#american brown ale

[auraeseer]

Perfect for the playing the Well Tempered Clavier . . .

[theamericanpin-up]

Al Buell - April 1961 Al Buell's Beauties Calendar Illustration - Brown & Bigelow Calendar Co. - American Pin-up Calendar Collection

[mimi-0007]

James Brown and Al sharpton

[elenichr]

Year of Lists

March Films

more awards-related stuff and then FREEDOM (what I chose to do with it is another thing but one thing I cannot be judged for is there are a LOT of movies this month, and that is positive)

must-watches in bold (these are in relation to other movies watched, and the time, not necessarily must-watches of all time)

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always (2023) *6ish, I guess? - does this count? It's nostalgia in an hour's worth. it's every bit as bad as you would hope. Great stuff.

American Fiction (2023) *7.5 - hell yeah. Finally, something important done in a pleasant, human, enjoyable way (see how much I sobbed during this awards season: so.many.super.sad movies - or if not sad, just.so.much, overall). Performances are out of this world; it has everything: humour, nuance, a bit of romance, a bit of sadness; it was so damn good to watch.

The Zone of Interest (2023) *6 - how do you rate this? that six is not representative of the movie at all, but here we are. Everything you've heard about this is true: it's masterful, definitely a gut punch, Sandra Hüller is having a great year; the sound(track) is out of this world. It says so much with so little. Yes, it's a movie about the Holocaust, but it's also, really, a movie about how we stand by and allow atrocities to happen. It's a movie about humanity's cruellest side: indifference - right now, and then, and always. There is much to be said here, a lot of conversation was around how Schindler's List worked as a movie, therefore, romanticised, by the movie lens, the Holocaust. I can see how The Zone of Interest tried really hard not to do that, and I can confidently say it's done so much for exposing how useless we can be in the face of tragedy, but with every day that passes, I keep thinking more and more that it hasn't escaped that movie lens. However, it does really well at asking the question of whether we can portray atrocities of this kind, and does it really make a difference when we try?

Dune: Part Two (2024) *7.5 - umm, this is so long I need to rewatch it to even have a formed opinion. In lieu of a rewatch, here are my current thoughts: it wouldn't have been half the movie it is without the soundtrack. Also currently my favourite soundtrack of all time. I could rave and rave about it. The performances were great all round. I really love that Villeneuve doesn't try to constantly capture people like the mega starts they are: see Timmy's double chin, constipated face, present in both movies, and at a close-up at that. Some scenes were visually and emotionally breathtaking but I'm not sure if this was the case because of the anticipation of seeing something loved in a book portrayed on screen. It felt busy and a bit disjointed, especially in comparison to Part 1. I so wish they'd done the romance differently. I was constantly thinking of The Bear and how well that worked there. I wish they'd let Paul and Chani's connection breathe and mature, taken us along for the ride.

Alice, Darling (2022) *6 - this gave How to Have Sex vibes. I love when a movie addresses difficult subjects (in this case, abuse) in a slice-of-life, uber real, awkward way. It dexterously looks at the outward indicators of abuse, the responsibility of friendship - some mild body horror for both symbolic and literal purposes.

The Sixth Sense (1999) *7.5 - they don't make them like this anymore. Boy, do I envy anyone who hasn't watched this and doesn't know anything about it. If you know that person, please, make them known, I want to sit them down and pop this in the cassette player (Netflix or Prime or whatever, but you know). It's only the second time I watched this because I thought there wasn't much reason to, apart from nostalgia. Surely, it's just so worthy because of the set-up. Yeah, yeah, I was wrong. I had to pause a couple of times to allow myself to digest the mastery of what this movie is when YOU DO KNOW.

Scarface (1983) *7 - what can I say? Yup, it's great. Colours are a highlight, as is Michelle Pfeiffer.

A Time to Kill (1996) *6 - disclaimer: I am going through legal dramas, I love 'em. This was fun, much more timely than I expected. Samuel L Jackson has a beautiful, beautiful speech. A man fancies a woman that is not his wife, and she is pretty, and young, and smart, and she ignites a spark in him, and she believes in what he's doing in all the ways his wife doesn't, and yet, said man doesn't cheat on said wife. Woohoo. I'm all for complexity and non-monogamy (when both, or more parties, agree to it) but it is just so beautiful to see a good marriage challenged and withstand the challenge. Bonus points for young Matthew McConaughey and infant Sandy Bullock. It's serious, it's legal fun, a bit naïve; the nineties in a two and a half hour ride.

Rush Hour; Rush Hour 2; Rush Hour 3 (1998) (2001) (2007) *6 *6 *5 - WAR UGH ... SO MUCH FUN. Yeah, they shouldn't be bunched together, yeah, a lot of it reads problematic, yeah, I wish I'd been watching them all my life. Great stuff. Don't look away at all the racist jokes, both ways, and any other way you can imagine. This is a superb example of looking at what we made for fun: there's so much to digest, learn from, appreciate. I LOVE JACKIE CHAN. When I was a kid, it was considered embarrassing to appreciate his work. I had a stupid-ass, DUH, moment of realisation watching this: oh, that 'martial arts movies are sub-par' idea? Yeah, blatant racism. It feels so good to come to this now. Side-note: Zhang Ziyi showing up in 2, what a treat. I'm not one for recycling material but can we have Rush Hour 4 please, please, please?

Blow Out (1981) *6 - another Brian de Palma, another good movie with its merits. Some of it was delicious in a movie buff way, but I was bored nonetheless. If you're into your legal, crime, journalistic slow-burners, go for it.

Decision to Leave (2022) *9 - triple bold. This is my favourite movie. It has been since I saw it in the cinema and cried in the toilets after. It is a masterpiece, Park Chan-Wook might well be my favourite director. There are not enough good things or good enough words I could say. Here's the best I can do rn: noir at its best, romance at its most complex, human nature at its barest, lyricism, depth, story for days, really unapologetic storytelling, no infantilising the audience here, crime at its most beautiful, and potentially the best ending scene cinema has ever seen. Watch this, watch The Handmaiden, watch Stoker, watch Oldboy (when I watch more of his movies, they'll be added to this). They're all in my great movies of all time (fictional) list. Side-note: WE ARE SLEEPING ON KOREAN CINEMA. We're getting there, but we're not even close. Still underrated.

Joy Ride (2023) *6 - does what it says on the tin. Also SO MUCH FUN.

[lifelovemusiq]

🎈🎉♊️🥳 [6-4-2023]

[blue-eli]

Ink October day seventeen: Pectus

The breast of a bird.

[beautifulfaaces]

Sahara Ale

Facts

January 1, 1995

American Napalese actress

Filmography

Janet [In Theory: 2022]

Eliza/ Jorts [Look Both Ways: 2022]

Ruby [Glitter Tang: 2021]

Nila [Others: 2017-2018]

Rinalora [Field of Flowers: 2018]

Appearance

brunette

brown eyes

1.52m

Roleplay

playable: young adult

[aixelsyd13]

New Year’s Day Pork & Sauerkraut II

I came to blog my recipe then through a search, discovered I posted one last year! That was in the roasting pan though, and it was a pork loin rib half. This year, I put a pork shoulder roast in the crock pot... and made some dumplings 2 ways too!

[mcmansionhell]

this house may or may not be real

on grayness in real estate

Allegedly, somewhere in Wake Forest, North Carolina, a 4 bed, 5.5 bathroom house totaling more than 6,600 square feet is for sale at a price of 2.37 million dollars. The house, allegedly, was built in 2021. Allegedly, it looks like this:

A McMansion is, in effect, the same house over and over again - it's merely dressed up in different costumes. In the 90s, the costume was Colonial; in the 2000s, it was vague forms of European (Tuscan, Mediterranean), and in the 2010s it was Tudor, dovetailed by "the farmhouse" -- a kind of Yeti Cooler simulacra of rural America peddled to the populace by Toll Brothers and HGTV.

Now, we're fully in the era of whatever this is. Whitewashed, quasi-modern, vaguely farmhouse-esque, definitely McMansion. We have reached, in a way, peak color and formal neutrality to the point where even the concept of style has no teeth. At a certain moment in its life cycle, styles in vernacular architecture reach their apex, after which they seem excessively oversaturated and ubiquitous. Soon, it's time to move on. After all, no one builds houses that look like this anymore:

(This is almost a shame because at least this house is mildly interesting.)

If we return to the basic form of both houses, they are essentially the same: a central foyer, a disguised oversized garage, and an overly complex assemblage of masses, windows, and rooflines. No one can rightfully claim that we no longer live in the age of the McMansion. The McMansion has instead simply become more charmless and dull.

When HGTV and the Gaineses premiered Fixer Upper in 2013, it seemed almost harmless. Attractive couple flips houses. Classic show form. However, Fixer Upper has since (in)famously ballooned into its own media network, a product line I'm confronted with every time I go to Target, and a general 2010s cultural hallmark not unlike the 1976 American Bicentennial - both events after which every house and its furnishings were somehow created in its image. (The patriotism, aesthetic and cultural conservatism of both are not lost on me.)

But there's one catch: Fixer Upper is over, and after the Gaineses, HGTV hasn't quite figured out where to go stylistically. With all those advertisers, partners, and eyeballs, the pressure to keep one foot stuck in the rural tweeness that sold extremely well was great. At the same time, the network (and the rest of the vernacular design media) couldn't risk wearing out its welcome. The answer came in a mix of rehashed, overly neutral modernism -- with a few pops of color, yet this part often seems omitted from its imitators -- with the prevailing "farmhouse modern" of Magnolia™ stock. The unfortunate result: mega-ultra-greige.

Aside from war-mongering, rarely does the media manufacture consent like it does in terms of interior design. People often ask me: Why is everything so gray? How did we get here? The answer is because it is profitable. Why is it profitable? I'd like to hypothesize several reasons. The first is as I mentioned: today's total neutrality is an organic outgrowth of a previous but slightly different style, "farmhouse modern," that mixed the starkness of the vernacular farmhouse with the soft-pastel Pinterest-era rural signifiers that have for the last ten years become ubiquitous.

Second, neutrals have always been common and popular. It's the default choice if you don't have a vision for what you want to do in a space. In the 2000s, the neutrals du jour were "earth tones" - beige, sage green, brown. Before that, it was white walls with oak trim in the 80s and 90s. In the 70s, neutrals were textural: brick and wood paneling. We have remarkably short memories when it comes to stylistic evolution because in real time it feels incremental. Such is the case with neutrals.

Finally, the all-gray palette is the end logic of HGTV et al's gamified methodology of designing houses with commodification in mind: if you blow out this wall, use this color, this flooring, this cabinetry, the asking price of your house goes up. You never want to personalize too much because it's off-putting to potential buyers. After twenty years of such rhetoric, doesn't it make all the sense in the world that we've ended up with houses that are empty, soulless, and gray?

A common realtor adage is to stage the house so that potential buyers can picture their own lives in it. In other words, create a tabula rasa one can project a fantasy of consumption onto. Implied in that logic is that the buyer will then impose their will on the house. But when the staged-realtor-vision and general-mass-market aesthetic of the time merge into a single dull slurry, we get a form of ultra-neutral that seems unwelcoming if not inescapable.

To impose one's style on the perfect starkness is almost intimidating, as though one is fouling up something untouchable and superior. If neutrality makes a house sell, then personality - at all - can only be seen as a detriment. Where does such an anti-social practice lead us? Back to the house that may or may not exist.

In my travels as McMansion Hell, I've increasingly been confronted with houses full of furniture that isn't real. This is known as virtual staging and it is to house staging as ChatGPT is to press release writing or DALL-E is to illustration. As this technology improves, fake sofa tables are becoming more and more difficult to discern from the real thing. I'm still not entirely sure which of the things in these photos are genuine or rendered. To walk through this house is to question reality.

Staging ultimately pretends (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) that someone is living in this house, that you, too could live in it. Once discovered, virtual staging erases all pretensions: the house is inhabited by no one. It is generally acknowledged (though I'm not sure on the actual statistics) that a house with furniture - that is, with the pretense of living -- sells easier than a house with nothing in it, especially if that house (like this one) has almost no internal walls. Hence the goal is to make the virtual staging undiscoverable.

If you want to talk about the realtor's tabula rasa, this is its final form. Houses without people, without human involvement whatsoever.

But what makes this particular house so uncanny is that all of these things I've mentioned before: real estate listing photography, completely dull interiors and bland colors all make it easy for the virtual furniture to work so well. This is because the softness of overlit white and gray walls enables the fuzzy edges of the renderings to look natural when mixed with an overstylized reality. Even if you notice something's off in the reflections, that's enough to cause one to wonder if anything in the house is real: the floors, the fixtures, the moulding, the windows and doors.

This is where things are heading: artifice on top of artifice on top of artifice. It's cheap, it's easy. But something about it feels like a violation. When one endeavors to buy a house, one assumes what one is viewing is real. It's one thing if a realtor photoshops a goofy sunset, it's another to wonder if anything in a room can be touched with human hands. I won't know what, if any, part of this estate costing over 2 million dollars actually exists until I visit it myself. Perhaps that's the whole point - to entice potential buyers out to see for themselves. When they enter, they'll find the truth: a vast, empty space with nothing in it.

The better this rendering technology gets, the more it will rely on these totally neutral spaces because everything matches and nothing is difficult. You are picking from a catalog of greige furniture to decorate greige rooms. If you look at virtual staging in a non-neutral house it looks immediately plastic and out of place, which is why many realtors opt to either still stage using furniture or leave the place empty.

Due to the aforementioned photography reasons, I would even argue that the greigepocalypse or whatever you want to call it and virtual staging have evolved simultaneously and mutualistically. The more virtual staging becomes an industry standard, the more conditions for making it seamless and successful will become standardized as well.

After all, real staging is expensive and depends on paid labor - selecting furniture, getting workers to deliver and stage it, only to pack it back up again once the property is sold. This is a classic example of technology being used to erase entire industries. Is this a bad thing? For freelance and contract workers, yeah. For realtors? no. For real estate listings, it remains to be seen. For this blog? Absolutely. (Thankfully there is an endless supply of previously existing McMansions.)

The thing is, real estate listings no longer reflect reality. (Did they ever to begin with?) The reason we're all exasperated with greige is because none of us actually live that way and don't want to. I've never been to anyone's house that looks like the house that may or may not exist. Even my parents who have followed the trends after becoming empty nesters have plenty of color in their house. Humans like color. Most of us have lots of warmth and creativity in our houses. Compare media intended for renters and younger consumers such as Apartment Therapy with HGTV and you will find a stark difference in palate and tone.

But when it comes to actually existing houses - look at Zillow and it's greige greige greige. So who's doing this? The answer is real estate itself aided by their allies in mass media who in turn are aided by the home renovation industry. In other words, it's the people who sell home as a commodity. That desire to sell has for some time overpowered all other elements that make up a home or an apartment's interiority to the point where we've ended up in a colorless slurry of real and unreal.

Fortunately, after ten years or so, things begin to become dated. We're hitting the ten year mark of farmhouse modernism and its derivatives now. If you're getting sick of it, it's normal. The whole style is hopefully on its last leg. But unlike styles of the past, there's a real, trenchant material reason why this one is sticking around longer than usual.

Hence, maybe if we want the end of greige, we're going to have to take color back by force.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including extra posts and livestreams.

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar, because media work is especially recession-vulnerable.

[decolonize-the-left]

"Speaking to Al Jazeera, Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, says Israeli officials, both in Netanyahu’s coalition and in the opposition, have been speaking more openly about making Gaza unlivable for Palestinians.

“There have been ongoing statements in recent days … which seem to indicate a particular plan the Israeli government seems to want to implement, which is not only to create unbearable conditions for the population of Gaza, but actually to speak about removing the population,” he said.

“Or as one minister [far-right finance minister] Smotrich said, to encourage them to leave Gaza either to the Sinai Peninsula or to other countries that would welcome them,” Bartov said.

“Or that Israel would rule that area and as this particular minister said, there should be discussions about settling the Gaza Strip,” he said, adding if the current trajectory continues, the world is witnessing an operation of “ethnic cleansing under the mantle of humanitarian action”.

American Muslim leaders carried on a campaign launched earlier this month against President Joe Biden over his handling of the Gaza conflict.

#AbandonBiden campaign was first launched by Muslim leaders from Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Saturday’s plan to actively campaign against Biden in all 50 US states was announced in Chicago, Illinois at the end of a national convention organised by the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America.

The leaders say they intend to guarantee Biden’s loss in the upcoming 2024 election over his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed more than 21,000 people, mostly children and women.

“The president betrayed us because he violated the value of dignity and life. What’s the point of voting for you when you deny 2.2 million [in Gaza] people water?” said Hassan Abdel Salam, a spokesperson for the campaign.

" Prime Minister Netanyahu thanked the Biden administration for its continued backing, including approval for a new emergency weapons sale, the second this month.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a similar decision on December 9 to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106m.

Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making a proposed $14.3bn in American military assistance to Israel contingent on concrete steps by Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza.

Netanyahu says Israel needs more time in Gaza.

“As the chief of staff said this week, the war will continue many more months. My policy is clear. We will continue to fight until we have achieved all the objectives of the war, first and foremost the annihilation of Hamas and the release of all the hostages.”

Keep protesting and boycotting and calling your reps and blocking ships and railroads

🕊️🇵🇸🕊️

artist

[sophaeros]

arctic monkeys for q magazine, june 2011 (x) (x)

ARCTIC MONKEYS: Inside Alex Turner's Head

Words Sylvia Patterson Portrait John Wright

The day Arctic Monkeys moved into their six bedroom, Spanish-style villa in the Hollywood Hills, where the first-floor balcony looked over the patio swimming pool, they knew exactly what to do.

"From the balcony, you could get on t'roof and jump in't pool," chirps the Monkeys' most gregarious member, drummer Matt Helders, in his homely Yorkshire way. "We looked at it and said, That's definitely gonna happen. So by the end, we did a couple of 'em. Somersaults in t'pool, from the roof. At night time."

In January 2011, as Sheffield and the rest of Britain endured its bitterest winter in a century, Arctic Monkeys capered among the palm trees, eschewing hotels for a millionaire's Hollywood homestead as they recorded and mixed their fourth studio album, Suck It and See.

The four Monkeys, alongside producer James Ford and engineer James Brown, lived what they called the "American man thing": watched Super Bowl on giant TVs, played ping-pong, hired two Mustangs, cooked cartoon Tom And Jerry-sized steaks on barbecues on Sundays, had girlfriends over to visit, all cooking and drinking around the colossal outdoor kitchen area featuring a fridge and two dishwashers. Living atop the Hills, they could see the Pacific Ocean beyond by day, the infinite glittering lights of downtown LA by night.

Every day, en route to Sound City Studios, they'd travel in a seven-seater four-by-four through the mountains, via bohemian 60s enclave Laurel Canyon, blaring out the tunes: The Stones Roses, The Cramps, the Misfits' Hollywood Babylon. For the sometime teenage art-punk renegades whose guitarist, Jamie Cook, was once ejected from London's Met Bar for refusing to pay €22 for two beers, the comedy rock'n'roll life still feels, however, absolutely nothing like reality.

NICK O'MALLEY: "It were really as if we were on holiday. When we came back it's the most post-holiday blues I've ever had!"

JAMIE COOK: "It's hard to comment on that. It were just really good fun."

MATT HELDERS: "We always said, As soon as things like that feel normal, we're in trouble. But it's just funny. You might think it would get more and more serious as you get older but it's getting funnier. We've done four albums now and I'm still only 24, I'm still immature to an extent. So who cares?"

Alex? Al? Are you there?

ALEX TURNER: "Yeah, it were good times. But we were in the studio most of the time. So there's no real wild Hollywood stories. Hmn. Yeah."

Wednesday, 16 March 2011, Strongroom Bar, Shoreditch, East London, 11am. Alex Turner, 25, slips entirely alone into an empty art-crowd brasserie looking like an indie girl's indie dream boy: mop-top bouffant hair which coils, in curlicues, directly into his cheekbones, army-green waist-length jacket, baggy-arsed skinny jeans, black cord zip-up cardigan, simple gold chain, supermoon sized chocolate-brown eyes.

Almost six years after I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor became the indie-punk anthem of a generation (from the first of Arctic Monkeys' three Number 1 albums), and nothing prepares you for the curious phenomenon of Alex Turner "in conversation". Unlike so many of the Monkeys frenetic early songs, he operates in slow motion, seemingly underwater, carrying a protective shell on his back, perhaps indie rock's very own diamond-backed terrapin. The most celebrated young wordsmith in rock'n roll today talks fulsomely, in fact, only in shapeless, curling sentences punctuated with "maybe... hmn.. yeah", an anecdotal wilderness sketching pictures as vague as a cloud. He is, though, simultaneously adorable: amenable, gentle, graceful, and as Northern as a 70s grandpa who literally greets you with "ey oop?".

"People think I'm a miserable bastard," he notes, cheerfully, "but it's just the way me face falls." Still profoundly private, if not as hermetically sealed as a vacuum-packed length of Frankfurter, his fante-shy reticence extends not only to his personal life (his four-year relationship with It-girl/TV presenter Alexa Chung, whom he never mentions) but to insider details generally. Take the Monkeys’ Hollywood high jinks documented above: not one word of it was described by Turner. Before Q was informed by his other Monkey bandmates, Turner’s anecdotal aversion unfolded like this:

Describe the lovely villa you were in. AT: "Well... we certainly had a... good view."

Of what? AT: "Well, we were up quite high."

The downtown LA lights going on forever? AT: "I dunno. It was definitely that thing of getting a bit of sort of sunshine. Is it vitamin D? If you can get vitamin D on your record, you've got a bit of a head start. So we'd get up and drive to the studio."

What were you driving? AT: "Nothing... spectacular. But yeah, we'd drive up the studio, spend all day there and sort of, y know, get back. To be honest... we had limited time. So we spent as much time as possible kind of getting into it, like, in the studio.

So your favourite adventures were what? AT: "Well, they were really… minimal. We were working out there!"

Any nightclubs or anything, perhaps? AT: "You really want the goss 'ere, don't you?"

Yes, please. AT: "I could make some up. Nah!"

And this was on the second time of asking. It's perhaps obvious: Alex Turner, one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation (four Monkeys albums and two EPs in five years, The Last Shadow Puppets side-project, a bewitching acoustic soundtrack for his actor/video director friend Richard Ayoade's feature-length debut Submarine), is dedicated only to the cause – of being the best he can possibly be. He simply remembers the songs much more than the somersaults.

Throughout 2009, Arctic Monkeys toured third album Humbug – the record mostly made in the Californian desert with Queens Of The Stone Age man-monolith Josh Homme – across the planet. While hardly some cranium-blistering opus, its heavier sonic meanderings considerably slowed the Arctic Monkeys' live sets and on 23 August 2009, Q watched them headline the Lowlands Festival, Holland and witnessed a hitherto unthinkable sight – swathes of perplexed Monkeys fans trudging away from the stage. With the sludge rock mood matching their cascading dude-rock hair it seemed obvious: they'd smoked way too much outrageously strong weed in the desert.

"Heheheh, yeah," responds Turner, unperturbed. "That's your theory. You probably weren't alone."

Back in the Strongroom Bar, Turner's arm is now nonchalantly draped along the back of a beaten-up brown leather sofa. He ponders his band's somewhat contrary reputation…

"I think starting the headline set at Reading with a cover of a Nick Cave tune perhaps was a bit contrary. D'youknowhat Imean?! But to be honest, that summer, at those festivals, we had a great time. And I know some fans enjoyed those sets 10 times more. And you can't just do, y’know, another Mardy Bum or whatever. Because how could you, really?"

With Humbug, notes Turner, "I went into corners I hadn't before, because I needed to see what were there," but by spring 2010 he wanted their fourth album to be "more song-based" and less lyrically "removed". He was "organised this time", studied "the good songwriters" (from Nick Cave, The Byrds and Leonard Cohen to country colossi Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline), discovered "the other three strings" on his guitar, and wrote 12 songs through the spring and summer of 2010, mostly in the fourth-floor New York flat he shared with Chung before the couple moved back to London late last summer (the New York MTV show It's On With Alexa Chung was cancelled after two seasons). The result: major-key melodies, harmonised singing and classic song structures.

At the same time he revisited the opposite extreme: bands such as Black Sabbath and The Stooges ("we wanted a few wig-outs as well"); he was also still heavily influenced by the oil-thick grinder rock of Josh Homme, who is clearly now a permanent Monkeys hero. After four months' rehearsals in London, on 8 January the Monkeys relocated to LA for five swift weeks of production and Homme came to visit, singing backing vocals on All My Own Stunts. Tequila was involved.

"Tequila is probably me favourite," manages Turner, by way of an anecdote. "But it takes a certain climate... It's not the same... in the rain. Yeah. [Looks to be contemplating a lyric] Tequila in the rain."

Vocally, he developed the caramel richness first unveiled on The Last Shadow Puppets' Scott Walker-esque The Age Of The Understatement, finding a crooner's vibrato. "Everything before was so tight,” he notes, clutching his neck. "Probably just through nerves. That's just not there any more." Suck It and See contains at least four of the most glittering, sing-along, world-class pop songs (and obvious singles) of Arctic Monkeys' career: the towering, clanging She's Thunderstorms, the summertime stunner The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala, the heavenly harmonised title track and the Echo & The Bunnymen-esque jangly pop of closer That's Where You're Wrong.

Elsewhere, in typically contrary "fashion", there's preposterous head-banger bedlam (Brick By Brick, the rollicking faux-heavy rock download they released in March "just for fun", featuring vocals by Helders; Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair, and Library Pictures). News arrives that the first single proper will be Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair. Q is perplexed. Brilliantly titled, certainly, but arriving after Brick By Brick, the new album will appear to the planet as some comedy pastiche metal album for 12-year-old boys.

You've got all these colossal, summery, indie-pop classics and you've gone for... The Chair? AT: [Laughing uproariously] "The Chair! I'm now calling it The Chair, that's cool. Well for once it weren't even our suggestion. It was Laurence's (Bell, Domino label boss). And I were, Fucking too right! He's awesome. It'd be good to get a bit of fucking rock'n'roll out there, won't it? It's riffs. It's loud. It's funny."

If you don't release The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala as a single I'm going round Domino to kick Laurence's "awesome" butt. AT: "I think it'll be the next one!"

The record's title, meanwhile, could've been more enigmatically original than the un-loved phrase Suck It and See. The band, struggling with ideas due to the opposing sonic moods, invented an inspiration-conjuring ruse: to think of new names for effects pedals in the style of Tom Wolfe, Turner being long enamoured with the American author's legendarily psychedelic books The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, "cos that just sounds awesome".

"There's the Big Muff pedal," he elaborates, "That’s the classic. I've got the Valve Slapper. And there's the Tube Screamer. So we came up with the Thunder Suckle Fuzz Canyon. And… wait till I assemble it in me mind… em… it'll come to me… The Blonde-O-Sonic Shimmer Trap. So we were going for summat like that."

A wasted opportunity?

"Nah. Because some of those things ended up in the lyrics anyway. Suck It and See was just easier."

Alex Turner, rock'n'roll's premier descriptive art-poet, still writes his lyrics long-hand in spiral-bound notebooks. "Writing lyrics is a craft that I've practised a bit now," he avers. "In me notebook it looks like sums. Theories. There's words and arrows going everywhere. There's always a few possibilities and I write the word 'OR' in a square."

For our most celebrated colloquial sketch-writer of the everyday observation (all betting pencils, boy slags and ice-cream van aggravations) the more successful he becomes, the less he orbits the ordinary. "I'm not struggling with that, to be honest," he decides. "In fact I'm enjoying writing lyrics much more than I did. Stories. Describing a picture. Um. There's quite a bit of weather and time in this one. Which is probably not reassuring. 'Oh God, he's writing about the weather.' Maybe leave that out!"

There are also some direct, funny, romantic observations: "That's not a skirt, girl, that's a sawn-off shotgun/And I only hope you've got it aimed at me..." (from the title track).

Some of your romantic quips, now, must be about Alexa. AT: "Right. Yeah. Definitely. Well... there's always been that side to our songs, when we weren't writing about... the fucking taxi rank. It's kind of inevitably... people you're with." [At the mention of Chung's name, Turner is visibly aggrieved, head sliding into his neck, terrapin-esque indeed.]

It must have been very grounding being in a proper relationship through all this madness. Because if you weren't, girls would be jumping all over your head. AT: "Em. Hmn. Well, of course that helps you to... I don't really know.. what the other way would be."

Does Alexa wonder if the lyrics are about her? AT: "Oh there's none of that. Yeah, no, there's no looking over the shoulder."

She must be curious, at least. "Maybe."

Did you ever watch Popworld? AT: [Nervous laughter] "Em! Now and again."

Did you ever see the episode where she helps Paul McCartney write a song about shoes? AT: "Ah, yeah I think so, maybe I did see that."

Well, if I was you, I'd have been thinking, "She's the one for me." AT: "Well. Yeah... maybe that would've... sealed the deal! Hmn. But maybe that wasn't when i got the ray of light. When was? Nah [buries head in hands]. I might have to go for a cigarette..."

Q can't torture him any more and joins him for a snout. Turner smokes Camels from a crumpled, sad, soft-pack and resembles a teenager again. As early song You Probably Couldn't See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me says, "Never tenser/Could all go a bit Frank Spencer…”

In January 2006, when Arctic Monkeys' Number 1 album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not became the fastest-selling debut in UK history, inadvertently redefining the concept of autonomy and further imploding the decimated music industry (& wasn't their idea to be "the MySpace band", it was their fans': the Monkeys merely kick-started viral marketing by giving away demos at gigs), the 19- and 20-year-old Monkeys were terrible at fame. They weren't so much insurrectionary teenage upstarts as teenage innocents culturally traumatised by the peak-era fame democracy.

To their generation (born in the mid-'80s) fame was now synonymous with some-twat-off-the-telly a world of foaming tabloid hysteria where renown and celebrity meant, in fact, you were talentless. Hence their interview diffidence and receiving awards via videos dressed up as the Wizard OfOz and the Village People. Which only, ironically, made them even more celebrated and famous. (“That were a product of us just trying to hold onto the reins," thinks Turner today. "Being uncooperative.")

Q meets The Other Three one morning at 11am, in the well-appointed, empty bar of the Bethnal Green, Bast London hotel they're staying in (all three live in Sheffield, with their girlfriends, in their own homes). First to arrive is the industrious, sensible and cheerful Helders, crunching into a hangover-curing green apple. He has recovered from last year's boxing accident at the gym, which left his broken arm requiring a fitted plate. Now impressively purple-scarred, the break felt "interesting" and the doctor couldn't resist the one-armed drummer jest: "D'you like Def Leppard?"

Currently enjoying an enduring bromance with Diddy, he still doesn't feel famous, "it just doesn't feel that real, there's no paparazzi waiting for me to trip up." He and Turner, during the four-month rehearsals last year, became an accomplished roast dinner cooking duo for the band. "I reckon we could have us our own cookbook," he beams. "Pictures of us stirring, with a whisk."

O'Malley, an agreeable, twinkly-eyed 25-year-old with a strikingly deep voice and a winningly huge smile, is still coyly embarrassed by the interview process. A replacement for the departed original bass player Andy Nicholson in May 2006, he went from Asda shelf-filler to Glastonbury headliner in 13 months and still finds the Monkeys "a massive adventure". His life in Sheffield is profoundly normal – he's delighted that his new home since last October has an open-hearth fireplace: "Me parents had electric bars." He has also discovered cooking. “I’m just a pretty shit-hot housewife, most of the time," he smiles. "I cook stews, fish combinations, curries, chillies. I made a beef pho noodle soup the other day, Vietnamese, I surprised meself, had some mates round for that."

Recently, at his dad's 50th birthday bash, the party band, made up of family and friends, insisted he join them onstage "for ...The Dancefloor. So I were up there [mimes playing bass, all sheepish] and it were the wrong pitch, they didn't know the words or 'owt, going, Makin eyes... er..." He has no extra-curricular musical ambitions. "I'm happy just playing bass," he smiles. "I've never had the skill of doing songs meself. It'd be shit!"

Cook, 25, is still spectacularly embarrassed by the interview process. He perches upright, with a fixed nervous smile, newly shorn of the beard and ponytail he sported in LA: "Rockin' a pone, yeah, because I could get away with it." With his classic preppy haircut and dapper green military coat (from London's swish department store, Liberty), he looks like a handsome '40s film star. (Turner deems Cook "the band heartbreaker" and had a word with him post-LA: "I said to him, Come on, mate, you've got to get that beard shaved off. Get the girls back into us. Shift some posters.")

His life in Sheffield is also profoundly normal. He still plays Sunday League football with his local pub team, The Pack Horse FC (position, left back), remains in his long-term relationship with page-three-model-turned-make-up-artist Katie Downes and "potters about" at home, refusing to describe said home, "cos I'll get burgled".

A tiler by trade, he always vowed, should the Monkeys sign a deal, that he'd throw his trowel in a Sheffield river on his last day of work. "I never did fling me trowel," he confirms. "Probably still in me shed." He's never considered what his band represents to his generation. "I'd go insane thinking about it, I'm pretty good at not thinking about it… Oh God. I'm terrible at this!"

Back in the Strongroom Bar, Alex Turner is cloudily describing his everyday life. "I just keep meself to meself," he confounds. He mostly stays indoors and his perfect night in with Alexa is "watching loads of Sopranos. And doing roast dinners".

No longer spindle-limbed, he attends a gym and has handsomely well-defined arms – "You have to look after yourself."

Suddenly, Crying Lightning from Humbug rumbles over the bar stereo. "Wow. How about that? I was quite happy the other morning cos Brick By Brick were on the round-up goals on Soccer AM. It's still exciting when that happens. It was like Brick By Brick is real."

He spends his days writing music, "listening to records", and recommends Blues Run The Game by doomed '60s minstrel Jackson C Frank ("who's that lass?... Laura Marling, she did a cover recently), a simple, acoustic, deep and regretful stunner about missing someone on the road.

Lyrically, he cites as an example of greatness the Nick Cave B-side Little Empty Boat [from ‘97 single Into My Arms ], a comically sinister paean to a sexual power struggle: "Your knowledge is impressive and your argument is good/But I am the resurrection babe and you're standing on my foot."

"I need a hobby," he suddenly decides. "I'd like to learn another language." Since his mum is a German teacher (his dad teaches music), surely he can speak some German? "I know how to ask somebody if they've had fun at Christmas." Go on, then. "Nah!"

Where Turner's creative gifts stem from remains a contemporary rock'n'roll mystery; he became a fledgling songwriter at 16, after the gift of a guitar at Christmas from his parents. An only child, did his folks, perhaps, foresee artistic greatness? "I doubt it!" he balks. "Cos I didn't. I wasn't... a show kid." Like the others, he doesn't analyse the past, or the future.

"You can't constantly be thinking about what's happened," he reasons, "it's just about getting on with it." The elaborate pinky ring he now constantly wears, however, a silver, gold and ruby metal-goth corker featuring the words DEATH RAMPS is a permanent reminder of he and his best friends’ past. The Death Ramps is not only a Monkeys pseudonym and B-side to Teddy Picker, but a place they used to ride their bikes in Sheffield as kids.

"Up in the woods near where we lived," he nods. "Just little hills. But when you're eight years old they're death ramps." The ring was custom made by a friend of his, who runs top-end rock'n'roll jewellery emporium The Great Frog near London's Carnaby Street. Ask Turner why he thinks the chase between his writing and speaking eloquence is quite so mesmerisingly vast and he attempts a theory.

"Well, writing isn't the same as speaking," he muses. "Not for me. I seem to struggle more and more with... conversation. Talking onstage... I can't do it any more. Hmn. I'll have to work on that."

The ever-helpful Helders has a better theory.

"Since he's been writing songs," he ponders, “It seems like he’s always thinking about that. So even when he’s talking to you now, he’s thinking about the next thing that rhymes with a word. Even when he’s driving. We joke he’s a bad driver, his focus is never 100 per cent on what he’s doing. Which is good for us cos it means he’s got another 12 songs up his sleeve. I think music must be the easiest way for him to be concise and get everything out. Otherwise his head would explode.”

The Shoreditch.com photo studios, 18 March. Alex Turner, today, is more ethereally distracted than ever, transfixed by the studio iPod, playing Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, a version of I’d Rather Go Blind. Occasionally, he’ll completely lose his conversational thread, “Um. I’ve dropped a stitch.”

The first to arrive for Q’s photoshoot, he greets his incoming bandmates with enormous hugs (and also hugs them goodbye). Today, Q feels it’s pointless poking its pickaxe of serious enquiry further into Turner’s vacuum-packed soul and wonders if he’ll play, instead, a daft game. It’s called Popworld Questions, as first posed by someone he knows rather well.

“Oh, OK. Let’s do it,” he blinks, now perched in an empty dressing room. He then vigorously shakes his head, “Um…I’ve gotta snap back into it.”

Here, then, are some genuine “Alexa Chung on Popworld” questions (2006-2007), as originally posed to Matt Willis, Amy Winehouse, Robbie Williams, Pussycat Dolls, Kaiser Chiefs and Diddy.

Why do indie bands wear such tight jeans? AT: “Um. I supposed they do. They haven’t always. When we first were playing I was definitely in flares. You need to be quite tall to get the full effect, though. So, that's why this indie band wears such tight jeans, cos we've not got the legs for flares."

What makes you tick in the sexy department? AT: "Wow. Pass. What do I find most attractive in a woman? Something in the head? That's definitely a requirement. Well... Hmn. I'm struggling."

Tell us about all the lovely groupies. AT: "No!"

If dogs had human hands instead of paws, would you consider trying to teach them to play the piano? AT: "Absolutely. I'd teach Hey Jude."

How many plums d'you think you can comfortably fit in one hand? AT: "They're not very big. [Holds small, pale, girly hand up for inspection] It's a shame. Probably three. Diddy only managed two? Maybe not then. I can carry a lot of glasses at once, though. If they're small ones I can do four."

Are you cool? AT: "Not as much as I'd like to be. There's this clip where Clint Eastwood is on a talkshow and he gets asked, Everybody thinks of you as defining cool, what d'you think about that? And he gets his cigs out, takes one out, flicks it into his mouth, lights it and says, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Here, Turner locates his Camels soft-pack and attempts to do a Clint Eastwood. He flicks one upwards towards his mouth. And misses. Flicks another. And misses. "Third time lucky?" He misses. "I'll get it the next time." And succeeds. "Hey. Fourth time. Don't put that in! So there you go. I'm four steps away from where I wanna be."

Thank you very much for joining me here on Popworld, here's my clammy hand again. There it is, let it slip, hmmn. You can let go now. AT: "OK! Were you a Popworld fan, then? It was funny. Cool. What were we talking about, before?"

Blimey, Alex. What must you be like when you're completely stoned out of your head? AT: "Stoned? What d'you mean, cos I seem like that anyway? Yeah. A lot of people... tell me I'm a bit... dreamy. But I like the idea of that. Of being somewhere else."

Two days earlier, Turner had contemplated what he wanted from all this, in the end. Many seconds later he gave his deceptively ambitious answer.

"I just wanna write better songs," he decided. "And better lyrics. I just definitely wanna be good at it. Hmn. Yeah.”

—

RUFUS BLACK: AKA Matt Helders, on his ongoing bromance with Diddy

Matt Helders has known preposterous rap titan Diddy since they met in Miami in 2008. “He goes, Arctic Monkeys! Then he said summat about a B-side and I was like, He's not lying! I just thought, This is funny, I'm gonna go with this for a while." Last October Diddy texted Helders, suggesting he play drums with his Diddy Dirty Money band on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, to give his own drummer a day off. “I were bowling with me girifriend at the time. In Sheffield, on a Sunday." On the day of recording, says Helder, "We had a musical director. That were one of the maddest times of my life. Next day Diddy said, Why don't you just stay? Come along with me. So I went everywhere with him." Diddy had "a convoy of cars" and made sure Helders was always in his. "He'd stop his car and go, Where's Matt? You're coming with me! So I'd get in his car. Just me, him, his security, driver." Diddy, by now, had given him a pseudonym - Rufus Black. "He kept saying, I don't wanna fuck up your image. And I'm, I don't think it's gonna do me any harm!" He stayed in Diddy's spectacularly expensive hotel. Some weeks later, Helders almost returned to the Dirty Money drumstool for a gig in Glasgow. "But we were rehearsing in London. I were like, I might come, how are you getting there? And he were like, Jet. Jump on t’jet with me. But I had to stay in Bethnal Green instead.”

Love’s young dream: Diddy (left) with Helders

[theamericanpin-up]

Al Buell - May 1961 Al Buell's Beauties Calendar Illustration - Brown & Bigelow Calendar Co. - American Pin-up Calendar Collection

[progressivepower]

PRESIDENT BIDENS ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

✅More People Are Working Than At Any Point in American History

✅Managed inflation to where it is now under control & moving consistently downward

✅Stock markets hitting all time highs & most well managed businesses are now thriving under this economy

✅Delivering on the Most Aggressive Climate and Environmental Justice Agenda in American History

✅Making More in America where wages are increasing across the board

✅Rescued the Economy and Changed the Course of the Pandemic

✅Lowering Costs of Families’ Everyday Expenses

✅Biden's Inflation Reduction Act will save millions of seniors money on some of the costliest prescription drugs on the market. New laws now give

✅Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices.

✅Rebuilding our Infrastructure

✅Historic Expansion of Benefits and Services for Toxic Exposed Veterans

✅The First Meaningful Gun Violence Reduction Legislation in 30 Years

✅Protected Marriage for LGBTQI+ and Interracial Couples

✅Historic Confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Federal Judges of Diverse Backgrounds

✅Rallied the World to Support Ukraine in Response to Putin’s Aggression

✅Strengthened Alliances and Partnerships to Deliver for the American People

✅Successful Counterterrorism Missions Against the Leaders of Al Qaeda and ISIS

✅Executive Orders Protecting Reproductive Rights

✅Historic Student Debt Relief for over 4 million Middle- and Working-Class Families so far.

✅Ending our Failed Approach to Marijuana

✅Advancing Equity and Racial Justice, Including Historic Criminal Justice Reform

[catgirlbutthole]

Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna get a tablespoon of butter in a non stick pot on medium heat, and once it's foamy you add a tablespoon of flour. Let it toast for a couple of minutes and slowly add milk, stirring until homogenous after every splash, until you've added two cups. Add your cheeses of choice, such as cheddar, Edam, masdam, gruyère, gouda. Add a total of 1 pound of cheese. Once it's all melted and homogenous add a shake a garlic powder, paprika and pepper, then add your pasta of choice, such as elbow, penne, shells, fusilli, cooked al dente in salted water. Cut the heat and add cubes of cheddar, stir lightly and pour all of it in a baking dish. Cover completely with slices of a nice melting cheese, like Edam or Colby, not American cheese. Put in in the oven on broiler until it's nicely browned and melted, and serve with peas that you've cooked with some butter. Add a little hot sauce on top. You got everything? I love you. I will never forget you.

[morallyinept]

A full character analysis on AGENT WHISKEY from the film KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

I've created this as a point of reference when writing for Pedro's characters, and I hope you find it useful. Even if you just want to learn more about the character. 🖤

FULL MASTERLIST OF PEDRO'S CHARACTERS ANALYSED

FULL CHARACTER STUDY:

Basic Details:

Full Name: Agent Whiskey/Jack Daniels

Nickname(s): None, real name Jack Daniels

Appears in: Kingsman: The Golden Circle, 2017 (first appearance seen at approx. 47:41)

Age (if known): 42 - (Although this was the age Pedro was himself when he filmed his scenes, and Whiskey's DOB is listed the same as Pedro's, 2nd April 1975, so his age may be incorrect. This was found via Whiskey's character Wiki page, see the bottom of this post for the link.)

Nationality: American, from Kentucky

Sexuality: Straight

Family: Former sweetheart/wife and unborn baby boy

Spouse/Partner: None, however he did have a "sweetheart" who died when she was out getting groceries and was caught in the crossfire of a robbery. It is claimed she was his wife, but he never refers to her as his wife or girlfriend in the film, only as his "sweetheart"

Relationship Status: Single/possibly a widower if he was married

Current Living Status: Deceased - Death by meat grinder

Languages Spoken: English

Education: Not confirmed, however as Whiskey is a secret agent, he would have had substantial training with Statesman. Assumed would have had school/college education as minimum before joining/recruited

Occupation:

Job Role/Title: Senior Statesman Secret Agent/Spy

Special Skill(s): Master marksman with guns, skilled with a lasso/whip, combat training, espionage and spy experience, can pilot aircraft

Notable Colleague(s): Eggsy, Galahad, Champ, Tequila, Ginger

Distinguishing Features:

Tattoo(s): None

Piercings: None

Scar(s): Mark/scar on left temple by left eye from being shot at point blank range by Agent Galahad

Other Markings: Freckles on neck

Eye Colour: Brown

Prominent Feature(s): Moustache

Injuries: Whiskey is shot in the head at point blank range, left side temple, by Agent Galahad, but is saved and revived by an alpha gel nanite pack. He's left with a mark/scar on his lower temple, right by his left eye. He is later killed by being pushed into a meat grinder, head first

Hair Colour: Brown

Whiskey's mark/scar from being shot at by Galahad:

Personality:

Traits: cunning, adept, clever

Whiskey appears to be from Kentucky, based on his American accent and where Statesman is based in the film.

Whiskey is against any mercy being shown to helping cure the people poisoned by Poppy's drugs, due to his own story of loss and grief due to drugs. His sweetheart/wife was killed whilst out grocery shopping by two meth addicts, who held up the store. She was also pregnant with his baby boy at the time.

Whiskey is a master marksman; he is adept and can shoot at moving targets with precision, barely missing. He can do tricks with his guns such as spinning them around his fingers.

Whiskey's whip/lasso can be turned electric and can cut through almost anything, including metal.

It is apparent throughout the movie that Whiskey harbors some sort of dislike for Ginger Ale. He has voted against her several times to become a field agent. This has never been explained or really explored in the film. Fan theories suggest it's because he is trying to protect her from being in the field due to what happened to his sweetheart/wife. Other theories suggest he is resentful that she couldn't help save his sweetheart/wife with the tech they have at Statesman; he later tells her that she didn't fix Galahad properly, hence why Galahad shot at him: "well I’m guessin’ you didn’t fix him right!" The real reason for Whiskey's distaste of her however, has been left open to interpretation. Later, after Whiskey's death, Ginger is promoted to an agent, and is, ironically, assigned Whiskey's code name.

Whiskey sees himself as a charmer with the ladies, telling Eggsy to "watch and learn, kid" when he attempts to smooth talk the target at the festival. He ultimately fails.

When we first meet Whiskey on screen, he is based in the New York office of Statesman, and is referred to as a senior agent by Champ, indicating Whiskey has been with Statesman for a long time and has plenty of experience and leadership skills, and is one of their best agents.

Fashion/Outfits:

Outfit 1 - (Opening scene in New York office) Black suit, white shirt, textured tie, Stetson, Statesman aviator spectacles

Outfit 2 - (Picking up Eggsy & festival scene) Black leather jacket with brown under collar, white round neck t-shirt, dark blue jeans, black wellington boots, Stetson, aviator sunglasses, brown studded Whiskey flask belt, watch/tracker on left wrist

Outfit 3 - (The bar scene) Blue wool blazer, dark denim jeans, brown boots, white shirt, blue polka dot tie, Stetson, brown studded Whiskey flask belt

Outfit 4 - (Statesman HQ scene) Brown wool blazer, white shirt, black/blue and white striped tie, Stetson

Outfit 5 - (Mountain scene) Blue snow suit, blue gilet, white turtle neck vest, black leather gloves, Stetson, aviators, black snow boots

Outfit 6 - (Piloting jet) American Flag helmet with name 'Whiskey' printed on it, denim jacket with brown lapels, grey denim look shirt, aviators

Outfit 7 - (Final showdown scene) Denim jacket with brown lapels, dark denim jeans, grey denim-look flannel shirt, brown boots, Stetson, brown studded belt with Whiskey flask, brown leather knife sheath and gun holsters on belt

Accessories: Aviator sunglasses, brown Stetson, watch/tracker on left wrist, silver engraved mini Whiskey hipflask belt buckle, which is detachable and he drinks from it

Weapons Used:

Weapon(s): (Exact weapons pictured below)

Whiskey has two Colt single action army 5.5 artillery model .45 long colt pistols that were custom designed and made for the film, and silver barreled. They are sheathed in a dual gun holster leather strap, embossed with the Statesman logo.

Whiskey has a whip/lasso that he can make electric, which has the power to cut through thick metal

Whiskey also has a knife with a thick brown handle, that he uses in the final showdown fight with Eggsy & Galahad

Modes of Transport:

Vehicle(s):

Whiskey drives a 1970 Ford Bronco with white top and trim and black base

Whiskey pilots the 'Silver Pony,' which is an F 22-A Raptor Fighter Jet

Dialogue:

🗨 See Whiskey's full dialogue from the film, including deleted scenes.

Further Character Links (if any):

Behind The Scenes Interview with Pedro Pascal, Kingman: The Golden Circle Behind The Scenes, Final Fight Over Briefcase VFX With Whiskey

Whiskey's Villain Wiki Page

Samples of Whiskey's Wardrobe - Brown Stetson, white shirt, blue wool blazer & tie info obtained via Styleofpascal IG

FULL MASTERLIST OF PEDRO'S CHARACTERS ANALYSED

[ghoulysaphomet]

team red mer doodles but i sprinkled in my own headcanons lol

Jason: bigger out of the two because of sexual dimorphism, he's transmasc and while fish (and thus merfolk) can change sex, some things like physical sizes stay the same. jay has curly hair and lotsa scars from when he 'died' (in this.. AU i guess, it was presumed) but was then saved by the al ghul pod. jays markins are inspired by the a blades tattoos, and so is his eyes. (i headcanon jay has blue eyes normally, bluegreen after le pit, but when using magic they shine golden/brown.) I didnt rlly overthink either of the designs i just wanted to have fun lol.

i headcanon him to be 22, transmasc (using he him pronouns) aro/acespec. hispanic.

Tim:

He's non-binary (uses he/him) and is smaller bcs, again, sexual dimorphism lol.

i headcon Tim to be enby, 20 (almost 21, jay is 1.5 years older) and to be scandinavian/american. again, didnt overthink the designs i just like drawing mers and i want to talk abt my headcanons for blorbos ok