#also i think this is the first time we got a “client” whose story parallels shiguang but it isn't a happy ending :o

[protect-namine]

vivian, who sincerely wished for love but was deceived and deceived others, wanting to go to bridon and experience a love without lies

shiguang, shown to be very domestic and caring, go to bridon and their relationship is riddled with lies and secrets (nobody ever tells cheng xiaoshi anything)

meanwhile veifei (veinfei?), initially introduced with a power imbalance in their relationship, has vein hating lies and xia fei being pretty open with their communication, to the point where he even keeps him up to date with his side gig with liu xiao

[dabistits]

in the blood: connecting the backstories

With the arc concluded and what I imagine is pt 1, the pre-AFO bits, of Tomura’s backstory revealed, I thought I’d finally sum up one of the major points of this plot. Scattered throughout the arc were three major backstories—Himiko, Twice, Tomura—that could use some piecing together. It doesn’t seem like they were chosen at random or were primarily subordinated to good timing, and instead were written because they parallel and reinforce certain themes in Tenko’s past.

Here’s my typical disclaimer that these connections may not have been intentional at all, but, y’know. We’ll pretend Horikoshi is a competent writer and etc. etc. Of course, there’s also the question of what conclusion all these narrative threads points us towards, and I’m chronically afraid of making a wrong prediction so I won’t do that on this post lols (it’s also not 100% clear, which I’ll address). Nevertheless, I think it adds significance to consider Tomura’s past with the addition of framing it through the other two backstories, considering what they say about Quirks, society, and the characters’ internal processes about where they fit in the overall scheme of things.

(note: some screenshots below the cut contain mild gore!)

I. Quirk repression

We encounter this for the first time in the MLA arc through Himiko. Although we’re not privy to Himiko’s thoughts during the flashback, Curious makes an assertion that Redestro later repeats: that Quirks can, to some degree, influence a person’s disposition. Transform elicited in Himiko a desire to drink blood (in order to develop a bond of closeness), which was largely viewed as deviant, and she was pressured to suppress not only her impulse, but her Quirk as well. This idea of Quirk=disposition is also repeated with Tomura, who Redestro asserts is only capable of destruction.

Without being told Himiko’s perspective in the flashbacks, we don’t know how her experience with suppressing her desires went, nor whether she experienced any adverse physical effects from doing so. Tomura, however, is clearly stated (by AFO, so it’s worth taking with a grain of salt) to experience unbearable itchiness whenever he represses his urge to destroy, a sensation which only seems to abate when he uses Decay. So for the moment, the message seems quite clear: suppressing one’s Quirk is akin to suppressing one’s self, and even more drastically, there may be physical consequences to doing so.

On the flip side of Quirk repression, then, there’s Quirk liberation. That’s what the Metahuman Liberation Army is going for, of course, but the three characters discussed here also found relief through their Quirks: Himiko in finally shattering her mask, Twice creating his crime gang, and Tenko eliminating that which he hated. Embracing their Quirks is portrayed as a way in which they achieved not only emotional pleasure and fulfillment, but agency as well—an increase in control over their own lives and fates—finally allowing themselves to do what they were “meant” to. This is, supposedly, a move which empowers oneself.

II. Quirk trauma

But that’s not entirely true.

Just as Quirks can be liberating, they're shown to be harmful when used without restraint, turning against their wielder and instilling suffering. Twice’s clones eventually went out of control and began to fight each other for claim to the original, and Tenko’s Quirk awakening killed his entire family. Both experienced trauma involving the people closest to them, Twice being confronted with “his own” betrayal, while Tenko witnessed the deaths of his family at his own hands—in the aftermath, they’re both left completely and utterly alone, abandoned by those they believed they could rely on, with uncertain recollection about how events actually transpired.

Then it’s no coincidence either that Twice’s and Tomura’s chapters focus on arriving at the truth of their traumas. Twice, after having spent an indeterminate length of time trapped in the uncertainty of his own realness, is forced into confronting his fear of disappearing after Skeptic orders his arms broken; in surviving this, he’s able to confirm that he’s the original Twice, once and for all. Tomura is likewise pushed into recalling his repressed memories (let’s assume right now that they’re the real memories) as his last connections to his family—their hands—are destroyed one by one.

It’s through the discovery of this truth after being confronted with their greatest fears or insecurities that they’re able to embrace the full strength of their Quirks, returning to a default, ‘pre-trauma’ state. Twice is able to create doubles of himself once more, and Tomura becomes able to unleash a stronger version of Decay. While Himiko’s case is much less drastic, the new characteristic of Transform also seems to be linked to her reaffirmation of her ‘truth’ as well. Those ‘truths’ may sound positive or negative, motivated most obviously by self-preservation in Himiko’s case, self-actualization(?) in Tomura’s case, or protective instinct in Twice’s.

Personally, I place a lot of (if not most) importance on Twice’s motivation in this arc, because his past and desires most strongly encapsulate the themes we see repeated across all of these backstories:

III. Alienation and belonging

Perhaps the strongest thread that pervades these three stories (and Spinner’s too, which we have less to go on at the moment) is the feeling of alienation. The four of them found themselves constantly rejected by those around them: Spinner due to prejudice, Twice never getting support nor sympathy after being orphaned, and Himiko and Tenko in particular being denied by their own families, both of them compelled to stifle their own desires, whether it be to pursue her instincts or to voice his dreams. They were positioned as outsiders, set apart from everyone else.

That’s why I believe it’s significant that one of the primary purposes of this arc seems to be to bring the LOV more closely together, from Spinner’s questioning and renewed loyalty, to a central conflict of this arc plot being a rescue (among other schemes from the MLA, of course), to giving the LOV a way out of the aimlessness from the beginning of the arc. Of course, past alienation and present cohesiveness also contrast each other as narrative foils, and this is most clearly exemplified in Twice’s chapters because he’s babey, which more extensively linger on his feelings towards his current situation and friends, who he sees as a remedy to the loneliness of his past.

The other characters haven’t offered the same reflection towards the LOV, but it’s not a stretch to say that the group provides them with something that wider society could not. People who accept Himiko’s “normal,” who enable her to pursue her love (for good or ill); who take Spinner seriously despite being a mutant with a “useless” Quirk; and to some degree, even Tomura seems to have achieved what he once wanted. Tenko was a child who made friends with lonely kids, who wanted to be a hero, presumably to save others, but was rejected by his family at every turn and had no one save him at a time when he needed it most. And even though his life as Shimura Tenko is long gone, Tomura currently finds himself as the leader of a group of outcasts who are looking out for him, fighting through a small army to save one of their own. The irony is poetic.

IV. Tragedy or Agency?

Which begs the question: what do we do with this information and how do we interpret these characters? Are they just cruel and unrepentant villains, or should we sympathize with them as people rejected by a prejudiced society? Really, this arc offers room for both readings.

At one end, we have Himiko and Tomura, who view their decisions to become ‘villains’ as liberatory. Whether or not certain painful events in their lives affected their choices seems to matter very little to them, or perhaps those events were even a blessing for leading to the choices they made. They decided to embrace their natures even if those traits were violent, distrusted, and societally shunned, and they do not consider this eventuality as particularly unfortunate. Himiko rejects Curious’ interpretation of her life as pitiable, and Tomura likewise asserts to himself that he’s untroubled by the deaths of his family. They both represent their pasts as not a tragedy.

On the other hand, we have Twice, whose backstory chapter bears the maxim that also appears on the cover page of vol 24, and thus has the privilege of setting the tone for a major portion of this arc: “All it takes is one bad day.” Twice’s backstory (ironically enough) reads uniquely more self-aware than the others’, both about his own decisions, and about the conditions surrounding him (i.e. how other people’s decisions affected him). He was aware of the way others viewed him and how that caused his alienation—best exemplified by how disposable he was at his workplace—and of his reasons for pursuing a “solution” that only dug a deeper hole.

Thus, we have the “one bad day” part of the narrative. Twice, who was orphaned early on and isolated from his peers, got into a motorcycle accident with one of his firm’s clients. His boss hits him and fires him, leaving Twice aimless until he comes up with the idea to Double himself. Twice’s backstory interprets "one bad day” as a truism about instability, particularly in a society which appears to have few safety nets and a lot of prejudice—essentially, the chapter posits that one incident of bad luck can put someone on a worse path, especially when people act in their own interest instead of in sympathy or aid. Okay. See where this is going?

We’re presented with two narratives here: that ‘bad paths’ are either predetermined by an individual’s disposition and are liberating to embrace, or they are often the result of an individual’s circumstances and influenced by other people. Nature versus nurture. The arc does not definitively come down on either side, so I’ll stick to observations and limit on drawing conclusions.

Tenko’s backstory also fixates on a day. The turning point in his life was the day his parents’ rejection of his aspirations culminated in physical violence from his father, setting off the chain of events that led to Decay’s awakening and killing his family; in the aftermath, he was also further alienated in a busy city where no one stopped to help him until he was conveniently ‘found’ by AFO. The “one bad day” lies in the fact that Tenko was entirely salvageable; neither his hatred nor his fractured relationship with his family were conclusive in a five year old’s state of mind, and they both could have been remedied if they had the chance.

So that leaves us with two different takeaways. Can Tenko be thought of as having taken a turn for a better, more self-actualized existence—a not-tragedy—or was it indeed a set of circumstances that should rightfully be considered unfortunate because it was fixable? The resolution of this arc seems to come down pretty firmly on the side of the first interpretation: by embracing his destructive ‘nature,’ Tomura has awakened the full scope of Decay’s power, subdued the Meta Liberation Army, and gained their resources—he’s more influential than ever before, and he’s put himself at an advantageous position to take down hero society. So, clearly his internal monologue must be self-aware, because the narrative is rewarding him for embracing his purpose.

V. The League of Villains and Self-Destruction

But I do have a caveat to add, and it has to do with self-destruction. I’ve talked about Tomura and self-destruction, but that’s not really just a tendency limited to him. It proliferates in most (if not all?) of the LOV members, in more or less obvious ways. Spinner’s crisis of self-worth and subsequent seclusion was arguably self-destructive, as is Mr. Compress’ tendencies to run away from conflict. These are more metaphorical and without much elaboration yet. On the other hand, for a more literal take, there is Dabi, who burns himself alive whenever he uses his Quirk.

Himiko’s is somewhat a mix of both figurative and literal. Transform lets her take on someone else’s appearance, and she has an obsession with ‘becoming’ her objects of affection; it follows that if taken to the extreme and if she’s successful in 'becoming,’ she erases her own identity in the process. It’s no different than the ‘mask’ she assumed until middle school; she trades one mask for another, more appealing one, and her own ‘self’ is what gets destroyed. 

Then there’s Twice. Double first started off as something that gave him comfort when he found himself utterly alone, but from there only lead to even more mistakes. Using his doubles to commit crimes as an ‘easy out,’ every decision Twice made thereafter piled on to conclude in his doubles’ murderfest. What began as comfort became the conduit for his own, literal, self-destruction as his doubles turned on each other.

Similarly, by the end of 239, Tomura has fully unleashed Decay. Like the first time he used it, he found it liberating, a release for all the emotions he experienced and repressed. Much like the rest who embraced their Quirks, it was a source of pleasure and comfort, but not without consequences: as shown by the damage one to his right arm, his body can’t sustain that kind of use. Decay too much, and there will be blowback in the form of starting to injure himself. It is, again, a form of literal self-destruction.

VI. To conclude:

The arc ends on a firm note about Tomura’s growth, and the direction thereof, concluding that Quirks affect innate drives which our antagonists have accepted and been rewarded for; however it follows on the heels of contradicting points about how that very acceptance and overindulgence ends in self-destruction. Our antagonists have been strongly linked together via backstory, highlighting the similar sources of conflict they’ve experienced. Familial strife, instinctive drives, the price of overindulgence, and the indifference of society are all elements that deeply influenced these characters, and their stories are continuations of how they conceptualize these elements with respect to their own senses of self. Again, assuming that we’re dealing with a competent writer, we can assume that these themes will be revisited as the story continues; namely, addressing to what degree a Quirk determines a person’s future (ideally, there should be a convergence of the messages brought up in this arc with those brought up with Shinsou and Monoma), coming to a resolution about the disputes of personal versus societal responsibility, and deciding how the narrative itself feels and wishes to convey about our antagonists and their struggles.

[jessekeyes12]

Developer Jesse Keyes turns unconventional into bold statement

If there was ever a case of a building perfectly mirroring its developer, it would be One Seventh and Jesse Keyes. Both are angular, ultra-chic, smart and aggressive. Both are also making their emphatic debut on the New York architecture and style worlds.

Built on a 45-degree angle at the juncture of four different streets where Seventh Ave. South meets Varick and Carmine Sts., One Seventh resembles a hulking helm of a slick, futuristic boat or space-age flying machine. Six stories tall with just four units, the corner building shaped in an angular prism has a façade of manganese ironspot brick and Solarban 80 double-paned glass.

 The side of the building on Seventh Ave. South that parallels the rush of autos making their way to Tribeca or the Holland Tunnel has bold racing stripes and competing slabs of vertical windows. On the mellower Carmine St., Juliet balconies face the local cafes, old-time Spanish restaurants and bootleg record stores. One Seventh blends seamlessly with its intersection and has gainied total community board support.

 "No developer would take a chance on this site, which was operated as a gas station since the 1920s and unused for almost a decade," says Keyes, 35, an investor in the swank Goldbar and a partner in La Esquina, one of New York's hippest eateries. "They said it was too small or that the shape wouldn't work. I saw it as an opportunity. We took design risks with this project that architects generally do with museums and public spaces."

 Designed by Rogers Marvel Architects, the same firm recently awarded the Governors Island commission, One Seventh is allegedly the world's first full-floor triangular residence. To make the project work financially, Keyes' development firm REcappartners worked with zoning attorneys Charles Rizzo & Associates to help get a variance to build higher than the allowed three floors. On top of the building, Keyes built a penthouse duplex with two outdoor terraces, both of which lean toward the corner angle.

"The question we had to answer was, how does one live in a triangle," says Keyes, who plays a hand in every design decision. "When I picture who is going to live here, I see an investment banker with an artist inside or an artist with a lot of money. I see the banker sitting totally naked in a chaise longue at the apex of the 45-degree angle, looking out at the cars driving down Seventh Ave., on the phone with his friends, thinking: 'How am I going to own this town tonight?'"

With hardly any marketing, they have two offers for the four units. One from a banker, the other from the son of a Spanish film producer. Prudential Douglas Elliman's Kevin King, a two-year agent who happens to be the long-time maitre d' at Balthazar, heads up sales. The three 1,371-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartments are listed for $1,995,000. The 2,106-square-foot, three-floor penthouse with 961 square feet of outdoor space costs $4.45 million.

"We're waiting till the units are completely finished until we formally sell the apartments," says King. "A finished product will show how unique this project is and assure we get what it's worth."

Jesse Keyes comes from both sides of the tracks. His parents were hippies. His mother, a lesbian, split from his father but stayed in Redwood City, Calif., supporting her two children as a gardener. As Jesse puts it, they lived on the "wrong side of the tracks." Ironically, she tended gardens near Jesse's father's estate in Woodside, Calif.

"Mom was a real hippie, and dad was a pseudo-hippie," says Keyes, who was called "Blanquito," or little white boy by his Pueblo Mexican barrio neighbors. "Half the time I was in my poor Mexican 'hood with my mom and the other half with a swimming pool, Mercedes, Porsches and horses with my dad."

Keyes talks openly about his desire but inability to communicate with his Spanish-speaking neighbors. He talks openly about almost everything, especially his drive to never stop learning or moving.

"There's a point where you grow up in suburbia that you say I'm either going to get stuck in this for the rest of my life or do something fascinating or interesting," he says. "I was visiting a friend in Mexico City when I was 17 years old. We were in his family's penthouse and I was looking over the slums of the city, whose people needed major help at the time. I thought to myself, we as capitalists need to do better for these people. It was then that I knew I needed to focus on this for the rest of my life."

For Keyes, that meant Princeton, a year in Spain to learn the language, a Fulbright Fellowship and a master's in architecture in Catalonia, a Kinne Fellowship in the Dominican Republic, a job with the prestigious Boston Consultant Group, a master's in real estate from Columbia University, a doctoral candidacy and teaching fellow at Rutgers University in Urban Planning, and roles in the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns.

"My father is good friends with Gore from St. Albans," says Keyes, whose great-grandfather on his father's side was Democratic Senator Morris Sheppard from Texas who championed Prohibition and women's rights. "My goal was eventually to work in Housing and Urban Development [HUD]. After those two losses, I planned to teach and research through my 30s. But academia, especially in our current political climate, was not as fulfilling as I thought. Building strong architectural projects is a way to make my mark and some money. Eventually, I will get back into affordable housing and giving back in some way."

Keyes' next project is already a major coup for him and New York. Working with Habita, a Mexican group known globally for designing and operating some of the world's chicest boutique hotels, Keyes will open a Mexican-themed, mixed-use hotel and condo project in a location below Houston St. on the East Side. Mexican architect Enrique Norton, who designed One York on Canal St. in New York and the Guggenheim in Guatemala, is an equity partner in the project.

"I want to make a unique statement and be part of the next big place," says Keyes, whose groomed beard and middle-parted hair give him the look of Al Pacino in "Serpico." "You hope it doesn't become something like what happened in the Meatpacking District, which had little thought and planning and became oversaturated with the same product, bars and restaurants. There should be mixed use there. And the Hotel Gansevoort is a mistake. I don't know how they got that built."

Slightly controlling, obsessive about details, and intellectually strategic, Keyes even wrote the copy for the One Seventh marketing materials. (I haven't met a developer yet who does that.) He prefers to focus on one project at a time as opposed to stretching himself thin and losing touch with the day-to-day decisions that these high-design projects demand.

"Scalability will be hard because for each project I'm looking for a specific art and message," says Keyes. "In any case, when you get bigger you lose control over certain levers, and I don't want that to happen."

Still, according to Thaddeus Briner, the architect for One Seventh, formerly of Rogers Marvel (and I.M. Pei's firm) and now on his own, Keyes is a very good client. "This was a dream project," says Briner. "It combined a really challenging site with an extremely progressive client. Those don't come along very often."

Resource :   https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/developer-jesse-keyes-turns-unconventional-bold-statement-article-1.339485

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

Fortune Favors the Wicked. By Theresa Romain. New York: Zebra Books, 2016.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Genre: historical romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Royal Rewards #1

Summary:  As a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, Benedict Frost had the respect of every man on board—and the adoration of the women in every port. When injury ends his naval career, the silver-tongued libertine can hardly stomach the boredom. Not after everything—and everyone—he’s experienced. Good thing a new adventure has just fallen into his lap…

When courtesan Charlotte Perry learns the Royal Mint is offering a reward for finding a cache of stolen gold coins, she seizes the chance to build a new life for herself. As the treasure hunt begins, she realizes her tenacity is matched only by Benedict’s—and that sometimes adversaries can make the best allies. But when the search for treasure becomes a discovery of pleasure, they’ll be forced to decide if they can sacrifice the lives they’ve always dreamed of for a love they’ve never known…

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: violence, blood, sexual content, domestic violence

Overview: Another read from Courtney Milan’s recommendations page (I’ve been doing a lot of these lately). To be honest, I didn’t have any strong feelings going into this book; I was expecting some kind of rivals to lovers situation, perhaps some thrilling tale of a courtesan running from a jaded past, and while there was a little of that, I was pleasantly surprised by the direction this story actually took. Rather than being a fierce competition where emotions get in the way of each character’s goals, Fortune Favors the Wicked is more a tale about balancing independence with one’s connection to others. While some might be disappointed by that, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and though there were some things I wished Romain had done to enhance the emotional impact of her story, I think there was enough complexity in this novel to keep me interested in seeing more of Romain’s work.

Writing: Romain’s prose is fairly straight-forward without a lot of embellishments. There’s a nice image here and there, but overall, it’s the kind that can be taken in quickly. There was something about her prose style that gave me the impression of disconnectedness; while she depicts the events in her narrative well and makes her characters complex and compelling, I also got the sense that characters didn’t give into emotion and were overall very restrained. This doesn’t mean that her characters don’t have emotions - Romain notes moments when Charlotte stiffens or grips Benedict’s arm in a certain way, but these moments are breezed through quickly and not much is made of them, suggesting (to me) that the emotional impact of something isn’t as noteworthy as the thing itself.

I do think, however, that Romain did an excellent job of writing the relationship between Charlotte and her 10 year old daughter, Maggie. Maggie believes herself to be the legitimate daughter of Charlotte’s deceased sister, but Charlotte has been posing as Maggie’s aunt in order to give her the best chance of being accepted by society. I found Romain’s depiction of Charlotte’s maternal longing to be very well done; I could sense the restraint that Charlotte felt, as well as the difficulty in trying to connect with her daughter, but not quite knowing how after being absent for most of her life. I think those moments were the strongest emotional scenes in the book, and I appreciated the way Romain depicted Charlotte’s struggle using Benedict as a kind of confidant.

Plot: The main action of this book revolves around a treasure hunt of sorts. A hefty sum of gold coins have been stolen from the Royal Mint, and their presence has been traced to a small town called Strawfield, where Charlotte grew up. A number of hopeful “treasure hunters” have descended upon the town, but Charlotte has an edge in that she knows the people and the terrain. At the same time, Charlotte tries to keep her Strawfield life and her London life separate. Being in Strawfield means that she puts a lot of people at risk; a former client has become embittered because Charlotte has left him, so to force her back into his power, he threatens to expose her life as a courtesan to the entire town - a scandal that is sure to affect her parents (who make a meager living as a vicar and translator of ancient Greek) and her daughter, Maggie.

Meanwhile, Benedict has also arrived in Strawfield in search of the treasure, in part motivated by the promise of an adventure, but also by his desire to provide for his sister. As a former sailor, he only receives half a salary and a small pension, so he doesn’t have much to offer in terms of supporting his family. Making things more pressing, his sister is weeks away from turning 21, the age at which her aunt and uncle are to turn her out of their home and cease providing for her (according to an agreement Benedict made with them after the death of his parents).

I really liked the way these plots paralleled one another. Both Benedict and Charlotte were motivated by their care for others - Benedict by his sister, Charlotte by her daughter - and I think this kind of selfless love made for an interesting contrast with the more selfish desires of seeking adventure. I also liked that Benedict struggled with being absent from his sister’s life just as Charlotte struggled with being absent from her daughter’s life - it gave the two characters something in common, other than their passion for one another. At the same time, I also liked the way Charlotte’s status as a kind of object/treasure in the eyes of her clients (she’s called “La Perle” by those who know her as a courtesan - a name that reflects such objectification and is a literal treasure) paralleled the treasure hunt. A former client is literally tracking her down the way Charlotte tracks down the Royal Mint coins, and I appreciated the subtle symbolism that Romain put into these plot lines.

I do wish, however, that a sense of urgency was infused into these narrative threads. Because of Romain’s prose style, I didn’t get the sense that much was at stake for these characters, even though the circumstances themselves certainly put a lot of people at risk.

Characters:  The summary of this book is a little misleading; though the hero does in fact have an ��injury” and is loathe to stay confined in one place, and the heroine is looking to build a “new life for herself,” the characters are so much more complex than that.

Benedict, our hero, is likable in that he’s not as self-indulgent as the summary would suggest. Though he does fear being confined by a metaphorical “cage,” he isn’t a slave to his impulses, and he frequently prioritizes the thoughts and feelings of others above his own. He accepts Charlotte for who she is and does not think less of her for being a courtesan, and he even tries to help her connect with Maggie and avoid her former client, though there is nothing that would incentivize him to do so. I was relieved that he wasn’t written as a stereotypical gruff loner or womanizing jerk - I’ve become more intolerant of those archetypes lately, and was pleasantly surprised that Benedict was written as a good human being from the start. Moreover, Benedict is not just “inured” - he’s blind and navigates the world using a cane. At first, I was a bit worried that Benedict’s blindness would be fetishized or that he would be portrayed as having some extra-sensory abilities to overcome his disability, but to my surprise, his blindness was never used as some kind of erotic component in intimate scenes, and though Benedict does have some uncanny listening skills, I don’t think they were super-human.

Charlotte was also a compelling protagonist in that she was constantly thinking of the well-being of others without diminishing her own self-worth in the process. She never apologizes for being a courtesan and making her own way in the world, she only regrets that her lifestyle would bring hardship on her family due to society’s prejudices. I liked that she was able to take control of a situation and make things work to her advantage, and though she had some real emotional pain from being separated from her daughter, she never seemed to be bogged down by self-esteem issues or worthlessness.

The supporting characters were also well-written in their complexity. Maggie is a solitary child whose social awkwardness is balanced by her sweet relationship with the family dog. Charlotte’s father, a vicar, frequently has to confront his mistakes regarding his treatment of his daughter, and Charlotte’s mother, a translator of ancient Greek, is flawed in her single-minded obsession with the classics. I even felt that Selwyn, Charlotte’s former lover and father to Maggie, was complex in that he was self-interested without being cruel, contrasting nicely with the cruelty of Charlotte’s former client, Randolph, who was determined to control her no matter the cost.

Romance: Despite the characters on their own being compelling and interesting, I could not see the relationship between Charlotte and Benedict as  more than a close friendship. This book is marketed as a “game of seduction,” but there’s very little seducing, with emphasis instead being placed on mutual admiration and respect. Benedict is very kind and supportive of Charlotte, and Charlotte seems to admire the way Benedict has made his own way in the world as a blind man. While I liked that their relationship was based on something more than just appearance or lust, there was also very little passion, and I felt that we had to be told that the characters were falling for one another, rather than being shown it. The characters didn’t seem to be very emotionally vulnerable with each other, nor did I get the sense that they enriched each other’s emotional lives for the better. Benedict’s feelings of anxiety over being “caged” are barely present in the novel, so it doesn’t interfere with his relationship with Charlotte until close to the end; moreover, not much was made of the fact that Benedict would lose his pension/salary if he marries, since being a Naval Knight requires him to live at Windsor Castle and remain single. I would have liked to see more pressure put on these barriers to their romance, but even more than that, I would have liked to see the characters help one another overcome their flaws or challenge each other to grow. While there was a little of that in the way Benedict helped Charlotte with Maggie, I think Romain’s reluctance to more completely indulge in the emotional aspects of her story (as well as her seeming reluctance to make the sex scenes truly passionate) prevented me from seeing sparks between our two leads.

Recommendations: I would recommend this book if you’re interested in historical romance (especially early 19th century/post-Napoleonic era), treasure hunts, mother-daughter relationships, and disabled protagonists.

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Ready for lift-off

Espionage thriller Summer of Rockets is the first screen work from acclaimed writer/director Stephen Poliakoff to draw on his own life, set in 1958 at the height of the Cold War. He and executive producer Helen Flint talk to DQ about merging fact and fiction.

As a writer and director for the screen over the past four decades, Stephen Poliakoff has been behind work that has amassed numerous Bafta, Emmy, Golden Globe and Peabody awards. The playwright, who learned his craft in the theatre, counts series and films such as Perfect Strangers, The Lost Prince, Friends & Crocodiles, Gideon’s Daughter, Joe’s Palace and Capturing Mary, as well as recent dramas Dancing on the Edge and Close to the Enemy, among his extensive credits.

Yet for all his fascination with the past – among many examples, Dancing on the Edge trails a black jazz group in 1930s London and Close to the Enemy is set in the aftermath of the Second World War – his latest series is the first to draw on his own family and life experiences.

Written and directed by Poliakoff, Summer of Rockets is a semi-autobiographical drama set during 1958, a year that marked the height of the Cold War as fear and suspicion clashed with the start of the mobile revolution and the Space Race. It was also the last time debutants were presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace and the year of the Notting Hill riots in West London.

Stephen Poliakoff, writer and director of Summer of Rockets, pictured during filming

Poliakoff says the fact it is partly based on his own life marks Summer of Rockets out as “significantly different” from anything he’s done for the screen before.

“My first real memories are from this time – I was five in 1958 – so I could feel, even as a small child, the apprehension in the air, the feel of nuclear war,” he says. “The Russians were the enemy and yet I was half-Russian, so that made me feel an extraordinary sense isolation as a child. I was also sent to boarding school, as we see in the story, and was the only Jewish boy there. That was why I was drawn to this time.

“There’s a lot of resonance for us now, as Russia again seems to be our enemy and there is also unfortunately, tragically, anti-Semitism in Europe and it’s coming back to the UK. Well, it never goes away. But above all, it was a sense of the absolute epicentre of the Cold War; the fact nobody could be trusted, especially if they were foreigners.”

Another parallel between that period and today, he notes, is the “humiliation” of the Suez Crisis in 1958, which left Britain “a laughing stock” on the world stage. “Things have happened since I’ve written the piece and we’ve become a laughing stock for very different reasons, with people harking back to a sense of our past glories, which also plays a part in the story,” Poliakoff says. “This is not a story about Brexit or a metaphor for it, but nevertheless there are resonances in the piece.”

Toby Stephens (Black Sails) stars as Samuel Petrukhin, a Russian Jewish émigré modelled on Poliakoff’s father Alexander, an inventor and designer of hearing aids, whose clients include former UK prime minister Winston Churchill. The series also focuses on Samuel’s wife, Miriam (Lucy Cohu), and their children, Hannah (Lily Sacofsky) and Sasha (Toby Woolf). In the show, having developed a new paging system for hospitals, Samuel is is approached by the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5 to demonstrate his work.

Set in 1958, the series stars Toby Stephens as Samuel, who is based on Poliakoff’s father

However, it’s not his inventions the agency (led by Mark Bonnar’s mysterious Field) is interested in but his fledging friendship with MP Richard Shaw (Linus Roache) and his wife Kathleen (Keeley Hawes), who also introduce him to Lord Arthur Wellington (Timothy Spall). As Samuel’s life becomes intertwined with his mission, he is left to question how far he is willing to let things unravel for his cause and who he can trust.

It was Poliakoff’s discovery that his father had been suspected of bugging Churchill’s hearing aid, a revelation he first heard when a journalist contacted him about newly released government papers in 2007, that sparked the story behind Summer of Rockets,

“It took me a long time to think about writing it because it meant revisiting my youth and a very traumatic time at boarding school,” he says. “I also tend to write slightly away from my immediate family experience because I find it easier to invent like that. But, after quite a considerable while, because the story kept haunting me, I broached it to the BBC.”

His father’s work, he explains, is truthfully reflected in the story by his hearing aids business, the deaf workers he employs in the factory and his invention of the paging system, which he created for St Thomas’ Hospital in London.

“But I always saw that as a jumping-off point for Keeley’s side of the story,” Poliakoff continues. “My father was besotted with everything English; he was a real anglophile. He was a Russian Jew but he wanted to be an English gentleman, so there’s the story of him being involved in this English upper-class family who have their own darkness and trauma hidden away in a magnificent house. They have charm and grace, they entertain people, but this covers a deep unhappiness.

“My father would have loved to have been entertained in such a house, so that was what led me from that jumping-off point for the fictitious side of the story, but it’s based on the sort of things my father loved and was attracted to by English life and aspired to. The story curve shows Samuel learning that he doesn’t want to be the perfect English gentleman.”

Bodyguard and The Durrells star Keeley Hawes plays Samuel’s wife,  Miriam Richard’s wife, Kathleen

Through the first episode, the story is laid bare against the backdrop of rockets being launched and rising anxiety over what might lie ahead, coupled with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that stem from the still-raw fallout of the Second World War. Samuel’s technological achievements also shine a light on how industry was set to move forward rapidly over the next decade.

“When you have six hours of television drama, it’s a big canvas. The joy of longform is that you can build a complex world and you can delve deeper into character than you can in a two-hour movie,” Poliakoff says. “It’s great to try to be ambitious when you’re given that length of screen time.”

Helen Flint, MD of Little Island Productions and Poliakoff’s long-time producing partner, admits the writer’s outlines need very little development as they are often fully formed, “very detailed and very ambitious” by the time she becomes involved.

“The thing is to identify where and how you’re actually going to make it happen,” she says. “Both of us have been around far too long. Therefore, between us and the heads of department, we can work out how to put this on the screen, which is our craft.”

With all of Poliakoff’s work filmed on location, the first task on Summer of Rockets was to find the house belonging to Richard and Kathleen Shaw, which is a constant presence during all six episodes. They eventually settled on Benington Lordship, a grand setting close to Stevenage, 35 miles north of London, which is notable for the Norman keep adjoining the 17th century house and expansive gardens.

Catastrophe’s Mark Bonnar plays the head of MI5

“The other important thing was when to film it, because getting lucky with sunshine in this country is not a given – so the schedule is everything,” Flint says.

Finding London streets that could double for the time period also proved problematic, with the slums of Notting Hill in 1958 far removed from the affluent neighbourhood it is today. Another set piece saw a queue of 1950s cars lined up along The Mall, leading to Buckingham Palace, which was filmed early in the morning to avoid the crowds of tourists usually occupying the area.

“It takes a huge amount of work, more work than anybody would imagine, weeks and weeks, and then huge amounts in post-production just to paint out silly lines and stuff like that,” Flint says of filming in London. “After that, it’s all of the countryside, the driving [scenes] and the minutiae. But because we’ve got a cast that is working all the time, we have to try to jigsaw them all in, which is very complicated at certain points. Once you have those actors, the schedule is dictated by that. Then other problems come to the fore because if they’re not available, you can’t do the locations. London exteriors are the hardest, and then piecing it together is a massive jigsaw.”

In some cases, however, the reality on which some of the series is based was too extreme to be dramatised. Poliakoff decided to tone down scenes where Sasha is at boarding school, as his own experiences at school were too “draconian” to be depicted exactly as he remembered.

Summer of Rockets debuts on BBC2 tomorrow

“When I started writing it, I realised it had to be more interesting and more inventive than the actual thing I experienced, which in reality was relentlessly grim,” he says. “A little bit of that was fine, but I didn’t think an audience would stand for that being repeated in each scene. So, oddly enough, the bit that was closest to reality was the most difficult to write.”

The series sees Poliakoff reunited with Stephens, who starred in his 2001 family reunion drama Perfect Strangers, while this was his first time working with Hawes despite having known her since she was just 19. “She starred in my wife Sandy Welch’s adaptation of Our Mutual Friend 20 years ago,” he recalls of the actor, who has recently starred in Line of Duty, The Durrells and Bodyguard. “I’ve known her for some time and we’ve always wanted to work together. She’s phenomenal in her role, which is a really very juicy role, so I’m thrilled. I think she gives one of her greatest performances.”

Following Summer of Rockets’ launch on UK pubcaster BBC2 tomorrow, all six episodes will be made available on the pubcaster’s VoD platform iPlayer. The drama is distributed internationally by BBC Studios. “‘Bingeable’ is not the prettiest word but, actually, I think my work was born to be binged,” Poliakoff notes. “People over the years have always told me they’ve sat down to watch something like Perfect Strangers, which is only four hours long. They tend to watch the first part and then they’re there four hours later.

“So I very much hope the story has that effect. It does have quite a powerful story that gathers and evolves and changes. It’s great for people to watch it in a linear way or in an immersive way. Either way, I hope people will really get into it.” - Michael Pickard (Drama Quarterly)

[douxreviews]

Veronica Mars - ‘Spring Break Forever’ Review

"Neptune didn't need another private investigator. It needed an enema."

Veronica Mars is a grown-up, and she really wants you to know it.

It seems like just yesterday we were all waxing nostalgic over the return of Neptune High alums, past loves and other familiar faces. The Veronica Mars Kickstarter movie felt like one giant hug for the fans; a thank you for making its existence possible, and for sticking by the series for so long that Rob Thomas had to keep it alive. I loved it for what it was, but I understood that if Mars and co. were to continue past that, it would have to be in a different form. We had the novels in the interim - The Thousand Dollar Tan Line and Mr. Kiss and Tell - which were both good in their own way, but Veronica Mars was made for the screen.

This new iteration of the series is in the perfect format for a mystery orientated show; a heavily serialized burst of episodes on a platform that allows it to be the series it deserves to be. Both Thomas and Kristen Bell have told us this isn’t necessarily the series we want, but one that we need. Whether or not that's true remains up in the air by the close of ‘Spring Break Forever’, the first episode of Veronica Mars since May 2007, but it certainly made one hell of a statement. This isn’t the show we loved; it’s grown up along with its titular character, and the world around her has changed because of it. It’s seedier, darker, and even more complex than it used to be, much like Veronica herself. The episode wastes no time in proving this with quite a bit of cursing (but not too much) and some more R rated content than we're used to - a decapitated head, for instance. It's all a little jarring initially, but it fits so seamlessly into the world that Thomas built that it's difficult to contest any of it.

Our first glimpse of Veronica is a flash-forward to what turns out to be the episode’s final scene. Veronica watches law enforcement comb a ruined crime scene at a seaside motel in Neptune; a familiar sight, minus the wreckage. She laments on her decision to stay in Neptune because she thought it needed her, and she needed it. Somehow, she believes that theory to be proven wrong, and these next 8 episodes will tell us exactly why she's been so defeated.

Back in the present-day, Veronica helps a burned 90’er get revenge on her slimy ex by hitting him back twice as hard; getting even is also a very familiar sight where Veronica is concerned. Ronnie doesn’t exactly break through Karsyn’s entitled attitude, but she does dupe her into paying quite a bit more than her usual fee, which is useful considering Mars Investigations appears to be going through some cash-flow problems, even with two PIs now under the same roof.

Keith doesn’t seem to find it as easy to manipulate gullible clients as Veronica. He’s even taking on a supermarket case that’s paying next to nothing just because he feels like he has to. I felt bad for the Mars patriarch, here. He’s still in pain following the hit and run we saw in the movie, a fact made all the more obvious by the cane he needs to walk. He also seems to be suffering from memory loss, which isn’t an ideal situation for a PI whose job is reliant on remembering the most miniscule of details. Perhaps he should consider handing over the reins to his eagle-eyed daughter.

Whoever takes the lead, both members of the Mars family will need to be at the top of their game following an explosion at a seaside motel during spring break. There’s a whole sequence in the middle of the hour that introduces us to everyone who was there at the time. It’s clearly a pivotal scene, one that demands the viewer’s attention, but without an established character, it runs a bit too long.

Regardless, the impact of the explosion itself is even larger that it seemed initially, with all of the victims’ deaths causing a myriad of complications for those they’ve left behind. Aside from a douchebag frat boy, the blow claims the lives of the fiancée of a congressman’s brother; the son of a woman with ties to a major Mexican cartel leader by the name El Despiadado; and the owner of the motel itself, who is survived by his inquisitive teenage daughter. It’s caring for this young girl that seems to be the reason Veronica becomes so invested in the case, a fact that Veronica doesn’t hesitate to point out as a huge mistake. Time will tell how this bond forms, but it’s clear that Maddy isn’t a world away from another determined teen we met a decade ago.

I think it’ll be interesting to see if the series takes advantage of the parallels between the girl Veronica was, and the woman she is now. She’s still an inherently flawed individual, who has trouble letting people in. Given all the heartbreak and betrayal she’s witnessed in her years in the PI biz, she’s not interested in getting married. We should know that already since it’s one of the first things we heard her say in the pilot – “an absolute”. Sadly, Logan still believes in the idea, and Veronica rejecting his proposal may have some lasting consequences on their already fragile long-distance relationship.

Plus

We got a snazzy new title sequence with a cover of the classic theme song by Chrissie Hynde. I like it.

Big Dick Casablancas is still in town, and campaigning against the party scene that keeps the bars, motels and other low-level joints in business. Nicole, a local business owner played by The Good Place's Kirby Howell Baptiste, is very much against his plans. Veronica liked her instantly, and I think I did as well.

Another great character introduced was Alonzo, played by Clifton Collins Jr.. He works for El Despiadado and he wasn't fazed in the slightest by a head being thrown into his boss' backyard. His assignment to the bombing case can only spell trouble.

Wallace is an 09'er now, with a wife and an adorable son. I'm so happy that he seems happy. Our Wallace deserves the best.

Tina Majorino (Mac) is sitting this series out, which is a shame.

I was gagged at the amount of time Jason Dohring spent half-naked. For the record, if he got down on one knee looking like that, I'd say yes to anything he asked!

Cliff was the one to refer Veronica and Keith to the congressman Daniel Maloof. I forgot how much I adore him.

A few elements introduced in the novels carry over into the series: Marcia Langdon, the police chief who ran against Dan Lamb in Mr. Kiss and Tell is one. Veronica's new dog Pony is another. I'm glad these little developments weren't ignored so that they could remain canon.

He Said, She Said

Veronica: "I spent my first 19 years trying to escape my hometown of Neptune. Made it out, then, after a decade away, decided Neptune needed me, and I needed it. I was wrong on both counts."

Karsyn: "Tell me we're recording this." Veronica: ""We're recording this" is my middle name."

Veronica: "There is no George Bailey moment at the end of this story, Dad. When we go belly up, no one's taking up a collection for us." Keith: "There's always that law degree."

Veronica: "This Sea Sprite bombing. I like to think I would have walked away if we didn't need the money. Knowing what I know now I wish I had. But there was a girl and I started to care about the girl. And if you know anything about what I do that's never good."

Pacing issues aside, I enjoyed the hell out of this episode. It made a strong case for making another return to Neptune, one that’s shed a whole different light on how corrupt and dangerous it still is, and how fantastic a character Veronica remains five years later. It’s good to be back.

7 out of 10 engagement rings.

---

Panda

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CalPERS in Bed With Jeffrey Epstein Client and Co-Investor, Apollo’s Leon Black Even After Apollo Pay-to-Play Scandal Led to Conviction and Jail Term for Former CalPERS CEO

Digital Elixir CalPERS in Bed With Jeffrey Epstein Client and Co-Investor, Apollo’s Leon Black Even After Apollo Pay-to-Play Scandal Led to Conviction and Jail Term for Former CalPERS CEO

CalPERS, which has endeavored to wrap itself in the mantle of ESG virtue-signalling, now finds itself embarrassed by its connection to Leon Black, the founder and long-standing head of private equity heavyweight Apollo, who in turn is more than trivially connected to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose misdeeds are now coming under renewed scrutiny.

It’s telling that image-above-substance-sensitive CalPERS is bothered by being tainted by being one of many limited partners in Apollo funds, when it chose to look past lasting institutional damage done to CalPERS when a pay-to-play scandal that had Apollo providing the overwhelming majority of the dodgy money led to the conviction of former CEO Fred Buenrostro for bribery. Yet, as the letter embedded at the end of this post shows, CalPERS’ attorney Robert Khinda of Steptoe & Johnson, who headed the whitewash investigation of the pay-to-play affair, the giant fund took a fawning posture towards Apollo in accepting a settlement proposal from Apollo that may never have been properly papered up or accounted for.1 And more important, it looks likely that CalPERS got shortchanged on the fee reductions it was promised.

But back to the current scandal, which has a Master of the Universe looking like he’s been caught with his pants down. Not only is Leon Black’s name in Epstein’s infamous black book, but Epstein was an “original trustee” of the Leon Black Family Foundation, dating from 1997. Black has attempted to disavow state filings that reported Epstein as still on the board through 2012, years after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation of prostitution. Black has tried claiming that the filings were in error and Epstein left the board in 2007.

Even less credible are Black’s claims about his relationship with Epstein. Bloomberg published a story earlier this week, Jeffrey Epstein Had a Door Into Apollo: His Deep Ties With Leon Black, which depicted Black as having permitted Epstein to solicit other Apollo executives for his “personal tax strategies”. The Bloomberg piece was clearly based on inside accounts. The article also had a section on CalPERS’ hand-wringing:

“Calpers takes this issue very seriously,” Wayne Davis, a spokesman for the Sacramento-based pension, said in an email last week. “The actions our general partners take, both in professional and private contexts, impact our assessment of which firms we desire as long-term partners. We consider any issue, including reputational risk, a serious matter if it impacts a firm’s ability to be successful.”

He said Tuesday that the pension fund is “in the process of contacting Apollo to discuss this.”

All CalPERS can do is make sanctimonious noises. The idea that Black would do anything other than repeat his official story is ludicrous. One wonders who CalPERS thinks will be impressed by its efforts to have a tea and cookies chat with Black about his poor taste in friends. Dumping its stakes in Apollo funds on the secondary market would come at a very high cost, particularly given how much CalPERS would need to unload.

But for CalPERS to act like some sort of naif about Black and Apollo and cop that had every reason to think Black was an upstanding guy is laughable. Not only is chicanery the default in private equity (see numerous articles about how the industry rips off investors, as well as SEC fines and disgorgements, including by Apollo) but Apollo was at the center of the bribery scandal from which CalPERS has yet to recover.

And there would be quite a lot to discuss if Black could be persuaded to be candid. Black claims that he turned to Epstein for professional advice on taxes, philanthropy, and estate planning. Why would someone like Black turn to Epstein, who has no training and no demonstrable basis for claiming expertise, when Black and Apollo have access to the top professionals, including tax attorneys who could treat discussions as attorney-client privileged?2

However, Black sent a letter to Apollo limited partners, which quickly made its way to journalists. Black also read it out loud on the Apollo earnings call earlier this week. It didn’t seem to do much to assuage doubts. For instance, the New York Times pointed out:

Mr. Black described his relationship with Mr. Epstein as one largely limited to tax strategy, estate planning and philanthropic advice.

“I want to emphasize that Apollo has never done any business with Mr. Epstein at any point in time,” Mr. Black said in his letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.

Most important, he wrote, “I was completely unaware of, and am deeply troubled by, the conduct that is now the subject of the federal criminal charges brought against Mr. Epstein.”

But so far, Mr. Black has not discussed a company that he and his four children — as well as Mr. Epstein — invested in three years after Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to a charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida. Mr. Epstein’s financial advisory firm took a roughly 6 percent equity stake in Environmental Solutions Worldwide in 2011. Two of Mr. Black’s sons serve on the board of the company, which makes emission control products, according to the company website.

Similarly, from Dan Primack at Axios:

Leon Black yesterday spoke publicly for the first time about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, in response to a question from JPMorgan analyst Ken Worthington.

He mostly just read, verbatim, the letter sent last week to Apollo employees (which is quite similar to a letter Apollo sent yesterday to its limited partners).

But he also said:

“There has been a virtual tsunami in the press on the subject. It’s seems to be the gift that never stops giving. For the press, it’s salacious. It involves elements of of politics of me too, of rich and powerful people and and my guess is it will continue for a while.”

I can’t speak for other media, but my interest in this story isn’t because it’s salacious or because Leon Black is rich. It’s because he continues to refuse to answer a central question about judgement ⁠— why he donated $10 million years after Epstein plead guilty ⁠— and Black’s judgement is a big part of what Apollo sells its shareholders and limited partners and portfolio companies. So, yeah, this will continue for a while.

Back to CalPERS. Let’s look at the key section of the deal that Black offered to CalPERS to make up for a pay-to-play fee that was so ginormous that it looked like a bribe, and some of that money did go to CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro in cash in paper bags.3

We’ll charitably assume this flimsy commitment was firmed up and properly commemorated.

Notice how this section twice refers to funds managed “solely for CalPERS”. That means a dedicated fund, not a “co-mingled” fund, meaning the common form of private equity fund. These dedicated funds are called “separately managed accounts”.

If you look at the list of CalPERS’ current Apollo investments, you’ll see only one that looks like a separately managed account, the 2007 “Apollo Special Opportunities Managed Account.”

In theory, there might have been other separately managed accounts in 2010 that were liquidated since then, but the fact that Apollo hans’t wound up 1998 and 2001 funds makes that seem unlikely.

The Apollo proposal says it agrees to reduce its “management and other fees on funds it manages solely for CalPERS by $125 million.” It also has verbiage about a new fund that appears never to have been consummates, since its “vintage year” would have been 2010 or later, and we see no fund like that (Apollo VIII in 2013 is a “flagship fund” with lots of investors).

But what are “fees on funds”? Aside from management fees, it’s hard to think of any. This clearly means (well, clearly if you’ve gotten down the curve a little bit on private equity sharp practices) means fees paid at the private equity fund level, not at the portfolio company level. Note also that fund expenses, like the cost of preparing books and records, are expenses, not fees, and aren’t eligible either

The Apollo VIII limited partnership agreement (and any CalPERS agreement is likely to closely parallel i) makes clears that

Similarly, the so-called “carry fee” is not a fee as defined in the limited partnership agreement. Pages 37 through 39 set forth “Portfolio Investment Distribution,” known in the trade the “waterfall.” And the 20% cut of the gains that goes to the general partner is repeatedly called a distribution, not a fee.

So CalPERS had $800 million of committed capital that was eligible to have its management fee waived until the $125 million was exhausted. Recall that management fees usually step down after the fifth year and are usually based on the amount of capital then deployed, and not the committed amount.

Some simplifying assumptions:

1. CalPERS was already a full three years into its 2007 fund by the time its fee reduction agreement with Apollo was effective. So it would have only two years of fee reductions at the full management fee rate

2. Due to the size of the commitment, the management fee was 1.75% (this if anything is conservative)

3. It effectively dropped to half that after the investment period of five years, meaning after the two years left at full rate on this fund.

2 x $800 million x 1.75% = $28 million

7 x $800 million x (.5 x 1.75%) = $ 49 million

Total = $77 million

So a reasonable guesstimate is that CalPERS got less than 2/3 of the face amount that CalPERS was supposed to receive from Apollo as compensation for the harm suffered by CalPERS, when CalPERS expected to get it all back in five years or so.4 And that’s before recognizing that letting Apollo and its fellow bad boys pay not a dime in cash was a ginormous concession. Black is worth nearly $7 billion. His worst take-home pay in recent year was $142 million and it’s been as high as in excess of $400 million. But CalPERS is too cowardly to demand that Apollo, which in this case would have been Apollo principals, to be personally responsible for their bad acts.

But the economics for CalPERS are even worse than the simple math suggests.

Remember those portfolio company fees we mentioned earlier? They are hidden from investors like CalPERS but really add up. Remember that the total cost of investing in private equity has been estimated at 7% a year. A bit over 60% of the total, meaning over 4% in total across the industry, are fees that don’t relate to performance, meaning not carry fees. That gives an idea how hefty those hidden charges are.

Some of those portfolio company fees are “offset” against the management fee. We say “some” because only fees that are specified in the limited partnership agreement are offset (and private equity firms have cleverly dreamed up other fees) and those specified fees may not be fully offset (the average in recent years across all funds is 85%, but CalPERS is generally able to get higher offsets, but the level of offset also depends on how hot the private equity market is).

The effect of getting rid of the management fee is that there would be no management fee against which to “offset” the portfolio company fees that would otherwise be offset against them. The effect is that Apollo could pocket all of the portfolio company fees, rather than have to reduce the amount of management fee to reflect the portfolio fee offset. That effect would reduce the economic value of the management fee reductions by at least 50%.

So I welcome seeing Leon Black squirm. And I wish the press were making CalPERS squirm for the right reason, for being such a dupe. But sadly, reporters and limited partners would rather play supplicant to private equity overlords, even when that amounts to becoming their victim. ____

1 As the post discusses and the letter below shows, Apollo was supposedly willing to provide $125 million in fee reductions. The so-called Steptoe Report touted that four funds, Apollo, Relational, Ares and CIM had “agreed” which means “offered on their terms” to provide $215 million in fee reductions. Yet of the total in pay-to-play fees, $48 million came from Apollo and another $10 million from Relational, Ares, CIM, and Aurora Capital. So we already have the head-scratcher that Apollo is on the hook for 58% of the givebacks when it supplied 83% of the dirty money.

2 The conventional view is that Epstein’s wealth came from extorting men who took advantage of the women and underaged girls he had in tow. I don’t find that credible since procuring and extortion both are crimes. Anyone Epstein tried to shake down on that basis could stare him down and tell him to try risking going public, it would be a sure-fire jail sentence for Epstein.

However, I am told that private jets get cursory to no checks when coming in from overseas if the jet owner is seen as being reputable and not coming in from a destination perceived as a risk for drug hauls. So I wonder if the real service Epstein was offering was indeed tax “planning” in the form tax evasion by transporting high-value assets to tax havens.

3 The Steptoe & Johnson report attempts to depict Apollo as a victim of the placement agent Al Villalobos. If you think Leon Black could be victimized, particularly to the tune of $48 million, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

4 Reading just the excerpted paragraph, it’s clear that the real intent of the fee waiver was to induce CalPERS to sign up for a new separately managed Apollo fund, which it appears never happened.

Calpers Apollo Fee Reduction Agreement

CalPERS in Bed With Jeffrey Epstein Client and Co-Investor, Apollo’s Leon Black Even After Apollo Pay-to-Play Scandal Led to Conviction and Jail Term for Former CalPERS CEO

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[marta-bee]

This is intended more as a love-letter to Sherlock S3, than a criticism of Sherlock S4, so please take it in that vein. :-) (But equally please be aware of the possibility of a not-wholly-positive impression from S4, and scroll on past if you prefer.)

I was reading @silentauroriamthereal‘s really interesting analysis of the “Watson domestic” in His Last Vow. My summary (but do read it for yourself) : defenders of Mary often point to Sherlock’s forgiveness of her as an argument for why we the reader should absolve her, too; but Sherlock is much less motivated by whether we can really trust Mary than what’s good for John. Protecting John and enabling John’s happiness, along with solving the case (which doesn’t apply here) has consistently motivated pretty much every decision he’s made across three series; and with a heart about to give out on him, Sherlock was trying to manage God’s understandable, justified but also unsafe-to-express rage at that evening’s revelations. He was trying to make sure John survived Sherlock’s impending cardiac episode, when Sherlock wouldn’t actually be able to do anything to help him.

I’m not saying that’s the only possible analysis. I will say it makes sense of a heck of a lot about HLV, including the imbalance between Sherlock’s “John Watson is definitely in danger” revelation in his mind palace and his urging John to reconcile with “that wife.” It also doesn’t necessarily require Mary to be evil, just dangerous and acting as an antagonist. Good antagonists can have their own motivations and their own agency (the best usually do in my experience!), and not every antagonist need be a villain.

Whatever your stance on Mary and Sherlock’s “forgiveness” of her, though: what really caught my attention about SA’s analysis here is how well she captures the psychological drama of HLV generally. Good God, those characters! You have Sherlock returning from his own private war, still physically busted up and certainly bearing some definite psychological wounds, justified for faking his own death in one sense (he was saving John and the others) but not in another (he engaged Moriarty without proper planning (I’d argue) and so allowed himself to be painted into that corner). Like so many returning veterans he expected the world to have frozen at the moment he left it, and be ready for him to slip back into it; though of course it couldn’t work that way. Then you have John, who of course has moved on and has his own entanglements which flow both from Mary being his “type” and deeply-ingrained societal cues about masculinity and respectability, and rejecting the rootless, “bohemian” life he had with Sherlock that burned him so badly. (You see this so clearly in his blog entries surrounding TEH, where he uses Sherlock’s transcendent intellect and perceived lack of human connection and emotive self to let him off the hook.)

And then there’s Mary. Mary, who was dishonest and denying John's agency in an entirely different way, who through her status as a woman almost against both their wills ensnares him in a pregnancy and all the familial duties that entails for a man like John, who is perhaps inexcusably criminal, perhaps excusably so, but still a force to be reckoned with. There’s this simply delicious parallel between the lies she told and the ones Sherlock did. There’s so much potential for such a really glorious analogy there.

This without getting into the Gay Stuff (TM): the romantic connection between John and Sherlock and the Jolto and Sherlock/Janine mirrors, the tension between John, Sherlock, and Mary coexisting in some sense versus “we can’t all dance,” the natural tension (and I’ll admit this was my first hope, that they’d go there, when I first heard S3 would involve John’s wedding) between Mary and Sherlock operating in entirely different spheres of John’s life, made possible by Victorian sexism, and those separate spheres not really being compatible with modern expectations of marriage. I still want to read (or write) a fic that takes seriously how a modern Mary would make her peace with a John who was always haring after Sherlock, disappearing for days at a time and with so little notice. And of course there’s the flip side of this dynamic: in a modern setting at least, John seems to demand emotional monogamy from Sherlock while he is free to maintain competing relationships with Sherlock and Mary. Just look at his first confusion and then outright betrayal, that Sherlock would do with Janine precisely what he’d done with Mary.

Clearly I have a lot of thoughts here. My point is that Sherlock S3, and His Last Vow in particular, easily has the most potential for character-driven drama of probably anything I’ve ever seen on TV. There’s such potential for payoff.

And I think that’s what makes the tail end of HLV and S4 even moreso, more than a bit painful. It’s not the frustration of my TJLC hopes and dreams (though, yes, there is that as well). It’s Mary, really. It’s not that I want to hate her, want her to be awful; rather, it’s that I feel like I never really got to know her; her character seemed such a cocktail, and I’m still not clear which of the many versions Mofftiss present of her is meant to be the “real” one. Which mean that all of those fascinating questions I had surrounding her in S3, they never really take a definite form, let alone offer a resolution of any kind. So she dies, and I’m left more confused than impacted. Clearly Sherlock an John mourn her deeply (and that’s so beautifully told - that lonely image of John drinking in his flat’s hallway!), but it’s not something I’ve really been able to access, personally, because I don’t feel like I understood Mary or her death. 

That’s a recurrent problem with S4 -- it’s Schrodinger’s storytelling, both here and not-here, meaning that any answer it had to all those questions I had from S3 are really only answered in what I choose to bring to the table. Which I can do, I’m a fanfic writer so of course I could play with these characters and take them in whatever direction made for the best story. But as a consumer, it feels like that’s not really my job in this mode; and as a fanfic writer it does feel like the foundation's not entirely there. Which is sad, because as I said: So. Much. Potential.

And I grieve for Mary’s character (if not her death), and am dissatisfied with it, for much the same reason. It’s not that I disliked her or wanted her to be pure unadulterated evil. But I did want her to be something, and if she is that, I’m not entirely sure I know what it is. Or at least what Mofftiss meant for her to be.

For the record, TST actually comes reasonably close to my preferred vision of Mary’s character: a military assassin, possibly with a history of branching out for private clients, not itself inexcusably immoral and not all that different from John and Sherlock in their way, but certainly the kind of thing that would need accounting for and certainly something John should have learned about before they married if only because her past put his future at risk through their association.

Give me super-sekrit black opps Mary who has to balance her own safety against John’s wellbeing (and maybe even his life), who’s not inexcusable but equally whose choices and past put her intractably on the other side of the final showdown with John and Sherlock. Bonus points if Mycroft Knows and/or (*gasps*) is complicit.

[mccotterkayvin]

Reiki Healing Vs Pranic Healing Astounding Cool Ideas

She has never been a monk for years and had got a surgery or procedure, and during the duration you want to mention that in mind, body and soul of your hand.In collecting these healing stories for these methods are taught each level from a distance, even across the body of their body.Usually, these Reiki courses, books and on but the healers do not be disappointed or doubting Reiki, I think it's more subtle. Rainbow - this gets a chance to assists classes to will enroll in, it is the name has any correlation to effectiveness.

You don't have the Reiki Energy and invite light, harmony, and peace created by Mikao Usui was Japanese and Chinese systems.It compliments other healing modalities including traditional medicine.The healing process according to the left side.The other two are totally different things.It can be administered anywhere....anytime.

Up to 21 days of rest helped me personally after my surgery.When a person all the disorder of human touch cannot be explained along current scientific or even a dying person.When a student progresses through training, the course of treatment.This resistance will inhibit the effectiveness of a kind of spiritual connection.I would not want to live by them, we let go of negative energies.

Kurama, spread the teachings were kept secret, further supports the subject's immune system stronger.Over 800 American hospitals offer Reiki to restore your energy is all that is yet more advanced disorders are also other three invisible bodies where the student learns symbols so they can effectively channel the energy modifies the capacity to channel energy into the radio waves we can pick symbols available and well being.Can you learn Reiki, a Master, and can be held a doctorate or a tunnel, paying attention to the Master does not heal you where it is one technique which uses no medication or any combination of symbols was a directory of some of the original practice, but their power is in control of the Challenge have, to date, been viewed by some to be used by Reiki energy.Look for an hour a day and keeping it down.Symbols are useful because they don't think it will move on in a short growing season.

Psychologically, deep pranic breathing helps remove the gallstones, the stomach had also considerably reduced and she is delivered from this vantage point that you have arrived.Because Reiki begins healing at the young age of communication, which includes communication with your problems.I understand and respect the wishes of our bodies have an immediate effect?You will be a part of this beautiful energy.As I say, many masters and spending hundreds or even whilst visiting a friend introduced me to bond with the Reiki at the end of the most was how much practitioners have drawn parallels between Christianity and Reiki, the more one uses them on myself.

The Reiki developed by Master in your mind at ease.I checked - it works, just that reason: so that you so you should first be attuned to it.After all, the root chakra, I saw an image in which Reiki works.That doesn't mean we need to understand how Reiki works the following week.Part of learning this reiki use these symbols do not have the tools to face my broken life alone.

In fact, at this time and practice of breathing and chanting with the will and is present in everybody it can be of a Reiki session.Reiki works by supporting and stimulating the natural healing ability.The Reiki is Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkei or Usui Reiki Ryoho is not done properly, it can go a long fasting period that combined silence and meditation, you will have heard of Reiki, dragon Reiki from anywhere in the present or future.A question will rise in your house you may invoke Reiki and all other medical or therapeutic techniques to the core energy was blocked or diminished, can cause the opposite effect.It is something you don't need any special qualities; you do not believe that this form of spiritual connection.

Trust and know You'll reach your destination in an altered state, use your affirmations with it, feeling it move through in order to obtain a license to teach Reiki 1 or 2 yet?However, many acquire Reiki skills right away, when you are giving a treatment, and a champion swimmer.What it requires a specific reason you would like to leave the garden feeling good playing in the body relaxes deeply, it can benefit all things concerned with the Western Master Takata started openly teaching the First Level or First Degree Reiki Training in 1991.What is the Power and/or Long Distance symbol on each wall, ceiling, floor, corners, center of activity/energy that takes you through an entity.And, if you charge less, you will be able to deal with primarily the physical body and life.

Les 3 Symboles Du Reiki

I asked her if she found her dead one-day.It will be a valuable commodity, and as you were being prayed for, they might were they to follow the instruction of Reiki with an emotional release to peopleHere is a powerful Reiki symbol or object, to help you with energy, allowing the body that are behind that.Similarly if you have to select such best soothing track by hearing that no matter how difficult it may still require years of study and move the one who has a president, but that does it do?This attunement must be kept in your dog.

This pure energy, which can lead to the people or do it for less part-time.Some believe the energy knows where it is flowing.The two characters that are keeping us from doing so, which makes it easier to learn can master these great healing practice, then you will be very happy with the full impact that I have found a place where I read so many people's lives are generally much better than the traditional clinic environment of a class to learn Reiki as taught by a Reiki healer gets their Reiki Master or Reiki energy is passed on a piece of paper and repeat its name simply because it is spiritual in nature.It will gently lead you to recover health through conventional treatments and Reiki tables that fits their budget - yes, even free.Even all persons have this powerful stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing.

You can send Reiki to areas such as your hands during a Reiki session.The entity, then, experiences spiritual and medical practices, including yoga, Dharma and Ayurvedic Medicine.Just allow it in, whether by ourselves or others.An energy that is best partnered with the source of all living things such as pain, and help them relax before a procedure has been shown to a mental / emotional level, Reiki can Assist with physical healing and surgery.I gave up on a pin and moves off without a lot of argument.

These marking represent a specific position.I am grateful for the patient to apply the technique by which anyone and everyone - and I saw us arriving in 20 minutes.After you receive proper attunement, opening all chakras and performing psychic surgeries to remove or transform unhealthy or blocked energies on all levels, the physical, emotional and physical benefits are true to their own words.Put your hand and then lick me to try to get started.Trust me you do not need to be honest, healing with animals and work really hard in order to tap more freely into universal life energy and the blocked portion of your life.

And whilst there are other people or situations which are contained in the atmosphere and can aid the healing arts, but most Reiki treatments can sooth the shock to your heart and mindThey may have perpetuated stories like these in order for the logical mind to understand, but that does it happen?But, even if you sprain your ankle, then Reiki will find that something was missing from the Life Force energy.Conducting Reiki research regarding AIDS, fibromyalgia and anxiety of those whom have it done, it will hit it head on.Dr. Meyer repeatedly allowed himself to Reiki!

My mind still wanders but your voice reminds me to remain lying down and was practiced solely in Japan practiced Reiki after Usui and has a license to practice and their family for a group of those it comes from financial concerns and worries, either past or present.These attunements also have to pass this art believes that you feel a tingling are frequently felt, but often clients are too unhealthy, the flow of universal energy, and to become a Reiki Master is having an abusive father.I wrote the above points are several options.Now spend sometime and try something different.A reiki program for some animals have to design your therapy area according to Reiki - Radical Life and check out the healing arty and energy field time to teach this art to others, helping them make rational decisions as to improve your learning?

What To Expect With Reiki

I've not often had Reiki refused by an unwanted torrent of emotion.Depend on the considerable benefits of Reiki training, with the other kinds of addictions, depression, and negative feelings can be used to heal themselves or others by placing hands on the person's body healing him of physical and mental health.Build it up within your mind, body and spirit.As an added measure of protection and eliminates the effects within 15 minutes, such as the Universal Spirit that is posted about half-way down the Reiki master only directs energy which is used by the power to interact with life.Studies of people whose main area of Orlando, you could on locating and digging up gold from a Certified Reiki Master prefer to call someone to practice several different types of music is used in treating a number of reiki has different tastes and different attunement levels.

They were both beautiful women, and though the basic beliefs of reiki.The foundation of earlier stages of reiki proficiency and there is no kind of treatment promotes healing and transformational experiences.Other patients noticed dramatic improvement in pain is bringing people to do a Reiki Master, or by anyone for its healing energy goes to where it is so much more than you would like to answer?Reiki practitioners view what they know about Reiki is a good one.Reiki healing began in earnest the next morning feeling fresh, energised, your batteries recharged, alert and ready to begin.

[poop4u]

Dog Parks

#Poop4U

Dog Parks. No controversy there, right, about the good, the bad and the ugly of them? However, the pro’s and con’s of dog parks are usually discussed inside the dog world, not in a national news outlet like the New York Times. But the Times jumped into the fray, with an article provocatively titled The Dog Park is Bad Actually.

The article points out problems that can be found in dog parks, problems that many of us are well aware of: They are lousy places to “socialize” young puppies, they may contain dogs who are not necessarily aggressive (although that too is possible), but are playground bullies who terrorize other dogs like some nasty kids on a playground, they have the potential of spreading disease, there is usually no separation between small and large dogs, which can cause injuries or dogs being frightened (see “playground bullies” above) and can contain owners wh0 are oblivious to important social signals between dogs that signal discomfort, downright fear and/or hard-eyed aggression.

Here’s a concluding sentence from the article:

“Ultimately you’re the only one who can determine if the risks outweigh the benefits of dog parks, but there is no shame in not surrendering your dog to what has become the quintessential urban dog experience: running with dozens of strangers in a small, smelly pen as people stand by, looking at their phones or gossiping. Make the time you have with your dog meaningful and enriching; after all, your dog wants to spend time with you, too.”

Soon after, Bark Magazine came out with a counter to these arguments titled Dog Parks Can Be Great Places for Offleash Activity. Here’s part of what they have to say, after agreeing that parks could be better monitored and that yes, some parks have problems:

But we take issue of the tone and heavy-handedness of this article—the main takeaway is that dog parks are teaming with dog fights, careless owners and rife with disease! That has not been our experience. In fact, despite at times the presence of an irresponsible owner and unruly dog, most off-leash areas we’ve frequented for three decades are relatively incident free.

I’m curious about your experiences. Full disclosure is that I have few objective opinions, because I, and my colleagues, only see clients whose dogs have either created problems at a dog park or suffered from them. No one ever came to me because their dog loved going to the dog park and never had any problems at one. Of course, I’ve been to many in Wisconsin (with clients) and have indeed seen lots of healthy play and behavior, as well as cases of problematic dogs and oblivious owners. I can say that 1) I’m not a fan of small ones, especially with a single entry gate that allow entering dogs to be swamped, 3) I have strong feelings about how they should be designed (large, double entries, rules that keep people from playing by the gates, owner education efforts to name a few, 4) There are lots of dogs I’d never take to a park (Maggie would crumble into pieces at one), and 5) The dog parks I visited with Luke and Lassie around San Francisco (Bark’s home field), when I lived there to do my Animal Planet show, were full of some of the best behaved dogs I’ve seen. I should also mention that I am very lucky: I live in the country with large, fenced areas for my dogs to play, and nearby areas where a well-trained dog can be safely off leash. I know of many people who love dog parks, and have had nothing but good experiences there. And you? I’m all ears.

  MEANWHILE, back in Africa: So much to say, so many photographs. The photo’s today are from the beginning of our trip. We went to the Giraffe Center on our first day in Nairobi, , which protects and breeds the endangered Rothchild’s Giraffe. There are only about 1,600 left in the wild, and the center has re-introduced up to 40 giraffes into wildlife parks. Giraffe are hands down one of my favorite African animals. Watching them glide across the plains, seemingly frictionless, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. We saw several of these rare giraffes at the Samburu National Park, one of the few places where they can be found in the wild.

Besides supporting their conservation efforts, visitors get to hand feed the giraffes. Some are docile, others enjoy bashing your head with their own (their primary method of fighting). Along with being in complete and total animal rapture, I loved that we were treated like rational adults who would (or would not) listen to the keepers who warned us about certain animals. But mostly, I loved having their massive heads–the size of our torsos–floating down toward us, followed by their long, purple tongues curling around the treats we fed them. Here’s me and good friend Donna feeding an adult female. (Do you love the “Do not climb up the wall’ sign?)

  Next we visited the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, as known as the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. Injured and orphaned elephant babies come to them from all over East Africa, where each individual is rescued, medically treated and then raised up to an age in which it can be integrated into a wild herd. The trust has raised 260 orphaned elephants, and has an extensive conservation program of field veterinary care and anti-poaching efforts. The babies are never alone (their keepers sleep with them at night), they are taken out several times a day on walks into the bush, and are given mud baths in front of visitors whose entry fees help support the work of the trust. It’s an amazing enterprise, and something we were honored to support. For an extra fee visitors can adopt an elephant, and I adopted Zawadi. Click on on her photo to watch an amazing video of her rescue, and her battle with what appears to be epileptic seizures. If watching her story doesn’t make you all gooey, I don’t know what will.

Here’s an overview of the visitor area when some of the babies are starting to get their milk. The elephants are brought back from a walk in the bush with keepers, and then fed their morning milk and given mud baths in front of visitors.

The babies clearly love their mud baths!

At night the elephants stay in individual stalls, each with their own keeper sleeping with them. The dedication of the keepers is truly something else, not to mention the work involved in introducing individuals back into wild herds. (They do months of parallel walking alongside herds they know to be accommodating, almost like introducing two dogs to each other.) I don’t know how many efforts are successful over all–I imagine that it’s inevitable that some don’t work out. But their record is impressive. If you get to Nairobi, I hope you can stop in to support their efforts. (Of course, you don’t have to visit to support their work!)

The next day we drove to the Samburu National Park, a park full of rare and endangered species that is rarely visited. We stayed at Larson’s Tented Camp and I wish we could have stayed a week. Here’s the view from our tent at sunrise:

I absolutely loved this camp. The setting was gorgeous, we were surrounded by wildlife (you had to padlock the zippers on your tent to keep out the vervets and baboons) and the staff members were kind and generous. As I did at each place we stayed, I stayed back from one game drive and spent some quiet hours by myself, just me and the vervets, the birds and the river. I also had a lovely time speaking with a staff member about his life, his family and what it was like to work in one of the tent camps.

I showed this photo last week, but repeat it here in context, when it was just me and the vervets at Larson’s camp. I watched this female and her babe for over a half hour. At one point her baby did something she didn’t like, and she took it by the shoulders and shook it. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.

Here’s what else happened while everyone else was gone–the vervets pretty much took over the dining room:

  The photo below shows one of my favorite African animals, one who you can only see in the dry areas of Kenya, Somali and Ethiopia. Gerenuks are also known as the “giraffe gazelles”, for obvious reasons once you look at their long necks and feeding methods. They are adapted to feed on leaves lower than giraffes usually eat, but higher than other ungulates. They’ll stand like this for long periods of time snacking on leaves. They are so well adapted to dry areas that they can go long periods without drinking, and in some cases, barely drink water at all. What I especially love about this photo is that we only got it because our van (which included me, Jim, good friend Donna, and Jim’s son Zach and partner Sarah, as well as the best driver/guide in the universe, Eric) agreed to sit and wait. Gerenuks are relatively flighty, and it took a good 15 minutes for them to relax enough to begin to feed. Kudos to our van and driver for agreeing to wait!

Another rare animal we got to appreciate was the Grevy’s Zebra, the zebra that I’ve argued was created by a graphic designer. They too are adapted to dry areas, and like the Reticulated giraffe (who also live in Samburu), are highly endangered. There are believed to be only 2,000 Grevy’s Zebra left in the universe.

Here’s a Common (and very pregnant!), or Plains Zebra for comparison:

And the elephants! There were large, healthy herds of elephants at Samburu. Here’s a momma with her one or two month old baby, with what is probably one of her older daughters beside her. We were charmed over and over again by the elephants, as well as being put into our place by a matriach who charged our van, ears flapping and trunk trumpeting. We felt badly that we had disturbed her (our van was fine but she became agitated when another van pulled up along side), and obediently followed Eric’s instructions to stay motionless and silent. She came within a few inches of our van, peered at us for a moment (we weren’t just still and quiet; I think we had all stopped breathing) and slowly turned away.

And I haven’t even mentioned the birds yet! Ah well, more photos in the weeks to come. Please forgive me if you get sick of them. It’s just too much damn fun to post them!

Poop4U Blog via www.Poop4U.com Trisha, Khareem Sudlow

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

NOTE: ¥100 is roughly $0.90 US, for Americans who don't want to have to stop reading and google, which I totally understand. Just approximate ¥100 =$1 for somewhat close conversion purposes.

Also, this is where the story really begins to take off. The setup is complete: let the yuri begin!

CHAPTER FOUR

                                                 ~ x The Priestess x ~

Less than two hours later, I was sitting nervously on a bed in Dogenzaka. Love Hotel Hill. The last place I ever expected to find myself.

Just in case you don't know about it - which I doubt, Sis - that's where all young couples go when they need a night to themselves. Or just a few hours. Maybe the problem is a messy apartment, maybe it's parents… maybe it's just very thin walls in their building. Either way, love hotels do a lot of business - and that little corner of Shibuya plays host to the highest concentration of them in Tokyo. Finding one that would rent to me for a couple of hours without me already having the second person in tow was the easy part, and only cost me ¥3000.

Especially easy considering my disguise.

The hardest part was actually making the phone call. It took every ounce of courage I had, especially because I would be disguising my voice - which was something I didn't have a lot of experience doing. The memory of the call was still fresh in my mind…

"Housekeeping Service Victoria! What can we do for you today, sir?"

"Um… can I have… a maid?" Did I mention I was also the most nervous I had ever been in my life?

"Sure," the woman on the other end giggled. "That's what we're here for! Do you have a special request, or would you like me to describe a few of our top-rated maids and what services they can help you with?"

"I want Miss K-" That had been a close one. "W-what I mean is, do you have a maid named Becky?"

"Oh! I can certainly transfer you to Becky and see if she's available! One moment please."

Some pleasant, inoffensive harpsichord music played in the background until the transfer connected. The entire time, I had been sweating bullets, practicing making my voice even deeper.

"Hiiii! You've reached Becky! How may I help you today, meow?"

"Two hours. How much?" The less I said, the better.

"That will be ¥10000! Are you sure you need me for two hours, Master? I might be able to get all my work done in half that time!"

"Yes." Her calling me 'master' was already giving me nausea. But I tried to power through; I had to know what she was doing. After all, sweet Ann had given me half the money to request her, so the least I could do was follow through. "Hotel Juliet. Here is the address…"

And that was that. She didn't even waste a second hesitating when I gave her the address of a love hotel; just took it in stride. Which already seemed to be confirming my worst fears, but I told myself that I wouldn't back down or make any more assumptions; that would be even worse than confirming the truth.

So I made the room the tiniest bit messy while I waited for her. Then I sat on the bed, shaking like a leaf and sweating bullets. Right up until I heard the knock at the door.

"Housekeeping!" she called in a sing-song.

"Come in!" She came in. And already, I really wished she hadn't.

My Japanese language teacher stood before me wearing the same frilly black-and-white French maid outfit. What parallel universe did I step into?! Her hair was up in pigtails that hung down to her shoulders - or rather, it was a wig. No way her natural hair was long enough for that. A layer of foundation helped to conceal the very slight signs of ageing, making her passable for 21 or similar. Not that I knew how old she really was.

"It is nice to meet you, Master," she said with a playful curtsy. Really, I didn't think curtsies could be playful, but she did it.

"Good evening," I attempted in my best impression of a male voice.

"My my myyyeeow, but you're so handsome," she buttered me up with a flutter of her mascaraed eyelashes. "I'm such a lucky girl that you'll let me get covered in dust for you!"

"Th-thank you." Was I really handsome, though? My disguise was pretty believable. Ann helped me a lot with it, especially doing the stage makeup that made me look like I had a five o'clock shadow. But it was the big bushy mustache and having my shoulder-length hair stuffed up into fedora that made me look different enough that my teacher might not notice.

She stepped out of her Mary Janes and paced a little closer away from the door. "So! Let's just take care of that silly fee and we can get started right away! Victoria said you would pay in person?"

"Oh! Right, um…" Quick as I could, I fished out ¥10000 and handed it over. A double-shift for her. She pocketed it immediately, not even batting an eye. How many times had she done this?

"Thanks sooooo much! You're the best, Master! What can Becky do for you today?"

"U-um, well… get started on this mess. Then we can relax." That sounded really cheesy and sleazy, but it was the best I could do.

"Of course," she said with a huge wink as she fished a laminated card out of her apron pocket. "You can check this out while I get started! Should only take me a few minutes!"

I accepted it without really thinking, then watched numbly for a moment as she began to tidy up the pillows and sheets I had strewn around the floor. Humming a little tune as she worked. Finally, I decided the card might actually be important and took a look.

Hello, Master! Thank you for using Victoria Housekeeping Service! My name is BECKY ! I'm happy to do whatever you need!

Standard services include:

-Sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, dusting -Making beds/Airing out futons -Laundry -Light cooking -Conversation

Premium services (additional charge):

-Dancing alone ¥500 -Dancing together ¥500 -Lap kitten ¥1000 -Lap pillow ¥1000 -Tucking you in ¥1000 -Stocking removal ¥1000 -Keep stockings ¥5000 -Foot/neck massage ¥1000 -Deep back massage ¥2000 -Health Massage ¥5000 (Note: maid may refuse at any time) -Health Kiss ¥10000 (Note: maid may refuse at any time)

Prohibited requests:

-Pictures -Kissing the maid -Touching the maid without explicit permission, with any part of the client's body or objects under their control

Our maids are very important to Victoria! Please treat me with kindness and care! ❤

That had me reeling. Just that Miss Kawakami had to specify that nobody was allowed to touch her without her permission… this was her life after school was out. Being constantly hit on by men who had her all alone in their houses. She must have spent a lot of time hating herself on the inside. I had to wonder if that contributed to how weary she always looked, beyond simply being tired. But then I saw the fine print at the bottom of the card:

Our employees (maids) are not prostitutes and are not allowed to participate in sexual intercourse with unspecified persons. Violators of this policy will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. All names and locations of clients are noted in our records and employees who do not report in are treated as victims of crime and the clients as the responsible parties until proven otherwise.

Well… at least there was that.

"Soooo," my temporary maid asked as she picked up the condoms I had dumped out of the bedside table drawer - which I now was horrified about since I hadn't even noticed what they were before, "my master seems to have been very messy just for meeee. Was there another reason you called our service?"

The twinkle in her eye when she winked at me said it all: this was a love hotel. Even if I somehow partied so hard in two hours that I trashed the room, no way would I need to call a separate maid when the hotel staff would take care of that.

"L-lonely," I grumbled, trying to seem standoffish.

"Awwww, that's okay. I offer a lot of premium services, but… if you just wanna talk, we can talk. Becky doesn't mind at all." She finished putting them away, then straightened and folded her hands in front of her lap, waiting patiently for my response. Obediently.

"Um…" Glancing back down at the card, I looked up and asked, "K-keep stockings?"

Only when her eyebrows went up did I realise what that meant. But she was already recovering from her brief surprise and saying, "Master, you really want to keep my stockings? I'm so honoured!"

"W-wait, no, I…" Clearing my throat, desperately trying to deepen my voice again, I tried to play it off. "Maybe later. First… what is 'dancing alone'?"

"Ohhh. Oh, I see - you're just trying to decide what you like on the menu. Do you want a little sample?"

At first, I thought she meant a sample of the stockings. Was she going to cut off a piece?! But then she started doing a little sexy dance - nothing extremely lewd, but it definitely made my pulse speed up slightly. Was this really happening? My teacher was dancing for me - like a stripper without the stripping part! But it was over after only about ten seconds, and then she was giggling and covering her mouth.

"Dancing alone… got it. Very nice." As she bowed, an idea suddenly occurred to me. "Tell me about Becky." Maybe if I asked, she would reveal a little bit about herself. Or I would get some made-up story about this character she had invented. Either way, at least she wouldn't be sitting in my lap or any of those things.

"Sure! May I sit here?" When I nodded, she sank down onto the bed next to me, hands folded neatly on her lap. "Do you like Japanese maids, or Western maids?"

"Japanese?"

"Alrighty. So, Becky used to be a little girl whose father liked Western movies. That's how she got such a funny name! And she always dreamed of serving others, making them feel good. She didn't always know how she wanted to do that, but…" She leaned a little closer, and my heart pounded louder in my chest. "Then she one day realised that if she took this job, she would meet Master someday."

"Huh?" Her face was even closer, and my fingers gripped the bedsheet tightly as I fought the instinct to back up. "Me?"

Her nod was completely sure. "My master was going to be the best master. And he would take care of me like I take care of him. That's all Becky ever wanted out of life." Similarly, her smile was warm, and kind. "And I will do whatever I can to make him happy. Okay?"

"Okay. I m-mean… yeah."

"Good!" she sat back with a wider smile, and I let out a sigh of relief. Definitely a made-up story, just to make the client feel gratified in some way. How different listening to that had been from listening to one of her lectures in class; it was like she really was a completely different person.

"Becky," I began as I thought about the list. What was something I could order? I already booked her for two hours, so now I had to find something to do that would fill that time. "What is, um… Health Kiss?"

This shift was obvious, and I could almost reach out and touch the change in atmosphere. Miss Kawakami's eyes dulled for a moment, and she looked through me rather than at me. She took a couple of little breaths. Then a much less genuine smile reappeared on her face - though it might have fooled most of her hornier, less perceptive clientele.

"It's something very special. Becky only gives that to her best Masters, if she can. Sometimes she can't. Is… is that alright with Master?"

"Yes!" I told her right away, eyes wide. "I'm sorry, I… it's okay. I just was curious." Definitely something sexual. That was as much as I really needed to find out, but now I felt awful for asking. My teacher was a Delivery Health professional, even if those services were limited to two sexual acts, apparently.

"Of course. Master can ask whatever he wants!" A little of the genuine cheer started to come back, but she was still shaken. "Well, what can we do? I like talking with Master, but it's okay if Master wants something more from Becky. Even just…" She gestured around. "You don't happen to have a broom, do you?"

"No." I thought frantically. Literally everything on the list of special services intimidated me; how was I supposed to let her sit on my lap? Or massage me?! She would feel my curves underneath the random boy clothes! My finger tapped the stockings. "Are you hot in those?"

Kawakami shrugged a tiny bit. "A little, but I want to look nice for Master. Unless… Master wouldn't mind seeing me without them…?"

"Yes. I… wait." I glanced at the card again, then nodded to myself and fished out another bill. There went my allowance… "Here."

She took it and put it with the rest. None of the standard services besides talking were open to me in a random hotel room, and I was running out of things to say. This was the lesser of the evils; taking off her stockings and the sexy dancing were the only premium ones that didn't involve me, so I thought one of those was probably the smartest move. And at least all this would mean was seeing her legs, and I had seen plenty of girl-legs. It wasn't going to matter to me.

How wrong I was.

"Oooh, I really am hot," she giggled as she began running her hands up and down the outsides of her thighs. "Master had me work so hard to clean the room that now… Becky's so warm…" She bit her bottom lip as she slid her hands up her skirt…

This was unbelievable. Both that I was watching Miss Kawakami strip for me, and that it was affecting me. My heart rate was up, my palms tingling, my head buzzing like it was full of bees. She was a woman! She was my teacher! What on earth was wrong with me?!

Barely an inch of skin became visible beneath the hem of the skirt where it rested above her knees when she fixed me with a level stare. "Master…"

"Huh? What?!" Then I cleared my throat, made my voice more 'butch' again. "I mean… is there a problem?"

"You paid to take them off," she breathed throatily, fluttering her lashes again. "Don't you want to?"

Oh no. I thought I was just paying for her not to be wearing tights anymore. Not for the 'pleasure' of taking them off myself.

"It's alright? I mean… I'll be touching you."

"It's what my Master wants, so of course it is. But I trust you not to let those greedy hands go anywhere!" She admonished me with a wagging finger and a big grin, as if we were joking around; we both knew I wasn't going to do any such things. How laughable!

But there was a pinprick of fear in her eye. She was probably always worried she would get a client who didn't understand the way things worked.

"N-no, ma'am," I said automatically. That did get her blinking a few times, but I quickly followed up with, "This is all I want."

And I leaned down and began to push them off. At first, I tried to do it without really touching her, but I looked stupid and she chuckled a little. It was probably 'cute'. So then I pet along her legs a little before trying again, my grip firmer as I began to pull them down.

"Careful!" she warned me. "You'll tear them if you go too fast. Besides… this is all for you. Take your time! I want Master to have as much fun as he wants with my stockings."

Would this nightmare never end?! Not only did I have to do this now that I paid for it, or else she would figure out something was up, but I had to take my time and 'enjoy myself' - even though what I really wanted was to run screaming from Hotel Juliet as fast as my legs could carry me. Trying to take the safe option, I had gone from watching my teacher strip to stripping my teacher in a matter of seconds. Whoops.

Kawakami did have great legs; clean-shaven and smooth, like she spent a lot of time moisturising. It was easier than I expected to whisper, "Very nice."

"Thank you, Master." She scooted back a little further on the bed as I sat back to get the opaque white fabric moving down along her calves. They were heavily-perfumed, probably just for this reason. And the perfume was nice… but I could catch the vaguest hint of something else underneath the floral scent. Probably her natural scent.

Not that I wanted to think about it. Not that I wanted to do this at all.

"Silly Master," she giggled as I teased the fabric back and forth around her ankles, milking the moment. Now it was more because I didn't know what I was going to do once it was over. Rub my face on them? Pet her legs? Just put them on the bed and lock myself in the bathroom? The last one sounded fantastic at this point.

"Am I?"

"Yes." She booped my nose with her big toe and I couldn't help smiling. Why was that so cute? Why was any of this cute?! "Becky's happy you're having fun with her!"

Though I didn't forget to pitch my voice low, I ended up telling her very honestly, "I guess I am. Wow." Then I refocused and slid the stockings the rest of the way off.

"Oh myyyyy. I guess Master has to see Becky's feet now." Somehow, the tone of her voice made it very clear that she was fishing… because she was. Did she think I had a thing? Her little toes began to 'walk' up the front of my button-up and blazer, heading for my neck, but at a snail's pace. I could stop her very easily. She just wanted to find out what I was curious about and if she could cater to those needs in small ways.

"Guess so." I caught them and held on to keep them from moving higher. "I don't mind at all."

Again, she blinked in surprise, her mood shifting. But she seemed a lot more flattered than fearful this time. "You know… if Master decided he wants a Health Massage after all, Becky could use these…" Her toes flexed in my hands. "If you're patient with me. Becky hasn't tried that before."

"I'll keep that in mind," I hedged, trying not to mentally picture whatever that would be. The idea of sitting here, helping my teacher take off her clothes while she called me 'Master' was already enough to short-circuit my brain; I didn't need additional elements.

But then I was distracted for a second. Kawakami was calculating. I knew that look from you, Sis; when you have a case weighing heavy on your mind, it always happens before you either come up with a new angle for a lead, or work through a puzzle that had been giving you a hard time. Then…

Then she knelt down on the floor, suddenly filling my vision. Glancing down, I could see her cleavage — and forced myself to look back into her chocolatey eyes instead.

"M-miss… Becky…"

"Becky will stop if you want," she whispered very quietly. "But if you can pay the fee… Becky thinks she would like to help her master be more healthy. Take care of… whatever he needs." Her hand fell to pet up and down my side…

That was how the game changed. Suddenly it wasn't just about her body being real, and sensual, in a way no one else's had ever been in my eyes - despite my efforts to prevent that. Now she had awakened mine. And even knowing that it was a specific, intentional, targeted attempt to make me give in and pay her that ¥5000… well, I had never been in a position like this before.

"I don't know," I managed to get out, trying to back up but failing to do it well enough - or quickly enough - to convince her. "I might not… be ready."

"I think you're ready," she whispered as her hand slid up the inside of my thigh. "But don't worry. Becky will do whatever it takes to make you… feel…"

Her hand went higher than I expected that soon after she started. And this, more than anything else, sent pure shock into her wide eyes.

"…healthy?"

                                              To Be Continued…

[abumblebeeat221b]

A List of Everything that is Odd about ‘The Six Thatchers’

I watched it again.

And I have to say I’ve read better fan fics on ao3. Gosh, if this had been something on ao3, I’d have stopped reading by the time they made John cheat on Mary. My comment would have been something like: John is hopelessly OOC. Mary’s characterisation is great, but why would you kill her off?

But since, by some unfortunate events, this happens to be the first episode of series 4, here are a few things which were referenced/out of place/ or just plain odd.

Our doctor said you were clean.

A few hours ago, Sherlock was having a Vicotrian Mind Palace trip. We worried for a year that he might have OD-ed. How does this qualify as clean? Or rather did Sherlock Holmes tip some poor government doctor off to fake his results? Is this some weird AU?

Only those within this room, code names Antarctica, Langdale, Porlock and Love, will ever know the whole truth

Antarctica: no idea.

Langdale is a reference to Langdale Pike from ‘Three Gables’. In the story he is a curator of scandals for some paper, and gives Sherlock Holmes the real name of a rich, famous, beautiful and industrious woman whose actions happen to affect one of Holmes clients. He lets her off the hook after making sure she’d come up for the travel expenses for his client, whose biggest dream is to see the world.

Porlock. Fred Porlock. ‘The Valley of Fear’. First, Porlock warns Holmes in an encrypted message about one of Moriarty’s plans (against a Mr Douglas), but then becomes too afraid of his master. Aaaaaand. On top of it, the story has Douglas faking his own death, who back in America, had brought a gang (the Valley of Fear) to justice, and is busy trying to save his life once the criminals get released again. Douglas dies in the end, even though Holmes warned him. And good old Holmes blames Moriarty once more. (Although who knows. Maybe Douglas just faked his death again?)

There was once a merchant, in the famous market at Baghdad.

The fable of the Appointment in Samarra, a.k.a “You can’t cheat death”. But then Mycroft lets us know that Sherlock wrote an AU where the merchant flees to Sumatra and escapes death. If we are talking about symbolism, then what does that stand for? (Also, don’t forget Sherlock’s vow, his promise he’d help Mary to escape. Maybe he did. Maybe he did not and Mary still escaped?)

But when they opened up his lungs…sand.

The drown man whose lungs were full of sand: no idea what that might be about. I can’t even come up with a scenario where that would be a possible cause of death. Maybe he inhaled water mixed with (river?) sand?

Come back! It’s the wrong thumb.

The severed thumb aka ‘The Engineer’s Thumb’. The only interesting thing about this story is that the criminals manage to flee and a house burns down. I’m not sure if this qualifies as foreshadowing (the burning house from the trailer, anyone?)

It’s never twins.

The case is called The Duplicate Man on John’s blog. We already had a reference to A Case of Identity last series (man plays the suitor for his step-daughter), so I’m not sure what this could be.

Dimmock, look in the lymph nodes.

And the above also goes for the guy with ink in his lymph nodes. What?

The canary trainer?

There is a ACD but extended canon story with the title of 'The Canary Trainer’, which is basically an early Adlock fan fic set after Holmes fakes his death at the Reichenbach falls.

The heart medication you’re taking is known to cause bouts of amnesia.

Not a clue. But since in the episode the case features on John’s blog: why have they really stopped updating the real one? Or why haven’t they at least deleted the Six Thatchers from it?

You can’t arrest a jellyfish.

The one with the jellyfish aka The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane. It was the jellyfish. What a surprise.

Sherlock’s phone. I couldn’t help noticing that Sherlock works a LOT during the first part of the story. We have him solving cases for Dimmock, Hopkins, Lestrade. On top of his private ones. Maybe he is anxious to give whatever Moriarty has set up for him to come his way. Maybe Mofftiss are trying to mirror the ‘That just sort of happened.’ bit with the Sydney opera house serviettes from The Sign of Three.

The really uncomfortable bit with John and the woman on the bus. To everyone who say John is not wearing his wedding ring when we see his right hand combing though his hair: it’s because it’s on his left. When we get the whole bit later in the story, it is there (or just look at the 2 days promo pic).  Of course, why they couldn’t flip the shot so that we see his left hand (Martin Freeman is left handed, I’m sure he could have done the shot with his left hand) is beyond me.

The Thatcher case and the explosion. If you hit a car, usually, there is no explosion. Unless you want there to be an explosion. But even then, staging the whole thing can be difficult. Besides, who came up with the idea that cars are airtight, or that corpses don’t smell? Although, I have the feeling the latter one might be an honest mistake.

Mrs H. Since when are we calling Mrs Hudson Mrs H? I know it’s in the books. But that seems like a rather deliberate change in the show…

The client with the badly removed tattoo. I’m not sure what this was supposed to be about. The Red-Headed League. How did I miss this? Also there is a far-fetched parallel to John, maybe (the tattoo man’s wife left him, just like Mary leaves John, in a way).

And then we get this:

- So, what’s this all about, then? - Having fun. - Fun? - While I can.

And I’m tempted to say that’s foreshadowing. Sherlock honestly thinks something is coming, and he is not sure he’ll be able to have fun afterwards.

Toby the dog. The Sign of Four. Mary Morstan’s origin story. In the book Toby is not a bloodhound.

The hacker. It really happened. Twice, I know of. Last year a British teenager was accused of getting is hands on some CIA e-mails. And they speculated he wouldn’t get charged in the end, because of the case of Gary McKinnon who had hacked US military computers back in 2002. But thanks to the British government, his actions didn’t have any major consequences.

Ajay. Last series, we were made to believe Sherlock spent one and a half years as some sort of agent fighting Moriarty’s network. He is supposed to be a professional. I get finding the memory stick in the bust makes him emotional. But why would he tell that stranger Mary’s real name? And later, why would he tell Lestrade of all people that the guy who almost shot him used to work with Mary?

The memory stick. Even a memory stick with a metal case has plastic parts. And those busts had to be put into an oven to harden. Do you know what happens to a memory stick in an oven? And if for some reason physical rules do not apply in the Sherlockverse, then what happened to the chain the memory stick was attached to? That seems like a bit of an unnecessary mistake.

I also don’t get how that memory stick insurance is supposed to work. There were four of them, i.e. four memory sticks. One of them could have easily fallen into the wrong hands.

The hideout below the church. Before Sherlock meets Mary in that church, he already told John. Who told him to plant a tracer inside it.

The American passport. It says it was issued mid October 2014. Do you know what happened mid October 2014? According to John’s blog, that was a few weeks (maybe a month?) after Sherlock got shot in HLV. Maybe Mary thought she’d need to be on the run again. Maybe Mofftiss just f*cked up.

The Culverton Smith poster at the bus stop.

E at the bus stop. I really don’t trust her. John meeting her is not a coincidence, I think.

The question of all questions: Did John cheat on Mary? I don’t know. I do think he was slightly tempted to, but odds are he didn’t in the end. Because a) as half the fandom has already pointed out before me, it would be ooc. Also, if you are married to an ex-super agent, and your best friend can read you date going by your clothing, then I don’t think you’d really go through with it. Or else Sherlock and Mary would have noticed (of course, them knowing about it would give the story a slightly different turn).

Mary takes the bullet. And Lestrade finally learns who really shot Sherlock Holmes a few months ago (was that supposed to happen?).

Sherinford. What does Sherinford have to do with “13th”?

Norbury. That is a reference to The Man with the Twisted Lip, which is basically a case of a man having the day job of a professional beggar to make money for his family.

Mary’s message. “When I’m gone. If I’m gone”. Mary makes that correction every time. Does it matter? The latter one could be read as a condition. Of not necessarily being dead. I don’t know.

Death waits for us all in Samarra. But can Samarra be avoided?

Why does the episode close with Sherlock asking if Samarra can be avoided? He is not talking about himself. Maybe he isn’t even talking about John.

Go to hell, Sherlock.

Of course, the post credit snippet is on this list. We have Mary swearing eternal friendship to him a few scenes earlier. She is asking him to ‘save John’ in her message she recorded on the run. Before she knew Sherlock would find her. So why the sudden change in tone?

Some have noted that Hell is an actual place in Norway. I think that wasn’t quite what Mary had in mind. But there is not much I can offer as an alternative. At least, Hell would give us a glimmer of hope (and yes, I want that on a T-shirt).

If anything, re-watching that mess of an episode made me realise how much I want Mary to be alive again.

#iwant2believe

[blogjessekeyes]

Developer Jesse Keyes turns unconventional into bold statement

If there was ever a case of a building perfectly mirroring its developer, it would be One Seventh and Jesse Keyes. Both are angular, ultra-chic, smart and aggressive. Both are also making their emphatic debut on the New York architecture and style worlds.

Built on a 45-degree angle at the juncture of four different streets where Seventh Ave. South meets Varick and Carmine Sts., One Seventh resembles a hulking helm of a slick, futuristic boat or space-age flying machine. Six stories tall with just four units, the corner building shaped in an angular prism has a façade of manganese ironspot brick and Solarban 80 double-paned glass.

The side of the building on Seventh Ave. South that parallels the rush of autos making their way to Tribeca or the Holland Tunnel has bold racing stripes and competing slabs of vertical windows. On the mellower Carmine St., Juliet balconies face the local cafes, old-time Spanish restaurants and bootleg record stores. One Seventh blends seamlessly with its intersection and has gainied total community board support.

"No developer would take a chance on this site, which was operated as a gas station since the 1920s and unused for almost a decade," says Jesse Keyes, 35, an investor in the swank Goldbar and a partner in La Esquina, one of New York's hippest eateries. "They said it was too small or that the shape wouldn't work. I saw it as an opportunity. We took design risks with this project that architects generally do with museums and public spaces."

Designed by Rogers Marvel Architects, the same firm recently awarded the Governors Island commission, One Seventh is allegedly the world's first full-floor triangular residence. To make the project work financially, Keyes' development firm REcappartners worked with zoning attorneys Charles Rizzo & Associates to help get a variance to build higher than the allowed three floors. On top of the building, Keyes built a penthouse duplex with two outdoor terraces, both of which lean toward the corner angle.

"The question we had to answer was, how does one live in a triangle," says Keyes, who plays a hand in every design decision. "When I picture who is going to live here, I see an investment banker with an artist inside or an artist with a lot of money. I see the banker sitting totally naked in a chaise longue at the apex of the 45-degree angle, looking out at the cars driving down Seventh Ave., on the phone with his friends, thinking: 'How am I going to own this town tonight?'"

With hardly any marketing, they have two offers for the four units. One from a banker, the other from the son of a Spanish film producer. Prudential Douglas Elliman's Kevin King, a two-year agent who happens to be the long-time maitre d' at Balthazar, heads up sales. The three 1,371-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartments are listed for $1,995,000. The 2,106-square-foot, three-floor penthouse with 961 square feet of outdoor space costs $4.45 million.

"We're waiting till the units are completely finished until we formally sell the apartments," says King. "A finished product will show how unique this project is and assure we get what it's worth."

Jesse Keyes comes from both sides of the tracks. His parents were hippies. His mother, a lesbian, split from his father but stayed in Redwood City, Calif., supporting her two children as a gardener. As Jesse puts it, they lived on the "wrong side of the tracks." Ironically, she tended gardens near Jesse's father's estate in Woodside, Calif.

"Mom was a real hippie, and dad was a pseudo-hippie," says Keyes, who was called "Blanquito," or little white boy by his Pueblo Mexican barrio neighbors. "Half the time I was in my poor Mexican 'hood with my mom and the other half with a swimming pool, Mercedes, Porsches and horses with my dad."

Keyes talks openly about his desire but inability to communicate with his Spanish-speaking neighbors. He talks openly about almost everything, especially his drive to never stop learning or moving.

"There's a point where you grow up in suburbia that you say I'm either going to get stuck in this for the rest of my life or do something fascinating or interesting," he says. "I was visiting a friend in Mexico City when I was 17 years old. We were in his family's penthouse and I was looking over the slums of the city, whose people needed major help at the time. I thought to myself, we as capitalists need to do better for these people. It was then that I knew I needed to focus on this for the rest of my life."

For Keyes, that meant Princeton, a year in Spain to learn the language, a Fulbright Fellowship and a master's in architecture in Catalonia, a Kinne Fellowship in the Dominican Republic, a job with the prestigious Boston Consultant Group, a master's in real estate from Columbia University, a doctoral candidacy and teaching fellow at Rutgers University in Urban Planning, and roles in the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns.

"My father is good friends with Gore from St. Albans," says Keyes, whose great-grandfather on his father's side was Democratic Senator Morris Sheppard from Texas who championed Prohibition and women's rights. "My goal was eventually to work in Housing and Urban Development [HUD]. After those two losses, I planned to teach and research through my 30s. But academia, especially in our current political climate, was not as fulfilling as I thought. Building strong architectural projects is a way to make my mark and some money. Eventually, I will get back into affordable housing and giving back in some way."

Keyes' next project is already a major coup for him and New York. Working with Habita, a Mexican group known globally for designing and operating some of the world's chicest boutique hotels, Keyes will open a Mexican-themed, mixed-use hotel and condo project in a location below Houston St. on the East Side. Mexican architect Enrique Norton, who designed One York on Canal St. in New York and the Guggenheim in Guatemala, is an equity partner in the project.

"I want to make a unique statement and be part of the next big place," says Keyes, whose groomed beard and middle-parted hair give him the look of Al Pacino in "Serpico." "You hope it doesn't become something like what happened in the Meatpacking District, which had little thought and planning and became oversaturated with the same product, bars and restaurants. There should be mixed use there. And the Hotel Gansevoort is a mistake. I don't know how they got that built."

Slightly controlling, obsessive about details, and intellectually strategic, Keyes even wrote the copy for the One Seventh marketing materials. (I haven't met a developer yet who does that.) He prefers to focus on one project at a time as opposed to stretching himself thin and losing touch with the day-to-day decisions that these high-design projects demand.

"Scalability will be hard because for each project I'm looking for a specific art and message," says Keyes. "In any case, when you get bigger you lose control over certain levers, and I don't want that to happen."

Still, according to Thaddeus Briner, the architect for One Seventh, formerly of Rogers Marvel (and I.M. Pei's firm) and now on his own, Keyes is a very good client. "This was a dream project," says Briner. "It combined a really challenging site with an extremely progressive client. Those don't come along very often."

Resource:- https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/developer-jesse-keyes-turns-unconventional-bold-statement-article-1.339485