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sockablock · 7 years ago

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Something New for Me and You

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Chapter 2: Last Song of the Night

Caleb shut the door and fumbled slightly with his keys, trying to not to drop them while also trying to balance a large plastic bag of leftovers in his arms. Eventually he managed to hook them onto the rusted coat rack by their welcome mat which, in faint letters, read:

Nein.

Nott had found it buried under a pile of random junk in the Goodwill down the street a few years ago. It had been a permanent fixture of their home ever since.

Caleb slipped his shoes off, and went to unbutton his jacket, and remembered that he wasn’t wearing it anymore.

“Scheiss,” he muttered, “Molly still has it.��

“Has what?” Nott asked.

Caleb looked up and saw a pair of large, bright yellow eyes glowing back at him from the approximate area of the kitchen set-up, about five feet in the air. And then, in the darkness, another eye opened, much smaller and pale blue. He squinted. Then he flicked his wrist, and four globules of light blossomed around him. They drifted out to the corners of their tiny apartment, faintly illuminating the room around them and revealing Nott, sitting on their makeshift dinner table, holding Frumpkin in her lap. There was a faint meow from said cat, which Caleb decided to interpret as a greeting.

“What does he still have?” Nott asked again. “Oh, and welcome home. Nothing exploded while you were gone.”

This elicited a faint smile. “That’s good,” he said, “I always like to hear that is the case.” Then he started undoing the buttons on his vest and added, “I was referring to my jacket. Mollymauk still has it.”

Nott instantly raised an eyebrow. “Why’d he steal your jacket?” she asked suspiciously.

Caleb snorted. “No, no, he didn’t steal it.” And then he blushed slightly, and his fingers slipped. “I just, er, I just lent it to him.”

Her other eyebrow went up. “Oh, no. Caleb, come on, no.”

“What is your ‘oh no,’ what does that mean?”

Nott leaned back. She lifted Frumpkin up by the scruff and over his protesting meows said, “Gosh, kitty, Caleb really must be in love.”

He spluttered. This vest would not be coming off anytime soon. “That’s not true, spatz. That’s not the case at all.”

“Frumpkin, I think he’s lying to us.”

“I am not,” he said, and would be affronted if he wasn’t so flustered. “I went tonight as a favor for Jester. Nothing else. Not to find a…a significant other, not to take advantage of her hospitality, and not to meet Mister Mollymauk. Er, I mean, to meet Mollymauk.”

Nott shook her head and tutted. “And gods, did you hear that? Mister,” she sighed. “That means he wants to impress him.” She turned towards Caleb. “Is this…Mister Mollymauk guy fancy, then? Is that why you’re all manners-y now?”

Caleb finally managed to shrug the vest off and hung it on the coat rack. He vaguely remembered that there were rules for storing such well-made clothing, but at the moment he couldn’t remember a single one.

“He is quite fancy,” Caleb conceded, making his way to the kitchen and taking a seat in front of Nott, who was still right in the middle of the table. “He’s a singer at a well-known club.”

“Which one?” Nott asked.

“The Fletching & Moondrop,” said Caleb, “same as Beau and Yasha. And Fjord, of course.”

“In the fancy part, I’m guessing?”

Caleb sighed. “Why did everybody but me know that their club had such a gleaming reputation?”

“Because Yasha and Beau work there,” Nott said. “Jester knows everything. You don’t pay attention.”

“And how did you know?”

She shrugged. “I used to sneak in and steal stuff from the rich folk. But now I’m reformed and a valuable member of society and I only steal when I need to. Or when you ask me to. Or when I can’t help myself.”

“Truly, a model citizen. I am impressed.”

She beamed. Her jagged, crooked teeth gleamed yellow under the faint light from Caleb’s globules. He absently leaned over, and pinched her cheek.

“So other than the fact you’re in love now,” Nott said after he pulled away, “how was the double date? Does Molly love you back? Did Fjord and Jester make out? Did you bring me back leftovers?”

He nodded, and pushed the plastic bag towards her. Her eyes lit up, and she started yanking out leftover containers.

“There’s still some chicken,” he began, “and salad, but I imagine you won’t want that. There’s also fish of some kind, save that for Frumpkin, and, oh, I see you’ve found the beef—”

Her cheeks bulged. The table was now covered in scraps, and Frumpkin poked a loose tomato with his nose.

“Sorry,” she said, slightly muffled. “I was really hungry.”

He smiled. “Bon appetit, schatz. Sorry to make you wait so long for dinner. I thought I would be home by ten but—”

She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s a midnight snack.” She shoveled a forkful of chicken into her mouth. “And it sure beats not having any dinner. Plus this stuff is real fancy. It’s going to make pizza tomorrow look like peasant food.”

Caleb blinked. “Pizza tomorrow? Why are we getting pizza tomorrow?”

She frowned. “We always get pizza on movie night,” she said. “Is—can we not afford it? Because I can go steal some from somewhere, I’m sure.”

He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “No, no, no need, sorry. With all the excitement of tonight’s dinner I forgot that it was our turn to host movies tomorrow. We should be alright. I mean, I’m sure Kosh was kidding when he threatened to cut our power, right?”

Nott nodded loyally. “Definitely,” she said. “Absolutely, probably.”

“Great. Did you pick out a movie, yet?”

She grinned. “Actually, I let Jester—”

“We are not watching Tusk Love again. I swear to the gods I will torch the television.”

“You won’t,” said Nott in a singsong voice. “We can’t afford another one.”

He sighed in defeat. “Why would you let Jester do that? She does not need another enabler, after Fjord.”

“I like her,” said Nott, “and I couldn’t think of anything. And I knew you’d want to watch The Courting of the Crick—”

He blushed. “I would not—”

“And I refuse to watch a romantic film that’s going to teach me something. So Tusk Love it is.”

“Are you even old enough to have an opinion on...on...on smutty movies?”

“Definitely,” said Nott. She pushed a plate of salad towards Caleb. “Can you put that in the fridge?” she asked. “And make more ice? The layer from this morning is melting now.”

He accepted the tray and made his way over to their unplugged refrigerator, dragging along a Dancing Light as he went. And while he rubbed his hands together and started concentrating on a localized, low-power Ray of Frost, Nott spoke up again.

“So, you didn’t answer my question from before,” she said. “Did Mollymauk fall in love with you?”

He snorted. “I doubt it. He’s a nice fellow, but we barely know each other. I think we’re just getting to be friends, also.”

“Did you get his phone number?”

“I do not use my phone, spatz.”

“Well, maybe it’s time to start?”

He sighed. “It’s better for our budget if I didn’t. Besides, yours has been fine for both of us, hasn’t it?”

“That’s true. Hey, is he coming to movie night? Isn’t he Jester’s friend now? And Fjord’s? Nevermind, he’s definitely coming to movie night.”

Caleb, face hidden by the fridge door, blushed. “Maybe,” he said. “I suppose we will wait and see.”

“I wanna meet him,” said Nott. “I need to make sure he’s good.”

“And what would you do if he was not?”

“Kill him,” she said with complete nonchalance.

Caleb stood up, shutting the fridge behind him. “Please don’t do that,” he sighed. “I don’t want to deal with the police. I’m sure Jester would be devastated. And...I would prefer if you did not.”

She grinned. “You really do love him.”

Caleb rubbed at his eyes, and gave her one last half-hearted sigh. “I’m going to bed, spatz. You try and get some sleep as well, alright?”

She gave him a salute. “No promises,” he said.

“Good enough,” he nodded, and turned around and walked into the bedroom and got ready for the night.

•

The second they got home, Molly belligerently refusing to answer a single one of Fjord’s not-so-casual, prying questions the entire ride back, Molly shut himself into his bedroom, and leaned against the door.

Their apartment was never what Molly’s...guests expected, especially since Fjord also lived there, but he always liked to think that they had done rather well for themselves. The space wasn’t small, there was a lovely view of the waterfront, and two bedrooms, a bath, and a proper kitchen was quite the achievement in Molly’s eyes. And Fjord’s, who had grown up moving crates at the docks of a neighboring city. Plus the place was furnished mostly by Molly’s ever-rotating cycle of deep-pocketed suitors, so it was not only well-decorated, but also extremely gaudy. He loved it. Fjord didn’t, but never complained.

Molly wiggled out of his dress and into a bathrobe—another gift—and tossed it onto the bed. And then he considered the jacket Caleb had given him. It was tan, extremely well-made, and had kept him warm in a number of ways on the ride home. He laid it out carefully on the back of a chair. And then he threw himself into his sheets and pulled out his phone and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

Molly beamed. “Yasha! Darling, how are you?”

There was a pause from the other end of the line. And then a long sigh.

“Mollymauk, it is one in the morning.”

He flipped over onto his stomach and started twirling his hair. “And what?” he asked. “I can’t call my favorite lady in the entire world at one in the morning? My best woman? My dearest friend? The light of my life—”

“You only make phone calls when you are drunk,” said Yasha. “Are you drunk?”

Molly rolled his eyes, and then forgot that Yasha couldn’t see him. “No, no, I’m not drunk, dear. Not even tipsy. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve met the love of my life, and that I’m changing my last name now.”

There was another long pause. “Are you sure you’re not drunk?”

He sighed. “Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Sally sells seashells by the seashore. Wizened old wizards hold wiggling wild wands—”

“Alright, alright, I believe you,” came Yasha’s voice. “Who are you talking about? Is it another bar patron? You know how those always end.”

Molly shook his head. “No, no, dear. Not at all. It’s someone I had the most wonderful date with, at the Triumph Chime’s rooftop restaurant. You know the one.”

“I do,” said Yasha, “but it’s not a bar patron? That’s a very nice place for a date, Molly.”

“Come now, come now, don’t tell me Jester didn’t tell you?!”

“Tell me what, Molly?”

“I had a double date tonight, of course! With her and Fjord and one of her friends! One of your friends, actually.”

Molly counted down on his fingers as he waited for Yasha to put two and two together.

“Beau?” she asked, astonished.

Molly almost choked. “No, gods no,” he spluttered, completely thrown off now. “No, Yasha, no. With Caleb. Caleb Widogast?”

“...with Caleb.”

“Yes, darling.”

“You went to the Triumph Chime with Caleb?”

“Yes, darling.”

"You went to the Triumph Chime with Caleb?"

"Yes, darling."

“And...and you’re in love with Caleb?”

“Yes, darling, is it the late hour? You’re usually much quicker on the uptake—”

“Excuse me,” said Yasha, cutting him off, “I’ve got to go.”

And then before he could respond, the line went dead.

“Hello? Yasha? Hello?”

Molly looked at his screen. It was dark. He sighed, and put his phone down on the covers next to him, and stared up at the cieling for a minute or two. And then his cell started buzzing, and he quickly grabbed it and hit answer.

“Mollymauk?”

“Yes, Yasha?”

“I just called Jester to make sure.”

“And?”

There was no hesitation this time. “I’m happy for you.”

Molly fought the wide grin threatening to split his face in two, and lost. “Thank you, dear.”

“Does he like you back?”

“I have no idea.”

Molly could almost picture Yasha nodding solemnly here as she made a loud huffing noise and said, “Alright then. I suppose we’ve got some work to do, then.”

Molly laughed. “Thank you, dear. Whatever did I do to deserve you?”

“You can pay me back in that really good jerky they sell at that fancy supermarket.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Molly quipped, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“See it later” said Yasha. “I know you’re not singing tomorrow night but there’s still all-day rehearsal, and I know how bad you are at waking up.”

Molly put his arm over his eyes and grinned. “Alright, alright, Mother. I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to you at work?”

“Bright and early.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love you, dear.”

There was a soft laugh on the other end of the line. “I love you too, Mollymauk. Now go away.”

He hung up and pulled his bathrobe off. Then he crawled under the covers, and sighed, and tried to go to sleep. He must have eventually dozed off but in the hours before he did, he kept glancing at the tan jacket in the corner, and kept thinking about a certain head of fiery hair, and a certain pair of dazzling blue eyes.

•

Jester created the new group chat: “TUSK LOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO” 7 members: Jester, Beau, Yasha, Caleb, Fjord, Molly, and you

Today 12:13 PM

Jester changed her nickname to “(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*” Jester changed Beau’s nickname to “Drunkmonk” Jester changed Yasha’s nickname to “Babebarian” Jester changed Nott’s nickname to “SheSoBrave” Jester changed Fjord’s nickname to “Seaman” Jester changed Molly’s nickname to “Lavender Thunder” Jester changed Caleb’s nickname to “Gayleb”

You changed your nickname to “NottSoBrave”

Drunkmonk: aight i just got 90 notifications and nobody’s even said anything yet (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: shut up Beau this is important (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: WELCOME TO MOVIE NIGHT! Babebarian: it’s noon (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: WELCOME TO MOVIE NOON (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: fjord and molly you are now part of a very time-honored tradition Drunkmonk: we’ve been doing this for a month NottSoBrave: welcome and caleb says welcome too (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: anyways this is for planning tonight we are going to caleb and nott’s and we are going to watch tusk love 8PM and pizza any questions Seaman: why is my nickname seaman (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: you are a man of the sea Lavender Thunder: i concur and thank you for inviting me to your movie night! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: its my honor Seaman: oskar would have been better NottSoBrave: @jester caleb wants to know why his nickname is gayleb (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: because he is gay and is never going to open this chat to change it NottSoBrave: caleb says “point taken” (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: okay anyway is everybody good with this plan then?

Nott put down her phone and turned to Caleb. “This means you have Molly’s number now, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Now you can text him.”

He sighed and tapped the handlebar of the shopping cart nervously as they moved through the snack aisle of the Broad Barn, Nott occasionally leaning out of her perch in the toddler’s compartment to grab a bag of chips or a package of candy. They already had three boxes of popcorn kernels and four bottles of soda. Caleb, on the inside, was fearing for his nearly-empty wallet.

“I don’t know if I should, yet,” he muttered. “Isn’t it underhanded that I got it from somebody else? Shouldn’t I have asked for it by myself?”

“I dunno,” said Nott, casually slipping a chocolate bar into the pocket of her oversized hoodie. “Why didn’t you, before?”

“I was too afraid.”

“So this works great! Now you have it, and you don’t need to ask.”

He sighed. “Perhaps. But...but maybe I should wait for Molly to call me first?”

“Sure,” she shrugged, somehow managing to make the gesture supportive. “He seems like the type that would, anyway. Hey, can we get these too?” she pointed at a string of licorice.

“Put those in your sleeves if you like,” said Caleb, and steered them towards the toiletries section. “We need soap—don’t make that face, Yasha and Jester will kill me if I don’t clean up—and that means our snack budget is smaller now. Especially since our electric bill is overdue, and it’s winter, so we need as much as we can for heating.”

“I thought we were saving plenty by never using the lights and unplugging the fridge,” Nott muttered.

“Magic can only save so much,” Caleb sighed. “I do not want to know what would happen if I tried to use a Thunderwave to charge your phone. And I still cannot get more hours at the library,” he added dejectedly.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll come around,” Nott said loyally. “They’ll realize any second how smart and hardworking and organized and on-time you are.”

He sighed again. “Let us hope. Come on, now, I think we have enough snacks. And I still need to do a deep clean of the apartment.”

“You’ve never done that before,” Nott pointed out. “Why now?”

A faint blush crept across Caleb’s cheeks. “No reason,” he said quickly. “I just want to be hospitable.”

Nott glanced down at her phone. Then she looked up and gave Caleb the cheekiest grin he had ever seen on her face before. “You’re doing it for Lavender Thunder, aren’t you?”

He almost choked. “Excuse me? For who?”

“That’s the nickname Jester gave to Molly. Weren’t you listening when I read them out loud?”

“Apparently not,” he mumbled.

“Don’t worry,” she leaned over and gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “I’m sure you won’t have to call him that when he comes over. And, if you want, I’ll even help you clean.”

•

The group arrived at once, having carpooled together with Fjord as the driver in his beat-up station wagon, which was mildly terrifying for Caleb because he had only just shoved the air freshener under the kitchen sink and only just managed to kick the loose bags of cat food to the side and only just managed to slip on a semi-decent shirt, hoping that they would end up changing into pajamas soon, before there was a knock. And then several more knocks, as Jester muscled her way to the front.

He opened the door, and they all filed in. Fjord entered first, shaking Caleb’s hand and beaming and thanking him for hosting in that smooth southern accent. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, and came bearing a family-sized bag of Cheetos. Jester came next, waving the Tusk Love DVD with one hand and throwing a hug around Caleb with the other. Beau and Yasha followed, greeting him much more calmly, Yasha carrying a six-pack of soda and Beau with a DVD player in her arms. And then, at the rear, was Mollymauk.

At least his outfit was more tame this time, a long knit sweater covering his upper-body well, but Caleb had the distinct impression that jeans should not be that tight. Then he realized that they were leggings.

“Welcome, everybody,” he said, pointedly not making eye contact with Molly for fear of self-combustion. “I am glad you all got here safe.”

“Your landlord sucks,” said Fjord. “He was glaring at us as we came up.”

“He’s the worst,” supplied Nott. “You’re Fjord, right? Jester’s boyfriend?”

He preened slightly at this question, and stuck a hand out. “Nice to meet you. Nott?”

She took his hand with only mild-suspicion, which was rather good for her. “That’s me,” she said. “This is my house.”

“I’m Molly,” said Molly. “Nice to meet you as well.”

Nott did not accept his hand, but did give him a slight nod. “So you’re Molly,” she said. “Alright.”

Said tiefling raised an eyebrow. “Is…is everything alright?”

“Let’s get set up,” Caleb said quickly. “The lights are already off, for movie reasons, but I can make some if we need it. Could you put the snacks on the coffee table? And, er, Beau, I’ll give you a hand with the DVD player.”

As he walked over to help Beau, he sighed and under his breath mumbled, “Please, gods, spare me this evening.”

•

Caleb had a slightly tattered sofa, and an armchair next to it to form an “L” shape. Then the coffee table was nestled into that bend, and behind that the TV was positioned on top of a very tall stack of books, at an angle so that all could see it. Yasha took the chair; Beau immediately sat down on Yahsa’s left, on armrest, and swung a leg on top of the armrest of the sofa next to her. Caleb sat to Beau’s right, and Nott sat on the back of the sofa by his head. And then Molly had plopped down next to Caleb, and with the added bodies of Jester and Fjord—nearly on top of one another at the other end of the couch—they were extremely close.

“Mister Mollymauk,” Caleb murmured as the tiefling’s warm body pressed against his.

Molly raised an eyebrow and smirked. “I thought we agreed to be a bit less formal, around one another? I imagine this distance is as casual as it gets.”

Caleb managed a tiny grin. “We did,” he agreed quietly. “But it’s also kind of fun when it’s just me and you, isn’t it?”

Molly cracked a wide smile. “So it is, Mister Caleb. So it is.”

“Shut up,” said Beau loudly. “The movie’s starting.”

Molly rolled his eyes and stopped talking, but gave Caleb one last sheepish grin before turning away. After a second, Caleb forced himself to fix his gaze back towards the television. He wordlessly accepted the bowl of popcorn passed down to him from Nott, seated on top of the sofa, and handed it to Beau after scooping some up.

And then the words “Darrington Films Presents” appeared on the screen, and his attention focused on the opening scenes of Tusk Love.

•

“Oskar,” Jester mouthed softly along with Guinevere, “how very nice to meet you. Will you be in this area for long?”

“No, miss,” grinned Fjord, easily falling into the role under Jester’s enthusiastic urging. “I’m afraid the folk around here aren’t as kind as you are to people like me.”

“People like you?” Jester asked as Guinevere’s soft features curled into a confused smile. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Well, you know. People who aren’t...people.” Fjord said, sighing.

Beau threw herself off the side of Yasha’s chair, bridging the gap between the sofa and almost launching herself into Caleb’s lap, who jumped slightly with a start. “This writing is trash,” she groaned, covering her eyes. “I can’t believe we have to watch it again.”

“Shhhhh,” hissed Molly, face glued to the grainy TV. “This is a masterpiece of fiction.”

“Yasha, back me up here.”

“Hush,” said Yasha softly. “This next part is my favorite.”

“Hang on,” said Fjord as Oskar suddenly turned around. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Jester asked with slightly too much feigned concern. “What is it?”

“It...it sounds like wolves.”

“Wolves?” Jester threw her arms around Fjord. “Oh, no, please! Oskar, what do we do?”

“Get behind me, Guinevere. I can protect us. I will—”

The TV screen went black. They were all silent, for a moment.

Then Beau stood up. “What the shit,” she asked. “What…did I do that?”

Caleb stiffened in his seat, the mild warmth of Molly’s side and the fabric of the sofa instantly melting away. He quickly glanced over at the heater in the corner and with a sinking stomach, realized that it had stopped whirring.

The power was out.

“Drat,” muttered Nott, getting up and walking over to the television. “The dumb thing must be broken again.”

Fjord stood up and went to follow her. “Here,” he said, pulling out his phone. “We can use this as a flashlight.”

“This may also help,” said Yasha, clapping her hands together. A sphere of bright light suddenly drifted into the air around them, hovering around Nott’s head.

“I’m gonna look for the light switch,” sighed Beau. “I can’t see shit right now.”

“Fjord, let me help,” said Jester, scrambling off the couch, “I can at least hold the phone—”

And amid the hustle and bustle of all his friends leaping into action, under their conversation and nose, Caleb heard a voice at the back of his mind.

It said:

What a disappointment. Trust you to ruin this night for your friends. Of course your landlord would cut the power, you’re worthless and miserable and can’t even make the bills on time. Look at you. You’re a disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should—

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder. He realized that his breathing had accelerated, that his fists were clenched, and even stranger than that, he was shaking.

But it wasn't from fear. It was from anger. At Kosh, at the television, at his ridiculous lack of funds and at himself for ruining this night for his friends.

He risked a glance to his left and saw a pair of bright, ruby eyes, glowing in the darkness, staring back at him with a furrowed brow. Behind Molly, the others were still talking loudly and weren’t paying attention to him. Fjord had crouched down next to Nott behind the small square television and was inspecting it with a frown. Jester was standing over them with the flashlight. To the side, Yasha helped the now-blind Beau look for a light switch.

“Are you alright?” Molly murmured. “You looked like you were...spacing out a bit.”

Caleb nodded.

“Can you speak?”

He was silent for a moment, and eventually trusted himself enough to open his mouth. “I can now,” he said. There was still a sharp edge to his words.

“What happened?” Molly asked gently.

“Electrical bill was overdue,” he muttered. “Kosh must’ve stopped the power.”

Molly nodded. “Do you want to solve that problem now? Do you want me to go talk to him?”

Caleb quickly shook his head. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to deal with that now.”

“Alright, Caleb. Is there anything you do want?”

“I want to make sure Beau doesn’t try to turn the lights on,” he said, and as he did, he could feel himself beginning to calm down.

Molly nodded again. “Alright,” he said. “I might be able to help. Could I try something?”

He blinked. “What...what do you mean?”

This time Molly gave him a faint grin. “Trust me,” he whispered. “I’ve got a great way to distract people, and keep the fun going all at the same time

He squeezed Caleb’s shoulder, and felt the man untense further. He took this as his cue, and pulled away, and stood up on the sofa.“Hey, everybody!” he called excitedly. “Don’t bother with the TV. Caleb and I had a great idea.”

“What’s that?” Jester asked, glancing over. “Because I think we can fix—”

Molly shook his head quickly. “Nah,” he said. “This’ll be much simpler.”

“What is it, then?” Nott asked. “Are we changing apartments to finish the movie?”

“Nope!” Molly beamed, and stretched his arms out in a grand gesture. “Even better. We’re all going to get into Fjord’s car, and we’re going to go sing karaoke!”

There was a brief pause. Then Jester grinned enormously. “Can I pick the first song?” she asked.

"You can pick all the songs, dear."

Fjord glanced at Molly, and then back at Jester, whose face had lit up like a Winter's Crest ornament. “I’m in,” he said with a smile.

“Me too,” said Beau immediately. “I hate that movie.”

“I enjoy singing,” volunteered Yasha.

“I’m a great singer,” said Nott, bobbing her head. “Caleb, can we go?”

He nodded immediately. “Ja,” he said. “Ja, I would like to go.”

Molly laughed delightedly, and took a bow. “Excellent!” he called. “I know just the place.”

•

The host of the Leaky Tap Tavern and Karaoke Bar brightened right away when he saw Molly, and grinned even larger when he noticed how many others were accompanying said tiefling tonight. He didn’t even bat an eye when they insisted that Nott was definitely an adult halfling with a skin condition, and quickly waved them on into a back room.

“They know me here,” chuckled Molly. “People in the hospitality business stick together.”

“And you’ve thrown up here multiple times,” Fjord muttered, settling into one of the chairs. “You’ve really tested their hospitality before.”

Molly tuck his tongue out at him, and tossed the songbook over to Jester. “Here you are, dear. In charge, like we promised.”

She squealed with delight, and started rifling through the pages. “Just you wait, you guys!” she giggled. “Oh, this is going to be so fun!”

“Is there alcohol?” Beau asked.

“Even better. There’s a minimum purchase of alcohol.”

She smiled a wicked smile. “Excellent,” she said. “I’ll have as much beer as physically possible.”

They spent the next few hours tearing through Jester’s song selections, the highlights being when they sent tremors through the ground over the chorus of Sweet Caroline, absolutely butchered I Need a Hero, belted out the words to Build Me Up Buttercup, even reluctantly allowed Jester to shove Never Gonna Give You Up into the queue—and then unironically sung their hearts out anyways. They ran through Bohemian Rhapsody, where every person tried to sing every part, destroyed half the soundtrack of Grease, warbled along to Africa, giggled as Beau drunkenly stumbled through Electric Love and tried hard not to look at Yasha the entire time. They even roped the flustered-looking waiter into doing a surprisingly excellent rendition of Defying Gravity.

Molly's voice, of course, was the most self-confident of them all, and for good reason. Fjord's was strong and laced with his trademark accent. Jester’s was slightly pitchy, but her cheer and enthusiasm made any critiques meaningless. Beau sang aggressively, though after a few drinks she mellowed out significantly. Nott was an auditory nightmare, but seemed so genuinely happy that they just covertly turned down her microphone when she wasn't looking. Yasha and Caleb were both rather quiet—not from nerves, but as if they weren’t used to singing this way.

By the end of the night, Fjord had broken a heavy sweat. Jester was tipsy off Sangrias, Yasha’s pale skin had flushed slightly pink, Nott’s already-ragged voice was even more mangled, though she didn’t seem to care at all. Beau was completely plastered and needed Yasha’s help staying upright, and Molly had the largest grin in the world splitting his face in two. And though he had started out mostly just humming along at the beginning, even Caleb managed to raise his voice for song or two. He was smiling. His heart was racing and for once it felt good. He very much enjoyed these people.

"Thank you for this," he murmured to Molly as the others bickered over a song choice.

The tiefling smiled. It was small, and soft, and made Caleb's chest flutter.

"Of course, Mister Caleb. I'm always here. Er, I mean, anytime. If you need things. Oh, shit," he said suddenly, “speaking of things, I completely forgot to bring your jacket.”

Caleb blinked, and then shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “Next time.”

“Next time?” Molly paused. “Oh, right, yes, a next time. Yes, er, that’s a great idea.” In the low light, Caleb could see the other man’s cheeks flushing, and his own did as well as he realized the implication of what he’d just said.

“I mean, if you would like a next time?” he tried. “If that is agreeable.”

“Yes, absolutely! Er, sorry, that was loud, I mean—“

Jester slammed the songbook down on the table and aimed the remote at the screen and hit the combination for the last song of the night. Then she grabbed two mics, shoving one into Molly’s hands—who instantly accepted—and one into Caleb’s. A-ha’s Take on Me started filtering in through the slightly-fuzzy speakers under the monitor.

Caleb’s eyes widened.

“No, er, Jester—”

And then he saw Molly’s face. Those red eyes were looking back at him. Open, friendly, and only slightly pleading. There was a faint blush across his cheeks. His lips were parted in a slightly worried grin.

“Please?” he asked softly.

It wasn’t much. But for Caleb, it was everything.

He sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know if I can keep up with you.”

Molly instantly beamed. His tail perked up behind him. “That’s alright, Mister Caleb!” he said jokingly. “Nobody can! But it’s the effort that’s always worth it.”

Bright green words appeared on the screen, and Molly locked his gaze onto Caleb’s and began to sing.

“We’re talking away. I don’t know what I’m to say—I’ll say it anyway, ‘Today’s another day to find you.’ Shying away, I’ll be coming for your love, okay?”

“Take on me,” Jester shouted happily into the mic, “take on me!”

“Take me on,” Fjord echoed, “take on me—”

“I’ll be gone,” sang Yasha.

“In a day or two!” crooned Nott and Beau together, and then the whole group looked over at Caleb.

“Er, er…” he began, and swallowed, and steeled himself, “So needless to say,” he sang, “of odds and ends, but that’s me, er, stumbling away. Slowly learning that life is okay…”

“Say it after me,” Molly jumped in immediately, “it’s no better to be safe than sorry.”

Take on me (take on me) Take me on (take on me) I'll be gone In a day or two.

“Oh, the things that you say,” sang Caleb softly, “is it a life or just to play my worries away?”

Molly shook his head, “You’re all the things I’ve got to remember. You’re shying away—”

“I’ll be coming for you anyway,” they finished together.

Take on me (take on me) Take me on (take on me) I'll be gone In a day or two.

And as the rest of the group ended the song, collapsing into a fit of giggles and cheers and drunken clapping, Molly and Caleb continued to stare at each other for just a little bit longer. And then they looked away, lowering their mics, faces blushing and eyes on the ground as the flashing technicolor light of the screen washed gently over them both.

#man isn't karaoke great #critical role fic #critical role #fanfiction #widomauk #caleb widogast #mollymauk tealeaf #jester #fjord #beauregard #yasha #nott #jay writes #cr2 #text #very long post #fanfic #something new for me and you #modern au

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4himglory-blog · 7 years ago

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Top 5 Romantic Getaways in Seattle

Seattle is one of those cities that couples have all the reasons to be attracted to. From the sleek boutiques and secluded inns to scenic oceanic views and luxurious resorts, you will definitely find all the romance you want here. Being a multi dimensional city, you will find a great combination of urban entertainment and outdoor events here. If you are planning a romantic getaway with your special someone, here are the top 5 romantic getaways in the Seattle area.

The Woodmark, KirklandThe Woodmark hotel rests on the shores of Lake Washington which is approximately a 30 minutes’ walk from Seattle. With elegant accommodation and urban waterfront, the hotel offers it’s guests with luxurious amenities and personalized services. If you are a guest, you can choose between the spacious waterfront suites and the renovated guest rooms. All the rooms feature Italian limestone bathrooms, deluxe beds, flat panel TVs, and desktop computer docking stations. The hotel also feature a range of activities to engage in including lake cruises, boat rentals, kayak rentals, and paddle boarding. Freestone Inn at Wilson RanchThe Freestone inn is located just west of the Withrop in Mazama. Featuring carefully appointed wooden cabins and lovely forest and lake views, the ranch will give you a relaxing escape from the hustle and bustle in the city. With about 17 guest rooms and free-standing cabins with modern amenities, you will get all the comfort you need. Here you will find guest rooms with up to five bedrooms to accommodate even those with large families. Nearby you will find the Freestone inn’s recreation centre where you can engage in activities like cross-country skiing, hot ballooning, horse riding, and biking. Semiahmoo Resort, Blaine, WASemiahmoo resort is a state iconic resort that is surrounded by natural beauty and tidal pools. With a nearby estuary, several wildlife find home in this sanctuary adding to the beauty of the resort. This place is also home to the Semiahmoo county park offering an array of outdoor activities including biking, picnicking, and roller-blading. Going in the guest rooms, it features bathrooms, and a place to enjoy the attractive views of the bay. The Resort also offers a variety of treatments including massage. Suites with contemporary decor that comes in warm tones. Every guest room has a television, a fire place, and en-suite.

The Resort at Port LudlowThe Resort at Port Ludlow is one of Seattle’s most luxurious hotels. Located on the shores of tranquil Ludlow Bay, the hotel is surrounded by sandy beaches, magic views of the Olympic Mountains, and lush forests that are full of trails and winding woodlands. Boasting of 37 stunningly appointed guest suites, the guests are accommodated with cosy sitting areas and very modern amenities. In every room, you will have your private balcony with stunning views of the mountain and waters. Some of the admirable features of this hotel include a full-service 300-slip marina, a state of the art dinning, an 18-hole championship golf course, and a series of outdoor adventures including hiking, fishing, boating. Inn at the MarketThe Inn at the market is ranked #1 on TripAdvisor.com for Seattle boutique hotels - and is the perfect place for those people who love to explore the market place. Located just inside the market located on Pine Street in a hidden courtyard, it is the perfect place to relax from the hustle and bustle of the city. This location is largely what has made it one of the most popular hotels in Seattle. With lots of romance inducing features including an attractive roof top deck full of grotesque panoramic view, you will find it very romantic. The rooms are all contemporary and sophisticated.

#Seattle #Boutique hotels #Romantic Getaways

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familydestinationsguide · 5 years ago

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The 10 Best Family Resorts in Maine of 2019 – That All Ages Love!

This post first published at Family Destinations Guide.

Family holidays are always special, but choosing the right place to travel to is a major factor when it comes to optimizing the fun factor.

With its unique blend of a massive coastline and bustling cities full of culture, Maine is one such destination that has a little something for everyone in the family.

If you are wondering what are the best family resorts in Maine, you have found yourself in the right place, because during the course of this guide, I will be introducing you to some of my top picks for places to stay with your family when you visit Maine.

1. Nonantum Resort

One of the top family resorts in Maine, located just a short walk away from downtown Kennebunkport, is Nonantum Resort, a family-owned property aimed at providing a space for families to make the most of their downtime.

A gorgeous property set around two main buildings — the historic Carriage House Inn and Portside Lodge — the resort has beautifully manicured lawns that lead to the Kennebunk River for a positively idyllic setting for your family getaway.

Depending on what the season is, the resort offers a wide range of activities for you and the little ones to enjoy.

During the summers, these activities are usually centered around the river, with boat tours and crabbing trips down the river.

You can also huddle around the campfire in the evenings to enjoy some s’mores.

During the winter, you can make the most of the Christmas Prelude festivities in town by enjoying breakfasts with Mrs. Clause or making the perfect gingerbread goodies.

Keep in mind that the hotel opens its doors only between mid-April and mid-December.

See Best Price

2. Edgewater Motel & Cottages

Just a short drive away from Acadia National Park’s many treasures, Edgewater Motel & Cottages is the perfect place for families that are looking to score a comfortable accommodation at surprisingly budget-friendly rates.

The best part about this property is that it is far enough from the people central to give you peace of mind but close enough that you can choose between a bunch of the local attractions when you want to make that trip out and that’s what I love about this place the most!

As the motel is set facing a private pebble beach for those summer days, you can rent sailboats, kayaks and canoes to explore the waters.

There are a number of different accommodation options available, ranging from the standard rooms with two queen beds to cottages and suites that allow you to fix up some meals in-house.

While the motel does offer parking and laundry, there is no restaurant on-site.

See Best Price

3. Inn by the Sea

If you want to be close to downtown Portland because of the sheer number of things there are to do, but far enough to enjoy your small stretch of the sandy beach, Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth is definitely an option to consider.

The property has 61 different rooms and suites, ranging from suites that have a master bedroom and a living room with a pull-out sofa to larger suites that come with two full bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and a deck to enjoy the sea breeze.

In addition to the spectacular swimming pool, families can also enjoy storytime or movie nights and special winter activities during Christmas time.

Mom and dad will also not be disappointed, thanks to the impressive spa and dining options at the property.

In case you want to try some of the local specialties, there are a bunch of other eateries around the hotel.

Families with pets are especially fond of the hotel’s pet policy!

See Best Price

4. Samoset Resort On The Ocean

Samoset Resort On The Ocean is a family- friendly resort synonymous with luxury.

It’s a Maine oceanfront family resort that will give you amenities like a giant outdoor swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts, as well as an 18-hole championship golf course for families that want to stay active during their family vacation.

If your little ones are between the ages of five and twelve, you can sign them up for a host of different arts and crafts classes, as well as other activities hosted by the Samoset Kids Club.

Keep in mind that the golf course turns into a massive arena for skiing and sledding when winter comes.

Samoset offers a number of rooms and suites, all of which have a large television, an iHome radio as well as a balcony.

If you want to go in for ultimate luxury, Flume Cottage with its two rooms, kitchen and porch — with a hot tub — is a fantastic option.

You’re parents are bound to appreciate the spa and wine tasting too!

See Best Price

5. The Beachmere Inn

If you are wondering where to stay in Maine with kids, The Beachmere Inn’s spectacular location on Marginal Way makes this property a sure shot winner.

Ideal for both summer and winter getaways, you can enjoy the lobster bakes — held every week — when the temperatures are running on the higher side and the wonderful snowshoeing tour when the weather gets cold.

The property consists of six main buildings, which include a historic Victorian Building and the Beachmere South.

You can choose one of the Inn’s well-appointed family suites to enjoy the patio or balcony, while the kids watch their favorite shows on TV or spend the evening snacking.

This property is especially popular among parents because of the romantic setting — some rooms even have fireplaces — that include a lovely spa and sauna, along with a family-friendly restaurant on-site, which offers a complimentary breakfast buffet.

See Best Price

6. Hampton Inn Portland Downtown — Waterfront

If you’d rather stay in Portland’s downtown area and soak in the alluring views of Casco Bay, Hampton Inn Portland Downtown — Waterfront is a property that never disappoints.

The main reason why this hotel has made it to this list is that you will never fall short of things to do during your time here.

Setting off the day with a complimentary breakfast, you can walk through the streets of Portland to visit some of the more popular tourist attractions like the Children’s Museum or just hop from cafes and boutiques to restaurants and galleries along the Old Port.

In addition to a range of accommodation options — including a suite that comes with a pull-out sofa — you can enjoy the property’s indoor swimming pool, or have a kid-friendly meal at Sebago Brewing Co. that is on the property.

See Best Price

7. Cliff House Maine

If you are opting for coastal Maine as your next destination for a family holiday, your accommodation should also do just to the beautiful location.

At the Cliff House Maine, located between the town of Ogunquit and York Cliffs, you will be able to enjoy the spectacular views of the ocean from the private terraces of all the different rooms and suites on the property.

All the rooms come with luxurious bedding, a 55” flat-screen TV and Wi-Fi.

During the summer, you can enjoy the hotel’s outdoor pool, go on a lobstering tour or set off on a fishing trip.

When the weather gets colder, you can either enjoy some cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, or retreat to the warm indoors and enjoy the heated swimming pool.

Mom and dad are bound to appreciate the wellness center and spa as well.

See Best Price

8. The Colony Hotel

As a part of the Historic Hotels of America, The Colony Hotel is a family hotel in Maine that has been standing for over a century at this point.

Currently being run by the fourth generation of the same family, this property gives you the feeling of being transferred back in time.

With a heated saltwater pool and a private beach with tidal pools, your tykes and tots are unlikely to get bored of the water, but if they do, the hotel also offers an 18-hole putting green, croquet and bikes on rent to explore the nearby regions.

The guest rooms are all renovated to have modern amenities with a classic touch, but keep in mind that all rooms may not have TVs.

There are a bunch of restaurants on-site, which means that there will be something for everyone to enjoy.

See Best Price

9. Beauport Inn Bed & Breakfast

The B&B experience is truly enjoyable for families who want to feel close to home even when they are on vacation, and there are very few properties like Beauport Inn Bed & Breakfast that make this experience even more special.

Located outside Ogunquit on a vast strip of land, this property is ideal for families with older kids, as it is one of the best options for exploring nearby beaches.

In case you want to stay in, you can enjoy the outdoor hot tub, sauna, lap pool or a Turkish steam room, or if you’re a fan of biking around like I do, simply get those complimentary bicycles to explore along the coast.

See Best Price

10. Hidden Pond

No matter whether it’s your first family vacation, or you’re seasoned pros, if you are looking for a luxury family resort in Maine, Hidden Pond is a property that just cannot be missed.

With bungalows and two-bedroom cottages spread across the 60-acre property, this resort is truly eclectic when it comes to the aesthetic.

With a spa that looks like a tree house and an organic farm that hosts yoga classes, this is a property that will be thoroughly enjoyed by families of all sizes.

While your little ones will be engaged by the beautiful locale, you can enjoy the fantastic restaurants after you come back from exploring the beach nearby.

See Best Price

List of image sources

The 10 Best Maine Family Resorts of 2019

Nonantum Resort

Edgewater Motel & Cottages

Inn by the Sea

Samoset Resort On The Ocean

The Beachmere Inn

Hampton Inn Portland Downtown

Cliff House Maine

The Colony Hotel

Beauport Inn Bed & Breakfast

Hidden Pond

#Family Travel #Family Vacations #Family Resorts

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placestostayflorida · 6 years ago

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Beach House Resort 4 Anna Maria Island

Contents

Resort vacation accommodations

Island … tropical

Vrc16-000350 island living

Bungalow beach resort

Beach club. limited membership privileges: guests

Beach House Resort – Bradenton Beach, FL – This one-bedroom, direct Gulf-front vacation condo is one of the best-kept secrets on Anna Maria Island! Couples and families alike will love the private hot tub, great location, and furnished balcony with stunning beach views. The family dog is even welcome for an additional nightly fee! (25 lbs.

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Donde Queda Anna Maria Island Where is Anna Maria Island? Surrounded by the Intracoastal Waterway, Tampa Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico, Anna Maria Island is the perfect place to visit if you want to experience all that Florida has to offer without all the tourists. Vaunting some of the most pristine seven miles of beaches in the U.S, Anna

Only 60 miles south of Tampa, Anna Maria Island is hidden in plain sight amidst the attractions of central Florida. Where to book a rental on Anna Maria Island We offer a vast variety of Anna Maria Island vacation rentals, from the town of Anna Maria to Bradenton Beach.

For luxurious accommodations on Anna Maria Island, the only choice is The beach club. limited membership privileges: guests of The Beach Club at Anna Maria #4 will have temporary membership privileges at Cedars Tennis Resort located at 645 Cedars Court on Longboat Key.

Anna Maria Island Dolphin Tours Anna Maria Island Dolphin Tours offers 3 hour and 4 hour egmont key trips holmes beach annual rentals, two hour private, 11/2 public guided Dolphin Eco Tours, and two hour private, 11/2 hour public Sunset Tour.Our Captains are skilled at providing you with an up close and personal experience. Most commonly spotted are Dolphins, Manatee, Sea Turtles, Eagles, Roseate The Waterfront Anna Maria Island Anna Maria Island vacation rentals. Gulf front, beachfront, pools and hot tubs, pet-friendly. Fall in love with Florida‘s gulf coast from an Anna maria island rental. Stunning ground level 3 bedroom/2 bath home with luxury finishes at every glance. Brand new to the market and recently renovated, this home is packed with designer finishes throughout

The post Beach House Resort 4 Anna Maria Island appeared first on CSITND Travel Blog.

#Island Beach House Maria Anna 4 Resort

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frankkennedypress-blog · 8 years ago

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MUA HERE TO STAY

The once influential Maritime Union of Australia has a decreasing membership due to a loss of employment within the seafaring sector.

The dwindling down has led to a merger with the Construction Forestry Mining and Employees Union (CFMEU). The MUA has no longer sole representation of the maritime industry with the new and third operator in Melbourne choosing a third and rival union. This act performed by a former national official of the MUA and now manager of the new terminal operation.

The new terminal unionists enjoy far cheaper fees and better coverage for their dollar and the workforce say. MUA National Secretary Paddy Crumlin and Deputy Warren Smith could not persuade the employees or the company of a better proposal offered by the Australian Maritime Officers Union. The MUA officials have been damaged by poor performance in Victoria over the past decade and several high profile cases have caused hostility amongst members.

The MUA suffered a serious blow in the dispute of 1998 when Union breaker Chris Corrigan received generous concessions on redundancies and guarantees of industrial harmony from John Coombs the National Secretary who not long after retired to a vineyard in close proximity to the industrial mogul.

Paddy Crumlin succeeded, who members for years have been critical of the dictatorial style of leadership and numerous paid positions internationally with the International Transport Federation and Federally with board positions with Maritime Super and others attracting a salary comparable to the current Prime Minister. Other union officials enjoy paid positions without scrutiny of qualifications and members of the union are subject to fees up to three thousand dollars annually. Questionable transactions on funds have also plagued the union for years.

Now there is a proposed merger and for some there is a long debt that needs to be repaid to the construction union. Western Australian Branch Secretary, Christy Cain a former militant unionist that came to power from funds from the CFMEU. A current National MUA official from Perth handed a large sum of money to fund a campaign against the then State Secretary Wally Pritchard who alleges that Cain had assaulted him in company at a local hotel. This resulted with the Wharfies wanting to expel Cain at the time and with Crumlin refusing to expel Cain. Christy would later set up a social media campaign with the funds and was elected. A large portion of his family now enjoys employment through the union.

Cain has always used intimidating tactics and has a relationship with an outlaw motorcycle gang that came to notice in the murder of a former detective and his friend in a car bombing in WA.

Cain��s victory leads to the CFMEU black listed members on building sites finding lucrative employment off shore at the expense of seafarers as the reward after a vicious campaign for the position. Cain then set about to control the National office and now has the significant position of the Presidency of the MUA. Cain’s nemesis returned recently when Pritchard surfaced again, this time for the deputy secretary position rumored to be sponsored by the outgoing Mick Doleman as was a highly qualified Safety professional.

Doleman in the words of the current Deputy Secretary Will Tracey “fell on his sword” the position was made vacant reluctantly and rather than the position going to the current National officials Ian Bray or Warren Smith. It is said that Tracey was provided with damming correspondence that resulted in his resignation.

Tracey leapfrogged into the opportunity which Doleman supporters believe as having “scabbed” his job. Smith not long after challenged unsuccessfully for Tracey’s position and now is seeking favour of Labor left stalwart Anthony Albanese for a safe seat into Federal politics.

Doleman, rather than be blackmailed out of his position negotiated an alternate post with the International Transport Federation for the Oceanic and South Pacific region but tensions remain divisive. Doleman with his years of service in trade unionism is a powerful force and a cunning operator.

Tracey is also no stranger to political skulduggery and had a previous bitter battle with ALP leader Bill Shorten when both were in the Australian Workers Union: a nemesis of the CFMEU.

It is also said that Will Tracey is married to the daughter of CFMEU boss Tony Maher.

Shorted had the Australian Council Trade Union discipline Tracey for his conduct and if the merger of MUA and CFMEU is to increase the power of the Left faction, Shorted will once again need to be victorious. Cain has been unsuccessful in Western Australian political endeavors with MUA official Adrian Evans contesting a then marginal seat, which has become now a Liberal safe seat. Cain also sponsored Chris Brown who was railroaded by the Right faction of Labor and lost the party endorsement.

The huge MUA donation to the ALP was never returned despite Cain’s insistence.

Cain lost further power when his eastern state support base led by recently deposed Victorian Secretary Kevin Bracken was defeated by Joe Italia who endured during the election campaign the misfortune of his motor vehicle tyres being slashed, house vandalized and a series of harassing late night phone calls. A neighbor of Italia’s, was filming the two offenders via a security system.

Bracken, once called a “dill” by then Prime Minister Gillard also orchestrated the deliberate loss of support for the “Qube 2″ and the dismissal of two popular local members. This case is now lodged with the High Court despite pleas from Cain and Tracey not to proceed.

The curious case dubbed locally as the “Qube 2″ of two employees who work for the Spirit of Tasmania at Station Pier has now attracted a prominent film producer’s interest. Executive producer Bert says that now that the case has been lodged in the high court means that there is significant interest as a television production. “Everybody loves a waterfront story. It’s bankable and its popular”. To add further insult the production team had a pre-production sit in and take minutes during the recent Court proceedings in Sydney involving the once close friend of Paddy Crumlin, Buster Russell.

“Buster” says he was offered a job by Crumlin in place of running against Tracey for the number two position in the last election. He had run previously attracting forty eight percent of the vote and confident he would win second time around. Crumlin offered him a position of manager at the ITF seafarers club if he did not contest the election and despite friends advising him against it, he took the job. “Paddy was pleading me to take it, ringing three times a week”, telling me the industry is dead and I need to think about my future”. Within a short time he realised the job was not what was offered and lost his position with the premises now sold. Frustrated he approached the union and a pushing match developed with NSW State Secretary Paul McAleer. No punch was thrown by either man. Buster was then king hit from behind by an official identified as Joe Deakin and after regaining his feet, he staggered outside the Sussex St building and realised what had happened.

A few days later the Officials from the Sydney Branch had him charged with assault and an AVO was served upon Buster.

Buster had sent what the magistrate described as “abusive texts” not threatening as what two of the NSW officials had been claiming. Whilst in the Court both Officials claimed that he possessed a knife hidden up his sleeve.

McAlee under oath and cross examination stated he was acting under instruction from the MUA executive of Crumlin, Cain and Tracey. Cain and Tracey recently were rallying the troops at a Melbourne Terminal and were both told to shove off after they confirmed they acted in this manner. Blue collar workers see this act as “a dog or rat in old speak or Grubs, scum or filth to a younger generation” as told by a veteran wharfie.

Worse still they are being viewed as police informers by the MUA membership which Crumlin has been labeled before, as he is related to high ranking NSW police officer. It is one thing to be identified as a snitch but deliberately giving false statements to ensure the incarceration of a member who posses the union’s dirty secrets is a new low in unionism. “We couldn’t write this stuff” Bert quips and the transcripts have been purchased by the production company. The four Sydney officials, McAlee, Keating, Garrett, and Deakin with the three National officials Crumlin, Cain and Tracey have much to answer.

The past two decades if scrutinized will show the MUA hierarchy in poor light at a time when Unions can least afford the scrutiny and the CFMEU might question the recent Memorandum of Understanding publicized. The union has been going in overdrive in social media but unfortunately “We had a person at the Court and now have purchased the transcripts for the production; it gives us depth for the show which is the primary stage of pre-production” Bert says. Russell through his long association of being within the inner circle of union matters knows all about financial transactions and an audit would be controversial and damaging. The act of having him removed from the election and an attempt at incarceration was devious but that plan has now unraveled. “It is the act of desperate men who need to hold on to power and privilege at any cost but the genie is now out of the bottle and social media has been our weapon with the responding MUA Executive trying desperately to plug the dissent”.

The High Court action, Sydney transcripts and the forthcoming television production will see the end of several reputations and many diehard members will be disillusioned. The Federal Government needs to perform a forensic audit on the finances of the Maritime Union of Australia.

Both parties would recognize the value of such an audit.

If Malcolm Turnbull wants to deflect the recent critics’ from his front bench and all politicians that claim travel expense funds then he will need to act upon the recent manifestations of what can only be described as corruption. Shorted will need to be seen as equally strong and should be in favour to prevent what the Left of his party have planned for him and the future direction of the ALP.

In the wake of the Heydon Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption it appears the MUA had been well greased and come out unscathed. It certainly makes one wonder about what deals the MUA has with the Government.

After the rorts in the UK the British system of disclosure could be a great act to follow. Voters want to see all corruption identified and corrected. Be it from its representatives skimming tax payers through travel expenses or unions skimming funds, superannuation or insurance fees from members who pay for service.

Industry and Voters demand strong guidance when told to make austerity sacrifices and Tony Abbott has strength in spades if Malcolm Turnbull dislikes the possibility of dirt on his hands.

Corruption measures should apply equally to both sides of the political divide and the tripartite of Governments, Corporations and Unions equally. A snout in the trough is just that and Australian people shouldn’t condone such practices any longer.

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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The amazing stories of a man you’ve never heard of • Eurogamer.net

The Godfather

“If he only knew his final script was going to be written by some fat, non-professional Irish guy, I think he would have been fairly pissed off.”

Mention The Godfather game to someone and they might not bat an eyelid, but tell them you were at Marlon Brando’s house two weeks before he died and they’ll sit up straight.

You’d better sit up straight.

Meet Phil Campbell, a guy you’ve probably never heard of. But you’ve probably played his games and you’ll definitely know the people he’s met. He’s got stories for days. This is one of them.

In June 2004, Campbell was in a car with Godfather executive producer David DeMartini, on the way to Marlon Brando’s Hollywood home. Brando couldn’t make it to a recording studio because he wasn’t a well man, but EA had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse so they would go to him instead. The deal was for two recording sessions over two days – one now, one in the future, both around four hours long.

They pulled into to Mulholland Drive and buzzed the gates. In the backseat was a basket of fruits and wines to sweeten Brando up. “He’s quite the connoisseur,” Campbell tells me. But the gates to the house wouldn’t open. Even then, with the deal shaken on, “He tried not to let us in,” Campbell says. Phone calls were made, lawyers talked and eventually the gates clicked open.

“It was just like a regular house but it had grounds,” Campbell recalls. “I remember when they let us in the security gate we came up through fields and grounds, and there was landscape gardeners and people working.” Jack Nicholson lived next door. “I could have hopped the fence!”

Then, Brando. The actor with a mountain-like presence. The actor who’d defied Oscar awards in the name of activism and turned televised interviews on his hosts. And all of a sudden, the idea of ‘chatting for a bit to get to know each other’ didn’t seem so straightforward. But down they sat, with the recorder on – Campbell recorded everything – and began.

“You know, there’s an incredible self-intimidation factor with Brando,” Campbell says, “and for the first while – you can hear it in our conversation – he’s strong.”

Brando is holding court. He’s making phone calls in “two or three different languages” and regaling the visitors with tales from his decorated past. “At one point,” says Campbell, “he was telling us a story about [Elia] Kazan [director of On the Waterfront] and he actually did the scene from the back of the taxi cab, the contender scene, and we couldn’t believe our ears, our jaws were dropping. He was doing it to make a point about everyone considering it an amazing piece of acting, and he was saying it wasn’t, really, it was his audience that generated that impression.

“He was charming,” he says. “We chatted for so long with him.”

Eventually, it came time for Brando to clear everyone out of the room and get down to business, everyone except Campbell and a sound engineer hidden around the corner. Marlon Brando and Phil Campbell, more or less alone in a room Campbell believes “some stuff had gone down” with Brando’s troubled son. All Campbell had to do was hand over the script he’d written and direct Brando’s performance of it – no biggie.

“And of course, at first, when you’re dealing with Marlon Brando, you tend not to butt in or correct or anything, but over the course of time he made it obvious I could interject and feedback, so I did try to get a performance out of him,” he says.

But there was a problem. They had worn him out. “We chatted for so long with him, it probably tired him out,” Campbell says. He had a breathing tube, Brando, and their one shot at overcoming the audio quality issues with it, was to muster a really big performance. But he hadn’t the energy.

“If it wasn’t for the really bad audio quality, he actually did it really well,” Campbell assures me. “He took us back to the whole Godfather thing.” But they couldn’t use it. And they never got the chance to try again. Two weeks later, on 1st July 2004, Marlon Brando died of heart failure, aged 80 years old. “It was, in fact, the last script he ever performed.”

But all was not lost. Yes, the many grandfatherly talks Campbell had primed Brando for would not be recorded, and an impersonator would have to step in, but some Brando did make it into the game.

Go to the hospital, says Campbell. “If you go and lean in, by [Don Vito Corleone’s] room, you can hear the real Brando.”

Punks in Pleasure Town

Have you ever heard of a place called Portrush? It’s a seaside town in Northern Ireland where Phil Campbell grew up. A place made for holidays. A place of bingo and arcades, dodgems, big dippers and pinball. A place of golf and beautiful beaches, not far from the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, and Bushmills Distillery. “It’s where all the troublemakers and terrorists used to go for their day trips,” Campbell says. “Consequently, there was rarely any trouble.”

Campbell’s dad was a well known architect. He made a name for himself designing modern movement-influenced houses in the ’50s. “All of his houses are now listed as of historical significance and you can still see them around the north of Ireland,” Campbell says. “I always dreamed of buying one of them.”

Not sure you’ve quite nailed the punk look, Phil.

But teenage Campbell didn’t want to be an architect, he wanted to be a punk, so in 1976 he joined a band called Pipeline as their singer. You might have heard of them. “We have the honour of being mentioned on the internet once,” he jokes, “when we supported the Undertones at the Portrush Arcadia.”

Being a punk offered an escape from the bloody Troubles in Northern Ireland, which Phil Campbell grew up in. “The great thing about being a punk rocker during The Troubles,” he says, “was that there was no religious divide for us – protestants and catholics hated us alike!

“I suppose it was a bit of an escape. We would go to the seemingly most dangerous places in Belfast and Derry just to see great bands. In Belfast, Stiff Little Fingers, the Outcasts and Rudi were all getting going. In Derry, we took our fear in our hands and ventured to see the Undertones at a tiny pub called the Casbah…”

But the punk rocker dream didn’t last. “This was never a feasible career for me,” he says. “I was a terrible singer.” And the pull of architecture was too strong.

The Godfather, part two

“James Caan never stopped being Sonny. He told us it got him really good seats in restaurants.”

There’s a funny story about James Caan. Unlike Brando, he was happy to be involved in the game, and he was healthy, so EA gave him a lot to do. They made Sonny, the character Caan played in the film, into the player’s friend, made him a kind of big brother to you. Again, Campbell wrote the script.

But again, there was a problem. “I don’t know if this is publishable…” Campbell begins.

“I always remember being called into an executive meeting for The Godfather and they had my script for Sonny in front of them – I used to do these really nice packages with lots of drawings and images.

“They called me into this meeting, these producers, and they said, ‘Look, we’ve gone through your script for Sonny and there’s too many “fucks” per page. I’d like you to take out two “fucks” per page.’ And so, after moaning and whinging about it – basically a creative director’s job – I proceeded to do that.”

Cue James Caan. “He hadn’t changed at all,” Campbell says. He was Sonny Corleone. It was like he never left the role. And when you have an actor so in the moment, you let them improvise, you roll with it – no matter what comes out of their mouth.

And quite a lot did come out of Caan’s mouth, much to the executive’s displeasure and and Campbell’s delight. “He actually added back about four more ‘fucks’ per page,” Campbell says, laughing. “It was very satisfying. It was actually one of my most satisfying moments. He added imaginative swears I never could have written.”

Such as?

“Well,” he answers, “some of them were in Italian and they may have referred to certain parts of a horse’s anatomy…”

He laughs. “It was classic. They’re all in the game.”

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Alongside Caan, EA convinced Robert Duvall and Richard Castellano, and others, to reprise their Godfather roles in the game. Impersonators filled in the blanks. But there was a notable exception, an actor who both refused to be in the game and refused to be impersonated: Al Pacino, who played Michael Corleone.

On the surface, Pacino’s refusal was understandable. “He wasn’t bad about it, he just said he created his legacy with The Godfather and he didn’t want to go back to it, he didn’t want to change it,” Campbell says. “That was hard to take but he was perfectly reasonable.”

But why, then, did Pacino agree to voice a Scarface game for Vivendi released only a few months later? Was he already tied down? Did they offer more money? Or was Scarface not as important to him as The Godfather? Campbell consoled himself with the latter idea. “That’s the way we read it.”

What hurt more than Pacino, however, was what happened with Francis Ford Coppola, who directed The Godfather films. Contrary to popular belief, he was involved, at least to begin with, before he decided to pull out and pillory the game.

“We had Francis Ford Coppola on board until he decided to trash us in the press,” Campbell says. “He came around, with his entourage. We showed him some early cuts and a whole bunch of stuff.”

Coppola even invited the game-makers to his private archives. “I actually got to play with that amazing script he doctored,” says Campbell. “It’s a really legendary movie document where he took the [Mario] Puzo book and cut out the pages and put each one inside a page of his notebook. They’ve now published it, actually, but at the time, us frantically rushing to the photocopier to do 30 pages at a time, was really amazing. It gets to scenes like where Michael kills Sollozzo and the police chief, and Coppola has annotated it and the scene is there in his notes.

“One thing I totally realised by the time I finished writing the script – because I had to basically try and pull more information from the book and then make a load of stuff up – was he seriously did get anything from the book that was any good at all and put it in the movie. There was nothing left. There was the odd scene in the ’30s with Don Vito but really he did an amazing job cutting out all the crap and ending up with a masterpiece.”

Then, something changed. Coppola pulled out and all of a sudden he turned on the game in the press, saying, “They never asked me if I thought it was a good idea.” And, “I had absolutely nothing to do with the game and I disapprove. I think it’s a misuse of the film.”

His beef seems to have been all the action in the game. Action the game needed but the film didn’t have. There are only around 15 minutes of action in the whole Godfather film.”What they do,” Coppola said about the game, “is they use the characters everyone knows and they hire those actors to be there, only to introduce very minor characters, and then for the next hour they shoot and kill each other.”

Campbell sighs. “There are only so many car chases or explosions you can duplicate from The Godfather to serve the purposes of a video game.

“I don’t know. There may be money involved – I have no idea about that. All I know is he was brought in and he gave us full access to all his facilities. I watched all the tapes of the actors auditioning. I just got to sit in his archives and look at everything related to The Godfather. And then along the way, something political happened.”

And it stung. “It matters to me still why Pacino wouldn’t do it, or why Coppola didn’t endorse us.”

Architects in polo necks

“They play softball in Hyde Park and act like they’re Americans. No. I loved the profession of architecture for one main reason: you can still do it when you’re eighty.”

So, Phil Campbell became an architect. He studied in Oxford – Oxford Brookes – and graduated with a first and a masters, then became a registered architect in 1986, working for a company called Rolfe Judd in London.

“I always did the fun stuff,” he says. “I never went on site much, I was terrible on site – I’m terrible at construction – but I always had ideas.” Ideas which turned into bars and restaurants, and led him to a senior designer role on Legoland Windsor.

Campbell even pitched a colour-coordinated car park to Disneyland Paris, which required people in certain-coloured cars to park in certain-coloured lots. “It was like an Impressionist painting on all these slowly undulating car parks,” he says. “Of course, everyone said it was bollocks,” he quickly adds, as he tends to. “And let’s face it, it was.”

His architecture career was going so well he was offered the chance to take over his dad’s firm, Dalzell and Campbell, in Northern Ireland, but Campbell junior had other plans. Phil Campbell and his girlfriend, Julia, who’d go on to become his wife – also an architect – fancied the look of America.

“We were literally sitting on the sofa while I zipped through Teletext – remember that?! I don’t think zipped is the operative word! – and we saw an offer to apply for green cards. We did just that. I entered the Irish Lottery and Julia entered the English Lottery, and we forgot all about it until we heard Julia had got in. We didn’t even talk about it. We just looked at each other and decided to take on the adventure. The move was totally a blind leap of faith.”

They moved to America with nothing but the clothes on their backs and two prized Aalto chairs. And 20,000 comics.

Bowie

“I was in the Bowie fan club when I was eleven. I told him that the first time I met him.”

One day, Campbell received a phone call at home and answered it to discover it was David Bowie. The David Bowie. The two men had been working together so this wasn’t completely out of the blue, but Bowie had never called Campbell at home before.

Campbell was terrifically excited. He was a lifelong fan and could only imagine how impressed his wife would be when she knew who was calling, so as quietly as he could, he called her over. “I was gesticulating to my wife saying, ‘It’s Bowie, it’s Bowie!'”

But how to prove it? He had an idea. “I quietly put him on speakerphone so she could hear the man,” he says, and they gathered around the phone. No sound, however, came out. What had happened to David Bowie?

What they hadn’t realised was David Bowie wasn’t in a good mood. He had actually phoned to give Phil a bit of a telling off. What they also hadn’t realised was everybody knows when they’ve been put on speakerphone.

The silence continued until eventually, Bowie spoke. “Phil, have you put me on speakerphone?”

Oh dear, rumbled by your musical idol. Campbell had no choice but to own up. “Yes, David,” he replied, like a guilty schoolboy. I’m sure his wife was very impressed.

Campbell laughs about it now, of course, it’s one of the stories he tells, and the truth is, he and Bowie got along famously.

They met a long time ago, in the mid-90s, working on Omikron: The Nomad Soul, a David Cage, Quantic Dream game – two relatively unknown names at the time. Campbell was the senior designer and more or less second-in-command, and they needed someone to do the soundtrack to the game.

To Campbell, the answer was obvious: Bowie, obviously. But David Cage disagreed. He wanted Bjork, she was bigger at the time, and usually where David Cage is concerned, Cage gets what Cage wants. “He’s an auteur, you know,” Campbell says, “he’s [Franois] Truffaut. I always wanted to be Hitchcock in that relationship but still.”

Somehow, though, Campbell won out, and the pair set their sights on Bowie. They had an in. Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, was working in the games industry at the time, so through him they arranged to meet Bowie at Eidos HQ in London. Much to their surprise, he turned up. “He watched everything and came back the next week with Iman [his wife] and Joe [Duncan Jones] and Reeves Gabrels [Bowie’s musical collaborator of many years].” And he agreed to do it.

What followed was a Parisian dream for Campbell: two weeks of working with David Bowie every day. “We rented a flat for the duration and David booked into a fancy hotel under an assumed name. He was writing all this stuff, pitching it to us every day. He would turn up at nine, work practically nine to five. It was an unbelievable phase.”

They laid the groundwork for the album which would become Hours, “smoked too many of my cigarettes to count”, and came up with an entire soundtrack for the game. (“It wasn’t the greatest album in the world but we’ve always loved it because it filled our world with music.”) Anything Campbell put in front of Bowie, he’d sign. He even tried to push a bit of poetry on Bowie, which he “gently rejected”.

“Of course he never told me…” Campbell pauses. “What I really wanted was – you know he was famous for doing that cut-up technique, the [William S.] Burroughs thing, where you cut and paste words together to create sentences? He had a computer program for that which I desperately wanted to get hold of but he refused.”

Nevertheless, Campbell, once a boy in the Bowie Fan Club, was now a close friend of the man himself. There was a lovely moment at the Omikron wrap party, at a tiny French restaurant, where Bowie beckoned Campbell over to sit next to him. “Seconds before,” Campbell says, “all the Eidos big-wigs had been jostling for the spot. But David simply beckoned me over, patted the seat and said, ‘Phil, mate…'”. It’s fondly referred to as ‘awesome Bowie moment number two’.

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Bowie really threw himself at Omikron – it wasn’t a fleeting involvement. He played two characters in the game and motion-captured “some classic Bowie moves” for in-game concerts. He believed in the game and medium so much he saw it as a platform to reinvent himself.

“He wanted to take Bowie into Omikron and leave him there and come out the other side as David Jones,” Campbell says. “He wanted to take his life back and leave Bowie. Bowie would be gone forever.”

Think of the two characters he played in the game. One was an omnipresent half-man half-robot called Boz, the sort of character you’d expect Bowie to be, whereas the other character was an 18-year-old starving street singer called… David Jones.

“Of course, that didn’t happen,” Campbell says. “In the end, Omikron itself could not stand up to the rigors of being the place where Bowie ended. If we’d have sold more copies I wonder if that whole scenario would have played out, but it just wasn’t important enough.”

Bowie and Campbell worked together for two years on Omikron in total, and even after the game wrapped, they continued to see each other. Campbell would travel up to Bowie’s office in New York to pitch him ideas. “Crazy ones.”

There was one idea which had come to Campbell after seeing something on the news about space junk – old decommissioned satellites circling Earth forever. “And you could buy these,” he says. “So I suggested to David he could buy these satellites and launch Ziggy from there again. Well it’s obvious, right, that’s roughly where he was from!”

Bowie didn’t go for it.

There was another idea to make a giant character in Times Square called, wait for it, Bill Board. Campbell can’t even remember what Bowie said about that. But he does remember using interviews with Bowie as a platform to promote some of these ideas, and he does remember an email Bowie sent to him at the time about it. “He simply stated, in his most Warholian fashion, ‘How are you enjoying your fifteen minutes, Phil?’ I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased or not!”

Guest list tickets continued for years afterwards but the two men drifted apart. Then, in January 2016, while Campbell was watching the movie Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, the news broke about Bowie’s death. “I still find it hard to believe he’s gone,” he says.

Today, he has a pile of signed memorabilia to remember Bowie by, his “prized possessions”, he calls them, and of course he has treasured memories. Which brings us neatly around to ‘awesome Bowie moment number one’.

Taking him up the opportunity of guest list entry years later, Campbell decided to try again to introduce his wife to David Bowie. They went to see him play at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, sitting at the VIP table with Iman “and, man, really lapping it up”. Then they went backstage afterwards to see if they could find him. But they couldn’t.

It wasn’t until Bowie’s managers Coco Schwab and Bill Zysblat pointed the Campbells in the right direction they found the room Bowie was schmoozing press in. “We walked into this big room and all the press photographers were there taking photographs, and he was there, meeting and greeting people, and he turned around and saw me coming into the room.”

Gulp – would this be another speakerphone moment?

“Phil!” Bowie shouted. “And he ran over and he planted a big kiss on my lips, right in front of my wife.”

He laughs loudly. “Best moment of my life, mate, I tell you!”

A pack of wolves

They landed in San Francisco. They quickly established themselves as architects but something gnawed at Campbell, an itch he couldn’t ignore. “I was always playing games.” It began with the Spectrum and never stopped. “I played everything. I loved the Commodore 64; we used to have these massive parties where we’d all play the Track & Field games.”

So, he volunteered. He went to places like EA and Domark (which would be bought by Eidos, which would be bought by Square Enix) and tested games, and every time, he left a calling card. Literally – he left a resume designed like collectible trading cards. “And somebody fell for it.”

Domark fell for it, and he started his own game there called Blackwater. “Here,” Domark told him, “use these new tools, they’ve been developed at Core.” As in, Core Design. As in, Tomb Raider. But Tomb Raider hadn’t been made yet so, for a while, things were peachy. But as Tomb Raider’s star began to rise, things began to change.

Suddenly, the tools weren’t for anything but Tomb Raider. “We’re never going to use these tools for anything other than Tomb Raider,” Domark announced, “so we can’t do your project.” The Blackwater team was “trashed” and the project cancelled. But Campbell’s aptitude with the tools wouldn’t go to waste. He was sent to work at Core Design in Derby. “It was like punishment!”

But Core Design didn’t want him. Core Design really didn’t want him.

“They got me to come over and the first day I was in Derby, the original Tomb Raider team – the game hadn’t shipped yet – they circled me like wolves,” he says. “They refused to let me sit down or go to work because it was theirs – we’re not having anyone else come in. They literally circled me and said, ‘You can’t work here. Nobody else is working on this. It’s ours.'”

It wasn’t until operations director Adrian [Smith] stepped in and “saved my life”, Campbell was allowed in. “Adrian calmed them down so I decided to start coming into the office,” he says.

“I would go into Core’s offices and work late and build levels, and just build, build, build. And slowly – it’s one of those movie scenes – one by one, they’d look in and show they’re curious. And then they’d play it and say, ‘Oh this sucks,’ and then they’d play it a bit more and go, ‘Oh that’s a good idea.’ And so by the end of it I got nothing but support from them – that was the amazing thing at the end of it – but it was like trial by fire.”

Five years, he worked on Tomb Raider, creating, writing and designing expansions and fleshing out Lara Croft as a character and collaborating on comics. However rocky his start at Core Design, working there “taught me almost everything I needed to know”.

What pulled him away was the ambitious young French studio Quantic Dream, also under the Eidos umbrella (Domark was bought by Eidos in 1995). Campbell was still technically an Eidos employee while he worked on Omikron: The Nomad Soul, “But I had so much faith in Quantic Dream at that time that I left Eidos to go work with David [Cage],” he says, “because the allure of what he was trying to do was just too interesting.”

Best and worst

“Me and David Cage together in the same room? It’s an unbearable idea for some people.”

“Oof.”

I’ve just asked Phil Campbell a tricky question and he’s at a loss for words, and that’s a rare thing. But it’s a tough question: “What’s the best idea you’ve ever had?” It’s like knocking on the door of London’s National History Museum and asking for their best dinosaur bone – Campbell’s had thousands of ideas.

I can almost hear him flicking through them in his mind, yep-noping them as they pop up. Then he pauses. “Do you remember a game called Fear Effect?” he asks. I pretend I do. “I singularly remember standing on the phone talking to [the game’s makers] and coming up with the notion that the health and all the other systems in the game should be like a fear effect.”

But no, that’s not it, he goes back to looking.

“I churned out so many ideas into Tomb Raider in the early days,” he suggests. “Every possible level-design trick I could summon. The rolling ball thing, the classic Indy thing they stole and made a Lara thing: I thought ‘Why do we have to limit it to one rolling ball? Why can’t we have a ceiling full of them dropping on you in a weird chess puzzle game?’ And I did that. I always challenged all of the assumptions.”

But no, that’s not doing it either.

Then, suddenly: “My worst design decision ever? I can tell you that for sure.”

The idea is in another Quantic Dream game: Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy in America), the game Quantic Dream made after Omikron. Again, Campbell was instrumental in the design, but this time he wouldn’t see the game through by virtue of it taking three years, apparently, to find a publisher. “We couldn’t sell the damn game!” he says.

It wasn’t until Fahrenheit came out, Campbell realised his worst piece of design. It dawned on him after Godfather senior designer Mike Olsen returned one morning to give his verdict of the game. “Play it, you’ll love it!” Campbell had told him.

Olsen’s reaction, however, didn’t tally. “He came in the next day and he was so angry and frustrated,” Campbell says. “And he said, ‘I played this game and it was so shit. I got completely stuck.’ I couldn’t understand why Mike was so upset.”

Then it clicked. Olsen had gotten stuck at the place you had to stand still and do nothing – the place with the giant flying bugs. Oh dear. “This was my clever-clever design idea,” Campbell says. “It was supposed to show that you were mad – you were swatting at things that weren’t there.”

But doing nothing wasn’t as easy as it sounds. “You’ve got to remember, Mike Olsen is a hardcore gamer. Hardcore,” Campbell emphasises. “He did the whole hand-to-hand system for The Godfather. And of course a hardcore gamer like Mike, there’s only one thing in games he can’t do…”

He pauses for a bit of dramatic effect.

“…do nothing.”

Campbell learned his lesson. “I realised at that time you can be too clever for your own good.”

Our conversation meanders after this, while Campbell’s search for his elusive best idea goes on. At one point, we’re talking about The Untouchables film, the one with Kevin Costner in, the really long one. We’re talking about it because Campbell pitched an Untouchables game idea to Paramount.

“I’d been so pissed off,” he says. “Every single time I was writing something, it was the hero’s journey, it was rags to riches, it was Ray Liotta pushing through the crowd in Goodfellas and becoming a made man. I wanted to do something where, like with the Scarface game I designed at the time-“

Oh, by the way, he made a Scarface mobile game.

“You’re Al Pacino, you’re on a mountain of cocaine – not literally – and you’re trying to cling on. I loved that narrative where you’re at the top already. I wanted to be Brando, you know? I wanted to be Robert De Niro playing Al Capone, hitting the guy with the baseball bat in The Untouchables.”

The Untouchables game would let you do that, play as characters other than the hero. He’s really proud he got this into Quantic Dream games, he tells me, and as he does, it finally hits him: “The best bit of design I ever did. I’ll tell you know, I remember – have you time for it?

“For me, probably the best piece of work I’ve ever done is…” would you believe it? Also in Fahrenheit. “I was responsible for doing the diner scene at the start of Fahrenheit which became the demo. For me, the demo was the perfect little game.”

Do you remember it? The game opens with you, the player, murdering a man in a toilet. You weren’t in control when you did it but now you are in control, you have a body to deal with, and you know, because of a split-screen view (“unashamedly” stolen from the TV series 24) there’s a cop in the diner and he’s going to need the toilet real soon (Campbell calls him “living timer”). Sure enough, the cop gets up and walks towards the crime scene. You have to get out…

Then the game spins and you’re a detective on your way to the crime scene. But of course, as the player, you already know what’s gone down, even where the murder weapon was thrown. It means you waltz in acting like a proper detective, not some rookie, bumbling around. “There’s nothing worse than a player coming into scene, playing a policeman, and not acting like a policeman,” Campbell says. “Once you stop doing appropriate things, you break the immersion.”

In other words, it’s a Bond moment – a term Campbell picked up working on 007. “Bond always had to be Bond,” he says. “The minute he trips on a curb because you built it badly, or he slides off a roof, that breaks the Bond spell.”

The spell in the Fahrenheit demo held. It had tension, it had pace, it had immersion and different points of view. “It summed up everything I wanted to do.”

Where things take a turn

At one point, Campbell was the chief creative officer of Quantic Dream, running a small office in San Francisco, creating an episodic story idea which became Fahenheit. But Campbell would leave long before the game was released because in 2001, “EA made me an offer I couldn’t refuse…”

Yet, Cage and Campbell went on to work together for many years, Campbell as contracted help. They worked together right up until recently, through Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls.

“I did the adaptation,” Campbell explains. “Basically, David would send me wadges of French, translated by a student, and ask me to create all the voices for the characters. It worked really well in Heavy Rain; notwithstanding some of the very bad acting, the good actors’ roles really came across. I got some great write-ups in press on that.

“In Beyond: Two Souls…” He pauses, probably because the game wasn’t well received. “It’s funny,” he goes on. “Beyond: Two Souls was supposed to be David Cage’s game-game and it was a beautiful game, great characters, but what neither of us really realised at the time was it had no agency […] you couldn’t die or anything, whereas Heavy Rain had hit that sweet spot where you could lose your main characters and the story could go all over the place.”

Evidently, Campbell didn’t mind Cage’s domineering way of working and the two men forged a strong working relationship. “I think I’m one of the only people who’s been able to work well with David over many, many years,” Campbell says. “I did a few more things with David but I lost contact with him around Detroit.”

Campbell was brought into EA on the James Bond licence, where he was the creative director on Agent Under Fire (2001) and Everything or Nothing (2003). They weren’t brilliant but they did try to be more than movie tie-ins, bringing original stories to the series.

The Godfather, though, was Campbell’s all-consuming work at EA. “The Godfather was and always will be my baby, for better or worse,” he says. “Just going through a four-year process, which is a really long time, hearing that theme music on loop in the studio – I never want to hear it again, forever. But creating a world, creating every single building in that world, every single mission, every single word, was an incredible experience.”

But living and breathing The Godfather for four years wore him out. He had mafia coming out of his eyeballs and needed a change. It led to a fateful decision. “I made the stupid mistake at EA of saying, after Godfather, I’m not working on Godfather 2,” he says. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t face any more Godfather.”

He asked to be put back on the Bond team and EA obliged. “So I went back to Bond for about two weeks and then they sold the bloody licence to Activision and I was out of a job, just like that after six years. That was the hardest part.”

Walking away

“That’s the way the luck goes sometimes.”

Picture this: Campbell, alone, surrounded by his ideas. Ideas on the walls on tables, on paper and whiteboard, mapped out in charts and storyboards and flow diagrams. Ideas conveyed in board game dioramas with explanation paperwork surrounding them. But no sound, everything still, like a museum of ideas, their curator waiting idly among them. This was Campbell’s last year at Zynga. His last in the business.

Nothing had quite landed for him after EA. He suggested a Virtual Me idea to EA while working as a consultant. “It was an idea I had that we could consolidate all of EA’s avatar systems, company-wide,” he says. Imagine having one avatar you used for FIFA and Madden, Battlefield and Apex. “You had a single avatar that had all these guises and shared qualities,” he says. “It was a good idea. It’s just, EA’s a very big organisation…”

They worked on Virtual Me for six months, soft-launched it in Poland, “But it really didn’t work,” he says. “It didn’t make it.”

Augmented reality and virtual reality came next, through a company Campbell co-created with Irish animation heavyweight Greg Maguire, who’d worked on blockbusters like Harry Potter and Avatar. They, as Inlifesize, had all kinds of ideas.

There was an idea for wellness pods. “Imagine the Tardis,” Capbell says, “a Tardis for wellness.” You, surrounded by your medical data. It didn’t catch on.

There was an Evil Dead idea Campbell created a gorgeous interactive art book for, to pitch American filmmaker Sam Raimi. It’s got these amazing drawings with cut-out sections that act as windows to the page below, then transform when you flip the page. It’s hard to describe so I’ve included a video to do the job for me. “We never really got the project going the way we wanted,” Campbell says, “but we did ship as a kind of endless runner.”

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This video was shot in portrait – oh Phil! If it doesn’t display properly, click through to YouTube and watch it there.

Their biggest bet was on a game called Fairy Magic, an iOS game which used your phone’s GPS and camera to overlay magical creatures in the real world. Sound familiar? “It was totally Pokemon Go without the Pokemon and the monetisation,” Campbell says – and it was released three years earlier. But it didn’t catch on. “We hit too early,” he says. “We ended up making about two bucks a day.”

If that wasn’t painful enough, Fairy Magic had once been conceived as a Game of Thrones game, and the licence was a very real possibility in 2011, as Inlifesize was funded by Northern Ireland Screen, the company bringing Game of Thrones to Northern Ireland (a now historic move which transformed the region – “We take it very seriously, our gold and our Game of Thrones.”). But Campbell ditched dragons in favour of faeries and the more family-friendly age rating which came with it. “We turned down Game of Thrones early in the GOT process, which was probably our worst ever mistake.”

But what brought Inlifesize to its knees was Doctor Who. “We pitched Doctor Who – we’re all big fans – and what I thought was an awesome AR [augmented reality] Doctor Who game,” Campbell says. “It started in the Tardis and ended up with the Weeping Angels and the Daleks and everything you would expect, and we pitched it for about eight months. We built everything, we did demos, and basically we were told, at the end of the line, that this AR thing, it’s never going to work. ‘Would someone want to do that on the bus?'”

Even now, in 2020, people still aren’t convinced about virtual and augmented reality, and Campbell was banging the drum in 2014, when Oculus Rift was still a development kit two years from commercial release. The ideas fell flat and Inlifesize was wound down.

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It’s at times like these we turn to those we love and so Campbell turned to his wife, who had some motivational words for him. “Go and get a job for fuck’s sake!” she said (Campbell exaggerates for effect) and that’s how he ended up at Zynga.

It wasn’t all bad. In fact, for a while, it was brilliant. He was unleashed on all the brands he loved – The Walking Dead, Ghostbusters, Justice League and Batman – and ideas poured from him, earning him the cheesily named Design Rockstar of the Year Award in 2015. “For one year it was glorious,” he says. “But the other two years…”

You have to remember, this was Zynga in decline, with three CEOs in three years and a rapidly depleting workforce. One by one, the people around him disappeared. “At one point, I had a whole wing,” he says. “I had a floor at Zynga because they’d been firing so many people I ended up sitting on my own.”

But he didn’t sit idly. ‘I know what I’ll do,’ he thought to himself. ‘I’ll decorate.’ So he got out his Sharpie and plastered any surface in sight – and Zynga loved it. “Everybody who visited Zynga would be brought round,” he says, to be impressed by the overt display of creativity before them.

But Phil Campbell’s way of working began to fall from favour at Zynga. A more methodical approach was desired. Micro-managers moved in, “and I’m a very hard person to micro-manage”. “The final year put me off the business forever.” So in 2016, fed up, Phil Campbell walked away.

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This video was shot in portrait – oh Phil! If it doesn’t display properly, click through to YouTube and watch it there.

The man you’ve never heard of

The whole time we talk, which is quite a long time, one thought keeps bouncing around my head: ‘How have I never heard of you before, Phil Campbell?’ The things he’s done, the people he’s met, games he’s made. The stories he tells. How come I’ve never heard of him before?

But such is the nature of success, I suppose. We don’t hear about the runners up because history celebrates the winners, and for all it promised, Omikron didn’t quite come together, and The Godfather never measured up to the film. But everything Campbell was involved in tried something new. It had new ideas, ambition, guts. The second Godfather game, without him, was empty.

To lose that relentless creativity and energy: it’s a great shame. It’s our loss.

Unless.

Unless Phil Campbell ended up somewhere he was always meant to be.

Something new

“It’s a terrible thing, enthusiasm – you can’t get rid of it.”

“It’s going to kill me!” he says.

“I run about in my classes and I’m jumping on tables, demonstrating mechanics, doing a lot of shouting and drawing on the wall. For old men like me, just raising your arms above your head is dangerous, but I can’t help it.”

Today, Campbell teaches. Four days a week, he’s leaping on tables at either Berkeley City College in San Francisco, or Cogswell in San Jose, inspiring the minds of tomorrow. And he loves it. “I wish I’d started 10 years ago,” he says.

And they love him.

He has the highest retention rate of any class at Berkeley City College. “Every semester I have one hundred and fifty new names to learn – at my age!” he says.

Maybe it’s to do with his lenient marking. “I can’t be bad cop ever,” he says, “it’s ruined my career actually.” Or maybe it’s because he throws comics at students to inspire them. It’s not as though he’s going to run out, he has 25,000 comics at home.

Or maybe it’s because having ideas isn’t as easy as it sounds. How many have you had today? I imagine you’ve had at least one idea while reading this piece (it’s long enough). But what did you do with it – swallow it? What good is it to anyone then?

“I’ve been known in my time, variously, as a great gushing waterfall and a rusty, leaky tap,” Campbell says. “You get both because what you do is you decide to commit. A lot of people will have these ideas in their head and they’ll never emerge. I say get it out. Seventy per cent of the time it will be OK, thirty per cent, people will think you’re stupid, but, you know.”

And he’s developed a few methods over the years to help.

Bodystorming

“Bodystorming is basically brainstorming using your bodies,” Campbell says. “You have a situation and you all play a character and you bodystorm it – you move around, you communicate, you act, and it helps you sort out problems. It’s really brilliant for level design.”

Campbell learnt bodystorming from a guy called Sean Cooper, who used to swear a lot. “When I used to go over and work with Core on Tomb Raider, swearing is just, you know, a casual thing in Britain.” He laughs. “Cooper would come over with a lot of big nasty swears and get everybody’s attention and annoy everybody, but you’d be sitting in a meeting and he would, not angrily [but to demonstrate], flip a chair over and duck behind a desk. He would climb over, he would show what Bond would do physically in any given situation.

“It was the best example of bodystorming I’ve ever seen. He’s an incredible guy. It’s like this legacy of game stuff that gets passed down from the earliest games.”

Hidden narratives

“A hidden narrative is what I had to use many, many times in Tomb Raider because I was churning out levels so quickly over a short period of time I had to find a way of not ever being stuck,” he says.

“A hidden narrative is taking an established piece of media – it could be a song, a poem, a book, almost anything – and you take that classic structure and set out a beginning, middle and end of a narrative for whatever your designing, let’s say a level, and basically insert Lara Croft into that scenario and keep working it and working it until the hidden narrative disappears.

“I based some of Lara’s levels in Egypt on Alice in Wonderland. Right at the end, she’s at the Tea Party, only I created a tea party with all the Egyptian Gods instead of the ones in Alice, and that led me to some more ideas. Or, she goes through the rabbit hole, so I had Lara diving down into…

“I based level designs on my back garden. Anything that triggers you and keeps you going,” he says, “because the worst thing to do is to stop.”

Half-remembering

This is his favourite, and it’s remarkably easy to do. Why, I feel like something of an expert already!

The idea of half-remembering struck Campbell while giving a talk he had completely forgotten he had to give. He was just leaving the hotel to go to the airport when an organiser spotted him and said, “Oh, Phil, the room’s over there. If you could just-“

Phil interrupted: “What for?”

“You’re the keynote speaker,” he was told.

“So I walked out and quickly whipped up my slideshow and I had no idea what to say, and the room was packed – they were practically coming out the doors and windows.

“So I just started the usual chat and showed a few slides and talked about what, you know, we talked about, in a way, and then I couldn’t remember something and I started talking about fuzzy memory, and I just came up with the phrase ‘half-remember things’. And the place erupted.

“It was like one of those moments where you go, ‘I came, I saw…’ and everybody just goes ‘yeahhhhhh’. And it was completely spontaneous. It wasn’t deserved! It just was the way the room was, the atmosphere. Whatever the way it was I said ‘half-remembered’ made people go ‘yeahhhh’. It was like scoring a goal!”

Half-remembering is when you can’t quite remember a plot from a film, say, and end up confusing it with another one. By stitching them together, you create something new. It’s the sort of thing we do all the time in dreams, hopping unquestioningly from one thought to another. So get fuzzy, let yourself forget.

“Don’t become a Wikipedia,” instructs Campbell. “If you can keep your thinking a little bit fuzzy and you can create links between dreams and reality, just let it roll. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or imagined. It’s stuff, It’s content, it’s ideas.”

We snap back to talking about teaching.

“I’ve been called the c-word a lot,” he says.

I laugh.

“That one too, yes,” he goes on, satisfied, “but ‘catalyst’ is the word people use for me. I put ideas together, I get things to work, I share.”

He triggers imaginations, it’s what he’s always done. He throws up thoughts for other people to jump in on, pulls people in, bounces off them. And he does it now, coaxing his students into a place where they have no fear sharing their ideas. They rarely sit down. He tries to get them up on their feet, away from books, playing, sharing, collaborating.

That’s key, working together. If he’s learned anything in his time in the industry, it’s to crack collaboration early on. “I don’t falter,” he says. “I don’t let people go off and work on their own.”

It makes him happy, teaching. He’s content. He’s finally found somewhere his methods and way of working really click. And though he’s not directly in the games development industry, who knows? His effect upon it now may be greater for those he equips to join it. He feels good about that.

“It’s a bit of a legacy thing,” he says. “I get paid very little – luckily my wife has a real job. I’ll just keep teaching until I drop, probably. I just love passing it on.”

A beautiful morning

“This is a real test for me – it’s an exam – trying to not half-remember things.”

It didn’t quite pan out the way Campbell expected. He once expected every game to pay royalties like Tomb Raider did. “They set me up for some dream industry which never quite evolved for me. But hey,” he says, “valuing stuff like meeting Brando and Bowie, it enriches your life forever.”

If he has a regret, it’s not taking any pictures with Brando. He couldn’t, he wasn’t allowed, nor would Brando sign anything. But he has his memories of Brando, Bowie and more. How many people can wheel out the kind of stories he can? “I just look back on a ton of memories and think how lucky I was to be in the right room at the right time,” he says.

There’s still architecture – he picked it because he could do it when he was 80, remember – and it never really left him. It’s why, when he was making The Godfather, his virtual New York had a ludicrous 200 landmarks. He knew them all but how many can you name? The Rockefeller Center, The Empire State Building, Central Park, um, the Friends apartment?

It wasn’t until an EA executive came to ask members of the team the same question in order to prove a point – they averaged around five or six – Campbell finally conceded.

He still plays The Godfather with his students, you know, and finds unexpected pleasure in it. “What was great about playing The Godfather was not playing the missions,” he says. “The joy of Godfather was just starting a rumble in the middle of town. Not in the design plan, not intended, but a true joy to play. That’s what I look for in games.”

He dabbles in a bit of architectural work too. “I still consult,” he says. “I consulted on the Titanic museum in Belfast. But it’s all very casual. My wife is a real architect.”

They collaborated recently (he credits her with all the work) on a very personal project. It’s the reason he suddenly breaks off during our conversation to talk to an engineer. I hear the word “elevator” and I’m just about to ask when he beats me to it.

“Sorry about that, Bertie,” he says, “we just built a new house, finally, after all these years, and I’m standing here looking at the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s certainly beautiful here this morning.”

More specifically, he’s standing in his rooftop garden overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, and he has a six-story bookcase running up the stairs. Downstairs, on the bottom two floors, there’s an apartment stuffed with “everything my wife didn’t want in the house”, all his gaming paraphernalia, and they rent it out on Airbnb. “We just started,” he says. “It’s like a pop culture museum.”

It might not have panned out the way he expected, then, but it panned out pretty nicely in the end. “It’s Retirement House,” he says. Then he changes his mind. “That sounds bad.”

He thinks for a moment longer and with a laugh hits upon something better. He says,

“This is a house to befit someone who’s not quite famous.”

The view from his rooftop garden.

The greatest honour

I feel good about how I leave Phil Campbell, there on his rooftop, looking at the bridge, and as I hang up, I can’t help thinking about all the ways I feel a little bit like him. I’m not Irish, though I do a terrible accent, but my thoughts fire around like his, hopping all over the place, and I can’t resist an opportunity to make someone laugh.

I have ideas, too. No, really! They pop up all the time. But I am in no way as disciplined and determined in getting them down. That’s his mastery. No doubt he’s already off concocting an idea to delight or torment his students with. That’s nice. I’d like him as my teacher. I think of it as his final form. But he wouldn’t be there had he not gone round the houses learning his trade, and as the cliched old saying goes, we learn more from our mistakes than we do our successes.

It’s changed my mind about what this story is. Someone asked me this last night and I struggled to answer – never a good sign when you’ve spent so long on something, let me tell you! It was once, simply, the amazing stories of a man I’d never heard about, and maybe it still is. I hope you’ve enjoyed them. But that feels a bit disingenuous, too, a bit thin. It implies, I think, he’s never found success, and I don’t think that’s right.

Success irks me, because what does it actually mean? Does success mean you’ve attained the highest honour in our society? If it does, what is that – fame and fortune? Is that really all it is? I don’t like to think so.

It reminds me of when I used to take my son to ninja lessons, because that’s what parents in Brighton do, and of something they taught there. It always stuck in my head. They taught that the highest honour you can attain is to teach. Not to become a great warrior, famed and acclaimed, but to learn so much you will one day have the great honour of passing it on. That, I like. Phil Campbell, grandmaster, talking at a hundred miles an hour and cracking jokes. Passing it on.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/the-amazing-stories-of-a-man-youve-never-heard-of-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-amazing-stories-of-a-man-youve-never-heard-of-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Netflix creating production hub in Toronto that will support up to 1,850 jobs

TORONTO — Netflix is setting up a dedicated production hub in Toronto, which film and TV creators hope will provide new opportunities for local talent.

The California-based streaming giant announced Tuesday it is expanding its presence in Canada by leasing two studio spaces along the downtown industrial waterfront area.

At Cinespace Studios, Netflix is leasing four new sound stages — along with spaces for office and support work — totalling approximately 164,000 square feet.

William Watson: CBC can’t beat Netflix’s ‘imperialism’ with subsidized Cancon nobody watches

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At Pinewood Toronto Studios, Netflix is also leasing four sound stages and adjacent office space totalling 84,580 square feet.

Netflix said the commitment will provide jobs for up to 1,850 Canadians per year, and that the leases are “multi-year” but didn’t specify for exactly how long.

“This is great news for the Toronto and the Ontario community, because it’s an endorsement of the high quality of the work that comes out of our industry,” said Jim Mirkopoulos, vice-president of Cinespace.

“Netflix has made a commitment to the film and television industry here that they’re going to continue to do stuff and by making this announcement, they’re standing by that,” added Nanci MacLean, president of Pinewood Toronto Studios.

Cinespace said its sound stages leased by Netflix are under construction and set to be operational this summer.

Pinewood said Netflix will move a production onto one of its sound stages in the next couple of weeks. The four sound stages being leased are separate from Pinewood Toronto Studios’ previously announced planned expansion.

Projects already set to be made at the hub include the horror anthology series “Guillermo del Toro Presents Ten After Midnight” and the film “Let It Snow.”

Netflix has production facilities in Los Angeles and recently announced new hubs for Madrid and Albuquerque, N.M.

It also leases British Columbia’s Martini Film Studios and production sites across Canada on a case-by-case basis.

Its co-productions with Canadian partners have included “Anne with an E” and “Alias Grace” with CBC, “Travelers” with Showcase, and “Frontier” with Discovery Canada.

Speculation of a Toronto hub started swirling last month when Mayor John Tory, who has been making annual trips to Los Angeles to lure film and TV projects to the city, told The Canadian Press he had “a very high level of confidence” that Netflix would open one up.

Tory’s words drew positive reaction from local screen talent, who said they hoped it would foster Canadian projects.

“In television right now, they’re always going to be my first stop, frankly,” said Toronto producer J. Miles Dale, who is developing “Ten After Midnight” with del Toro, with whom he won an Oscar last year for “The Shape of Water.” Dale is also developing his own Netflix series, “44 Chapters About Men,” which he hopes will be at the hub.

“You can say whatever you want, you can show whatever you want, you can show real adult situations without the kind of censorship that comes in.”

Netflix is giving a similar freedom to filmmakers, said Dean DeBlois, the Aylmer, Que.-raised director of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” out Friday.

“It’s the wild west of filmmaking within their particular format and I have several friends who have gone to Netflix with original projects and they’re just having the best time of their careers,” said DeBlois.

“They’re willing to take a chance on a completely original project and not just resurrect something that’s been done before.”

Streaming services are also one-stop shops for Canadian creators who usually have to go through multiple avenues to find producers, sellers, distributors and financing, said Oscar-nominated Toronto director Hubert Davis.

“For filmmakers, that might be the best option for your project to get it going, as opposed to going to all of these different sources to get it made,” he said.

Vancouver-based producer and filmmaker David Paperny is looking forward to the possibility of conducting business within Canada.

“They could have their ear closer to the ground of the vast Canadian talent source out here,” said Paperny.

“So it will be easier to pitch them, it will be easier for them to work in collaboration with us on our productions.”

But some worry the hub will take up precious studio space that producers are clamouring for in Toronto.

Netflix has also faced heavy criticism from Canadian broadcasters and other industry players for not being on a level playing field when it comes to regulation in Canada.

Because it’s a foreign digital company, Netflix isn’t required to collect or remit federal or provincial sales tax.

So far Netflix also hasn’t fallen under federal regulations that require the country’s broadcasting companies to pay into the Canada Media Fund for the creation of homegrown programming.

Netflix has argued it shouldn’t be forced to pay into such funds, pointing to the money it’s already putting into the system by creating shows here.

In September 2017, the company pledged to spend $500 million over five years to fund original content made in Canada, a number it recently said it will exceed.

“I’m all for (a hub), bring it on. I just care about Canada’s voice and Canadian content,” said Virginia Thompson, co-executive producer of “Corner Gas” and co-founder of Verite Films.

“If there are more jobs for people in the city, great. And if it increases the chance of people here making (stuff), then terrific,” added Toronto-based actor/filmmaker Jay Baruchel, star of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.”

“When a big corporation comes to town, it could be awesome, but it’s not guaranteed to be so…. Whatever puts resources in the hands of talented Canadian artists, I’m all for it.”

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2GwM3Y5 via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

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alfredrserrano · 6 years ago

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Fort Lauderdale mansion headed for auction with a $19.5M minimum bid

Bella Fortuna at 534 Bontona Avenue in Fort Lauderdale

The owner of a 27-room waterfront mansion in the Las Olas Isles area of Fort Lauderdale will offer the residence for sale at an auction on Thursday.

The minimum bid has been set at $19.5 million, and winning bidder can pay 25 percent of the price in the digital currency bitcoin.

According to the builder of the three-year-old mansion in Las Olas Isles, its construction cost in today’s dollars would be about $25 million, or 22 percent above the minimum bid.

Fisher Auction Company will conduct the auction starting at 11 a.m. Thursday on the premises of the mansion at 534 Bontona Avenue in Fort Lauderdale, called Bella Fortuna.

Fisher will conduct the auction in cooperation with the listing agent for residence, Katrina Campins, an agent of brokerage firm Trump International Realty who was a cast member in the first season of “The Apprentice,” the NBC reality television show that starred Donald Trump.

The current owner built the mansion in 2015 on the site of a house purchased from the family of the late H. Wayne Huizenga.

Following demolition of the Huizenga house, the land was raised by eight feet, putting the ground floor of Bella Fortuna 10 feet above sea level.

Marker Construction built the mansion, which has more than 17,000 square feet of space. Bella Fortuna features custom marble throughout the property, two fireplaces, two home offices, an elevator, hand-painted Portuguese wall tiles, a mahogany butler pantry, a hidden “panic room,” a heated swimming pool and a five-hole putting green that overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway.

The mansion also has faux painted ceilings by the late Leonard Pardon, who was appointed by Queen Elizabeth to do restorative painting at Buckingham Palace.

Bella Fortuna has won more than a dozen awards including the prestigious Addison Mizner award from the Institute of Classical Architecture. – Mike Seemuth

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/2018/10/27/fort-lauderdale-mansion-headed-for-auction-with-a-19-5m-minimum-bid/ via IFTTT

#The Real Deal Miami

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mosscreek-designs-blog · 7 years ago

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Is This The Title?

After one year of design and two years of construction, this magnificent waterfront Lodge located in the Finger Lakes region of Central New York is finally complete. In one of our most complex projects to date, MossCreek designed every aspect of this beautiful home. From concept design, final building design, interiors, mechanical systems, and overseeing the construction, Moss Creek meticulously worked to create a new icon for central NY lake homes.

The homeowners found Mosscreek through a magazine feature, and then later on the Internet. About six months after selecting us, the homeowners and MossCreek met on the property for a kick off design meeting. At the property, we met each other for the first time. Prior to that it had only been phone calls and emails. The husband in the family is very busy with his work, so this was the first time we had gotten together to seriously talk about what they were looking for in a home. There was an existing small home on the property that was not in good condition. Renovating the home was not an option due to both the size of the home and the condition of the home. Unfortunately, that meant we had to move the new project further away from the water’s edge. The old home had been much closer due to older guidelines that allowed you to be closer to the lake.

When we met at the property, I asked them what they were looking for in a home. They explained to me that they were wanting to build a home that would have seasonal use for their immediate family as well as some extended family that live in the area. As you might imagine, this included the need for multiple bedrooms. The original scheme included a basement level with high windows set at grade. Unfortunately, the floodplain in the area did not allow for occupancy of a basement level. The compromise was to develop three-bedroom suites with ensuite bathrooms, and then a bunk room as a catchall for kids. As typical with a vacation home with a gorgeous view, the homeowners wanted open plan living for the public areas of the house with a large glass view to the lake. The design allows for the kitchen, dining and great room area to flow is a single room. The fireplace was positioned such that it can be seen from all three areas. The goal was to make sure that people in the kitchen still felt like they were part of the social group that might be in the great room.

Great room features a two-story glass wall that flows from the ceiling to the floor. This allows uninterrupted views of the lake and the backyard activities. The low windows cause the space to feel like it flows from the interior of the great room right onto the massive stone terrace overlooking the lake. In the great room there is an extremely large fireplace and chimney with stone from glacier Montana. The firebox itself is 6 feet wide. The mantle is 7 feet above the floor. We pulled the firebox closer to the floor to create more of an old-school look, rather than the more modern raised hearth look. To the right of the fireplace is a wood box for storing Firewood. The floor in the great room, as well as most of the rest of the house, is walnut stained oak. The timber trusses in the great room are reclaimed timbers from old barns in the south east. Each of the beams is over 100 years old. The timber frame was hand cut and crafted by Carolina timber works, in Boone North Carolina. The wrought iron straps on the Timbers were created by a local blacksmith. The custom chandelier, handrails, and light switch plates in the great room was also created by the same local blacksmith.

The kitchen features Downsview cabinets, absolute black granite countertops with a leathered finish, and a La Cornue French range and hood set in an arched stone niche. The stone niche scheme is repeated on the left wall with the outer two niches housing shelves and cabinetry, and the center niche being the doorway to a large pantry. The door leading to the pantry is a pocket door with half glass and decorative iron work. A matching door occurs at the passageway from the kitchen to the laundry room. On the right-hand side of the kitchen, which is the lake side of the house, a large three-panel sliding window sits over a double basin kitchen sink. From this "helm of the ship" position, the three panel window slides open to a serving counter extending into the covered porch that frames a magnificent view of the lake. This serving window allows the kitchen to directly link with outdoor entertaining area.

Walking to the master bedroom suite, you pass through a private then. The den is separated from the public spaces with a pair of hand crafted sliding pocket doors. Inside the Den is a sitting area, stone fireplace and a television mounted on the wall.

Doors from the Den leading to a spacious master bedroom suite. The master bedroom features a large stone fireplace, antique ceiling timbres, a beautiful view to the lake, and passageway to the master bathroom.

The master bathroom features a copper soaking tub, his and her vanities, a large child steam shower with a rustic theme, and sliding doors that open to the rear terrace and custom-built spa tub.

The laundry room/mud room features custom-built cabinetry and dishes that are for storing and staging everything from laundry supplies to coats and shoes. There's also an exit directly to the Rear Terrace so that this area performs as the entry and exit point to the lake. The slate floor and other interior finishes are suitable for a wet environment that accommodates wet bathing suits, towels, and all other manner of affects from outdoor activity. A guest bath with shower opens directly off the laundry/mudroom. This room lends support by serving as a changing room for lake activities.

Upstairs the house features three bedrooms and a large themed bunk room. Two of the bedrooms feature a stone fireplace and a bathroom. The third bedroom shares a Bath with the bunk room. All of the bedrooms feature antique timbers on the ceiling.

The themed bunk room will ultimately feature Bohemian style decorations. The room the spacious and has a vaulted ceiling with antique ceiling timbers. The adjoining bathroom suite is accessed through a Hidden door in a set of shelves. The bunk bathroom features a large tile shower, generous soaking tub, and a three-spigot wash sink.

When considering the exterior design of the home, the homeowners requested a rustic Lodge look. We decided to design something similar to the old lodges of Lake Tahoe and the Adirondacks that were built by the leisure class in the early 1900s. These designs included an element of rusticity, blended with elements of refinement. In general, the larger the architectural element the more rustic it would be, and the smaller the architectural element the more refined it would be. So in this design you can see that we have large rustic pieces of stone, large antique timbres, exterior walls covered with antique Logs and chinking, rough sawn cedar board and batten, Poplar bark from North Carolina, rustic timber rafter tales, and #3 cedar shake roofing. Of the interior we begin to see a little more of the refinement. The large timbers are still antique and very rustic. But the cabinetry becomes quite refined. The custom doors and the trim become especially refined. Even the blacksmith work, while small in scale, starts becoming much more detailed as it gets smaller.

The front of the house features a wraparound porch, creating at welcoming feel for any arriving visitor. The rear of the home features large view glass in many of the rooms, and an expansive rear terrace covered in blue stone, and a generous outdoor living space complete with outdoor kitchen.

The rear terrace also includes very large spa tub that was custom built out of stainless steel in California and shipped to the project. Custom surround from Ironwood finishes off this wonderful family spa tub. Opposite the spot tub is a large outdoor fireplace. During the fall and spring cool season, this will make the hot tub much more enjoyable.

The exterior of the house features stone around the entire perimeter to give a solid natural connection to the ground. The stone steps utilized for the home are in a cascading style, letting the architecture feel as if it flows to the ground

The project took about one year to design and two years to build. There were many regulations for building on this lake. Many of the agencies were not prepared for the construction of a new home, and we had to sort through overlapping regulations. But in the end it was a wonderful experience.

During construction, we had weekly video conference meetings with the owner and the builder.

Due to their busy schedule, the homeowner were only able to visit the project twice during construction. It is through new technologies that we are able to create and design a wonderful home where the homeowner and the designer are in different cities, and the project is in an altogether third location.

The project is a total of 5823 ft.². The main level is 3305 ft.², the upper level is 2518 ft.²

The project cost is confidential

The project is filled with all kinds of custom construction. The house features a full house sound system.

Looking from the lake, you see that the Stone Terrace is lifted about 42 inches above the ground. We then surrounded the stone terrace with a wall rising about 36 inches above the Stone Terrace, with stone lantern posts every 12 feet or so.

The round river stone on the exterior of the house was sourced locally.

I can’t say enough wonderful things about the builder, Bill Duell. When the design was about 75% complete, we interviewed builders and Bill stood out among the other candidates. For a home like this, being a builder is not enough, you have to be a craftsman. Architectural drawings cannot convey all of the information needed. As in an orchestra, a part of the music is on paper, and the other part is in the conductor’s baton. Bill conducted his crews with an artist’s viewpoint. The project could have been much different without him.

In particular, Bill help us establish a budget, and then help us stick with it. It wasn’t always fun, but in the end we were able to create a home that met both the homeowner’s design an budget goals.

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#Completed House

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nedsecondline · 7 years ago

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The Search for a New Humility: Václav Havel on Reclaiming Our Human Interconnectedness in a Globalized Yet Divided World

“Our respect for other people… can only grow from a humble respect for the cosmic order and from an awareness that we are a part of it… and that nothing of what we do is lost, but rather becomes part of the eternal memory of being.”

In his clever 1958 allegory I, Pencil, the libertarian writer Leonard Read used the complex chain of resources and competences involved in the production of a single pencil to illustrate the vital web of interdependencies — economic as well as ethical — undergirding humanity’s needs and knowledge. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,” Dr. King wrote from Birmingham City Jail five years later, as the material aspects of our interconnectedness became painfully inseparable from the moral. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

How to inhabit our individual role in that mutuality with responsible integrity is what the great Czech dissident Václav Havel (October 5, 1936–December 18, 2011) addressed in his 1995 Harvard commencement address, later published under the title “Radical Renewal of Human Responsibility” in his collected speeches and writings, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice (public library).

Václav Havel

Havel — a man of immense erudition and literary genius, who embodied Walt Whitman’s insistence that literature is essential for democracy, who went from playwright to president, who endured multiple imprisonments to uphold his ideals of justice, humanism, anti-consumerism, and environmental responsibility — begins by recounting an incident that sobered him to the irreversible forces of globalization: Sitting at a waterfront restaurant one evening, watching young people drink the same drinks as those served in his homeland to the sound of the same music that fills Prague’s cafés, surrounded by the same advertisements, he is reminded of the fact that he is in Singapore only by the different facial features of his fellow diners.

A decade before the social web subverted geography to common interests, values, and sensibilities as the centripetal force of community formation, Havel writes:

The world is now enmeshed in webs of telecommunication networks consisting of millions of tiny threads, or capillaries, that not only transmit information of all kinds at lightning speed, but also convey integrated models of social, political and economic behavior. They are conduits for legal norms, as well as for billions and billions of dollars crisscrossing the world while remaining invisible even to those who deal directly with them…. The capillaries that have so radically integrated this civilization also convey information about certain modes of human co-existence that have proven their worth, like democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, the laws of the marketplace. Such information flows around the world and, in varying degrees, takes root in different places.

And yet, with prescience painfully evident two decades later, Havel cautions that there is a dark side to this undamming of information and ideas:

Many of the great problems we face today, as far as I understand them, have their origin in the fact that this global civilization, though in evidence everywhere, is no more than a thin veneer over the sum total of human awareness… This civilization is immensely fresh, young, new, and fragile, and the human spirit has accepted it with dizzying alacrity, without itself changing in any essential way. Humanity has gradually, and in very diverse ways, shaped our habits of mind, our relationship to the world, our models of behavior and the values we accept and recognize. In essence, this new, single epidermis of world civilization merely covers or conceals the immense variety of cultures, of peoples, of religious worlds, of historical traditions and historically formed attitudes, all of which in a sense lie “beneath” it. At the same time, even as the veneer of world civilization expands, this “underside” of humanity, this hidden dimension of it, demands more and more clearly to be heard and to be granted a right to life.

And thus, while the world as a whole increasingly accepts the new habits of global civilization, another contradictory process is taking place: ancient traditions are reviving, different religions and cultures are awakening to new ways of being, seeking new room to exist, and struggling with growing fervor to realize what is unique to them and what makes them different from others. Ultimately they seek to give their individuality a political expression.

With an eye to the dangerously disproportionate dominance of Euro-American values in this global marketplace of values and ideas, Havel writes:

It is a challenge to this civilization to start understanding itself as a multicultural and a multipolar civilization, whose meaning lies not in undermining the individuality of different spheres of culture and civilization but in allowing them to be more completely themselves. This will only be possible, even conceivable, if we all accept a basic code of mutual coexistence, a kind of common minimum we can all share, one that will enable us to go on living side by side. Yet such a code won’t stand a chance if it is merely the product of a few who then proceed to force it on the rest. It must be an expression of the authentic will of everyone, growing out of the genuine spiritual roots hidden beneath the skin of our common, global civilization. If it is merely disseminated through the capillaries of the skin, the way Coca-Cola ads are – as a commodity offered by some to others – such a code can hardly be expected to take hold in any profound or universal way.

Illustration from Alice and Martin Provensen’s vintage adaptation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey

Acknowledging that such a line of thought might be dismissed by cynics as unrealistically utopian, Havel insists on not losing hope — lucid hope. “This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen,” Rebecca Solnit would write a generation later in her electrifying manifesto for civilizational resilience. “It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.”

A decade before philosopher Jonathan Lear made his case for “radical hope,” Havel writes:

I have not lost hope because I am persuaded again and again that, lying dormant in the deepest roots of most, if not all, cultures there is an essential similarity, something that could be made if the will to do so existed – a genuinely unifying starting point for that new code of human co existence that would be firmly anchored in the great diversity of human traditions.

He points out that at the heart of every spiritual tradition, no matter its geographic or temporal origin, is a set of common moral principles upholding values like kindness, benevolence, and respect for human dignity. And yet, in an era of such irreversible triumphs of science as the splitting of the atom and the discovery of DNA — triumphs which Einstein believed united humanity through “the common language of science” — any real movement toward healing the ruptures of our natural interconnectedness lies not in reverting to ancient religions but in integrating the achievements of reason with the core values of the human spirit. Half a century after pioneering biologist and writer Rachel Carson invited us to step out of the human perspective, Havel writes:

Only a dreamer can believe that the solution lies in curtailing the progress of civilization in some way or other. The main task in the coming era is something else: a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility. Our conscience must catch up to our reason, otherwise we are lost.

It is my profound belief that there is only one way to achieve this: we must divest ourselves of our egotistical anthropocentrism, our habit of seeing ourselves as masters of the universe who can do whatever occurs to us. We must discover a new respect for what transcends us: for the universe, for the earth, for nature, for life, and for reality. Our respect for other people, for other nations and for other cultures, can only grow from a humble respect for the cosmic order and from an awareness that we are a part of it, that we share in it and that nothing of what we do is lost, but rather becomes part of the eternal memory of being, where it is judged.

Illustration by Soyeon Kim from Wild Ideas

Havel calls for “the search for a new humility” — a search that politicians have an especial responsibility to enact:

Even in the most democratic of conditions, politicians have immense influence, perhaps more than they themselves realize. This influence does not lie in their actual mandates, which in any case are considerably limited. It lies in something else: in the spontaneous impact their charisma has on the public.

In a passage of bittersweet poignancy against the contrast of our present political reality, Havel adds:

The main task of the present generation of politicians is not, I think, to ingratiate themselves with the public through the decisions they take or their smiles on television. It is not to go on winning elections and ensuring themselves a place in the sun till the end of their days. Their role is something quite different: to assume their share of responsibility for the long-range prospects of our world and thus to set an example for the public in whose sight they work. Their responsibility is to think ahead boldly, not to fear the disfavor of the crowd, to imbue their actions with a spiritual dimension (which of course is not the same thing as ostentatious attendance at religious services), to explain again and again both to the public and to their colleagues – that politics must do far more than reflect the interests of particular groups or lobbies. After all, politics is a matter of servicing the community, which means that it is morality in practice, and how better to serve the community and practice morality than by seeking in the midst of the global (and globally threatened) civilization their own global political responsibility: that is, their responsibility for the very survival of the human race?

Standing before “perhaps the most famous university in the most powerful country in the world,” Havel issues a particularly urgent exhortation to American politicians:

There is simply no escaping the responsibility you have as the most powerful country in the world.

There is far more at stake here than simply standing up to those who would like once again to divide the world into spheres of interest, or subjugate others who are different from them, and weaker. What is now at stake is saving the human race. In other words, it’s a question of what I’ve already talked about: of understanding modern civilization as a multicultural and multipolar civilization, of turning our attention to the original spiritual sources of human culture and above all, of our own culture, of drawing from these sources the strength for a courageous and magnanimous creation of a new order for the world.

With a cautionary eye to “the banal pride of the powerful” — corruption of character which Hannah Arendt followed to its gruesome extreme in her timeless treatise on the banality of evil — Havel adds:

Pride is precisely what will lead the world to hell. I am suggesting an alternative: humbly accepting our responsibility for the world.

Looking back at his own life with the astonishment of one who grew up under the locked-in nationalism of a communist authoritarian regime, then went on to travel to places like Singapore and address the graduating class at Harvard, Havel ends on a note of radical, responsible hope:

I have been given to understand how small this world is and how it torments itself with countless things it need not torment itself with if people could find within themselves a little more courage, a little more hope, a little more responsibility, a little more mutual understanding and love.

Complement this fragment of Havel’s wholly ennobling Art of the Impossible with other exceptional commencement addresses — including 21-year-old Hillary Rodham on making the impossible possible and Joseph Brodsky on our mightiest antidote to evil — then revisit Eleanor Roosevelt on the power of personal responsibility in social change.

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