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A note to Fight Freaks Unite readers: I created Fight Freaks Unite in January 2021 and eight months later it also became available for paid subscriptions for additional content — and as a way to help keep this newsletter going and for readers to support independent journalism. If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription please consider it. If you have already, I truly appreciate it! Also, consider a gift subscription for the Fight Freak in your life.

Friends! Thank you so much! I officially hit 100 paid subscribers this week. I am so grateful to every person who thinks my work is worth paying for. Here is a testimonial from a paying subscriber, if you’re still on the fence about taking the plunge: I subscribe because I love good pop culture criticism and nowadays it’s hard to find it amidst the overflowing content we have incoming. Frankie’s coverage of queer sports gives me access to those stories of struggle and joyful resilience.

A note to Fight Freaks Unite readers: I created Fight Freaks Unite in January 2021 and eight months later it also became available for paid subscriptions for additional content — and as a way to help keep this newsletter going and for readers to support independent journalism. If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription please consider it. If you have already, I truly appreciate it! Also, consider a gift subscription for the Fight Freak in your life.

At the onset of the final act of Mike Flanagan’s 2019 film Doctor Sleep, the now-grown Dan Torrance returns to the decaying remains of the long-abandoned Overlook Hotel, the once-glamorous Rocky Mountain resort where, as a boy, he’d experienced a lifetime’s worth of terror in The Shining. After prying open the entrance, Dan (now played by Ewan McGregor) walks into the lobby with the grim determination of a man embracing the inevitable.

In 2021, as a component of a long-running career plan to heavily monetize my two worst qualities, pedantry and obsession, I undertook the task of “annotating” Denis Villeneuve’s Dunemovie, identifying scenes, characters, and references that deserved special comment, whether because there is more information to be applied from the original text, or because they made me laugh, or cry, or hoot, and holler at the screen. "Dune" (the movie), annotated·

With about a month to go until the NBA Draft, Valley Tales will publish a series of profiles on prospects who could be a fit for the Suns, featuring exclusive interviews with a college assistant coach or personal trainer.  These are the people who discovered and recruited these players, who were around them every day, who observed their development into a potential lottery pick. Sure, these coaches/trainers want to support their guy, but they were also generally honest while evaluating where their player needed to improve to have a successful NBA career.

If I had to describe myself in one word, I would say that I am a dreamer. This is not a good thing. Apart from sleeping, the one activity I have most indulged in is day-dreaming. For years, I defined my life according to goals that I would achieve one day — writing that book, making that movie, winning that prize. The here-and-now was mundane — the prospect of what lay at the end of the rainbow mattered more than the present beauty of the rainbow itself.

The President of Columbia wrote a lengthy screed demanding student protestors dismantle their encampment. They responded with: “When students refuse to do the reading … they have lost the plot" David Brooks will write tomorrow. “Peaceful protest is a first amendment right. But threatening to burn the school is a direct threat to Jewish students,” David French, tomorrow. “Why this protest movement totally different than ones we approve of” the Atlantic, for eternity.

Last fall, Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, aka Liz Hoover, released a “Statement about Identity” in which she admitted she had no ties to the tribal nations she repeatedly claimed while building a career in Native food sovereignty and Native environmentalism. What Hoover left out of the October 20, 2022, statement were any feelings of regret or remorse for her decades of Pretendianism. Instead, she blamed her family for filling her head with trauma and stereotypes about Native peoples — false narratives that she willingly believed, promoted and trafficked while pursuing advanced degrees, writing books and making public appearances as person of supposed “Mohawk” and “Mi’kmaq” descent.