Clay Cook

EPHS ‘18♦️ URI ‘22 🐏 Freelance Camera / TV Production Owner of the Green Bay Packers 🧀

[🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotlands sweetheart 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @humphriezz]

The people of Boston will deal with this for us

[greg @greg16676935420]

Freddy: My flight got canceled

American Airlines: We’ll do whatever it takes to get you there

Me: My flight got canceled

American Airlines: Dang that’s crazy here’s a link to our FAQ

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

Scotland fans have donated nearly $30,000 to charities in Providence as a thank you for welcoming them for their World Cup matches.

• $10,000 to the children's hospital cancer unit
• $10,000 to soccer for underprivileged kids
• $6,500 to help kids learn bagpipes

[Danhausen @DanhausenAD]

Danhausen is requesting a one day contract with The KNICKSHAUSEN so he may retire from basketball’s as a champion of the world.

[GFed @GfedGoCrazy]

We storm them like the beaches of Normandy

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

Good morning from Galveston, Texas.
Our main mission today is to get a new suitcase. Everywhere we go, people are so incredibly kind to us. This is what we received from the Police Department and the Astros yesterday.

What I appreciate most is that they always think of my friends too and prepare gifts for them as well, not just for me. Huge thank you to everyone🙏

[nyara @nyaraVT]

Replacing the rainbow with something even gayer.. the French

[Josh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @jhendy_10]

In all my years following Scotland, one of the most hilarious and brilliant moments. Tartan Army take over Fenway Park post game singing "Super John McGinn" on repeat for over 45 minutes

[Esteban @RedSoxAsere]

Hear me out…

[Danhausen @DanhausenAD]

Danhausen stronger than Darth Vader confirmed.

[Danhausen @DanhausenAD]

Danhausen will take his free house on Sesame Street now @NYCMayor

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.

In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.

"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.

"Honey, that's what it looks like."

The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."

I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.

I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.

It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.

"Well?" the waitress asked.

"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."

"Everybody does, hon."

Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.

Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.

I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.

It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a warehouse store. A fully roasted chicken costs five dollars, the raw chicken beside it costs seven, and I stood between them like a man between two truths.

Golden. Hot. Seasoned. Spinning in glory under the lights, in a line of its brothers. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents.

I checked the raw birds. Seven dollars. Pale. Cold. You must do everything yourself.

This is not commerce. Commerce does not move backward. Somewhere in this building, mathematics lies defeated.

I asked the man at the counter. "How is the cooked bird cheaper than the raw bird?"

"Been five bucks forever. They keep it that way."

"But the store loses."

"Yep. On purpose."

On purpose. I held my receipt with both hands.

In my land, a lord who lowered the price of rice in a hard winter was remembered for generations. They built him a small shrine. This store does it every day, with chicken, and tells no one.

A woman behind me grew tired of my reverence. "It's just a chicken, sir."

It is not just a chicken. It is a wound the merchant takes on purpose, so that anyone, on any day, with five dollars, eats like a lord. The bird is the message. The price is the vow.

I will confess: I bought two. I did not need two. The second was not hunger. It was gratitude, and it was delicious.

Some prices are not prices. They are promises.

I return every week now. I take one bird. I bow toward the deli, briefly, so as not to alarm the staff. They have begun nodding back.

The vow holds. The bird turns. Five dollars.

Long may it spin.

[FOX Soccer @FOXSoccer]

Bringing the Scotland fans together after the FIFA World Cup win 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

(via IG/steviejukes)

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

This is so insane😭😭😭

[Mike Morrison @MDMorrison82]

In the dead of night the Scots arrived at the Airbnb across the street. Decked out and playing the pipes at 6:30 am. So it begins…

[Jack (not a burner) @_jackmcpherson]

Freddy’s final boss