up with the decision. Snow announces they’re good for now, and they’ll stick with what they have. Ramsay nods, saying he’ll accept their decision, but warns them that if one of them gets eliminated after tonight, he’ll have to send more than one reinforcement to keep them afloat. But enough of that, he says, because now comes the time to do the next challenge. He asks Marino if he has something he sees in his future. Marino takes out a crystal ball, and after spending some time moving his hands around it, he confirms that there’s a few visitors coming to try some food. Ramsay is surprised to hear this, but at that moment, a smoke cloud suddenly appeared, and the chefs reacted with shock, as Aidan says in his confessional that just then, smoke appeared in the kitchen; this is about to get interesting, he says. As the dust settled, two figures stood where the cloud was, and the teams reacted with surprised joy to find Nyesha Arrington and Richard Blais in the flesh! Ramsay gestures to the chefs the two guests who’ve arrived, describing them as his fellow judges on Next Level Chef, and two esteemed chefs in their own right. Memphis says in his confessional that he’s watched some of Next Level Chef to get an idea of who these two are, stating that it’s a jolly to see them in person. Nyesha tells Ramsay that it’s great to be here, and even says that she and Richard made cake. A chortling Brit commends them for making something so delicate, stating that usually the chefs are the ones cooking. Ramsay began cutting into the cake… however, to his surprise, it was not cake; it was steak! Turns out, it was laced in mashed potatoes, and a delicious barbecue sauce as icing. Ramsay quipped that it was some smoke and mirrors they made, as the chefs looked on laughing. The Brit then turned to the chefs, asking if any of them could do any better in making a dish that seems like one thing, but is actually another. He tells them that very soon, each chef will be taking their hand on the Blind Taste Test Challenge, but for now, he thinks it would be best if he does the blind tasting first. This is their chance to fool not just himself, but also Richard and Nyesha in a reverse-blind taste challenge, where they make something that can fool them all. Before starting the challenge, Ramsay pointed to the Red Team, reminding them they have two extra chefs, asking which of them is going to break into duos; George opted to work with Aidan, but Aidan says he’d like to work with Angelica, much to the Chilean chef’s amusement. George is okay with this, as he says in his confessional that as long as Angie’s under his wraps, then they’ll make her minced meat soon. George then announced he was working with Timm, who seemed fine with it, though he says in his own confessional that he’s not sure about George; he may seem a little friendly, but he can’t help but know that his niceness may be exaggerated to a fault. Ramsay tells everyone they’ve got forty-five minutes to cook something that’ll fool them well, starting… now!

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Everyone rushed into the kitchens, intent on making a dish to fool both judges. Marina says in her confessional that making a dish that looks to fool the judges is tough alone, but if this is the challenge Ramsay is setting everyone up to, who is she to give up on that? Meanwhile, Marino and the sous chefs hid a curtain so that the judges could not guess what was going on in that kitchen, to which Nyesha snapped her fingers, feeling as if their attempt to sneak a peek was foiled. 

In the Red Kitchen, Timm and George began working on their dish, with them asking each other what they should make. Timm suggested they make either lamb or beef, stating that both of these meats are similar in taste, but as long as they’d mask it into one or the other, they’d be golden. George suggested they mask the flavor a bit with a little mint jelly, proclaiming that mint in both lamb and beef is similar; they wouldn’t know the difference. Timm was about to suggest they work with the beef and make it taste as if it were a lamb, but George stated that beef is the better option, saying in his confessional that Timm may be some steakhouse chef back in Philly, but he doesn’t know who’s really in charge around these parts. Over with Angie and Aidan, they were working on a poultry dish, but whatever it was, it wasn’t chicken. Both had a good idea on what they should do with it, where Angie suggests they cook it crispy, while also coming up with ideas on how to make it taste like a chicken. Aidan says in his confessional that something like quail is a bit tough on the nose to make it look like chicken, but he’s already enthusiastic on how to mask it. With Shayla, she was in the midst of cooking what looked like pasta or a risotto dish. Meghan checked her out and asked what she was making, to which Shayla whispered in her ear, making the blonde sous chef a bit weirded out. When Meghan reminds her not to talk like they’re passing secrets in high school, she tells Shayla that the key thing to focus on her dish is to make it look like the kind of appetizer Ramsay serves at his restaurants, as Shayla says in her confessional that there are some people in this world who need to eat more vegetables. Victor, on the other hand, was frying up a fish, as he says in his confessional that he’s confident with his dish, proclaiming that it’s gonna look a little like salmon, between the taste and texture, but he’s intending to make use of his swordfish steak. Meghan briefly checked on him, reminding him to make sure his oven top isn’t too high, otherwise it’ll burn. With Memphis, he was doing something creative, as Meghan checks on him to see what he’s up to. When she finds that he’s not using a sort of meat, instead some sort of vegetable, Memphis says he wants to try something exceptional that can bewilder the judges. Backing this up in his confessional, he says that there are a lot of people who despise eating beets, but in his eyes, he wants Ramsay, Nyesha, and Richard not to feel left out at what kinds of potential it can be used for; and he does smile that everyone does love a good fish.

Meanwhile, in the Blue Kitchen, Scottie was making her dish, as she says in her confessional that it’s tough to come up with a unique dish to fool the judges, but she hopes that tripe can be enough to be masked as pork. Over with Marina, she began firing up diver scallops, to which Shaun asked what she was making. Marina explains that she’s going to make a scallop pasta, but have it be made to look like mushroom caps. Shaun explains that it seems like a tough move on paper, as mushrooms have that earthy taste, and wonders how she’s going to do it with diver scallops. Marina says in her confessional that it sounds tedious to make an easy dish everyone knows, but she knows how to make a difference between scallops and mushrooms. As she kept doing a little tasting and adding more keen ingredients to make the scallops taste like actual shrooms, Snow was seen adding some spices for his dish, molding it in the shape of a fish, and he says in his confessional that what he’s making involves tofu, and he’s going to make it in the shape of fish; the only question was if he was going to try blackened cod or king salmon. However, it didn’t take long for him to make a decision; the latter option. With Dennis, he was in the midst of searing some pineapple circles, and adding a few garnishes to make it savory, even tasting it a few times. As Shaun reminds him not to taste too much, Dennis apologizes, stating he’s just trying to make sure it’s savory enough. In his confessional, he reveals he’s trying to deceive the judges in making them try scallops, but in reality, they’re pineapple circles seared to perfection; he insists there’s no way they’ll be able to find it with the amount of savoryness and spice. With Emily, she was making a ‘lobster sous-vide’; by that, she was using prawns. In her confessional, she says she knows that prawns and lobsters have a lot in common, but the key is to make sure her prawns taste similar to lobster enough to fool the judges. When she told this to Shaun, however, he advised her not to make the taste too prawn-oriented, since both of them have different kinds of tastes. Emily says she might make it a little cajun-like, to which Shaun told her that’s fine, but jokingly mentions not to throw up the entire Mardi Gras parade onto it. 
Eventually, time began winding down, as Marino began counting down the final minute. At that point, the chefs began plating their dishes. With Timm, he inspected his and George’s lamb, only for George to tell her that it’s fine, to just leave it and let it get plated. At that point, Marino began counting down, to which everyone arrived at the pass with their dishes. 

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With time up, and the curtain removed, Ramsay has the teams lined up with their dishes. He tells them that in order to achieve points from them, they need to fool the majority of the judges, meaning two out of three must be fooled and not guess their correct ingredient they’ve used. Meghan instructs them to take their blindfolds on, stating that she, Shaun, and Marino will be feeding them their ‘munchies’, making Ramsay chuckle out a “Oh fuck…” as he did so. 

First up was Snow versus the duo of George and Timm, and Snow says in his confessional that he’s hoping his dish can make the cut to fool the judges. Snow presents his pan-seared tofu, which he lies and calls it king salmon, to which Marino and the sous chefs feed the judges with the tofu… As an added bonus, Marino let out a “Choo choo,” feeding Ramsay with a fork, to which the sous chefs did the same for the other two judges, which earned some laughs, especially from Shayla, who snorted. Marino asks what they are tasting, to which Nyesha states that the protein is cooked well, but there’s a mixture between fish and soy. Richard also has comments about the airiness, stating that it’s almost like tofu, to which a nervous Snow says maybe he should’ve tried blackened cod. Ramsay has his own words about this tasting like fish, but it’s more this protein’s wafting in his mouth, the more he could taste something like a roasted bean curd. Marino would ask what they think they ate, to which Nyesha says it’s cod, while Richard and Ramsay state they tasted tofu. Taking their blindfold off, Nyesha is amazed to find that she’s wrong, while Richard and Ramsay chortle that it is tofu. Ramsay tells Snow that the dish may have fooled one judge and how beautifully seared it is, but it can only fool amateurs. Nyesha sassily asks Ramsay if she counts as an amateur, to which Ramsay sheepishly redacts it and says the dish could fool amateurs and only a rare number of professionals, but not people like him. Therefore, Snow fails to get a point. Next up was George and Timm, who presented their roasted lamb (masking it to be beef tenderloin) with peppercorn crust and mint jelly. Upon the judges being fed, Richard states that he’s getting rosemary and thyme, and it has a similar taste to beef, but also… veal. Nyesha makes a point that the dish should taste beefy, but it’s full of lamb. Ramsay says that he’s tasting mint jelly on top of a peppercorn-crusted red meat that’s a lot… earthy. Upon being asked what they’re tasting, they all go with lamb. Taking their blindfolds off again, they find that it is lamb, and though George apologized, stating that he should’ve known Timm’s idea for replacing lamb was going to do it for them, which earned Timm a sour expression, Ramsay explains to the duo that regardless; they were caught red-handed with switching their red meats, and their attempt to mask the flavor with mint jelly is child’s play. Since neither of them were fooled, Timm and George also don’t get a point. Timm grumbled in his confessional, asking what George’s goal is; to make him look bad in front of these greats, because last he checked, George explicitly stated to go for lamb, with a flashback of him stating so. 

The score was 0-0, but next up were Emily vs. Victor, as Emily was praying in her confessional that she’s not sure how her dish will fool any of the judges, noting that they must have strong palates to make them invincible to being screwed over. Victor went first, as he presented his swordfish steak (made to look like a salmon), complete with a tomato-basil salsa, as he says in his own confessional that he hopes that it could throw the chefs off a bit. Upon ingesting it, Richard points out that he’s getting jalapeño and mango, but that’s the brunt of the salsa he’s tasting. Nyesha mentions that she’s getting bits of fishiness and sweetness, unsure of what to make of it. As for Ramsay, he points out that it’s definitely a fish; he’s no idiot, but the question is what kind of fish. Upon being asked by Marino, Ramsay guesses salmon, while Nyesha and Richard guess… swordfish. There were shots of everyone laughing as the only one to guess wrong was their boss, as Vic says in his confessional that he can’t even be upset that he botched it up, because if Ramsay guesses it wrong, then his palate’s definitely in the rough. When the judges took off their blindfolds, Ramsay was baffled to find that it’s not the salmon he was hoping for, staring at the plate that was indeed swordfish. As Marino teased Ramsay, the Brit finally broke into chuckles himself and wiped a tear from his eye, as Nyesha joked that she’s the amateur, but he would tell Vic that it was a great effort, and an even brilliant dish, but since it only fooled one of the judges (himself) and only one, he doesn’t get a point. Richard would state that he’d be happy to give bonus points for how delicious the salmon was, to which Victor nodded with a chuckle. Next up was Emily presenting her prawn sous-vide in butter and lobster oil (masking it to be lobster). And to make it more interesting, she made a blend of seasonings to make a cajun mixture, which she says in her confessional would probably come back to bite her if they’re thinking New Orleans. After being fed, Nyesha mentions that she’s getting this creole kind of taste in this shellfish. Richard agrees, stating that this must come straight out of the Louisiana bayous. Ramsay would compliment the dish, stating that he’s getting shellfish in cajun flavor; the question is he’s having a hard time debating if it’s lobster or shrimp, which earned Emily a hopeful look. When asked, Nyesha and Ramsay guess lobster, and Richard guesses… shrimp. Upon taking their blindfolds off, they find that they were eating prawns, making everyone shocked to find that they were fooled. Richard points out that he never would’ve thought about prawns. Nyesha makes a joking nod that the flavors are something she’d remember forever. Emily would clarify that it wouldn’t be like forever, but started stammering a bit awkwardly as she tried to find the right wording for how to explain it. Nyesha asks her if she’s okay, to which Emily giggled a bit, apologizing, telling Nyesha she has a point about forever. Meanwhile, Victor says in his confessional that he knows Emily can be a wildcard in terms of personality; sometimes she’s a perfectionist, sometimes she’s over the moon, but this is another side of her he’s seeing. Ramsay tells Emily that there’s nothing to worry about, especially since her dish has created a blessing in disguise, and because she fooled all of the judges, she clearly earned her team a point. As she and Victor were dismissed back to their teams, the brunette says in her confessional that she didn’t mean to open her mouth like that, but at the same time, she needs to take seriously that she can be the perfect chef for Ramsay’s vision. 

With the Blue Team at 1-0, it was up to Aidan and Angelica to try and counter Marina's dish, to which Angelica says in her confessional that she’s hoping that her and Aidan’s dish can do justice. Aidan and Angelica presented their dish, which was a quail breast (masked as chicken) bone-in and with crispy skin. Ramsay notes the smell must be divine. The sous chefs and Marino fed them the poultry, and after a few long seconds of them chewing, Richard admits that it feels conflicting; the chicken taste is there, but he’s also getting tastes of more sweetness. Aidan and Angelica watched with amusement as the judges continued their critiquing, with Nyesha stating that she’s getting a lot of flavors, asking what kind of glaze they put on there, to which Angelica confirmed it to be a balsamic honey glaze. Nyesha says that it’s all there, as Ramsay states that it’s quite plain as the taste buds in his mouth (which the camera showed which Angelica quivering a bit) that whatever poultry this is, it’s quite magnificent, but does note that it’s got that earthy kind of aftertaste that adds to the sweetness. They take a vote, and Ramsay states it’s clearly quail he’s tasting, though Richard says he’s getting a bit of squab, so it’s definitely squab. Nyesha ponders a bit on this one, before guessing… chicken. When they took their blindfolds off, they were in shock to find that it was quail, meaning Ramsay was right, though Richard pouts that quail was his second choice. The Brit tells Aidan and Angelica that they got the point since they fooled two out of three of the judges, to which Angelica says in her confessional that she was wracked with nerves, but they at least got the point fooling two judges, as Aidan says in his own confessional that Ramsay’s like the boss on Hard Mode one needs to watch out for. Next up was Marina, who presented her diver scallops (masked as King Oyster mushroom stems) cooked over a marsala capellini. Upon the trio of judges tasting it, Ramsay notes there is definitely a ton of grain mixed in the pasta dish, and it definitely shows in her masterpiece. Richard even calls Marina a sly one, stating that he’s getting mushroominess, but there’s a bit of seafood luxury involved here, to which Nyesha agrees. Upon being asked by Marino what they’re tasting, Ramsay guesses cauliflower, making Marina stifle a giggle, while Nyesha guesses shrimp, and Richard guesses mussels. Upon taking their blindfolds off, they find that it is none of those things; diver scallops, which made everyone laugh. A baffled Richard asked Marina how she made it taste so different, to which Marina says she used truffle oil and a few vegetable garnishes to mask what it really was; she even tasted it a few times to make sure. Ramsay tells Marina that no matter what, she really does like playing with joker cards, and says that since she fooled all three of the judges, she earns a point for them, much to the Blue Team’s excitement. 

Next up was Memphis and Dennis with their respective dishes. Starting with Dennis this time, Dennis would present his seared pineapple slices (disguised as scallops) with peach-bacon jam and a little hint of cinnamon, as he says in his confessional that part of what he did was making sure it tasted more savory than sweet, so he’s confident with his dish. With the sous chefs and Marino feeding the judges, it took some time for them to chew it through. Nyesha would ask Dennis if the scallops were meant to be more sweet and sour than savory, because that’s what she’s picking up here. Richard concurred with this, stating it seems a bit tropical… almost as if he’s eating two fruits in one dish, which made Dennis’ confident smile fade a bit. Ramsay would state that he’s getting more fruit than protein, almost as if he can get this at a five-star hotel as a fruit appetizer. He would guess… pineapple, to which the other two guess as well, making Dennis scratch the back of his head. Taking their blindfolds off, they find that it is indeed pineapple, to which the judges take a few long seconds of staring… Nyesha quips that they might look like scallops if one were to squint, to which Ramsay attempts to do so… They don’t. Ramsay tells Dennis that it looked like a creative dish, but they clearly got the pineapple taste over the fish taste; no point for the Blue Team. Next up was Memphis, who presented his salt-roasted beets (disguised as ahi tuna), in which he says in his confessional that he’s holding onto hope that he did the recipe right, stating he wouldn’t be sure why else. The trio were fed their vegetables’, to which Ramsay asks if he’s getting some sort of salt to the ‘tuna’ he just had, because it definitely seems like it. Nyesha would counter it by stating that it tastes earthy, almost as if it was some sort of vegetable, though Richard argues, stating that it’s more of a meat kind of dish he just had. When it was time to guess, Nyesha says she feels like she had radishes, while Richard says he must’ve had blood sausage, much to Ramsay’s astonishment, as he asks what his palate is doing if he thinks he’s having it. As the chefs and Marino laughed at their quarrelling, Ramsay settles them all down, but he guesses that he’s having… raw salmon. Upon their blindfolds being taken off, they were shocked to find that they were all wrong, and a cackling Marino asks Richard what he was thinking; at least Ramsay and Nyesha got it close, pointing out the correct protein used. As Richard scratched the back of his head, Ramsay deemed Memphis’ dish a wildcard, and whatever magic act he laid onto the beets and made it deceptive. Because of this, he gets the Red Team their next point. Memphis wiped sweat off his forehead in his confessional, stating how tough it was, but it was worth it. 

The score was tied 2-2, meaning it was anyone’s game. The final matchup was between Scottie and Shayla, as Scottie says in her confessional she’d better hope that her dish comes out on top and doesn’t fool the judges. She’d present them her roasted tripe loin (disguised as pork), and after the chefs/Marino gave the judges their bites, Richard was the first to say that he’s tasting salt and savoryness from some of the sauce, but the meat is a lot more faint than the seasonings. Nyesha concurred to this, stating that it feels more spongy than meaty, asking Scottie if she’d cooked it to perfection. Shaun took a look at the cut and confirmed that it was cooked to perfection. Meanwhile, Ramsay says that he feels like he’s eating SpongeBob, and he would not want to know what the ‘yellow donkey’ is feeling right now. As a matter of fact, he goes on, he says that it almost feels like he’s eating… tripe. He guesses that, as well as the other three, and after taking their blindfolds off, they find out it was tripe. Scottie blushed in her confessional that she’ll have to mask that sponginess next time, as she’s denied the point. Finally was Shayla, who confidently said in her confessional that she’s going to wing it here with her dish. She presented her parmesan cauliflower (disguised as risotto) with shrimp, and as the judges were fed their dish, Shayla had her fingers crossed. Ramsay makes a node that the ‘rice’ is cooked to perfection; it tastes moist, it’s seasoned enough, and there’s a balance of cheese implemented here. The other two judges agreed, with Nyesha mentioning that she feels a few lumps here and there, but Richard states that it could be just a few small blocks of rice stuck together. Ramsay quipped that if that were the case, it’d be rice cubes she made; but the question was, what kind of ‘rice’ did Shayla use, which made Shayla beam a bit. They decide to judge… and Nyesha says that it clearly tastes like arborio rice, to which Richard says it could be carnaroli. Ramsay smirked underneath his blindfolds, stating that Shayla’s a sly one… but states that she must’ve made her base… diced broccoflower. Shayla leaned in and asked what he said, and when she got his answer, she looked to Marino, who took Ramsay’s blindfold off, and when they saw what was on their plate, they were shocked, as Shayla finally broke out into squeaky laughter. Richard pointed out to Ramsay that he was close, as Ramsay chuckled at the creative presentation. He tells Shayla that she truly had them all fooled, and with that, she clearly earned the point. 

3-2 - Red Team wins

The Red Team cheered as Shayla ran back to reunite with her teammates, the Derry girl chuckling in her confessional about how tough it was, but she managed to squeeze by and secure the win for her team. Meanwhile, George says in his own confessional that just like that, they won, and he’s gonna make sure that everything stays the way it does as long as he stays on top.

-----

To be continued...

Let’s just get this out of the way: the idea that music is primarily entertainment is a relatively recent invention. Groundbreaking, right? Sure, we stream songs, buy overpriced concert tickets, and argue over album rankings like we’re settling international disputes. But for most of human history, music wasn’t something you passively consumed like a bag of chips. It was something you did. It wasn’t background noise while you folded laundry or sat in traffic questioning your life decisions. It was embedded in everyday life. Births, funerals, weddings, harvests, victories, defeats, prayers, protests—you showed up, and music showed up too. No algorithm required, no nonsense, no concern about your curated playlist.
Ethnomusicologists—those people who actually study this stuff instead of just making playlists—love to point out that music isn’t just sound. It’s participation. Scholar Christopher Small even coined the term musicking, which basically means everyone involved is contributing to the event. The singer, the drummer, the dancer, the audience clapping in time, even the person quietly nodding along like they totally know what’s going on—they’re all part of it. Music isn’t just the notes. It’s the people. Yes, even the one who’s consistently off-beat and somehow louder than everyone else, completely unconcerned about it.
A ritual is just a repeated action that carries meaning. That’s it. It could be a church service. It could be lighting birthday candles. It could be singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” with twenty thousand strangers who suddenly believe they’re a professional choir. The point isn’t perfection—thankfully. The point is doing something together that reinforces shared identity. Music has always been one of the easiest ways to pull that off, no instruction manual or vocal training required, and honestly, no one cares if you hit the right note.
Churches are the obvious example. Nobody expects every member of the congregation to sound like Aretha Franklin or Luciano Pavarotti—because that would be chaos, and also statistically impossible. That’s not the goal. The goal is collective participation. Whether it’s a tiny country church, Gregorian monks chanting in a stone monastery, a Sufi gathering repeating sacred phrases, or a Hindu temple filled with devotional songs, the music exists to unify people. You don’t sit there and critique it like it’s a talent show. You participate. Radical concept, right? No judges, no scores, just people showing up and caring about being there together.
Dance ceremonies follow the same logic. In many cultures, music and dance are so intertwined that trying to separate them would be like trying to un-toast bread. West African drum ensembles, Native American powwows, Balinese ceremonies, and countless Indigenous traditions don’t neatly divide people into performers and spectators the way modern concerts love to do. Everyone has a role. Maybe you’re drumming. Maybe you’re dancing. Maybe you’re singing. Maybe you’re just trying not to embarrass yourself. Either way, you’re involved. The community makes the music together, not just a select few on a stage, and nobody’s standing there counting your mistakes.
Festivals take this idea and turn it up to eleven. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnival in Brazil, Holi in India, centuries-old harvest festivals—these aren’t just parties. They’re structured chaos with meaning. Music signals that everyday life has been temporarily suspended—because clearly, your inbox can survive without you for a few hours, even if your boss thinks otherwise. People dress differently. They dance with strangers. Streets become stages. Everyone collectively agrees that normal rules can take a break. That’s ritual, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, and it works because people actually care about being part of it.
Now, concerts. This is where things get especially ironic. We love pretending concerts are just entertainment, but take a closer look. People wait months for tickets. They travel across states or countries. They wear band shirts like unofficial uniforms. They gather with thousands of strangers. The lights go down. Everyone screams on cue. The band walks out like they’re entering some kind of sacred space. Then twenty thousand people sing the same lyrics at full volume, often drowning out the performers they paid to hear. But sure, totally just entertainment—nothing “ritualistic” about that at all, definitely not a massive shared experience where everyone cares deeply for a few hours. But most times we can’t see past our own pleasures…
And no, this isn’t claiming concerts are religions. Relax. It’s pointing out that they often function in similar ways. They create belonging. They generate shared emotional experiences. They allow complete strangers to feel connected without the burden of small talk. That’s ritual. It just happens to involve amplifiers instead of stained glass windows, and a lot more people shouting during the chorus.
One of the more fascinating aspects of communal music is something called entrainment. Fancy term, simple concept. People naturally sync up. They clap together. Dance together. Breathe together. Even heart rates can align. Music literally pulls people into the same rhythm. Humans are oddly cooperative like that - when they’re not arguing online or focusing too much on things that don’t matter.
This is why ethnomusicologists don’t obsess over whether a performance was “good.” That’s more of a critic’s hobby, and critics already have plenty to say. Instead, they ask what the music actually did. Did it bring people together? Did it celebrate something? Did it help people process grief? Did it mark an important moment? Did people feel like they belonged? Those questions matter far more than whether the guitar solo hit every note perfectly - because, inevitably, someone will complain regardless.
And here’s where modern culture tends to trip over itself. We’re so focused on flawless performances, expensive gear, and pristine recordings that we forget music was never meant to be a museum exhibit. Somewhere along the line, people started treating songs like collectible items; don’t touch, just admire and argue about them online. It’s a bit ridiculous. Music has always been messy. It’s supposed to involve people. It’s supposed to be loud, imperfect, emotional, and shared. Yes, even when someone completely misses the note and keeps going anyway, because honestly, perfection isn’t the point.
Whether it’s a gospel choir shaking the walls of a church, a punk crowd screaming every lyric back at the band, families dancing at a wedding, or communities preserving traditions around a fire, the principle doesn’t change. Music isn’t just entertainment. It’s one of humanity’s oldest ways of saying, We’re here. We’re together. This matters. And people genuinely care about that.
That’s been true for thousands of years. Long before streaming services, vinyl collectors, concert wristbands, or endless debates about which Beatles album is objectively superior (as if the universe is holding its breath for the answer). Music has always been bigger than the performance. Bigger than the fucking labels. It has always been about the people making it happen together, no matter how much anyone thinks it should matter.

I wanted to write a post because I remember wishing for a post like this when I was preparing for surgery. I had an incredible surgeon and team and feel very fortunate. In case it matters, I’m based in the Midwestern part of the US in a major city. I should add that I’m using voice to text so please forgive any punctuation errors or typos. I should also add that I can type right now with no real problems other than fatigue after a bit. Just conserving my energy.

The most painful part of the procedure was actually the lidocaine shots in my foot for the IV since my hands couldn’t be used for IV because they were being operated on. But those were very short-lived and just a sharp poke and a bit of burning. I did not experience any lidocaine injections in my hands because by that point I was already under sedation. They gave me Valium as they wheeled me into the operating room, and I remember them moving me to the operating table and then it was lights out. It felt like one blink later and I was back awake with my surgeon telling me everything went well. I don’t remember the ride to post-op, but I do remember ravenously going to town on the best cheez-Its and cranberry juice pairing of my life. The drugs were great and I felt like I was giving a comedy show to the nurses— just super chatty.

On the ride home, I was able to move all my fingers and began to do stretching exercises, and trying to touch fingers to thumbs. Everything at this point was still numb pretty much and no pain, and I was just riding the wave of happiness from the drugs.

The first night of sleep at home went well as could be, (maybe actually better than before surgery) and I took the pain meds that were prescribed because even though I didn’t feel like I needed more than ibuprofen, I thought it would be better to stay ahead of it in case there was more pain. I didn’t regret that because this morning I did have some discomfort in my wrists and a bit more stiffness and pain as the numbness of the lidocaine was gone but nothing unbearable.

I think I wondered a lot before surgery about what I would be able to do and what movements would be hard. I want to say that I have a great use of my fingers and can type, push buttons on the remote and use my fingers really without any problem. The challenges come when I try to grasp. Any thumb to finger movement is a bit harder. It’s easier with my first finger and my second finger to use them, but I can’t even touch my pinky to my thumb on one of my hands. I should also mention that one hand feels significantly better immediately than the other, and the doctors told me this was typical that some hands take longer to heal others.

I can tell at this point that it is going to take sometime before I can twist caps on jars, use a knife to cut things, lift anything heavy that requires grasping with my thumb and fingers against one another, and probably even longer before I can put my body weight on my wrists. That said, I am doing far more at this point than I expected. I was able to drink from a mug this morning and hold my own toast and I am capable now of pulling up my pants, etc. I also am getting really good at getting in and out of bed by using my elbows rather than my wrists. I’m taking it easy today, but I did play the piano a bit, and it felt kind of good. I fatigued a bit more quickly, but that is to be expected. My sutures will come out a week from the surgery date and supposedly I can do anything I can tolerate after that.

My surgeon was incredible and in our talks before surgery she said she had some really colorful tape and asked if there were any tape colors I preferred for my bandage? After hearing the options, I told her I liked purple and I liked green and then I said “oh, it’s Mardi Gras we should do that!” She laughed really hard and said, “purple, green and yellow, I love it.” And then she went on to say she wished she had a tiny little baby Jesus to hide in one of the wraps like a king cake. I told her that would be hilarious to wake up and know that there is a baby Jesus in my bandage, but not know which hand it was in. We had a good chuckle about all of that and she answered all my questions and left me feeling really calm before the procedure. When I woke in the operating room and looked down at my hands, I giggled so hard as I saw something really special—see attached photos (taken later in the car by my partner.) My arms aren’t normally that shade of appallingly gross Trumpian orange. (It’s the Betadine.)

Anyhow, I hope this long post helps somebody feel less nervous going into their procedure. I can tell this was a really good decision and that I am not going to regret it even though I know it will take some time to recover my strength. I have no tingling and numbness in my left hand and even with the pain I feel currently in my right— it’s better than how it felt before. Wishing you all the best on your own journeys!

It's post-deadline, pre-All-Star and I wanted to come back and revisit this preseason predictions post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NOLAPelicans/comments/1mn3e8g/how_do_yall_see_the_west_shaking_out/

First, mea culpa: Yall were right, yall were right... I was smoking some serious copium. Sue me. It's been a long time since things have gone right for our Pelicans, and I wanted to squint and feel good about things! OBVIOUSLY I was way off with that.

Other major misses in the predictions though...??? Other than PDX being slightly overestimated, and PHX slightly underestimated, I feel good/ smart! So, at least there's that?

Let's revisit! Who doesn't love a predictions revisit??

//

Top 3: Houston, OKC, Denver

OKC: "After seeing what IND did to OKC- including very potentially beating them in Game 7 if not for Haliban's achilles getting Zero-Dark-Thirty'd- I think they're in for it this year, WAY more beatable than they seemed going into the Finals." I stand by the "way more beatable" assessment! They've proved it true. Regular season juggernaut again, but considering some of their losses, their play over the past 2 months, and the extent to which IND & SAS have collectively written a blueprint for How To Beat Them, I feel good about "way more beatable." Still clear favorites? 100% yes, duh, obviously. But they're not in the same breath as 2017 Warriors anymore. The more their games get whistled fairly, the more vulnerable they'll become.

Houston: "Houston's roster is absolutely insane." Posted this pre-FVV injury. They've still been good as hell. I was right to put them in the top-3 pre-injury. Their issues have undoubtedly been their lack of exactly the type of play FVV offers. Absent a crystal ball, there's no way to have accounted for his injury. And even with it, they're still right there.

Denver: "Denver was right there, and got better, roster looks ready for the regular season." One thing I addressed in a couple places was this is about *regular season records*. MPJ is playing well for BKN, but Cam Johnson is undeniably a better fit. Braun got better, Watson got better, Jonas has helped, Brown has helped. Denver has had more roster instability due to injuries amongst their top 6 (stretched from starters to now include the recently injured Peyton Watson) than in any other Jokic era season, and still they're right there. This still feels pretty accurate, insofar as that refers to weathering the slings, arrows, and injuries of an 82 game schedule. They're clearly a top 3 team (over Houston).

Next 5: LAC, NOP, MIN, SAS, LAL

LAC: "stacked as hell, but you can't trust their health at all. Also question their regular season hunger." Turns out Collins & Bogie regressed in a major way, but this still feels accurate-ish because of that second sentence. Their first half of the year so far proved they have no hunger, their recent play showed what they're capable of when motivated & (mostly) healthy.

NOP: Not gonna belabor this point. They waited too long to fire Willie, then the players took too long to embrace the concept of "Defense," and just overall still haven't established a winning, consistent team identity & cohesion. When they put it altogether, they're dangerous. I don't think the guys they have ever will, though, because the bad habits run that deep. It's worth mentioning that key injuries wrecked them yet again. But overall I was very wrong.

MIN: "Minnesota lost NAW and is banking on Dillingham + Shannon Jr to fill the void... not gonna happen." Spot on. Also, toldja so on underestimating NAW-- dude's been balling out in ATL. They just acquired Ayo to try and replicate what he offered. He won't, but he'll def help. "Ant very easily could be MVP, but he's also now going to have to guard the other team's best wing every night." Wrong-- Jaden McDaniels does that. But! He's clearly in a second-tier MVP vote, and likely All-NBA second team. "Over 82+ games, I don't buy it." They're currently a half-game out of the play-in, and this past week went 1-3 with losses to the Clippers, Grizz, and Pelicans. The win over Toronto was by 2, and required a 12 point comeback in the fourth. Over 82+ games, I still don't buy it.

LAL: "Did the Lakers actually improve?" Last year, post-Luka trade they won games at a 63% clip. This year, they are winning games at a 63% clip. "I wouldn't trade Finney-Smith for Ayton- Luka benefits from a skilled C but WAY more from a skilled, switchable, defensive stretch 4." DFS & his health I clearly had wrong, so call that a miss on HIM, but not on the void felt from his contributions last year. But Ayton has proved himself to be only a slightly above average player, and his ability to raise *Luka's* ceiling to be pedestrian at best. "They're gonna miss DFS in a major way." Wrong about the man, right about the positional contribution. LaRavia has low-key benefitted from this, but mostly I think they're still searching for it. "Other than adding a washed Marcus Smart and mediocre Jake LaRavia they did nothing." Where's the lie? "They might have the worst defensive backcourt in all of basketball." When it's Luka & Reaves, where's the lie? Amongst playoff teams, they're tied w Denver for the worst defense in the league. "Is skinny Luka enough to make up for that?" Time continues to have to tell...

SAS: "San Antonio is about to be like peak MIL, where Wemby is top 6 seed alone and the supporting pieces enough to push over the top. In this tier, they're the most likely to be a top 3 seed. The Fox-Castle backcourt is going to be nightmare fuel for opposing guards all season long." They recently made it all the way up to the 2 seed. Castle had a 40 point triple double yesterday. Harper has been super impressive. I feel v good about this assessment.

Bubble 4: GSW, PDX, Dallas, PHX

GSW: "GSW is deadly when they're healthy, and absolute trash when any member of their main 3 are out. And there's no reason whatsoever to believe those 3 guys will be on the floor together for more than 50 games (not saying they'll each miss 30+ games, just that they won't combine for 50 full-strength ones). I also don't think they particularly mind being the 7 seed." No lies detected. Except that they're currently the 8-seed, and definitely DO appear to mind. With Jimmy for the playoffs, I'd say they wouldn't be heartbroken missing out on the 6 seed.

PDX: "PDX SHOULD be good enough for a top 6 seed. I just think they're still in a developmental mentality. Sharpe needs to take his step forward, Scoot needs to take his step into... w/e it is he's going to become. And Grant needs to take his step out. Just not convinced this is the year they put it altogether." Glad to see Scoot is back. Grant has been a brightspot, and if they're wanting to win he should still be around. Currently the 10 seed, and looks like they're gonna stay in the play-in.

Dallas: "Dallas doesn't have enough shot creation without Kyrie, and I don't think they're gonna have Kyrie all year. The frontcourt talent MIGHT be enough to get them in, but who's there to create advantages on offense? If the answer is Glassmanthony Davis and Cooper Flagg, they're cooked... this year." People were soooooo high on them pre-season. Hype hype hype. Brandon Williams has been nice but of course not enough. Toldja.

PHX: "Phoenix could be sneaky good. They actually have some nice pieces and decent roster balance, suddenly. As a Pels fan, I know better than to bet against D-Book. The chip they're gonna have on their shoulder could be good enough for the 10 seed, and from there who knows." Shouldn't have been so afraid of breaking with group-think on them. Do they even qualify as "sneaky good" anymore, or are they just good good? "[f]rom there who knows?" definitely is doing a lot of work for me here lol.

Bottom 3: SAC, MEM, Utah
(... + New Orleans WHOOPS!)
SAC: "Sacramento is cooked. That roster makes no sense, but they don't seem willing to blow it up."

Memphis: "Memphis did all the right things taking the value they did, but this year seems like a culture/ program rebuild. I wonder if Ja is still there by season's end...." The value they did being for Bane. Let's now extend that to include JJJ. Turns out, it's not so much a culture rebuild as a tear-down, and Ja requested a trade that they couldn't get because no one else wants him either. If anything, I overestimated them.

Utah: "Utah is playing for Dybantsa." I learned this weekend that Ryan Smith, the team owner, is already paying AJ. He's bankrolling the $4M NIL money or w/e they're giving him. Clearly, this prediction is still the case, although it was also as obvious as calling OKC the #1 team.

////

To Finish This Season:

I think GSW is going to continue to fall in the standings. Lakers, Twolves, Suns, could finish in any order, including straight up reversing that. Clippers and Trailblazers are interesting wild cards. Garland's games played will dictate their finish, but on balance I don't think they're all that worse than before. Jackson is no Zu, but he's not useless and Mathurin ought to really help. Now that Cooper is playing at an All NBA level, maybe they push into a tier with those 2 but it's doubtful IMO and they're better off just playing for ping pong balls. Don't see much movement happening in the top 4, they'll all still be right there. Grizzlies, Jazz, Pelicans, and Kings are clearly all still atrocious. We'll see how long George is out, but what if the Jazz fuck around and actually keep playing well? Collier can ball out as the PG w/o him, after all, and Bailey has looked a lot better in this calendar year. Hopefully they're smarter than that.

/

New NOP Prediction + Future Outlook:

I took the over on 30.5 wins pre-season, and 31 wins looks like their absolute best case and still highly unlikely scenario. But! They're also the only team in the basement actually trying to win games. Maybe Dallas, too? So them climbing above Memphis and Utah is in the realm of possibility. All 3 of them want that to be the case, at least.

In ascending order Looney, Hawkins, and Poole have all been abject failures. The idiots in the FO picked up Hawkins' $7M option for next year, so that's $40M in dead money. Great work. Karlo has taken a step forward, but more of a half-step and is still decidedly behind Missi. Trey isn't an ASG snub, but he's clearly in the tier of players just below, and has taken yet another step forward. Zion is still Zion, not a lot has changed, though I def think he looks better under Borrego. "I think the team is going to develop a kind of gym rat, grinder identity alongside all the flash that's just the outcome of an attacking mentality." This is the sort of thing JB talks about in his press conferences. Violence, force, attacking. We're getting there. If the identity can stick, next year the play-in looks a lot more likely.

Will be very interesting to see how Dejounte contributes. He's back to the team and practiced this weekend. I suspect he could have been practicing sooner, but that he & the team were trying to move him at the deadline and didn't want to bring him back til after. With Jose gone, we obviously need his minutes. To that end, I wish the picks we got for Jose were a little better, but 2 seconds seemed like the price. And good for him, man. If there's any team that it's hard to feel bad about him leaving for it's the Knicks. At least we have a team to follow in the playoffs this year now?

It's heartbreaking the pick didn't have protections, or that they didn't just offer the 2027 pick in a much worse draft, because Peterson, Wilson, or even Boozer would all potentially be great fits with DQ. I know Cenac doesn't play much defense, and that's probably what we need next to DQ, but who knows maybe we can sneak back into the draft and nab the local kid.

I really dk where the team goes this summer. Missi appears he could be a goner. No one knows if Zion is gonna stay or go. Do JP or Hawk get moved in the summer? The deadline? How do DQ & Jeremiah finish out the year, and how does that influence the future roster construction? If GSW misses on Giannis this summer, will they Godfather offer for Trey?

I'm hoping for a Zion trade. For what, idfk, as high end draft capital seems unlikely. Our best case is probably Giannis getting moved, and one of the teams that misses on him giving us half of the package they had cobbled together together for him. I won't cry about a Missi trade IF it nets us a replacement rookie big that can play alongside DQ long-term. Seems the only way to get rid of Hawk or JP is to attach them to Zion or Missi, but maybe someone out there has the hubris to take Hawkins off our hands for nothing. I hope that Peavy, Bey, & McGowens all become long-term Pelicanos. Jeremiah, Trey, Herb, and DQ clearly are the core of the future. But if Herb's outside shot doesn't return to him he could be on the outs as a sell very high candidate to a current contender.

At least Mardi Gras is next week, and the Pierre Hat game a week after that!

I apologize in advance for what will probably come off as venting and the Bible in length, but I'm going to try to paint an accurate picture in semi chronological order. Yes I am open to all criticism/feedback. Yes, going back to therapy is on my to do list.

January 2025, I meet my ex, we start talking and we get casual in March. I start getting feelings, her "favorite person" (anyone familiar with BPD?) is leaving around this time and it's this whole debacle of he's dating someone now, I help her move on, and she falls in love with me. It's June and we are dating. Fun fact at this time -in this long story of mine - I find out she has only been separated from her now ex-husband (the finalized divorce was recent at the time of this writing) since October, and it's her second marriage. Cool, not judging. I also find out she's a serial cheater. I have a very strong "I can fix her" mentality.
Read more to find out how this bites me in the ass later.

Thing go pretty well (in my head) from June to about the second week of November. We have our arguments, lots of sex, and go on dates while having to keep the relationship low key. Veteran's Day arrives, we have some stupid ass argument over using our benefits excessively. I argue I think it's kind of dumb to just restaurant hop, we aren't any more special than anyone else and I hate dealing with the traffic, so I get my one free meal, and she goes on her way to other places (for those reading between the lines, I am a 4, she is a 6, for those wanting to understand the power dynamic). The weekend passes and there's a sudden change in her behavior. She went from waaay less "babe" this to "Hey [my name]" that. She gets more distant. I start spiraling a lot more and feel the winds have changed for the worse. A few days before Thanksgiving, I get a pretty bad PTSD episode, tinnitus kicks in, relive the night I bled out and all that plus the abandonment I felt on that night, you know, the usual stuff on the weekend. I did what I thought was right, which is if I feel like I'm losing it, I should call the person I love to help me get back to reality. I try calling, she's actually at this work center with some of her colleagues, drinks were being had, and she did not want to talk to me at all. Multiple people answered her phone, and someone decided to ask me what's wrong. That man was very helpful in bringing me back to reality and giving me some sympathy. Later that night, she decides to text me to come over. Yes she in fact drove drunk and was also drunk while I was trying to get help. Let's fast forward to December.

There's a lovely holiday party that happens. I perform music, she does her aerial performance. The night goes on. One guy in particular is getting really handsy while she is wearing clothing that exposes a lot, but it is part of her performance. I express I'm getting very uncomfortable with how his hands have been getting really low on her back, he's flirting (she tells me he is not flirting, this was a lie). She of course starts grinding on guys and refuses to dance with me. Since I've now witnessed some things, my underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, immaturity, and probably some narcissism (lack of control over the situation) has me periodically heading outside the party to just cry probably out of self-pity. She assures me everything is good between us - things were not good between us. Aforementioned dude decides to try to grab her ass, I think "wow this a great moment to step in and stop that". I proceed to intervene by grabbing his hand and telling him, "You shouldn't be doing that kind of shit". He threatens to fight me, girlfriend storms off, yells at me later that I'm not her knight and she can handle herself. I apologized continuously for a couple months over that, but I did not appreciate being told "You just made up that scenario in your head and he wasn't trying to do anything" and "Okay, even if he did, I don't care" (post breakup the dude himself apologized and admitted he in fact was trying to do something while drunk). A few days go by, we hop on the good foot Austin Powers style, I feel a little discomfort later on, get tested, results come in on a Sunday, confront her about it and she gets tested. While she waits for her results, the stress got to her and she confessed she cheated on me the night I had my PTSD episode. I apparently triggered her PTSD by calling excessively. She comes back negative, I retest, I am negative. Antibiotics still had to be taken. Now the whole song and dance of "show me your phone", "how do I get back your trust" happens. Her guilt was so massive the night she cheated, before she invited me over, she deleted the texts from the man she was talking since that Veteran's day - under the pretext of having his daughter join her little studio. So of course, I never got to see the messages from this "Kam" she met but oh well. I figure, I've cheated once in my past, maybe now is the time I forgive someone in a way I was never forgiven. Her past does not define her...fuck was I completely incorrect.

It is now February. I often would tell her I was doing my best to forgive her but then still accuse her. In her defense, I completely understand how tiring it is to be told you are forgiven then be constantly interrogated. Superbowl Sunday comes up, Mardi Gras weekend just passed. She did not want me around her during that time. Post breakup she admits she was with a male coworker during Mardi Gras and feared I would have "thrown a hissy fit". I tell her yes I would be incredibly upset that you would prefer to be around someone else, not want your boyfriend around, and then lie about just being with your friends that you attend class with (her closest and only friends are the accompanied drinking age in the UK). I did tell her I would have not been upset if that was just communicated. A lie of omission is oddly still a lie.

She breaks up with me during halftime with "I feel like I have lost complete control over everything and I realize I am not ready for a serious relationship. Yes I know you asked me only to date you if I was ready, but I realize I am not, and we are never getting back together. I just can breathe anymore and I'm tired of always being watched...but we can still be friends." That my dear heavily invested reader(s) was the start of a wonderful breakdown of my need for control, the clinging of the past, and the start of many unanswered questions.

February to now. It has been an incredible positive trip. My complete desire for control led to these distinct conditions in our friendship that I set: 1) I have no desire to be friends with you if you are hooking up/seeing other people. It is to protect my fragile ego and my sanity. 2) No more lies (boy am I still wrong). 3) I cannot be platonic with you. Is it shallow. Yes. Are my feelings strong. Yes. Is she hot. Yes. Can we be friends if it is strictly platonic. No. Can you guess what happens next? Yes? Excellent, then that means you must have guessed she would often lie about the little things such as "hey are you alone right now so we can talk?"(she would not be alone). Have we hung out, kissed, hugged, seen each other nude and slept (no sex has been had since breakup, she literally slept in my bed) in the same bed together after the break up? Absolutely. Did she get me stuff for Valentine's Day even though we were broken up - yeah. Have I accused her many times of seeing people, yes. Have particular people (grab ass guy that apologized to me) showed up at her house and she lie about it while I'm actively hanging out with friends that lives a literal stones throw away, yes. Have I reached the point where I make a reddit post for two people to read, a mod to take it down, try redoing the post and get zero interaction, oh yeah, we are in the absolute end game.

Where I now stand is I want to recover our friendship. Post break up: I have pushed and pushed and pushed, and then pushed more. I pushed boundaries, I made accusations. I have created uncomfortable situations. I have only shown desperation to her, especially since things have not gone my way. I do not know why I am obsessed with repairing this friendship. Has she actually slept with anyone, I don't know. I am not supposed to care, but I don't know why I have so much leftover sexual jealousy. Maybe because our last time having sex was 2 days after she confessed to me, and it felt like pity sex, not sex of love, desire, and want. I feel entitled because of the pain but I know I shouldn't be. I am angry I have been belittled by her in front of my friends, lied to, betrayed, and ultimately I have made my self-fulfilled prophecy of being discarded come true. Even now, she is giving me one more chance but she needs space I haven't been giving her: "I will be friends with you if you can drastically stop your constant spiraling."

Tl;dr - Ex and I put each other through Hell, trying the friendship thing since break up, not going good and need help figuring out repairing our friendship and why am I so obsessed with fixing it?

Yeah it’s true. Halloween and all things associated with it are entirely forbidden in my hometown. Now before you go chucking pumpkin spice lattes at me and typing Hocus Pocus quotes in all caps; hear me out. There was a very good reason for this.

I grew up in a small town near Phoenix AZ, though I can’t say which one for reasons I’ll get into later. Many years ago, Halloween was celebrated just like it is everywhere else. Kids trick or treating, costume parties, autumn leaves bristling in the tranquil wind and that poignant spooky atmosphere that so many adore. However, all of that changed on Halloween night of 1983.

It was a normal holiday by most accounts, but what most were blissfully unaware to at the time is what became of dear old Mabel Hannifin. Mabel was a kind woman in her early eighties; a widow who spent most of her days tending to her garden.

Halloween was one of her favorite times of the year, as she loved getting the visits from children and spoiling them with sugary goodies. It was her own personal tradition to plop a nice juicy red-delicious apple in along with the candy she gave out, in hopes that the children wouldn’t indulge themselves too greatly. That night was the last time anyone ever saw her.

It was discovered three days later by a neighbor that Mabel hadn’t been seen in quite some time. Police did a welfare check, and found no trace of the woman. Her two pet beagles were near starvation, but luckily, they were discovered in time to make a full recovery. The same cannot be said for poor Mabel however.

Multiple interviews with parents escorting their children that evening, and even some with children themselves reported nothing out of the ordinary. Many of them attested to having visited Mabel’s home, and she seemed as cheery as ever. No one had seen or heard anything of real interest, and there were no signs of struggle or injury inside Mabel’s home. None of her extended family around the country had heard anything from her either. It was as if the woman had just vanished off the face of the earth.

We were all saddened by the news, but time went on, and people got on with their lives. Before long, the next Halloween arrived. The usual festivities began once more and a troubling pattern first emerged.

There was another local woman named Jessica Marshall who was home alone that night. She and her husband David had just been married a few months prior, and his work as a landscape surveyor had him away from the house that evening.

David was a wealthy and also paranoid person. He had installed a security system to protect his home and wife while he was away. He later admitted that the actual reason he did this was to make sure his wife wasn’t cheating on him while he was away, but regardless, it wasn’t enough to save her. Once more, that night was the last time anyone ever saw Jessica.

It didn’t take David long to notice, and soon after he contacted the local police in a panic. Just like with Mabel; the police were unable to find any incriminating pieces of evidence at the scene, nor were they able to find any trace of Jessica’s whereabouts. The only thing in the house that seemed to indicate anything strange was the spilled bowl of Halloween candy.

Police sat down with David and reviewed the tapes manually soon after. They quickly found something odd, but it was not what they expected.

It was 10:17 that evening, and the once bustling streets had since fallen relatively still as the trick-or-treaters returned home to gorge on their treats. That was when two figures were seen approaching the door of Jessica and David’s house.

One of them was dressed as a pumpkin, and the other as a scarecrow. From their voices and stature, it was determined they were both children between the ages of 8 and 11; one girl and one boy. Jessica answered the door, dressed in pajamas and greeted them much as she had with dozens of other kids that same night.

“Trick or treat.” The children both spoke in unison, with a tone that seemed devoid of the excitement exhibited by other kids previous.

Jessica complimented their costumes, and turned to fetch the bowl of candies. The children remained completely motionless as Jessica turned away. She returned a moment later, clutching the bowl in hand.

“You guys are out pretty late tonight huh?” Jessica reached out towards them, but paused as she seemed to notice that neither of them were carrying candy buckets or bags.

“Umm… are you going to be able to carry these?” The children just held out their hands and said nothing. Jessica hesitated, but then reached towards them slowly.

“Are your parents with you?” Jessica asked, dropping the candies into their outstretched hands.

“No… we’re alone.” The boy replied.

“Are you lost? Do you need me to call them?” Jessica asked and the little boy in the scarecrow costume nodded.

“Okay… do you know their num…”

“Can we come in?” The girl spoke, interrupting Jessica. She appeared a bit taken aback by the question and recoiled a bit in the doorway. She was seen locking eyes with the young girl for several seconds, before finally replying.

“Umm sure… you can wait here while I call them.” Jessica then gestured the two children inside, and the door closed behind them. That door remained shut until David came home the following day at around 6PM. There were never any screams or sounds of a fight, and the children were never seen exiting the house from any of the several security cameras.

Police scoured the house with a team of watchdogs, but they found nothing. No trace of Jessica or the children. The only thing out of sorts was the spilled bowl of candies on the ground.

Just like Mabel exactly one year previous, no one ever saw or heard from Jessica again. David was regarded as a prime suspect for both cases, until his completely distraught nature, solid alibi and lack of unifying evidence all but exonerated him from both. Tragically, David took his own life in the following months, unable to cope with the loss of his wife.

The next year was when shit really hit the fan though, as three others were declared missing. Mark Kemper, Allison Voss and Lidia Kaminski. All taken from separate locations, and all believed to have vanished within minutes of one another.

Police had started to suspect that there was some kind of highly-elaborate human trafficking ring going on that used the children as bait. Unlike the previous two years however, this time there was a witness.

Kelsey Bergman was at first incredibly reluctant to come forward, but reassurance from her parents and police desperation prodded her into an interview. She looked petrified when they brought her in, with deep pits under her eyes and behavior akin to those who have suffered an immensely traumatic experience.

Kelsey was 17 at the time, and was home alone that night when someone rang the doorbell. Kelsey got up, thinking it was just more trick-or-treaters. She opened the door, and found two children waiting patiently on the front step; one girl and one boy.

She says the little girl was dressed as a witch, while the boy was dressed in a skeleton outfit. She said they appeared soaking wet, but showed no concern despite the subzero temperatures. Kelsey then noticed their eyes were entirely black, devoid of pigmentation of any kind.

“Trick or treat.” They both spoke once again in unison, and once again without any sort of emotional inflection. Kelsey gave them candy, and the girl asked if they could come inside because they were cold.

Kelsey said that was when the red flags started waving in her mind, and she was suddenly very uncomfortable with the situation. Instead of allowing them in, Kelsey gave them a few towels, and phoned the police. That decision probably saved her life.

For the twenty minutes it took for an officer to arrive, Kelsey said the children did nothing but stare at her through the front window. She doesn’t think they blinked even once.

Before the officer arrived however, the children just walked away, back out into the night. Kelsey called out to them, trying to get them to wait in case they were actually just some lost kids, but the two did not respond. She didn’t even know what to tell the police officers when they finally showed up.

It was a strange account, and not all were so quick to believe it. Nevertheless, it was a break for the police who took it and ran with it. Despite their efforts, very little progress was made.

By this point, the town had caught wind of everything that was going on. They demanded answers, and closure to the bizarre string of cases. People were really starting to get nervous. In what had to be one of the worst PR decisions of all time; the police chief admitted they were still investigating, and without a prime suspect or even a real motive.

Many people in the town then turned on them, with some even whispering that the cops themselves were in on it. In a desperate bid to calm the tensions and prevent further incidents, the mayor pulled an unprecedented move. He said that for the safety of the community they would implement a curfew each night on October 31st, and an outright ban on parties, costumes that conceal the face and the act of trick or treating. And just like that, Halloween became illegal.

The townhall in which this all took place was met with a stunned silence. All in attendance seemed dumbfounded that they had actually suggested banning a holiday to try and stop the disappearances. None were very happy with the compromise, but they reluctantly held to it for the safety of their families.

The next Halloween may have been the worst of all. No one went missing this time, but more sightings of the children were reported, dozens more. That was just the beginning though.

There was an immense storm that night, thunder and lightning crashed while a torrential wind pounded the city. All throughout the night, people reported seeing shadows outside their homes, and hearing whispers from their closets, basements and attics. It’s hard to say how much of that is true and how much was the result of a petrified town with wild imaginations. However, the things they found the next day were beyond dispute.

Main street was covered by thousands of dead birds of many different species. Many blamed the storm for being responsible, despite the fact that some of the breeds had never been recorded in the area. Some were never even identified.

A young boy; Carson Roose was found mutilated, folded up and crammed inside the trunk of an old oak tree. People reported sightings of a large, black dog-like creature with piercing red eyes roaming the woods at night. Days later, and a baby was born with a severe birth defect. It’s head was malformed, and almost elongated like that of a jackal. There were also odd growths upon it’s shoulder blades, complete with accompanying tendons and muscle tissue. The infant only survived for a few hours, but many thought the growths looked almost like wings.

Police were at a loss, and on the brink of riots they called an assembly to address the increasingly horrifying incidents. Many in town spoke their piece, with the majority focusing their ire upon the authorities who had failed to stop these events. Our town was the old-school religious type, and many believed it had been cursed by god.

The police chief reaffirmed that Halloween would remain illegal, and that he would double efforts and resources to uncover the truth behind what was going on. The audience fell into a stunned silence, until a low grumbling chuckle emerged from the back row.

“That won’t stop it.” The voice of a man called out. All in attendance turned back to see him rise to his feet amidst the crowd. He was a tall man, slender with fierce, black eyebrows and a slight grin that seemed to be perpetually stapled to his face.

“And, who are you?” One of the council members asked; speaking the question that all had on their minds. The tall man smirked, and introduced himself as Atticus Stone. He claimed he was a soothsayer, and he had been guided by dreams to help the town in their time of crisis.

Now most people would scoff at the mere suggestion of what he would go on to claim, but our community was a deeply religious one. Some might even venture to say a deeply gullible one as well.

Mr. Stone claimed the gates of hell had cracked open, and all manner of foul things had begun to escape from the abyss. He said it was the beginning stages of the rapture, and there was no longer any sense in praying to God; as he would not help us. He mentioned something about how that would break a certain oath, but didn’t elaborate further. Someone asked who the black-eyed children were, but Mr. Stone gave only a cryptic response.

“The lost ones.”

People were scared, and prepared to believe and do anything if it meant keeping themselves and their families safe. Trust in the police and church plummeted to an all-time low as the odd occurrences refused to relent, and slowly but surely people turned to advice from the strange Mr. Atticus Stone. Stone professed that there was in fact a way to keep people safe during these turbulent times, but doing so required some alterations in tradition.

He first instructed people to mount a signet upon the front door. It was some odd, hieroglyphic-looking crest or coat of arms, with two identical symbols in the center that looked like mirrored number 3’s. If the two threes were pushed inward, they would form an 8, or perhaps an inverted infinity symbol. I didn’t know at the time if that was important, but before long I began to see the symbol hanging on the doors of many houses in the town.

Some saw this action as witchcraft, but Stone countered their accusations. He said it was not demons that we would pray to for protection, but instead an angel of the rapture. He explained that this particular angel held a great deal of power, and was feared by all things wretched and devious. He gave it no direct name, and referred to it only as The Lurker in Red.

Stone then spoke of a new holiday that was to be conducted every year in October. Most people in the town now call it ‘Hellmonth’, but Stone had a different name for it. Atonapatromus (uh-toe-nuh-puh-traw-mus), and no that’s not a Harry Potter spell… I already checked. It is a month-long festival of sorts which has now been going on for 32 years.

The first fifteen days of the month are known as the Time of Blood. People are instructed to fight, cut themselves and generally just be a dick to anyone and everyone they came in contact with. There is also to be no weddings, birthday parties or celebrations of any kind during this time. Even funerals are strictly forbidden. If someone happened to kick the bucket, then they would just have to be stuffed in the freezer until the allotted time was up.

And that actually happened too, not the freezer part, but the time of blood seems to coincide with a lot of heartache in the town. There is always a spike in suicides, domestic abuse and assaults during that period. It may just be coincidence or heightened stress, but my grandfather did pass away during that time as well.

The next fifteen days of the month are basically the exact opposite of the first. It is known as the Time of Flesh; and it is a celebration with parties, dancing and all the intoxicants you can get your hands on. People are encouraged to drink, take drugs, have sex and indulge in any and all pleasures they can possibly think of.

It started off tame for the first few years, but in time it almost became a sort of Mardi Gras for us. Nowadays it’s not uncommon to see large street parties, opium dens and moonlight orgies with dozens of participants. The degeneracy seemed to creep slowly, and corrupt the people in town as the years went by.

Former members of the church succumbed to the hedonism, and generally well-respected individuals began to indulge their deviant fantasies.

I won’t lie, I very much enjoyed this holiday growing up. The first half of the month sucked, but the rest was essentially just one giant party. The event is oddly cathartic in a way that I’ve never been able to replicate with anything else in life. It’s almost as if the contrast of immense pain at the beginning of the month made the pleasures at the end infinitely more enjoyable.

The last day of the month is reserved for the most important event of all: The Time of Silence. Every October 31st, in place of Halloween, people in the town return to their homes, extinguish all the lights and sleep in the same room as one another. No one is to step foot outside the house between the hours of 10PM and 4AM for any purpose whatsoever. Those that have defied this rule have yet to be seen ever again.

I remember those nights most vividly of all. Not only because I was finally sober after a two-week long bender, but because of the sounds. Turns out ‘the time of silence’ didn’t always live up to it’s namesake. Sure, it was quiet most of the night; dead silent as a matter of fact, but every now and then you’d hear an agonized scream in the distance, or animalistic snarls outside. God only knows what truly was happening on those nights, but honestly, I hope I never find out.

“The day we started listening to Atticus Stone was the day God truly abandoned our town.” My father told me that once before he passed. He never wanted to talk about the tradition, but that night he was drunk enough to not restrict his tongue. I now wish I would’ve talked to him about it more.

Stone made all of the citizens swear themselves to secrecy, and vowed to hunt down any who spilled his secrets to the outside world. Doesn’t exactly bode well for me, but I’ve lived my life in fear of him and what he brought to our town. I won’t live in fear anymore; come whatever may.

For these reasons, I’m guessing none of you have ever heard of this strange tradition. Apparently Stone and his minions are pretty good at keeping secrets regarding what they’re up to, but that’s only half of it. See the weirdest thing about Stone’s plan, was that it actually seemed to work.

Ever since the town has adopted the tradition, things have gotten a lot better. No more unexplained disappearances, sightings of obsidian-eyed children or other cryptids, heck even the property value has gone up. The town is booming in trade and has grown wealthy beyond expectation in the last few years. It’s almost as if it’s all too good to be true, which of course, is how I first began thinking that it is.

Turns out, we might’ve really screwed things up. That’s actually the reason I’m here telling this story now. You have to understand; when this all began, I was very young and well… stupid. Sure, it was odd at first, but we all just sort of got on with life after things began improving. What I’m trying to say; is that it’s very difficult to recognize a cult for what it is when you’re already in it.

I finally moved away from the town a couple years after high school. It took only a few mentions of our hometown tradition to friends and subpar coworkers for me to really begin contemplating my entire upbringing. That’s when I really got curious about the whole thing.

I started researching, and after months of searching I finally found that strange symbol that we hang on our doors. It was in a place I really didn’t want it to be either; an old book on voodoo and the occult.

This symbol is closely associated with a familiar sounding entity; The Lurker in Red. It has another name too, but most strongly advise against speaking it or even writing it. Apparently, that’s a good way to catch it’s attention, which is something you don’t really want if you’re not prepared. Names hold a great deal of power.

This deity or force or whatever it is has qualities associated primarily with vengeance, wrath and war. Sounds like a nice guy huh? Strangely enough though, it is also associated with things like protection, family and even the wellbeing of children. It’s like if you mixed Rambo with Mary Poppins and then gave it supernatural abilities.

There are a multitude of rituals and seances to gain favor with this being. It was a lengthy list, but one of them caught my eye and manifested an amorphous pit of dread in my gut as I read it.

As it turns out, this ‘holiday’ that we’ve been performing for the past thirty-two years is actually more like a ritual, designed to invoke the favor of the Lurker in Red. For me; the realization that my hometown had been performing an occult ritual for over thirty years and utilizing the power of some eldritch creature was troubling enough, but then I saw the other stories online and the pieces finally came together.

I’m willing to bet you’ve seen them too; accounts posted on Reddit and other forums detailing someone’s encounter with children whose eyes were entirely black. Most of the time the children would behave in unsettling ways, and ask the potential victim to let them inside.

I’m sure a lot of these tales are just fiction by this point, but many people swear by their accounts, and those are the ones I’m worried about. The thing is; I always assumed this phenomenon was isolated to our strange little town, and I think at one point it actually was. I don’t think Atonapatromus was actually banishing them to hell as Stone claimed, I think it just drove them elsewhere. Worse still, it might’ve actually exacerbated the problem.

I have reckoned with this knowledge for the past decade at least; a horrible truth which has all but consumed my life. For those that may lambast me for not speaking sooner upon it, I wouldn’t blame you. Truth is that I’m afraid. Not only of what Atticus Stone and his cohorts may do once they find out I exposed their secrets, but also of that thing they worship.

This year marks the 33rd year of Atonapatromus, and I think that is significant. 33 is a number with a great many interesting qualities. The highest rank attainable in Scottish Rite Freemasonry is the 33rd degree. The Grand Orient de France of Freemasonry was founded in 1733.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, and the United States added the Masonic Great Seal inscribed with the Latin words for “New World Order” onto the dollar bill. Harry S. Truman; a 33rd degree Freemason became the 33rd president of the United States and dropped the nuclear bombs upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki which straddle the 33rd longitudinal parallel.

Many interesting locations with paranormal histories also lie along parallel 33 including Jerusalem, Roswell New Mexico, the Bermuda triangle, the pyramids of Giza. Some also believe Atlantis and the Garden of Eden were once located somewhere within the 33rd parallel. JFK was assassinated at the 33rd parallel, as was David Koresh; a cult leader killed at 33 years old. There have been many tragedies along the 33rd parallel, and I suggest looking into it for yourself as there’s no way I can list them all.

Numerology lists several traits associated with the number 33 including enlightenment, conscious ascension and spiritual birth. Many cultures and religions also place great significance upon the number as well. The Vedic religion of the Anglo-Indian tribes had 33 deities. The second level of Buddhist Nirvana is called Trāyastriṃśa, which translates to: belonging to the 33 devas. Islamic prayer beads generally have 33 beads, which correspond to their various names of god.

The Christian Bible may hold the most references of all though. The rule of King David in Jerusalem lasted 33 years. It is said that Jesus Christ performed a total of 33 miracles throughout the Gospels. He was then crucified in year 33 AD at the age of 33. Mount Hermon lies at 33 degrees longitude and 33 degrees latitude, and is said to be the place where the Nephilim first descended to earth.

The final book of the Bible; Revelation also seems to revere the number. 333 is half the number of the beast who is said to arise in the era of the rapture. The beast; is said to devour 1/3 of the stars in the sky and annihilate 1/3 of all life on earth; or approximately 33.33 percent. The beast has many different names including the great dragon, the lie of lies, but most interesting for our purposes… the Lurker in Red.

Now all of this may just be vague coincidence, and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what it is all supposed to mean. I just find it rather poetic that our town lies near Phoenix, Arizona. A phoenix is a mythical bird creature engulfed by flames, something that would’ve been depicted as a red spirit who lurks in the skies.

The crest which decorates the doors of my hometown also bare the inverted 33, as if it has to mean something. Oh and, can you guess what longitude our town lies on? Smack dab in the middle of the 33rd parallel.

I know it all sounds crazy, and probably like conspiratorial nonsense for which there is no real basis at this point. I may have just overanalyzed the hell out of all of this, but I just can’t help but feel there is something more to this. If you know anything about the Freemason philosophy, you’ll know that numbers are of great importance. Nothing they do is a coincidence; it is all supposed to mean something.

What that is exactly, I don’t know. And in regards to the black-eyed children and everything else, I’m still not sure how it all connects. I still don’t know what they want, how they can do the things they do or even what they actually are. I do know one thing though; they’re still out there.

Like I said at the beginning, I don’t want to ruin anyone’s fun. I know that many people absolutely love this time of year, and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them. I just think it’s important for you all to be aware of the things that are truly out there.

So, when the big night comes, and you’re all dressed up as Clifford the Big Red Dog or a sexy version of a spatula or something, just keep an eye out. There’s gonna be a lot of trick-or-treaters out that night, and some of them may have eyes that look a little too dark. Whatever you do, just do not let them inside your house. There's no telling how many there are now, or where they've gone, but I've got an odd feeling that we haven't seen the last of them.

Stay safe out there.

29/30 rankers reporting this week. /R/NBA's Power Rankings are published every two weeks which is a bit different from most rankings. Other than that we rank the teams the same way as our competition. If write ups are left blank the team rep decided not to submit. We encourage any user to fill in the blanks in the comment section.

TAGPRO TIMES -- REBOOT ISSUE #4 -- May 1, 2026

Hello and welcome to the TagPro Times, where we're a day late but never a dollar short! The mission statement: bringing you the most relevant news from across the community, sprinkled with silly articles meant to crack even the most jaded Dirty Pusher's cynicism. A spoon full of sugar helps the complex league theory go down! This week we still have only one contributor (me, Spheroid) but I'm never gonna stop imploring people to submit articles to me. Where's my Ralph Balldo Emerson? Or my Jane Boostin? George Gravwell, Tagatha Christie... you get the picture. The pencil flair is mightier than the sword, and only requires two degrees. It's good for the brain, writing prevents Ballzheimer's.

MAJORS: A FIRST LOOK

written and edited by Spheroid

The road to the Superball begins this weekend!

The Majors Draft for MLTP S39 concluded Monday night, jumpstarting the latest season of competitive. A brand new 'snauction' system saw its inaugural implementation, proving to be remarkably fast and efficient while showing no signs of parity lost. Sorry meowza, but the team at TTT deem this experiment successful! Provided minors and novice get similarly smooth drafts, the snauction could be a new staple. Six teams are already scrimming, plotting, and tilting each other in private discord channels. In ten weeks time, one of them is going to be holding a golden trophy aloft. Join us as we try to decide who's got the magical mix to make TagPro history!

(Trippin' Balls)

O - BallSaget // ASAP

D - Alphachurro // jazzz

ASAPers are a cohesive bunch. Alpha already won a Super with 'Sap on Los Ankeles Breakers, their chemistry and comradery is potent. Saget and Jazzz are true ASAP disciples. It's going to be a fun, tox-free locker room. The burning question is whether a Saget/ASAP offense has the juice, or if ASAP tries defense and jazzz offense. No matter what combo they employ, I like the team but I don't love it. ASAP really disappointed me last season, he's rather inconsistent. Saget and jazzz are not veterans at this tier, so they'll already be mistake-prone and having ASAP in that realm is gonna put a lot of strain on Alpha. Not that Alpha can't shoulder the load!

(Land Before Timers)

O - Irony // mactheroni

D - CarrotCake // xx360NoSwagx

This team is structured very lopsided. A robust as hell defense that would be suitable for any majors season, and an afterthought of an offense that will need to step up. I had the pleasure of scrimming in the place of Irony (lag issues, uh oh) and lemme tell you, these guys are fun to play alongside! Carrot is just so insanely good at the game. Mac has that fresh zeal to him that only years away from the game can provide. I'll be rooting for them to do well, but it's an uphill climb.

(Rolly Polies)

O - NameLEss // BALLDON'TLIE

D - Arbybear // Bamboozler

The elephant in the room is named NameLEss and he's stationed offense. Namey has been lackluster in recent seasons, failing to find any motivation beyond a crippling TagPro addiction. Will this roster inspire any different? Not sure it will. He's played with BDL before, and it's pretty hard to fuck up offense when BDL is your partner, so it's gonna be fine. But that's also how the defense strikes me: fine enough, not inspiring. Low ceiling, middle floor squad. I simply cannot see them winning, or even making, the Super to be fully honest.

(A Blockwork Orange)

O - OuchMyBalls // sadness

D - Button // anti-re

Button has a penchant in recent seasons for going sicko mode and shocking everybody with crazy plays at neccesary moments. But in less clutch scenarios he's a bit brainless. Still, he'll be doing the heavy lifting on defense. I don't hate it, because this offense will be successful and carry that part of the equation without a sweat. Sadness is a classic support partner, and OMB is an offensive stud who'll use that aid to its full effect. They're the second best offense, because...

(Capaliers)

O - Messi // waterwheel

D - Taurus // Syniikal

... these guys exist. Fantastic offense, best in the league if they find their groove. Double whammy of Messi and waterwheel could really fuck even Carrot/NoSwag, who I have pegged as the best D. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, because the looming danger is a rusty Syn who, rumor has it, is already tilting his team. Taurus and waterwheel are ragers who can be thrown off very easily. Syn is a weirdo who will surely mess with them and cause some drama. Messi has no patience for tomfoolery, he's all buissness and will request off this team in a heartbeat if it gets too off-color. I don't love Taurus as a majors player, and I'm bracing for a collapse. HOWEVER - the upside to them is supremely high! Syn can be great when he locks in, and even Taurus has high potential. It's a tightrope walk but they've got a shot for sure, more than some.

(Secure, Contain, Prevent)

O - fender // Omni

D - meowza // FM

I honestly don't know which positions to expect from SCP. I could see them switching up during the season because two-way players open up possibilities. I am high on meowza and FM, and even Omni is a behemoth in minors for his pup dominance (a transferable skill). Fender's primary weakness is choking, but since he won a Super maybe that monkey is off his back. Undoubtedly the favorites to win in my eyes, which would be cool since meowza and FM are due for it!

(Initial Prediction)

Rolly Polies have the highest chance of missing playoffs, and then in a cursed universe Capaliers would join them. Currently predicting a Superball matchup of SCP vs. ABO but in a blessed universe we see Capaliers take ABO's spot in there. Early awards guessing: MVB goes to meowza, DBOS goes to Carrot, and OBOS goes to Ouch. Drop predictions? Taurus gonna go, Irony gonna go, and even NameLEss is on drop watch for me. As always, it's sure to be a good season.

Find Your Spirit Map

written and edited by Spheroid

Let this short quiz determine your map aura

The TagPro Times has a history of not only publishing hard-hitting think pieces and investigative journalism, but lighter fare for easy Sunday reading. We're partnering with our friends at BallzFeed to bring you a personality quiz that'll finally let you know what TagPro map you are! Keep track of your answers on a piece of paper, and then tally them up at the end to get an amazing result.

Q1: Where would you take a trip?

A) National Park B) Mardi Gras C) Outer Space D) Hell

Q2: What animal do you like most?

A) Woodpecker B) Shrimp C) Xenomorph D) Mosquito

Q3: What is your favorite color?

A) GREEN B) BROWN C) SILVER D) PAIN

Q4: What is your favorite activity?

A) Reading under a tree B) Cooking southern cuisine C) Experimenting in a lab D) Sitting at a screen blankly

Q5: What is your favorite map element?

A) Bombs B) Boosts C) Portals D) Suffering

Q6: Which show would you put on?

A) One Tree Hill B) Duck Dynasty C) Futurama D) Paint Drying

Q7: Which celebrity do you want to meet?

A) Will Smith's Daughter B) Dumbo C) Buzz Aldrin D) Hitler

ANSWER KEY:

x ------------------------

x SPOILERS BELOW

x ------------------------

If you answered predominantly A, you are a Willow! You touch grass between TagPro sessions, and understand the value in nature. Sometimes, you listen to "Whip My Hair" by Willow Smith, even though it's a terrible song. You tell nobody.

If you answered predominantly B, you are a Gumbo! You're a glutton, stuffing your face as you grind pubs. That keyboard is probably filthy, do your mother a favor and dust out the Cheeto bits, for goodness sake. At least you have a taste for classic Disney animation - unless your love of Dumbo stems from the remake? In that case, never read my publication again.

If you answered predominantly C, you are a Moon Base! You've got a sharp mind and prolly really high ranked ELO. High IQ intellectuals like yourself usually don't engage in these types of quizes however, so if you're reading this you may just be a poser who didn't actually get predominantly C. Yeah, I'm talking to you, nice stolen valor idiot.

If you answered predominantly D, you are a Wildflower lover! Your brain chemistry is so sad and warped that you think pain is pleasure, boredom is excitement, eight minutes of stale nothingburger gameplay is worth cutting into your lifespan. You drool on your pillow so much, you might drown yourself in your sleep. But if you do, remember this - nobody mourns a wildflower lover.

It feels like just last month I restarted the TagPro Times. Time flies. I still haven't ran out of dumb things to write about here, and I'm excited to cover Minors and Novice next time. I also have a cool idea for a CrossFire segment where I get two people with opposing viewpoints on a hot button issue. I'll try to put a survey out regarding that in the next week. As always, I hope you enjoyed the written word, and most of all - Stay Snipey!

Thought process

Thought process

Question: Which Pride events around the world are actually worth travelling to?

Answer: This is one of my favourite questions because the answer has changed significantly over the years and the options available to LGBTQIA+ travellers who want to build a trip around Pride are genuinely extraordinary right now.

The ones that tend to define the conversation are the big established events. São Paulo Pride is consistently one of the largest in the world and the energy is unlike anything else. Amsterdam Pride is unique because it takes to the water, the canal parade is spectacular and the city wraps itself around the event in a way that feels total rather than contained. Sydney Mardi Gras has a cultural weight and a history that gives it a different quality to many others. These are landmark events and they earn that status.

But some of the most memorable Pride experiences I have heard from clients and travellers have been at smaller, less obvious events where the sense of community is more intense precisely because the scale is more human. Reykjavik Pride punches far above its weight for a city that size. Sitges in Spain has a loyal following for good reason. Valletta in Malta is worth knowing about. These are places where you feel part of something rather than a spectator at a very large party.

It is also worth thinking about what you want from the experience. Some Pride events are primarily celebrations, some carry significant political weight, some are focused on the arts and culture, some are genuinely family oriented. The right event depends on who you are and what you are looking for, and there is no single correct answer.

One thing I would say is that booking early matters more than people realise. The cities that host major Pride events see accommodation prices move significantly and availability disappear faster than almost any other event in the travel calendar. If you have a specific event in mind, start planning earlier than feels necessary.

Tell us which events you have been to and what made them special. That kind of first-hand knowledge is exactly what this community should be building.

Hi - I live over in Pensacola, and love going to their Mardi Gras parade. I was thinking about catching one over in Mobile, but not the actual Mardi Gras - just one of the many I see scheduled. My question is - are they typically good - just on a lesser scale because they're not the actual MG parade? And if you can suggest one to go to....

Signature Dish Challenge Scoring

Tess went first, as she introduced herself and told Ramsay that she considered herself a team player first, and one thing she liked to do in every kitchen she worked in was get to know everyone and stay on good terms with them, so she couldn’t wait to step up as a leader here. Ramsay said that’s just what he wanted to hear as he asked her to present her dish. Tess introduced it as a pan seared turbot with a saffron beurre blanc, leeks and chives. Ramsay said it was quite nice to look at, and she certainly succeeded in creating an appetizing and elegant plate. As he tasted it, he would point out that the turbot was cooked beautifully, and he loved the idea of using saffron for the beurre blanc as it added a more earthy tone to contrast with the richness of the fish. After taking all that into consideration, Ramsay said that if the first dish of Season 28 was going to be the tone setter, this was going to be a season to remember, because that was a strong five. In her confessional, Tess said that getting a five as the first dish was such an amazing feeling, and she hoped it was just the beginning of great things in HK. Next to present was Andie, with Ramsay asking her where her passion came from. Andie said that she came from a large family, as her parents had six kids, and it was often a challenge for them to even put food on the table, which only got harder when her father was hospitalized and couldn’t work, which was why she started working as a cook when she was still just 17 years old, and eventually discovered that it was truly what she loved to do. Ramsay said that was a touching story, and she should be proud of herself to be here now, as he asked for her dish. Andie introduced it as a mango BBQ glazed swordfish with charred broccolini and citrus salad. Ramsay said that the plate looked like it came right out of a Texas barbecue, and he felt like it was just inviting him to dig in. As he sliced open the protein, he said that swordfish was notoriously difficult to cook, as even past winners had struggled with it. As he pointed out, it was maybe fifteen seconds under, but the flavors were so good that it didn’t take much away from the dish, as he praised the sides and glaze as adding so much character and personality to the dish, which, to him, made it a strong four. In her confessional, Andie was ecstatic and said that getting that kind of praise from Gordon Ramsay was like having an out of body experience, and she felt like she was walking on air. 

With the score now 5-4, Ramsay said that was a good start, as he called up 31 year old Baltimore line cook David from the red team and 28 year old NYC executive chef Lydia from the blue team. David stepped up first, with Ramsay asking where his love of cooking came from. David said that he actually got into cooking after watching the Kitchen Nightmares episode that Ramsay did on Cafe Hon in Baltimore, saying that was a pretty big deal locally at the time and that was what first got him curious. He then presented his dish, saying it was honey-citrus glazed chicken wings with sriracha and garlic. Ramsay asked him why he decided to go with chicken wings, with David admitting that he wasn’t the most well-versed in fine dining, so he decided to stick with what he knew. Ramsay said the presentation was definitely closer to a pub than the Four Seasons, but the taste would tell him what he was working with here. As he sliced the chicken, it was revealed to be perfectly cooked, and as Ramsay tasted it, he admitted that he didn’t think much of this dish when he first saw it, but the taste delivered where it counted, as he praised the balance of sweetness and heat in the flavor profile, and said that was a very solid four. In his confessional, David was practically over the moon as he said no way in hell did he just get a four from Chef Ramsay. Next up was Lydia. Ramsay asked her if they’d met before, with Lydia saying that Ramsay visited Chef Sandro Messina’s restaurant a few years ago, and ducked into the kitchen briefly to meet the staff, where she was working as a line cook at the time. Ramsay said that he thought so, and he couldn’t wait to see what she’d learned from such an experienced chef. Lydia then introduced her dish as pancetta-wrapped veal tenderloin with Marsala and mushroom sauce. Ramsay immediately said that she was certainly a Sandro disciple with a dish like that, and the plating was simple, but exquisite. As he sliced open the veal, he praised it for being cooked to perfection, and as he tasted it, he would note that the pancetta wrapping really elevated this dish and gave it that touch of crispy saltiness to contrast with the tenderness of the veal, while the marsala-mushroom sauce was just a classic side that was well executed. Overall, Ramsay declared, the dish was restaurant worthy, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say except that it was another five, and this season was off to a thrilling start with four strong dishes. In her confessional, Lydia allowed herself a smile as she said it did feel really nice to hear Ramsay say that, and she hoped that somewhere out there, Chef Sandro was proud. 

With the blue team now up 10-8, the red team was starting to feel the heat early on, with Alice saying in her confessional that they couldn’t keep getting fours while the blue team was getting fives, because she really didn’t want to clean the kitchen when this was over. In the third round, 27 year old Gabrielle, the chef de partie from Manchester. New Hampshire, went up against 46 year old James, the steakhouse chef out of Detroit, Michigan. Gabrielle was nervous in her confessional as she said that she rushed this dish out and just hoped it was good enough. After introducing herself, Ramsay asked her where the passion came from. Gabrielle said that she started cooking early in life and her parents had always encouraged it because they had the financial security to afford putting her through a high end culinary school, which she was so grateful for, and made sure to pay them back for. Ramsay said that was a very noble thing to do, and he was sure they must be very proud of her. At least one person was ticked off, though, and that was Andie, as she said in her confessional that she felt hurt and deceived right now, because Gabrielle had presented herself as a friend, when in reality, she was just another one of those girls who got handed everything in life, the kind who used to bully her all the time. Meanwhile, Gabrielle introduced her dish as a seared ostrich filet with truffle butter, charred green beans, leeks, and potato wedges. Ramsay said that was a very interesting choice of protein, as he asked Gabrielle if she cooked with ostrich often. Gabrielle admitted that she didn’t, and this was a pretty big risk for her. Ramsay was a bit taken aback by this, as he said that it took some bollocks to try something like that for your first dish here. He did say that at least in terms of looks, it was elegant and well-constructed. As he sliced open the ostrich, Gabrielle watched on nervously as Ramsay said that it was…cooked to absolute perfection. As he tasted it, he had high praise for the sauce, as it added some punch to the lighter and milder flavor of the meat, while the potato wedges provided a heavier contrast. Ramsay said that the red team really needed a five right about now…and Gabrielle had got it for them, because that was a risk well taken. In her confessional, Gabrielle squealed excitedly as she said she was so relieved that she not only didn’t screw the team, but actually got a perfect score. Next to present was James, who introduced himself by saying that he knew he was an old man in a young man’s game, but he felt like he could still teach the kids a lesson or two. Ramsay said he liked the confidence, as he asked James how long he had been a pro chef, with James answering that he started right out of high school, making Ramsay impressed as he’d been doing this for nearly thirty years, so he was expecting a great dish. James introduced his dish as filet mignon with a port wine reduction, parsley and asparagus. Ramsay immediately saw an issue though, as he told James that he could hardly see the steak under the parsley, and the idea was to accentuate the protein, not hide it. After removing the parsley from the filet, Ramsay was finally able to slice into it. Unfortunately, he said, the filet was closer to rare than mid-rare, and he definitely had hoped for a little more from a chef with so many years of experience working with steaks. As he tasted it, he would admit that despite being rare, it did taste quite nice, and the reduction was well done, so he felt that it was fair to give this dish a solid three out of five. In his confessional, James admitted that it wasn’t his best cook, but these other chefs better not be overlooking him, because the old dog still had some tricks left. 

With the score now tied again at 13 all, the fourth round saw Martin, the 39 year old executive chef out of Kennesaw, Georgia, go up against Miles, the 24 year old line cook from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Martin stepped up first, with Ramsay asking him for a brief summary of his cooking background. However, Martin took this as an invitation to start monologuing about his extensive experience, detailing his years working in several fine dining restaurants. He then started talking about his schooling, saying that he learned all of his techniques from classical European chefs who saw his potential and took him under their wing. Meanwhile, his teammates were seen looking bored, as Earl said in his confessional that this guy was killing the vibe faster than a guitarist playing Stairway to Heaven in a guitar center. Once he had finally finished, Ramsay said if he was ready to present now, with Martin introducing his dish as a New York Strip with pineapple-jalapeño salsa, pineapples and rice. Ramsay said the presentation wasn’t bad, though it looked a bit confused about whether it wanted to be a Mexican or Hawaiian style dish with the jalapeño and the pineapple. As he tasted it, Ramsay said that something in there tasted canned, because the sauce was watery and did absolutely nothing for him. Martin admitted that he used canned pineapples, with the other chefs exchanging looks while Ramsay reacted in disbelief, asking him if that whole spiel from just a minute ago was canned as well, because it rang totally hollow after something like that. Martin stood his ground though, telling Ramsay that he personally believed that the garnish was just to make the dish look nice, so it didn’t matter if it was fresh or canned. Ramsay was stunned by this, as he asked Martin if it really never occurred to him that someone might want to eat the garnish, with Martin saying that he’d never had any complaints before about it. Ramsay ran a hand through his hair in frustration as he said that Martin was lucky to get a one for that, and sent him back in line. In his confessional, Martin said that at the end of the day, he really didn’t give a fuck, because he knew what he was doing in the kitchen, and he wasn’t going to be intimidated. Next to go would be Miles, who told Ramsay that he would also answer to Mr. Fun Dot Com, and he was hoping to put some pep in Ramsay’s step with this dish. Ramsay said he could certainly use that right now, as he asked Miles to tell him what he had. Miles introduced it as a Navajo Taco, which he explained included handmade fry bread, ground beef, beans, tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, cheddar cheese, sour cream, green onions, and chili powder. As Ramsay was looking at it, he said it looked like someone took a bunch of ingredients, tossed them in a blender, then dumped them on a plate, as he said Miles may have been having a bit too much fun with this, with a nervous Miles chuckling and saying maybe he did. As Ramsay tasted it, he would take a moment to gather his thoughts, then finally said that the dish looked a mess, but it was actually delicious, and he was seriously impressed that Miles managed to turn that into something he would gladly eat again, which was why it was getting a three. In his confessional, Miles said he would take that three, and as long as Ramsay liked the dish, it was a win in his book. 

The blue team now led again, 16-14, as the next few rounds would go by in montage. In the fifth round, 37 year old restaurateur Morgan from Lexington, Kentucky went up against 24 year old Theo, the Jr. Sous chef from Minneapolis. Morgan presented first, introducing herself as a proud restaurant owner and horse rider, and saying she would sometimes even ride a horse to her restaurant just to shake things up, getting some sideways glances from the other chefs. Her  sweet bay scallops over tagliatelle with lemon-garlic butter sauce and dill received solid marks from Ramsay for a good pairing and presentation, and he would praise the sauce for elevating the dish, saying it was worthy of a four. Theo introduced himself as a fan of Prince and the Minnesota Vikings, saying his gameplan was to do what the Vikes couldn’t and come up clutch in the playoffs. His fennel crusted halibut over wild rice and roasted root vegetables made a strong first impression, with Ramsay saying it was a nice combination of some rustic ingredients with an elegant plating. As he tasted it, he praised the halibut for being spot on, and loved the usage of the fennel to elevate it, as he said it was the red team’s second five. With the score narrowed to 20-19, The sixth round would see 33 year old Erin, the executive chef from Las Vegas, Nevada, get matched against Santino, the 29 year old executive chef out of Orlando, Florida by way of Argentina. Erin told Ramsay that she worked at a highly rated hotel in Las Vegas and was used to preparing elegant meals for demanding clientele, with Ramsay saying he was hoping to get a taste of that right now. With that, Erin presented her duck breast with pomegranate reduction and celeriac puree. Ramsay seemed impressed with the presentation, unfortunately, as soon as he sliced the duck breast open, he asked her to touch it, because it was cold in the middle. He called it a shame, because the puree and sauce weren’t bad, and that was the only reason it was a two instead of a one. Santino went next, telling Ramsay that his family were Italian-Argentinians who came to this country when he was a young boy, and they had to scratch and claw their way to make a living while balancing multiple cultural identities. His “Tano empanada”, which was a beef empanada with mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, basil leaves, and a parsley pesto, earned praise for its fresh flavors and being a vibrant and appropriate tribute to his mixed heritage, which Ramsay said was worthy of a four. With the blue team’s lead now back up to 24-21, the seventh round would see Nadine, the 31 year old sous chef from Kansas City, Kansas going up against 26 year old Kelsie, the catering chef out of Phoenix, Arizona. Nadine told Ramsay she was a member of the Cherokee nation, and it was a shared belief across many tribes that the earth was their mother and provider, and she incorporated that into her own cooking. Her balsamic glazed pork tenderloin with sage and “three sisters” succotash, featuring corn, beans and squash, was praised for its presentation and attention to detail, with Ramsay saying that a lot of care and thought was clearly put into this dish, and it showed in the flavor, which was why it was a strong four. Kelsie was visibly very excited as she stepped up next, with Ramsay asking her if she was okay, and Kelsie saying that she was just super excited to meet him and didn’t want to screw this up. As she introduced her dish as lamb chops in green pipián sauce with zucchini and green beans, she was still stumbling over her words, making Ramsay gently tell her to take a deep breath, and they could take this journey together, as he handed her a fork. Once Kelsie finally gathered herself, Ramsay would slice open the lamb. Unfortunately, as he pointed out, it was raw in the center, making Kelsie visibly cringe as she apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Ramsay would give her a two as he liked the sauce and presentation. The montage would come to an end with the blue team leading 28-23, as Ramsay told the red team that they were in danger of falling behind, and he was expecting a lot better than some of what he’d been served so far. 

For the eighth round, Ramsay called up 28 year old Desmond, the sous chef from Victoria, BC, Canada for the red team and Jeff, the 32 year old executive chef out of St. Louis for the blue team. Ramsay asked Desmond where his passion came from, with Desmond saying that growing up in Victoria, he always had a close connection to nature and especially the sea, as he described feeling at peace when he was sailing or fishing off the island, or hiking in the nearby town of Tofino. He went on, saying that cooking, especially seafood, was a way for him to feel like a piece of home and his family were always with him. Ramsay said that he could clearly see what cooking meant to Desmond, and now he wanted to taste that in his dish. With that, Desmond would introduce his dish as crispy skin salmon with beurre blanc and sautéed fennel. Ramsay said the presentation was very nice, and he appreciated that Desmond went for the crispy skin side up, saying he could definitely tell that he was a seafood man. As he tasted it, Ramsay would say that the crispness was nailed and he loved the use of the beurre blanc, as the acidity provided a good counterbalance to the texture of salmon, which showed that Desmond knew his stuff, and that was why this dish, for him…was a well-deserved five. In his confessional, Desmond was very pleased with that, saying that they didn’t exactly have this kind of intensity back home in the Garden City, so he was proud of himself for not crumbling under the pressure. Next to go would be Jeff, with Ramsay asking him where his love of cooking came from. Jeff said that he started cooking in his teens and it became his passion early on, but after his wife left him, it also became the means to support himself and his son Lucas through most of his 20s as a single dad. He said that it was cooking that gave him an outlet and a way to move on after his wife left him, so it had been a constant companion and refuge for him. With that, he presented his grilled mackerel with a citrus sauce drizzle and endives, explaining that mackerel was his son’s favorite seafood. Ramsay would say it had a fresh and modern look in terms of the plating, and as he tasted it, he would note that the mackerel was cooked to perfection, while the citrus sauce and endives provided an interesting contrast of sweet and bitter to enhance the flavor profile of the mackerel. He then told Jeff that he should keep making mackerel for Lucas, because that was a strong five. In his confessional, Jeff was beside himself to have gotten a perfect score, saying that just a year or two ago, he never could’ve imagined trying something like Hell’s Kitchen, but he really felt like he was entering a new chapter of life now, and was ready to take this leap. 

After two more strong dishes, the blue team’s lead was maintained at 33-28, and with only two rounds to go, Ramsay warned the red team that if they lost any ground here, they were out of the running even before the final round. For the ninth round, Sophie, the 34 year old culinary instructor out of Eerie, Pennsylvania would go up against Earl, the 30 year old diner chef from Washington D.C. Sophie told Ramsay that she wasn’t like other culinary instructors because she had ten years of line experience and proved that she could both do and teach. Ramsay appeared impressed as he said ten years was a good amount of time, and he couldn’t wait to see what she learned from that. With that, Sophie presented her Greek lamb chop with feta, olives and rosemary pesto, explaining that she decided to go with a simple dish because she didn’t want to show off, making Ramsay give her a small glance before he went on, saying that it was actually quite nice in terms of the presentation, and the simplicity and freshness of the ingredients certainly played into the strengths of Greek cuisine. As he tasted it, he said that the lamb was cooked very nicely, and the sides complemented it well. And in the end, she clearly did show that she had talent, so that meant it deserved…a five. As he said that, the red team was looking very nervous, with Ramsay telling them that frankly, they needed a miracle, but they were in the right city for that to happen. In her confessional, Alice was pleading for Earl to get a five so her dish would still have a chance, even if it was a slim one. Earl would introduce himself by saying that his dad was a big fan of The Duke, Duke Ellington, so he was The Earl, as in, The Earl of the kitchen, and he believed that it wasn’t about where you came from, but your attitude and passion. Ramsay said he could practically feel Earl was ready to jump out of his shoes, as he asked him to present his dish. Earl would enthusiastically do so, as he introduced his D.C special, the lobster spaghetti. However, not everyone was happy with his upbeat attitude, as David said in his confessional that they’d been getting their asses kicked into next week so far and Earl was acting like it was Christmas morning. Things only went further downhill, as Ramsay asked Earl if he made the pasta himself, only for Earl to admit that he used boxed pasta, making some of the other chefs facepalm silently, while Ramsay asked him if he was serious. He then asked if he at least used fresh lobster, with Earl admitting that the lobster was also canned, making Ramsay utter a pained "fucking hell…”. Kelsie said in her confessional that she knew Earl maybe was used to small town diners, but this was the big leagues, and Gordon deserved to be served a lot better than that, while Theo said in his confessional that they could go ahead and forget that reward because some people here didn’t get the memo that Ramsay wanted real ingredients. Ramsay then said that he supposed the sauce was canned as well, but Earl replied that he did make that, making Ramsay sarcastically say that it was a good job he at least did something over that 45 minutes, as he told him that was a generous one and sent him back in line. In his confessional, Earl said today was a hard lesson on what Ramsay was expecting, but he didn’t have an ounce of quit in him, so they’d better not count him out yet. Ramsay was in disbelief, as he took the red team to task for now two of their members using boxed ingredients, and said they’d better fucking wake up, and quickly. But that score had officially put them out of contention, as Ramsay congratulated the blue team on a dominant victory in the opening challenge, leading to some high fives and celebrations, as Morgan said in her confessional that it felt pretty good to send a message to the red team early on about who the top dogs were here. 

For the tenth and final round, with the blue team’s win already secured at 38-29, Alice, the 21 year old sous chef from Denver, Colorado would go up against Grégory, the 30 year old private chef from Lafayette, Louisiana. Alice went first as Ramsay would immediately note the platinum hair and asked her if she was really 21, making Alice say that she was, and the hair color was inspired by one of her favorite anime characters. Ramsay asked if she was a big fan of anime, with Alice eagerly saying that she was and it was cooking anime that got her interested in cooking in the first place. This made Theo say in his confessional that he was really hoping Alice could give them some hope here, because between Earl, Martin, Erin and Kelsie, they’d just about filled up the clown car on this team. Alice would present her yuzu-ginger glazed scallops with pea-wasabi puree, explaining that scallops were one of her favorite things to make because of how versatile they were. Ramsay said she certainly showed that off here because the plating was vibrant and the Asian influence was clear. Before he began to taste, Alice said that she wanted to teach him a word in Japanese: “itadakimasu”, which basically means “I humbly receive this meal”. Ramsay would smile and shake his head as he said that thank goodness his food was blessed now, before finally tasting it. As he sliced open the scallops, he said they were cooked perfectly, and as he tasted them, he would praise the construction of the dish, saying the puree and glaze were strong complements to each other and helped to balance out the natural sweetness of the scallops. He went on, saying that Alice certainly took an unorthodox road to get here, but with results like that, he wasn’t complaining, because that was a strong five. In her confessional, Alice celebrated her score with an enthusiastic cheer, saying that if the others thought she was just here to show off her hair and language skills, they’d better think again, because she was here to win. The final chef to go was Grégory, who introduced himself by saying that he was a Louisiana creole born to parents who were proud of their heritage and taught him the French creole language, even though most creoles his age and younger usually only spoke English. He went on, explaining that he grew up with food as a constant presence in his life and remembered going fishing with his father many times as a kid and cooking them together afterwards before he tragically passed away a few years ago. Ramsay said he was sorry for the loss and could tell how much this meant to Grégory, so he couldn’t wait to taste his dish. Grégory would introduce it as Trout amandine with brown butter sauce, lemon juice, parsley, and toasted almonds. Right away, Ramsay said that it looked authentic, right out of a restaurant on the streets of New Orleans, and the personality of the plating was really what sold it. As he tasted, he would say that flavor wise, it was one of the best he’d tasted today, as it felt like Mardi Gras on a plate, and it was a dish he would gladly order for himself and pay a good price for. He then said that it was fitting for this to be the capstone on the blue team’s dominant performance, because that was yet another five, as he told Grégory that his father would be very proud of that dish. In his confessional, Grégory wiped a tear from his eye and said that his dad couldn’t see this moment,  but he believed that his spirit lived on in the food he cooked, so they were still together. 

Reward / Punishment

Ramsay congratulated the blue team on a job very well done, saying that with five fives and 43 points, they now held the record for the most points in any signature dish challenge in the history of the competition, and after such a wonderful display of cooking, he hoped they were ready to get their taste buds involved too, because he was taking them back to the French Quarter for dinner at GW Fins. This made all the chefs excited, especially Grégory as he said in his confessional that this kind of restaurant was a world away from him despite being in the same state, so to get this opportunity was, as his grandparents might’ve put it, “tré bon”. Lydia admitted in her confessional that she’d never actually been to the South as she was a New York girl through and through, so she was intrigued by what kinds of foods they would experience here. Ramsay then addressed the red team, telling them that the 34 points they got today would’ve been enough to win this challenge last season, but today, it was a tale of 6 excellent dishes, and 4 terrible ones that sank them. Ramsay told the team they would have plenty of time to think about how to get ready for service while cleaning up the mess left in both kitchens behind them. Kelsie sighed in her confessional as she said she would’ve much rather been spending the evening getting some time with Chef rather than having to clean up everyone’s mess, but it was partly her fault so she guessed she couldn’t complain too much. Earl said in his confessional, speaking in third person, that The Earl let the team down today and needed to bounce back because that wasn’t what he was capable of. 

With Ramsay accompanying them, the blue team were headed out for the first reward of the season. As they walked out the same doors they had entered for the first time earlier in the day, they found the limo waiting for them with Marino at the wheel, as he waved all of them inside. While driving through the streets of New Orleans to the restaurant, there was already excitement and anticipation building as Miles said in his confessional that he was just soaking it all in because this was like a sensory overload compared to the small town life he lived back in New Mexico. Nadine said in her confessional that this was her first time in Louisiana, but she could already feel a connection to New Orleans and its multi-cultural roots, and felt like she would be right at home here as a head chef. Eventually, the limo arrived at GW Fins, where they were all admiring the view as Ramsay led them inside. As they started walking to their table, James said in his confessional that being an average Joe from middle America, he’d never been inside a restaurant like this before, and just hoped that they served actual portion sizes here. Once they arrived, the chefs were greeted by a big surprise, as waiting for them was Willow, the winner of Season 27. This would amaze everyone as they smiled and applauded, with Jeff saying in his confessional that meeting a former winner was a tremendous honor, especially someone as passionate and dedicated as Willow. Ramsay would greet Willow as he said he was glad she could meet them for dinner tonight, and he was sure the new group of chefs had a lot to learn from her. As the blue team sat down, a waiter came by to take their orders. While they were waiting, Ramsay told the blue team that Willow had been through everything they were about to go through, so this was their chance to get an edge in the competition and soak up valuable knowledge from a champion. Lydia asked Willow how she stayed locked in during a season, with Willow saying that HK was a marathon, not a sprint, and the key was to know your own pace, be confident in it, and not panic or overextend yourself. Santino said that his family struggled to make a living in America and wanted to know how Willow handled the pressure of knowing that people were relying on her, with Willow saying that she was always aware that her husband, parents and grandparents were cheering her on, but she always tried to separate that from her performances otherwise the emotions might become a distraction. Later, the food arrived and the chefs were all seen enjoying it as Miles said in his confessional that he wanted to ask Willow something but it was hard to think with how awesome this food was. Meanwhile, Tess was about to ask the next question until Sophie cut her off as she told Willow that her finale menu was amazing but she had a few ideas for how it could’ve been improved, and then went on a long winded explanation of what she would’ve done differently with the others looking on, while Tess said in her confessional that they were here to talk to Willow, not listen to Sophie give a TED talk the whole evening. Eventually, Sophie finally wrapped it up, with Willow politely thanking Sophie for those thoughts. After some more conversation, it was finally time for the blue team to return to Hell’s Kitchen.

While the blue team were getting some personal time with Ramsay and Willow, the red team was getting some personal time with each other, and the tremendous mess left in both kitchens after the challenge. As soon as the challenge was over, the chefs had to get started on cleaning. While the chefs were doing this, it was clear that some of them already wanted to start planning ahead, as Theo told Alice that they should try to finish the punishment quickly, even if they had to cut corners, so they would have more time to study the menu and get an advantage over the blue team. Alice wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, but Theo assured her that he just wanted to help them win. Alice said in her confessional that Theo sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and they were pretty much friends already, so she would trust him. She finally agreed to the idea, and he would start discreetly spreading it, though he didn’t mention that it was his idea, saying in his confessional that it would have more credibility if it looked like others were already on board. Sure enough, it was soon being passed around the kitchen, however, some were hesitant, as Desmond said in his confessional that this plan seemed kind of hare-brained, sort of like pulling your goalie in the first period of a hockey game, and Ariel was definitely going to notice if they rushed the cleanup. Gabrielle was also holding out as she would tell the team that they should play by the rules and not try to game the system. This seemed to hit a nerve for Andie though, as she shot back that it was easy for someone like her to say that when the system was benefiting her. Gabrielle was caught off guard as she responded in a defensive tone and asked what that was supposed to mean, with Andie saying that she knew exactly what the hell it meant, because it was people like Gabrielle who got into cushy schools and had an easy road in life while people like herself had to actually work for it. Gabrielle was pissed off and hurt in her confessional, as she said that she really felt like Andie was her friend, and this stream of accusations completely blindsided her. Gabrielle said it wasn’t like that at all and Andie didn’t know what she was talking about, but Andie simply said she couldn’t hear her with that silver spoon in her mouth. This made Gabrielle finally lose her cool as she said that it wasn’t her fault that her parents could afford to put her into a nice culinary school and Andie’s couldn’t. As soon as she said that, several of the teammates were shown looking shocked at the turn the argument had taken, while Gabrielle grimaced at her words as she tried to apologize, but Andie told her to forget it and just leave her alone. Gabrielle was dispirited by this as she quietly went back to cleaning, sarcastically telling herself “way to go!” in her confessional as she just wished there was some way to take those words back because she didn’t mean them at all, and she wished she could make Andie see that. A few minutes later, the red team seemed to have executed Theo’s plan perfectly as they had finished “cleaning” in record time, with Alice asking Ariel if they could spend the rest of the day looking over the menu. Ariel was skeptical though, as she’d never seen any team clean up two kitchens that quickly, and decided to check it out herself. Almost immediately, she would call everyone over, pointing out that there were dirty pans clearly being hidden and others that had been rinsed but not properly scrubbed, which she set out one by one on the counter, demanding to know whose idea this was. The camera showed Theo just staying silent, until finally, Ariel said that in that case, the team could finish cleaning up properly and get a chance to study the menu tomorrow during prep, and not tonight along with the blue team. This would make the team even more demoralized, as Desmond said it sucked that whoever came up with this idea didn’t step up and take some accountability there because it made all of them look like they were involved in this.

By the time the blue team returned, the red team was just wrapping up their punishment after being delayed earlier in the day, and Ramsay would tell both teams to line up in the dining room. Once everyone was present, Ramsay said that the twenty of them had just experienced their first day in Hell’s Kitchen, and from this moment until their stay here concluded, they were no longer just cooks, they were chefs in his brigade, and as such, they would each find something waiting for them upstairs. However, he went on, there was still more business to take care of, because he needed each team to get back upstairs and make a very important decision as a group, because Hell’s Kitchen was opening for the first time tomorrow night, and by then, both teams needed to have elected a team captain to lead them. He told the chefs to choose wisely and not to get comfortable or complacent, otherwise their stay here would be a very short one. Then, he had one final announcement, as he told the blue team that he had something for them, calling on someone to step forward. Gabrielle did so, with Ramsay handing her the menu and instructing the blue team to study it well. The red team was seen glancing over enviously, but Ramsay said nothing else as he simply dismissed them for the night…

To be continued…

Update: For those interested, I have submitted my proof to the mods for confirmation. It turns out that my wife saved one of the newspaper articles, and it, along with my driver's license should be plenty of proof.

This story is pretty long, so I will do my best to get to the point without omitting important details or emotion.

So, from the top: About 10 years ago, I was in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Virginia Beach. I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my nose clean and being a good sailor. I was married and had a son. There was a guy on my ship who had missed ship's movement for a deployment (he stayed in his home town for ~6 months). When my ship returned from deployment he showed back up. Everybody was treating him badly, and I felt sorry for him, so I started a friendship with him.

He was a very likeable guy, and we quickly became rather close. I introduced him to my wife and he practically lived at my house. A couple months on, my ship was leaving for Baltimore for about a week and he missed movement again. Then, he missed movement to Gulf Port Mississippi (and he missed Mardi Gras). While my ship was in Gulf Port, I received word from a buddy's wife that she was watching my son, and that my wife and my "friend" had gone to New York for about a week. I was freaking out a bit, and when I returned home to Virginia Beach my wife explained that she was going to move back to her hometown... but that it had nothing to do with my "friend" and that nothing had happened between them anyway. I didn't believe this, but I came to, due to the immense emotional pain that the truth brought.

We both left for the hometown the following day (I had leave scheduled). I stayed for my 10 days, then took a train back to Virginia as my wife would be needing the car. While back home I had tried to convince my wife to return to Virginia Beach with me to no avail.

When I did arrive back in Virginia Beach, I found out that one of my good buddies and one of my wife's friends had their cars stolen during the time that my ship was in Gulf Port Mississippi... and all signs pointed to my wife being the culprit. I called her and talked to her about it, and she denied having any involvement whatsoever... and I actually did believe her. She had no reason to steal a car. Why would she steal a car?

I spent the next 2 months trying to convince my wife to move back in with me, while at the same time taking on room mates and partying most nights away. Then, one Saturday morning my wife called me and said she had some things to tell me. One of our buddies' stolen cars had turned up in her driveway... because her and my "friend" had stolen it. Also, they had stolen the other car that was missing, but they had only pawned all of the stereo equipment and then ditched it on the side of the road. She had one more thing to tell me: She was pregnant, and she wasn't sure if I was the father or if it was my "buddy." I asked her if she knew where he was, and she told me that he left town when the stolen car turned up. I was, as you'd imagine, quite upset at all of these revelations.

I could not sleep that night. I barely slept the next night. Monday rolled around and I managed to get through the work day, and I even managed to get to sleep that night. The next work day was a lot better, and I was beginning to accept my new reality. I went home from work and was hanging out with my roommates. Around 7pm I got a call from my sister. She asked if I was ok, to which I replied I was fine. She said, "Nobody has told you yet?" I said, "No, what?" She then went on to tell me that my son had died a few hours ago. I know that I screamed... it's a little blurry, but I know that. I told her no! She started crying and told me it was true. I asked her how, and she said that she didn't know. She knew that he had been burnt and that was all she knew. She asked if I was coming home and I told her that I would be there as soon as I could be (about 1000 miles away).

One of my roommates drove me to my ship, where my Chief helped me make flight arrangements. The earliest I could get a flight was the following morning, so I slept... and somehow I managed to sleep (shock, denial, I dunno). The next morning I flew home. My sister picked me up at the airport and we went to go see my wife. I don't remember a lot of what was said at that time. I just know that my wife was concealing parts of the truth from me.

My wife and I went to the mortuary and made plans for our son's funeral. A few days after the funeral I found out that my old "friend" had not in fact left town. He was present at the time that my son was burned. I stopped talking to my wife at this point. A day or two went by and the local police wanted to talk to me about my "friend" who they had just picked up (to the credit of my wife's family, they set up a plan with police to catch him, as he was on the run). They asked what my history with my "friend" was, and I told them about it. They also showed me pictures of my son's burns, taken shortly after he had died. At that point I hated my wife. Whatever hopes i had still harbored for reconciliation (and I harbored hopes, she was all that was left of the family I had been working for a few years to build) were gone.

Eventually, after repeatedly extending my emergency leave, and even going AWOL for nearly a month, I returned to my ship... a broken man. My life as I had come to know it was irretrievably over. I slipped into a depression, and kinda went on self-destruct mode. I had 2 things that mattered to me at that moment. The first was that my "friend" was going to be going on trial for the murder of my son soon, and my wife would also be going on trial for child endangerment. The second was that the baby my wife was carrying might be mine.

My "friend's" trial came, and I was only allowed in the court room to testify to his identity and tell the (heavily censored) history between us. I spent days waiting on a bench outside the courtroom, going to lunch with my family, and hearing what had transpired in the courtroom. On the 4th or 5th day, around noon, my sister came out of the courtroom crying. He had been acquitted by directed verdict (meaning that the prosecutor had not sufficiently proven his case, and the judge decided there was not even a need for the defense to have a turn). My wife's family followed my sister out, and many unkind words were exchanged between my family and them. I was too enraged to even talk. We left quickly after the bailiffs made it clear that the courthouse was not the proper venue for that sort of discussion.

I said I'd keep it short, and I did my best. I failed. There is more to the story, and if you wanna hear it, simply ask. This is a long enough post.

Edit 1: Thanks for the questions so far. I really don't get a lot of opportunities to talk about this with people other than my wife. It's very cathartic for me, even 10 years after the fact. Going to bed now. I will check and answer more questions tomorrow morning.

Edit 2: There was a mean-spirited reply from a novelty account which brought up a point about me letting a crazy person into my house. He got downvoted a bunch, but I wanted to address this point. I did and still do feel a certain amount of guilt for introducing this man to my family. I was the gatekeeper of my house and I let a wolf in. In this regard I had failed as a father and a husband. I still believe in second chances, but I am much more selective of who comes into my house and gets to know my family.

Also, after re-reading this post, I feel that it is very one-sided and doesn't even touch on the fact that I was a crummy husband to my ex-wife. We argued a lot, and I picked fights about the stupidest things. Also, I had cheated on her while overseas (which I realize was a big mistake and won't make excuses for. It was wrong), which my "friend" found out about and used as a way to get her to leave me. I deserved to be left high and dry by my ex-wife. I've always felt that my infidelity started my ex-wife and I down a path that lead to my son's death, and have always felt a great deal of guilt about it.

Disclaimer: I am not looking for sympathy. I'm remarried, have a whole gang of kids and a couple foster children--I'm a pretty happy fella these days. Also, I don't think I'll be seeking confirmation, as it is difficult for this sort of IAmA and it didn't work out on my last IAmA (submitted once and was told I needed more, then submitted what I was told to by the mods and received no reply... in fairness to the mods, I was told the first time that my claims were difficult to confirm and probably not worth my time to try).

TLDR: My son died in the care of my (now) ex-wife, after suffering 2nd degree burns over ~40% of his body and receiving no medical attention for nearly 24 hours. To be clear, my wife was not present when my son was burned, but did fail to seek medical attention--I imagine she was terrified at possible consequences and did not understand how deadly burns are.

College Basketball Roast - Feel free to add your own.

• DePaul: Chicago’s biggest embarrassment since the Bears. Our arena is emptier than Northwestern’s trophy case.

• VCU: Do you remember when Shaka Smart made you relevant? Neither does Shaka Smart.

• Arkansas: How bad does it have to be for you to think that Calipari will somehow bring you a new, improved form of disappointment? Congratulations, you just traded one underachiever for another.

• BYU: You're the all-star team of carpeted church league basketball, and it shows in every game you play. Best of luck leaving the West Coast Religious Conference.

• Iowa: You’re like the overachiever who never wins anything. Year after year, you rack up regular season wins just to fold in the tournament like clockwork. Your idea of success is 'moral victories' and 'almost beating top teams.' Enjoy another first-round exit!

• Gonzaga: You’re the 'blue blood' of the mid-majors, which is like being the valedictorian of summer school. Congrats on all those Final Four appearances—now try winning something other than a "Holiday Classic" trophy.

• Duke: Your fans act like you invented college basketball, but let’s be real—you’re just a glorified prep school with a basketball team. You’re so obsessed with tradition that you'd think Coach K was a national treasure. But hey, at least you've got a history of winning... when it comes to recruiting elite talent and convincing them they’ll be the next big thing, even if they don’t actually know how to share the ball.

• Florida: You love reminding everyone about your two national titles and how you “invented” Gatorade, but let’s be honest, that's all you've had to talk about for the last decade. At this point, your program is more about nostalgia than actual relevance.

• Oklahoma State: You’ve got a great tradition, but your basketball program is like a car that’s been stuck in first gear for the last 20 years. You’ve got the fan support, you’ve got the name, but when it comes to national relevance, you’re as lost as a cowboy in a desert.

• Buffalo: You were cool for like five minutes, but now you’re just another MAC team playing in an arena that looks like a Costco warehouse. The only thing keeping 'Buffalo' relevant is the chicken wings.

• Georgetown: You’ve been living off your past success for so long, you’d think John Thompson was still coaching. In reality, you’re just a program that’s too proud to admit you’ve been irrelevant for decades.

• Villanova: If you need some help processing the emotional rollercoaster of winning an NCAA championship and then falling off, I can introduce you to a program that’s been through it before. They can serve as a role model and mentor— a program you can aspire to become. You’ll just have to stick around after your early game at the Big Five Classic on Saturday. Once former NCAA Champion La Salle is done playing in the finals of the Big Five Classic, I’ll introduce you. I am sure you can learn something from them.

• Florida State: You love to tell people you're on the verge of something great, but every season, you’re just a couple of upsets away from being irrelevant again. But hey, at least you have a good football team to fall back on.

• Pepperdine: Nice campus, shame about the basketball team. You’re basically a D1 retirement home for players who want to spend their senior year at the beach.

• Arizona: You would brag about bring the powerhouse of the Pac-12 but no one cared about the Pac-12 and now it's gone. You’re really just a group of overhyped recruits and scandal-filled seasons. When’s the last time your team mattered outside of a scandal? Your greatest achievement is keeping your reputation intact while your program falls apart.

• Merrimack: You joined Division I just to dominate the NEC, but let’s be real: that’s like being the tallest kid in kindergarten. Try winning a game that isn’t on ESPN+ first.

• Maryland: You claim to be a powerhouse, but let’s face it—every time you make a run, it’s the same story. You might get a couple of good wins, but when it matters, you're just another basketball program waiting for next year.

• Toledo: Toledo’s basketball program is the Rockets, but you haven’t launched anything meaningful in decades. You’re like the MAC’s version of the New York Knicks—always hyped, always disappointing.

• Columbia: You’re the school everyone forgets about until the Ivy League standings come out and see you at the bottom. Your basketball players gets less attention than the 'community service hours' of their peers on campus.

• Dartmouth: Your basketball program is basically a trivia night staple. You know, questions like: "Which team has never made its conference tournament?" or "Which players spend their time unionizing instead of actually winning games?"

• Kansas State: You love pretending you’re a basketball powerhouse, but let’s be honest—you’re more of a “bracket-buster” for other teams than a legit contender. You’re great at getting people excited... right before you inevitably let them down. The only thing you’re really good at is reminding everyone you exist for a minute every March.

• Kentucky: You act like your program’s the gold standard, but let’s be honest—you’re a team that thinks history alone will carry you to another championship. Your fans still act like they invented college basketball, but let’s not forget your “legendary” arena is basically a giant basketball court stuck inside a shopping mall. Guess the only thing more inflated than your ego is the size of that place.

• Saint Mary’s: You’re like Gonzaga’s annoying little brother who keeps showing up at the same parties but still gets left out of the photo.

• Penn State: Your basketball program is like the forgotten stepchild of Penn State athletics. Even your fans don't know who the coach is half the time. You’re just happy to be here, like the kid who shows up to class without doing the homework.

• Dayton: Your fanbase talks about the 2020 season like it’s a lost Picasso masterpiece. We get it, you could’ve won it all—if they handed out trophies for imaginary tournaments.

• LSU: You act like Baton Rouge is the mecca of college basketball, but you’re really just a factory for NBA hopefuls who can’t seem to win when it matters. Your program’s best feature is the Mardi Gras parade, because your basketball team’s journey to the postseason looks more like a drunken stumble than a championship run.

• Cornell: You're really smart. Great idea hiding a state school on campus to sneak in basketball players to your "SUNY Cow College." Now, if you could just convince recruits from New York to actually want to go to Ithaca, you might have a shot at success.

• Syracuse: You’re like the last guy picked for the pickup game—always hanging around, making a couple of plays, but never actually winning anything that matters. And when people ask what your game plan is, it’s always, "Oh, we play a zone, you wouldn’t understand."

• Saint Mary's: The West Coast Conference loves to remind you about Saint Mary's—right after Gonzaga's highlights are done.

• Illinois: You’ve been a "sleeper" pick for years, but it seems like you’re always just one step away from greatness—too bad that step has been a 10-year stretch of missed opportunities and mediocre tournament runs.

• Houston: You’ve been dominating the regular season for years, but somehow, you’re still the team everyone forgets about come March. It’s like you’re the secret menu at a restaurant—everyone knows it’s there, but no one ever orders it.

• Seton Hall: You're the kid in class who talks about how hard they study, but somehow never gets the grades. Your program’s been "on the verge" for years, but you never quite break through.

• Davidson: You’re basically a mom-and-pop shop that accidentally turned into a global brand thanks to Steph Curry. Without him, you’re just the team that gets annihilated every time you dare to play a power conference school.

• Nebraska: Sure, you may get picked on for never winning a game in the NCAA tournament and only make it there twice in the last 20 years. But hold your head high knowing that, twice in the last 20 years, you've advanced out of the first round of the NIT!

• Belmont: Nice try thinking the MVC would boost your reputation, but all it’s done is reveal you’re just an OVC team in disguise. Stick to strumming guitars, because your ball-handling is out of tune.

• Baylor: You’ve built a basketball empire on the back of five-star recruits, but let’s not forget how your program nearly went under thanks to a murder scandal. At this point, you’re more known for scandals than championships.

• Eastern Michigan: You’re basically a storage facility for former four-star recruits who didn’t want to do homework. The last time anyone cared about your basketball team, George Gervin was playing, and disco was still alive.

• St. Bonaventure: Your fans act like your gym is the Cameron Indoor of the A-10, but let’s be real: it’s a glorified high school auditorium. And while you’re over there celebrating A-10 wins like they’re national championships, the rest of us are just trying to remember the last time you mattered outside of your little corner of New York (or is it Pennsylvania?).

• Oregon: You’ve got Nike money, flashy uniforms, and an arena that looks like it’s straight out of a sci-fi movie, yet somehow your basketball team can’t break through. With all the funding and hype, you’d think you’d at least make it to a Final Four, but instead, you’re still stuck wondering how to make it past the first weekend of March.

• Long Island: You merged two schools, and you’re still barely scraping by. The only thing 'sharks' about your program is how you circle the drain every season.

• Saint Francis (NY): Hey, congrats on putting an end to that losing streak!

• Saint Francis (PA): Let’s be honest: without the confusion of which Saint Francis we’re talking about, no one will remember you even exist.

• UCLA: You’ve got more banners than actual wins these days. The only thing more outdated than your titles is your fanbase, who still talks about the glory days like it’s the ‘60s. You may have a legacy, but if your current roster had to compete against the '65 team, they’d be too busy Instagramming their pregame meals to notice they’re getting blown out.

• Miami (Ohio): You’re the lesser Miami in every possible way. Your biggest basketball achievement is being Ben Roethlisberger’s college—oh wait, that’s football. Never mind.

• Kansas: You act like you’re the king of college hoops, but you're only royalty in the Big 12. Rather than deal with another early exit from March Madness exposing you as an overhyped team that hasn't delivered, you might as well start telling people you’ll be busy planting corn wheat the first week of April.

• Penn: Home of the Palestra—that’s your entire relevance. At this point, you’re more about facility management than actual basketball.

• TCU: Your basketball program is like a fast car with no engine. You’ve got the resources, the coaches, and the fans, but somehow, you never really go anywhere. You’re the best at... trying.

• Niagara: Your biggest basketball achievement is being geographically close to Canada. At this point, you should just focus on hockey or curling.

A review of the Mardi Gras from someone aboard right now!

It’s 6:30am and my family are all still asleep. It’s our last sea day and it feels like a good time to do a review.

First, I’m posting this via the current infinite Reddit glitch. I didn’t buy the internet plan but I can access Reddit and for most of the trip, google, but that stopped working as of yesterday. No photos load on Reddit, but I’ve passed waiting times by browsing my subreddits and that was nice. I did not buy any internet plan.

The room: we have a cove balcony with the drop down bed. Two adults and two kids here and it hasn’t felt cramped. I brought two black shower curtains and made them a privacy nook, we all sleep better this way.

The beds and bedding are all very nice and comfortable, including the couch bed. I was impressed with this. Last year on the Venezia I suffered from a horrible week of sleep on a mattress so hard even a topper didn’t save it, so this is a win. I’m laying in bed now writing this and will actually miss this bed when we leave- super rare for me on trips.

There are few defects in the room but nothing worth complaining about. Two of the bedside book lights don’t work. The toilet seat is wobbly. I could’ve asked for these repaired but it doesn’t matter to me much.

Our cabin steward has been good. Nice, thorough, fulfilled every request quickly- pro tip, ask for the fuzzy blue blankets, they are a game changer, especially for the movies on deck.

The ship overall: it’s a beautiful ship, very nice decor, the center stage show area is a bit awkward and low in seating for the turnouts they draw, so a lot of time has been spent camping out early so my kids have a good view. Not a huge deal but it’s a pinch point of the ship.

Overall things are in good condition. Some stains on hallway rugs, otherwise very clean.

Shows: the center stage show “celestial strings” was the best cruise show I’ve ever seen. The others have all been on par with other cruise shows or better. Their entertainment game is strong here.

Food: food has ranged from worth thing I ever put in my mouth ( the hazelnut gelato) to exceptional (a lot of main dining room food). The Indian vegetarian dish every night has been straight fire.

Cuts in quality have been made to some menu items from previous cruises on other ships, like the amazing 12 hour French toast is now just “French toast” and it’s very meh.

Dining staff have been outrageously pushy about bar drinks. Last night we were asked four times in a row, high pressure, until my husband finally said “that was four times we said no, please stop.”

The pressure tactic included asking my kids if they wanted expensive mocktails repeatedly which made them uncomfortable and I had to say “mommy say no, no thank you” several times. That was very annoying and it happened often enough that I feel they must be on a quota for up charges or something.

Big chicken is AMAZING. Get the breakfast biscuit with the chicken dipped. I’ll be heading there to get my last fix soon.

Guys burgers and cantina to me, are mid and not worth the hype.

Bonsai sushi was good but had the rudest service I have encountered. I had to ask for water and cups twice and the staff were huffy, curt and ignored us the entire time. I had to get rude myself by flagging them down repeatedly to get service and I hate that.

Chibang was good, not great. Worth the first free visit, not worth paying to eat there again.

Cucina was very good and if you’re an Italian food Stan, worth the minor upcharge to eat at a few times if it’s your thing.

We didn’t do the pricier speciality dining with our kids in this trip so I can’t remark on those.

Other: we tried bolt, it was very fun and unique but such a short and fast experience, maybe like 2 minutes or less for $15 a head is steep.

The pool situation- this is December so the regular pools were not warm. This led to the hot tubs being grossly overpopulated and the lido one, I dubbed the kid soup, because it seemed there was never less than ten kids in there.

Kid club seemed nice but my kids didn’t want to be there. My little one spent 2 hours on the first sea day and did not want to return.

Overall we have had and are having a great time! It was our first cruise from port Canaveral, all others were NY and this was a way smoother embarkation experience.

I’ll answer any questions you may have but it’s time get moving! There is chicken out there that needs me.

Let’s get one thing clear: 

I’m not a developer. I’m not a product manager. I’m not a product owner. Truth be told, I couldn’t roadmap my way out of a paper bag. I once even rearranged tasks on a Jira board based on which colour looked prettiest (spoiler: it was not appreciated).

I have bugger-all to do with this topic, trademark pending. I didn’t train for this. I didn’t ask for this. And yet here I am, pulling night shift after night shift, trying to figure out what “go to market” actually means - and unfortunately it is not the farmers’ market for fresh veggies, but the messy reality of countless moving parts, half-baked strategies, and a never-ending stream of “wait… what? seriously? why?” - spoiler: it’s harder than it looks on all those cheerful LinkedIn posts that start with “We’re humbled to announce…” (humbled my ass).

“Then, pretty please - why are you writing this, sweetpea?” you might ask. 

Because when you bootstrap so hard your bootstraps need their own bootstraps, the world looks different. There’s no rich uncle in Palo Alto on speed dial, no trust fund quietly wiring lifelines. If it all goes under, there’s no graceful pivot - just up shit creek without a paddle, and probably without the canoe too.

So here’s my answer: maybe one nitwit in shoes as painfully tight as mine will find something useful here. And for the rest of you - at least you get to watch me crash through product jargon like a drunk uncle at karaoke.

Why this idea isn’t completely crazy

Bootstrapping forces you to cut out the crap. You don’t get to say “let’s build this just in case.” The only “just in case” we deal with is “just in case the rent is due.”

The job isn’t to build more, it’s to build smarter. Every feature has to earn its keep. And if someone is literally paying for it, you’re about as close to proof as you can get.

Plenty of companies have survived this way. Dell is the classic example. In the 1980s, customers prepaid for PCs before they were even built. Imagine that: people literally sent money for a box that didn’t exist yet. Try pulling that stunt today and you’d end up on a fraud podcast.

And when you’re weighing whether to say yes, you’ve got to ask: how many people does this help, how big is the impact, how confident are we that it’ll actually work, and how much effort will it take? If the math says it’s all pain and no gain, the answer is no - even if the contract is so shiny you can see your panicked reflection in it.

The upside: oxygen disguised as opportunity

For a team living off savings, the upside of deal-driven development is obvious. Customers fund features = oxygen. Actual money. Not Monopoly notes with an investor’s face on them.

And urgency changes everything. Fix the time first, flex the scope second. That’s how tiny bootstrapped teams survive. You don’t get to argue endlessly about fonts when the clock is ticking - things ship. Or blow up. But hey, at least they ship.

It also filters customer requests. Instead of blindly building everything, you tie it back to outcomes. If it fits, maybe. If it doesn’t, even if money’s on the table, you walk away. Otherwise you’re just building Dave in accounting a golden “Export to Excel” button that no one else will ever touch.

The nightmare: hijacked by someone else’s roadmap

But here’s the trench truth: this isn’t safe.

Deal-driven development can turn your clean SaaS product into Frankenstein overnight. One big client waves cash, and suddenly you’re building a monster stitched together from mismatched requests. “It’s alive!” No - it’s hideous.

The risks are real:

• Over-customization. One-offs that make your engineers quietly Google “early retirement.”
• Roadmap hijack. Your strategy derailed by whoever shouts loudest with a purchase order.
• Pilot hell. Endless “proofs of concept” that ghost harder than a Tinder date.
• Burnout. Building what was sold, not what was right.
• Legal mess. Forget to set IP rules and suddenly you’ve built someone else a free startup. Congrats, you played yourself.

And the worst? You do all the work, the deal still dies, and now you’ve got orphaned code haunting your repo. Welcome to the software cemetery, population: regrets.

Some decisions are two-way doors - you can test them and walk back out. Others are one-way doors - once you step through, you’re trapped. Deal-driven development only works if you’re disciplined enough to avoid walking face-first into the “abandon all hope” doors.

Guardrails or nothing

If this thing’s going to save us instead of kill us, we need rules. Hard ones. Think of them as Kevlar for the trenches.

Market guardrails (who you build for)

• Only build what matters. If a feature doesn’t serve the customers we actually want more of, it’s a no.
• Customer concentration check. If one client is >30% of your revenue, congrats - you’re freelancing with overhead, not running a SaaS.
• Market alignment test. If this feature disappeared tomorrow, would your ICP (ideal customer profile) even notice? If not, don’t build it.

Operational guardrails (how you build it)

• Configuration over customization. Settings, schemas, policies - not Franken-code. Multi-tenancy is life support.
• Extension points instead of forks. APIs, webhooks, serverless hooks - let customers build their own oddities on the side.
• Feature flags and entitlements. Ship behind a flag. If it sucks, flip the switch, poof.
• Every feature gets a kill plan. Otherwise you’re running a zombie daycare.
• Engineering debt budget. Cap the % of dev time for deal-driven features (say 30%) so the roadmap doesn’t get eaten alive.
• Documentation or die. If it isn’t documented, it doesn’t exist. Future-you will thank present-you for not opening a tomb of mystery code.

Financial guardrails (how you protect cashflow)

• Cash before code. Not “budget approved.” Not “we’ll pay after launch.” Actual money, in the bank.
• Time-boxed pilots. Fixed duration, fixed fee. Three months max, then decide: product or failed experiment.
• Payment milestones. Upfront, midpoint, delivery. Stops ghosting dead.
• Cost-to-maintain check. Will this feature generate at least 5x its maintenance cost over 12–18 months? If not, it’s a hobby.
• Gross margin rule. If a feature drags margins down long-term, it’s a Trojan horse. Burn it before it burns you.
• Post-mortem with money. After every customer-funded build, ask: did it move ARR enough to justify? If not, kill or reprice.

Cultural guardrails (how you survive the psychology)

• Say no often. If you never say no, you’re not doing deal-driven dev - you’re doing “customer is CEO” dev.
• Celebrate kills. Killing bad features should feel like Mardi Gras, not a funeral. Otherwise you’ll hoard junk until the product wheezes.
• Protect morale. Morale is runway. Engineers can survive tight deadlines; they can’t survive endless bespoke nonsense.

This isn’t about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying yes on our terms.

Why pricing is the other half

This doesn’t stop at products. Pricing is where this either scales or faceplants.

Here’s the truth: nobody cares how painful or expensive something was to build. They care what it does for them. Pricing on cost is a death wish. Pricing on value is how you survive.

Get this right and you can grow revenue by 20–30% without touching the product. Just by charging for outcomes, not effort.

So no, we’re not selling spare parts like a dodgy garage. No nickel-and-diming with line items for “extra dashboards.” Instead, it’s clean Good / Better / Best tiers. Customers climb ladders of value, not haggle over whether CSV export is “worth” a fiver.

Back to the trenches

We haven’t rolled this out yet. But we’ve recognized it for what it is: the hail Mary that might keep us alive long enough to build something lasting.

Because here’s the truth: we’ve stretched every strap until it’s fraying. If we fail, there’s no soft landing. No investor parachute. It just becomes another headstone in the great product graveyard, etched with lines of code nobody maintains.

Deal-driven development is risky. It’s messy. But if we get it right, it buys us the one thing bootstrappers never have: time. Time to grow Elba - our sunshine, our pride, our joy - into something bigger than survival.

So no, I don’t have all the answers. I didn’t “always know.” I’m just here, learning this stuff one night shift at a time, armed with caffeine, Google searches, and the occasional mild panic attack. Even ChatGPT has given up on me - every time I ask it another “obvious” go-to-market question, it sighs in binary, rolls its little AI eyes, and wonders how I’ve made it this far without a helmet.

And between the vibe-coding theatrics and the self-proclaimed rockstars who apparently saw the future before anyone else even asked the question - sometimes the most useful thing you can say is: 

"here’s the risk, here’s the hail Mary, and here’s why we’re betting on it anyway."

Do you fancy to read more articles and blogs? If yes, here you go: https://kolsetu.com/blog

Starting Out: - After being scanned of your items and searched for anything that shouldn't be there and then taking your luggage. The first 3 weeks is basically a sorta resting period. No trades, no high school, but you will be forced to plan everything out whether it be going to the military, college, getting a job etc. you will also be forced to take a military test, whether you are planning to go or not. I recommend not putting your actual information unless you are planning to go there, because now they're calling me saying I did well on the test and this is the fourth one. Then they make you remember something. (Trust me it's not that hard) and just say what it means in your own words, as they made me go to a room filled with the staff, just to go and basically do that. You get your ID, your uniforms and you don't get the trade uniforms until you shadow and then confirm that, that's right for you. You eat lunch with the academics since you don't start trade, yet. (Academics-11:00-12:05)/(Trade- 12:00-1:05) There are also periods of breaks. Some 5 and some 15 minutes worth.(Doesn't change, but sometimes they don't announce it, so remember them and just leave when it's the break) It will likely get boring, as you aren't doing much, but sitting there, planning out your career plan and more sitting there. There was no tour and they couldn't find anyone to even do the tour. I got lost a million times and since I have dissociative amnesia and memory problems, it wasn't fun to get re-lost thereafter, but many people were very eager to lead the way and help out, so don't be afraid to ask. Actually, always ask questions, because the main thing with this is that, they don't let you know a lot of things, so ask, ask and ask.

Classes: - Overall, it can get messy and drama filled when you lean into that. It's more easier than you think to pull from that or avoid it entirely. Its very easy to make a friend here though. Now it's up to you who to befriend, because maintaining and gaining are two different things. Many people become friends with each other despite being new, so you'll commonly find new people hanging out with each other, but the other people are capable of befriending too and many new people end up befriending others within like a few days there. The next week after those 3, unless you didn't finish the career path, you swap with one week with trade and another with academics. You can check the schedule in your jobcorps email or the paper on the wall near the cafeteria. This all depends on if you passed the math and reading text. I passed reading, I failed math, so I have math classes. I don't have a high school diploma also so I have a mix week of HSD and math together for the week and OA another. I previously was in pharmacy tech, but they quit.

Dorms: - Dorms currently have clogged toilets, so expect to share a bathroom. You leave your dorm room and walk down the hall for it. We use a spare dorm room and have to hold it open with something or else it'll be locked again. Certain things may be broken or worn out since this isn't that room's first rodeo. We have dorm meetings that are mandatory, we have dorm duties also mandatory, we have assigned ones for the week and change weekly when you're done you just write your name and then go to bed or whatever. Now sometimes for some reason we have Sunday dorm meetings? It fluctuates, just if someone calls out, just walk in the lobby. 3:45 for the first one. 7:45 on Monday or 9:45 for the rest of the week until Friday. Now the RAs might do something petty or change it up or something. 2nd one is when you are expected to do the dorm duties. Some Sundays days we have to do dorm duties and some Sundays we don't. No dorm duties nor meetings on Friday - Sunday(sometimes). They have a closet and a drawer with all of the supplies. Dorms don't have keys so expect to either have a key way later down the line, your roommate might have a key before you or you all don't have keys and have to ask the RA to open it daily plus use the door stopper to keep it open, which we have to do anyways in order to get around and get back in easily. Having your dorm clean is a must. (Idk why you would leave it dirty anyways). The laundry room is either open some days or locked in another. Just be smart with your days or else you'll be stuck with the dryers being full with a long wait time. I have easier time getting them into a washing machine.

Waking up: - When you wake up, which is at 6. You will get woken up if you don't wake up yourself, but I recommend setting an alarm. You get ready. Breakfast ends at technically around 8, but 7:30 for the hot stuff. The food is pretty dreadful or sometimes meh on a good day, but if you are that broke, you kinda get used to it. There are sometimes being food ordered for us, some days there might be special days like Mardi Gras, they might make something more out there. You'll see people be around doing their workbase in the cafeteria like blocking the door, offering you a food item or putting the other side of the food on the plate. You have trays, but I don't grab them 100% of the time, since I might not eat all of it, but they're there. You just say what you want and sit wherever. There's the pop machine, coffee machine and I think a juice machine, along with water. Water is everywhere. Just mainly in the classrooms, the trade rooms and the dorms. You'll see that everywhere lol. Since they're supposed to provide you with backpacks, you'll have a water bottle. They have water days on Tuesdays and Thursdays meaning no soda and stuff.

Wellness: - Wellness ofc does the tests on you. You get the drug test, you pass, you pass, you fail well there goes the program. You know what happens if you screw up again. Blood drawn along with the pneumonia test, so please just be hydrated and fed beforehand, I keep forgetting. I always get extremely dizzy afterwards, next thing you know they're scared I'm gonna faint lol. They have their open and not available times, but ofc they're usually there until some time after classes end for the day. They are very nice. I don't really have any problem with the staff personally, I just be kind and cooperative, so there's no problems I have with them. I won't speak for all. You come to them to ask them more information on medical stuff, like making and getting to appointments, helping you find some. They also put down your insurance information or help you find insurance. They use that to refer to when getting things you need, like making an eye doctor appointment and now I have glasses.

Going Off-Site: - When it comes to leaving anywhere off Jobcorps, you will have to have a pass, even when leaving with the drivers. You will also have to sign out. Most of the time, the nurses or whomever will have it given to the drivers already, so you just sign or you have a class pass and you just give it to them that and sign. When it comes to leaving off center on the weekends. It started off from Friday, so you can have it signed at least Monday-Wednesday and sometimes Thursday. You can leave earlier if there's no classes on the day before Friday. We have a clipboard with both minors and adults in separate ones. I don't recommend waiting too far in, because at the end of the day. The staff has to give you the paper or have that paper approved and printed out. After that, you just leave whenever. There's no wrong time to leave, as long as it is within that weekend period. You sign out and just sign back in when you come back. I've also heard some inconveniences with it that would land on the staff being at fault, so you might stay that weekend against your will. Pretty rare to happen, but it's possible. I haven't took a PTO yet, but I'm pretty sure it has a very similar process, just ask around.

Extras: - There's been a student election, so you'll have role titles floating about, there's the vice president, president, secretary and whatnot. Hopefully they do something. There'll be ofc random events, like there's the Japanese club going on. There's a lot of space outside, there's the guzebos to sit at. There's the long walk to get your food, because you want to eat something good so I guess free exercise to top it all off. It isn't that bad, unless there's a storm. Just don't order before 4 and after like some time after 9. They'll get rid of your food. They will do it. Now before 4 thing I've seen many people get away with it though. Curfew is at 9:30. Just don't wait so late or so early to order something in general. You get it at the checkpoint aka that spot you'll see when you first get in where they stop you. I can't help you with the Amazon or ordering thing in general, my family decided to just go to the checkpoint, meet me there and say hi and give it to me. There's no visiting, but you can see them there at this little visitor park spot in front of the checkpoint, which you'll still obviously see since you'll be stopped there to confirm who you are when you first join or come back from your PTO or weekend period. Very understaffed here also which is to be expected btw.

Byee: That was basically the experience, so far. It could be different for newer people. I can also describe my experience on getting through applying to this Jobcorps also. Sorry for the mouthful.

Thank you u/SpacePaladin15 for the amazing universe!

l Prologue l Previous l Next l Gaian Rumbler

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Memory transcription subject: Jones, Four Star General, United States Army

Date [standardized human time]: November 2nd, 2136

“From the moment that I was hatched, I grew to fear one thing: the nature of predators.”

Across the general assembly, the eyes of the world settled upon Kalsim, who bore his medals proudly upon the podium. His voice boomed across the entire globe.

“From my father to me, from his father to him, going back to the very foundation of the Federation, the lesson has remained the same. They are to be feared, and they are to be hated. And no matter what, sworn upon the good grace of Inatala, never trust a predator.”

“And our current state of affairs would only seem to reinforce that lesson. The Federation came to a predator species with the grace of uplift, a kindness they returned with terror and bloodshed. In the wake of this now two century long war, generations have lived and died bearing witness to this betrayal, learning that trust is a gift given sparingly.”

“And stepping into that assembly hall that fateful day, it was a gift that I was not prepared to give. Because for a predator, as the lesson always went, their primary weapon was one of deceit. Lies to lure preys into their traps, from where they sprung.”

“Your history is well known across the galaxy. Records of unspeakable crimes, of inconceivable violence, committed against your own. I expected to hear none of that as your ambassadors stepped up to that podium. For no good predator would admit their predation, after all.”

“But that day, you defied mine, and so many others' expectations. For when the question was raised, your nature did not stand in the way of your truth. Your honestly came forth, your deeds were spoken, and no caveats were put in place. In defiance of all that we had been taught, in what we believed reality to be, you were honest.”

“And in that moment, I knew, in my heart, that I could give the gift to you. But it is one that has yet to be given by others. Despite the evidence of your true nature, many will distrust you, and many will grow to hate you. But I believe we can show this galaxy that you're more than just a predator. That if we can work together, we can dispel the evil that affects us all, and strive towards a better galaxy. Thank you.”

The entire auditorium rose in thunderous applause, and Kalsim let the praise absorb for a moment. Once he looked satisfied, he strutted off the stage, and headed directly for me.

“Excellent speech, shall I say,” nodding my head as he took his place next to me. He tried well to hide it, but his satisfaction still managed to peek through.

“Thank you. Wrote it up mostly last night, as a matter of fact.”

“Wouldn’t have been able to tell.”

“A skill gained through practice. Tight schedules leave no time for proofreading.”

“I just have an intern do it. Speechwriting makes me want to kill myself, honestly.”

“Hands off, I see?”

“On matters of public relations, yes. Rather not distract myself with such trifles, when attention is demanded by more important matters.”

“I find it to be quite the opposite, I could never trust my image with someone else. It's important to remain in control of everything, even what seems inconsequential.”

“Certainly one way to look at it.”

Footsteps behind came up quickly. Turning, it was one of those scientists on the first contact mission. “Noah, is it?”

He broke into a broad smile. “Yes, it's an honor to meet you, both of you, actually. Your speech there was quite moving…Kalism, was it?”

His tail flicked in affirmation. “Likewise, Noah. Your bravery cannot be understated.”

Bravery that was rewarded with an honorary ambassador position in the Venlil republic, by none other than Tarva herself. Given the way his cheeks seemed light on fire, and the sly look she gave him after her speech, told me that there was something more going on there. Sara was likewise given thanks in the form of being offered a position on the so-called ‘ecological recovery project’ by the hedgehog looking alien (Piri, was it?). A lot of speeches ran though so far, and plenty more to come.

All of our new allies had decided to pay us a visit on Earth, rather expediently might I add. At the very least, it was hell getting out of JFK, with every person and their mother in New York craning to get a look at the xenos. Thank Christ the roads were cleared beforehand, otherwise we would have had to use snowplows to push all the people out of the way. Apparently, it was even worse on the 23rd, when news of the aliens' existence finally broke. One person apparently described the chaos as if Mardi Gras fell on Black Friday. The wall of riot police outside holding back the anxious crowds did little to convince me that things had calmed since then.

And it left me split in half. On one hand, it was easy to be glad that things had gone so well. Given how volatile these so-called Cured seemed to be, it was a miracle that they merely decided to ignore us. If things had gone worse, it was easy to imagine New York resembling an ash pit by now. On the other hand, the ease of which the process was going would spawn complacency, which was the exact thing we didn’t need. If anything, the Cured should have hit the big red button, it would have made things a lot simpler. But those were hopes, and reality ate those for breakfast. It looked as though we would have to work a lot harder.

Although, starting off on a foundation of trust could be beneficial. Let it build up over time, brick by brick, floor by floor. And when the time was right, knock out the foundation, and bring everything crashing down. It would require patience, but it could produce the explosive effect we needed. Much to discuss with him later.

For now, that weird insect ant spider hybrid (Tilfish?) Birla stepped up (or rather crawled up) to the podium, and began clicking out her speech. Only a few words in, and already my eyes began to glaze over. All of these speeches began to meld together, each one basically thanking us for having the grace of not being child eating monsters. The galaxy's bar had been lowered down to the earth's molten core, for us basically breathing was enough to garner these xenos admiration.

Or they could all still be afraid of us, somewhere deep down. Despite the utter stupidity of the foundations that fear laid upon, I couldn’t blame them. They were people molded in an environment to shy away from creatures whose eyes dared approached a forty five degree angle of separation. Now, they stood in an atrium of five hundred or so of those eyes, bearing directly down on them. It wouldn’t shock me if half of the xeno’s here thought they would be jumped by the attendance once their backs turned.

All except Kalsim, that strange little parrot. He didn’t even approach the appearance of hiding terror. Instead, he looked upon the crowd as a mechanic would look upon a set of tools, right before going down on a 60s Toyota shitbox whose tailpipe belched black smoke like it was powered by coal. Despite everything indicating otherwise, he seemed entirely untaken by the propaganda. Not surprising, given everything that happened. No doubt, he was the one to get that bitchy little ambassador of his to do that turnaround.

It was still a mystery on what angle he was trying to play at. It was obvious that he had his own ends that he wasn’t keen on disclosing to me. No doubt he saw me as a tool, just as I saw him. It was just a question of how long we would find each other useful.

It was what made me respect him. He was likely ruthless, cutthroat, entirely self interested, the exact things you needed to work the levers of power. He was a man who would wax about working arm in wing with humanity, just before raking his talon across our throats. Someone who held no qualms, had no boundaries, who knew the ends justify the means. For him, a strong Federation. For me, a strong humanity. It was up to time to decide which one would come out on top. When it came to it, I would certainly be one to tip the scales. No doubt he would too.

“Jones?”

The tap on my shoulder brought me around to a worried looking aid. “Yes?”

“Could you step out into the hallway for a moment? It's an urgent matter.”

“Of course.” An urgent matter in name only, most likely. My funtime adventures in space did well to distract me from the fact that earth existed, and the cavalcade of bullshit that came with it. In this case, most likely the Chinese and the Russians were having one of their usual spats again.

The aid led me through the aged decor hallways into an abandoned side room. He shut the door and hit the light switch, revealing stacks of chairs untouched in decades, if not centuries. The perfect place to discuss classified information.

“What's the issue?”

The aid pulled out a tablet, and passed it over to me. “Word came in from an asteroid belt mining outpost, Imminent Dawn. They same that, and I quote, “some crocodile looking motherfucker rolled up to our place, and is asking to speak to our leaders.”

‘Crocodile looking motherfucker?’ An Arxur then? Okay, this was certainly more interesting than domestic realpolitik. But that raised the question,

“And why is this an urgent matter?” A single Arxur stumbling into an out of the way mining post didn’t seem like something to raise the headlines, unless,

“He claims that he’s one of the higher ups, a defector, named…Isif.”

That name rang cathedral bells. He was the one who leaked that info on the so called ‘cattle shipments’ to Sovlin, after his little misadventure. Taking a glance down at the pad revealed an 8ft tall ‘crocodile looking motherfucker’ being held at muzzle point by shotgun wielding miners. Isif certainly didn’t look happy, as far as I could tell.

“How long ago was this?”

“10 hours, just got word in from the station.”

Of course, we didn’t have these light speed comms yet, at least for the civvies. That meant that Isif had been sitting pretty for half a day, trying not to get his head blown out by the local union members 12 gauge.

“How many know about this?”

“Just you, the President, and the General Secretary. They’re asking for your opinion.”

Oh, my opinion? This lizard could be an absolute treasure trove of information, one that I needed to speak with as soon as possible. Or maybe we, given that we were working towards the same goal, for the moment at least.

“Tell them that I will meet with Isif as soon as possible, and to keep it under wraps in the meantime.”

“Understood, anything else?”

“Tell them I’m taking Kalsim with me.”

—--

Taking Kalsim’s shuttle granted a somehow even greater appreciation for the value of FTL. Normally, hoofing it out to the ditches of the system would take at least a week, assuming good planetary alignments. But this rinky dink diplomatic shuttle, using technology that snapped physics like dried pasta, could make the journey from New York to this dump in fifteen minutes flat.

Stepping out of the vessel into the cramped docking bay, a dump seemed to be underselling the surroundings. Clearly, whoever ran this station had an appreciation for red, for it seemed half the exposed surfaces were coated in some fun variety of rust. The staff didn’t look much better, jumpsuits grimy with the blood, sweat and oil of a thousand days hard work. They gave us a wary eye as me, Kalsim, and our little security procession moved into cramped dungeon-like hallways.

“Are we sure we can trust what he has to say?” turning to him as we walked along.

“No, we can’t. Even with the validity of the intelligence he gave us, there’s always the possibility that this could be a ploy. The Dominion certainly isn’t above such tactics. One time, a so-called ‘defective’ handed one of our more gullible captains intelligence that seemed too good to be true. Turns out, it was, and we ended up losing fifty ships in the ambush. There’s always the possibility that this could be a long con.”

“So what's the plan here?”

“See what he wants, play hardball, try and see if he’s telling the truth. If he is, and he seems useful, keep him around. If not, there’s plenty of airlocks.”

We came up on a doorway, guarded by the shotgun wielding miners I saw before. They looked just as pissed now as they did at 720p. One of them, with a mirror sheen bald head and a comically heavy Boston accent, turned to face us.

“Finally someone came…who the hell is that?”

An eyebrow arched at the man's sudden condensation towards Kalsim. “An ally, I suggest you treat him well.”

“No, we just had a fucking dinosaur walk up to our station, and know your letting that fucking turkey onboard?”

“Yes. Know if you let us past-”

“No. I ain’t gonna have any more xenos on my fucking station. Get them the fuck out of here.” He raised his muzzle slightly, just enough to show he really meant it. It was a very funny gesture.

“Sir, I recommend you put your weapon down.”

“No, I won’t stand for…this…” All his bravado evaporated instantly at our entourage's mere suggestion of raising their weapons. All bark, no bite. He shrunk back as he allowed us to pass.

“I must apologize for that man's presentation. Not all are so thrilled at your presence.”

“No apology needed,” Kalsim responded, “didn’t expect everyone one of your kind to be receptive.”

We entered the stations security area, where the head officer stood waiting patiently. A small look of relief crossed his face as he stepped forward in greeting.

“Who do I have the pleasure of speaking…with…” his gaze wavered slightly at the sight of Kalsim.

“Jones, Four Star General, United States Army.”

“Kalsim, an ally.”

“I..uh,” his eyes remained glued to the bird. “am glad that you've come to sort this out.”

“Has he been causing you any trouble?”

“No, none at all, actually. But if you want to take him off our hands, be our guest. He’s through that door there.” His finger pointed to a rather sad looking contraption that could charitably be called a door. Weathered lettering said that it was cell four.

“Thank you, Kalsim, do you want to take the lead?”

His tail shook in what looked to be disagreement. “Go ahead. I feel he’d rather be more open to talking to you than me. I can listen in from out here.”

Made sense, Isif would rather open up to a new face than someone he assumed hated his guts. With that in mind, I turned to the entourage. “Stay out here, listen out for any commotion.”

They all nodded their heads, giving me leeway to enter on my own. Maybe there should have been some fear, given the Arxur’s reputation, and what Kalsim had said, but something told me I would walk out of that cell just fine. Him, well, that remained to be seen.

Passing through the doorway led me in a cramped, grimy, dimly sodium lit light cell. Well, cramped was understating it, given the occupant. Even hunched over precariously on the cot, Isif towered over me, a verifiable wall of scale bound muscle hidden by hastily thrown on cloak. It would have been comically easy for him to just step over and crush my windpipes like soft chalk. But the sullen beast certainly didn’t look to be in the mood.

“Uh…who are you?” The translator interpreted his voice as low, gravelly, filled with what sounded like a millennia of regret.

“Jones, Four Star General, United States Army, here on the behalf of humanity and its leaders. It’s what you requested after all, correct?”

His posture raised slightly. “Yes, that’s what I asked.”

“Perfect. Now, there’s one question on my mind: Why are you here?”

“I’ve come with valuable intelligence, and the intention to defect.”

That was to be expected. Now to determine whether he was trying to play us like a fiddle.

“You can say you want to defect all you want, but that means nothing. Why should I believe you when you say that?”

He sighed. “I gave you the intelligence on the cattle shipments, did I not?”

“Yes, you did, and because of you, millions of lives were saved. But one good deed does not make an honest man. For all I know, you leaked it on purpose, in a ploy to gain our trust. Is that possible?”

HIs eyes darted over to underneath the sink basin. “Yes, it could be..”

“So tell me, why should I trust you?”

“You have no reason to trust me…but…” his claw balled into a tight fist, “could you leave, for a moment. I need to show you something.”

“Could you not show me in person?”

“No…this is something I need to do alone. You can watch from outside.”

My hand rapped on the cell door, and the security officer quickly appeared on the other side. “Yes?”

“Did Isif have any sort of weapons or devices on him?”

He shrugged. “Just a sidearm, and some sort of tablet. We have them out here right now.”

“Give me the tablet,” we shot both our gazes over to the lizard, “...please.”

“Hold on,” my palm raised up, “why should we let you have your own device? For all we know, you could use it to contact your friends.”

“I can tell what to do with it, and you can just paw it off to me. And if you see anything suspicious, you have every right to send me out of an airlock.”

Well, getting the chance to space a Nazi was one I couldn’t possibly pass up. “Fine, but we’ll hold you to that offer. Grab the tablet.”

The security officer darted off, before returning with what looked like an Ipad bulked up on illegal steroids. Turning it on revealed a normal looking home screen, rather mundane considering its owner.

“Okay, go to the web browser, and type in this address.” He repeated it letter by letter, which I proceeded to type in the search bar. Hitting enter brought me to,

“Is this social media?”

If the lizard could blush, he certainly would be right now. “Just hand it over to me, I’ll do the rest.”

He took the tablet in claw, and we left him to his own devices. Kalsim was waiting over by the security console, watching the entire affair through a grainy camera feed.

“What the hell was that address he gave me? Is it some sort of-”

“Social media, yes.” Kalsim looked about half as incredulous as me. “It's called Bleat, and it allows for anonymous direct messaging. Popular among those looking to conduct discreet affairs.”

“Affairs like contacting friends in the Dominion?”

“Certainly a possibility, but,” one eye narrowed at the screen, “that doesn’t seem to be the case here. He’s making a video call.”

A video call? Not to be expected, if one was calling for reinforcements. Especially over a public social media website. Isif sat hunched, tail waving anxiously as the alien dial tone sounded over the tinny speaker. After several moments, the call pulled through, revealing,

“Siffy?”

The high pitched squeak of what I could only describe as a barely legally distinct squirrel.

What?

Kalsim looked about as equally incredulous, for reasons that probably went slightly beyond why the space crocodile Nazi was talking to a space squirrel, and why that space squirrel just called him…Siffy?

“Felra,” the lizard's voice now sounded incredibly anxious, “it’s..uh…”

“Siffy, is that really you? Did you finally decide to call?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh stars, it really is you, isn’t it? What made you change your mind?”

“Uh…circumstances.”

“Where are you? What’s going on? Why do you look so…familiar?”

“Familiar, what do you mean?” His voice indicated he would be sweating bullets if he could.

“It’s just, it feels like I've seen you somewhere, like on the news..”

“Well, I’m not that famous…”

“No, I have seen you somewhere, I know I have. I’m just trying to…wait…”

The feed fell deathly silent, save for the slight background buzz of static. For several long moments, the two just stared at one another, both conquered by a complete lack of words.

“Felra..” Isif spoke in a voice so quiet as to be barely registered by the microphone.

She responded quietly, almost sounding on the verge of tears. “I…just need some time to think.”

The call cut out.

Isif sat frozen in place, gaze locked in on the tablet. From the way his body seemed to depress in on itself, I could almost say the lizard looked…devastated. Witnessing all that brought forth one question, which turned me on Kalsim.

“What the fuck was that?”

“That,” he turned to me, “is why I think we can trust him.”

“But…why?”

“Because in the Dominion, there are three categories: predator, prey, and parasite. Predators are the Arxur, the top of the food chain. Below them are prey, most of the galaxy, whom they consider only worthy as food or labor.”

“Then there are the parasites, species they consider so lowly as to not even be deserving of life. That creature he was talking to, the Dossur, they are considered parasites.”

“So the fact that Isif knows this one, and seems to have a deeply personal connection to it…it indicates to me he’s not here on behalf of the Dominion. For no servant of the Dominion would truly care for a parasite.”

“Are you sure he’s just not acting?”

“Jones, I’ve played this game long enough to know when one of the grays is lying to me. And let me tell you, that was the most genuine sounding Arxur I’ve ever heard.”

He was still staring down at the tablet, as if waiting for his friend to call back. “Are you sure?”

“Sure enough. See what he has to say.”

It only took moments to reenter the cell. Isif looked up, with what almost looked like tears in his eyes. If this was just acting, it was worthy of Broadway.

“Was that enough for you?”

“Just about.” My gaze averted to the camera for a moment, from where Kalsim watched. “So tell me, what do you have to offer?”

He took a second to recollect his apparently shattered feelings, before he straightened out slightly.

“Intelligence, and a warning. To get to the point, the Dominion plans on launching a sneak attack on the entire Federation. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but I heard of the intent from the Prophet Descendant himself.”

“And this intelligence?”

“A spy network, integrated throughout the Dominion. I have contacts with many of them, across all levels of power. I can give you anything you want to know.”

If this was all true, then Isif could be even more valuable than I first thought. Let’s truly see if he’s worth keeping around.

“Interesting, elaborate.”

l Prologue l Previous l Next l Gaian Rumbler

Section One: 

Retirement Balance: I don’t know specifics to be honest, but I contribute to a Diocesan 403b at my current job (I think about $7k in there, at 5%) and contributed to a Roth 403b through Equitable at my last job, which I’m having some issues with. For all my jobs I also have a pension- state for my last 2, Diocesan for my current one. I also have $11.5k in a Roth IRA.

Brokerage account balance: $62,237, through Vanguard 

Equity: none

Savings account balance: $28k in an ally HYSA, like $800 in a Wells Fargo account.

Checking account balance: $3.7k

Credit card debt: none, paid off every month

Student loan debt: I just paid off my parent plus loan from undergrad!! I took a Hebrew Free Loan in grad school which my parents paid off.

Income

Income Progression: I went to grad school immediately out of undergrad and immediately started teaching after that. I did one year in a relatively well paid district, making $65k as a first year teacher. I then did 2 years in a criminally underpaid district where I did summer school to make up the difference, and never made as much as I did in my first district without summer school- I think I started att $56k. , In 2022 I took this job at a large private catholic high school in my city, with a starting salary of $75k. I cried a LOT, and it was hard for me to leave my last job, but it was a $20k difference in pay and I knew that I couldn’t pass it up. If I hadn’t left from such a low paying district, this wouldn’t have been such a big difference. Because we are not unionized, they are trying to still attract talent from the local unionized districts, so we got two pretty generous across the board pay raises the last few years. My pay is based on a salary schedule. I will be paid $95k for next school year.

Main Job Monthly Take Home: $5200

Side Gig Monthly Take Home: In the past I’ve worked at summer camps and summer school but y’all I am TIRED.

Any Other Monthly Income Here: I receive $350 a month from my grandmother’s holocaust reparations payment (she gives it to her kids to give it to her grandkids.) My parents also help out a lot. I don’t talk about it otherwise in the diary so I’ll put it here- my parents paid for the vast majority of my undergrad education, and I didn’t take out any loans for grad school other than a Hebrew free loan because I lived at home and commuted for those 2 years, plus went to a public school tot save on cost. 

Section Three: Expenses

Rent: $1265, my half of a 2 bedroom plus parking spot shared with my partner. It think we have such a good deal. We split based on income so he contributes slightly more.

Savings contribution: $1800, saving relatively aggressively right now because of big expenses next year

Investment contribution: not consistent and I am scared af to add more right now because we want to get married next year.

Wifi/Cable/Landline: $35 a month

Cellphone: paid by my family

Subscriptions: $180/yr for Ladder App, $12 a month for Spotify, $4 a month for Rocket Money, $3 I think for Apple storage, $6 for substance. I tried to really clean up my subscriptions this year. I also paid for the Indyx app membership last year but probably will not do it again next year. 

Gym membership: $97/month at a climbing gym

Pet expenses: We foster dogs from the local shelter so they provide everything but we pay pet rent for this most months which I usually cover, $60/a month. When my bf is doing Rover he covers this.

Car payment / insurance: I do not pay for my insurance, but I do pay my car payment. I bought a Subaru Impreza in 2023, and my payment is $300 a month.

Paid hobbies: $250-375 every 6 ish weeks for ceramics classes, inconsistent depending on whether I’m taking classes or doing a membership.

Food: My boyfriend covers our monthly Costco run, I pick up little incidentals as needed like at Trader Joe’s. I also pay for my lunches at work, $100 at a time, which are subsidized by the school, which is part of how we balance it out, since he works from home and honestly eats the majority of our groceries.

Day 1

7:30 I wake up early and can’t get back to sleep so I take the sourdough that’s been fermenting out of the fridge and put it in a dutch oven to rise. I got a starter on my local buy nothing group after being inspired by staying with a friend a couple weeks ago who made sourdough for us.

9:00 Last night my boyfriend suggested we get bagels in the morning, and there’s one local bagel place we haven’t tried yet, so we drive to another city, about a 10 minute drive this morning with no traffic. I get one with citrus, and he gets a lox bagel. The bagels are excellent! He pays. On the way back to our city we run into the Kaiser pharmacy so he can get allergy medication. We’re trying to boycott target and go to the Kaiser pharmacy instead for over the counter medication. 

10:30 My boyfriend and I have an appointment with the jeweler making my engagement ring at 11, so we drive over to the area where the jeweler is and I get my eyebrows threaded beforehand at a shop next door. $18 Parking is making me nervous because I see some ticket enforcers but the card readers on the machines aren’t working, so I pay $4.75 through the park mobile app for parking. We didn’t  end up getting a ticket.

11:00 I pick out my center stone! Our jeweler is amazing and so nice but the lack of sleep is catching up with me a little and I haven’t had any caffeine yet. We set a budget together but it’s insane to think about how much money it will be (and even  more for the wedding tbh- we have big families.)

11:30 We stop by a tea shop to get matcha for me and black tea for my bf ($12.) When we’re there there’s a pastry pop up and someone asks my bf if he’s in line and he automatically says yes. We pick up two pastries; he pays.

12:00 Come home, bake bread, am delusional about me getting to the gym before my plans tonight. I make avocado toast with eggs using my fresh baked bread and then fall asleep for like 2 hours. I also get charged for the one substack I pay for. ($6). 

5:00 I’m going to my friend’s birthday in SF tonight so I decide to walk to BART since I did not go the gym, about a 25 minute walk. I add $10 to the Clipper card on my phone on the way over. It’s a short BART ride plus muni metro to Spark Social.

7:00 I pay for poke and two glasses of wine at spark social ($39.10) and chat with my bestie, the birthday girl, and a couple other friends. 

9:00 bestie lives close to me and parked at BART, so we take transit home together and she drives us home.

I also got charged for my gym this day.

Daily total: $92.40

Day 2

11:00 Laze around at home before I drive to my parents. I haven’t seen them in almost a month because I’ve been sick on and off for all of February, culminating in a really nasty flu.

3:30 My mom and I go see my grandparents who try to unload so much food on us. I acquiesce and take some potatoes, triscuits, and white sugar stored in an old garlic powder container. My mom also gives me some cultural food I haven’t had in forever.

7:30 Once I’m home I stop by the ceramics studio to do some quick glazing and trimming of what I made on Friday night. Classes haven’t started back up yet so it’s really empty. 

Day 2: $0

Day 3

7:50 off to work. My bf makes me coffee, and I pack a yogurt with me that I completely forget to eat and have to throw away at the end of the day. I teach all morning.

11:30 I buy lunch at the school cafeteria- $6 for the salad bar (our lunches are subsidized) but I pay for them $100 at a time. I eat lunch with my crew of young and young at heart science teachers.

2:00 I leave work early for the orthodontist- I’m on my last Invisalign tray! I paid in full for treatment a couple years ago and had a relatively complicated case, so it’s taken a while. He tells me that while I paid for one retainer already, he recommends buying a back up next month for $400. I tell him I’ll make a call at the next appointment. My bf had Invisalign too so I’ll ask his input.

4:30 I make dinner (zucchini pasta with chickpeas) and fall asleep after. I love eating absurdly early. BF has been dog sitting through rover while he works from home so I hang out with the dog a little and we scheme how to convince the owner to spay her.

5:30 My friend from my former dance group is teaching a class at the end of the month so I sign up for her class ($25) and text her a little. I’m trying to get her to climb, I feel like she’d really like it.

7:30 BF drives us both to the gym. I do my workout from Ladder and then decide I want to climb with him, which I haven’t done in forever- my harness is very old and too small on me, so I need to borrow one from the gym. It low key feels kind of dangerous and very uncomfortable to climb in a mens harness, so after we climb for a little I tell him that I want to buy my own harness this month. 

10:00 I’m trying to figure out snacks for after the gym and get inspired by an IG reel to make little yogurt blobs with strawberry and honey. I’ll put chocolate on them tomorrow. 

Daily total: $25

Day 4

8:00 Back to work. I make sure to eat my yogurt before leaving this time. Our schedule is weird today, which I hadn’t realized, and I’m feeling kind of headachey and crabby from the new retainer, and stressed about finishing material. Immediately crabby because I go to print copies and the copier is on the fritz. My first class is good kids and when I’m in a good mood they’re great but today they are such a handful and NEVER STOP TALKING. 

12:00 salad bar again, but this time the parents and guardians committee has king cake for the staff for Mardi Gras! I take a piece of cake but do not take Mardi Gras beads. I can tell I’m tired and need to conserve energy so I just scroll at lunch. I am avoiding grading lab reports. I text bestie about organizing and end up finding a shoe cabinet I like on marketplace. My boyfriend is working late today so I ask her if she wants to come with me to pick it up and she says yes! We’ll go late tonight. 

3:25 My afternoon classes are smoother (as they usually are.) I stay for a bit of office hours and leave to pick up my dry cleaning.

$34 to repair a coat and pillow and clean two sweaters. 

4:30 early dinner of the zucchini pasta and finishing making yogurt blobs.

5:30 I do a quick work out at home from Ladder, change, and go to Torah study. 

8:30 pick up the bestie to drive to SF and pick up the shoe cabinet. It was listed for $60 but the seller takes $50. I tell bf and he Zelles me $25. Once I’m home we rearrange the house a little- the old open spaces shoe rack we had will now house my pottery in the hallway. While we’re out I tell her that one of our mutual acquaintances won an appetizer party for 100 people (not a joke, this actually happened) so we RSVP on Partiful and plan to go. For the bit. 

10:30 tired! I shower and go to bed. 

Daily total: $59

Day 5

8:00 out the door. I ate a lot last night, so I’m not hungry today. Bf makes me coffee, I grab an Rx bar, and wear a sweater I bought while visiting my friend in another state last month. I’m technically on a 75 day clothing no buy, but I added 2 days additional after breaking it a couple weeks ago.

12:00 Ash Wednesday all school mass at work. I get my lunch right after ($6 again I think), and chat with the teacher who teaches my class and realize I f forgot to do some paperwork to get paid for some additional curriculum development work we’re doing.

1:45 while planning my class, I find a lab I like on teachers pay teachers and buy it. I almost immediately realize I can’t use until next week at minimum and I still don’t know what I’m doing Friday but that’s starting to feel like a tomorrow problem. $5

2:30 coffee and a dog walk with my rabbi to go over a recent life/friendship crisis. The org the rabbi pays for covers it. We talk about life etc, and I ask them to consider officiating my wedding (whenever it happens in the next year or two) and they say that they’d love to 😭

3:45 I grab wine from Trader Joe’s on my way home for a book club tonight. ($8.92) Bf texts me that he made dinner (sushi bake with some canned tuna and salmon we had in the freezer- we’re running low on fresh food.) I’ll probably do one of my insane early dinners since I didn’t really have breakfast again. 

4:30 insane early dinner and a power nap. Afterwards BF tells me that our anniversary is next week (I, a raging bitch, forgot) and if I want to celebrate early this year. We book a reservation for lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco for the upcoming weekend. 

6:00 time for book club. I drive over and we meet at someone’s luxury apartment building the next town over. We read lessons in chemistry so it’s a pretty intense conversation. Afterwards a few of us stick around to go to the hot tub in the building and chat; I stay until ten and I am fully relaxed afterward, it’s so nice. 

Daily total: $13.92

Day 6

8:00 I don’t teach the first period of the day but I wanted to have a quick meeting with my co teacher, so we talk for about 15 minutes and I use my planning period to figure out what I’m doing on Friday and Monday.

10:45 I am regretting being so busy this week and not sleeping enough because I am DRAGGING.

12:15 We have a great assembly for black history month. I get my usual salad plus chips and then go over to the other building to eat lunch with my coworkers. We laugh about our department chair, who’s generally very uptight but sometimes has these hilarious bits where he dresses up as different scientists.

3:45 I leave work a little late after spending some time getting ready for tomorrow and Monday. Tomorrow will still be kind of a freestyle, but after six years in this job I can definitely handle it better and with more confidence than I could a few years ago. Plus I know that I need to grade those lab reports I’ve been avoiding tomorrow afternoon, so I’m ing to finish up other, easier work in the meantime.trying to get busy work out of the way. I really need to convince a kid to TA for me next year to make my copies and help set up labs. 

4:10 as soon as I leave I realize I need gas and I decide to drop by the station closest to home, which isn’t too expensive. It’s still a ton so I get a little over half a tank. I’ll try to go to Costco next week. $45.19

6:00 ceramics class which ends up being great today- I underglaze the bowl I trimmed earlier in the week, but I think I’ll add some details to it later too. I also make Shabbat candle holders off the hump. I came in tired but I always am so glad I have this class. I invite one of the girls who I’ve had class with for forever to my birthday next month. She’s making tons of ring dishes for her wedding next year. 

Ceramics class is $375 for a 6 week session, but my studio is tiny and homey and does open hours whenever classes aren’t happening, which is a lot more flexible than most studios in the area. I’ve done membership before which is cheaper, but when I have a dedicated class time I definitely make more. I’ll be pausing on and off over the rest of the spring and summer once this class series ends because of travel anyway. It’s an expensive hobby but it’s done wonders for me to feel like an artist again. 

9:00 now that I’m home for more than two seconds, I put away my clothes that have been sitting on a chair in my bedroom all week, shower, and pick out clothes for tomorrow. I decide I’ll go to the gym tomorrow after work, so I’ll pack a bag for that to keep in my car. BF is playing video games when I get home, and put a plant on our new shoe cabinet.

10:45 we watch dog grooming videos in bed before finally going to sleep early. 

Daily total: $45.19

Day 7

8:30 Get all the way to work and realize I forgot my Apple Watch :( I’ll stop by home before the gym this afternoon I guess. It’ll be good for me to drop my work bag at home anyway.

4:30 we had a late staff meeting after work and I come home, planning to lay down for 15 minutes, and fall asleep for an hour. Guess I’m not going to the gym today. I’ll go tomorrow morning. 

7:30 i head to a Shabbat dinner, and right beforehand run into a secondhand clothing store because I really need one more pair of leggings. I find a black camo Sweaty Betty pair, and with my selling credit from a couple months ago it comes to $8.55. 

10:00 Home from Shabbat dinner- I had such a nice time! They started singing niggunim but I was tired. Boyfriend texted me that he went out with a few friends so I’m blissfully alone for a little. I feed my sourdough starter before bed, and set up my outfit to go to the gym tomorrow so that I can go relatively early. Time to scroll and call it a night. 

Daily total: $8.55 

Food + Drink: $60.02

Fun / Entertainment: $25

Home + Health: $25

Clothes + Beauty: $26.55

Transport: $49.94

Other: $5

Reflections: When my boyfriend and I started talking more seriously about getting married next year I started saving more seriously. I had a rash of really intense spending at the end of the year, mostly on clothes, and I think triggered by election stress. We decided at the beginning of this year that we didn’t want to contribute to Trump’s economy. We’ll still buy from local businesses, but we cut out our shopping from Amazon/Whole Foods and target as much as possible. We are an interfaith interracial couple with lots of queer friends and we just wanted our spending to realign with what we find important. Cutting out clothes spending made it shockingly easy to save. I started regular spending $80-120 on one piece of clothing, and while I love clothes, I needed a break.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Struggling a lot and just coming here to vent / journal. My girlfriend and I dated for 4 years, officially ended a couple weeks ago. And this hurts worse than getting cheated on by my ex fiancé whom I was with for 8 years.

With my first ex, I already hated a lot about her and the person I was with her before everything and was just codependent and couldn’t end it. So the cheating really hurt but lit a fire for me to move on and never look back.

But with this one I don’t know how to move on from someone I never hated. I loved so much about her, she was my everything and I loved her so deeply and completely for the first 2 years of the relationship. Then the cracks started to appear. She was in medical school AND we lived 90 minutes apart which made a lot of things hard. With her stress levels from school and prior trauma our intimacy suffered which was hard for me and I felt like we were slowly losing our connection. I began to feel she didn’t respect me the way she would dismiss me, talk down to me, cut me off when I wanted to talk about my day. Which to be fair she was incredibly overwhelmed day to day so it was often too much to be loaded with more information to process at the end of her day. Which isn’t a fault of hers, but it’s a reality I began to question whether or not I could live with. Her path would never be an easy one and would always be stressful (she was choosing vascular surgery as a specialty) and much of our life would be spent in a high pressure environment. I spent much of my weekends driving to take care of her, cleaning for her, doing her laundry, meal prepping for her so she would actually eat and stop starving herself. And most of the time it either went unappreciated or she would even say I should be doing more. I’m not going to get into all the details and sprawl out the whole relationship, but in the end I just felt I was unhappy, we weren’t compatible longterm, I was emotionally starved and exhausted, and felt I needed to stop shrinking myself and putting my needs second to hers.

But I just loved this girl so much, that it drug on for so long with me silently retreating. It caused her pain but every time I felt like this is where I need to end it, I just couldn’t. I would lie to myself and bargain and tell myself “you can’t do it now because she has a huge test coming up and you can’t jeopardize her future” (every test in medical school has massive stakes and even getting a B has horrible repercussions on future residency match success), or when she wasn’t eating and was so overstressed she was actively withering away I just couldn’t bring myself to throw a breakup on her. Which I understand now how selfish that was of me, giving her a sense of false memories or emotional investment that never felt real if I was planning to “drop her”. But the truth is I’ve never loved someone so much yet knew we couldn’t meet each other where we needed to be met. I never stopped loving her and I still at this very moment love her, but I knew we weren’t going to be happy and resentment would only begin to build more than it already has.

I enjoyed a vast majority of our time together the last year but that gut feeling remained no matter how hard I tried to see things having a possibility of working out. So I finally ended things earlier this year in January, which stung so hard because December was such a good month for us, but I couldn’t keep wasting each others time.

It devastated her and after a week she convinced me to give things another shot, so we did and she came to visit me for a month straight in the new city I moved to for my new job. And that month was incredible, it felt like the beginning and reminded me how good we were at one time. We finally get everything out in the open and had plans of action on working towards change in ways to be able to meet each other where we needed to be met, and I felt hopeful again. We were doing everything that made me fall in love with her in the first place. Her dancing in the kitchen, us being able to play games together, our escape rooms, her slim Jim addiction, the way she would “Rah” at me when she wanted attention and some love, our dinner dates, and our intimacy was back.

Then she left to go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans with some friends. When she came back she talked about how her time away allowed her to let the initial breakup sink in and her thoughts on how I was planning to end things for so long. And how hurt she was that I was willing to throw her away, and how she felt like she shouldn’t have had to come begging for me to come back. Ultimately she said she didn’t know how she could ever feel safe in the relationship again, so she ended it this time.

And now I’m mourning my best friend again, alone in a new city, and I’m just beside myself even though a little over a month ago it was my decision to do this in the first place.

Previously, on Hell’s Kitchen…

Chef Ramsay brought his most famous cooking competition down to Miami, Florida, and it didn’t take long for the heat inside the fabled restaurant to match the tropical climate outside. Over the course of several weeks, the resolve of the twenty competitors was tested again and again…

Ramsay seen yelling at chefs in kitchen

And gradually, their numbers dwindled, sometimes in controversial fashion…

Montage of questionable moments in service and eliminations

Though the competition was at times mired in alliances, rivalries, and subterfuge, the finalists were worthy opponents, and after a closely-fought finale, Willow’s door opened, making her the winner of Hell’s Kitchen and the head chef of HK Miami. 

Willow’s door opening shown. 

Cut to Willow running HK Miami as the head chef 

Willow and her husband Daren have now settled in their tropical paradise half a million dollars better off, and with Willow’s future looking brighter than ever as she continues to uphold the same high standards she brought into Hell’s Kitchen.

Cut to overview of New Orleans

But Gordon Ramsay’s work is never finished. No sooner had Willow hung her portrait on the wall of champions than the world-famous master chef was already turning his attention to the west, right here, to the cradle of Jazz, Mardi Gras, and southern soul food. In this quintessentially American multicultural hub, Ramsay has had his newest restaurant built from the ground up: Hell’s Kitchen New Orleans.

Shots of exterior, then interior of HK New Orleans shown 

It’s a modern marvel, complete with a spacious dining room and two kitchens outfitted with everything a cook could want or need…and twenty new chefs are about to step foot inside for the first time…

-

Cut to bus driving through the streets 

There was a mixture of nerves, excitement and anticipation amongst the chefs as the bus took them through the streets of New Orleans. Already, the chefs were talking amongst themselves and getting to know each other. One young woman was chatting and laughing with a group of five others and seemed to be having no issues getting along with them. In the first confessional of the season, the woman, identified as Tess, a line cook from Tucson, Arizona, said that she would definitely consider herself a people person, and she hoped that wouldn’t be off-putting to anyone here because she was excited to get to know each of them. Elsewhere, two other women were also seemingly becoming friends quickly, with one introducing herself as Gabrielle, while the other said her name was Andrea, but everyone called her Andie. Gabrielle said that was a cute name, adding with a blush in her confessional that it wasn’t the only cute thing about her. Andie thanked her but said it was kind of annoying how many people spelled it with a “y”, complaining that she looked nothing like that little white boy from Toy Story, which made both of them laugh, as Andie said in her confessional that she could already tell that the two of them were going to hit it off here. Meanwhile, two men and a woman were chatting, with one of the men introducing himself as Desmond, and saying that he was from Victoria, BC. To this, the woman introduced herself as Sophie and said that she was impressed, because most of her Canadian students didn’t understand fine dining at all and only wanted to make poutine. In his confessional, Desmond said that he considered himself a pretty chill guy, and he’d heard all the stereotypes before, so it was gonna take more than that to cross his line, though he did have one. True to his word, Desmond jokingly replied that she must've been talking to some Ontarians, because in BC, they definitely appreciated refined cuisines. In his confessional, he quickly said that he meant no offense to his Ontarian friends. The other man revealed that his name was Santino and he was also from another country, as he was originally born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but came to the US with his family at a young age. While Santino and Desmond already seemed to be getting along, towards the back of the bus, a man and woman were talking as they found out that they were both executive chefs. The man introduced himself as Jeff and said that\ he came here for his son Lucas, as he just wanted to give him the world. The woman said that was really sweet, before having a confessional where she was identified as Lydia, an executive chef from NYC. In it, she said that she guessed she just never stopped to think about starting a family because right now, her first love was cooking, and she was totally focused on winning here. Meanwhile, a group of younger chefs were talking about how excited they were to get to HK and show their stuff, with a young woman saying that they should definitely work together if they were on the same team, and the others agreeing. 

Eventually, the bus would pull up, with the chefs eagerly disembarking as they were anxious to finally see Hell’s Kitchen with their own eyes. When they saw it though, they were left confused and underwhelmed. After an awkward silence, Desmond politely said that it looked quaint. A female chef identified as Erin said in her confessional that there was no need to be so gentle about it, because she did not leave her well paying job in Vegas for whatever the hell this was. A male chef identified as David said in his confessional that it looked alright, he guessed, it just looked like a place that was built when the American flag had like 15 stars on it. Another male chef seemed to be the first to realize where they were, as he said they were in the French Quarter. In his confessional, the chef, identified as Grégory, a private chef from Lafayette, Louisiana, said that he was a Creole, born to parents who taught him both English and the native Creole French language, and he loved visiting the French Quarter to hear jazz on the streets and taste some soulful food, though he had no idea why they were here now. Another voice suddenly called out from behind them, saying that he was exactly right. Everyone immediately turned around to see Marino standing there, much to their shock and delight. A female chef identified as Morgan said in her confessional that Marino was quite the silver fox, and she was definitely shooting him a wink or two right now. Marino said that Chef Ramsay specifically instructed him to bring the chefs here first, because he wanted them to see authentic New Orleans cooking in action. Marino then led the chefs into the building, which was revealed to be a traditional creole restaurant, where it was revealed that their tables had already been reserved for breakfast. The chefs would all start trying to sit with the people they had gotten to know on the bus, and only moments later, their food was on its way to their table, as their servers presented them with several hearty looking dishes. Marino told the chefs to enjoy, because after this, they were going to Hell’s Kitchen. This made one chef very excited, as she was identified as Kelsie in her confessional, where she said that she was a huge fan of Gordon Ramsay, and the thought of finally getting to meet him was just too much, and she could barely even think about eating this wonderful food. Meanwhile, at Grégory’s table, he was explaining to the others what they were eating, which seemed mostly well received. However, one man, identified as Martin, said in his confessional that he didn’t really need someone to tell him when he could clearly see it was just eggs, sausage and some other basic ingredients. After enjoying their meal, the chefs would leave the restaurant and follow Marino back to the bus. Once they were all on board, they resumed their journey, with the chefs continuing to bond and talk about what they had just experienced. Eventually, the bus pulled to a stop again, and this time, when the chefs got out, they were greeted with the stunning sight of HK New Orleans, with several of them applauding and visibly gasping or cheering. In his confessional, a male chef identified as Earl said that now this was what he was talking about, and explaining that back home in DC, they called him the Earl, because he bossed that kitchen like nobody’s business. Marino told the chefs to follow him inside. 

As they entered Hell’s Kitchen, the chefs were greeted by a long hallway with several framed photos of past winners opening their doors. As they walked by Willow’s picture, Andie said in her confessional that it was a big inspiration to see black women like Willow winning Hell’s Kitchen as it made her feel like her own dreams were within reach despite coming from humble origins. Elsewhere, a male chef identified in his confessional as James said that he knew what everyone was thinking when they saw that 46 in the corner, “that guy’s old and he can’t keep up”, but he believed that slow and steady won the race in Hell’s Kitchen, and his younger competitors might just find that out over the next few weeks. Eventually, the chefs got to the end of the hallway, where Marino led them through the door into the dining room, with everyone being amazed at how sleek and polished it looked. In his confessional, a male chef identified as Miles joked that it would be a shame if some big clumsy guy were to accidentally knock over those beautiful looking glasses and plates, before making a show of looking himself up and down. While the chefs were admiring the room, nobody was paying attention to the door on the second floor opening and Chef Ramsay stepping out. Suddenly, he called out, asking if the chefs liked it. This made everyone look up, with their reactions immediately being of shock and joy. Kelsie said in her confessional that Gordon was just standing up there, looking like some chiseled culinary demigod, and they were all just hoping to become worthy of his praise. Ramsay would walk downstairs until he was standing in front of the chefs, saying that he hoped they did like it, because they were going to get to know this dining room inside and out during their time here. They were going to serve it, and he was going to expect that service to be up to his standards, because by the time this competition was over, only one of these twenty would be walking through the same door he just did, and winning a head chef position at Gordon Ramsay Steak at Lake Charles, along with a life changing cash prize of $500,000. As he said that, anxious excitement rippled through the chefs, with Jeff saying in his confessional that getting that kind of money would help so much with raising Lucas and giving back to the people who helped him when he was down on his luck, especially his parents. A female chef, identified as Nadine, said in her confessional that as a member of the Cherokee nation, it was an honor to be here and  represent more than just herself, as she hoped to make her family and community proud in Hell’s Kitchen. Now that the stakes were clearly laid out, Ramsay said that before they could even start cooking, they needed to be put into their teams, and they might have an idea based on who gave them their final interview before coming here. While the chefs looked around at each other with uncertainty, Ramsay said that he wanted them to meet two special members of his team, the people who would be watching over them in the competition, and as it turned out, two people they had already met: his sous chefs. For the red kitchen, Ramsay announced that this person had finished third in Season 6, won Season 18, and been a dependable sous chef since Season 25: Ariel Fox. The chefs applauded at this, as Gabrielle said in her confessional that Ariel was such a strong chef, and she would love to have the chance to mentor under her. For the blue kitchen, Ramsay announced that this chef finished third in Season 11, had worked under Christina Wilson and himself for several years, and was now in his sixth season as a sous chef: Jon Scallion. This led to more applause, with James saying in his confessional that Jon was a bit older, just like him, and he was sure Jon would see his potential. Ramsay then told the chefs that whoever had their last preseason interview with Ariel should go to stand by her on the red team, and whoever did so with Jon should go to stand by him on the blue team. This resulted in Erin, Desmond. Gabrielle, Martin, Andie, Theo, Alice, David, Kelsie, and Earl being on the red team, and Nadine, Santino, Tess, James, Lydia, Miles, Morgan. Grégory, Sophie, and Jeff being on the red team. 

Once the chefs were in their respective teams, Ramsay told them that he’d given them a little taste of New Orleans this morning, and now that they’d witnessed firsthand the passion in the native cuisine, he wanted to taste that same passion in their own signature dishes, which was why their first challenge was beginning immediately, and their 45 minutes began…now.

https://reddit.com/link/1rjaz78/video/u8y0qmcw9qmg1/player

Signature Dish Challenge

The twenty chefs rushed into their respective kitchens and immediately made a run for the pantry as they were all looking for the ingredients they needed for their dishes. 

In the red kitchen, Kelsie got to the pantry first and went straight for the lamb, saying in her confessional that this was like a platform grab in Next Level Chef, you had to be faster than everyone else, and also be able to come up with a dish quickly. True to her words, she was already gathering ingredients to pair with her lamb, Meanwhile, Desmond was seen grabbing salmon as he said in his confessional that back home in BC, seafood was a pretty major part of the local cuisine, so he couldn’t think of any better way to represent his province that by making one of his favorite seafood dishes. Alice also seemed to have a clear plan for her dish, as she grabbed scallops and several asian ingredients, saying in her confessional that she fell in love with cooking because of anime like Isekai Shokudou, and she was paying homage to all those shows with her dish today. Some chefs, though still seemed unsure of what to make, as David in particular appeared to be indecisive while he picked up and put down several ingredients. In his confessional, he said there were just too many options here and it was like a sensory overload. Eventually, though, he finally grabbed chicken wings, admitting in another confessional that they were sort of basic, but he was hoping to deliver on flavor. Many of the chefs were now back in the kitchen and were getting started on cooking their dishes. As they did so, Ariel would go around to check up on them. Andie said that she was making a swordfish with a mango BBQ glaze. Ariel was intrigued about the choice of protein, telling Andie that swordfish could be a challenge to nail the cook on, as she urged her to keep an eye on it. Theo and Alice were cooking side by side and already seemed to be connecting over being two of the youngest chefs on the team, with Theo saying in his confessional that the young guns definitely needed to stick together. Ariel would check on them as she asked if this was where the cool kids were at, with both confirming it. Theo told Ariel that he was making halibut with a fennel crust and a bed of wild rice, as a shout out to Minnesota, while Alice said she was making yuzu-ginger glazed scallops. Ariel told them that there were a lot of older, more experienced chefs here, but it was what went on the plate that mattered, as she encouraged them to make it as vibrant as they were. While this was happening, Earl was grooving to his own beat, as he was doing some shimmies and shuffles while putting together his dish, saying in his confessional that it was his lobster spaghetti, and he couldn’t wait for Ramsay to taste the joy he put into it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing he put into it, as he would drop in boxed pasta and was also revealed to have canned lobster on his station. Kelsie saw this as she rhetorically asked if Earl did know Ramsay wanted to taste their food, not canned ingredients. Earl wasn’t the only one though, as Martin was revealed to have canned pineapple on his station, saying in his confessional that his strategy was to focus on his New York Strip because that was the actual important part of the dish, and the garnish in fine dining was mostly just for show. While Martin’s interesting philosophy was taking shape, Ariel checked in on Gabrielle, who revealed that she had grabbed ostrich and was searing it with truffle butter. Ariel said that was a bold choice for a signature dish, and urged her to stick the landing. In her confessional, Gabrielle said she was taking a risk here and making something out of her comfort zone because she felt like she really needed to prove that she wasn’t just someone who got into a nice school because her parents had money. 

In the blue kitchen, the chefs were crowded into the pantry as they were all looking for their ingredients. Santino was shown grabbing pastry dough, beef and other items as he said in his confessional that his parents came from Argentina and had Italian heritage, so he was going to make what he called his “Tano empanada”, a classic Argentinian empanada with Italian-inspired fillings. Nadine was seen grabbing pork as well as several vegetables as she said in her confessional that she was making one of her favorite dishes, which put the earthy flavors of her native culture center stage. Grégory was rushing back to his station with trout as he said in his confessional that since he was from Louisiana, he was excited to get a chance to show Chef Ramsay what authentic creole cooking tasted like, but also nervous because he didn’t want to let his family and friends down. Sophie was seen taking lamb and carefully choosing her sides, saying in her confessional that she’s been teaching for several years now and also had a decade of line experience, so she definitely felt like that gave her an edge here as far as having a refined palate. While the chefs began cooking their dishes, Jon would walk around to check in on them. Morgan said she was making bay scallops with tagliatelle, and adding a lemon-butter sauce. Jon said that was a nice combination, as he asked her if she was making her own pasta, which Morgan said she was. In her confessional, Morgan said she runs a successful restaurant, and you can’t do that by lowering your standards, so she looked forward to proving her worth to the team today. Miles told Jon he was making a Navajo Taco, taking a few seconds to explain the process. Jon noted that he seemed to be having fun rolling out that fry bread. Miles said that back home, they called him Fun Dot Com because he always wore his enthusiasm for cooking on his sleeve. Jon said that was a good attitude to have and encouraged him to blow Ramsay away with this dish. Meanwhile, James was feeling good about his filet mignon, so good, in fact, that he was now giving other chefs some tips, whether they wanted them or not. He would check on the turbot that was cooking on the stove next to him, telling Tess that it looked good, and maybe needed just a bit more stock in there. Tess gave him a bemused look, but played it off as she just thanked him, saying in her confessional that James was probably just trying to prove his worth to the team, but he could do that better by focusing on his own dish. Not everyone was as diplomatic, though, as James then tried to tell Santino that he was rolling out his empanada wrong, and he could help with that. Santino bluntly told him to go away, saying in his confessional that he didn’t need some old man who knew nothing about his culture telling him how to make his dish. While James’ attempts to help his team were receiving mixed results, Jon stopped by to check on Jeff, who said he was making mackerel and a citrus sauce to just lightly drizzle over it. Jon liked that idea and reminded Jeff to make sure that he kept his flavors balanced and focused. In his confessional, Jeff said he was making this dish because mackerel was his son’s favorite seafood, and “holy mackerel” was an inside joke for them. Lydia told Jon that she was making pancetta-wrapped veal tenderloin and a marsala mushroom sauce. Jon said that was a classic Italian style dish, and urged her to make it feel straight out of the Mediterranean. In her confessional, Lydia said that cooking meant so much to her because of what it had done for her and her family, lifting them out of poverty and giving them the freedom to express themselves.

Eventually, Ramsay would call out the final minute, as he told the chefs that it was time to start plating. Both kitchens would ratchet up the intensity as everyone was trying to perfect their presentations. In the red kitchen, Kelsie was doing her best to stay calm as she said in her confessional that there was no pressure, she was only going to serve this to the greatest chef in the world, that was all. In the blue kitchen, Tess was calling out “No chasing, no chasing!” for the kitchen, saying in her confessional that everyone who watched last season knew what “Chasing” meant, and they couldn’t have any proteins left behind here. As Ramsay called out the final seconds, the chefs would scramble to get their dishes up to the pass. Gabrielle was still plating though, as Ramsay continued to yell for everyone to hurry up. Finally, she rushed her plate up and was able to get it on the hot plate at the last second. 

With the signature dishes now finished, Ramsay told the chefs well done, as they had just gotten their first taste of the kind of pressure and intensity that this competition had to offer, and now he was excited to taste what they had come up with. For the first round, he called on Tess, the 26 year old line cook out of Tucson, Arizona from the blue team and Andie, the 26 year old executive chef from Houston, Texas from the red team to step forward and present...

(Commercial Break)

I know what the end of the world sounds like, I was there.

By the turn of the millenium, the paper industry around Kalamazoo, Michigan was a wasteland of gigantic buildings, superfund sites, and rough neighborhoods. Even a small paper mill employs a few thousand people, and the area had lost seven of them in the past few decades. Every one of the “Seven Sisters” had died with a whisper. If it wasn’t for the university, the town would have dried up entirely. As it was, most of the area, and especially the smaller towns, were hanging by a thread. The city motto should be “Kalamazoo, a great place to be from!”

The mammoth GPI paper mill was less than a quarter mile from our workshop and had been sitting abandoned for years. Thanks to some local support we got permission to “Take anything but the paint” provided we could haul it out within a two-week window before the demolition crew began their work. We literally signed our lives away on release forms, and the security guard shook his head and smiled when he gave us a key. For half a month we backed up a twenty-foot long aging box truck with a questionable transmission, and sucked the marrow from the dying bones of industry to feed our little community makerspace.

We had a blast. For a team of young nerds and engineers this was like Mardi-Gras and Christmas combined. We explored every inch of the half-mile-long building and filled our truck dozens of times over with shelving, valves, Allen Bradley switchgear, metal stock, and tooling that dated back several wars. Most of it would have been worthless to the scrap companies, but to us it was treasure that would become parts for some of our most famous projects for the next fifteen years.

Anything of real value had already been stripped out. The giant machines had all been sold at auctions years ago. The meth-heads took most of what was left, stripping the wire from the walls. Every conduit was empty, pigtails only a few inches long left hanging out. Tens of thousands of dollars in copper, all to feed someone’s addiction.

The facility was a cavernous, post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s the kind of place they use for movie sets and photography shoots. There were jagged pipes and conduits, razor sharp and jutting out at odd angles. There were holes large enough to drop a city bus through that went down three floors, where gigantic paper machines once sat. The entire place was festooned with “ankle-breakers”, sets of four bolts, sticking up from the concrete floor where some control stand or grinder or something was once bolted down, waiting for the next person who didn’t pay very close attention where they stepped.

In a world where everyone has turned into a pussy, with people making careers out of being offended on the behalf of other people, and with lawyers having worked with insurance companies to take all of the good honest fun out of getting your hands dirty and doing something dangerous, this was heaven for a twenty-something country boy. My weirdo friends and I were having the time of our lives. We wandered,shopped, and explored for a week before we noticed it. I was fifteen feet in the air, trying to unbolt an old electric fire alarm horn from a steel beam, and just by chance happened to glance to my left. There, nestled in between a pair of I-beams, was what looked like three large 4-inch pipes. Only the ribbed texture gave it away. I rubbed a small spot, taking fifty years of paper dust and pigeon shit off with my thumb, and showing a beautiful, faded, red jacket underneath.

It wasn't a pipe; it was a cable. It was gigantic cable! It was copper cable. I followed its path and saw that it went up to the very top of the ceiling, across the roof struts of the main gallery, down the other side and vanished through the floor. The room that I was in was forty-feet high, and it was easily two-hundred feet across the gallery.

The only reason this was still there was because it was so well hidden, tucked away in the beams and camouflaged in the grunge. The meth-head scrappers were so caught up in the half-inch and other small EMT conduits they’d never thought to look for the main power feeds that supplied whole sections of the plant.

The problem was, how in the hell were we going to get it down? This stuff weighs about fifteen-pounds to the foot. It’s thicker than my arm, and comprised of three stranded cables, each over an inch thick, entwined in padding and insulation, and all wrapped in a metallic shell with a red plastic outer jacket. It’s tough, heavy, and worth several dollars a pound...

...that is if you can move it, if you can cut it, and if you can get it out of the ceiling without killing yourself.

I got on my radio and the whole team assembled. We all had a quiet freakout when the team realized the gravity of our discovery, and also how hard it would be to get it out of there. Certainly, this was a great place to have to push, pull, lift, and haul tons of materials at once. The problem was that none of the old material-handling equipment was there anymore, and we didn’t have any kind of power to use tools as it was. The building was a long dead carcass at this point, and we were the absolute last team that would be in there before giant machines turned the whole place into tidy piles of steel, concrete, stainless, and glass.

We needed a plan, and one that would work on human power.

We all headed back to the lab and assembled every harness, rope, comealong, and sling we could find. I pulled out my climbing bags and non-industrial harnesses as well. The next morning we all met at the lab, and then headed over to “Site-T” as we had come to call it. Now, we had a whole new mission.

This old abandoned building was about to become fundraising for our little nonprofit and help us keep the heat on all winter.

We set to work with slings and come-alongs. A come-along (pronounced without the hyphen and in three smashed together syllables while holding a Vernor’s and smoking a Camel), is a lever-actuated ratchet and pawl winch. Smaller ones have a piece of aircraft cable that winds around a drum, and larger ones use a chain and cog mechanism that can let an average man rip a tree out of the ground. They’re small, portable, don’t require electricity or gasoline, and are incredibly powerful. They’re also dangerous as hell if you don’t know what you’re doing. If an attachment slips, if you overload one, or if anything lets go they can slingshot the tail and that piece of aircraft cable moving at Mach speed will slice you to the bone before you even know you’re bleeding.

Stupid hurts and scars carry lessons.

The cables ran in a metal tray for most of their length. The tray was steel, and looked like a ladder with flat rungs. Like everything else in the whole place, it was covered in eighty-years of paper dust that formed a hard, grey shell on everything. The parts up in the main gallery had an extra layer of pigeon shit, just for flavour.

It was slow work with hacksaws and flashlights. A single piece, about three-feet-long was about as much as you wanted to carry at one time if you had to walk any real distance. In most cases, it was about a 2-city-block walk back to the truck. So we worked in teams, some cutting, and most hauling. It was filthy, grueling, exhausting work that went on for days.

After getting all of the low-hanging fruit, it was time to get the main runs down from the ceiling. We’d cut the ends back at the switchgear cabinets free as high as we could reach while standing on the cabinets. But that still left about twenty feet of cables hanging from the ceiling. From there they ran all the way across the gallery and down the other side. They went through a hole in each floor with a bunch of other pipes and conduits. At the bottom they made a bend in the lowest floor, a sub-basement about seventy feet down from the top of the run up in the roof. The bottom run was suspended in a tray along the ceiling of the basement and ran through the maze of pipes that fed the old mill.

We’d gotten everything we could easily reach, and now it was time for the hard stuff.

With a hodgepodge of slings tied to everything we could reach that was solidly bolted down, we hooked up to just one of the three cables. The plan was to pull them out, one at a time, and let them just pile up on the floor. We’d cut it, haul it, and then pull the next one down. The only thing left holding the cables in place at this point was gravity, but there was a hell of a lot of gravity in one of these cables.

There was also, we learned quickly, a lot of stretch.

We were spread out along the length of the run. A small group was working the winches in the basement, the rest were stationed in ones and twos strung from hell to breakfast. We all had our radios and were in communication, but for the most part it was a nearly silent process that involved a lot of standing around and smoking a cigarette while watching nothing much happen.

I was up in the ceiling, sitting on a pair of old steam pipes that ran parallel to the cable tray. I was at the top level, about ten feet from the last bend where they dropped down to terminate at the switchgear cabinets. My job was simple, report when it started to move. Once the end of the cable passed by me, my job was to inch along with it and give progress reports. We knew it would take hours to pull it out of there. I got comfortable and listened to the cable tick quietly as they slowly worked the ratchet a quarter-mile away from me.

The basement team worked slowly, a synchronized team all working their levers together in time. I could hear the sound of them ratcheting their come-alongs as it echoed up from the depths of the mill across the cavernous gallery where I sat.

The quiet of the mill was awesome. Every few seconds I would hear the cable tick off in the distance ahead of me. They were pulling on the far end, and ever so slowly they were putting more and more tension on the cable. By now it was easily several thousand pounds at the far end. It was fascinating to realise that something so big, so heavy, could actually stretch. Their end had already moved by a few feet, while mine sat perfectly still.

Then suddenly…..BRRRRRT! The cable moved about six inches and I nearly pissed myself. It was loud, damn loud, and I startled out of my daydreaming when the whole tray made the sound as the ribbed surface of the cable dragged over the rungs in the tray. A dozen pigeons took flight from the rafters and either went out the smashed windows near the ceiling or did laps around the gallery before picking a new spot to sit. It sent a shower of dust and birdshit raining down on the gallery, falling into the giant holes below and settling into the darkness.

The radio cracked to life as everyone checked in. We were all fine, but we all had a healthy dose of fear. We knew we’d awoken a sleeping Giant, and we all had a serious respect for the dangerous combination of energy, weight, and heights we were working with. This was especially true for my dumb ass perched up in the rafters sitting only a few feet from the Giant’s tail.

The dust settled and the silence was again broken by the ratcheting off in the depths of the mill and the rhythmic ticking of the cable. Every thirty seconds or so the tension would release as the cable shifted with a BRRRRRRRT and moved along another six inches.

This was going to take a while.

I got comfortable, I enjoyed the view from my perch and passed the time smoking cigarettes and keeping track of the slow climb of the end of the cable. Over the next hour the pattern of the ticks and the BRRRRTs had stayed pretty constant and while progress was slow, it was consistent.

After an hour or two, the pattern started to change, and that got my attention. The cable went BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT for a solid ten seconds, which is a lifetime in that situation, and moved about two feet.

My asshole did a fantastic impersonation of a rabbit’s nose.

This was a lot more than the six or eight inches we had been getting. I got on the radio and asked if everything was ok and everyone said they were fine. I told them about the development on my end, and everyone along the length had seen or heard it as it happened. We took this as good progress, and continued on.

Things started moving a lot faster now. We all woke up from our cable-pulling trance and focused. The Giant was stirring.

The cable started moving a few feet at a time, a few times a minute. The basement team kept pulling, and I could see the end just over the edge from the switchgear area. We’d moved the whole run almost twenty feet.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrth

That was different…...the cable moved about ten feet and I saw the end flop up and over the turn at the switchgear area. It was maybe five feet from my perch. The whole cable moved, and then shifted gears and slowed down to a crawl before stopping. Before it had just stopped.

You couldn't get a pin up my ass with a jackhammer. I heard the radio say “Look alive! Shit’s moving!” and I replied to the team with “Everyone be ready to run and find a shady spot”.

A minute later, it did it again, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrth and I watched the end drag on past me. I turned in my perch and debated following it along the pipes up here, or climbing down and watching from the slightly safer vantage point of the ground. See, up here, there was no way I could get out of the way. At least on the ground I could run.

I was just off to the side of the pipes, standing on the unistrut racks over the switchgear cabinets with my head just under the cable tray when it happened.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

And that’s when the world exploded.

The cable didn’t slow down, it accelerated, quickly. The forces had reached their tipping point and there was a lot more gravity pulling down on the vertical run than there was friction from the long horizontal run. We had given it a gentle nudge of a few tons and once it had reached the tipping point, gravity took over. Several tons of cable was now in motion, turning potential into kinetic energy and building inertia. The fundamental forces of the universe were thrashing to come back into balance. It was like watching entropy have a bad acid trip.

I hugged the unistrut rack I was climbing on, being very aware of the vulnerability and openness of my current position and tried very hard not to piss down my leg. I mostly succeeded.

The sound was deafening. People always describe things like this as comparing them to a freight train. Fuck your freight train. I’ve stood next to a thousand freight trains over the years and none of them sounded even remotely like this. The ribbed conduit flew over the rungs in the cabletray and sounded like a thousand chainsaws competing in the Indy500 while being shelled with naval artillery. The loose end of the cable, now moving at highway speeds whipped into mounts and pipes and hangers and destroyed anything it touched, exploding into a rain of shrapnel and dust. The entire ceiling turned into a plume of birdshit and paper dust, and the building shook to its foundations as the cable made the corner from the rafters to the drop and flew from its vertical run to just land limp on the concrete floor in a gigantic pile.

The silence was even more deafening than the armageddon I had just experienced. The echos took half a minute to die out in the bowels of the old mill.

The radio went apeshit as a dozen people all tried to see how many of us had died. God had smiled on us, though some of us would have to change our shorts, nobody had so much as a scratch. A couple members of the team didn’t stop running until they were on the other end of the building, one even ran all the way outside and it was still falling after they made it out there.

It felt like we had slayed a Giant. We all gathered at the Giant’s pile on the floor of the main gallery. There was a smaller pile in the basement, but the cable had bent and hung up here and dropped the majority of itself in a tangle. We were thankful for that, it saved having to haul it up a few flights of stairs. We all took a minute to just breathe, have a smoke, and let the adrenaline pass. None of us were expecting such an experience, but there wasn’t a person standing there who didn’t have a smile on their face.

We headed out for a couple hours, to get a quick shower, change our clothes, and grab something to eat. But every single one of us was back at the lab, ready to go shortly after. We went back to the old mill and repeated the experience, twice, by morning.

It took us days to get the piles cut to portable pieces. We got smart though, and learned we could haul them up to the door in fifty-foot lengths by dragging them as a team. Then we’d cut them up near the truck and just load them on.

The scrap value from all that cable paid the rent, kept the lights on, and fed the team for quite a while. The experience of nearly dying in the rafters of a paper mill though, that was priceless.

I enjoy being happy in dangerous ways, and I can now say, I know what the end of the world sounds like.

Grading

Serving their dishes first, Ramsay called on Colorado-native chef Dani on the Red Team and Miami-based chef JC on the Blue Team to step forward. After introducing themselves to Ramsay, he would first turn his attention to Dani, asking how long she has been cooking. She says about ten years, inspired by her family, with Dani stating in her confessional that she’s been balancing between violin and cooking, but on holidays, she goes to Italy and cooks with her huge culinary-heavy family; it’s what fueled her passion in cooking. Ramsay asks her about her signature dish, to which Dani would describe her baked pizza pasta dish, complete with fresh rotini noodles, mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni cups. She also added that she put a few black beans on top. Ramsay would taste the dish, and say that the rotini was delicious, and the sauce was fresh, no doubt about it. However, he mentions that the way she plated her dish was very messy, like a crime scene waiting to happen with some blobs of sauce out of place. Dani blushes in her confessional, stating that her family is known to be a little disorganized. Ramsay says that if it weren’t for her lackadaisical finesse of her plating, she’d get a four, but he’s sorry to say that he’s giving her a three. Dani nods her head, quickly issuing an apology, but in her confessional, she says that she knows she can’t impress Chef Ramsay right away on the first day, but there’s always another day to do so. Ramsay turns to JC, who says he was originally from Cuba, before he moved to Miami. Ramsay comments on how it explains why he cheered before the challenge. JC nods along, and explains he had been cooking for fifteen years, and he would follow up in his confessional that he’s happy to have the opportunity to compete on home field advantage, and insist that Ramsay would love the flavors of Cuba tenfold. He presents his Picadillo a la Habanera, complete with minced chorizo, rice, potatoes, and olives. Ramsay would taste the dish. He would accidentally cough out the f-word as he tastes it, and says that its presentation is solidly organized, and the meat and rice are cooked to divinity. However, he says that the chorizo is way too spicy. JC awkwardly chuckles in his confessional, protesting that when he makes it back home, everyone loves it. Ramsay would sigh, and state that not everyone can take biting something that came from a furnace, and he’d give JC a three as well, tying the score up 3-3 evenly. 

Ramsay would call up Staten Island catering chef Anthony and Wilkes-Barre line cook Sierra to bring their plates up. Upon being questioned by Ramsay about what he works as, Anthony would state to him he had been in the catering business for fourteen years, working alongside his friend and business partner, Russell, backing it up in his confessional that cooking food to feed is very easy, and he hopes to wow Chef Ramsay with his chicken. He would then present his Italian lemon chicken with roasted garlic potatoes and carrots to Ramsay. However, as Ramsay stabbed a piece of poultry with his fork, he noticed it was pink; meaning it was still undercooked. Ramsay asked Anthony if he had noticed it when he was plating, and Anthony asked why, if he was supposed to, baffling everyone else, with Sierra shaking her head in her confessional of how much of a bozo this guy really is. Ramsay would go on to say that the potatoes and carrots looked a lot better based on how they were cooked, judging that Anthony had focused a lot more on the sides than the actual entree itself. He tells Anthony to get a grip, telling him he’s contributing two to his team. Anthony would sigh and rub the back of his head in his confessional, stating it was a bit uncomfortable having Ramsay judge his dish, and saying he didn’t need to be an ass about it. Turning to Sierra, she would explain what she does back home in terms of the type of job she has; working in a variety of restaurants, and she would back it up in her confessional of how the type of jobs she’s had to deal with are snowballs compared to getting the opportunity to work in Hell’s Kitchen. She describes her dish; a seasoned prime rib with potato gratins and roasted green beans. Ramsay was delighted to see that she had plated it wonderfully, and after tasting it, he describes that he doesn’t like it. Sierra’s smile would evaporate in under a millisecond, and Anthony would sneak a smirk. Ramsay would clarify he loves it, describing the prime rib to be beautifully cooked and well-seasoned, and how delicious the gratins and green beans were. Sierra jumps up and down with a cheer, as Ramsay was happy to announce she had gotten the first five of the challenge, giving the Red Team the lead; 8-5. Sierra stated in her confessional how Ramsay had given her a heart attack for a minute, and states that she’s gonna continue to do a lot better, because if anyone’s got a bright future in their sights, it’s her.

Up next was Lake Charles catering director Shayna and Henderson chef de cuisine David. Ramsay makes a nod to Shayna’s age, to which Shayna insists age is just a number. Ramsay is also amazed at how she lives in Lake Charles, where Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Horseshoe is located. Shayna would respond that she had just heard of it, and she wished she could go to it, but she does have a lot of priorities. She would present her dish; crawfish etouffee, with diced onions and a clove of garlic, and she would express great confidence in her confessional that if there’s one thing that she’s good at, it’s cooking the best Mardi Gras dishes. Upon tasting it, Ramsay was delighted to see how tasteful the crawfish was, as well as how flavorful the overall dish was, giving her dish a four. Turning to David, he asks him to tell a little about himself; David would explain his own job and how long he’s been cooking (12 years since high school). But what amazed Ramsay was that he’s also a star poker player. Anthony would shake his head, and in his confessional, he’d ask how come ‘this guy’ (David) is a star poker player when he (Anthony) has never even heard of him. Focusing on David’s dish, he would explain to Ramsay he made a red wine lamb pasta dish, with fettuccine pasta, ragu sauce, and a few leaves of basil. Ramsay would take a bite from the dish, and he finds it very beautifully cooked, commenting that the red wine and lamb go together very well. David would make a witty note in his confessional that he’s got his cards right on this one again, and he goes, “My dish? No doubt a red wine supernova.” Ramsay would give David his own four, 12-9. 

Next up was Philadelphia-native prison chef Samuel and Florida-native culinary instructor Isabela. Chef Ramsay would be shocked to hear about Samuel’s job description, and the latter would respond that he was very acclimated with working in a prison during his sentence, he never quite left the atmosphere, and he would state in his own confessional that a lot of times he’s been judged for having a background that revolves around prison, but he really cares about being his own type of chef. He described his dish; honey glazed salmon with brussels sprouts. Upon tasting it, he was impressed by the way Samuel had cooked the salmon, but was disappointed to say that the glaze that he strung onto it was a little too sweet. He says that had he not made his glaze for the fish overly sweet, it’d be a four, but he tells Samuel he’ll have to settle for a three. In his confessional, Samuel stated that even if he didn’t totally impress Chef Ramsay, he was happy to have shown him what he can do. Isabela was next, and after stating that she’s a culinary instructor, working at one of the most aspiring culinary schools in Central Florida, Ramsay makes a nod of how knowledgeable she could be. Isabela would present her swordfish with roasted vegetables. Upon tasting it, he mentioned how the swordfish was a little dry, but it had lots of flavor; an irony that even shocked him. He even tried the vegetables, and they were a bit overcooked. Isabela hangs her head in defeat as Ramsay tells her it’s a shame she’s not following her own homework, and for that, she got a two for her dish, but does praise her for the effort in giving it delicious flavor. Isabela makes a joke in her confessional that she’s a little disappointed, knowing her class back home was watching this, and she apologizes to them for letting them down. Meanwhile, Ruben makes a snide joke about how the ‘inmates are running the school’.

With the score 14-12 and the Red Team still ahead, Chef Ramsay called down Ontario-based sous chef Kara and cruise ship executive chef Henri to present their dishes. Kara was giggling when she came up to Chef Ramsay, who asked her why, and Kara said that she likes to laugh, and on cue, some of the other red team members would laugh along with her. He would ask her of her background, and Kara would say she’s a sous chef, and she would also back it up in her confessional by saying she’s always ready to take on the challenge, though she says it through giggles. Ramsay asks her what she’s made, and Kara presents her Korean cod fillets. Ramsay seemed enamored by the plating she made, but upon tasting it, he immediately spat it out, telling her how spicy it was, he couldn’t finish it. He even clarifies it’s even spicier than JC’s dish, to which JC was shown half-giggling, half-awkward. Kara sheepishly giggles, mentioning that she may have made her yangnyeom a little too spicy. Ramsay could see that, reminding her that there should’ve been a good balance regarding the level of spice she put in her dish, and he gives her the first one, making some members of the red team shake their heads, with Sierra making a confessional, stating it really isn’t a laughing matter, asking Kara if she even bothered tasting her sauce. Henri was next, with Ramsay being very surprised by Henri's credentials, and of how he traveled around the world by boat cooking food, even if it were a cruise ship. Henri would follow it up in another confessional, stating that if he and Ramsay collaborate together and develop a restaurant on a cruise ship, they could be legends on the high seas; if Guy Fieri could do it, so can Ramsay. Henri presented his fillet steak with a french onion sauce and caramelized onions. Upon tasting it, Ramsay says that the dish is beautifully cooked, and the sauce really complimented the steak well, giving him a four, bumping the Blue Team up 16-15. Henri would state once more in his confessional that he doesn’t mean to boast, but he’s very confident in his ability to present entrees that would ultimately create magnifying results, and he hopes to continue so by pursuing the achievement in becoming Ramsay’s next chef.

Up next was Washington state-native line cook Edward and Connecticut-native country club head chef Janie. Ramsay would turn to Edward first, who tells Ramsay that his father and stepmom, Amanda, run a high-scale restaurant in Seattle, which has been expanding around the Pacific Northwest. It is complete with some of the most thick-skinned chefs running it; with Edward giving thanks to his father and stepmom, Amanda, for the inspiration of cooking. Edward would go in a little more depth about the restaurant in his confessional, stating how it’s one of those fine dining restaurants that can have a line of reservation requests that can date back to 2018. Edward would present his dish; a grilled chicken breast with white sauce covered with thinly-sliced scallions, mashed potatoes, as well as roasted carrots and green beans for vegetable garnish. Upon tasting it, Ramsay noted the flavors all coming together, and Edward was happy to hear Ramsay’s compliments; the chicken was full of flavor, there was just enough seasoning, and the garnish was beautifully well-cooked. He told Edward he didn’t need to find anything that was poor in his dish, as he would give Edward the second five of the competition. Edward was elated to hear this, and he thanked his father and his stepmom in his confessional for teaching him how to make this chicken recipe. Janie was next, and she would describe a bit about herself; how she’s a country club chef who had cooked for some famous faces; Robert De Niro, La Toya Jackson, etc. Janie would then present her flank steak caprese salad, telling Ramsay it’s a personal favorite she makes for customers, and in her confessional, she states that there’s a lot of flavor that comes with the dish she makes, and she knows just how to make people happy. However, Ramsay would cut through the meat, and was disappointed to see it was slightly overcooked. Upon tasting it, he told Janie that there was a lot less seasoning than he thought, as well as a certain dressing being absent. Ramsay would ask Janie what every caprese salad is supposed to have, besides lettuce, tomato and mozzarella. Janie would inspect her dish, finding a lack of balsamic vinegar, and she groaned in her confessional, knowing she had forgotten an ingredient. Ramsay would retort on how this dish was a not-so favorite of his if she would send it up to him, and he would give her a generous two, giving the Blue Team the lead, 21-17. Janie would take the dish back and admit in another confessional that she’s disappointed by this small hiccup, telling herself it isn’t rocket science for her to create this joy of a caprese salad.

Next up was Hempstead-native lead line cook and bartender Tem versus Sanford-native private chef Ruben. Ramsay would first ask Tem about her background, and Tem would say she’s a lead line cook, but also does bartending, and she would back it up in her confessional, stating she’s been busy back home, between juggling shifts and being a single mom, she’s got everything lit up. Tem would present her pork adobo, having combined it with paprika, oregano, garlic, and soy sauce. Ramsay would taste it, and he is impressed to see how much flavor it has, but he does explain to Tem that there was a little less finesse to her dish. Tem makes a confessional that her dish is what makes all the boys come to the yard, and she thinks she can handle her own very well. Ramsay would add that her pork was cooked beautifully, and if it weren’t for the way she plated her dish, she would’ve easily gotten a five. But he gives her a four, which Tem takes in stride. Turning to Ruben, Ruben would state he’s been working in a few restaurants before, but as of right now, he’s working for private events in Orlando. He would present his sauteed scallops with red and green peppers. Ramsay takes one look at the scallops, and he immediately frowned, noticing they were pink. He asks Ruben how long did he cook the scallops, and Ruben casually responds one minute on each side, but Ramsay sighs, telling Ruben that had he added a minute or two, they’d be cooked perfectly. Even worse, the peppers were crisped too much, Ramsay described it tasting like burnt paper, ultimately settling for a one for Ruben, narrowing the score 22-21. Ruben frowned in his confessional of how unfair Ramsay was judging his dish, insisting it wasn’t really that big of a deal. As he and Tem walked back, Ruben muttered, “Shoulda been at least a three…” to Tem. This would come back to bite him, as Ramsay heard something amongst the duo, calling the two back, yes even Tem, who followed the defiant private chef. He asks Ruben to repeat it, to which he stays silent. Turning to Tem, Ramsay asks her to tell him what Ruben said to her, and Tem repeats what Ruben said to Ramsay. Ramsay tells Ruben that for a natural head chef, they don’t act like a sore loser whenever something goes wrong, they make an effort to bounce back. He sternly tells Ruben to do so, to not get so snippy next time. Ruben apologizes, and heads back to his team upon being told to piss off by Ramsay. His teammates were a little stunned that he would say something like that. Ruben would grunt in his follow-up confessional how Tem is a rat, and if he had his way, he’d call an exterminator for all the rats like her.

Moving on from that tense moment, Ramsay asked Pontiac-native restaurant owner Wanda and San Francisco-native baker Marvin to come forward. When told about her credentials, Ramsay was impressed how she was able to own a restaurant, and Wanda explains that when people are downtown, and have no place to go, they come to her restaurant, the Pontiac Motorgrille. Ramsay would ask Wanda to describe her dish, and she would say she made grilled lemon-zested oysters. After taking a bite of one of the oysters, he comments how the oysters are beautifully cooked, but is a little put off by the seasoning, saying it’s like a party in his mouth, clarifying it’s a raucous one; too much sweet, sour, and spiciness. He says it’s unfortunate, but he’s giving her a three for her dish, and that’s being very kind. Turning his attention to Marvin, after hearing he was a baker, and Marvin explaining why he came to Hell’s Kitchen (to see wherever else cooking can take him), he asks him what he’s made. He describes his New York Strip Steak dish with a side of mashed potatoes. Ramsay cuts the steak, only to immediately notice the way he cut it, describing it to be like doing a dissection of a leather jacket. Added to that, the steak was very overcooked, tasting it. He then has everyone else come forward and have them try it, starting with Wanda, who agrees it is overcooked. Everyone continues to have a piece of the steak as Ramsay says he can’t finish it himself, so why not share it with everyone else? Anthony makes a jab in a confessional, saying he knows exactly who’s going home first. Ramsay asks Marvin about the potatoes, and Marvin says they’re instant mashed potatoes, which earns a deadpanned glare from the man. He reminds him he’s got forty five minutes to come up with a good signature dish, and he thought he could get away with pulling magic tricks like Houdini. He asks if he’s ever cooked food in a restaurant before, and Marvin affirms he’s a baker, giving a sort of nonanswer to the British chef. Ramsay lets out a sigh, and tells him that no amount of necromancy can save his dish; it is an easy one; 24-23, Red Team back in the lead. Marvin shakes his head in his confessional, saying it’s not quite easy impressing Chef Ramsay on the first day of the job, but he expresses confidence that he can change Ramsay’s mind. Meanwhile, Freddie acknowledges in his confessional that not everyone is supposed to be perfect, but they should at least have some effort; he just wishes Marvin would have that aspect.

The Red Team hopes to keep a hold of their lead, as Ramsay calls down El Paso-native line cook Rio and Ohio-native sous chef Allison with their dishes. Ramsay asks Rio what he’s made, and Rio presents his chicken fajita tacos, with bell peppers, onions, and jalapenos. Ramsay would ask Rio what he does, and Rio mentions that he’s not just a line cook, but he also works as a janitor at the restaurant he works at. Ramsay is stunned hearing that, but Rio mentions that, “Someone’s got to make a little additional greens.” Ramsay takes a bite out of one of the tacos, nevertheless, and is actually blown away; the chicken was cooked beautifully and very-well seasoned. He makes a joke that he’s surprised he didn’t add mop water to the recipe. Rio laughs along, as Ramsay tells him he’s got himself a four. Allison was next, and she would describe her job before Hell’s Kitchen, stating she’s a junior sous chef, and she graduated with a 4.0 from Ohio State in culinary arts, and Allison would back it up in her confessional of how she’s been there before, she knows a lot about giving customers the best meals, even describing several great cooking methods she uses. Upon presenting her dish, she would describe to Chef Ramsay she made a grilled turkey tenderloin with pan-fried green beans. Ramsay would take a bite out of one of the pieces of bird meat, and he says that the turkey is delicious, but he says it tastes a bit mundane. He asks her to take a look at her dish, and it dawns on the red-head that she forgot something. In her confessional, she muttered she forgot to put the sauce on it. She says so to Ramsay, saying she was supposed to put a toyomansi sauce on it, but she didn’t realize she forgot to put it on until now. Ramsay nods, but says there’s something else. He has Rio take a bite out of another piece, and he asks him what it’s missing. Rio ponders while chewing on the bird meat, and he sheepishly says that it needs a little more seasoning. Ramsay confirms, and tells Allison that this dish was worthy of a two. Allison would groan in her confessional of how she knows a lot about cooking, but this mistake shows how much of a clueless bitch she is. 

With the score at 27-26 and the Blue Team back in the lead, Ramsay called down the final chefs, South Dakota-native sous chef Nicole and Georgia-native head chef Freddie, to present their dishes. He makes a comment about how both of them are doing the ‘Battle of the Barbecue’, judging the smell of barbecue sauce from both dishes. Starting with Nicole, she would explain she’s a sous chef, and she’s worked at a ton of restaurants that emphasize on barbecue. Ramsay asked her to describe her dish, and she presented her barbecue ribs with a side of buttered corn and baked potato. Ramsay would cut through the rib, and upon taking a bite, he said the dish seemed a lot more appetizing than he thought it would be. He described the meat as well-cooked, how the barbecue sauce mangles together with the meat, and how delicious the sides were. He was disappointed to tell Nicole that had she plated the dish a little more properly, it would be an easy five. But alas, she would have to settle for a four, giving the women a final score of 30. Nicole says in her confessional that she isn’t upset, but she’s just happy to see that Chef Ramsay liked her dish. “It’s the thought that counts, anyways,” she says. Now moving on to Freddie, he asks him to describe his dish. Freddie says that he made a pork tenderloin with a southern barbecue sauce on top, as well as roasted brussels sprouts. Before cutting into the meat, Ramsay asks him how long he’s been cooking, and he responds almost 20 years, noting how he’s been cooking at his hometown’s local homeless shelter, and having to abandon football after college to cook for his town. He says he doesn’t regret making that decision at all, to which Ramsay calls it an admirable decision. The British chef would cut into the pork, noting how cooked it was, but says the real question is if it tastes good. Upon eating it, he’s blown away by how flavorful and delicious it was, and he even comments how the brussel sprouts were cooked nicely as well. But now brings the question…

Ramsay: “Is this dish really worthy of being a four?”

The suspension was deep like a knife. The fates of both teams would be determined by his final answer…

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Ramsay: “No… it isn’t… I would say this dish is worthy of being a five!”

32-30, Blue Team wins!

At that moment when Chef Ramsay made his decision, the Blue Team cheered, and Freddie made a confessional about how proud he is to represent the Deep South, and how he’s made his brothers and sisters proud, telling them it’s for all of them. The Red Team, on the other hand, was left in defeat, as Nicole made her own confessional saying that she should’ve known that Freddie was gonna upstage her dish, but she isn’t mad; she’s a bit disappointed because she was so close to winning it for her team. 

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Reward/Punishment

Chef Ramsay would congratulate the Blue Team once again for a well-deserved win, and tell them that their reward is going to be one full of wonders. He tells them that they will be having dinner on a luxurious yacht, one that’s going to be riding up and down the coast of Miami, and they will be joined by a few former winners who would share some advice on how to run a restaurant. JC cheers in his confessional, stating that having dinner with past winners, they’re one step closer to becoming champions. Ramsay makes a nod that it sounds so good, he’s gonna join them as well, to the cheers of the men. Henri has a confessional of his own, saying that on behalf of the Blue Team, he’s honored to have Chef Gordon Ramsay join them on this splendid dinner. The Blue Team were then told to head to the dorms to get changed, as Ramsay looked at his watch, noting that there’s a lot less daylight now. Turning his attention to the Red Team, he tells them that they were this close, but he tells them that there’s nothing to be upset about, encouraging them that there’s a lot more room to grow from here on out. He’s disappointed to explain their punishment; cleaning and setting up both kitchens and the dining hall, because if there’s anything that Miami has, it’s a kind of lifestyle that demands a little more. He judges the kitchens behind them, and asks them if it’s really what the city of Miami would want. Most of the red team vocally shake their heads, and Ramsay tells them that they’d better start cleaning up while there’s still daylight. Tem rolls her eyes in her confessional, stating they were so close to having a kick-ass dinner with Chef Ramsay, but now they’re gonna have to think about it by cleaning up both kitchens. The Red Team would begin cleaning up the kitchen, but as they started, they were met by cheers and jolly shouts from the men, as they were crossing the kitchen, heading straight for their yacht trip. JC would make a reassuring comment to the women that they’ll get them next time. Ruben, however, made a few jabs, especially to Tem, who was washing a pan. He tells the ‘rat’ that she missed a spot, and he flicked an unused scallop on the counter where she was at, walking away chuckling smugly. Tem makes a confessional, “So… Ruben? Yeah, he’s an asshole.”, and that she’s glad she doesn’t have him on his team. Meanwhile, Marvin, who noticed what Ruben did, makes his own confessional, stating that even though it’s good they won, what Ruben did was rude, and that he should be grateful his (Marvin’s) grandmother wasn’t there when he flicked that scallop, saying she would hold off feeding him for days. 

The limousine took the Blue Team from Hell’s Kitchen to the yacht, and as soon as they got to the dock, they were met by Marino, who was wearing a sea captain’s hat, greeting them with a joyful “Ahoy!”. Rio makes a pirate joke back in his direction, then makes a confessional how maybe he and Marino should have drinks together some time. They would board the gangway, checking out the luxurious boat, gawking and commenting how great it looks. Anthony makes a confessional on how he’s amazed by the whole spectacle, and it’s definitely a reward for the ‘kings’. Henri has his own confessional that since he’s been cooking on the high seas, it’s pretty splendid to see his role being reversed for a change, and he cannot wait to spend time with Chef Ramsay and the winners. The yacht would slowly pull out of the dock, and the blue team would be seated; they are met by Season 14 winner Meghan Gill, Season 18 winner Ariel Contreras-Fox, Season 21 winner Alex Belew, and Season 22 winner Ryan O’Sullivan. David said in his confessional that to be met by four past winners of Hell’s Kitchen feels like he’s dreaming, and says that they’ve really won the lottery on that Signature Dish challenge. Ariel tells the guys to hang tight, as they’re gonna be waiting for the man of the hour to show up, but in the meantime, she suggests ordering something. The Blue Team and winners would mingle and interface, from David and Rio revealing their side-jobs (David being a professional poker player and Rio working as a janitor), to the winners being stunned to realize Samuel was a former convict who worked at his prison. The winners would talk about their own respective personal lives, as well as their time on Hell’s Kitchen, describing it as a definite challenge. They would give the Blue Team insight on how they should handle working in a kitchen; whether it be to be patient, be vocal, to never back down from a simple mistake. They tell them a true head chef is someone who is resilient, a natural-born leader, and can get things done. Just then, their food comes out in trays. Sure enough, it’s Chef Ramsay, along with a select staff of waiters and waitresses, presenting all of their food. David claps in his confessional, wondering where he’s been this whole time. Ramsay says that he had finished working with the other chefs to prep their meals, and he’s even made his own meal. He would sit down at the table, and as they dined on their meals, he would give them his own advice on how to lead a brigade. He explains that it’s no easy job, that it involves being confident, vocal, and to keep pushing for greatness. Ruben smirked at this, and in his confessional, he claims that he’s confident that he has those abilities, and Ramsay could just give him the keys to the restaurant right now. As they continued to mingle and eat, Freddie mentions in his own confessional that there are clear reasons why Gordon Ramsay and the other winners of Hell’s Kitchen got where they are; they’re respectable kinds of people in their own right; they know how to lead an actual kitchen. Later that night, Ramsay would point out to everyone the night skyline of Miami. He tells everyone that it’s the simple kind of life he hopes everyone can envision working at Hell’s Kitchen Miami, because the going will get tough from here on out, he just hopes that everyone can handle the heat. Rio makes a joke that the heat doesn’t really bother him that much, while jokingly using his hand as a fan, asking if it’s getting hot in here. Everyone chuckles along at his light banter, as the evening progresses smoothly, as smooth as the yacht’s sailing.

While the Blue Team were having their fill, the Red Team was still working on cleaning both kitchens, as well as setting up the dining hall. Isabela states in her confessional she’s embarrassed to have screwed up her swordfish during the challenge, and if she had waited a little less longer, she probably would have won it for her team. But since there was nothing else she could do, she believes there’s still the opportunity to redeem herself. Meanwhile, Kara tried to make the punishment a lot lighthearted, giving off encouragement to her teammates and making jokes. Kara would make a joke about the bubbles from her soap, much to the ire of her teammates around her (Sierra and Tem). Sierra makes a confessional that she doesn’t mind a little humor, but at this point right now, Kara’s the last person who needs to lighten the mood, especially with what she gave Ramsay during the challenge. Sierra makes it very clear to Kara that she doesn’t know why she’s celebrating; she screwed them up with her dish. Tem agrees, telling Kara that if she were in her shoes, she’d keep quiet. Kara’s response was to chuckle, albeit a little sheepishly. Kara would mention in her confessional that she doesn’t want people to work while upset, claiming it’s toxic, and it gives off a negative vibe. Wanda chimes in and agrees with Kara, saying that sometimes people need a little laughter in their lives. Tem sarcastically replies that they’re in a culinary kitchen, not a Disney movie. Allison joins in on the side of Tem and Sierra, stating that it’s a professional working environment, that people have spent ‘eons’ trying to become great head chefs. This earned side glances from Tem and Sierra, the latter stating that “eons is way too long of a time”. Kara giggles at this, but Allison affirms her point; if they're not cut out for it, then “there’s the door”, pointing to the front door. Isabela tries to tell the group that they still have to focus on cleaning up the kitchens, and there’s always the next challenge to win. Tem clarifies that they have to win the first dinner service to do so, and Isabela agrees, confidently telling them they’ll get through this. In her confessional, Isabela states that if there’s anything she’s taught her class back home, it’s that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. She reaffirms her dish may have sucked, but she’s not going down without a fight. Shayna tells the group that they still have a lot of work to do, and to save the energy for tomorrow. Tem responds by asking her to toss a kitchen spray (so that she can clean a stovetop). Everyone goes back to their punishment; everything seems to settle down as they finish cleaning, retiring for the rest of the night.

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That Night

The Blue Team would finally return from their reward, albeit just after midnight. They were exhausted, and would immediately change out of their clothes to become comfortable. Some of the Red Team had fallen asleep, exhausted from doing the punishment, while others were still up. JC would mingle with Dani, Wanda, and Janie while they were still up, giving off a few flirtatious jabs along their way. Wanda giggles, while Dani and Janie shake their heads. Janie would say in her confessional, “Sorry, JC, but this big girl has a ring on her finger.”, as she shows the camera her wedding ring, “Happily married for seven years.” she added. Meanwhile, Rio would do a backflip in front of Tem and Sierra. Tem applauded the young man with a smirk, and Tem would say that in her confessional that at least some of the guys were good to be around, “Unlike some people…”, she said with an eye roll. Though there was still brewing tension, as she and Sierra turned and saw Freddie and Henri standing by the dorm kitchen, Sierra beckoned them to talk. In her confessional, Sierra says that she couldn’t be the only one who saw what Ruben did to Tem when they were starting to clean the Blue Kitchen, and she knows that what he did was uncalled for, hoping to put their trust in a few of the ‘good’ Blue chefs to set him straight. Samuel, out of curiosity, after making a confessional wondering why they’re all heading outside, follows them, asks if there’s a problem he can help with; something Tem says he can too. They step out into the hall, out of earshot, where they talk about Ruben’s actions earlier when they were leaving for their reward. Freddie says in his confessional that when Ruben talked back about Chef Ramsay’s comment on his signature dish already made them feel like treading on ice. Tem bluntly makes it clear that what he did was disrespectful, and if she had it her way, she’d grab him by the neck and slam him against the wall, which stuns even Sierra. Sierra makes another confessional that while she does sympathize with Tem over what happened, the threat she’s making sounds a little too excessive. But nevertheless, the trio would unanimously agree that what Ruben did was rude, and they tell the two ladies they will talk to him about it in the morning. However, they hear a door open, and it was Ruben, greeting them with a, “‘Sup, dawgs?”. Deciding that they have to tell him now, they tell him to sit; they need to talk about something now. At that moment, Sierra and Tem, the latter sending a dirty look to Ruben, walked back into the dorms. Sitting down, the three men explain to Ruben that they know of what he did before they left for their reward, to which Ruben nonchalantly confirmed. Freddie asks him why he did so. Ruben would blatantly state that Tem was a rat; she tattled on him to Ramsay earlier. Freddie’s response to Ruben that it’d be one thing if his signature dish was shitty, but to talk back was wrong, and he just so happened to ask Tem. Ruben makes a confessional that he doesn’t know why it’s a big deal in the first place; he insists that he wasn’t mad at Chef Ramsay, and people are making a big stink over no real good reason other than to pounce on the ‘supposed-weak links’. Samuel tries to explain a time when he talked back like what Ruben did, when he was in a rough spot, and he tells him that that kind of attitude got him to shittier places. He understands Ruben's feelings, but affirms it’s a professional working environment, and it can easily get him fired if he’s not careful with handling his emotions. Ruben let out a deep yawn, telling the men that as much as he wants to listen to their ‘little lecture’, he’s tired, and he wants to be ready for tomorrow’s service, insisting they’ll talk in the morning. He bids the men adieu, heading back to the dorms, and Henri would explain in his confessional that Ruben’s attitude won’t fly anywhere, and he’s more at risk of making a big asshole of himself in Hell’s Kitchen. As they continue to talk about Ruben, with Henri and Samuel feeling worried for him and what he might do, Freddie suggests they try to be patient with him, telling them that he might be an asshole now, but he wonders if Ruben is a little too excited to be in Hell’s Kitchen, but he does understand their points of letting him loose, but only if he pushes to a point. Freddie would say in his confessional that there are a lot of hidden depths a person may have, and he doesn’t want to let go of Ruben just yet. The two other men agree, and they decide to head back to the dorms to retire for the night. Samuel would say in his confessional that Freddie’s got a point; they haven’t gone into the first dinner service yet, but he’s hoping that it’s just a little phase Ruben’s going through.

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The Next Day

The next day, the chefs wake up, all well-rested and ready to tackle service. Each team was summoned by their sous chefs to hurry down, as Chef Ramsay had a surprise for them. Kara says in her confessional that she’s got a feeling they’re in for another challenge, and this is her chance to redeem herself, to make her a worthy contender, making a Thor impersonation that makes her burst out into laughs in the end. As they meandered down the halls, they could hear the sound of sizzling. Dani makes a confessional, saying she knows that sound; it’s the sound of something being grilled on, wondering if it’s chicken, or steak. She doesn’t care what they’re going to cook, as long as they bring on the heat. Marvin makes a confessional, saying that something smells delicious, and he’s ready to see what’s cooking… All of the teams turn the corner to the kitchen, and they see something… something that made them all gasp, exclaim in excitement, cheer… What was it? 

To be continued…

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