It’s looking more and more as though Michael Sam’s football career may be over, after the openly gay defensive end left the training camp of the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes’ for “personal reasons” last week. 

The Alouettes have placed Sam on suspended status, and while NBC Sports says that could be just a procedural move while teams are paring down rosters, a report in The Montreal Gazette suggests Sam may not be coming back. 

Sam, a rush-end, has been put on the Als’ suspended list. While general manager Jim Popp says the door remains open for his return, another source within the organization virtually guaranteed the likelihood of that happening is non-existent.

The source also chided Sam for appearing on the reality TV series Dancing With the Stars instead of preparing for the coming season. … 

Popp added: “There’s nothing to tell you. He wanted to go home, and that’s what he did. I don’t know why. When a guy wants to go home, they go home. He had some personal things to take care of. I wouldn’t be surprised if he returns. I’m surprised he left. I was very surprised. If he doesn’t come back, I would think football’s over for him. He’s the one that has to face that. But I don’t think he doesn’t want to play football. That’s why he came here.”

The Gazette reports that another source said Sam recently took offense to a comment made by a teammate: 

“All I know is I heard somebody made a comment about him, about how he wasn’t very good and wasn’t having a very good camp. He took it personally and was pouting in his room,” the source said. “It’s very strange. I have no idea what’s going on. He might have a personal issue.” … 

“It’s a huge story because everybody keeps hounding and hounding and hounding. Michael Sam just wants to be a football player,” Popp said. “I would think anybody that’s 25 years old that has been going through it for a year and a half, it would have to affect him. I would think so. That’s one reason he didn’t want to do interviews and just concentrate on football.”

Here’s how Jim Buzinski at OutSports reacted to the Gazette‘s report:

Popp was sympathetic to Sam attempting to play football as an openly gay 25-year-old, but this whole situation makes him look bad. I was at the Nike LGBT Sports Summit in Portland when news about Sam leaving the team broke and several people expressed their dismay over what was occurring.

I don’t know why Sam left the team but the bottom line is that if he doesn’t return to the Alouettes soon, his dreams of playing pro football are over forever since no team would ever want to take a chance on him again. It would be a sad ending to his story that burned so promising 16 months ago.

Upon first glance, Robyn Hasty‘s glass-plate portraits seem like they could have been generated alongside those of 19th-century photo giants like Julia Margaret Cameron or Nadar. The images, crafted with wet-plate collodion tintype and ambrotype developing processes, depict nude subjects meeting the viewers’ gazes, bodies sprawled elegantly across a love seat.

“The impracticality of obsolete technology informs my craft,” Hasty explains in her artist statement. “I have learned several labor intensive pre-industrial processes including tintype photography, primitive ceramics, and traditional African earth architecture. I use these techniques because I am drawn to the tension between fine craft and entropy that arises from the struggle of making with unpredictable results.”

Upon closer look at Hasty’s work, certain particularities come into view: tattoos, piercings, dreadlocks and baseball caps, to name a few, anchoring the images in a more contemporary climate. Look closer still, and the nudes on view subtly disorient the viewer’s attempt to classify or categorize, their exposed flesh raising more questions than answers. The enigmatic portraits depict a range of transgender, cisgender, genderqueer and gender nonconforming individuals, juxtaposing classical compositions and traditional photography methods with nonconformist subjects.

The photo series couples past techniques with future ideologies, yielding magnetic images that teeter precariously on the present moment. The collection is named “Z,” alluding to the gender neutral pronoun. Hasty’s subjects reveal their unclothed bodies before the camera, proving that gender isn’t something written on the flesh, but rather crafted in the mind. The portraits recall the work of 19th-century photographer F. Holland Day, whose hazy, mythical portraits toyed with notions of race, gender and identity far before postmodernism seeped into the public consciousness.

While Day opted for fantastical costumes to illustrate the slippery nature of the self, Hasty does the opposite, showing that even without clothing, her subjects still occupy a myriad of identities. The silvery tintypes convey the infinite possibilities embedded in the skin, and the futility of attempting to fix human beings to any single predetermined definition or classification.

Robyn Renee Hasty’s “Z”, curated by Walker Waugh, will be on view from June 11 until July 12, 2015, at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.

 There was plenty of tragedy to go around on last night’s season five Game of Thrones finale. Just when you thought you were done with heartbreak, another one bit the dust, so to speak.

You may want to sit down before we get into it, because, for most of these characters, I’ve got bad news and, well, worse news.

Let’s discuss the details, AFTER THE JUMP …

Meanwhile, In Winterfell …
Yikes. Not sure if Mercury is in retrograde, or whatever, but things really aren’t going well for Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane). After his devastating sacrifice of his daughter last week, now half his men have deserted him, and his wife hanged herself. Even Melisandre (Carice van Houten) is like “Uh, I’ve got a thing … “ and rides off. With not much left to lose, Stan and his men march on Winterfell, only to be met and mostly slaughtered by Lord Bolton’s men.

An injured Stannis is left in the woods, and who just happens to be strolling on by? Brienne (Gwendoline Christie). We don’t see Brienne land the killing blow to Stannis, so we could, technically, still speculate if she successfully killed him in the name of Renly. However, after sacrificing everything for a bungled battle, it’s probably just his time to go.

While Ramsay (Iwan Rheon) is away fighting Stannis’ men, Sansa (Sophie Turner) decides to make a move. She uses a purloined corkscrew to escape her chamber, but leaves the bartool behind, like a fool. Now how will she shank Ramsay and/or uncork a fine cabernet? She hustles on over to light the candle in the highest window of the broken tower (not like Brienne is still waiting around to see it, though). As she tries to sneak around the grounds unnoticed, she’s cornered by Myranda (Charlotte Hope). As Ramsay’s sidepiece fixes an arrow on the young Lady Stark, Theon (Alfie Allen) finally makes himself useful by tossing Myranda to her death on the courtyard below. Having dispatched Stannis and his men, Ramsay returns home, forcing Sansa and Theon to leap to an unknown fate over the wall.

Meanwhile, In Dorne …
Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is all ready to take Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) back to King’s Landing. OK, everybody on the boat! But before Myrcella can hop aboard, Ellaria (Indira Varma) pulls in the young princess for a big ol’ smooch on the mouth. Boy, she really seems to have come around, right? I mean, just the other week she was ready to kill Myrcella, and now they’re all kissy-kissy. How sweet!

In transit, Jaime awkwardly attempts to confess that he may have been a little too kissy-kissy with Myrcella’s mother/his sister. She reveals that, duh, she knows and she’s happy that he’s her dad and it is so sweet that almost no one notices that Myrcella’s nose is bleeding and, oh no, she’s dead. Dead dead dead. In case there were any doubts, we see Ellaria back on the docks wiping off her lipstick and taking an antidote.

Meanwhile, In Braavos …
Meryn Trant (Ian Beattie) is doing his thing, smacking around young girls for funsies. He whacks the first girl, and she shrieks in pain. Same for the second. The third victim, however, barely even flinches. Trant sends the first two girls away and then really lays into the third. She removes her face to reveal herself as Arya (Maisie Williams) before super murdering him like a whole lot. Like a lot a lot. She stabs out his eyes, she stabs him a bunch all over his torso, and then she finally cuts his throat.

When she gets back to the House of Black and White, Jaqen H’ghar (Tom Wlaschiha) isn’t thrilled with her choices. She had a job to do: She was supposed to take her mobile raw bar around and then poison the gambler. Instead, she stole a face and super murdered someone else. Now, the rules are a bit hazy, but if you borrow another face to kill someone who was not officially sanctioned, it’s sort of frowned upon. Then Jaqen seemingly poisons himself, but then takes over another body while Arya frantically tears faces off his corpse. Then she goes blind. I guess I should really read up on my House of Black and White faceless assassin employee handbook, because there seems to be a lot of regulations there in the fine print.

Meanwhile, In Meereen …
Oh where, oh where has Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) gone? Oh where, oh where can she be? That’s the question on the minds of Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), Jorah (Iain Glen), Daario (Michiel Huisman), Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson). It’s decided that Tyrion, Grey Worm and Missandei will hang back in Meereen and, you know, govern, while Jorah and Daario set out to find their missing queen. On the plus side, Varys (Conleth Hill) has arrived, so it’s only a matter of time before those pesky Sons of the Harpy are sniffed out.

Elsewhere, Dany is trying to get Drogon to fly her back to Meereen, but she has about as much luck as trying to work with Delta customer service, which is to say no luck at all. While Drogon lazes about, she sets out to find some dinner. What she finds instead is a big ol’ group of Dothraki.

Meanwhile, In King’s Landing …
Cersei (Lena Headey) is still in full Orange Is the New Black mode, locked up in the dungeons. Finally, she decides to give the whole confession a whirl. How much worse can it be? So she reports up to the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) and is all yes, yes boinked my cousin. Sorry. The Sparrow, however, seems to have a little more up his sleeve. He asks about Cersei maybe also keeping it in the fam with her brother, but she denies it. OK, then, now with that confession out of the way, we can all just return to our normal business, yah? Unfortunately, there’s still a trial and also an “atonement.”

And, what, exactly does an atonement entail? Funny you should ask! First, a bunch of nuns give Cersei the full microderm abrasion body scrub down. Then, it’s time for a makeover! They take a razor to her hair, briefly giving her a very Keith Urban look before settling on some fierce Mia Farrow realness. (Cersei is serving some cheek bones for days.) It’s all very Anne Hathaway in Les Mis. The Queen Mother is then stripped naked and forced to walk back home through crowds of people throwing food, excrement, spitting on her and all kinds of other horrible harassment. It’s a completely debasing experience that just seems to go on forever. If Cersei wasn’t broken yet, she certainly is now.

When she reaches her destination, she’s greeted by a new member of the King’s Guard: The reanimated corpse of The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson)! That will certainly come in handy when she exacts her revenge.

Meanwhile, At the Wall …
Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) is still a little shaken up, which makes Sam (John Bradley)’s timing a little unkind. Tarley asks if he, Gilly (Hannah Murray) and the baby can high tail it out of there before things take a turn for the even more worse. Snow agrees, which ends up being a huge mistake. Once they’re gone, Olly (Brenock O’Connor) lures Snow outside where members of the Night’s Watch take turns stabbing the Lord Commander one at a time, with Olly delivering the killing blow.

The Internet is already ablaze with rampant speculation about this “death.” What do you think? Is Jon Snow gone for good? What else could his future hold?

How do you feel about this season of Game of Thrones?