#Yeah some players be a lot like those Capitol kids

[ask-chaotic-creatures]

To the tribe leaders have you even seen the humans bribe your people with human food? Desserts anything? Did you ever get to try any human foods?

Aszil: I believe this question has been asked before, but yes and it's become more common in Mount Pillar. There has been an increasing amount of human sightings, it seems the players have realized just how much my people love sugar. As long as it remains for harmless purposes, I will allow it. And yes, I've tried chocolate before. These days, I prefer dark.

Chaor: Lucky you, your tribe doesn't attract the malcontents.

Aszil: Trust me, we get problem players.

Chaor: If the players wish to try and bargain with my people that way, it's their choice. Not our fault if they get coded for it. Also, human food isn't very interesting for me. Won't turn down any meat, though.

Theb-Sarr: I haven't tried any of their food, but Peyton and a few other humans are still bringing water to Mipedim. I too allow it, but I've seen how thirst can be used as a weapon. Which is why I expect my soldiers to assure that doesn't happen.

Maxxor: I can't remember if I've human food before, but it doesn't seem that different from ours. I have seen some humans offering food to my people in Kiru City. Mostly for the warriors, but a couple were offering them to those not so fortunate. To which I won't stop them. I just hope they're doing it with good intentions.

Theb-Sarr: They should be fine. Unlike Chaor, your tribe attracts those goodie-two-shoes players.

Maxxor: And some a little too devoted to us.

Theb-Sarr: I consider my tribe lucky then, if the worst Mipedian players have to offer is Peyton.

[lemonluvgirl]

Thoughts on Other Characters

Prim,Haymitch,Effie,Cinna,Finnick,Johanna, Beetee?

Prim: 💔😢 breaks my heart because she was a very giving and loving character and I am still dreadfully sad she didn't make it. But that doesn't lessen the amount of love and respect I had for her. She was wise beyond her years, loved Katniss to pieces, and helped so many people. Prim remains an inspiration.

Haymitch: 😂🍺🔪 is the perfect reluctant mentor. He tries so hard not to get invested in Peeta and Katniss in the first book but he can't help himself. He's a big softie who loves his kids (because in the end I think Peeta and Katniss are as close to having kids as he'll ever get) so much that he can barely keep it together when they have to go back into the arena for Catching Fire. He's a tough old sonofabitch who doesn't use kid gloves or candy coat the reality of the terrible situation they are all in, but he does bring his own brand of humor and love to the situation. Also I live for Haymitchs wise cracks about Katniss. They kill me. ���

Effie: 👠👗💄I like her a lot. Even though she's stuffy and completely self centered and shallow at first, I think by the second book she grows as a character. She begins to question the practices of the Hunger Games. And in her own way she loves Katniss and Peeta. She doesn't know how to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from learning her entire society is built on a lie (that the people from the districts are somewhat less human than people from the Capitol), but she does her best to do her job. You can tell she wants to protect Katniss and Peeta, and she thinks they deserve better than what the Capitol does to them in Catching Fire. I think by Mockingjay Effie realized just how wrong everything was. I like to imagine she found her own way to help rebuild and do better after the war.

Cinna: 👔💔😭 evokes the same feelings that Prim did in me. He was so compassionate, so selfless. He used his influence and talent for good, to fight back against injustice and the Hunger Games. He was such a good friend and mentor to Katniss and I think it's terrible he died. He was incredibly instrumental in helping paint Katniss as a symbol for hope and rebellion. I still deeply feel his loss whenever I read Catching Fire and Mockingjay where he is not present but obviously missed.

Finnick: 🧜‍♂️😩💔 Is the best at first I thought he was a jerk and a player but then I realized he's actually a sweetheart and a prince character that I've ever read. He has so many layers, victor, rebel spy, love sick young man, ally, friend, and of course noble sacrificer. He is another character that I can't believe didn't get his happy ending. I thought he really freaking earned it too, after all he had been through. I still cannot watch or read about the sewer battle without crying or getting upset. And its been years.

Johanna: 🌲⚔🤨 is just such a badass. I love her. She's incredible. I hate that she got tortured and lost some of her fuck everything and everyone who tries to screw me over attitude after she was captured by the Capitol. But I am happy that she survived the last book and has a chance at living out the rest of her life, finding some peace for herself and no doubt causing more havoc for the people around her.

Beetee: 👓⚡💻 I like him, and I also very strongly disagree with his tactics during the war. I think Beetee is a bit of a mixed bag. I don't think he wanted to kill innocent people with his bombs, or enjoyed it. I think the design aspects and the science of it all was an escape for him. I think he was trying to stay busy and be useful. But its tragic to me that he had (not totally confirmed)a hand in Prim's death.

So yeah ��� those are my thoughts.

[everlarkficexchange]

Fate Takes a Break

BY: @ally147writes

RATING: T

PROMPT #50: everlark discovering on their date that they’ve missed each other their whole lives (living in the same city, went to the same high school, going to the same halloween and nye parties, were set up before by different friends but stood each other up, shopping at the same store, etc.) [submitted by @sunflowerslyf]

AN: This ended up being substantially shorter than I was aiming for, but it was nice to get back into fic writing all the same. Thanks to the mods for holding this exchange again, and thanks to all the authors and artists who took part. Your creativity is what is keeping the world spinning right now.

(Not beta’d - all errors are my own)

This date isn’t quite as blind as Katniss was expecting

Still a little bit blind, though. She’s seen the guy before, she’s sure of that. But where? The weird furrowed brow look he’s sending her every time she dips her gaze towards her plate to pick out another choice sliver of cheese-herb-sauced chicken breast tells her he’s got the same weird deja vu thing going on, too.

She sighs and asks, “It’s not just me, is it?”

The guy — Peeta, she tells herself again, somehow not as distinctive a name as it sounds like it should be — huffs a quiet laugh and sets his fork down.

“Maybe we’ve just got those kinds of faces?”

 “You might be right. But I’m not convinced.”

He smiles, a beyond-charming quirk of his lips. “No, neither am I. I think I would remember you if I’d seen you before.”

She blushes, just a little, and takes a sip of water. “Well, it’s our first date,” she points out. “Might as well do the twenty questions thing now.”

“And, what, deprive us of a perfectly good second date activity?”

“This will drive me insane if we don’t work it out right now.”

He drums his fingers along the edge of their table. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you not immediately pass up a second date.”

She runs her hands — nowhere near as damp now as they were at the beginning of the date — along the smooth satin of her skirt. “I could be tempted, I suppose.”

“Hmm. Noted.” He smiles that charming little smile again and leans forward, close enough that she can make out the hints of gold flecked like tiny bursts of sunshine in his blue eyes. “Where do you want to start?”

“Well,” she takes another bite of chicken before she says anything weird about his eyes that she might regret, “you’re obviously not from District Twelve, so —”

Peeta coughs. “Actually, I am.”

There’s a beat of odd silence where they do nothing but blink at each other.

“District Twelve,” she repeats, slower, like there’s a chance he misheard her. “As in, tiny ass coal town about two hours south of here?”

He quirks his brow. “Is there another District Twelve I should know about?”

She narrows her eyes. “Merchant or Seam?”

“Merchant, but I went to D12 Senior High. That was in the middle of Seam, right?”

“Bullshit,” she exclaims, maybe a little too loudly if the dirty looks she’s getting from the snooty old people at their neighbouring tables is anything to go by. “I’d remember if you were there. When did you graduate?”

“Uh, 2008?”

“Bullshit,” she says again, because this can’t be real, can it? “Same year as me. You weren’t there.”

He grins again. “I’m glad we can establish that neither of us remember each other from high school, so strike one for that, but I wasn’t there for all of it. Just… I don’t know, maybe the last three months of the semester? Didn’t seem all that worth going to graduation after not really having contributed anything. Then I got accepted to Capitol University, and —”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she cuts in with a chuckle. “Capitol University. When did you start?”

“Pretty much right away.”

She leans forward, eyes narrowed. “Major?”

He mirrors her. “Double, actually, Business and Arts. You?”

“Environmental Biology. But I had a friend doing economics, so I was around the business school a lot.”

“What was their name?”

She takes the last bite of her chicken and pushes her plate away. “Madge.”

He chuckles. “Don’t tell me, Madge Kingswood, right?”

“Uh…”

“She dated my roommate for about a year.”

“You were Thom’s roommate?”

“Sure was. For a little while after we graduated, too. Last I heard, he moved to District Two. Something to do with gem mining.”

“Hang on, are you the Peter — or, Peeta, I guess — that she and Thom tried to set me up with for, what was it… a double bowling date?”

He laughs, a boundless, joyful sound that pools warm in her belly. “I’m guessing you’re Kat with the lethal aim, then?”

“The lethal aim has more to do with archery. Did you have fun that night?”

“I got stood up, if you’ll recall?” His eyes glitter in the gentle candlelight. “Did you really have food poisoning?”

She blushes again, but she’s not sure why she’s so embarrassed. “No. I just… completely hate bowling.”

“Guess a second date down at the alley is completely out of the question, then?”

“I’d probably dredge up the food poisoning excuse again if you tried it.”

“Also noted.”

They share a smile, one that almost frightens her with the length and breadth of how it speaks of their possible future.

She coughs into her closed fist and dabs at her lips with a napkin. “Well, next thing, I guess you’re gonna tell me you were at all the music nights at the campus tavern.”

“Every Friday, if I didn’t have something due that night. Why?”

“I was in a band that played there about once a month. Drummer.”

“You behind a kit would have been a sight. What was your band’s name?”

“Victors.”

He shakes his head. “Funny. My best friend married your keyboard player.”

Her jaw drops. “You’re best friends with Finnick?”

“We went to the same elementary school. Been friends for years now.”

“He’s kind of a dick.”

Peeta bursts out laughing again. “Yeah, he kind of is.”

“Spend much time around the campus gym, then?”

“I was there on a wrestling scholarship,” he tells her, and the subtle flex of his muscles beneath the deep midnight of his suit jacket catches her attention in a way it didn’t before. “I assume you did the rounds there, too, then?”

She sighs and finishes her water. “Track Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“Hate to say it, but I don’t think our paths crossed there, either.”

“No, but I did go to a few wrestling meets. My roommate enjoyed them.”

He grins again. “Guys in tight spandex, huh?”

She snorts. “Don’t ask me. I barely looked up from my phone.”

“Glad my meets provided such riveting entertainment.”

“I was literally the only one not paying attention.”

“Probably a good thing I didn’t know you were there,” he muses as he takes another sip of wine. A drop clings to the edge of his lips, and the dart of his tongue to catch it is entrancing. “I might not have placed otherwise.”

She clears her throat. “We were way up in the nosebleeds, so there was probably no danger of me distracting you. This is all kind of uncanny, though. I could know you from anywhere.”

He smiles again, a rogue curl flopping forward over his eyes. “Sort of romantic, don’t you think?”

She snorts. “That we constantly missed each other over the years? Kind of sounds like the opposite of a fairy tale.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’re here now. Maybe the universe thinks we’re inevitable or something? Soulmates destined to be brought together. Maybe that’s why we’re familiar to each other, we were together in a past life or something.”

Her answering laugh is more like a snort. “Or maybe fate took a break, and this is some sort of cosmic screw-up that slipped through the cracks and is bound to fail.”

“Katniss,” he says, the playful glint in his eyes simmering down to something more serious, and strangely earnest. He reaches across the table, just barely grazing his pinkie against hers. It’d be dumb to say a thrum of lightning coursed through her at the touch, so she’ll just keep that thought to herself.

“If I’d seen you or, more to the point, noticed you then, during any one of those times our paths could have crossed but didn’t, any one of those times we were in the same room but I looked left and you looked right… believe me, I would have let you know, and I wouldn’t have let you go.”

“Well,” she says after a long moment, just staring at his finger beside hers, “good thing we’re meeting up now, then, isn’t it?”

That same hundred-year smile passes between them, maybe not quite as scary as it was before. “Yeah, it is.”

[captainseaweedbrains]

The Dance of the Color Guard, Op.64 Chapter 1

Katniss and Peeta used to be best friends when they were kids, but now in high school, they're barely on speaking terms. It isn't until they are forced together as the titular star-crossed lovers for their marching band's field show that they will have to face their past mistakes and try to get along if they ever hope of defeating the notorious Capitol Height's Imperial Marching Crusaders in competition.

It's all about winning and if that means pretending to be in love with Peeta Mellark, so be it.

But a lot can happen in six months.

Tumblr: x

Ao3: x x

April—Six Months Earlier

“Don’t be so obvious,” her music stand partner Leevy whispered in amusement, “but Peeta Mellark is staring at you again.”

“What?” Katniss looked straight up, not even pretending to be subtle, and locked eyes with the first chair trumpet player sitting directly across the room from her. His eyes widened for a moment, probably assuming she wouldn’t catch his stare with the clarinet section in front of him, but instead of looking away like a normal person would after being caught, Peeta Mellark smiled at her, his right eyebrow raising suggestively in question. Katniss gripped her flute and pointedly turned back to her music, knowing her section would be criticized next on their sloppy runs.

He liked to do that every so often during rehearsal, look at her like she was some kind of joke that amused him. Get her all flustered with those stupid eyebrows and smiles. Leevy enjoyed pointing it out all the time, drawing kissy faces with their initials in hearts on their shared music that Katniss would then furiously erase because what if someone saw that? People in band were gossipy enough with who was dating whom and who broke up with whom.

She didn’t want anyone thinking she had a crush on Peeta Mellark.

Mr. Abernathy, their band director, stepped between them on his podium, breaking any eye contact Peeta could make on her, and tapped his baton on his stand to grab everyone’s attention. “Okay, listen up, ya mangy teens! A few announcements before you all age me once more with your apparent lack of practicing. First being, next season’s field show—”

“Oh, can I say it?” Miss Trinket, their assistant director, asked, already pushing Mr. Abernathy off the podium. Miss Trinket was a small wispy woman, her height mainly due to the massive heels she sported no matter the season, but despite her title and small stature, it was clear to anyone with eyes who was in charge of any decision making for the band program.

Miss Trinket cleared her throat, smiling brightly as the room waited with anticipation. 

Marching season was one of the biggest things they did in the school year. Everyone looked forward to it and a strong field show could finally mean getting Athens Ridge High’s Marching Gladiators to finals and beating the crap out of their arch rivals: the rich snooty Capitol Heights Academy’s Imperial Marching Crusaders.

Every year they always came so close to beating them, but Capitol Heights had the money for large expensive props and Athens Ridge did not. They were lucky enough to have been able to afford new marching uniforms a few years back, replacing the threadbare grey ones with sleek black and gold. Mr. Abernathy always reminded everyone that he didn’t care about winning, nor did he give a rat’s ass about Capitol Heights and all their achievements. All he cared about was that they performed to the best of their ability and marched off the field with pride, but Katniss wanted their band to be the best. Everyone in the Athens Ridge band did.

“Can I get a drumroll, please?” Miss Trinket asked, looking pointedly to Gale in the back.

Gale rolled his eyes, but started the roll on his snare drum.

“This year’s marching show is…” Another dramatic pause.

“Will you just tell them, woman? This ain’t the Oscars,” Mr. Abernathy snapped, sick of all her flairs and dramatics. “We’re doing Romeo & Juliet. There. Now get off my podium.”

Miss Trinket held her ground, her pale features brightening under her anger, making her purple-streaked hair stand out more than usual. “Haymitch—!”

Everyone watched, entertained by yet another round of the two directors going at it once more. Katniss turned to look back at Gale, the head keeper of the betting pool, and he signed another two months before their directors would go at it like rabbits. She shook her head, laughing quietly to herself, and turned back to watch as the directors duked it out.  

“I’ve heard the music to this field show,” Leevy said after practice, cleaning out her flute. “It’s really pretty. I can see why Miss Trinket picked it.”

Katniss carefully tucked her flute back in its case, giving it one final shine before locking it shut. “You think Miss Trinket picked it?”

Leevy laughed and threw a pointed look over to where Mr. Abernathy sat slunk in his chair, stained coffee mug in hand as he scowled at some piece of paper. “I highly doubt Mr. Abernathy would choose a show like Romeo & Juliet without some heavy outside persuasion.”

She had a point there.

As they waited by the door, ready to book it the second the bell rang, Katniss and Leevy rolled their eyes at the chaos in front of them. Thresh Armstrong, a tuba player known for sneaking in toys from home, had brought out a foam football and had tossed it over to Johanna Mason, one of the smart ass percussionists, who almost crashed into the chimes trying to catch it. She held the ball up in victory and the guys around her hooted and hollered in applause. With a dramatic bow, she tossed it to Gale behind her, who caught it and called out for his girlfriend Madge to catch. Madge squealed in shock when the ball hit her in the back of the head, throwing the ball back at him in protest. 

“You’d think Abernathy would put a stop to that,” Leevy commented, laughing despite herself when the ball nailed Marvel Baxter in the face. “People can get hurt.” 

“Maybe he wants to see assholes like Marvel get hit in the face, too,” Katniss snorted, glad she got to witness it. “Do you think we’ll get to see Cato get hit in the face?” she asked, eyeing the bulky blond in the far corner with interest. 

“Doubt it.” Cato Martin was that stereotypical asshole who thought he walked on water and expected everyone to treat him as thus. And the sickening part was that people did. The school’s star quarterback was praised constantly in their school paper for his dedication to both the school’s athletic department and music department, despite being last chair in Symphonic Band and always being hounded for how bad he played by Mr. Abernathy. Despite his assholery, though, he always had a gaggle of followers around him, probably praising him for breathing. 

Katniss hated him so much, and it wasn’t just because they were locker neighbors and she was constantly having to shove him and whatever girl he was making out with off her own locker to squeeze in. Or that, since the 7th grade, he’s only referred to her as “Katnips Everslip” after a very unfortunate wardrobe malfunction at the community pool. Or even that time he taped rubber baby bottle nipples all over her locker sophomore year and only received a slap on the wrist by their dean, Mr. Flickerman, because he didn’t realize how offensive it was and he was so so sorry. Yeah, Cato sucked and she hated him for all those things and more, but she hated him most because Cato Martin was that entitled ass who just expected things to be given to him. He never faced any consequences and those were the worst kind of people.

Laughing at Marvel and his botched up nose, her eyes briefly caught Peeta’s and the amusement she felt seeing Marvel get nailed in the face vanished instantly. Every bully had that one lackey who wasn’t really an asshole, but was kind of one by association because he just went along with anything the bully did. Yeah, that lackey was Peeta Mellark. Which somehow made it even worse. She knew Peeta. Used to be friends with him in elementary school, back when your neighborhood friends were your whole world and nothing could come between you. Now he was just one of Cato’s goons who blindly followed whatever Golden Ass commanded. 

“Are you auditioning for color guard again?” Leevy asked, snapping Katniss’s attention back to her friend.

“Huh?”

Leevy’s eyes followed where hers had been and Katniss pretended not to notice the knowing smirk on her friend’s face, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve instead. “Are you trying out for color guard this year?” she asked again.  

“Of course.” Katniss flushed at her sure answer, but she always did color guard. It was kind of her thing, especially since Miss Trinket had singled her out freshman year, snatching 14-year-old Katniss off the practice field where she had been marching with her fellow flute players. “You’ve got the perfect arms,” Miss Trinket had told her and she’d been part of color guard ever since. 

“I’m hoping for captain, actually,” Katniss admitted, looking down at her beat-up sneakers. She hadn’t told anyone but Prim that, afraid she’d jinx it by putting it out in the universe too much, but going into senior year next season, she’d be the most experienced one auditioning. The odds were definitely in her favor, but the universe also had a tendency of fucking things up when she least expected it and she didn’t want to chance it.

Leevy sighed. “I wish you’d stay with the flutes. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to deal with that”—she pointed at the giggly flute players who were now fawning over Cato like lovesick puppies—"all by myself.”

Katniss gave her friend a sympathetic pat on the arm. “I’d rather shoot myself in the eye than have to deal with Golden Ass’ fan club. Why don’t you try out? You’re small, like me. I bet Miss Trinket would love that.” Their assistant director would be beside herself with joy at having another petite person in guard she could have tossed around. Miss Trinket was always complaining how there were too many tall girls nowadays and that it limited her “vision.” 

Leevy shook her head. “Oh, no. No, I don’t think I could ever do what you all do. Who would trust me to throw something in the air and expect me to catch it? And the way you did those handsprings for last year’s show?” She shook her head again in amazement. “I can’t even balance on one foot without falling. I’m nowhere near as talented as you.” 

Katniss’ cheeks darkened again at Leevy’s appraisal. Those handsprings were a bitch to grasp, she remembered, and the only reason she was the one doing them wasn’t because Trinket saw her as some talented goddess. No, it was just because everyone else was too afraid of doing them without any type of mat underneath them and Katniss wasn’t. She was about to tell her friend this—that yeah, she was pretty good with a flag and rifle, but all that can be taught and Leevy’s lack of gymnastic talent shouldn’t stop her from auditioning—when the foam football smacked her hard on the side of her head.

“What the hell?” She scanned the chaotic room for the culprit, rubbing at the spot where the ball hit. “Who threw that?” 

The culprit in question raised his hand apologetically and jogged over to pick the blue ball off the ground. Her hands balled into fists.

Peeta Mellark.

Of course.

“My bad!” he apologized, smiling down at her in that totally non-assery way that just pissed her off more. “I was trying to throw the ball to Glimmer and—” he started to explain, casually pointing behind him with his thumb.

“Your aim sucks that much?” she fumed, interrupting him. Glimmer was clear across the room by the other French horn players, far from where she and Leevy stood. “That could have hit my eye!”

There was a time, long ago, when she was once taller than him. She used to jokingly lean on Peeta while they waited in lines at school or the grocery store, calling him squirt and messing up his curly blond hair like his dad did, laughing when he’d scowl and pull away, hating that nickname. He always vowed he’d reach his growth spurt someday soon, just like his brothers, and she’d be sorry she ever called him squirt. Peeta stood almost a foot taller than her now, but she stood her ground. Glaring up at him, she considered using the old nickname, just to see if it rattled him

There was no way his aim was that bad. They’d had the same gym class for almost six years now and she knew he wasn’t terrible. Peeta was one of those guys things just came naturally to, especially sports. For years she has watched as he made the winning pass in basketball, smacked a volleyball down to score like nobody’s business, swiped the puck in during hockey. She smelled bullshit. 

This was probably some stupid dare Cato or Marvel put him up to. She eyed Marvel off to the side, still rubbing his nose. He was probably pissed at her for laughing at him and thought it’d be funny watching her get nailed in the face, too. Let’s see how hard the ball can bounce off Katnips Everslip’s tiny head! she could hear the idiots snickering. Marvel always did have a small ego. And of course, like always, Peeta just went along with it because that’s what Peeta did. Just go along with anything his friends suggested, even if meant injuring an innocent bystander.

“So why’d you throw it at me?” she point-blank asked, crossing her arms. “Did Marvel put you up to it? Cato?” 

His face quickly went from apologetic smiles to annoyance, rolling his eyes at her sneer. “You know, Katniss, believe it or not, accidents do happen.”

“Accident? Please,” she scoffed. “I know you, Peeta. You don’t do accidents. Everything you do is strategically planned and executed with exact precision. So who dared you? It was Marvel, wasn’t it?”

He looked back at his buddies and laughed, shaking his head incredulously. “I’m touched that you think I’m so robotic, Katniss, truly, but believe whatever the fuck you want. I said it was an accident because it was an accident.” 

“Just answer the question.”

“I already did.” He leaned toward her, his dark blue eyes mocking, and tapped the football on her nose with a smug smile, walking back over to his friends. Some of the guys made kissy faces at his return, laughing when Peeta shoved them to quit it, but he was laughing along with them. 

Katniss’ nails dug into her palms as she watched them, briefly wondering if someone could be glared to death. God, they were the worst.

“Wow,” Leevy breathed, watching the trumpet players, too. “The sexual tension is strong today. Felt like I was in a movie just now.” 

She turned to her friend, incredulous. “Sexual tension? With Peeta Mellark?” She gagged at the thought. “Did you not just see him be a complete ass to me? He hit me with a football!”

“Yeah and apologized for it.” Katniss rolled her eyes at the low standard bar Leevy had for apologies. Peeta’s apology was obviously fake and what about that annoying ball tap to the nose? Did she not see how condescending that was? “You two are so going to bone by the end of this year.”

The bell rang before Katniss could choke out a rebuttal.

[ellanainthetardis]

Hi again! Same anon here. I'm happy you're doing well :). I didn't have any specific character in mind actually. But maybe something about the Capitol citizens? Seneca, Plutarch, the stylists? (Or Elindra? she's sooo amazing)

For Elindra I think I poured all my current hc in that os I wrote about her not too long ago but for the others let’s see... 

Seneca is a character I had a very roughly undefinied idea of until not too long ago. I now have OCs for his parents. We saw Oresto briefly in an os I already published but there’s another one coming where he’s a bit more fleshed out. Basically I hc Oresto Crane (his father) was a Head Gamemaker around the Second Quarter Quell (and resigned a few years after that, probably around between 5 and 7 years) and he has great ambitions for his son, unfortunately Seneca always disappoints. It’s a bit of the same pattern Effie has going with Elindra which is why, I think, Effie and Seneca are such good friends. He’s a bit older than her so he wasn’t very interested in her friendship when they were younger but he knew her from infancy and they started being tight when Effie hit fifteen because they recognize the same struggle in each other.

Also Oresto doesn’t want to hear AT ALL about Seneca’s sexuality, to him, he needs to marry a well-bred woman and have the puncfuntory 2.5 heirs to pass along the Crane name - no adoption or surrogate will do for the first born at the very least. As a consequence Seneca doesn’t have a very nice life. He mostly hides the boyfriends in the worst-kept secret ever in the Capitol, parties a lot, samples drugs (I also hc his mother had an addiction problem because it’s the only way to make her life tolerable), and more or less earns himself the reputation of a player because he dates left and right (I hc he’s probably as pansexual as Effie but leans more toward men). 

He’s also SUPRA ambitious and won’t stop at anything to prove his father wrong so he works hard and manages to become the youngest Head Gamemaker ever appointed but even that doesn’t satisfy his father because there is ALWAYs something he could do better. On that regard, he enjoys Snow’s mentorship and that’s also why, probably, he’s a loyalist, less out of conviction and more out of sentimentality. 

This being said, he’s absolutely not blind to the state of Panem. Being a Gamemaker wasn’t the dream come true he expected it to be and he finds all the killing of children a bit hard to stomach (hence the drugs and the sex and the partying) but it’s not enough to convince him to drop his way or life or to give him rebellious ideas. He enjoys his comfort and, at the end of the day, he’s a powerful coward. He won’t put himself in jeopardy for anyone (the closest he would to put himself at risk is for Effie who he considered to be his best friend but even that has limits, if he had known the storm it would unleash, he would never have gone for teh star-crossed lovers things). He does try to be a fair Head Gamemakers to victors though and he does try to make the prostitution thing safer by implementing limits and rules but it’s a drop in an ocean of shit really. 

PLUTARCH now. He’s not my favorite character because I don’t find him very interesting. His motives are very plain to me and not very pretty. I never managed to give him a backstory that was compelling enough for me to like him. Basically I hc he’s very much a slytherin in the pejorative sense of the word (and I say this as a Slytherin). He’s the shadow behind the throne. Basically I hc that he was whispering in Snow’s ear for a very long time. A Gamemaker but not one anyone particularly paid any attention to, more of a curtesy title really, he was more of an advisor and a trusted one at that. 

But Plutarch always smells where the wind blows and he could tell a rebellion was brewing long before Katniss left the first sparks. I sort of hc it’s Fulvia who got him sucked into the rebellion because I like the idea of a romance between them but he’s far too pragmatic to do anything out of a sense of idealism. Probably for a long time he simply cultivated his contacts, his spies... He spun his web (a bit like Littlefinger) and waited to see where his interest truly lied before he chose a side. 

I think Plutarch genuinely values his friendship with Haymitch and the kids even if, on their part, it’s reserved because they know it comes with strings. Paradoxically I don’t think it does come with strings when they’re concerned but... Yeah, it’s maybe something he would come to resent them for a little way post MJ. He’s being the best version of a friend he can be for them and they still mistrust him a little because with him there are always angles.

THE STYLISTS now! Well, Cinna isn’t my favorite character either because he gets out as the “saint” of the series and, for a long time, Haymitch got blamed for a lot of shit that CINNA actually did (like turn Katniss into the symbol of the rebellion without asking). Cinna was the real hardcore rebel, he was dedicated, believed in the cause with a touch of fanatism and was only to happy to die for the cause, he was probably proud to die for the cause because he had martyre figure written all over it. 

Portia got involved out of conviction but also because of Cinna. I hc that by the time the 74th rolled around, they had been together a long time. Years, at least. He was more famous and more successful than she was as a stylist but she was getting there and while they were associates, they each had their own specific brand. Portia is quirky and she loves a good joke, she’s easy-going and loving but she can have a protective streak and she’s probably mroe down-to-earth than other Capitol because I hc she comes from the lowest Capitol classes (still wealthier than District people but you know, the part of the Capitol population that works). Same for Cinna. I know some people say he comes from District 8 but I don’t think I saw that in the books so Idk if it’s fanon or just something that people like to say... But I like the idea that there were actual Capitol people involved in the rebellion, who fought for equality because if the rebellion is only District people and Plutarch... Well, it just makes it sad. And even in Nazi Germany there were rebellion pockets, it’s just logical to have Capitol people actually fighting the system. So yeah, I like to think Cinna comes from the working class of teh Capitol and that both he and Portia worked their way up to the top and that it took lots of work and talent. I also hc they met in design school, saw each other’s sketches and just clicked. Instant connection. They’re soulmates, I can’t help it. 

Here, I think I’ve exhausted my top-of-the head hc for those characters... :p 

[antiquechampagne]

Antique Champagne - Chapter 30 - Family Ties

It took a few days, but people stopped giving her sideways glances. Payne quickly fell back into a steady routine of working followed by unwinding at The Third Rail while listening to Magnolia sing. It felt more comfortable than it had before; easy, even.

One late afternoon, she entered the Old State House and found Fahrenheit sitting in a chair cleaning her gun.

“Roof.” It was more of a grunt than a word.

Payne nodded and headed up. Fahr had barely spoken to her since her freak-out. She made a mental note to try to smooth things out with Fahr when she could find the time. Having a reputation could be useful, but she had to work together with Fahrenheit to keep Hancock out of trouble. If communication broke down between the two of them, it could be dangerous.

Sure enough, Payne found Hancock on top of the roof reclining against the wall of the stately cupola, watching the sky.

“This a private party?” she asked. She tapped the bottle of Day Tripper on the railing. “I see you’re swinging for the fences today.”

“Mmmm…” Hancock slowly turned to her, lost in a drug-induced cloud. “Now I know I must be dreaming…”

Payne paused. “Your normal Jet and Mentats cocktail not enough?”

“The latest shipment of Jet was weak as fuck.” He rubbed his temples. “It’s gone off… or something. It’s a rough and dirty ride.”

Payne nodded. The more powerful narcotic was to smooth out the rough bumps of a bad trip. “You haven’t given any of that bad Jet out, have you?” She knew his habit of sampling new shipments before distribution around Goodneighbor.

“Don’t worry, Fehr’s already rejected ’em. Threw the trader out on his ass for good measure, too.” He slowly raised himself to a sitting position, reaching up to the bottle. Payne moved it out of his grasp. Hancock scowled. “What gives? I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not carrying your skinny passed out ass down all those stairs.” She slipped the bottle into a pocket. “Wait a little while, until you’re back inside at least.”

Hancock threw his arms up in defeat. “Bah!” Propping himself back up on the wall, he looked out at the sky.

“Is Fred going to be able to keep up until you find someone else to supply the masses?”

“Maybe for a little while, but that would require him to focus and not take half the chems himself once he’s finished cookin’ em.”

Payne snorted. That was true enough.

“I’ll just have to share some of my personal stock until something comes through.” Hancock patted the spot next to him.

Payne sat down. A comfortable silence settled between them as they watched the sun near the horizon.

Eventually, Hancock let out a sigh. “I gotta tell ya, I’ve been thinking a bit about you.” Payne craned her head slightly. “Well, more about your family situation.”

Payne cocked an eyebrow. Payne wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at.

“Uhhh, it’s just that… even after everything you’ve been through, given the chance, you wanted to see them again. You miss them.” His head bent down as he now looked absently at his boots. “I really can’t say the same.”

Payne should have expected something like this. The last time Hancock decided to dip into his Day Tripper stash, he got pretty philosophical. She made herself comfortable. At least once the sun set, she would be able to take her helmet off.

Hancock grimaced. “If I had that tight-ass brother of mine in front of me right now, I would probably just sock him right in his smug face.”

“Jeez, don’t hold back,” Payne teased. The disdain Hancock had for his sibling was palpable.

“He wasn’t always such a prick. We grew up in a shack down by the waterfront with just our mom. Dad ran off when we were still little. Mom did her best with the two of us, pretty normal shit, ya know? He’d do regular big brother stuff, we’d rough each other up, play pranks. Crap like that. Once mom kicked it, we took what we could and moved to Diamond City.” Hancock pulled a cigarette out from a pocket and lit it, taking a long drag. As he talked, tendrils of smoke drifted from his open sinuses. “Somehow, slowly, he changed. Changed from a jerk of a big brother to something completely unrecognizable. Someone who would do anything to gain power over people. Even stoking hate and paranoia just to gain votes to win an election.”

“Wait a minute…” Payne stopped him. Votes? “Your brother is Mayor McDonough?” Hancock nodded as she digested the new information. “Guess politics runs in the family.”

“We are nothing alike. Don’t lump me together with that pile of brahmin shit. That guy doesn’t deserve the title of Mayor.” Hancock spat sourly. The reddish light from the setting sun made him look severe, deepening the shadows of his uneven skin. “All he does is serve himself, not the people.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” spat back Payne.

Hancock released a sigh. “I know. The guy just gets under my skin. I didn’t become mayor for some kind of personal power trip. By the people, for the people. Those aren’t just words to me, ya feel me?” Payne nodded. She knew he lived those words; she had seen it herself. “And to think that guy is my brother… family and blood…”

Payne really wished she could take off her helmet as she spoke up. “No one is ever going to think you are anything like your brother, trust me on that one… but listen to me. Family isn’t just about blood. Yeah, my family was pretty good, give or take a few details. But I grew up knowing how little that connection meant to some people…”

She took a quick moment to organize her thoughts. Hancock turned to listen.

“Before the war… well, things were different. People were expected to act, dress, behave a certain way… and only that way. Everyone was taught that you grow up, serve in the military, hate commies, get married and pop out a couple of kids. If you were different… if you loved the wrong person, if you looked different, wanted different things out of life… people would turn on you. Viciously sometimes. You’d lose friends, your job. People could end up dead over it. A lot of folks hid their true selves just to survive. My mom’s ranch was full of people who had been kicked out of their homes and had no contact with their families. They were deemed untouchable. But at the ranch, they formed new families. Stronger families, with deeper connections than they had ever had with someone they shared blood with.” She put a hand on his arm and gave a gentle squeeze. “Blood isn’t everything. Sometimes found families are better.”

Payne could see Hancock mulling over her words.

“No wonder you like it in Goodneighbor so much,” he finally said, the last ruddy beams of the dying sunset leaving his face.

Payne chuckled to herself. “I guess so.”

After a few moments, Hancock rose to his feet. “I feel like a walk. Mixing it up with my constituents, as it were.”

Payne knew what that meant… getting plastered at the bar. “Sure thing, boss.” At least it would be easier to distract him from taking more Day Tripper.

As they headed through the Old State House on their way to the Third Rail, Hancock filled his pockets with more chems. He was a veritable pill-popping Santa Claus to the citizens of the town, and he seemed ready to ensure he was propagating that sentiment tonight.

Hancock greeted the bouncer at the top of the stairs with a toothy grin. “Ham, my man! How’s it hanging?!”

A curt Sir was all the regard he gave the Mayor. Payne shared a slight head nod with Ham as she passed.

Down in the old subway station, Hancock fluttered around to packed tables and couches while handing out his addictive gifts to grateful patrons. Eventually he made his way to the bar, Payne trailing behind him.

Whitechapel Charlie whizzed to greet his employer. “Evening, Mayor. What’s your poison tonight?”

“I’m in a generous mood, Chuck.” He pounded on the bar for emphasis. “Next round for everyone is on me!”

A congenial cheer erupted from the evening’s crowd.

Hancock pointed to the wet bar. “A Gwinnett Stout for me.”

“Anything for you?” Charlies metallic orbs settled on Payne.

She shook her head. “I’m on the clock.”

That got her a jab in the ribs. “Live a little!” Hancock chided, his black dilated eyes dancing. His Cheshire grin and easy demeanor was contagious.

Rolling her eyes, Payne ordered a shot of whiskey to sip. Hancock was soon drawn away by a steady flow of acquaintances and drifters wanting to bend the ear of the charismatic mayor.

Payne relaxed a little, enjoying the radio while watching the crowd. A news report came on, commenting on new sightings of the Silver Shroud and his exploits squashing some band of raiders or something. It sounded like Nate was back from the Glowing Sea and up to some good deeds. Good for him. Kent would love that.

Payne noticed Magnolia at the end of the bar rummaging through a box. Curious, Payne took up a seat next to her.

“Whatcha got there?” she asked. Peering inside, Payne could start to see a small collection of records and holotapes.

“Daisy apparently found these in an old locked trunk that she bought off a trader. She had no idea what was inside. Once she popped the lock, she realized she had nothing to play them on.”

Payne smiled. “And that’s where you come in, right?”

“Something like that,” mused Magnolia, moving a stray lock of hair back in place.

Payne saw the flash of a peeling green label on a dusty record. Reaching in, she carefully extracted it, catching the crumbling paper as it sloughed off in her hands. Her breath caught in her throat as she read the faded white words under the bold script:

Capitol.

THE WILDEST – LOUIS PRIMA

Magnolia looked over and saw Payne’s bewildered expression. “You recognize something, hun?”

Payne couldn’t contain a small smile. “Oh yeah… you got a record player around?”

“Of course!” She fished around behind the bar before placing a ramshackle turntable in front of Payne.

“If I remember right, it’s the first track… cross your fingers…” Payne mumbled to herself. She tentatively placed the needle down on the spinning record a few times before catching the right groove. Payne missed Magnolia turning the radio off as her complete attention drew to the recording, listening for the first bars of the piano. Many of the bar patrons stopped their conversations, craning their ears closer to get a listen. The chance to hear ‘new’ music was a rare treat.

The piano joyfully sprang into existence. Payne’s shoulders took tiny bounces along with the jaunty rhythm involuntarily, her eyes closed. Happy memories flooded back in those familiar bars. As the lyrics started, Payne couldn’t help but sing along.

I'm just a gigolo and everywhere I go

People know the part I'm playing

There was no stopping it now. The infectious song ate away at Payne inhibitions. Too many times has she belted this song out in the green room back at her mother’s ranch, hamming it up with friends and family before and after rehearsals. This was their song!

Her eyes popped open, a smile stretched across her face from ear to ear. She stole a knowing glance at her fellow performer… a look that screamed, “Let the show begin!”

Paid for every dance, selling each romance

Payne palled up next to Magnolia, who started to snicker.

Ooh, and they're sayin'

Payne’s arms shot out to her sides. She held her fingers wide, pumping her shoulders while she shook her hands. She looked like some old vaudeville entertainer, drawing the audience in. The steps to the old dance took over, as if the last time she danced them was yesterday and not centuries ago.

There will come a day when youth will pass away

What will they say about me?

When the end comes, I know

They was just the gigolos

Life goes on without me

The words and steps were simple and repetitive. Quickly, she found with some gentle prodding she could get Magnolia to join her. The circle watching the impromptu performance grew. Many tapped along, laughing as Magnolia tripped over a few stanzas.

I ain't got nobody

Nobody cares for me

Nobody cares for me

I'm so sad and lonely

Sad and lonely, sad and lonely

Won't some sweet mama come and take a chance with me?

'Cause I ain't so bad

As she looked up, Payne could see Hancock watching in the crowd. With his one arm wrapped around the waist of a woman in a ratty dress and the other around the shoulders of a stringy-looking drifter, he lifted one hand in salute. Payne winked back. Turning back to Magnolia, she managed to get the half-drunk patrons to stumble along with a call and response, most whooping with lighthearted laughter by the end.

Payne was huffing by the time she took her sloppy bow with Mag. They were walking back to their seats when Hancock slid up to the bar next to them.

“I leave you alone for 10 minutes and you bring the place down!”

“Sorry to steal your limelight, boss,” Payne was still smiling from ear to ear. “I’ll blame it on the whisky if you like.”

“I know you better than that. You love the spotlight.” Hancock smiled back. “You were really grooving to that. Why don’t you keep it?”

Payne took the record off the player and put it back in the box. “Nah, I’m tight on caps remember?” She tapped her temple. “But, if you want to do something for me… have Daisy send it to that DJ in Diamond City.”

“Letting everyone in the Commonwealth enjoy it too? How can I say no to that, sister?” A roguish smirk stretched across his face. “How about you do a little something for me first?”

“Let me guess… you’ve double-booked a tour tonight?” Payne couldn’t help but roll her eyes a bit.

“You’re a mind reader! Clear out the VIP lounge for a private party, would ya?”

Payne got up, mocking indignation and put a playful finger on his chest. “Make sure that record makes it to Diamond City.”

“Scout’s honor.” His grin was growing. Payne knew he would do as she asked.

“You don’t even know what that means…” Payne headed off to the corner of the club. It took few minutes to clear everyone out. MacCready grumbled the most. He only moved after she mentioned the only way he was staying in the lounge was if he didn’t mind watching the festivities. After the area was vacated, she drew the threadbare curtain and pulled the improvised rope across the entrance.

It took her a second to get Hancock’s attention from across the room, his head buried in the neck of the waif of a woman. The trio ambled up slowly, the chems and drink slowing their progress.

“Weapons.” Payne commanded as they approached the lounge. Both of the wanderers looked confused.

“Really?” Hancock cocked his head.

“I’m your bodyguard before I’m your wingman. You know the deal.” She held out her hands. “Hand’ em over.” Reluctantly a few knifes and a six-shooter found their way into her possession.

“Enjoy your flight.” Payne teased as she lowered the rope for them to pass, though few would have gotten the reference. The rest of the night was easy. She nursed another whiskey and listening to Magnolia most of the night. Both were pleasant distractions as she stood guard until Hancock stumbled home early the next morning.

[mythos2]

If you’ve listened to our podcast, you’ve probably heard us say a million times that I and the other two Backloggers are originally from a state in the USA called West Virginia.  Huntington WV, to be exact, similar to some other good, good podcast boys.

Plain and simple, we love our home. While I left it a few years back, I’m always homesick for it. Growing up, I took for granted just how freaking beautiful the state was, and the amazing opportunities I was granted by being in a state where even the most major city was not even a mile away from massive forests and rolling mountains.  Camping, hiking, and many other things were second-nature to me. I’ve mentioned it before but Yuru Camp legit had me crying remembering what I had to leave behind for better opportunity.

I mean, that’s the capitol building for the state.  And that mountain right behind it is the start of the surrounding forest.  Nature be everywhere.

See, my home state is poor.  Very poor, by United States standards, anyway.  As beautiful as it is, West Virginia has been taken advantage of by hundreds of companies that mined it for its natural resources and then took all that money and ran.  We prospered while those companies were here, but they’re mostly gone and so has our fortune. The unemployment rate is higher than the national average and the state government is constantly misaffording funds.  However, we’ve always been a strong people. We were birthed out of a fighting spirit, seceding from the Confederacy and joining the Union in the American Civil War because we were against slavery.  We were the first ones to start the Railroad Riots of the 1870s because we weren’t going to lie down and let companies destroy the lives of their workers, and we continued that tradition of fighting for the little guys even this year, with the Teachers’ Strikes that started a national movement for better pay state by state for teachers.  We’ve always been a strong people, though we suffer a lot.

It’s because of this that I’ve found pride in the better aspects of my home.  Yes, we unfortunately still have many horrible racial and gender issues, brought on by years of physical seclusion from the rest of the world thanks to our mountains as well as decades of conservatives ruling our entire state government, but we also have so many wonderful people that may not always politically agree, but will always have you at the dinner table, no matter your views or the color of your skin. There’s a hospitality in my home state that I hold dearly. We’ll not only give someone the time of day, but if you strike up a conversation, we’ll also give you a free meal and place to stay, if you need it. So I think it’s such a shame that we’ve always been given a bad rep.

West Virginia is rarely known about.  Most people can find Israel on a map faster than they can find us, some of these people (no joke) living just a state over.  When people do know about us, we have notoriously been represented in American media for decades as the place of illiterate and idiotic hillbillies who couldn’t tell a door from a window.  We’ve been the butt of millions of jokes about how stupid and bigoted we are compared to the cultured and enlightened masses of the rest of the nation. This, coming from even those Confederate states who still to this day have some of the highest rates of police violence and racial discrimination in America.  But there’s nothing we can really do. We don’t have the funds or the media empires needed to try and change other’s minds, or even have them realize we exist. So we duck our heads, keep to ourselves, and try to get by with what we have, hoping America learns about the real us in time. We’re used to being the underdog because it’s all we’ve ever known.

That’s why this past E3 Gaming Conference absolutely shocked me.

“Virtual Roads… Take me home…”

Fallout, a game series about the horrors and effects of nuclear war, has always been in love with taking well-known places in America and depicting what their apocalyptic counterparts would be. The dev teams for these games take great pride and pain to represent some of the most famous places in America, whether it be our nation’s capital of D.C., the historical city of Boston, the infamous “sin city” of Las Vegas, and even larger swaths of land like California and the Midwest. The most recent games had their teams spend long periods researching even tiny little details of Boston and D.C., representing relatively accurately (if apocalyptically) the buildings and culture of these places. So imagine what went through my head when I suddenly see the player character of Fallout walking through the hills of my home, stepping over the ruins of many places I spent my childhood.

My neighbors probably heard an incredibly loud, “HELL YEAH!” upon me seeing the New River Gorge Bridge in the game.

This was unheard of.  West Virginia barely gets mentioned in a TV show now and again.  The only movies that mention us are usually horror films, like Silence of the Lambs, Silent Hill, and Tucker Vs. The Forces of Evil.  All good films in my book but terrible representation when the only thing we’re known for is bad cell reception and the perfect place to murder some kids.  Yet booming off the walls of this convention hall was the famous song about West Virginia by John Denver, and on screens altogether larger than my apartment was something completely different.  Positive representation.

In his well-known deep voice, Ron Perlman talked over that beautiful rendition of “Country Roads” in the trailer about a people that would open the door to their vault and travel out into a gorgeous landscape to rebuild, the trailer showing off beautiful mountains, dense forests, rustic towns, and unbridled opportunity.  There it all was.  The New River Gorge, Morgantown, The Greenbrier Hotel, and even later on in the show was Camden Park, an amusement park located not even ten minutes from my old house.  But to top it all off, after the dust had settled from seeing this trailer, the director and executive producer Todd Howard took the stage and stole my heart, giving these short and sweet words:

“Now most people don’t know West Virginia that well.  It is an incredible array of natural wonders, towns, and government secrets.”

It may seem like such a small thing, only two sentences, but for someone to speak so kindly even in this way about the place I grew up is so rare.  And he even knew our history enough to include the mystery of ‘government secrets’ in the mix, as we used to house the United States government’s secret emergency nuclear bunker.  Not only this but Todd stated soon after:

“And we even use the folklore of West Virginia to bring our Fallout [creatures] to life.”

A line stated while showcasing cryptids and monsters from our folklore and history, like The Grafton Monster, Giant Sloths from ancient times, and even allusions to The Mothman.  Pieces of the culture of my state were there, in all their strange and quirky glory. As the presentation went on, and Todd continued to talk, I just became even more giddy in my seat.  The millions of people who play the Fallout games would finally experience in even a small way this place that I loved.

https://twitter.com/mothmanbot/status/1015447901613514752Mothman is real, on Twitter, and will take what they want.

Representation is an important issue and there are many, many groups out there that desperately need it more than some straight white guy from the boonies.  Most importantly, I feel these groups of people need our time and attention first. However, this whole thing made me realize that there was more to representation than I had initially thought, and a smaller subset to it.  My visceral reaction to seeing some geological location like Charleston in a video game was because I associate with that place so much. It’s surprising how impactful where we grow up or where we call home can be to us. It incites a pride in us at times, something that is easily seen when going to sports games and watching the crowds cheer for their hometown.  It’s the feeling we get when after a long trip to other cities and places, we return exhausted and collapse comfortably in the safety and familiarity our beds.  Our homes speak to us deeply, and help to shape who we are in many ways.

And it’s more than just a place on a map.  To see a video game company try so hard to represent an underappreciated and oftentimes forgotten culture filled me with a joy I didn’t realize I could feel.  I spent a large amount of my time as a teenager just wanting to escape the culture around me. I hated the Appalachian accent, for instance, because it and its close cousin the Southern accent were the go-to accents in media to showcase someone as an ignorant idiot.  My father even spent years getting rid of his Appalachian accent to be taken seriously in his field, his doctorate of chemistry apparently not always being enough to prove his intelligence. However, as I got older, and the idea of moving away became very real, I realized how much impact the people and culture around me had.  I grew up with these hills and with these people, influenced by them, warts, accents, and all. I even started wishing for more of an accent, among other things I wanted to take with me, a reminder of where I came from and where I sadly had to leave.

West Virginia is one of many places that is rarely ever represented well, if represented at all.  I’m glad for those small bits of positivity we get, like the My Brother My Brother and Me television show, the wonderful film Logan Lucky, the respectful and loving episode of the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown television series, and other small claims to fame my state gets.  However, there are many other places that need some respect as well.  We all have places that mean something to us. We should celebrate where we call our home and share that love with others, talk about them, let them see where our hearts lie.  So that even if they aren’t always represented in some medium, we can represent them ourselves.

  And speaking of representing, here’s some of my favorite images I found of WV landscapes.  Hope you enjoy them.

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  Mythos talks about how amazing and important it is to have representation in media of where you call home. Even if it's a little nuked. If you’ve listened to our podcast, you’ve probably heard us say a million times that I and the other two Backloggers are originally from a state in the USA called West Virginia. 

[acehotel]

Interview: Justin Strauss with Nancy Whang and Nick Millhiser

DFA Records set the stage for a new kind of incendiary punk-dance music in New York over a decade and a half ago, releasing records from artists that were smart, DJ-driven and simultaneously referential and avant-garde. Two of these artists, LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang and Holy Ghost!’s Nick Millhiser, have become icons for dance music with teeth, shifting the perception of the genre to encompass a delightful brand of irreverence. They make dance music to levitate to. 

The two have become a pair, doing traditional couple things like finishing each others’ sentences — except the sentences are about playing a sold out show at Madison Square Garden and the complications of dating a touring musician when you yourself are a touring musician. For this edition of Just/Talk, Nancy and Nick talk with legendary DJ and longtime Ace friend Justin Strauss about the highs and lows of the Internet, City Hall weddings and the fight against boring music.  

Justin Strauss: Nancy and Nick, you’re the first couple I’ve interviewed.

Nick Millhiser: Oh, really? We’ve been duped.

JS: How did you guys meet? How does this story start?

Nick: We’ve had to tell this story many times this week.

Nancy Whang: It’s true. We were at a wedding and there were a lot of questions about our origin story…

Nick: …and when we would get married.

Nancy: Well, we met at Plantain Studios which was James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy’s recording studio, the DFA recording studio.

Nick: Still technically James’ for the moment.

JS: It’s still in there?

Nick: It’s still in there, yeah. I mean it could go at any minute, he’s renting it from the new owner of the building.

Nancy: This was 2000?

Nick: No, 2002…

JS:15 years, that’s a long time.

Nick: Yes!

Nancy: Right, it was 2002. Nick’s band in high school got signed to a major label.

Nick: It was called Automato.

JS: Oh yes. I have your record.

Nick: Oh, you’re the guy. You’re the guy who has our record.

JS: And Andrew Raposo, bass player in Midnight Magic and previously Hercules and Love Affair, was in that. I remember bought it at Virgin Megastore.

Nancy: Oh, wow.

Nick: I worked at the HMV record store on 42nd.

Nancy: Yeah, but that was at the ascendance of DFA.

JS: And Nancy, what were you doing at that time?

Nancy: I was just hanging out.

JS: Were you in the band yet, working with The Juan MacLean?

Nancy: We had done The Juan MacLean stuff. I think that was it.

Nick: That was the first one, “You can’t have it both ways.”

Nancy: I had recorded vocals for The Juan MacLean, and I think LCD. The first LCD 12” was out by then.

Nick: No it wasn’t. I remember…

Nancy: It wasn’t?

JS: Just LCD’s “Losing My Edge,” right?

Nancy: Yeah, and “Beat Connection” on the b-side.

Nick: I was living in Bushwick at the time and James was dating a girl who lived in Williamsburg — he would drive me home some nights — I remember one night he came downstairs and he was like, “look what I got, this is a thing I made.” I remember he said “you’re probably not gonna like it.”

JS: So this is a really exciting time in New York with DFA Records starting to come out and make some noise. For me, dance music had stagnated, and after DJing and making records for sometime, I was bored to tears with what was happening. I started getting very excited again because of things like DFA, Output Records and Relish Records, the Gomma label, and all these cool new labels, artists and producers.

Nick: Does Relish Records still exist?

JS: It does, very much so. Robi Headman’s label is putting out some great new stuff. So how did you meet James Murphy?

Nancy: I met James randomly at a party, we had a mutual friend who introduced us and then we just became fast friends.

JS: You were doing music on your own?

Nancy: No, nothing.

JS: What were you doing?

Nancy: I was working for an artist when I first met James. I was working for this artist who published Index Magazine and we met at an Index party. After that I was just doing various art worldly jobs. The office where I worked was like a block away from Plantain so I’d just always be there hanging out. And that was before the label really began.

JS: There was the Plant Bar scene happening then too. A lot of the DFA crew was hanging and working there.

Nancy: The office where the recording studio was was just this hangout, nobody was really doing any work or anything.

Nick: It was a very cool building. It felt very much (and I really don’t mean this in a bad way) like people were almost pretending to have real jobs in hopes that they would turn into real jobs. People would come in at noon because we have a record label. There wasn’t much to do, there was a lot of playing video games.

Nancy: It was very “behavioral psychology.”

JS: The Rapture was the first record released on DFA?

Nick: Rapture was the first, and that definitely wasn’t out yet because I remember them giving us CDs the first time we met with James and Tim. They gave us CDs that had rough mixes of stuff on it and I still have it somewhere, it’s a different version of “House of Jealous Lovers.”

JS: And you knew James because he produced the Automato stuff?

Nick: We met them through that. They hadn’t really done anything yet and we met them after we had signed to Capitol Records when we were 18 in 2000. We basically spent a year plus trying to find producers to work with and we had a really hard time. Honestly I remember meeting them and it’s not like we were blown away by them; in some ways we were way more impressed with Tim because Tim had done all the Mo Wax Records stuff and I was, in particular, a huge Mo Wax fan. The only record I knew that James had worked on at the time was a June of 44 record — weird New York indie rock stuff. And I remember very clearly the day after we met with him and we thought he seemed pretty cool. Alex was like, “well Tim seems cool. James just seems like a kid with a lot of toys. I don’t know what he does.” And then the first day working with him it became very clear that James is maybe the best engineer, also a great producer, but James has very clear talents.

But I don’t think anything was really out. I remember stuff coming out as we were making the record and seeing things happen for them very quickly. The reaction to that stuff was pretty immediate.

JS: You two met around this time at the label? And you met Juan MacLean through James?

Nancy: Yes, because I was just around all the time. Juan was working on this track and he wanted someone to do vocals, he wanted a female vocal, and James was like, “well I have a friend who has a female voice.”

JS: He hadn’t heard you sing at all?

Nancy: No.

JS: Just figured you could…

Nick: — and the defining voice of electro clash was born.

JS: Did you write the lyrics for that first single you did with Juan?

Nancy: No I didn’t. James wrote those lyrics. 

JS: And once the record was out did you guys start playing live?

Nancy: No, it just came out and I don’t think Juan had considered playing live for a while.

Nick: See, this was all happening around the same time. The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” was March 2002. We started making the Automato record in April 2002. Don’t ask me how I remember that. And I think at the DFA party at Warsaw Juan played one song. I think was just before we went into the studio. I have some recollection of going to that party and seeing James and Tim and being like “alright we’re going to start work next week.”

JS: And how long after you met did you guys become a couple?

Nancy: Seven years. Eight years.

Nick: A long time. We met then, but we really didn’t even hang out until much later.

Nancy: No, he was just a kid, fresh out of high school, still in his short pants.

Nick: I was a young man. We were the babies. I couldn’t legally drink when I met those guys.

Nancy: I like to say that we met when he was still a teenager, which technically is not true, I don’t think.

Nick: I think I was 20.

Nancy: But he had only just turned 20. And I was…

Nick: …older than that.

Nancy: Older than that. 

JS: And you grew up in New York?

Nick: Yeah, everybody in the band that I was in grew up together.

JS: In Brooklyn?

Nick: No, Upper Westside Manhattan.

JS: And where did you grow up?

Nancy: Portland, Oregon.

JS: And when did you come to the New York ?

Nancy: 1995.

JS: And what brought you here then?

Nancy: To go to school. I went to NYU.

JS: What were you studying?

Nancy: Visual art. I had some notion of becoming a painter.

JS: Do you still do that?

Nancy: No I don’t. I haven’t done it in a long time. Those aspirations quickly dissolved as soon as I got out of school because it was just heartbreak. The New York art world is brutal. I just don’t have the personality for it. 

JS: When DFA was in its early stages did you feel like something special and new was happening?

Nancy: It was for me. It did feel like something. But it was less like “we’re in a watershed moment,” and more a sense of self importance, that this is cool. What we’re doing is cool.

JS: What music did you listen to growing up?

Nancy: I grew up listening to punk and indie rock, just garage rock and stuff like that. So James and I had very similar musical backgrounds as far as what we listened to. And then we both had the same sort of fatigue about indie rock and how boring and joyless it was.

JS: And how about for you Nick?

Nick: I think there was a similar feeling. I’m a child of the 90s — I was born in the 80s, but my musical taste as a kid were for the most part, until the end of high school, very much just the music of the time.

JS: MTV?

Nick: MTV, Nas, Biggie. But what was happening in New York at the time was a lot of great underground hip hop, and that was very exciting for a moment, and then it got very boring right around the time that James et al were getting bored with indie rock. I very clearly remember meeting those guys and the way they ran the label, the way that they were just making music — the aesthetic of the music they were making seemed inherently more joyful and lighthearted. I remember James and Tim always had this thing: it’s important to have girls like the music you make.

If you make music for boys, that’s all who will ever like it. If you make music for girls, guys will also like it because they want to be with girls. And I never thought about it like that. I suddenly became very aware of all those shows in that world of Rawkus Records and Def Jux who were putting out really great music, but it seemed it was just all boys. It was all boys wearing backpacks, holding their backpack straps and, at most, kind of nodding their head.

Nancy: I mean it was the same in indie rock.

Nick: It was the exact same thing. There’s something that felt very cool and fun about going to early DFA parties and thinking, “oh I’m doing everything wrong. I want to do this.” And seeing those guys play was really inspiring, to see people make music that was so immediately gratifying. I remember them playing “House of Jealous Lovers” and James had a white label of “Killing” by the Rapture, which nobody had ever heard before, but every time he played it people went fucking crazy. And there’s something really inspiring about seeing something that was anonymous. It was before people were looking at the DJ or anything, and you could just see if it was good. You put it on, it worked. You had this very immediate visceral answer of good/bad.

JS: Did either one of you have a connection to dance music at this time?

Nancy: I did not at all. Not even a little bit. I remember watching a movie that came out in the 90s about dance music…

Nick: About going to a rave?

Nancy: It was either like Trainspotting or 24 Hour Party People or something like that. But it was more about techno and I remember my friends and I were so baffled…

JS: Baffled, meaning didn’t like it?

Nancy: No, I just didn’t understand it as a “thing.” I understood going out and listening to dance music so that you could dance, but then in this movie there were people who would buy the records, go home and listen to it. It didn’t make any sense to me why someone would listen to it at home. It still kind of doesn’t. But yes, I had no connection to it. I never even really heard of house music until I met James and Tim.

JS: And did they play you stuff and take you to clubs?

Nancy: Yeah, I didn’t understand because of the context of how I was listening. And because when James would DJ he’d play rock records but then he’d also play dance records — it all kind of melded into this one thing.

JS: It started to make sense.

Nancy: Yes, it was like, “okay that was fun.” This is gonna be fun to listen to and to dance to. DFA was sharing an office with Plant Records at the time, which was Marcus (Shit Robot) and Dom Keegan, and Marcus was DJing at Centro Fly every week so we would go there just to hang out with Marcus and drink for free. It was just what we did Saturday nights. But then, eventually, I started recognizing songs and absorbing it more, appreciating it.

JS: How about for you?

Nick: I bought Homework by Daft Punk when it came out. I had some sense of contemporary dance music, but it wasn’t until I was 18 and I moved out of my parents’ house to Cobble Hill, and there was a really great record store by my house called Dom’s. It was tiny, but he had awesome dollar bins. Alex and I would go shopping there, honestly almost every day because I didn’t have anything else to do, looking for samples. At the time every dollar bin’s basically like ELO records, Billy Joel Records and disco records. And as with anything you’re buying, with that mindset of looking for samples, you eventually start to like the stuff you got because of the weird record cover.

But it really wasn’t until — and I remember very clearly Alex and I having developed this very sincere love of it — finding the Loose Joints 12” Is It All Over My Face.

JS: Well that’s a good one.

Nick: I remember meeting James and Tim, the first two days we were in the studio with them, they were like “we’re not going to work, we’re just going to play each other records and talk about what we like about them.” I remember very clearly in the studio they had that first compilation of Larry Levan classics with the black and white photo of him on the cover. It had the Loose Joints track it. He played it to us and Alex and I were both just like “yeah, I know this song. I love it. Is it cool, is that okay to love this song?” I didn’t know because everybody else in the band sort of made fun of us. But Alex and I were getting into finding post-disco, very early hip hop, but still disco stuff. Some of the breaks on those records are awesome.

JS: Enjoy Records, early Sugarhill Records.

Nick: Yeah, I love it. By modern rap standards, it sounded amateurish and fun, but I love it.

JS: That’s how hip hop started, people rapping over disco records and breaks.

Nick: I remember the other guys in the band didn’t get it. There’s always this kind of “wink wink, you guys don’t really like this.” I remember being like “no, of course not.” And yet, if I want to listen to it all the time, it must mean it has a legitimate redeeming quality. James and Tim were the first people I had ever met who listened to that music in that context. Just played that music without a smile on their face. I had a realization that “right, if you like something, that’s just as valid as whether it’s fun or…” The 90s was such a funny time. If it wasn’t super serious and introspective, it wasn’t legitimate. Anything that was just fun was not real music. Everything was a rebellion against the 80s.

JS: There was a time when the 80s wasn’t thought of as cool.

Nick: Yeah I remember that very well.

JS: Now it’s cool, but back then…

Nick: It was the butt of the joke. Everything was just like “sooo 80s.”

JS: When was the change from Automato to Holy Ghost!?

Nick: The six of us had been playing together since we were teenagers and it was just doomed to implode from go. So that band broke up a year after the record came out. At that point Alex and I would write music all together in a room, but there were certain clusters of people who would start things together. Alex and I would always work on stuff together and what we were working on just started to feel dancier and more fun. I think it was even before Automoto played its last show. I started touring with Juan MacLean, filling in as a drummer. I played rough stuff we were working on for Juan, James and Marcus and they were all ready supportive.

JS: And James said “we should do a record?”

Nick: Honestly I think it was Tim first, but James was definitely the one who was the most encouraging at the beginning. There was a point where I was really frustrated with Automoto, I want to say it was New Year’s Eve, and I was venting to him. He was just said, “you should make your own music.” And I said that I didn’t have the equipment to do it and he’s like “well can you play bass?” I was like, yeah, kind of. Kind of a bass player. He was like “oh, do you have a bass?” I was like, no. “Come by the studio, I’ll give you a bass. Do you have a compressor?” I was like, no. He’s like “all right I’ll give you a cheap compressor.” And he gave me a bass and a compressor to do stuff with just drums and bass.

And that was sort of the beginning of Alex and I trying to work on stuff. I did the initial demo for “Hold On,” it was just the drums and the bass and the synth line. I remember playing James a bunch of stuff and James was like, “that one’s really cool.” And it was his ring tone for a while. I remember the rough demo was his ring tone. And he said “you should finish that one.” When we finished it, I remember talking with Tim — it had been done for a while — and Tim matter-of-fact made mention of it coming out. And I was like “what are you talking about?” He’s like “oh, we’re gonna put it out.”

JS: Were they involved in the production or was it just you guys?

Nick: Not until the end. The song was basically finished and then, at the very end when we were basically informed that DFA was going to put it out, Tim was like “if you want it out by this day we should really master it in the next week or two.” At that point James and Tim were sort of already on the outs, but James separately said, “I think you should re-record the vocals.” So we re-recorded the vocals with James, and then James mixed it, but that was all decided and done in a matter of 48 hours.

JS: And Nancy, what’s happening with you around this time?

Nancy: I guess this is around the time that Sound of Silver came out. In 2007 I was in LCD, but was still just a weekend warrior, I still had a job and we were just playing a couple weekends a month, a couple weeks a year. It was like ROTC.

It didn’t take up enough time for it to be something that I could do exclusively, but it took up enough time that I couldn’t hold down a normal job. I started working at this wood shop where we built displays for shop windows or store windows. It was very erratic. We’d be out for a year, and then we’d be home for a year while James worked on a new record or whatever.

JS: Were you involved in the first album?

Nancy: No, the first record James did all by himself. Pat might have played some drums and stuff, but it was really James in the studio alone. Because he started working on it before we even had formed as a band, and then when the second record came around after we had been playing together for like a year, Sound of Silver was a little more collaborative.

I think us playing together on the stage changed his ideas about how to record music. Having other people play at the same time rather than have him play one instrument, record that, and then go back to the next instrument etc, etc. 

JS: More of a band vibe.

Nancy: Yeah.

JS: Did you get involved in writing?

Nancy: No. No one’s ever involved in the writing.

JS: Still, to this day?

Nancy: Yes.

JS: So what’s the process? James presents you guys with a song?

Nancy: James generally has pretty clear ideas of what he wants to record so it’s like, “play this.” And then you play it. And then he takes it and does something to it.

JS: Right. And while this is going on, Holy Ghost! is in the studio making the first record album?

Nick: Yes, it was around the same time. Our first record took a really long time.

JS: And were you recording at DFA studios?

Nick: Some. That record we sort of did everywhere. At some point, we were able to quit our jobs. We were DJing so much, which was awesome, but it’s not like we were making enough money that we could take months off from touring. I remember when Hold On came out we had a Myspace page, and got our first out-of-state DJ gig.

JS: Had you DJ’d? Both of you guys DJj regularly now.

Nick: I had a little bit. I had turntables in high school, like a bedroom DJ. DJ’d a few things here and there; Alex never had. But it was always something I’d wanted, DJing was such a dark art pre-internet, it never occurred to me to pursue it professionally in any way.

JS: No one wanted to be a DJ when I started.

Nick: Right. And again, I think it was meeting James and Tim and that larger circle of people like Tim Sweeney, Trevor Jackson, or Maurice Fulton. All these different people were so interesting. It was a pretty awesome time, you go to see somebody and they were just playing whatever they wanted. That’s pretty great.

JS: And for you Nancy, what was your entree into the DJ world?

Nancy: Basically my first DJ gig was in 2010. It was when This is Happening came out and we were touring that record. I knew that it was going be it for LCD, at least for the foreseeable future, and this is what I do and I don’t have any other skills anymore. I’m gonna have to make a living when this band is done so I better start DJing.

JS: Did James came to you guys and said “It’s over,” or you just knew it?

Nancy: Oh no, he announced it in the press. “This is the last record.” He had said it privately about Sound of Silver, but I was like “that’s not true.” But with This is Happening, we knew that this is the last record. It was the last record while he was making it, and as soon as it came out, we knew that that was it. Our last hurrah.

Nick: And people had been asking you to DJ for years and you had always sort of…

Nancy: Yeah it terrified me. It still does. I’m like, “I have no idea what I’m doing up here.” I remember my first DJ gig was with a friend of mine at Tribeca Grand and we showed up with records and no headphones. I got there like, “how are you supposed to listen to this stuff?”

JS: Did somebody show you how to DJ or you just figured it out?

Nancy: Well, a couple of friends had showed me, “this is what you do with the turntable” and “this is how it works with the mixer,” but it was still beyond me. The first year of DJing was just me playing a record and then playing another song after that song was finished, and playing another song after that one was finished.

JS: And you were also doing shows and records with Juan MacLean at this time.

Nancy: Yes. While James was making This is Happening, I was on tour with Juan. We had just done that record The Future Will Come.

JS: Was that a more collaborative process?

Nancy: Yeah, with me and Juan it’s more of a partnership.

JS: Is that still something that’s on going?

Nancy: Yes, in fact I might record with him tomorrow.

JS: And at this time you guys are a couple?

Nancy: No. This was 2010, beginning of that tour. We played Coachella, we had been to Europe, and then we came back and were going to go on a U.S. tour. We did a run of shows at Terminal 5 before we left and we took Holy Ghost! with us on tour; they also did all the Terminal 5 shows with us. We did that, we went on tour, and then the tour was over, and…

Nick: And we missed each other.

Nancy: And we missed each other. A couple months later we got together. 

JS: DFA is a very incestuous family.

Nancy: Yeah.

JS: There’s a lot of cross pollination with bands, and it’s great.

Nancy: Totally. Andrew Raposo (Hercules and Love Affair’s original bass player) played in LCD for a couple shows because we needed somebody to fill in.

JS: You two both have very busy lives between your bands, your DJing, working on your new house, your dog. I’m impressed with how you manage it.

Nancy: I think it’s actually because we both do the same thing, we understand the life.

Nick: I think there are things about dating a touring musician that’s just inherently difficult. But when you’re in a relationship with somebody else who does that too, a few of those things they understand. They know that you’re going to have to go away and it’s not because you don’t want to be at home.

JS: It’s your job.

Nick: Yes. And when you come home you might be a little fried and might not be able to just jump back into life-as-usual. I see friends who are in a relationship and they fight about touring or it becomes a source of tension in the relationship…that tension isn’t in ours. That being said, it’s still tough because there are times when you’re both busy at the same time. There was one time two years ago when she was away for two weeks, got home the day that I left for two weeks, and the day I got back she left again for two weeks.

JS: So you didn’t see each other for a month or something.

Nick: More. And that sucks, there’s no way around it. I think we make it work better than most people, but it’s not always easy.

JS: Being in a band is like a relationship, and then there is being in a relationship.

Nick: I think that’s the hardest part for people who aren’t musicians or touring musicians to understand. That this something else in your life isn’t more important than you.

Nancy: But sometimes it is.

Nick: But sometimes it is. Or maybe it’s just as important as you.

Nancy: Or today it’s more important than you. Tomorrow you’ll be more important than this, but today this is what’s important.

Nick: It’s a very hard thing to explain to somebody, understandably. It sort of defies the logical brain’s common understanding of what a relationship should be.

Nancy: I always said that the key to dating somebody who’s a musician or an artist or anybody who does something creative, is that you just have to accept that you’re going to be number two, always. If you can be okay with that, then you’re fine. But it takes work regardless, relationships take work.

JS: Yes, just different work.

Nancy: You always have to put in an effort otherwise…

JS: So, you’ve figured it out sort of?

Nick: I don’t know that we’ve figured it out. It’s a work in progress. I think it’s great.

Nancy: That’s the thing, it’s not like you’ve figured it out, not like you’ve solved it and you’re like “okay, cool, we’re good” and you just glide along.

Nick: It certainly comes up.

Nancy: You’re always taking care of it. It requires constant maintenance.

JS: And so Nancy, you’re about to go on a long tour. Were you expecting LCD to get back together at some point?

Nancy: Yes and no. I was expecting it but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

JS: Was there ever a moment where you were thinking about it? Did you know that you wanted to jump back in?

Nancy: I’m still thinking about it. Everyday I reconsider. Is this really what I want to be doing? It’s complicated, but those five years between the last show and us playing again, that was a long five years. It was a long time for me to figure out who I was outside of LCD. I had spent so much time being in LCD and never really gave much thought into what I would do or who I was outside of the band, but all of a sudden I had to face this identity crisis.

JS: You won an award like best DJ in New York City?

Nancy: You know what, that’s just because I was in attendance.

JS: That’s great. Must’ve made you feel good?

Nancy: It was very sweet. 

But just figuring out what to do, DJing, making music. Whatever. Just on my own with other people. It was a very long journey.

Nick: It’s a long five years of forming an identity outside of that band.

JS: And then one day James calls and says “hey let’s get the band back?”

Nancy: Yes.

JS: But the nice thing is, at that point, you have each other too, you were together. And that was cool.

Nancy: Right.

Nick: But having to put in all this work of figuring out what your life would be outside of the band and then all of a sudden — and you missed it — but you could have all your time occupied again. 

Nancy: Yeah.

JS: So did you find you have a lot of free time during those five years and could do some things you weren’t able to do?

Nancy: No, but I did actually, at the end of last year, had amazing free time. I didn’t have anything to do, and I didn’t have to do anything. It was fabulous. But now that free time is going away.

JS: And when you guys got back together and played those first shows at Webster Hall, did it feel like “oh yes, this was the right thing to do?”

Nancy: It was fun. It was really fun. As much time had passed, it felt familiar and like no time had passed. Just back doing this again and it feels good, it’s fun, we like it, and we like each other, and we’re good at it, and we seem to be making other people happy.

JS: When some people were commenting that you guys should not have gotten back together after such a public end, did that affect you?

Nancy: It doesn’t really affect me, I don’t really give a shit. I mean I get it, it seemed like a strategy. But it wasn’t. I mean, I personally thought it was a little too soon, but now we’re here and it’s fine.

JS: How did you feel when you heard that that Nancy was going to go back to her job?

Nick: On one hand, I think I sensed it coming sooner than they did. On the other hand, I was very happy for her, and Pat in particular, because as much as I think the time off was really productive for them, there’s an obvious pride in being a member of that band. There was a certain spring lost from their step when the band went away. 

JS: During the break, Pat formed his own band, Museum Of Love.

Nick: Yeah, which was great. I love that record. 

Nancy was concerned about other things and I was concerned with whether or not she’d be happy. I think having some distance from a band allows you to focus on what you really want from being in the band. What do I need this to be? I think everybody in that band, James included, is better equipped to articulate and actualize what they want this to be. They’re also a bigger band now, so they have the power to manifest this thing.

JS: Can you have imagined that the band would become so big?

Nancy: No. Music was never anything that I aspired to do in any capacity, so everything from the very first thing until now — it’s all just like wow.

JS: When you get on stage in front of many thousands of people at these festivals, are you like “what am I doing here?”

Nancy: Sometimes. I feel very very lucky to be in this, particularly because it’s not something that I worked very hard to achieve. I mean, I worked hard, but it’s not like I was aspiring toward…

Nick: Unlike Al or James or Pat, who always wanted to be in bands.

Nancy: Yeah, since they were kids and picked up instruments, played in bands in their garages, I never did any of that. LCD’s my first band. So I feel very lucky. But I’m not fulfilling any premeditated goals that I had, so I can recognize that everything I do is an achievement. I would be just as satisfied had this thing never happened. Whatever this big show that we did.

Nick: And it was never your dream to play Madison Square Garden in the first place. Had that never happened you wouldn’t have…

Nancy: I wouldn’t have missed it. Having done it now, I’m like “that was amazing,” I’m really glad we did that.

JS: What’s happening with Holy Ghost! right now? Are you working on a new record?

Nick: We’re working on our retirement. We’re going to announce our break up.

JS: And then come back in a few years.

Nick: Yeah, we’re working on a new record very slowly but surely. 

JS: And you two have recorded together here and there?

Nick: Yes.

Nancy: Do I appear on every Holy Ghost! album?

Nick: Not the new one. I don’t think you sang anything on any new stuff. But you’ve been on every other.

JS: And you DJ together?

Nick: Yep, DJ together quite a bit.

JS: Will there ever be a Nancy Whang solo record?

Nancy: That is the question for the ages.

JS: Is that something that you would like to do?

Nancy: I don’t know. On the one hand, yes, now that I’ve sort of grown accustomed to this life of being a musician and having musical aspirations, I like the idea of making my own stuff. But what happens after that is terrifying to me. And I’m not sure I want that.

Nick: That’s certainly terrifying to everybody for what it’s worth.

Nancy: Exactly.

JS: And you guys worked on a record by yourself, just the two of you?

Nick: We’ve talked about it.

Nancy: Family band.

Nick: Family band, we were talking about it this morning. Doris would play a horn in every song. We talked about it, but no more so than half joking. Making weird ambient synth records. Which is basically what we listen to at home.

JS: With so much going on in this country and the world right now, how do you feel about artists speaking their minds on these things? Artists making their feelings known?

Nancy: I do think it’s important. If you have something to say, you should say it. LCD isn’t necessarily a very political band, but there are things that we talk about amongst ourselves and if you have an opportunity, if you have a voice and a platform, then you should use it. Always, but especially now because shit’s gotten so bad. It’s really important to realize that we wouldn’t necessarily be at this place if people had been more engaged before.

JS: What are your feelings on it Nick, as far as Holy Ghost! goes?

Nick: I agree. But it’s not something Alex and I have talked about formally.

JS: He’s been pretty vocal on the internet.

Nick: He has been, but it’s not something that’s come up in the music we make. Is it insensitive to not address it? It’s just the nature of the music we make. It’s just kind of like fun. If it came about organically, Alex wouldn’t censor himself if he felt like he had something to say. But I also think there’s a place for music to be a relief from all that. And right now it’s coming from all sides. I spent a day not watching the news because my sister got married and it felt like I missed the entire war. “Oh you didn’t want the news today?”

Everybody has an obligation to speak out and shouldn’t censor themselves. If I’m most frustrated with anybody, it’s our side politically. Alex and I were talking about this yesterday, why there isn’t somebody on the left to come out and, in strong language, just be like “fuck these people, fuck anybody who is at this rally.” We don’t need to censor ourselves or be inclusive because we’re unequivocally “fuck these people, if you’re on this side you’re on the wrong side of history.” Trump made up this term yesterday, “alt left.” I wish there was an alt left, it doesn’t fucking exist. It’s the first time in my life I really felt a sincere rage on behalf of my family. Both sides have been in this country a really long time, but both my grandfathers fought in the second world war, neither of whom I would say are particularly liberal men, but they fucking fought in this war. If either of them were still alive today to see their commander in chief essentially playing nice with nazis…it’s fucking insane.

JS: How do you feel about how the internet has changed our lives so much?

Nick: Nancy and I are in a really unique position, we’re not on Facebook, we’re relatively…

Nancy: …disconnected.

Nick: It’s weird. In some ways I don’t have any great insights like “it’s made everybody’s lives better” In some ways, I think it’s made people shitty and entitled.

JS: As a DJ and producer, it can be pretty helpful?

Nick: It’s amazing. I don’t think I would have a career if it weren’t for the internet. The avenue for a niche thing to reach people directly didn’t exist when I was in high school. We were talking about it to our friend Jay, saying the first time I ever heard “Liquid Liquid” was on a Grand Royal record sampler that I got at a Beastie Boys show in high school. Then something happened with their reissue of it and I remember trying to find it but I couldn’t find anything about them, I couldn’t find those records anywhere, and it just sort of disappeared from my mind until later when the Mo Wax reissue came out. I missed that aspect of music being mysterious and having to search for things.

JS: Is there anything you guys are listening to now that you’re finding inspiring or just fun?

Nick: Coming back to a lot of music from my peripheral past, listening to a lot of Sonic Youth which was always a band that I really liked but was never my favorite band.

Nancy: Speaking of the 90s, Nick and I watch a lot of MTV classics now, which show a lot of videos from the late 80s early 90s.

Nick: Moderate pop hits.

Nancy: Early rap records, but then also like…

JS: Beastie Boys?

Nancy: There’s some Beastie Boys, but also Pebbles and that kind of dancey R&B that came out of the 80s

Nick: It’s been really fun to be reminded of them. The fact that it made it on MTV made it pretty successful, but somehow history has forgotten, it’s not as celebrated.

Nancy: Pebbles’ “Mercedes Boy.”

Nick: And some weird English stuff too. Post shoe gaze but all very electronic production.

Nancy: We saw this video of this band called Curve, and I’d never heard this song, but it sounded very much like that.

Nick: We were both like “Oh this is from Manchester in 1992.” And they were from Manchester and this song came out 1992.

Nancy: Yeah, just had a very…

Nick: …defined aesthetic.

Nancy: Jesus Jones, EMF kind of sound. 

Nick: Baggy beats. Chorus of guitars.

Nancy: When I started listening to punk and indie, I rejected all that stuff at the time because I thought it was popular corporate music. But it’s good music.

JS: Do you feel a lot of pressure with this new LCD Soundsystem album coming out and how it will be received?

Nancy: Me, no. I feel no pressure. People are going to like it or they’re not going to like it.

JS: Are you really happy with it?

Nancy: I am. It’s weird. It’s different. Not wildly different, but different. It’s dark.

JS: Heavier record for a heavier time.

Nancy: I hope people like it so that we can continue to be a band.

JS: So there will be another one.

Nancy: Probably.

Nick: So not a good time to talk about the Shea Stadium retirement show.

Nancy: Exactly.

JS: Do you think it’s funny that with everything going on in the world that people are up in arms about the cover of your record, people not liking it or upset about it?

Nancy:  This is one of the cons about the internet and what it’s becoming. People just have all kinds of free time to form all kinds of opinions and share all those opinions with everybody.

And again, I would prefer it if people liked stuff that we did and put out, but also “It’s done, sorry.” What am I supposed to do about it? That’s what it is. Take it or leave it.

Nick: One of the things I always admired about LCD is that there was always this sense that the band is never bigger than James. When bands get big there’s always this, “oh it’s out of my hands” and I felt, from an outsider’s perspective, that James really tried to not fall into that way of thinking. This band is only as big as me, no decision gets made without me being close to it. There’s a point where things just grow and they’re sort of out of your control and you kind of have to let them go. The band does become the idea not within your control anymore. That’s true of your band now, you put stuff out there, you put this cover out into the world, and it becomes an article on Newsweek. That’s just the way of the world now.

JS: Are you guys planning to get married?

Nick: We’re for it.

Nancy: We’re for marriage.

Nick: I don’t think we’ll have a wedding.

Nancy: I know we will not have a wedding. I know for a fact.

Nick: We’ve been through enough weddings.

Nancy: This last weekend was a wonderful event, but it drew a line under the fact that we don’t want to have a wedding. I don’t want to participate in that at all.

Nick: There’s been a lot of talk this week, “so what are we gonna do?” Justin, have you been to City Hall for a wedding?

JS: Yes, I was a witness a few times for friends.

Nick: It is really cool.

JS: It’s easy, you stand in front of that little painted sky they have. And then walk over to Chinatown and have a nice lunch.

Nancy: My brother got married at City Hall and we went to Joe’s Shanghai for dinner after they got married.

Nick: There’s something nice about being in this room, everybody’s experiencing the exact same thing, everybody’s in a pretty good mood, it’s nice.

Nancy: It was pointed out a few times that, for being in a government office, the mood was really good. Everyone was really happy, people were excited, people were being nice to each other.

Nick: Everybody’s dressed pretty nice.

JS: People get spiffed up.

Nick: I really like that aspect of it.

JS: Well if you need a witness you know who to call. I’ve got it down now.

Nick: We’ll let you know.

[disappearingground]

“I’m speaking about stuff I’ve never talked about”

AV Club March 19, 2019

Jenny Lewis on her best solo album to date

By Erik Adams

Jenny Lewis has been making music for more than 20 years, on her own and with bands like Rilo Kiley and Nice As Fuck. But she’s never recorded anything quite like On The Line. Her fourth solo album and first since 2014’s The Voyager sounds humongous: rafter-raising vocals, pianos that seem to ring out endlessly, and, on “Red Bull & Hennessy” and “On The Line,” an earth-shaking double-drum attack courtesy of session warhorse Jim Keltner and Ringo Starr. On The Line is the crispest-sounding entry in Lewis’ catalog, and the most emotionally complex, written in the wake of a breakup and the death of her mother. Yet, as she discussed by phone this month, the true nature of those songs is a little more complicated. The A.V. Club talked with Lewis about “summoning” a former Beatle, the links between The Voyager and On The Line, and whether knowing the recipe ruins the cake.

The A.V. Club: I’ve been listening to On The Line a lot, and I feel like every time I do, I come out of it with a new favorite among the songs.

Jenny Lewis: That’s the hope—that people listen to it all the way through, and maybe more than once. How much do people listen to one album now? I know I do, because I have to limit myself to fall in love with something—like one side at the time.

AVC: How do you listen to music these days? Is it streaming, is it physical media?

JL: I have a cassette player that I love, in the kitchen. I really like listening to cassettes because of the parameters. A couple songs, let me digest it, flip the side. I listen to vinyl. I also listen to a lot of Howard Stern [Laughs.] in the car. A ton.

AVC: So you’ve got that satellite radio hook-up?

JL: Yeah, I’ve got that Sirius. When I’m driving, I like Howard, and the Grateful Dead channel, and the Beatles channel, which is so fun to listen to, because it’s just like trivia.

AVC: And now you have a Beatle on your record!

JL: It’s crazy. It’s crazy!

AVC: How does that feel?

JL: In the words of Larry David: Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

AVC: How did Ringo Starr end up playing on “Heads Gonna Roll” and “Red Bull & Hennessy”?

JL: I feel like we may have channeled him from the East Village. We may have summoned Ringo without realizing it. A friend of mine [Nice As Fuck drummer Tennessee Thomas] had a shop called The Deep End Club on 1st Avenue, and one day this Frenchman drove up on a motorcycle, and he just rode it right up to the shop door, came into the shop—just the two of us in there, myself and Tennessee—and the guy was watching something on his iPhone. He showed it to us, and it was this video of Ringo in a blue onesie with a silver star on it, singing “Only You (And You Alone)” with Harry Nilsson on background vocals, and a giant spaceship made out of papier mâché on top of the Capitol Records Building. [Laughs.] And I became obsessed with this video. I must have watched it a hundred times.

And there’s a little shop down the street called Flower Power—it’s like a little witches’ shop—and they have this oil called Come To Me Oil. And it was for romantic reasons that I bought this oil, but then I think it sort of got crossed with this Ringo video. [Laughs.]

AVC: It’s not just Ringo—it’s the studio, too.

JL: I would have never considered Capitol Records as a place that I could record. Honestly. My motto in life is “One up from the cheapest.” I want that to be my headstone. It’s a great way to choose a bottle of wine. So to end up at Capitol, that was a real trip.

AVC: How do you feel like the studio wound up influencing the album? How is it heard in the final product?

JL: I think the part of record-making that is magical, and mysterious, and human—it’s in the air, it’s in the space. When you record on a computer, you’re recording in a vacuum. When you record on tape, it’s alive. The hiss is the room. So when you’ve got the tape—which, we recorded on tape—and then you’ve got a room like that, which is just resonating energy, sound, air. I think that’s where the magic is, in the air.

And then you’ve got someone like Benmont Tench, who plays on the record, whose specialty is fog. He adds a layer of fog to music. He is so amazing at creating tension—melodic tension. Sometimes dissonance. But the fog and the air, I think that is the space.

AVC: Is there anywhere on the record where that fog is particularly prevalent? Or is it throughout the whole thing?

JL: It’s in there, and you can just feel it. On The Voyager as well. It’s this pristine, modern recording, which is cool as well. That’s why I think Auto-Tune is so popular, because it adds an otherworldly element that you’re not getting in the digital form. It’s so tight, digital recording, that Auto-Tune is a little bit magical, mystical, and creates space and fog. I think it’s almost like a reaction to the sterile environment of digital recording. You can still make something amazing on your phone, but I think there’s this humanness that people are drawn to in music.

AVC: And tracking the songs live in the studio provides its own energy, too. “Red Bull & Hennessy” feels muscular and electric.

JL: We call that “the big boy pirate ship.” “Red Bull & Hennessy” feels muscular because there are two men drumming on the track—Ringo and Jim Keltner, arguably the two best drummers alive—and the power of that.

So we started in the studio at Capitol, and then I mixed the record with Shawn Everett, who’s a different kind of artist and technician. He changed the sound. He put the sail on the big boy pirate ship.

AVC: You’ve talked in other interviews about getting the drum sound on the record by taking the midrange out—in layperson’s terms, how does that affect the sound?

JL: That isn’t necessarily specific to the drum sound. The drum sound was an organic drum sound through Shawn’s filter, which is: He is on his own trip, and I was there to go on that trip with him.

What I meant by removing the midrange: That relates to the whole track and creating space in the middle for the vocal. With guitar music, guitars eat up the same sonic space as vocals. By scraping some of that out—in the same way that a hip-hop track would be produced, where it’s bass, vocal in the middle, and then cowbell or hi-hat—sonically, those kinds of productions are really clean and sparse, and you can hear what’s going on. So Shawn and I were referencing some hip-hop for a clean, but muscular, track.

AVC: That hip-hop influence really comes across on “Do Si Do.” The percussiveness of the lyrics, the way they flow—they could be rapped or sung.

JL: Beck produced that song, and it feels so Beck to me. Although it’s Jim, and it’s Capitol Records—you know, it’s, like, singer-songwriter music—Beck is really so great at finding the groove. I wrote the lyrics like I wrote my first lyrics as a kid: I wanted to be an MC when I was 10. And I think the first poems I wrote were actually verses. They were rap. I had a freestyle battle with Biz Markie when I was 17, in Hollywood at this place called The Gaslight. And I realized that I wasn’t a very good rapper—I was probably a better writer. So that was the end of my rapping career, but that’s my formative writing skill, in that form. And then I learned about indie rock later, and then country music. So I’m aping those genres, but through a hip-hop prism, because that’s all I kind of know how to do.

(In addition to Beck and Everett, On The Line was in small part produced by Ryan Adams; following the sexual misconduct allegations against Adams published in The New York Times, Lewis tweeted the following: “I am deeply troubled by Ryan Adams’ alleged behavior. Although he and I had a working professional relationship, I stand in solidarity with the women who have come forward.”—Ed.)

AVC: Another of the Beck songs on the album is “Little White Dove,” which is about your mother’s death, though that might not be immediately apparent because of the groove and the bounce that it has. Can you talk about writing and recording that song?

JL: I started that with a guitar, with a drum machine—I have a little music room [at home]. My mom was ill, and in the hospital, and I would spend the day with her and then come back home and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Nothing was working: The weed wasn’t working, and I didn’t want to drink tequila, or go on a hike. Really music was—it was just something to do. That song came out of those days I spent with her.

AVC: There’s overlap between some of the themes and subject matter of The Voyager and On The Line—both deal with the death of a parent—and the albums’ cover photos are similar. Do you view them as companion pieces?

JL: They are. The Voyager, I didn’t have a title track for it. I needed to write another song for it. And there was a motel in Van Nuys called The Voyager that burned down. And my mom was living in that motel. This is years ago. And I just happened to turn on the news and saw it on channel 5. And I wrote “The Voyager,” which isn’t really about that. But it gave me the idea of this song, which is about everyone’s journey.

So [On The Line]—life just happens. Shit happens. You keep going. It’s definitely linked to The Voyager. Which I just realized right now. [Laughs.] Interviews are so weird! I don’t even know why I make this shit, but then I have these conversations, and I’m like, “Wait a minute: This is deeply coded.”

AVC: And that’s inherent in your songwriting. There’s always an ambiguity: “Heads Gonna Roll” has that line “I’m gonna keep on dancing ’til I hear that ringing bell,” which rings of “for whom the bell tolls”—but it’s actually a reference to boxer Floyd Mayweather.

JL: That’s one of the things it could be. I like to write lines that have, like, five different meanings, where it really is open to interpretation. And the album title, On The Line, means so many things. To find the meaning underneath the meaning, it’s the true meta vibe of the song—or to just uncover some clue. Or listening to something over and over again, learning more about it. I hope I don’t blow it by talking about it so literally. I feel like I’ve opened up and I’m speaking about some stuff that I’ve never talked about before. When you know the recipe, is it going to ruin the cake? Or does it still taste good?

AVC: It’s all context. It’s all additional understanding. Hearing about the experiences that inspired these songs and these lyrics might strengthen people’s connection to them.

JL: But it’s also a little embarrassing. I feel really vulnerable. It’s easier to just have a poem. When you start addressing your own life, like your family and your relationships—but it’s my own fault. I’m just [Laughs.], “Blab, blab, blab.”

But the songs are not true, through and through. I take many, many liberties. They’re not not true, but they’re not true. You know what I mean.

AVC: They blend memoir and fiction.

JL: And I’m not consciously doing it—I’m just doing it. I just write every day. I live and I write, and hopefully I’ll always be able to write. Because if not, then I’d just have to live, and that’s terrifying.

AVC: From what I hear, that’s the best way to do it. I interviewed Paul Williams recently, and he compared his creative process to juggling: “I think you have to just throw the balls up in the air and catch them. You start thinking about it, they wind up on the floor.”

JL: Yeah, I don’t think you want to analyze too much. There’s a magical element to creation, if you’re an artist. Some people listen to a song, and then they write another song: “I want to write a song like this!” But the other part of it is pretty mystical. And I think you maybe follow the bread crumbs. It’s all right there in front of you, if you just open your eyes.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Daniel Knox Interview: Chasescene, Song by Song Breakdown

BY JORDAN MAINZER

After breaking to make all sorts of music for film and theater, Chicago singer-songwriter Daniel Knox has finally completed his trilogy. Chasescene, preceded by Disaster and Everyman For Himself, is an album about fizzling relationships and barbarism, rife with animal imagery and raw desires. Featuring contributions from Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and Nina Nastasia, the album combines cinematic, baroque instrumentation and Knox’s theatrical baritone with moments equally devastating and hilarious.

Though released Friday in the U.S., Chasescene actually came out last month in the UK and Europe, where there’s more demand for Knox’s music. As such, he’s touring there right now and hoping to book a Chicago release show in March with a bigger band than who he’s been playing with lately (just guitarist Joshua Fitzgerald Klocek). Because Knox self-releases on his own label, H.P. Johnson, he normally does the work of a team of people, so the prospect of other band members (such as France-based drummer Jason Toth, electric bassist Paul Parts, string bassist Jim Cooper, violinist/viola player Andra Kulans, cellist Melissa Bach, and violinist Ronnie Kuller) weathering the load is an attractive one.

This year, Knox, who misses touring, hopes to play as many shows and write and record as much as possible and finish the “first and second steps” of various projects he’s started. (He’s also planning on reissuing the first two albums in the trilogy.) For now, yes, there’s Chasescene, but the album is, as Knox told me last month, “a break from ways of having done things” allowing him to revisit his process moving forward and revisit past projects. In an interview at the Music Box Theatre (where Knox works), he broke down track-by-track the landmark new album.

KETURAHWALTZ

SILY: "Keturahwaltz” seems like a cinematic introduction to the record. Not only do you work at the Music Box, but you’ve also done a lot of music for films. Can you talk about this track in context of both the record and your discography?

Daniel Knox: The first track was originally part of a suite of songs I wrote for a girl I was fond of--it didn’t end well. It also acts as part of a nice overture for everything that follows. In addition, Chasescene is the third part of a trilogy. I like following the last song on Evryman with a kind of post-apocalyptic instrumental. It starts with just me on the piano, and everything builds back up again. But it stats with nothing. I like starting the breakup story at the end of the world but also using it as a true overture in that its introducing most of the instruments on the record at large.

BLIND DEAF AND DUMB

SILY: “Blind Deaf And Dumb” seems to start one of the main themes of the record--animalistic desires--but also human desires and relationships. Is the line, “I tried to hold you with my claws,” or “I tried to hold you with my clause,” like a marriage clause?

DK: It’s “claws,” but I’ll take that if you want to give it that meaning. That works, too. [laughs]

MAN IS AN ANIMAL

SILY: “Man Is an Animal” continues the themes of the previous song, but instrumentally, it’s a little bouncy.

DK: Or as the critics like to say, “jaunty.”

SILY: Then it switches to a maudlin instrumental. Can you talk about that switch?

DK: There was a specific moment that inspired that song, which was that I woke up and walked outside to get the newspaper in my robe. I kicked the newspaper down the stairs, then I kicked it on the sidewalk, and I kept just kicking it. I was so tired. I looked back, and I was two houses away. I had this premonition of myself walking as far as I could into the distance, just wandering the world in a robe. It’s something I think about a lot. If you really wanted, at any point, to just get up and walk away from everything, you can. You have that ability. But people don’t--they get attached to things. There are a lot of ways to think about that, and I hope what I just said doesn’t ruin it. But if I had to associate an image, it would be that. The coda at the end feels like a very necessary thing. The song would feel more like a joke if it didn’t have that. I needed to say, “This is not a joke. This is not a funny song, really.” The two things can be intertwined.

SILY: You wouldn’t call “A Day In The Life” a funny song, but it has Paul McCartney’s bouncy moment. It’s honestly a similar story to yours.

DK: I’ll take it.

CHASESCENE

SILY: The title track seems to be the start of references to a bad relationship.

DK: Uh, yeah. [laughs]

SILY: To say the least.

DK: To say the least.

SILY: “I love you by the neck,” “You’re naked in the ground / You can’t make a sound,” “I love you with a knife”--are these lines referring to desires?

DK: I want to be careful in that my feeling about that song in the general sense is that if you’re looking for something bad there, you’re going to find it. If you’re looking for something good, you might find it. It’s kind of spoken from the eye of the storm, so to speak. Right after the significant event, you just don’t know what’s gonna happen. Your mind goes to the darkest place and paints a picture for you. The picture probably isn’t real, but your mind painted it. I think a lot of people have the tendency to back away from that and bury it.

CUT FROM THE BELLY

SILY: Where does “Cut From the Belly” lie within the record?

DK: In line with what you were talking about before--animalistic desires. In a lot of ways, it continues the progression of “Main Is An Animal”, as far as its title is concerned. It’s hard to talk about that song. To me, it’s more impressionistic. There’s a story, and it’s one of man versus beast. You can see that inwardly or externally. Either way is a fair way to look at it.

CAPITOL

SILY: “Capitol” was you sort of returning the favor to Jarvis Cocker.

DK: Oh yeah. That’s weird when they say “returning the favor” as if he had to do it. He didn’t have to do that. He did it because he liked the song, and we’re cool.

SILY: Do you keep in touch with him?

DK: Yeah, I mean I don’t chill at his house for the holidays, but we talk to each other. We’re friends. We kept in touch after I did the vocals on his song, and I asked him to do it for me. When I was on tour with The Handsome Family in England, I was like, “I’ll be there, will you be around?” He came from Paris to do it, and we tracked the vocals in a day.

SILY: It’s a perfect fit over the bossa nova instrumentation.

DK: I wrote that for a song cycle that I had for this that a lot of the music for the self-titled album came from. I knew it wasn’t for me to sing. I knew someone else had to do it. So I asked him. It’s nice to have that there at the end of Side A. It adds some much needed levity after “Chasescene” and “Cut From The Belly”, which are harsh in terms of imagery. And he’s got such a playful delivery, too, that it keeps the edge off. I wanted it to have sort of an old Hollywood feel to it, and he has that quality innately, which I don’t.

ANNA14

SILY: One of my favorite lines on the record is from “Anna14″, when you sing, “back of a car or an old crawl space...joking.” Was that ad-libbed, or did you write that in?

DK: I wrote that in. It’s a love song about moving. Moving is really emotional. It’s like having a kid or a pet dying. But it doesn’t have much representation in art. You have to kind of interface with everything that you own as a sense of measurement of not only space but time, and the space and time between yourself and the place and another person. That’s so under-served in love songs in particular. I wrote it for someone I was in love with who I was trying to say, “Alright, things will be better when we go to this other place,” but still trying to be honest about how shitty it is. That’s the crux of it.

PACK YOUR BAGS

SILY: Which leads into “Pack Your Bags”. 

DK: “Pack Your Bags” is about a friend of mine who is no longer a friend of mine. I don’t like necessarily saying it’s a breakup record.

SILY: There’s a breakup with multiple people.

DK: One of my more popular songs is “What Have They Done To You Now”, and a lot of people assume it’s about an ex-girlfriend, but it’s really about a friend. I have a lot of songs like that that people assume are about romantic endeavors. The romantic “I love you, I don’t love you” thing really disinterests me. I don’t care about it. I like songs of devotion, and to an extent songs of worship, but I can’t write them. The traditional “I love you, you used to love me” kind of song doesn’t interest me. People put that on my songs, which is okay with me if it serves them well, but it’s not my intention.

THE POISONER

SILY: For “The Poisoner”, how did you get in touch with Nina Nastasia? Did you know her before?

DK: I had done a show with her many times before, but I wouldn’t say that we knew each other really well. It was one of these “wow” moments for me. It definitely came together at the end. It’s my favorite song on the record. She, to me, is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I admire her in every way. Her performing, her writing, just everything.

LEFTOVERS

SILY: “Leftovers” is sort of a country ballad.

DK: I mean...yeah, it definitely leans on a country sound. Whether or not it’s country again is up for you to decide.

SILY: It also provides one of those great moments of levity you talk about: “I’m getting tired of this music-less dance / Why don’t you put your hand down my pants?”

DK: It’s definitely a case where I was trying to be humorous, but also stay in the ballpark. I think I had written it initially to be mean to somebody, when I thought I might have somebody else sing it. But then I realized, “Oh, this is also about me.” It’s reflected right back at me.

MRS ROTH

SILY: Similar to the title track, “Mrs. Roth” has those very direct dark lines.

DK: It does, but here’s the thing to remember about that song--something that’s missing from the record, which is nobody’s fault but my own. When I set that song up in concert, it’s about a little boy and his teacher. Which is not apparent to people. There’s a much darker inference that can be drawn when I don’t give that context. When it’s about a little boy obsessing over a teacher with whom he was sexually repelled and fascinated at the same time. In the context of the record, I suppose it’s black and white.

SILY: So, “shall I untie you now?” and “I put something in your drink”--those were sort of imagined in the boy’s mind?

DK: Yeah, for sure. It’s a weird thing to talk about the sexuality of a little boy, but when it’s you, you can do that. I had a teacher who was a strange looking creature. I was becoming sexually awake at a very young age, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. It felt unreasonable to me, it felt violent. And I also, of course, was drawn to it. So I tried to illustrate it in a funny and somewhat ugly way, and I guess I did. Like any uncomfortable story, there’s a time and place that’s absolutely wrong for it. A listener might hear it and have that be the case for them, but another might hear it and think it’s really funny and maybe see a little of themselves in it, and that’s alright too.

ME AND MY WIFE

SILY: “Me and My Wife” is one of those heart-stopping narratives. It seems a little more linear, leaving you wanting to hear what’s next.

DK: It’s funny you say that, because it’s somewhat non-linear in terms of its flow of things, but where it’s placed on the record, it creates a focal point for what preceded it. I try not to speak too much on my intentions. I like to leave a lot of space for the listener to find themselves in. For the story to give you as many pieces of the picture as you need to find yourself in it. I definitely like to think of that song as a fractured memory of everything not just on that record, but the two other records. Things ending, but also not ending. If you buy the vinyl, it’s not a perfect loop, but it doesn’t stop.

Chasescene by Daniel Knox

[pinelife3]

Ask about me. I wish you would.

Disclaimer: I don’t know shit about shit - but I’m trying.

Feel like my blogging this year (I know we’re not very far in) has been really sub-optimal. Typically I feel like my blogs are best when I get fired up about/really interested in something - they come easier and (hopefully) are funnier and more interesting. I have been interested in lots of stuff, but I feel a lot of what I’ve read has already been well positioned and there hasn’t really been much room for me to butt my nose in and comment. Anyway, I wanna try to steel man Martin Shkreli. Feeling pretty amped about this actually.

I remember late 2015 sitting in a fish and chip shop (Colin’s Catch <3 - I never got fish and chips there, always burgers) reading some shitty article on Jezebel about Shkreli and even though it was probably not a good example of reporting I found it convincing. In 2015 he (or actually, his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals) increased the price of Daraprim 5500% from $13.50 (US, I presume because they only own the US version of the drug) to $750 per pill. Once upon a time it retailed for just $1 a pill. The way people talk about him he might as well be the devil.

From The Daily Beast:

From Consequence of Sound:

From Dazed:

Hahah - from Wonkette (whatever that is):

The New Yorker:

The New Yorker article opens like this:

On Thursday morning, the most reviled person in America arrived on Capitol Hill for a short but memorable engagement with the most reviled institution in America. The institution was the U.S. Congress, which Americans say they hate—though not quite enough, apparently, to stop reëlecting its members. And the person was Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical executive who loves to play the villain, and who can’t decide whether to be amused or outraged when he is treated accordingly. Donald Trump can rightly be called polarizing, but Shkreli cannot: he seems to have precious few fans to balance out his innumerable detractors.

Okay, so I have cherry picked some of the more venomous headlines but I think it’s fair to say he’s unpopular. The mainstream media actively root against him. In December last year everyone was smugly pleased when some high school students made the active ingredient in Daraprim: like because some teenagers can bootleg one component of the drug in a high school chem lab that’s somehow valuable? They didn’t recreate the whole drug, just a key component. And in any case - the whole basis of the outrage was that this was a cheap drug that underwent an unjustified price hike. Has Shkreli ever tried to pretend there was some change of circumstances where they key component of the drug suddenly became expensive to produce? Their position has always been: we jacked up the price because we could. 

Quoth Shkreli:

To me the drug was woefully underpriced. It is not a question of ‘Is this fair?’ or ‘What did you pay for it?’ or ‘When was it invented?’ It should be more expensive in many ways.

And again:

If there was a company that was selling an Aston Martin at the price of a bicycle, and we buy that company and ask to charge Toyota prices, I don’t think that should be a crime.

It cost those high school goons $20 (assuming this is just in ingredients - not equipment, facilities, time, fancy lab coats, etc.) to create 3.7 grams of the active ingredient in Daraprim (which apparently works out to about $2 per pill… again, based purely on their ingredients). 

^^ Cute

Shkreli has always said that profits made from the price jacking allow/ed his then-company Turing Pharmaceuticals (he resigned as CEO in 2015 after being arrested for securities fraud - is there anything this guy can’t do?) to work on research and development for cool new drugs to save lives (or make more money depending on your outlook).

Shkreli has consistently defended the move to raise the price of the drug - in late 2015 there were some vague intimations that he would lower the price, but they later backtracked on this and it was later reported that Turing would instead follow some standard procedures to make it easier for patients to access the drug. According to the NY Times:

Daraprim, which has been on the market since 1953, is the preferred treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can cause severe brain damage in babies, people with AIDS and others with compromised immune systems.

According to PolitiFact:

There are only about 2,000 U.S. patients who use the drug every year. 

And if you don’t have insurance you can get it for free here. 

Turing have held this position from way back in 2015: 

“A drug’s list price is not the primary factor in determining patient affordability and access,” Nancy Retzlaff, Turing’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement. “A reduction in Daraprim’s list price would not translate into a benefit to patients.”

The company pledged that no patient needing Daraprim would ever be denied access.

How is this dude still so hated? According to the NYT, the programs Turing is undertaking are standard for high priced drugs (because it’s not like Daraprim is unique in being expensive - 12 months’ worth of cancer treatments can cost upwards of $100,000 - Daraprim is a bargain at the low, low price of just $75,000 for 100 doses):

Such patient assistance programs are standard for companies selling extremely high-priced drugs. They enable the patients to get the drug while pushing most of the costs onto insurance companies and taxpayers. 

I feel like only villains say stuff like “it’s just business” - but, I mean, it really is? If you can make money, why shouldn’t you? One of the all time top posts on /r/depthhub is about how Bill Gates is a bad dude because he’s a ruthless businessman who tried hard to beat his competitors. That’s business, man. Why would you work with or help you competitors? All that’s gonna do is take money out of your pocket:

He viewed any successful non-Microsoft software as a threat, even if that software was for Windows. And if that software was cross-platform he viewed it as an existential threat, since it lessened people’s dependence on Microsoft.

They literally are threats? They’re competing products… how thick do you need to be not to see that? Even if something is made for Windows, if it wasn’t made by Microsoft then Microsoft sees none of the profits. Why would they be interested in that arrangement? And some of the complaints against Microsoft are violently stupid:

Apple had contracted out to a 3rd party company to do the Windows port of QuickTime, so what did MS do? They went to the same company and gave them a ton of money to develop Video For Windows, but an insanely short schedule, knowing full well that the company would essentially have to re-use a lot of the QuickTime For Windows source code to get the project done on time.

When Apple found out (their contract with the other company stated that Apple owned all the QuickTime For Windows source code), they went ballistic and sued Microsoft. Microsoft had been caught red-handed and knew that Apple had them by the balls. So MS settled. Remember when Microsoft “bailed out” Apple in the 90s by buying $150 million in Apple stock? Despite what the tech press reported, that’s not what actually happened. The $150 million in non-voting Apple stock that Microsoft bought was part of their settlement (Apple was no longer on the verge of bankruptcy by that point, and didn’t need to be bailed out). The settlement also had Microsoft agreeing to port MS Office and Internet Explorer to Macintosh.

Really sounds like the third party’s fault to me? The third party company shouldn’t have agreed to an unrealistic timeline and they certainly shouldn’t have resold Apple’s IP. It sounds like all Microsoft did was go to a third party company who had proven success in developing a video player for PC (which is sensible) and asked them to make something for them as well. Anyway: so Bill Gates is cutthroat? So Bill Gates wins? So his throne is built on the bone dust of his foes? It’s just business - why should you make concessions for businesses which can’t cut it or are trying to cut into your share? It’s not charity. And Gates knows charity - he’s donated over $28 billion dollars to improve healthcare and fight poverty, he aims to wipe out Malaria in the next generation.

It’s not even a case of ends justifying the means (like, a mafia boss who funnels the spoils of his crimes into an orphanage or something) - Gates behaved in a way which was industry standard for any big corporation and does so much good - if he let other companies survive and make money (essentially taking away from his own bottom line) is there any guarantee that those $28 billion would have made their way into charity?

Tangentally related to this - Shkreli’s capitalist declaration:

Yeah, I’m a capitalist, I’d love to make an even bigger fortune than I’ve got now. But I’m not gonna do it at the expense of a human life. We sell our drugs for a dollar to the government, but we sell our drugs for $750 a pill to Walmart, to Exxon Mobil, to all these big companies, they pay full price because fuck them, why shouldn’t they? If I take their money to do research for dying kids, I think I’m a hero, let alone evil.

Anyway (I got distracted). In an AMA Shkreli did in late 2015, the top comment is:

Hey! Doctor here and I work in India.

Now medically speaking I haven’t yet heard of why your drug’s worth $749 more than my pyrimethamine. Does it improve on the nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea? Does it have a folate sparing effect? Can it be used in pregnant women and in epileptics?

No one’s been able to tell me what your upgrade is or how it works or even if it is a cost saving upgrade.

Now here is my second problem. If your upgrade reduces the side effects of the drug, why is it much more expensive than prescribing say…. Ondansetron and a Folate infusion to counteract the more common effects. I mean even if I used multiple drugs to achieve this and say bundled pyrimethamine with ondansetron and loperamide and an antacid say pantoprazole and suggested folate level monitoring it would be cheaper.

So what makes Daraprim better than pyrimethamine and what changes and upgrades have you made to the drug to warrant the increase in price?

I find this really frustrating because at no point has Shkreli ever said that he introduced a cool new feature to justify the price increase - this dude (the Indian doctor) is just being smug and facetious but you can’t out-smug Shkreli so what’s even the point? He’s just pandering to a bunch of outraged idiots on Reddit. This dude (the Indian doctor) knows the answer to the question (Q: why? A: because he could) and is just being deliberately obtuse so he can pretend to be some kind of altruistic hero: “Oh you mean you increased the price of the drug just to make money? Unfathomable.” 

Even before Shkreli jacked the prices up, it was still much more expensive than similar products elsewhere. Before he increased the price to $750 a pill, it was sold for $13.50 a pill - in India they sell a generic version for $0.05 a pill (and I guess the Indian doctor above uses a $1 pill). So it was already (I am bad at maths but I think) 27000% more expensive than similar products available in India (does that sound right?).

When similar shit goes down the headline is “A drug company hiked the price of a lifesaving opioid overdose antidote by 500 percent” - when Martin Shkreli does anything they invoke his name in the headline (as though he as an individual were carrying out these actions from his home office) and leave Turing (or whichever other company he’s working with/for) buried in the main body somewhere. In the article linked above, the writer doesn’t actually mention the company’s name (Hospira) until the third paragraph and she doesn’t make any calls to lynch the CEO. She opens with this:

At a time when America needs these drugs most, drug companies are hiking the prices.

It’s called supply and demand, bitch. Jesus. (This person is actually seeking drama and pointless backlash, the sub-heading is: “Where’s the outrage?”) She’s an idiot:

Drug overdoses kill more people than car crashes and gun violence in America, and these overdose antidotes have never been more important. But they’re also quickly becoming more unreachable for the people whose deaths they could avert.

Yeah because junkies would totally be carrying around anti-overdose medicine in their purses were it not for the $142.49 price tag. Fuck I’m also angry because no one writing about this stuff seems to understand what a free market is. She says:

America has long taken a free market approach to pharmaceuticals. Drug companies haggle separately over drug prices with a variety of private insurers across the country. Meanwhile, Medicare, the government health program for those over 65, which is also the nation’s largest buyer of drugs, is actually barred from negotiating drug prices.

In no way does this describe a free market. Sure, it’s more lax than England’s system but it’s still heavily regulated and therefore != free market. This is from a post about Shkreli but still applies:

They’re saying that the price hike is such a good example of how the “free market” is pure evil and “just doesn’t work”… well as per usual, those people just don’t see the big picture and have deeply misunderstood the parts they do see.

First of all, the pharmaceutical industry is not a free market by any stretch of the imagination. A free market would be almost a perfectly contestable market. A perfectly contestable market (aka a “free market”) has three main traits… no barriers to entry, no sunk costs, and universal access to the same technology for new firms as well as existing firms. The pharmaceutical industry is actually a perfect example of the EXACT OPPOSITE of a contestable market.

And all of those barriers to entry, sunk costs, and disparities in the level of technology among firms exist because of the actions of government regulators.

The idiot writer of the Vox article on opiate overdose antidotes concludes:

Unlike EpiPen, though, the naloxone price increases haven’t garnered much attention or outrage, maybe because of the stigma that comes with opioid addiction.

In the face of an out-of-control opioid epidemic, the outrage better come soon.

I am so not buying her point about this not being a scandal because no one cares about opioid addiction. People care. Throughout most of the press on Daraprim/Shkreli people have highlighted the fact that it is used by AIDS sufferers to try to signpost how much of a dick Shkreli is. Is AIDS not at all stigmatised? It was until recently. A couple of decades ago it was headline news when Princess Diana shook the hand of an AIDS patient without gloves.

Really, the hysterical, shitty and reactive reporting on this has probably caused much more drama and stress for patients taking Daraprim than the price hike itself. 

Every other pharma boss in the world has made themselves inaccessible and opaque to the public - Shkreli is surely kind of unique in participating in unfiltered interactions with the public. People are more likely to recognise his name than name of his company/ies or the drug itself. That’s kind of an achievement, right? His email (which he shares openly) is martin@thotpatrol.com. He live streams all the time:

In the video above he’s talking about a website he made called Pharma Skeletons dot com (which is what got me interested in him in the first place) where he basically tears apart the lobbying group PhRMA after they tried to scapegoat Shkreli/distance themselves from him as though he were an aberration in the pharma industry. According to Business Insider:

On Monday, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, (PhRMA) kicked off a multi-year ad campaign to try and shift the criticism the industry’s been getting on drug pricing onto a more positive topic. In a press briefing, PhRMA president Steve Ubl described the campaign as “Less hoodie, more lab coats,” an apparent jab at Martin Shkreli, who wore a hoodie while he was arrested for securities fraud in December 2015 and on stage at a conference earlier that same month. 

Shkreli was obviously savvy to PhRMA’s dig and didn’t care for it so he put together Pharma Skeletons to outline how member companies of PhRMA have acted similarly to Turing/Shkreli:

Don’t you dare point your finger at me for the pharmaceutical industry’s troubles. It turns out we’ve all made some unpopular moves.  

I’m so into it. This website is really simple - hardly any CSS, no images or videos. Just a list detailing these pharma companies’ indiscretions with links to sources. The tone is really fun as well:

Mallinckrodt / Questcor

Really? Acthar’s 65,000% price increase represents your values but Turing doesn’t?

Gosh, I’m so upset my portfolio companies aren’t a part of your trade group.

I sued & whistleblew this company after they bought the only competitor to their only drug in order to stop my competition from their high price.

Tax avoider? Check. Ireland.

Marathon

Bro. These guys invented price increases. I literally learned it from them.

Ovation. I can sell & start a new company, too.

I feel pretty convinced that what he did was industry standard. But I really don’t want my argument to just be ‘Shkreli’s no worse than the other guys in big pharma so it’s not fair to criticise him’ because I want to believe that he’s better/special/different somehow. He seems weird and funny and interesting. Everyone wants to hit him in the face. He’s the smartest guy in most rooms he’s in. 

Dumb justifications I’m thinking of:

Maybe he’s a bad dude, but at least you’ve heard of him. For a layperson (hi) he must be the most famous person in pharmaceuticals. Not saying notoriety is cool or in any way mitigates shitty behaviour, but I feel like he’s at least copping to it and is cognizant of what he’s doing and how he’s perceived - probably the CEO of every pharma company is as villainous as Shkreli, but they act like they’re not which gives Shkreli some kind of high ground

He doesn’t seem interested in or at all concerned with PR/PC bullshit

Did Shkreli perhaps inadvertently draw mainstream attention to serious issues within the US pharmaceutical/FDA/insurance/whatever else system? Everyone knows about these problems now. I certainly wouldn’t have cared were the articles not accompanied by pictures of a dude with such a punchable face. Possible downside: Shkreli as an individual is reviled, companies still seem to get away with it

All the pharmaceutical big dogs hate him - not because he jacked up the price of an old, cheap drug (they all do that) but because he drew attention to them and made their shitty behaviour more visible

(Do you think Shkreli gets laid more or less since all this went down?)

The faux hysteria over his ‘harassment’ of a Teen Vogue writer (who wrote this anti-Trump article in December which became really popular because who doesn’t go to Teen Vogue for quality journalism?) really pissed me off. He was mocking her by pretending to be obsessed with her because hot girls are lame and assume everyone is in love with them when really everyone hates them. I thought it was pretty funny

^^ Shkreli decorated his Twitter with pics of the journalist and Photoshopped himself into a picture of her and her husband 

Sidebar about that Teen Vogue Trump article (”Trump is Gaslighting America”) in which she argues that umm Trump is gaslighting Americans… which I find annoying because she’s basically taking away half the country’s agency - like, they know not what they do:

Trump took advantage of the things that divide this country, pitting us against one another, while lying his way to the Oval Office. Yes, everything is painfully clear in hindsight, but let’s make sure Trump’s win was the Lasik eye surgery we all so desperately needed.

The article is basically a plea for the truth. She suggests:

Inform yourself what outlets are trustworthy and which aren’t.

Hmmm. Teen Vogue. I want to cyber bully her too. I mean. Hmmm. 

I feel like in my eagerness to be contrary I get myself into these positions where I’m trying to defend the indefensible. I think Shkreli’s more nuanced, interesting and well meaning than the press give him credit for. Professionally, he’s obviously made some reckless choices and remains self-righteous and smug (hard to tell if he’s always smirking or if that’s just his face). The things he’s done which seem greedy and unreasonable are normal in his industry so if he’s no worse than his peers he’s just a normal dude (I don’t really feel convinced by that). Still, I think he seems cool. He’s entertaining anyway.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): On Sunday, The New York Times reported a bombshell from former national security adviser John Bolton’s unpublished manuscript about his time in the White House: President Trump had, in fact, wanted to withhold $391 million in assistance to Ukraine until investigations into Democrats — including Joe Biden and his son Hunter — were agreed to.

Bolton’s version of events undermined the president’s claim, which has been an important part of his defense during the impeachment process, that the decision to freeze aid to Ukraine was independent from requests that Ukraine investigate the Bidens. The reported contents of the manuscript also gave a snapshot of the kind of testimony Bolton might give if the Senate allows witnesses to be called in the trial.

The White House legal team is back in the Senate today presenting the president’s side of the case, but what should we make of Bolton’s manuscript? Does it change the calculus of the trial moving forward?

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Well, it certainly amps up the pressure on GOP senators to call witnesses. Bolton has been the white whale of the impeachment inquiry since last fall, since he seems to have been privy to a lot of key conversations around the Ukraine aid and the investigations. The NYT reporting just underscores how important his testimony could be.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): My impression is that Bolton wants this known — he is willing to back up what others have testified to: The aid was tied to launching investigations. I didn’t find this too shocking — there is ample evidence aside from Bolton’s words that the Ukrainians were being asked to investigate the Bidens in exchange for the aid. But Bolton was in the White House and “has the receipts,” as the kids say.

Reactions from Senate Republicans so far also suggest that Bolton’s version of events might have some impact. The senators who were already generally supportive of having witnesses at the impeachment trial (Susan Collins and Mitt Romney in particular) are now sounding firmer in that stance. And other Republicans are also now suggesting that they could be open to calling witnesses, although they are talking about summoning Hunter and Joe Biden as well as Bolton.

ameliatd: Some GOP senators have responded defensively to the Bolton news, and that could be important, too. One critique is that he’s just trying to juice books sales; another is that he doesn’t actually need a subpoena to share what he knows (which is true!).

The thing is, if Bolton wants this information to be known, he can make it known at any time by holding a press conference. But he seems to want permission from his party to share the info, in the form of a subpoena.

sarahf: So as Perry says, we didn’t really learn anything new here in Bolton’s manuscript. Rather, Bolton’s account essentially corroborates what others from the Trump administration told House investigators last November. But unlike those other witnesses, including the former top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, and American E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Bolton was “in the room.”

Is that, in and of itself, a game changer? I guess at the very least, it probably does shift the vote count on the motion to call new witnesses. A few days ago, it didn’t seem as if Democrats were going to win over enough GOP senators to make that happen.

ameliatd: It’s an interesting question, Sarah, because Bolton is different from the witnesses we’ve heard from so far in a couple key ways: 1) He’s a political appointee (almost all of the people we heard from in November were career officials); 2) He’s a longtime Republican hawk who should have significant cred if he’s saying that what Trump did was out of bounds.

On the other hand, Bolton left the Trump administration on pretty bad terms with the president, who is denying he told Bolton that the aid was tied to the investigations.

It does feel like if this doesn’t shift the vote count for calling new witnesses, nothing will.

perry: One of the big GOP talking points has been that this is all hearsay. Except now Bolton is suggesting he heard directly from Trump that the goal was to force an investigation of the Bidens or Ukraine would not get aid. I expect Republicans will eventually just pick a new talking point, though — “executive privilege” or “Bolton was disgruntled” or something.

ameliatd: And that’s why I think it’s telling, Perry, that GOP senators are already saying this is just a play to sell copies of his book.

perry: Bolton testifying would probably be really bad for Trump — so there is very little incentive for Trump and the Republicans to have him testify.

sarahf: Right, and Trump definitely seems to be busy already sowing seeds for a defense that Bolton is disgruntled/untrustworthy, saying that he never discussed this with Bolton.

perry: As always, the key players here on whether we hear from new witnesses are the Republicans from swing states: Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona and Collins, along with Trump-skeptical senators like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Romney. In my view, they need to find a way to placate Trump and his base but also their state’s more centrist voters. I don’t know what that looks like.

ameliatd: Yeah, and even though Republican support for calling new witnesses has gone down since the end of December — according to our polling with Ipsos, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel — 41 percent of Republicans still want new witnesses. (Of course, they could have witnesses other than Bolton in mind, like the Bidens.)

I guess my somewhat cynical take on this is similar to Perry’s — except for the people who were already apt to vote for witnesses, Republicans might just find other reasons to avoid calling Bolton. And frankly, I think the way Bolton has handled this makes that easier for them to do.

sarahf: So Amelia, you don’t think this tips the scale in terms of calling new witnesses?

ameliatd: I mean, I think it’s hard to predict right now. It’s totally possible that the balance does tip and we see more senators voting for witnesses. But GOP senators are already questioning Bolton’s motivations from a number of angles, and it’s not like their defenses of Trump have been especially consistent or logically cohesive to this point.

sarahf: My thought is that this is about as bad as news can get for Trump. This isn’t someone with secondhand knowledge alleging he withheld aid for politically motivated reasons. It’s a close former adviser with firsthand knowledge of these conversations. I think this now forces Republicans’ hand and they’ll have to call him.

Although, to be clear, I think there are still ways Republicans can spin this so it’s not a total defeat. Take Sen. Lindsay Graham. He’s now saying “all relevant witnesses” should be called, including ones Trump has requested, which I read as code for Biden.

perry: One of the unknowns is here whether Democrats will agree to one of the Bidens testifying if Bolton and others who will make Trump look bad are asked to testify.

ameliatd: Right, I don’t see a world where we only get Bolton, if witnesses are called. Some GOP senators have been pushing this “witness reciprocity” (Bolton-for-Bidens) line for a while, so it’s not surprising to see that resurfacing.

perry: What a move by Bolton. He is now going to join the likes of James Comey, Robert Mueller, Jeff Flake and others who are fairly conservative and were once in pretty good standing with the Republican Party, but then criticized Trump and were condemned by their former allies. Bolton was a fixture on Fox News before he joined the administration. Those days are probably over. He will be cast as part of “The Resistance” now.

And this will be another illustration of where today’s conservative moment is headed: You either support whatever Trump does or you aren’t going to remain in good standing at major conservative power centers , like Capitol Hill and Fox News.

We should note two other things: 1. The recording that came out last week in which Trump seems to be ordering the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, who was then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and 2. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo getting into a tense dispute with an NPR reporter who asked him about Yovanovitch and the circumstances of her recall from Ukraine. There are a lot of people tied to Trump involved in this Ukraine controversy who are not doing a particularly good job defending Trump, or, in Bolton’s case, not defending him at all.

The Democrats can’t keep this trial going forever. But it does look like evidence is going to keep coming out that makes Trump look worse, so they must be trying to figure out how to keep this trial going on beyond this week. And the Republicans have to be thinking that witnesses are a net negative for them, even if they get Hunter or Joe Biden to testify.

ameliatd: I will add also that the Republicans/Trump administration have been pushing the idea that Bolton’s testimony could be covered by executive privilege, which would snarl things up in the courts. They could certainly try that tack, but executive privilege claims are on shakier footing legally as more of this information comes out publicly. And also, if a majority of senators vote to subpoena Bolton and he wants to testify, it could be very hard for Trump to stop him.

sarahf: Tell us a little bit more about how that would work, Amelia. It seems to me that the administration could do what you’re describing, but they risk making a pretty unpopular move.

Because we’ve found in our own polling with Ipsos that a majority (59 percent) of Americans still want to hear new witnesses, and ABC News/Washington Post found in their latest poll that 66 percent of Americans favor the Senate calling new witnesses — and that was before the Bolton development. I have to imagine that number goes up.

ameliatd: Executive privilege is a pretty ill-defined power that presidents use to keep internal communications secret. In some cases, it has protected senior White House aides from responding to a subpoena. But those people were also unwilling to testify. The Trump administration could try to get a court to issue a restraining order preventing Bolton from testifying, but we’d be headed into unprecedented legal territory if that happens. And it’s not even clear that what Bolton would share would be covered under executive privilege to begin with.

It’s also possible that the courts would be less inclined to rule in the executive branch’s favor during an impeachment trial.

And then of course, there’s the fact that it looks pretty bad if Trump keeps someone with clearly relevant information from testifying. On the other hand, he’s been doing that for months and it hasn’t shifted the needle. But maybe Bolton is different, especially if he’s out in public making a ruckus about what he knows and how he wants to share it.

sarahf: Right, and I suppose the other thing here is: say Trump’s legal team did go down this path … it doesn’t stop Bolton from publishing his memoir, right? Though, I suppose the administration could push to exclude certain excerpts during the standard review process. It just seems as if from a PR point of view, we’re past that point, and so now the Trump team’s best of course action is to discredit Bolton, as they have tried to do with the other witnesses.

Assuming we do hear from Bolton because the Senate decides to call new witnesses, how could this change things? Does it cause some Republicans reconsider their vote to acquit Trump?

perry: Yeah, Bolton I think is unique in that: 1. My impression is that he doesn’t like Trump and wants this fight. 2. He served in the administration in a very senior-level job and probably knows a lot, some of which would be embarrassing for Trump if it came out. This may not matter for the impeachment trial, but if I were Trump, I would be a little worried about Bolton.

I don’t think this affects the bottom line — I don’t think Republicans will ever vote to remove Trump. (There is a very, very small but I think plausible scenario in which they privately urge him to resign.) But do I think it’s possible we have a longer trial with witnesses? Yes, and I think that possibility is much higher than it was on Friday.

But ultimately I think still it’s unlikely that we get witnesses — it’s just not in the interests of the GOP, and they probably still have the votes to prevent it. But a trial with witnesses would be a wild card — you never know what people will say.

ameliatd: Right, and Bolton is a much more well-known figure than any of the other people we’ve heard from so far. Plus, he seems like he could fill in the piece that’s been missing for Democrats all along: a witness who heard from Trump’s mouth that the aid was tied to the investigations.

Hard to see how that wouldn’t damage Trump in some way, even if he still gets acquitted.

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

This is of an old article I wrote 17 years ago. I am re-posting it because a lot of people didn’t see it. It takes place in the North Miracle Mile of Los Angeles California. The finale takes place at a movie theater on Beverly Blvd. Like many things in L.A, it does not exist anymore. It is now a patch of yellow grass.

           I went to the Pan Pacific movie Theater a lot in the 60’s and 70’s. It was cheaper than the Fairfax Theater several blocks away. The Fairfax played first run movies and the Pan Pacific played movies that were a couple of years old. Some times they play first run movies. I saw GoldFinger there in late 64.

           When the Beatles were hot in 64, their movie came to my neighborhood theater. This is what transpired. I preface it when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan show….

 A Beatle Memory

 By Stephen Jay Morris

Part 0ne

Tuesday, December 04, 2001

©Scientific Morality

  I remember the Kennedy assassination in 1963.  I was 9 years old.  It seems as though my Memory started at that point in time. I do not recall the 50's, or even the early 60's. What I do remember is that America was a sanitized place. Or, maybe I was just completely sheltered from the real world.  At the time, there was a pervasive melancholy in the atmosphere.  Everything was so sullen.  This didn't jibe with my childish outlook on life; I was carefree.  However, living in a Jewish neighborhood made things especially depressing. Most Jews there were strong supporters of J.F.K.  One day, I was visiting my uncle's house.  There was a hi-fi system in his living room.  At the time, Hi-Fi's were state-of-the-art record players.  There were some record albums on display, facing frontward on the mantle. One was a comedy L.P. entitled, "The First Family"--it was a satire on the Kennedy' s.  I asked my uncle if I could play it and he replied in an authoritarian voice, "Our president has just died and we must show respect for him!"  In my young, critical mind, I wondered why the dick had it on display in the first place, if he was so respectful!

        That was the tone of the times.  Adults were so God damn serious! The only things I cared about in 1963 were baseball and monster movies.  I hated school and my parents. However, I viewed school and parents as irrefutable authority figures to whose dictates I had to submit. I used to play with my childhood friend, Glen.  He lived in a high-rise apartment building near my house.  Our favorite place to play was on the roof of his building.  We would pretend that space aliens hid in the giant air conditioning unit.  We lived in our own little world.  I remember one day, we were playing on the front lawn, when Glen's mother yelled out of the 4th floor window, "Glen! Time to come in!  The President's funeral is about to begin!"  "Ok, mom--I'm coming!" he answered.  Then he turned to me and said, "My mom is making me watch Kennedy's funeral on T.V.  I don't want to watch no dumb funeral on T.V!  I gotta go! See ya."  Yep!  That's what was happening then.

Three months later, word came of something happening across the Atlantic Ocean.  I heard my sister talking about the Beatles; she was telling my mom how cute they were.  I didn't know what she was babbling on about; I thought she was talking about puppets.  It was in early February, on a Sunday night.  I'd always hated Sunday nights-- the last free night before school the next morning.  The local TV station broadcasted my favorite cowboy show.  It was on ABC, I think it was called, “Travels of Jamie Machetes.”  I was about to tune it in on my parents' old Zenith black & white, when my sister came bursting into the living room, demanding, "I wanna watch the Ed Sullivan show!   The Beatles are gonna be on!"  I said, "Tough! I'm watching my show!  She ran out of the room and whined to my dad, "Daddy!!  Stevie wouldn't let me watch Ed Sullivan!"  Next thing I know, my father stomps into the living room like the American Military liberating Italy in 1945; he was taking the moral high road, fighting against my evil selfishness!  He said in that 1950's fatherly voice, "Hey, stupid!  You don't own the T.V. set!  Let your sister watch her show!"  I relented.  My sister stuck her tongue out at me.  My dad was bigger than me, and this depute was not negotiable.  Also, he held the deed to the house and was the final judge. My sister always won the arguments! Because I was older than her and had a penis, she was the innocent victim. No matter what she did--even if she was in the wrong, she was innocent.  She got away with a lot of shit!  My dad was so overly protective of her. I think he was the only man in the world that suffered from "vagina envy." My sister made sure the whole family watched the show.  I hated the Sullivan show!  It was lame, wholesome, family entertainment.  I did like the comedians sometimes.  Most of their material consisted of mother-in-law jokes and self-effacing humor.  Then the big moment came.  I was expecting human-sized puppets, but instead, on the stage were four guys with Moe Stooge hairdos, singing these cute, upbeat, love songs. The mostly teenage-girl audience was screaming at them!  It was like one of those Godzilla movies from Japan.  Usually, females screamed at something terrible.  I remember thinking something bad was happening off camera.  I asked my mom why the girls were screaming.  She replied, "They used to do that to Elvis, and Frank Sinatra before him."  "Who ARE those guys?" I asked my mom.  "Will you shut up? I'm trying to watch the show!" my sister whined. I went to bed in disgust.

A lot of Baby-Boomers will tell you that that was the defining moment in their lives.  Not me.  I thought the Beatles were a bunch of fags!  My defining moment was when the Rolling Stones appeared on the Sullivan show, a year later.  I started to like the Beatles when Capitol Records released "Rubber Soul" in 1965.

In 1964, everywhere you went, you heard Beatles music.  People used to install public address systems by their swimming pools.  The neighbors to our left had one, and the family behind us had one, too.  That summer, while the neighbors had friends over to swim in their pool, you could hear slashing and laughter and Beatles songs.  At the Sav-On Drug Store, there was a whole section devoted to Beatles souvenirs. I remember Beatle lunch boxes, Beatle sweatshirts, Beatle wigs, Beatle board games, and Beatle plastic guitars.  Little did I know that this junk would become collectors’ items!  There were also Beatle trading cards.  They cost five cents a pack. Like baseball cards, they contained a stick of pink bubble gum.  You could smell the gum on the top card.  The cards came in two editions: the black & white set, and then the color set, which sold for 10 cents.  At my school, boys started to wear Beatle boots and combed their hair into bangs. Before they got home, they'd comb their hair back into pompadours so mom and dad wouldn't get pissed off.

At that moment in time, the Beatles were a harmless fad.  America was, and still is, a nation of fads.  The Beatles' management and the record industry calculated the Beatles fad.  It started out that way.  In the beginning, it was a teenybopper affair.  Today, most Beatles fans like this era of the Beatles' career the best.  Yeah, I must admit it's very nostalgic to listen to a 1964 Beatles' song.  However, three years down the road was the outbreak of the Counterculture movement.  A big fallacy is that the Beatles were responsible for this movement.  Nope! They were merely a part of it. In 1964, some ex-beatniks in San Francisco were experimenting with drugs and music and created "psychedelic" music. The Beatles just brought it to a mass audience.  Goodwater conservatives didn't think highly of the Beatles.  1964 was an election year.  Buttons started to circulate reading, "Beatles For President!"  It was all in fun.  The conservatives despised their daughters for getting hysterical at these effeminate looking Brits.  It's the oldest story in the world.  When humans (males mostly) get older, they lose their sexual attractiveness.  Consequently, they become anti-sex monsters.  They hide behind the lofty veil of "Morality."  Actually, it's just a simple of case of JEALOUSY!  Maybe Viagra will change that age-old problem. There used to be a movie theater in my neighborhood.  It was called the "Pan Pacific Theater."  It had that weird, 1950's, post-modern look, like the coffee shops that were built in the 50's.  I don't know when it was constructed, but I remember it burnt down in 1980.  During my childhood, it was the place to go for Saturday matinees.  It was cheap, too: 50 cents cheap!   For that, you'd get a couple of cartoons and a B movie--not bad!  I saw all the James Bond movies there.  In 1964, when "A Hard Days Night" was released, it came to the Pan Pacific.  I went to see it with my 5-year-old brother, Irwin, and my 8-year-old sister, Fay.  When we arrived, there was a line around the block!   This was unusual for this theater, which was called a "walk-in theater."  And it was.  It had only a local clientele.  But not this time!  The kids in the line were in a festive mood.  They had their Beatles shirts on, and sported buttons of their favorite Beatle.  Paul was the most popular.  I listened to the girls in line talking breathlessly about their heroes. The theater's owner--a fat, Jewish, middle-aged man--looked nervously at his youthful customers standing in line.  He was happy that he was happy making money for a change, however, he was uneasy about the possibility of a teen riot.  Around the block, there was another Pan Pacific Theater.  That theater staged an Elvis concert in the '50s, which had resulted in a teen riot.  After that, they never hosted another rock concert again.  The owners of this theater didn't want a repeat of that event.  After all, most of their patrons were old Jewish ladies who would complain about the air conditioner.

When we finally got in, we sat in the back row; all the good seats had been taken.  After the trailers of upcoming beach movies, the movie started and the place went nuts!  The girls were screaming at the movie screen like the Beatles were there in person.  It was unbelievable!  In the middle of the movie, the projectionist freeze-framed a scene and the house lights went on. There was a loud, collective groan from the audience.  The owner stood on the stage and said loudly, "I have gotten complaints about your conduct! People come here to see a movie, not to hear you make noise!  If you do not act like ladies and gentlemen, then I will stop the movie and send you all home!"  Then, the movie resumed and the screaming continued anyway.  I saw some grown-ups get up and go to the ticket office for refunds.  I did see the movie again--a few months later in an almost empty theater.

[junker-town]

The day Chris Long gave a season of NFL checks to charity

The Eagles defensive end’s career is football, but he won't let it be his legacy.

Chris Long looks up from his phone in time to see the stoplight change from yellow to red. He slams on the brakes of his Toyota FJ Cruiser and apologizes; he’s trying to follow his GPS while looking for an Instagram video he filmed with a drone at his farm in Virginia. It’s a bird’s eye view of him and a few childhood friends blowing up a Darth Vader doll stuffed with colored powder and Tannerite, an explosive target used in rifle practice.

Long, a defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles, is driving to the Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School in North Philly to speak to high schoolers. Earlier this morning, he announced that he and his wife Megan are donating his last 10 game checks to three different organizations devoted to educational equality in the three cities in which he’s played football. He’s calling his new initiative “Pledge 10 for Tomorrow,” encouraging fans to give what they can, and he’ll donate an extra $50,000 to the city with the most donations.

“Ah, here it is!” he says, finding the video. “I know Tannerite isn’t good, but how cool does this look?”

He hands me his phone. It looks very cool, mesmerizing even. Long has set the video to a song by My Morning Jacket, and the soaring chords match the brilliant bursts of teals, greens, and pinks that billow out against a white blanket of snow.

“One of my buddies from high school who I do this stuff with just had a kid,” Long says, taking his phone back. “I hope it doesn’t mean he’ll stop doing dumb shit like this with me.”

I remind Long, who is 32, that he has a kid, and that having children hasn’t stopped him, nor generations of men before him, from doing dumb shit.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, and smiles.

Long starts telling me about the other dumb shit he does. He regularly runs out of gas. He's had the car we’re in for two years and hasn't registered it. He lost his birth certificate a while ago. He was so obsessed with the movie Drive that he bought himself a ‘96 Chevy Impala, then totaled it listening to the soundtrack a day later. (He owned a replica of the scorpion jacket Gosling wore, too, but gave it to Goodwill after the crash because “the dream had died.”) Last year, he listed his former Patriots teammate Danny Amendola’s number on a fake Craigslist ad for a Suzuki Spider, then watched a bewildered Amendola field calls from people looking to buy his nonexistent motorcycle. He and William Hayes, who’s on the Dolphins now but played with Long on the Rams, once filled a teammates’ car with packing peanuts and crickets. The crickets died and it smelled terrible.

“I am incapable of not being a regular fucking moron,” Long says, laughing.

He misses the turn for the high school. He whips the car around, finds the entrance, parks, and walks by a few vans belonging to local news crews and NFL Films. The league is filming the event for some series about Players Doing Good Stuff.

This fall is the first time Long has so overtly publicized his charitable work. He founded WaterBoys in 2014 after he climbed Kilimanjaro with his then-teammate James Hall. So far the organization has funded 26 wells — 22 of which have been built in East Africa — that serve 7,000 people each. With former NFL player and Green Beret Nate Boyer, Long also leads trips of veterans up Kilimanjaro. He then founded the Chris Long Foundation in 2015.

Following the Unite the Right rally in his hometown of Charlottesville, Va., he was moved to put his arm around his teammate Malcolm Jenkins when Jenkins raised his fist during the national anthem before a preseason game. Long has continued to do so through the season, and yesterday, he and Jenkins were two of 12 players at the NFL owners fall meetings to discuss the protests. In a week, they will spend their day off after the Eagles’ Monday Night Football game against Washington at the Pennsylvania State Capitol advocating for criminal justice reform.

After his symbolic gesture, Long felt he had to publicly do something concrete. In September, he gave his first six checks to fund two scholarships at St. Anne’s-Belfield, the private high school he went to in Charlottesville (even though he and Megan had quietly funded two already, and those kids are about to head off to college). But he wanted do something “more macro,” so now he’s giving away his last 10 checks, too, forgoing an entire season’s salary. He also created the matching campaign on social media because he thinks a lot of people truly do want to help, they just don't know how. Give them a link and a pre-vetted charity, turn it into a competition, and boom: you’re raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. (As of publication, Long has raised over $205,000.)

Inside the high school, Sylvia Watts McKinney, the director of Summer Search, one of the programs Long is supporting, introduces him to the group of kids he’ll be speaking to. She reads a passage from Ralph Ellison’s essay What These Children Are Like.

“If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then I will not only drop my defenses and my hostility, but I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.”

“A little bit about me,” Long says, after he thanks McKinney and takes the mic. “I’m a football player. I spent eight years in St. Louis, and we never won more than seven games in a season, which is really bad, for anyone who follows football. It was a rough time.”

He’s not using any notes, and sounds far more natural than he did recording a Pledge 10 PSA from a teleprompter this morning at the Eagles facility. The students, very few of whom are white, seem skeptical at first, but they warm up as Long tells them how the Rams never made the playoffs, how he was injured in 2014, how he was released in 2015, how he went to New England and won a Super Bowl. He thinks he can do that here with the Eagles. A few kids whoop.

Long, back row, with students from North Philly’s Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School.

“For me as a student growing up,” Long says, switching gears, “I had everything I could ask for. Every resource was at my disposal. I went to a private school, I had tutoring, all those mentoring opportunities I needed, but I still struggled in school. I wasn’t a great student, but I also think I took it for granted. And that is something I really regret.”

Long did, and does, have everything. He’s the son of Diane and Howie Long. Howie was a famous NFL player, actor, and is now an analyst. Football is the reason Long — and his brother Kyle, who plays for the Bears, and Howie Jr., who works in player personnel for the Raiders — grew up rich and is the thing that has made him richer. It’s afforded him over 311,000 Twitter followers, given him a platform. Which, right now, he’s using to tell kids that they should value people the way people value retweets or likes on Instagram. This makes them laugh.

Then he lets it rip.

“Life is short,” he says. “Live it with joy. I really think that the biggest thing I could leave you with today is to take pleasure in the work that you do, whether in classroom or community, and enjoy it. Be that contagious light that spreads energy to other people. Great people make other people feel they can be great, too. We talk about this in the locker room as football players and leaders, how you want everyone around you to feel like they can be great for having played with you, sat in a classroom with you, been a friend of yours. Through your loyalty, your excitement, and for who you are. Be contagious in your energy.”

It’s Wednesday around noon, five hours before the event at the high school, and Long is walking into the Whole Foods next to the apartment he and Megan are renting in Philly. It’s 75 degrees out, but he’s decided it’s fall, so he’s wearing socks with Birkenstocks, thick sweatpants, a long sleeve wool shirt, and a Carhart vest.

“I call his style, ‘rich hobo,’” Green Bay Packers tight end Martellus Bennett will tell me on the phone a few days later. He played with Long in New England and the two became very close. Bennett describes their connection as “cerebral.”

“He’d walk into the locker room and I’d be like, ‘Nice jacket, but those sweats are trash, and those Birks gotta go,’” Bennett says. “But he has to wear socks because his toes are gross. I love his style, he always makes me feel okay to dress the way I dress. We both just didn’t care. He’s like a rich bum. Just look at him.”

The rich bum is currently looking at a wall of healthy-looking drinks. He picks up a Maple Water and puts it in his basket. I ask what Maple Water is. He’s not totally sure, but it’s probably just water with maple in it, and he says it’s good. I ask if he worries about getting recognized when he goes out in public.

“Nah,” he says. “I haven’t been in Philly long enough. And the great thing about being a football player is you don’t get a ton of facetime. You always have a helmet on.”

Long also grew up around fame. It’s not something new he’s had to adjust to.

“It’s too hot for the hot bar,” he says, waving his hand in the direction of the steam trays of chicken and tofu.

He then proceeds to wander up and down each aisle. I lose him at one point, which is hard to do, because he’s 6’3” and weighs 276 pounds. His arms are the size of a normal human’s neck. He has wide eyes, a square jaw, and broad, decisive shoulders. He could pass for a Viking, if Vikings had tattoos that said VIRGINIA; he has a full sleeve on one arm and a half on the other that will soon become full. Tattoos, he says, are addicting.

“He shows us as black players in the NFL that he gets it. He’s not turning a blind eye.” — Martellus Bennett

Long scoops some peanuts and raisins out of a bulk bin. If he occasionally acts like a teenager, he consistently eats like one (or at least a somewhat health conscious one). Over the next three hours, I’ll watch him eat a bowl of cereal, a protein bar, a piece of Ezekiel bread with peanut butter, a chicken breast, an entire bag of trail mix, a grapefruit, more trail mix, all of these peanuts and raisins, and another protein bar.

“He’s a total meat,” Diane will say about her son when I call her tomorrow. Long credits his parents — who’ve been involved with the Boys and Girls Club of Charlottesville for a long time — for teaching him and his brothers the importance of giving back.

“Did he clean his truck when you were there?” Diane asks.

I tell her I don’t know if he cleaned it, but that it was very neat.

“I'll tell you what,” she says. “That’s probably the one inauthentic thing you saw about him. Because usually, when you get in that truck, there’s piles of clothing and paperwork. He looks like he lives out of his car. He probably cleaned it for you.”

About an hour after the Whole Foods excursion, Long is sitting in a plush room off of the lobby of his apartment. He just called in to Ryan Russillo’s radio show, and we can’t go back upstairs because Megan doesn’t want us to wake their 18-month-old son, Waylon. We have to get out of this room, though, because the sun is beating directly in and Long is sweating through his wool shirt.

“You wanna play pool?” Long asks.

I say sure, so we head to the lobby, where there’s a pool table that no one ever uses. We’re playing best of five. Long breaks, then sinks the eight ball a few turns later. I win. I somehow manage to win the next game, too, on my own merit, which shocks both of us.

Suddenly, he realizes there's a chance he could actually lose this thing. His eyes narrow and he starts enforcing obscure rules. He wants to raise the stakes, so we bet that I have to publicize who loses in this article.

Long was the No. 2 draft pick out of UVA and a fierce competitor during his six “miserable” seasons with the Rams. He was, at one point, one of the best defensive ends in the league, but the team consistently sucked, and he suffered back-to-back, season-ending injuries in 2014 and 2015. When then-Rams coach Jeff Fisher released him, Long reached out to Bill Belichick and the Patriots. New England wasn’t the perfect schematic fit for Long in terms of defense, but he just wanted to win, so Belichick said he’d find something for him to do.

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Chris Long won a Super Bowl during his one season with the New England Patriots.

Last season wasn’t ideal from an individual standpoint — he was only on the field for 65 percent of the snaps — but it culminated in a remarkable Super Bowl win. And it gave him some of his closest friends; he still talks often to Bennett, Devin McCourty, Julian Edelman, and Rob Ninkovich often. That team had something special.

Still, he can’t get rid of the devil on his shoulder whispering that he wasted his prime with St. Louis, a team that was once a single fake punt away from going 0-16. He decided not to resign with the Pats because, while a championship was nice, he’s still acutely aware that he won as a role player. He loved team success, but his individual ambition was still unfulfilled.

“My career’s been all over the map, and I think players struggle with what’s their legacy,” Long says. “I haven’t been a superstar, but you can still think about your average-ass legacy. What’s kept me in the game is trying to leave on my terms. This has probably happened to so many players, and I probably won’t be able to accomplish it. But I want to leave playing at a high level. And using the game. I don’t want to let the game use me.”

Long felt that the Eagle’s defense was a better fit for him, and his intuition that they’d exceed expectations has turned out to be correct. With only one loss, Philadelphia has the best record in the league as of Week 7. And while he isn’t on the field more than he was in New England — he’s playing just 45% of snaps this year — he has two sacks so far and seems happy with his role. He also knows that as an active player, he has a bigger platform to raise money and speak out than he would if he retired.

Long sinks a shot, rubs his arm. He’s still sore from the Thursday game against the Panthers, which was almost a week ago. When he was recovering from surgery in 2014, he’d sit on the sidelines and watch huge guys crash into each other, thinking, I do this? He hasn’t been diagnosed with any concussions, but he worries about how CTE manifests itself. He also knows it’s too late to reverse any damage.

“And what’s me taking a knee in response to Trump? That’s not what this is about. He can’t make me kneel or stand.” — Chris Long

“Something I worry about more than that is the void that football will leave when I’m done playing,” he says. “You’ve been doing something your whole life, and then it’s over. You’re approaching your middle age. My friends back home have settled in. When I stop playing, I’m going to be the one who’s like, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

Long wins the fourth game to tie us up, 2-2. He keeps getting interrupted by the phone calls, FaceTimes, and texts from other players (including one from Edelman that just says “so tight”) as Pledge 10 gains traction.

“I think he’s one of the most genuine guys you could be around, especially off the field,” Hayes tells me. “Ninety percent of the guys you play football with, you don’t talk to after that. Chris and I haven’t played together the last couple years, but we’ve never left each other. He was my partner in crime when it came to pranks, and we both love competition. I tried to push him every day, and he did the same for me. He’s more of a brother than even a friend.”

Long breaks to start the fifth game, then goes on a roll, putting away most of his stripes for an early lead. He eyes up the cue ball, aiming for the striped No. 10, but he judges the angle wrong and sinks the eight ball again. I win.

We go back up to Long’s apartment after playing pool. Waylon has woken up, and is very busy putting wooden pieces of mail into his wooden toy mailbox. He’s a spunky kid with a mullet, which Long thinks is hilarious (he called him a young Mike Gundy on Instagram, in reference to the mulleted head coach of Oklahoma State). Megan gives Long a hard time for losing to me while she gets ready to take Waylon to the park.

Nicole Woodie, who used to run community outreach for the Rams until Long hired her to run his foundation, showed up at the apartment a few minutes ago. She sits on the couch replying to emails. Media requests have been pouring in since Pledge 10 went live.

“Someone from The Ellen Show just emailed me,” Long says, sprawled out on the coach and overflowing onto the ottoman. “They want me to come on. I’m gonna tell them no.”

“Chris, are you crazy?!” Woodie says. “You can’t turn down Ellen! Think of the moms!”

“Hmm,” Long says. “I don’t know. Would we reach people we wouldn’t reach through the sports media stuff we’re already doing?”

“Yes!” Woodie practically cries. “It's a totally different demographic! And Ellen usually does something like gives a big check. Come on, you have to do this.”

Long reluctantly agrees.

“His thing is that he’s not trying to bring attention to himself,” Bennett tells me. “He's trying to bring attention to the cause. That's noble, because a lot of people try to make it about themselves. He's trying to spread a message. He’s like, ‘Nah, I’m a part of this fight, but these [black players] are the generals. He wants to put the generals out there, guys who are more adept to talking publicly about it instead of himself."

I’ve watched Long try to do this all day. The Eagles’ PR guy asked Long this morning if he’d do SportsCenter before the upcoming Monday Night Football game against Washington.

“Nope. Put Malcolm on,” Long told him. “Put Malc up there. He’s doing great stuff in Philly.”

On Monday night, SportsCenter will run a short segment on Long anyway. But they will have to use old footage, random photos they dug up, and quotes from one of Long’s statements.

“How do you support guys like Malcolm without hijacking the situation?” Long wonders. “And then how do you interject your opinion without making it seem like you know these issues better than the people dealing with them? That’s a thin line you gotta walk.”

Bennett thinks Long is managing to walk it.

"You go through the league,” Bennett says, “and not many white players are actually saying things like Chris does. When he does, it goes bigger than just a black player saying it. He shows us as black players in the NFL that he gets it. He’s not turning a blind eye. When white players stay quiet, I’m like, I know you see the struggle, I know you see what’s going on. You play with me. We're examples of how people can get along and come from different backgrounds to work toward the same common goal. But when I speak on things that matter like this, and you turn your head, it’s like you think you can wash it away.

“Chris has always been real about it,” Bennett continues. “We'll have a conversation if he doesn’t understand something. That’s a powerful thing. And now he’s donating all of his salary to equality education? It's just like, what?!?"

Hayes appreciates Long’s involvement, too.

“When he put his hand on Malcolm’s shoulder, it showed a lot,” he says. “That one little thing he did. He knew that it could possibly cause a rift or cause a lot of conversation, but Chris, he knows what’s right, and what feels right. And he’s gotta stand up for it.”

Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

Eagles defensive end Chris Long embraces teammate Malcolm Jenkins on October 8, 2017, during the National Anthem.

Long hates that Trump has made the method of protest the point of contention. He thinks the national anthem is the most effective way players can draw attention to social injustice in their communities, but he’s never felt comfortable taking a knee because of the work he’s done with veterans. After Trump said that team owners should fire any player who kneels, a lot of people tweeted at Long telling him it was now his duty to do so.

“A lot of people use the knee as though it were some barometer for how much you care about these issues,” Long says. “I could take a knee and not do a thing off the field — and I’m not alluding to anybody doing this, I’m just saying — and it would be worthless. And what’s me taking a knee in response to Trump? That’s not what this is about. He can’t make me kneel or stand.”

Long picks up Waylon and gives him a raspberry on his stomach, then goes to find a shirt that doesn’t have a picture of the band The Highwaymen on it. He comes back out wearing a corduroy button-down that Megan bought him yesterday. He almost walks out the door with the tag still on.

On Wednesday night, after his speech, Long spends time with the Summer Search kids in the cafeteria. He takes pictures, posts a video to his Instagram story, and then does the requisite press conference before thanking McKinney, the director of the program. On the drive home, he talks about how jazzed he is that he got to meet some kids his donations will benefit.

“Before somebody’s president, or a hero in society, or somebody who invents something, they were sitting in a classroom,” he says. “You have no fucking clue who that person’s gonna be, who sets that whole thing in motion that alters the path of a city. Programs like this tell kids, ‘You matter. You fuckin’ matter, man.’”

I ask Long if he liked high school, and instead of answering, he asks me if I liked high school. He keeps flipping the script like this — who would I profile if I could pick five people to write about? What’s been my biggest mistake in an article? What’s been my most disastrous tweet? (All of them, I tell him.) He might be testing the waters; he’s mentioned that he might want to have a podcast, or try writing, once he retires.

He’d be good at getting people to talk; I’m five minutes into a story about the time I almost got suspended before I remember he's supposed to be telling me things like this. I ask him the question again.

No, he says after a beat, he didn’t especially like high school. He thinks he squandered it. He loves his friends from Charlottesville, but he wonders what his life would’ve been like if he hadn't gone to college in the same town he grew up in. He’s grateful for football, but wonders what it would’ve been like to find a passion off the field, something that didn't require Toradol shots to the ankle. That wouldn’t be over before he’s 35. That he’d be sure could fill the void. He never graduated from UVA and still wants to get his degree. He wishes he could've lived two different lives at once.

“I don’t know if you were like this,” he says quietly, staring ahead. “But when I turned 18, I got so sad. I was like, man, I just want it all to slow down. I kept thinking how I’d be 30 soon, how we're running out of time. I’m always thinking 12 years ahead.”

Long is motivated by an adolescent invincibility and stubbornness, but guided by an old soul’s understanding that life is short. He’s at once the teenager still doing “dumb shit,” and a grown man looking 12, 20, 50 years into the future.

It’s this duality that allows him to believe two things can be true at once. He's convinced he can still have his best season yet, but knows time is working against him. He knows about the risks of CTE and the fragility of bones and tendons, but puts his brain and joints on the line each week. He’s squirmy in the spotlight, but knows he needs it to make the biggest difference he can.

“You’re looking to catch him in the lie. And you won’t. It’s just like, why bother?” — Scott Van Pelt

The path of least resistance for Long would’ve been to retire after winning a Super Bowl and shut the hell up. Instead, he signed with a new team and dove into the thorniest political issues facing the league. And now he's doing it for free, at potentially huge physical cost.

“Charity is one of the coolest parts of being a football player,” Long had said on night before the launch of Pledge 10. “I’m really not bullshitting you, I really do care about what we do. I would totally resent the idea that I just do this shit for no reason.”

He sounded desperate to make me believe him; I could almost see his brain spinning. I asked him if he’s ever anxious.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am. And I’m trying to control the narrative in a positive way. I want to make sure I’m not misunderstood. I hate being misunderstood.”

Long has this recurring dream where he’s going to jail for life. Because no matter how hard he tries, the narrative is out of his control. Thanks to social media, he hears people who accuse him of having a white savior complex, or of being an entitled millionaire trying to stay relevant. He can see when people call him a libtard, a snowflake, unpatriotic, tell him to stick to sports. It drives him nuts when people insult his intelligence, and it’s the reason he fires back — the way he did when people criticized him for not going to the White House after the Super Bowl. Or the way he will in a few days when a conservative columnist (whose recent columns include “Hollywood has too little masculinity, not too much”) for the Bucks County Courier Times writes that Long “is a good example of the odious trend of virtue signaling.”

There will always be naysayers, so what can he do? Find a place — both on and off the field — where he can be useful, try his hardest to do what he believes is the right thing, and hope to cement a legacy he’s proud of.

“You can’t believe this guy is as good as he is,” ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt says. He’s admires Long and gave $10,000 to Pledge 10. “You’re looking for reasons for him not to be great, or good, or with his heart in the right place. You’re looking to catch him in the lie. And you won’t. It’s just like, why bother? Why not just accept that this is someone whose heart really is where it appears to be, and just be happy that exists? As opposed to trying to figure out how, or being an accountant for ways he could better. What a waste of time.”

Long’s mother says something similar.

“It almost sounds like a Disney movie,” Diane tells me. “It’s like he’s a weird, dark Disney movie. Dark because the subjects are more serious, but really, he’s just a good soul trying to do good.”

Having successfully navigated back from the high school, Long pulls up to the parking garage of his building and turns his car off in the middle of the road. I’m confused at first, but then realize the fob that opens the gate is attached to his keys. Which means he has to take them out of the ignition. He does, then waves them in front of the security pad to open the door.

“Chris,” I say, “There’s gotta be an easier way to do this.”

“Yeah,” he says grinning. “I know.”

Then he puts the key in the ignition, turns the car back on, and floors it up the ramp.

[ellanainthetardis]

Hey after yesterday's prompt, I wonder if you would consider writing something where Finnick sees Effie in her underwear and how the situation would be totally different. Haymitch's reaction probably as well. :D

Here you go! Some steamy crack to start the week! [x]

Aphrodisiacs

Haymitch watched the boy movehis rook with a quiet sigh of despair. He had been trying to teach Finnick howto be a decent chess-player for two solid years now but the kid wasn’t anatural at it. Four’s victor wasn’t as hopeless at the game as his escort wasbut it was a close thing.

“Not good?” Finnick winced.

“Think it through.” Haymitchrebuked, making a grab for his glass only to realize it was empty. He hauledhimself off the couch and made his way to the liquor cart in the corner of thepenthouse’s living-room, sparing a quick glance for the city lights spillingfrom the bay window. Even in the middle of the night, the Capitol’s sky waspolluted by neon beams and flashing lights. “You’ve got to anticipate youropponent’s next move, boy.”

He poured himself some whiskey,not offering the eighteen year-old kid a refill because he didn’t really fancygetting scolded by Mags in the morning.

“I’m trying.” Finnick grumbled,taking his rook back to its original place to study the chessboard.

Haymitch rubbed his face andglanced at the clock, not surprised to find it was well past one in themorning. On the muted TV, the live feed of the arena was still going strong. Caesar’sface was in the bottom left corner as he commented the action, tangible proofin Haymitch’s opinion that they expected the Sixty-ninth Hunger Games to get avictor tonight. Caesar only appeared at night if the Gamemakers were suresomething interesting would happen. Two and Three still had all their tributesand the Career pack was currently hunting the boy from Six. Once they wouldhave taken him down, Haymitch figured it would be a second bloodbath, the kindof finale the Capitol loved.

The elevator chimed not longafter he had taken back his seat and Finnick had finally decided to move hisknight instead. Bold move. Stupid but bold. The trap was obvious and clumsy toHaymitch’s eyes but the fact that the kid was trying to set traps at all wasalready improvement.

“Haymitch?” Effie’s shrill voicecalled from the hallway, loud enough to wake the dead.

He rolled his eyes. What if hehad been asleep? Would she just have come storming in like a banshee and wokenhim up? Who was he kidding? Of course,she would have.

“Still kicking!” he shouted backbecause she had been reluctant to leave him to his own devices as if he were a child who needed a babysitter and nota grown man. “And what do you know! The Center’s still standing!”

He didn’t get an answer to thatvery clever retort. Finnick was watching him with a small grin, his green eyessparkling in amusement even as he tossed a few glances over his shoulder,waiting for Twelve’s escort to appear. She never did so Haymitch figured shehad gone to bed.

A whole night of partying withher silly friends for whoever’s birthday… She was probably exhausted.

He snorted.

Finnick lifted his eyebrows in asilent question that he waved away. With Effie Trinket, some things were betterleft unexplained.

They didn’t talk much during thenext minutes, Haymitch patiently lured Finnick in the web he had startedweaving since his very first move while avoiding his trap, making the boy sighin irritation. He was about to call checkmate when he heard the clicking ofheels in the corridor…

“Oh, Haymitch…” Effie sing-sang. “I have a surprise for you…”

He knew that tone and he guessed something terrible was about tohappen seconds before she appeared on the living-room’s threshold in all theglory of a pink and black corset bodice complete with ribbon suspenders,stockings and ridiculously high heels.

Finnick gaped.  And stared.

Haymitch bolted out of thearmchair and to her before he could think it through, confused by her own lackof reaction. She was just standing there, staring back, not making any move tocover herself or retreat to the safety of the corridor…

Now, let’s be honest, that wasthe kind of surprises he would have lovedif he had been alone.

The way the kid’s gaze wasroaming on her though? He didn’t love that so much. And he loved it even lessknowing Finnick had had a crush on her forever and that he would probably havevery wet dream that night.

“You mind?” he spat at the boy,trying to shield her with his body, shoving her back toward the corridor.

She was still strangely unresponsiveand it wasn’t until he took a good look at her that he realized why.

She was torched.

She reeked of tequila, her eyeswere glassy and she wasn’t so steady on her legs. She grabbed his arms with ahurt look on her face.

“Don’t you like my surprise?”she whined, her lips wobbling.

That was a drunk Effie for you.She went from complete happiness to total despair in the remarkable space oftwo seconds.

“You get that Finnick’s here,yeah?” he growled. “You remember I told you we were gonna play chess tonight?You need glasses or what?”

She blinked and peered over hisshoulder. “Oh… Yes, he is. How rude of me. Hello, Finnick, dear!”

Finnick was still speechless andcould only wave at her.

Haymitch spared him a glare.“You’re gonna pick that jaw off the floor any time soon, boy?”

Four’s victor blinked, clearedhis throat and finally realized whyhe shouldn’t be staring. The kid flushed bright red and looked around until hiseyes fell on the jacket Haymitch had discarded earlier. He grabbed it andcrossed the distance to hand it to Twelve’s victor. “Here.”

Haymitch snatched it from hishand and wrapped it around Effie’s body but it didn’t do much to hide… Well…Everything was pretty much on display. He supposed it was a small mercy she waswearing lingerie at all, she could have come barging in naked.

“You should pay attention tome.” Effie pouted, tossing her arms around his neck. “I want you to payattention to me.”

“Oh, I’m paying attention.” hescoffed. “Everyone’s paying attention.”

“Is Finnick leaving soon?” shepurred, nuzzling his check before playfully biting down on his earlobe. “I wantyou to play with me now. Not chessthough. Chess is boring. I want fun. I want…”

“Yeah.” he cut her off beforeshe could say something they would never be able to take back. He wasn’t surehow he was going to keep hearty denials that he wasn’t sleeping with her after that. The tips of his ears were red –and so was the back of his neck, he was pretty sure.

Finnick was equally crimson.“I’m going to go now.”

“She’s drunk.” he tried toargue. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“Sure.” the boy grinned but itturned to a small wince when Effie tangled a hand in Haymitch’s hair andforced  his head to the side to lick hisneck all the way up.

Haymitch almost choked because…“How many fucking bottles did youdrink?”

“A lot.” she hummed. “And there were those cocktails too… They aresupposed to get you… In the mood. Idrank a lot of those.”

“No kidding.” he deadpanned.

“Alright, I’m off.” Finnickinsisted, jamming the elevator button with his finger. He actually looked a bitspooked now, like he didn’t trust Effie not to have his way with Haymitch withhim standing right there and Haymitch wasn’t sure he was wrong to worry.

He waited until the boy was goneto push her away from him. She whined and immediately tried to sneak closeragain.

“Those cocktails… What the fuck are they?” he frowned.

“Aphrodisiacs.” she hummed. “Ididn’t really want them but Dawn kept buying them for me and it would have beenrude not to drink them. I liked the tequila shots better.”

“Dawn.” he repeated. “Who’sDawn?”

“A girl I used to hook up with.”she dismissed, shrugging off his jacket. And fuck but that corset bodice thing looked good on her. Now that Finnick was gone and he was finally able toappreciate it… His pants suddenly felt tight. “I think she really wanted meto go home with her.” she continued, her fingers traveling down his chest andthen back up. When she started toying with the buttons of his shirt, he didn’tstop her. “I really wanted you to fuck me though.”

“She drugged you?” he growled – because woman or not, there would behell to pay about that.

She stopped unbuttoning hisshirt to look up at him with a confused look, clearly trying to understand thequestion. “Do not be preposterous.” She slurred that last word slowly anduncertainly. “It is just a cocktail. Perfectly harmless. The tequila is thereal devil.”

She managed to get his shirtopen with a content sigh and pushed it off his shoulders, apparently not caringit remained stuck around his arms since he was still holding her at a safedistance. Well, probably not that safe given that her nails were scratching hisnipple.

“Effie.” he grumbled, trying tohold her further away but she whined and bit down on her bottom lip in aridiculously endearing pout. “You get you just made a pass at me in front of Finnick, yeah? You just stood therehalf-naked in front of the boy and you didn’t even care. Don’t tell me you’re in your right mind.”

She blinked and blinked again,looking upset now. “It is not myfault.”

“Didn’t say it was…” he cuthimself off and shook his head. “Okay. Bed. You need to sleep this off.”

“Bed, yes.” she beamed, suddenly happy again.

He hated when she was wasted.It was much easier being the one completely drunk than being the one takingcare of them.

“Your bed.” he clarified.

“Of course.” she chuckled andthen wrinkled her nose. “Your room is a mess.”

“I’m not fucking you when you’re like this.” he insisted. He stoppedfighting to keep her at bay but just because it was easier to steer her in thedirection of her bedroom when she was snuggled close against him.

“But I thought you would likeit.” she complained, looking down at herself and running her hand on thefabric.

“Oh, I like it” he muttered.“Bet the boy liked it too. The little shitcouldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“Language.” She clucked hertongue but she did sound a little put out. She wrapped her arms around his neckagain, making it hard for him to maneuver. He grabbed her waist and she justhopped on like it was perfectly fine for her to lock her legs around his hipson a whim. Her giggles were loud in his ear. “See? I knew you wanted me.”

“When don’t I?” he snorted,hoping she wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning. Not that he would lether forget the main events though. He would take great delight in making fun ofher and embarrassing her.

He managed to get to her roomand tried to drop her on the bed but she refused to let go of him. She was likean octopus and the things her mouth was doing to his neck shouldn’t have beenallowed because it made it really hard to think.Fuck, but she had him throbbing forher and she hadn’t even properly touched him yet.

“What’s in those aphrodisiaccocktails?” he grumbled.

“Ginger and ale and a lightrecreational drug.” she hummed. “It is all quiteharmless. They are pink with golden specks. Very pretty.”  

“Can’t believe you would bestupid enough to drink that.” he snapped,sitting down on the bed because it was the only way he could think of gettingher off him. She didn’t move out of his lap though. She seemed content to rubherself on him. He clenched his jaw but let her because… Well, fuck, he didn’t have a good reason. He knewshe wasn’t really herself and it was wrong but she was begging him and it wasn’t like they were strangers who had neverslept together before. Besides, she looked like she was in heat and he kind ofhoped if she got it out of her system she would be… a little less high. “Fuck, Effie…”

He groaned and dropped hisforehead on her shoulder because the rhythm she had going… It was good. He was going to come in his pantslike a teenager but it was all so good.

It clearly wasn’t working outthat well for her though because she sneaked a hand between their bodies.

She was touching herself, itwasn’t taking advantage if she was the one doing it… He kept telling himselfthat, not sure it was right, not sure it was okay… He was pretty sure theywould have an explanation the next day anyway so…

“I did not want to sleep withDawn.” she insisted, a little short of breath. “I am strictly into penisesthose days. Yours to be specific.” She laughed. “Isn’t it funny? I am Haymitchoriented…”

“Shit.” he spat and he just… He gave up.  He flopped on his back and he watched herhump him and get herself closer and closer to the climax she wanted, onlybatting her hands away when she tried to open his pants. She came with a sharplittle cry and he knew, just at the sound, that it wasn’t a good orgasm but shedropped on his chest anyway and nestled there like a content cat, leaving himto close his eyes and clench his jaw because of the hard-on nothing wasstimulating anymore. It took a very longtime before his erection disappeared and it wasn’t helped in anyway by thewoman napping on his body.

He found himself petting thepink wig, fighting off sleep. He tried to move her at some point but shestarted grumbling and holding him tighter and he decided it was safer to haveher asleep on top of him rather than in that sort of mood again so he just… drifted off.

He woke up to pained groans anda series of muttered obscenities he wasn’t aware she knew. Her familiar weightwas still on top of him but they had shifted at some point and now most of herlower body was framed by his spread legs – not his most glorious position. Shehad been using his stomach as a pillow and she had her face pressed against thescar on his side – not in a let me wake youup with sex way either.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he teased.“Nasty headache?”

She groaned again and tried tocurl up which ended up with her knees propped on his right one and her torsoweighting down on parts of him that liked her to be pressed upon them. She was a little heavy for such a delicate area though and he pulled herup higher. She immediately hid her face in the crook of his neck and it tookhim a second to realize her problem was the light spilling from the windowbecause nobody had bothered pulling the curtains closed.

“Haymitch, there is an elephantpounding on my head.” she whined. “Make it stop.”

“Sorry, no can’t do. That’s whathappens to naughty girls who take drugs.” he mocked, not bothering to hide hisirritation.

“What are you on about?” shemuttered and then she winced. “Oh, the aphrodisiacs… They are perfectly…” Andthen she stopped and lifted her head, squinting at him because of the sunlight.“Did I truly walk around wearing…”

“Yeah.” he confirmed.

“In front of Finnick?” she insisted, lookingpanicked.

“Oh, yeah.” he shrugged.  “Lickedmy neck too.”

She shut her eyes tight andpressed her face against his shoulder with a disgruntled noise. “I am never drinking again.” She peeked up athim briefly. “Did I come on you?”

“Yeah.” he said but he was a bithesitant, not sure if she was going to be angry about that or not. She hadn’texactly been in any state to consent to anything and he didn’t want to be that asshole.

“You didn’t…” She let her sentence trail off.

“No.” he winced.

“Oh.” she breathed out and thennuzzled his shoulder. “I owe you one then but later if it is alright with you. Right now I feel like dying.”

“You’re not mad, then?” heasked, knowing he should have quitted while he was ahead.

“Mad?” she repeated. “Why wouldI be mad? You took care of me. If either of us should be mad, it shouldprobably be you.”

“I’m mad.” he scowled. “I don’t like you taking drugs. The state youwere in… Anyone could have done anything to you and you’d have probably thanked them too.”

She pursed her lips. “I was not that far gone. Just… uninhibited. My uninhibited self verymuch wants you as it turns out. Poor Dawn was very disappointed.”

“I bet.” he scoffed, coiling ahand around her nape. “Finnickwasn’t, let me tell you.”

“Oh dear.” she groaned againsthis skin. Then she grew very still and she bolted out of the bed and into thebathroom. The door slammed shut mere seconds before he heard the unmistakablesounds of retching.

“Hope you learn your lesson!” hetaunted, comfortable in his hypocrisy. “It’s never fun the next morning!”