Latest news with #Freed
New York Post
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Crazy stalker' toasts bride and groom with unhinged wedding speech confession: ‘What does she have that I don't?'
Her big day speech left 'em speechless. There's nearly nothing sweeter than a sweetheart declaring her undying devotion to the groom at a wedding — unless, of course, the lady professing her love isn't the bride. 'I let this crazy woman attend my wedding and she crashed out,' newlywed Dan Freed wrote in the closed-captions of a startling scene from his nightmarish nuptials. Advertisement 4 A groom virally claims that a 'stalker' hijacked his wedding by delivering a 'crazy' speech during the reception. @dan_freed/TikTok Eye-popping footage of the reception ruckus, which pulled in nearly 600,000 TikTok views, features an unnamed dame shamelessly fawning over Freed in front of his new wife and well-wishers before spiraling into an emotionally charged tirade. But social media skeptics can't seem to decide whether the gal, who Freed has deemed a 'stalker,' is a legit wedding crasher or simply a paid actor, hired to shake things up at the shindig. Advertisement 'You are the luckiest woman in the world,' began the blonde in her speech. 'Dan is such a great guy. He's got everything a woman could ever want.' 'He's kind, generous, successful, gorgeous. He's got an incredible body,' she continued to the laughing crowd before ripping the microphone off its stand and announcing, 'I'm just going to speak from the heart.' That's when the vibes switched from cutesy to kooky. 4 Stunned social media spectators showered Freed and his new bride with support in light of their wedding day disruption. Scott Griessel – Advertisement 'I would do anything to be you, Carolyn,' the showstopper said to the bride as onlookers nervously chuckled. 'No really, I would,' she asserted angrily, 'because, Dan, you never even gave us a chance, you never even gave us a chance.' 'I'm the one who taught you to make crab cakes,' ranted the distressed damsel, while the once-giggling faces of the onlookers turned stone-cold in shock. Freed jumped out of his seat and wrested the mic out of the woman's hands. Advertisement 'What does she have that I don't?,' she screamed. 'I'm Asian, too. I can dye my hair black.' 4 Freed's clip has left the internet divided as to whether the woman's meltdown was legit or a staged skit. @dan_freed/TikTok A handful of horrified folks online called the disastrous display 'crazy,' and offered Freed and his new wife sympathy and support. 'Block her number in his phone and everywhere on social media, cuz she ain't gonna leave him alone everrrrrr,' advised a concerned commenter. 'Men and women cannot be strictly platonic friends. Especially not when you are in a committed relationship. Only exception is if she's also in a relationship and you are only together as couples. Even then… caution,' wrote another. 'I kinda feel bad for her, mostly because everyone was laughing probably thinking it was a joke at first,' a bleeding heart chimed. Freed responded saying, 'It was very awkward. I think the laughs turned to anger really fast.' 4 Freed claims his wedding guests were also confused by the woman's wacky confession. Halfpoint – Advertisement Still, some not-so-easily fooled cynics seem to be convinced that the meltdown was nothing more than an afterparty prank. 'Dan this can't be real why was she invited if it was?,' questioned an audience member. 'Are we sure this isn't just a wedding of improv actors and their closest friends because this is so good,' another said. 'Great set!,' joked a doubter. 'Weddings are overrated, so I'm glad yours had entertainment.' Advertisement 'Please let this be staged,' a separate viewer prayed, prompting Freed to answer, writing, 'Who would be crazy enough to destroy their own wedding.' And he's right. Wild wedding speeches can upend perfectly pleasant unions. Desiree White, a recent bride, was swept off of her feet, when the best man confessed his love in a toast at her special soirée. Advertisement Rachel, another newly hitched heartbreaker, from Oklahoma, was publicly outed for cozying up to her groom while she was still in a relationship with his best friend, Dylan, who was also the best man. 'I just noticed the connection they had,' said Dylan in his shocking address to Rachel's 150 wedding guests. 'The laughs they shared together, the way they looked at each other.' 'And you would think it sounds really romantic, but the only problem was I was dating Rachel at the time.'
San Francisco Chronicle
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Lynn Freed, award-winning Bay Area author and teacher, dies at 79
As a faculty member at Bread Loaf, the oldest and most prestigious writing conference in the country, Sonoma author Lynn Freed would get the attention of her students by arriving elegantly dressed and glamorous — an irregular style for a class at the top of a mountain in Vermont in the heat and humidity of summer. She'd pick out a student's story and flip through it, then stop suddenly at a single sentence that stood out. Then she'd look at the author and announce in her South African English lilt, 'sink it, darling, shoot it through the knees.' That was her way of advising the student to cut that line, and it only worked because Freed was so charming and funny in her delivery. Freed, who was also a professor of English at UC Davis, had a reputation for being an entertainer to the point that fellow faculty would audit her classes. 'Her Bread Loaf lectures would have people doubled over in laughter and shocked at her candor and her turns of phrase and wit,' said Christopher Castellani, writer in residence at Brandeis University and a faculty member at Bread Loaf, which is affiliated with Middlebury College. Castellani got to know Freed when she stopped by his dorm room to borrow whatever clothes hangers he did not need — a standard means of introduction for Freed, who never could collect enough hangers for the wardrobe she brought to the 10-day conference. 'She had a very theatrical approach to teaching in the sense that she was a big personality,' Castellani said. But she also had the words on the page to back it. Freed was the author of seven novels and a collection of stories, many of which draw on her extraordinary upbringing in a prominent family in the tight-knight Jewish community in Durban, South Africa, during apartheid. She also wrote a guidebook to her craft called 'Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page.' 'She was adored by her students because she was the real deal,' said Patricia Hampl, a Minnesota memoirist, who served on the Bread Loaf faculty until 2016, as did Freed. 'She had presence and she had command, which is different from being performative.' Freed, who made her home in San Francisco before decamping to Sonoma, died there May 9 after an 18-month fight against lymphoma, said her daughter, Jessica Gamsu. She was 79. 'She was tough and had incredibly high standards but was also very loving and generous and a wonderful hostess,' said Gamsu, who was raised in San Francisco and lives in Cape Town. One beneficiary was Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik, who enjoys someone with a dry and cutting wit. She met Freed in a lunch group in the late 1980s, where a group of 25 or 30 creative women would go around the table and describe their latest book or endeavor. 'Lynn was a great subtle eye roller,' Garchik said. 'She did not do it in an obvious way, but once you understood that glance, you felt as though you were in on a delicious secret.' When Freed released her novel 'The Mirror,' in 1997, Garchik attended a crowded reading at Books Inc. in San Francisco's Laurel Village. Freed arrived dressed beautifully in silk with a tiger's claw necklace. 'Listening to her read was like watching a play,' said Garchik. 'She had a very elegant voice and her delivery was forceful. It was obvious that she had grown up in a household where theater was part of everyday life.' Lynn Ruth Freed was born July 18, 1945 in Durban, a coastal city on the Indian Ocean. Her parents, Harold and Anne Freed, did radio plays and ran a theater company. She first came to America as a high school exchange student with the American Field Service, spending a year in Greenwich, Conn. After returning to Durban to finish high school, she attended the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, graduating in 1966. She returned to the United States in 1967 to attend graduate school in English literature at Columbia University in New York, where she earned her Ph.D in 1972. By then she was married to Dr. Gordon Gamsu, a South African radiologist, who was living in New York. The couple relocated several times while Freed was in graduate school. They were living in Montreal, where Dr. Gamsu had a fellowship, when their daughter Jessica was born in 1970. They moved to San Francisco that same year, and Dr. Gamsu joined the faculty at UCSF. They lived in a two-story home until their divorce in 1984. Freed kept the house until her daughter graduated from University High School. Jennifer Pitts, a childhood friend of Jessica's, recalled taking the 43-Masonic bus to Ashbury Terrace after school, far from her own home in Forest Hill, just to spend time under the spell of Freed. 'She was extraordinarily funny and outrageous, and told wonderful stories about her own childhood,' said Pitts, now chair of the political science department at the University of Chicago. 'A lot of these stories later found their way into her fiction, and we loved hearing them all over again.' In 1989, Freed moved to Sonoma to live in a Victorian bungalow near the town square. She maintained the garden herself and wrote in a studio she had built on the property. For 35 years she was in a relationship with Robert Kerwin, a San Francisco writer whom she eventually married. He died in 2021. From 2000 to 2015, Freed commuted to her faculty position at UC Davis. She also made the longer commute to the Squaw Valley Writers Conference, and to Bennington College in Vermont, where she was a member of the core faculty in the MFA program. She was as strict with herself as she was with her writing students, as she made clear in 'Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home.' 'Writers are natural murderers,' she wrote. 'Their murderousness is a form of sociopathy fueled by resentment, scorn, glee, and deep affection. Before they can even begin writing they must kill off parents, siblings, lovers, mentors, friends — anyone, in short, whose opinion might matter.' Freed did it well enough and for long enough to earn her recognition by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded her the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award in fiction, in 2002. She also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She won the prestigious O. Henry Prize for short fiction for her story 'Sunshine,' in 2011, and for 'The Way Things are Going,' in 2015. 'She brought that laser beam of Freedian candor to everything she wrote and to any text she taught reviewed,' said Hampl. Freed is best known for her autobiographical novel 'Home Ground,' published in 1986. Hampl, who recently reread all of Freed's works, said her masterpiece was 'The Mirror,' a short novel that manages to cover nearly a century of South African history in 219 pages. 'She could not write a flabby line,' Hampl said. None of it came easily to her and she didn't make it easy on her writing students, either. One of her workshop techniques was to take a story, strip it down to the one sentence or phrase that was worth saving and instruct the writer to throw out the rest and start over based on that one passage. 'It was not for the faint of heart. She wasn't interested in making students just feel good about their writing,' said Castellani. 'She wanted to push them to write the best story they were capable of writing.'
AsiaOne
11-06-2025
- Automotive
- AsiaOne
Honda Freed review: Understated small MPV with plenty of plus points, Lifestyle News
The Honda Freed is one of those cars that's immensely popular, yet you don't really notice on the roads. There's obviously good reason for its popularity, and the Freed's otherwise plain looks hide a car that's practical, easy to drive and just generally pleasant to live with. There's now a new version of the Honda Freed on the market, and judging from the number of them seen on the roads so far, it looks like it's going to be more of the same story. What's new about the Honda Freed? The new Honda Freed trades its predecessor's slightly curvy looks for lots of straight lines, and the angular design makes it look literally like a box on wheels. There are neat details like the cube-design taillights, but otherwise the Freed is the kind of car that wouldn't stand out in traffic. Which is kind of the point anyway, as the design is meant to be more functional than fancy. Similarly, for the interior, the Freed features a layout that is optimised for user-friendliness. Most of the physical buttons are well-placed and intuitive to use; they're positioned high up to make them within easy reach of the driver. While there is a touchscreen for the infotainment system, it is an aftermarket unit that is fairly basic in its operation and user interface. It has both Android Auto and wireless Apple CarPlay, which is all you need for connectivity. But the biggest change on the new Honda Freed is its new hybrid drivetrain, which is now officially available in Singapore for the first time. While the output of 130hp is similar to that of the previous petrol model, the introduction of hybrid power means that the Freed now gets greater fuel efficiency than before. How does the new Honda Freed drive? Much like how it looks, the Honda Freed driving experience mostly hits the mark without being spectacular or outstanding. With its new hybrid drivetrain, the Freed now feels slightly zippier off the line, compared to the somewhat lethargic demeanour of its predecessor. The electric motor's instant torque lets the car accelerate with a bit more urgency, and while it's ultimately not fast, it's pleasant enough to make good progress in traffic. At the same time, the Freed is all about smoothness, from its linear power delivery to its excellent ride quality. It's quite obvious to see that the Freed places comfort as its top priority, and the suspension manages to cope quite well over most road surfaces, even when fully loaded with people on board. Handling wise, the Freed's steering is light and easy to twirl, making it a cinch to manoeuvre in tight spots. It can be a little bit slow to react though, which naturally discourages one from pushing it too hard. Not that you'll want to in a car like this anyway. Instead, the Honda Freed positively excels in other aspects of driving, and that includes its fuel efficiency, with a claimed average consumption figure of 5.1 litres per 100km. That's an excellent return by any objective measure, and a decent improvement over the previous petrol model's average of 5.9 litres per 100km. What is the Honda Freed like as an MPV? While the Freed's dimensions are quite small, it still manages to squeeze in seating for seven relatively comfortably. Sure, the third row can be tight in terms of legroom and shoulder room, but the Freed's upright and boxy styling means that there is plenty of headroom for full-sized adults. Access to the back is relatively easy too, with the second-row seats tumbling forward with a quick pull of a lever. The car's compact size means that there isn't really a lot of boot space, but the third-row seats do fold away (upwards and sideways, interestingly) to create more room for stuff. It's probably enough to fit in a few decent size boxes, or an average family's weekly grocery run, but not much more than that. There are plenty of other clever storage solutions around the interior though, such as two large gloveboxes up front, and numerous cupholders throughout the cabin. You even get USB charging ports planted at the back of the front seats, allowing rear passengers a convenient way to charge their devices. Is the Honda Freed worth buying? Well, if you want a relatively affordable way to drive seven people around, the new Honda Freed is certainly hard to beat. Its entry price of $171,999 with COE (as of June 2025) for the base HS7 variant is definitely competitive, especially in today's high COE environment. The one tested here is the higher spec HE7 model, which goes for $176,999 with COE, and comes with a few additional extras like rear aircon vents and adaptive headlights. Its closest and most obvious rival is the Toyota Sienta Hybrid, which costs a fair bit more at $189,888 with COE. And while the Sienta is certainly a very capable car indeed, the Freed offers plenty of plus points in its own right to make it a compelling choice for the budget family driver. Its winning formula is clearly to just keep it simple, and the Freed adheres to that philosophy by offering a practical and efficient package that's easy to live with. While it doesn't stand out from the crowd, the Freed certainly doesn't need to, for it lets its qualities do the talking. [[nid:711923]] No part of this article can be reproduced without permission from AsiaOne.
Miami Herald
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
James McGraw: A Life Freed by Storytelling
NAPERVILLE, IL / ACCESS Newswire / June 4, 2025 / James McGraw: A Life Freed by Storytelling There's something disarming about James McGraw's honesty. Maybe it's how casually he reflects on hardship. Maybe it's the way he admits to things most people try to forget-like eating mud as a child, working for two pieces of bubble gum, or wearing the sleeves from a long-sleeve shirt on his feet, held up with rubber bands, just to feel like he fit in. This isn't a man interested in impressing anyone. He's not chasing a legacy. He's just telling the truth the way he remembers it. For McGraw, remembering is liberation. Born Into Struggle, Raised With Grit James McGraw grew up in Fairfield County, South Carolina, on land that still carried the scars of the past. He was born in a wooden shack near the old quarry, where his dad worked for wages that barely fed them. And yet, this wasn't "history" for McGraw-it was daily life. In his words: "Although I was not literally a slave, I possessed a mentality akin to that of a person who is not truly free." That idea of mental enslavement runs deep through his reflections. He speaks of riding in the back seats of white families' cars, eating from their porches, laughing at jokes that weren't funny-just to stay safe. He remembers the quiet weight of being tolerated, not welcomed. What makes McGraw's story resonate isn't just the hardship. It's the clarity with which he sees it and the humility with which he tells it. Ask him what got him through, and he'll tell you: prayers. Not loud ones. Silent ones. The kind whispered by parents who were too poor to protect him from everything but still believed in a God who could. "My parents are long gone," he writes in Slave No More II, "but I believe their prayers for me are still working in my favor today." This isn't a grand declaration of faith. It's quieter than that. More lived-in. Like so much of his story, it's more about endurance than certainty. Faith wasn't something he put on display-it was what kept him moving. The Weight of Being Seen If McGraw's childhood was shaped by survival, his early adulthood was defined by a kind of invisibility. He worked hard, but opportunities came slowly, if at all. He was dismissed, overlooked, and, in some cases, flat-out mistreated. One memory in particular stands out: a bounced paycheck, written by a white employer to his father for a week's wages. But when the check bounced, it was McGraw-not the employer-whom the police came to arrest. It was only thanks to the intervention of a local white woman his mother worked for that the arrest was avoided. "I started grinning from ear to ear," he recalls, "because I knew it was all over now. These were rich white folk, and when they spoke, everybody listened." Moments like that are scattered throughout his life-not just as reminders of injustice, but as markers of just how tightly woven those power dynamics were. James McGraw didn't set out to become a writer. In fact, he's the first to say he doesn't see himself as one. Slave No More, his first book, was more of a test than anything else. Would anyone care? But they did. Friends, family, and strangers told him his story mattered. They told him to keep going. So he did. Slave No More II picks up where the first left off, moving from his early years into adulthood. It's unvarnished, deeply personal, and sometimes jarringly frank. He writes the way people talk when they trust you-with no agenda, just memories that have waited too long to be shared. What's striking about the book isn't the prose or the polish. It's the feeling that someone is finally saying out loud what many have lived but never put into words. Life After the Plantation McGraw never strayed far from where he was born. He built his home on the very land he once called "the plantation." That's not a metaphor. It's the literal place where he once labored-and where he now lives freely. It's symbolic, sure. But it's also practical. He made a life where he could. And in time, he made that life meaningful. He worked at plants and factories, took supervisory roles, and lost jobs when the economy turned. Eventually, after a third plant closure, he invested everything-retirement savings included-into a franchise. It nearly bankrupted him. But a contract with a major university saved the business. From there, things changed. He later launched a janitorial company and became what he once never thought possible: self-employed, self-sufficient, and a mentor to others. McGraw's sense of success isn't about money or recognition. It's in the fact that his children are both business owners. That they come to him for advice. That he was able to provide something more than what he had. He writes about becoming a father, buying his first suit, and fixing up his car so it would stand out in town-not because he wanted attention, but because, for the first time, he felt like he had something to show for his struggle. And even in those moments, he never forgets the people still stuck in cycles he escaped. His concern about generational disconnect is palpable. He talks about how family reunions used to matter. How children once belonged to a village, not just a household. "It takes a village to raise a child," he says. "But that village starts with the immediate family. And without those values, the risks grow." Why His Story Matters Now James McGraw doesn't preach. He doesn't moralize. But read between the lines, and his story is a call to listen-especially to those who don't often speak in public. He's part of a generation that lived through change but didn't always benefit from it. His reflections carry weight because they're lived, not theorized. In an age where voices are everywhere, McGraw reminds us of the power of the quiet ones. The ones who observe more than they comment. The ones who survive more than they shine. His story isn't a lesson. It's a life. Not Just a Memoir, But a Mirror There are no perfect resolutions in Slave No More II. No dramatic triumphs. No clean break from the past. Just a man still reckoning with what it meant to grow up poor, Black, and unseen in the American South. But maybe that's what makes it powerful. McGraw doesn't try to wrap things up. He tells it like it was. And in doing so, he offers something rare: the sense that being heard-really heard-can be its own kind of freedom. So no, James McGraw isn't trying to sell you anything. But if you take the time to listen, he just might remind you of something you forgot you needed to hear. Disclaimer:This release has been produced by Evrima Chicago, a media syndication and newswire organization. The views expressed are solely those of the featured subject. Evrima Chicago constructs feature articles based on interviews and source material as provided and does not represent the personal or legal positions of the individuals involved. For editorial inquiries or interview requests, please contact: pr@ SOURCE: James McGraw
Boston Globe
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Lynn Freed, South African writer with a wry style, dies at 79
'If Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz had a literary love child, she would be Lynn Freed,' critic E. Ce Miller wrote in Bustle magazine, describing Dr. Freed's writing as 'in equal turns funny, wise and sardonic.' Advertisement Raised by eccentric thespians in South Africa, Dr. Freed immigrated to New York City in the late 1960s to attend graduate school and later settled in California. Her first novel, 'Heart Change' (1982), was about a doctor who has an affair with her daughter's music teacher. It was a critical and commercial dud. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Dr. Freed caught her literary wind in 1986 with her second novel, 'Home Ground,' which drew generously on her upbringing. Narrated by Ruth Frank, a Jewish girl whose parents run a theater and employ servants, the book subtly skewers the manners and lavish excesses of white families during apartheid. 'Here's a rarity: a novel about childhood and adolescence that never lapses into self-pity, that rings true in every emotion and incident, that regards adults sympathetically if unsparingly, that deals with serious thematic material, and that is quite deliciously funny,' Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post wrote in his review. 'It is also the flip side of rites-of-passage literary tradition, for its narrator is not a boy but a girl.' Advertisement Writing in The New York Times Book Review, novelist Janette Turner Hospital praised the novel's keen point of view. 'Lynn Freed's guileless child-narrator takes us inside the neurosis of South Africa,' she wrote. 'We experience it in a way that is qualitatively different from watching the most graphic of news clips.' Dr. Freed returned to Ruth Frank in 'The Bungalow' (1993). Now it's the 1970s, and Ruth is married and living in California. After separating from her husband, she returns to South Africa to care for her dying father. Staying in a seaside bungalow owned by a former lover, she confronts past loves and past lives in a country that is, like her, in transition. In 'The Mirror' (1997), she told the story of Agnes La Grange, a 17-year-old English girl who immigrates to South Africa in 1920 to work as a housekeeper for a wealthy Jewish family and eventually finds her way into bed with her employer. 'The qualities with which Freed endows her heroine are fundamentally masculine, and through this comes a subtle but inescapable feminist message which makes 'The Mirror' more than a colonial family saga,' Isobel Montgomery wrote in her review for the British newspaper The Guardian. Lynn Ruth Freed was born on July 18, 1945, in Durban, South Africa. Her parents, Harold and Anne (Moshal) Freed, ran a theater company. They were certainly characters. Advertisement 'As childhoods go, it would be hard to imagine a better one for a writer,' Holly Brubach wrote in the Times, reviewing Dr. Freed's essay collection 'Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home' (2005). 'The youngest of three girls, Freed was born into a family presided over by a histrionic mother and a debonair father.' She graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, in 1966. She moved to New York City the next year to study English literature at Columbia University, where she earned a master's degree in 1968 and a doctorate in 1972. Her books sold well, but they were never blockbusters. In 2002, she won the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award for fiction, among the most prestigious of literary prizes. She also won two O. Henry Awards for her short stories. In interviews, she was often asked how much of her fiction was autobiographical. 'When I am writing properly -- which, I might say, comprises only a fraction of my writing time -- I tend to disappear into the fiction,' Dr. Freed said in an interview with Sarah Anne Johnson for the 2006 book 'The Very Telling: Conversations With American Writers.' 'What is the difference between remembered experience and imagined experience? I don't know.' Dr. Freed's marriage to Gordon Gamsu in 1968 ended in divorce. Her second husband, Robert Kerwin, died in 2021. In addition to her daughter, Jessica, she leaves two stepchildren, Fiona Zecca and Killian Kerwin; a granddaughter; and four step-grandchildren. For many years, Dr. Freed taught writing at the University of California Davis. She was also a frequent -- and popular -- guest at writers' colonies. Friends said her readings were always packed. 'She was beautiful, and she was fun to be around,' writer Philip Lopate, a close friend, said in an interview. 'Her voice on the page was the same as she was in person. Her writing gave pleasure, just as she did in real life.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in
