#and nick is his touchstone

[bairdthereader]

A Heartstopper body language moment (nanosecond edition).

This entire scene between Charlie and Ben is rightfully focused on them, their conversation, their faces, their emotions. It's a watershed moment for Charlie and a reckoning for Ben.

But I think the fact that Nick is still the in the frame, blurred or not, is significant. He's lending Charlie strength and support without any actual interference. He's trusting Charlie to do this incredibly hard thing on his own.

If you watch closely, there's this little moment right when Charlie says "But I don't want to be there to see that happen" where you can see Nick let out a deep sigh, a visible release of tension. He's been holding his breath (metaphorically speaking) for this entire painful confrontation.

Nick has had a totally singular perspective on this twisted relationship. He's seen Ben's assault of Charlie firsthand and named it for what it was. He's heard Charlie's side of the story in detail. He's endured multiple torturous interactions with Ben where Ben monologued, blamed, rewrote history, and tried to undermine Nick and Charlie's relationship. All of these interactions were private, giving Nick a uniquely thorough and complete understanding of just how damagingly manipulative Ben can be.

So I think it's safe to say that Charlie's statements here, especially "I don't want to see you ever again," are intensely meaningful for Nick, too. He recognizes that Charlie is extricating himself from Ben once and for all, that Charlie has done the emotional work of figuring out exactly what Ben did to him, and that he's won the battle against his own mind (maybe not the whole war, but this specific, important battle). Nick is breathing out all his long and deeply held worry.

That sigh speaks volumes.

[beliscary]

my son after being jumpscared by a bouquet of daisies:

I have 7k of AU sam who never grew up in ancelstierre sitting in my drafts. he's hilarious and I think about him often

[macbooth]

full of childish whimsy in a hostile fashion tonight so here’s every shakespeare clown i can think of and whether or not i think i’d beat them in a fight

(i do not mean fools i mean clowns. they do not need to be the secret genius of the play. if they are stupid in every way shape or form i am including them here)

Puck (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) No chance. Bro’s got that magic and ALSO has a big strong scary fairy king as his bear, like, do not separate them. If I even tried throwing hands at this cunt I’d get torn to shreds and used as glitter dude, I’d be over. 0/10

Nick Bottom (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) I could but I’d feel bad. I also think he’d put up a really solid fight. Like this is out of donkey form, bro was a physical worker. Like I reckon I could win a fight with some of the tradies I’ve seen but I don’t think it’d be easy. Also he’s just really dumb so I would feel a little bad. Donkey form though, I’m running away. Scary as shit. I am afraid of horses though. 6.5/10

Touchstone (As You Like It) Absolutely I could beat the shit out of this man. I hate him so much. Full of hostility towards this fucker. His clothes aren’t even subtle I could find this bitch in the forest no time and hunt him down and rip him to shreds, fuckin court jester doesn’t even have the roughness of the country on his side. 9/10 (-1 point cause he definitely fights dirty but I just hate him so much I’d win)

Jaques (As You Like It) First off he’s absolutely a clown. Second off I’ve played him before so my word is gospel. Third off bro has no fucking chance against me. He’s a podcast bro who thinks I don’t know that Tame Impala is one dude. I’d ask him why we can’t print more money and he would explode instantly and it would be the funniest thing he did with his life. 10/10

Audrey & Corin (As You Like It) I’m lumping these two together cause in the show I did they were one character (and I also played them). I wouldn’t even want to fight these two. And even if I wanted to Audrey would absolutely be able to beat the shit out of me and I would thank her. Our setting was in semi-modern country Australia, that girl would have a shotgun. 2/10

Autolycus (Winter’s Tale) Just like Jaques to me. He might be a little bit harder because he’d change costume and I’d get confused because I have no object permanence but other than that what has he got. Bitterness? Resentment? Bitch so did I when I was 15 grow up experience love. 8/10

Falstaff (Henry IV parts 1 & 2, Merry Wives of Windsor) I don’t actually know about this one but he is very punchable. I feel like he’d let me punch him and I think one punch would be enough for me. I think that would satisfy my urge to punch him. He may be a knight but let’s be honest he’s shit at it so I stand by this. 4/10 (just cause I don’t really give a shit)

The Dromios (Comedy of Errors) I absolutely could beat them in a fight but I would feel So Bad. You see how they’re literally already treated in the play, I wanna give them a break. That being said they’re both kinda dicks but they’re going through it already so I’d wanna give them a breather. I would win though, even if they both were attacking at once. 7/10

Launcelot Gobbo (Merchant of Venice) He’s such a prick but I would be laughing too hard at his name to fight him. Bro’s name is Gobbo. Bro’s name is basically Gobby. Imagine being named Blowjob. I would lose my mind. I would laugh so so hard I would collapse. My heart would fail. Biggest L name out there bro. Launcelot Gobbo oh my god. 3/10

Launce (Two Gentlemen of Verona)  Nah man he has an attack dog. I don’t care what breed of dog Crab is in a production I fully believe he would kill for Launce, that’s just their dynamic. I understand them better than anyone else (I have a dog). Also he’s already working for Proteus, is that not punishment enough? 4/10

Speed (Two Gentlemen of Verona) I mean I definitely could fight him. I don’t imagine he’s got much fighting experience. But once again, he has to deal with Valentine which does feel like it would be cruel to inflict more onto him. Like Valentine’s not as bad as Proteus but fuck is he stupid. Also if I accidentally flubbed a punch Speed could absolutely tear me a new asshole with his words and I would sob and cry and literally never recover. 4/10

The Porter (Macbeth) Fuck no. Bro definitely has a knife on him at all times. I can’t explain why I think this I just do. He works night shift, he definitely doesn’t get paid enough for his dog shit job, he would absolutely try to stab me just to spice up his evening without me starting a fight. 1/10

Trinculo (Tempest) Yes. Sorry, you’re Russell Brand? L. I could kick your ass. And he’s like drunk for half the show, and almost fucked a fish. I doubt his judgement is good enough to say the alphabet backwards let alone dodge a punch. He couldn’t even get Caliban to kick my ass (who definitely could by the way) cause Caliban fucking hates him. Bro, failwife to Stephano should pay more. But it doesn’t. 8.5/10

Dogberry (Much Ado About Nothing) Without Verges? Yes. With Verges? No way. Those two are a power couple in the dumbest possible way. He would absolutely try to get me arrested though but I simply would not go to prison. What’s he gonna do? Send me to prison? I’m already not going. 7/10

Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet) No chance. Unless Romeo fucked up so bad like he did in the actual play, I would have no chance against this dude. I wouldn’t even want to even if I could. I’m a Benvolio stan first and foremost and a person second you think I’d wanna fight his bestie? Only exception is if it was an actual fight club and not just a pure fight out of hatred. I feel like Mercutio could give Brad Pitt Fight Club Realness, outfits included.  I would still lose though. 2.5/10

Don Adriano De Armado (Love’s Labour’s Lost) I reckon I could wreck this dude’s shit. You know that gif where the fuckin dude is doing all these cool sword moves and then he just gets shot? You know the one. I forgot where it’s from but you know the one. That would be this fight. Armado would bust out his flair, his razzle dazzle, his pizzaz, and I would just deck him I think. That’s the power you need in this world, I think. Power of fist to face. Peace and love. <3 8/10

Costard (Love’s Labour’s Lost) I do not think Costard would realise he was being fought even as he was actively getting hit in the face. I know how to say honorificabilitudinitatibus, he doesn’t even have that against me. Bro couldn’t even confuse me with that, I learnt that, like an adult. Anyway yeah I’d kick his ass. 9/10

Holofernes & Sir Nathaniel (Love’s Labour’s Lost) This is the same man to me. I would destroy them both. Fuckin nerds. Flowery ass language nerds. I support gay rights and gay wrongs but the only reason I couldn’t fight those two gay muppets who heckle is cause they’re too far away (in a theatre booth), these two gay muppets who heckle are right in front of me. I’d kick their tweed cladded asses. 10/10

Jaquenetta (Love’s Labour’s Lost) She is just like Audrey to me. I could never bring myself to hurt her. Also she’s pregnant and I feel like it’s fucked up to hit a pregnant woman just for fun. Also she could absolutely wreck my shit. Please wreck my shit Jaquenetta. 0.5/10

Moth (Love’s Labour’s Lost) This little fucker should be an INSTANT knock out but I just know this fucker bites. He’s a shit talking 8 year old? Oh he plays wolves on the playground, I just know it. He plays wolves and he’s definitely been suspended for it, I just know it in my heart. Sure, I could kick him, but he would grab hold of my foot and try to rip it off. We would shake hands and agree to part ways, having met our match. He, who plays wolves, and me, who played fairies, leave the fight with our heads high and respect in our hearts. I am kidding of course but I do think we would tie. 5/10

Lear’s Fool (King Lear) There’s already so much fighting going on, I don’t even think they’d notice if I just started kicking this dude. Not only could I fight him and win, I think I’d get away with it too. I’d win not only physically but socially too. What’s he gonna do? Tell his boss? Bro he’s preoccupied with his whole kingdom crumbling, grow up. 9/10

Lavatch (All’s Well That Ends Well) This is more meta but my hatred of this play would fuel me here. I would fight literally anyone in this play if given the chance, not a joke. I would get in the ring with literally anyone from this play, but honestly, out of them all I weirdly respect Lavatch the most, maybe because he at least knows that he’s a cunt, unlike literally everyone else who Just Suck. I do think he’s probably scrappy though, so I wouldn’t leave unscathed. I also think if he got the upper hand he would be so so awful about it, so I’d really have to fight. 6/10

Sir Toby Belch & Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Twelfth Night)  Andrew is canonically bad at fighting, and honestly I do not believe Toby would be any better. Love both of these guys but if I had to fight them both at once I think I would be able to just move out of the way and they’d bonk each other on the head like a cartoon. They’re just silly guys. 9/10

Maria (Twelfth Night) Every woman clown could beat my ass. Audrey, Jaquenetta, Maria, they are all so special to me and would all also fucking destroy me. Maria especially cause I just know she is full of hate. You don’t hatch a plan like the Malvolio plan unless there’s something deeply worrying about you. She’s a Scorpio to me. <3 I do love her, she’d demolish me. 0/10

Feste (Twelfth Night) Would actually kill me. -5/10

I know I’ve definitely missed some but uhhh don’t expect me to remember every clown even if I’m neurodivergent about these plays please. <3

[pliablehead]

I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu

FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!

aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!

Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.

the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.

so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.

it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it

The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY

afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!

so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.

We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food

it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.

It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.

There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).

We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.

LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.

(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)

The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.

anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.

The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.

The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.

God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey

Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)

tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.

this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.

ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!

I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.

thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.

While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.

following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.

We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo

I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.

and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.

we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!

There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.

also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.

hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.

(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)

knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!

It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.

I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.

i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.

The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.

Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.

it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.

[acheronist]

I can't say this on twitter lest a billion stats-focused reply guys jump me for being too tenderhearted to enjoy sports but it really is, from an emotional perspective, at least, SO devastating for dylan to be the last man standing in the 'rebuild core' that was the touchstone of red wings optimism for COMING UP ON NEARLY A DECADE now... hank's career ended early and dylan was forced into a captaincy far too soon, despite steve and hank's best efforts to hold that responsibility off? he was still the captain in every regard except title. and then we traded andreas, luke, filip, anthony, tyler... all of the guys he leaned on the most for support in this melodramatic ass team sport, and left him with what? a bunch of teenagers and nameless faceless hypothetical draft picks? what was the point of the core, this whole time, all those years together? was it nothing more than a placeholder just to hold him up until we could scrape together a roster that MIGHT be a cup contender in five years? he's at the height of his career and has had to watch his dearest family members straighten their shoulders and walk away from detroit every single year after year, chasing something he knows won't be his for years to come... and knowing this is the same curse that hank, nick, stevie, alex, mickey, gordie, ted, and every other generational hero of detroit captaincy had to suffer thru in silence? the heartlessness of business is so scathing sometimes I can't help but want to cry for my little freak from waterford & his giant heart, constantly left behind to defend a hometown legacy that's too far in the past to claim as his own and too far into the future to have complete faith in :-(

[dustedmagazine]

Basic — This is BASIC (No Quarter)

The 1980s saw a second wave of progressive rock, with new personnel for established groups such as King Crimson and Yes, and multi-named ensembles such as Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe (ah, those lawsuits …). The rise of punk effectively vanquished the first wave of prog. Similarly, grunge changed the zeitgeist to one in which second wave prog was pilloried for its pretentiousness. Recent years have seen a reexamination of the music, and incorporation of its tropes by several musical artists. Guitarist Chris Forsyth is one of them. He named his latest group Basic and its recording This is BASIC as an homage to the 1984 album by Robert Quine and Fred Maher. One can readily hear its influence, 40 years later,  rebounding in the music of its successor.

Take the opening track “For Stars in the Air,” a nine minute long jam session (in fact, much of This is BASIC was developed from improvisations). The edgy repeating riffs that were played by Quine are a touchstone for Forsyth and Nick Millevoi, who plays baritone guitar on the recording, supplying the low end and also rhythm guitar. So too are the drum machines on the earlier album, with their motoric rhythms, a texture that Basic’s drummer Mikel Patrick Avery adopts in his percussion and electronics. In addition, Millevoi adds parts for drum machine.

“Nerve Time” is built around an undulating riff on baritone guitar that wouldn’t sound out of place on King Crimson’s Red, as well as a jagged repeated two-chord progression from Forsyth. The percussion provides a constant eighth-note pulse with cymbals prominent. Forsyth and Millevoi engage in an alternating duet while Avery plays sci-fi electronics and another minimal drum pattern on“Positive Halfway.” Partway through, Forsyth adds harmonics and Millevoi pushes his playing into high gear. Avery responds with a hail of vintage synth sounds. “Last Resort of the Gambling Man” is built in layers of guitar. Spontaneous sounding, it is the closest to free playing that Basic gets. With a rattling drum pattern, synth lines embellished by bent notes and wah-wah, and effects enriched guitars, “Versatile Switch” combines kraut rock and funky fusion in equal measures.

This is BASIC concludes with another extended jam, “Never Auspicious.” Strongly articulated repeated notes in baritone guitar and sinuous soloing on Forsyth’s six-string are abetted by driving drumming. A long crescendo builds the piece to an eruption of intensity, then abruptly ends. Prog may still have its detractors, but This is BASIC is a case study in why it deserves another look.

Christian Carey

[dankusner]

Starck contrast

The year was 1984.

A rich kid from Preston Hollow created a Studio 54 for the landlocked on a dicey stretch of McKinney Avenue.

The stories were legendary: People had sex in the bathroom. They did ecstasy, which was legal, and cocaine, which was not. The place was designed by Philippe Starck, aFrench architect who’d given his name to cool chairs that were wildly uncomfortable (the place had a few).

Stevie Nicks was part owner, though people rarely saw her during the club’s five-year run.

They did see Prince, Oliver Stone and Rob Lowe.

Clubgoers lined up to get inside. They wanted the scene, but they needed the music.

Punk, post-punk and new wave, spun on vinyl by real, living humans who knew more about obscure artists and B-sides than Casey Kasem could ever hope to learn.

The live shows were epic: Australian noise band SPK, New York art monster Grace Jones, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Video was projected onto the walls, because avirtual dreamworld still felt like a novelty.

Nobody knew screens and media would rise up like atidal wave and swallow us whole. You should have been there. And for one night only, May 12, you (sort of) can be when the Starck Club returns for a 40th anniversary party, thanks to the good folks behind the Longhorn Ballroom and the Kessler Theater, which is the far more civilized setting for this bash.

Of course, the event is already sold out, giving wannabe clubgoers the familiar experience of getting shut out ofthe best party in town.

Details: 6-11 p.m. May 12 at the Kessler Theater,1230 W. Davis St., Dallas.

Stalling for time FROM THE ARCHIVES In 1985, the now-acclaimed Texas Monthly writer Skip Hollandsworth contributed astory toThe Dallas Morning News about how men's rooms in Dallas were having amoment—avery opulent moment. He noted the upholstered walls ($70 per square yard) inside the gentlemen's lounge atCafe Pacific inHighland Park Village. He praised The Mansion on Turtle Creek's "hand-cast sink fixtures and commodes with comfy seats."Buthewas most gobsmacked by the facilities at the city's hottest dance spot: "The newly opened Starck Club downtown may be the only nightclub in Western civilization that has gotten national attention for its bathrooms. The facilities look like a combination video game, church parlor, hair salon and somebody's idea of a great practical joke. "The mirror-encased lobbies of both themen's andwomen's rooms arecoed. Everybody sits around high-tech couches and talks and smokes cigarettes. Occasionally,someone may get up to actually use the facilities. "There is a television monitor abovethecathedral-likedoor thatleads to the stalls.Likearrival-departure screens at the airport, the monitor tells you which stall is occupied. Each stall is setoff in its own separateroom large enough to startan impromptu game of handball." Hollandsworth spoke with valet attendant Herman Babers, 60, who worked the men's lounge at another showy nightclub, Mistral, inside the then-Loews Anatole Hotel. "I always thought you were supposed to pop inand out of abathroom," Babers told him. "But these men today like to come in and brush their hair and think about things, I guess." Christopher Wynn"The facilities look like a combination videogame, church parlor, hair salon and somebody's idea of a great practical joke."

For One Night Only, the Kessler Theater Turns Into the Starck Club The infamous night club in the West End opened its doors 40 years ago. The Kessler Theater is bringing it back to life, briefly. The scene at the Starck Club during its peak.

New York City had Studio 54, London had the Hippodrome, and Dallas had The Starck Club. The West End venue, named for its Parisian designer Philippe Starck, defined the nightlife scene in Dallas throughout the 80s and reveled in the excesses of the decadent decade, powered by a new and curious drug called ecstasy. DJ Mark Ridlen says there’s more to The Starck Club than meets history’s narrow eye, a cultural touchstone that meant far more than the unchecked libido of the clubgoers. “All they talk about is the drug busts, ‘Who shot J.R.?,’ and the 80s but you’ve never seen a club with such an eclectic lineup over the years whether it was a band, fashion shows, plays, performance art,” Ridlen says. “You name it. They had it.” The Kessler is bringing back The Starck Club for its 40th anniversary reunion by transforming into the venue for five hours on Sunday May 12 into a new version of the influential Dallas nightclub. Kessler Artistic Director Jeff Liles said the event sold quickly: it took less than a week to sell out. It is not dissimilar to the venue’s tribute to the long-gone Video Bar, a room that was influential in the avant-garde scene of the 1980s. “We love paying homage to the venues that made Dallas culture what it was,” Liles says. “It was happening right at the same time as the emergence of the Deep Ellum scene.” Club founder Blake Woodall opened his vision of a hip, technology-filled nightlife spot in 1984 under a Woodall Rodgers overpass near the West End in a converted warehouse space. The first official show for the club’s investors brought Grace Jones and Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks to its stage. They were the first of many celebrities to walk through its doors, early adopters before Rob Lowe and Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Talking Heads’ David Byrne dropped in while in town to film his movie True Stories. Members of the famed Brat Pack who starred in movies like The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink spent evenings there. Prince even hosted an after party at Starck one night that went “well into the morning,” according to David Hynds, who ran the club’s video and art department with his then wife, Suzie Riddle. Word of mouth spread mostly by hairdressers to their clients helped build the club’s reputation as a fashion hot spot for the late-night partier. The Starck Club’s popularity started with some exclusivity but eventually, it wasn’t a place where you had to argue with a bouncer to convince them you were important enough to go past the velvet rope. “Initially, it seemed to have an upper-end feel to it but as time went on, we attracted a much broader range of customers,” Hynds says. “Part of the design and desire was to have a complete mix of all spectrums of people.” The space wasn’t just used for live music, dancing, and the occasional hit of what we now call Molly. The Starck Club was one giant canvas that a got a new coat of paint every evening. “We had these funky theme parties,” Ridlen says. “We would make it look like a grocery store or we would make it look like a rodeo. We’d have these fun themes with appropriate music. We’d always have video exhibits, people showing their art videos. We had events just for that.” ADVERTISEMENT

The club’s first theme party took on the psychedelic. Hynds asked Ridlen if he would create a band that fit its far-out theme. Ridlen’s band was named Lithium X-Mas and the group stayed together long after the club’s closing. “It was only meant to be a one-time deal but a few months down the road, they decided they would carry it forward under that name,” Hynds says. The Starck Club served as a kind of zeitgeist thermometer for its time that reflected changing trends and new sounds. “It was the beginning of the DJ culture in Dallas,” Liles says. The events on the club’s calendar weren’t just concerts. The Starck Club would host fashion shows, plays, and all kinds of performance art. “It was a hotbed of all kinds of just really cool activities under one roof,” Ridlen says. “You would come and see that and then, of course, stick around the music.” No ideas was too off the wall for the Starck Club. Hynds had everyone on the staff pitch ideas for shows, theme nights, and artistic expressions. “One of the things we did was a furniture fashion show,” Hynds says. “It had the basic design of a fashion show instead of clothing, we had people dressed as furniture movers bringing up furniture. Me and Suzie and [Greg Snyodis] from Lithium X-Mas had the idea of doing a band but instead of audio or music, it was visual. Instead of musical instruments, we used visual instruments.” So no recreation of the Starck Club would be complete without a reconstruction of its eclectic style. Camron Ware, the owner and founder of Lightware Labs who provided the visual tech for The Kessler’s recreation of the Video Bar, will work with Hines to turn the Kessler into a visual recreation of the Starck Club. “It’s going to feel like it’s all really immersive when you come in,” Liles says. “There’s going to be a red carpet and everything. We’re really gonna trick out The Kessler that night.” The Kessler turns into the Starck Club for one night only, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. on May 12. Tickets are sold out, but keep your eye on this page. 1230 W. Davis St.

[zot3-flopped]

The Rolling Stone article (I can read it without subscruption...):

Mitch Rowland could have been designed in a mad scientist’s laboratory as the prototypical soft-spoken guitar dude. He’s a shy rock geek from small-town Ohio who just won a Grammy for Album of the Year, for his work on Harry Styles’ global blockbuster Harry’s House. When he met Styles, he was washing dishes at an L.A. pizzeria, a complete unknown with zero professional experience. All he had was his guitar and his ideas. He didn’t even quit his pizza job until two weeks after he joined Harry, and he still ducks the spotlight in live shows. As Harry has playfully introduced him onstage, he’s “Mr. Mysterious!”

But Rowland might have to finally get used to people noticing him. On his gorgeous solo debut, Come June, released through Styles’ Erskine Records, he ignores pop trends and finds his own voice. It’s all introspective acoustic beauty, a deeply personal song cycle inspired by his hero, the British folk legend Bert Jansch. Rowland is still adjusting to the idea of stepping out on his own. As he admits, “I still feel like I’m walking off a building going onstage to play.”

Come June is full of hushed, gentle ballads, in the mode of Nick Drake or Elliott Smith. Songs like “When It All Falls Down” show off his trademark delicate melodies and breathy vocals. But it’s a real guitar album. “Bert [Jansch] was the dartboard,” he says. “I hit the paint on the wall, but that’s what I was aiming for.” The music has a homemade feel. “I wanted it to sound as wood-y as possible,” he says. “I hope we achieved even a quarter of the way [Neil Young’s] Harvest��sounds when you put it on.”

If this talk sounds strange coming from the guy who co-wrote hits like “Watermelon Sugar” and “Golden,” that’s just a sign of the times. Rowland has a unique feel for walking the line between different music worlds, gliding back and forth between mega-pop flash and meditative folk. He and Harry have always made a funny duo — the most flamboyantly charismatic starman in the glam galaxy, next to the shy Midwest boy who’d rather let his guitar do the talking. Onstage, Rowland plays the Mick Ronson/Wendy Melvoin strong-and-silent sidekick to Harry’s Bowie/Prince. But he has his own mystique and his own following. When Styles played London in the summer of 2022, there was fan graffiti on the wall outside Abbey Road, with a drawing that depicted Rowland as George Harrison. It’s the highest compliment any guitar-weeper could ask.

As Harries already know, Rowland has always been brilliant at saying a lot with a quiet sound, as in ballads like “Matilda” or “From the Dining Table.” He co-wrote gems like “Sign of the Times,” “Canyon Moon,” and “Keep Driving,” and his psychedelic guitar freakout steals the show on “She.” He plucks the guitarlele on the fan favorite “To Be So Lonely,” a song that Harry called “the articulation of Mitch’s brain.” Styles sings back-up vocals on Come June, in “Here Comes the Comeback.” But he’s always been Rowland’s most shameless fan. “Super inspiring,” Harry once described him to Rolling Stone. “There’s a magic to Mitch, past him being so good. I feel like he represents a kind of magic to me.”

Come June is the album everyone hoped Rowland would make, except even better. He takes inspiration from contemporary indie-rock guitarists like José González and Jonathan Wilson — not to mention Ben Harper, who contributes lap steel and vocals to “All the Way Back.” Some people might think it’s a pop guy trying to cross over to an indie-rock folk sound, but it’s the other way around: These are his roots. He took an old-school approach to the album, thinking of touchstones like Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. “I wanted it to be under 30 minutes,” Rowland says. “I wanted a quick album, where it doesn’t take long to get into it. It ended up being 37.”

He cut Come June with producer Rob Schnapf, who made classics in the Nineties with Beck and Elliott Smith. The band is minimal — Schnapf, engineer Matt Schuessler on upright bass, drummer Sarah Jones. Rowland and Jones are both in Styles’ band, which is how they met, fell in love, and got married. They now have a toddler son. “If I couldn’t figure out a drum part, Sarah would come down,” Rowland says. “Our son came over one day. It was very cozy. We were always in a groove.”

Jones got to know Schnapf when she drummed on Kurt Vile’s latest album, (watch my moves). When she introduced her husband to the producer, it was a full-circle moment, since Vile was a pivotal influence on Rowland. “When I first played with Harry, I had this voice note on my phone, this slowish riff,” he says. “We sped it up in the end, but it sounded pretty Stones-y slowed down. I was trying to squeeze an idea out of Kurt Vile’s Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze.” The result was the Styles banger “Only Angel.”

Rowland and Jones’ toddler has grown up around Harry Styles shows, so he’s already witnessed plenty of fan hysteria. “We took him to the Green Man Festival in Wales, with all these folk acts, really chilled out, and he’s the only one screaming,” he says with a laugh. “He thinks that’s what you do. So he’ll probably be the only one screaming at my show.”

Growing up in Ohio, Rowland’s first musical love as a kid was his older brother’s drum kit. (He later played drums on “As It Was,” which spent 15 weeks at Number One.) He taught himself guitar, and moved to L.A. in 2013, where he had enough trouble just finding a pizzeria dish-washing gig. He and Harry were from very different worlds — Styles was a global superstar making his solo debut, looking to find his voice after breaking free from One Direction. Rowland had never even heard a One Direction song. But they had an instant chemistry, sharing a fresh, eccentric sensibility.

Their collaboration didn’t make any commercial sense, and people weren’t always shy about letting them know. Rowland grins as he recalls Swedish superproducer Max Martin coming into the studio to hear one of the tracks from 2019’s Fine Linetracks early on: “He gave a list of all the things that were wrong and needed to be changed.” They didn’t take his advice. The song was “Watermelon Sugar,” which became Styles’ first Number One hit as a solo act.

Rowland and Jones were indie rockers, blissfully ignorant about the pop scene. (They’re both obsessed with Guided By Voices.) Then they each met Harry — and suddenly found themselves playing arenas. It was a baptism of fire for both of them. But Jones was a road-seasoned veteran of U.K. bands like Hot Chip and New Young Pony Club, while Rowland had never toured at all. So he experienced some serious culture shock. The first time he ever played New York, it was the legendary Radio City Music Hall. “I went missing,” he admits. “I think I was feeling squirrelly, and I must’ve found an open bar on a different level of the venue, but I was late to getting dressed.” Five or 10 minutes before showtime, manager Jeffrey Azoff pulled him aside. “He said, ‘Do you want to meet Donald Fagen?’ I was like, ‘Fuck you, telling me that Donald Fagen is here! The marquee was scary enough.’”

Rowland calls his pop career “a nice accident,” but he’s authentically fluent in both these worlds by now. “I never wanted to win a Grammy,” he says. “I just never thought about that. How could that even possibly enter my brain?” When he gets star-struck, it’s usually meeting indie-rock heroes like Jonathan Wilson. “Going back to 2012,  when I heard Jonathan Wilson’s Gentle Spirit, I thought, wow, this is something else, and it’s happening now. That was my musical lifeline.” He notes that he met the great indie singer-songwriter Kevin Morby back at the pizza shop, when serving him a birthday pie. “I arranged the pepperoni,” he says proudly.

His first gig at a solo artist was opening for Harry at Dublin’s Slayne Castle — in front of 80,000 people. No pressure. “We were the first one on the bill,” he recalls. “It was us, Annie Mac, Inhaler, and Wet Leg. Like a festival day. So we went on first thinking, ‘They’ll be trickling in,’ but it was already full. That was freaky.” How did the gig feel to him? “I don’t know. I couldn’t look at anybody onstage or out there. I looked at the white dots on the side of the guitar neck until it was over.”

It’s a great rock & roll story — from slanging slices to conquering castles. But in typical understated style, he refuses to take any credit. “I’m only prepared to play a place like Slayne because of all the places Harry’s taken me, and then I’m only playing my music to anyone because of him,” he says. He also won’t accept credit for the meteoric Styles phenomenon, despite co-writing and playing on so many hits. He’s still the same dude who didn’t want to quit the pizzeria. (“I needed the check for the rent,” he says.)

“Harry could have picked any group of people when he decided he was going to go solo,” Rowland continues. “He was massive — he was larger than life. I still can’t believe he wanted to make music with someone who had zero credit to their name, when he could have done the opposite so easily, and everyone would’ve said yes. I’ll never quite get over that.”

But Harry’s gut instincts about Mitch turned out to be justified, to say the least. “He just had a feeling, which says a lot,” Rowland says. “I’ve learned a lot from Harry, but a lot of the most important stuff is to just trust the people around you, and let something be whatever it’s going to be.”

A few years ago, it might have seemed weird to cross over between pop and folk, as Rowland does on Come June. But it’s a sign that pop audiences have gotten more broad-minded. Whenever Styles sings the intensely emotional ballad “Matilda,” with Rowland on acoustic guitar, you can hear a pin drop in the room, even in a stadium. The hush is poignant — nobody even sings along. “Well, everybody’s crying,” Rowland says. “I never play that song facing the crowd. One night I thought, ‘Why don’t I just try it one time facing the crowd?’ But it was too much. It was deep into the tour, and all of a sudden, I’m paying attention, and I almost stopped playing. I thought, ‘God, this is what we’ve been playing every night?’”

He’s hitting the road next spring with the same tight-knit group that made the album. “Sarah’s on drums, Matt’s on bass, and Rob on guitar,” he says. “Everyone who did their bit on the record has said yes to playing live, which is ideal for me. It makes it feel more like a band. When we played Slayne Castle, Rob told me, ‘The last show I played was in ’98 with Elliot Smith.’ So I thought, ‘That’s a nice trajectory.’”

But the toughest audience to impress? His young son. As Rowland says with a smile, “His new thing is putting his hand over the guitar neck when I’m trying to play. He says, ‘No, daddy. No ’tar. Play cars. Come.’ I’ll be in the middle of playing something, but it’s hard to argue with that.” 

Thank you for this! Absolutely lovely. Mitch comes across as so humble still. Really liked this description of Harry:

He and Harry have always made a funny duo — the most flamboyantly charismatic starman in the glam galaxy, next to the shy Midwest boy who’d rather let his guitar do the talking. 

[gangseysallhere]

WE'RE GETTING SHIVER!

EXCLUSIVE: Andy Fickman (One True Loves) is set to direct Shiver, a feature adaptation of the same-name novel by New York Times bestseller Maggie Stiefvater.

Producer Addam Bramich (Russell Crowe’s Poker Face) optioned the book, published by Scholastic in 2009, which is the first in Stiefvater’s globally bestselling series The Wolves of Mercy Falls and spent more than 40 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. The film will follow Grace, who for years has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf — her wolf — has a chilling presence she can’t seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human… until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It’s her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human — or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

A writer for the film has not yet been attached. But Bramich will produce alongside Fickman and Betsy Sullenger (You Again, Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) through their Oops Doughnut Productions, with Stiefvater consulting.

“From the first page of Maggie Stiefvater’s novel, I was transported to a vivid, magical and romantic world that I immediately wanted to bring to life,” said Fickman. “These multidimensional characters are grounded in the daily joys and terrors of high school, live in an elevated arena between fantasy and reality, and love across those boundaries and without limits. I’m thrilled to bring this stunning tale of forbidden romance to the screen along with a fresh coat of Minnesota snow.”

“We could not be more thrilled to embark on this journey with the incredibly talented director Andy Fickman, as we bring the adventurous and thrilling world within this story to the big screen,” added Bramich. “With this unique story, and the help of the brilliant author Maggie Stiefvater, it is with great enthusiasm that we begin this exciting collaboration.”

Fickman is an award-winning writer, director and producer whose romantic dramedy One True Loves hits theaters on April 7th. Simu Liu, Phillipa Soo and Luke Bracey star in that pic based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestseller. In conjunction with Village Roadshow, he also recently directed and produced the stage capture of his award-winning show Heathers the Musical, which debuted to acclaim on Roku last September. The stage show is currently selling out at The Other Palace Theatre in London, where it has received several West End noms and other accolades.

Other notable titles helmed by Fickman include Fox’s family comedy Parental Guidance starring Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, DreamWorks’ teen sports rom-com She’s the Man, Paramount’s Playing with Fire starring John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key and John Leguizamo, Disney’s hit films The Game Plan and Race to Witch Mountain, both starring Dwayne Johnson, as well as Disney/Touchstone’s comedy You Again starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Betty White and more.

On the television side, Fickman most recently directed and exec produced Netflix’s NASCAR comedy The Crew, starring Kevin James, Freddie Stroma and Sarah Stiles. He previously collaborated with James as director and EP of his Netflix stand-up special Kevin James: Never Don’t Give Up, also directing on Nickelodeon’s No Good Nick, starring Melissa Joan Hart and Sean Astin.

An author of books for all ages, as well as a musician and artist, Stiefvater’s book series The Wolves of Mercy Falls and The Raven Cycle were both #1 New York Times bestsellers. She also previously penned The Scorpio Races, which was named a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book in 2012.

Fickman is repped by WME, Entertainment 360 and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller; Stiefvater by Angela Cheng Caplan of Cheng Caplan Company, Richard Pine of InkWell Management and VanderKloot Law.

[justforbooks]

Fleetwood Mac were Brit-rock stalwarts when, in 1974, they hit on the idea of pepping up their lineup. They invited a folky Californian, Lindsey Buckingham, to join, but he refused to come without his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks. The band agreed, on one condition: their sole female member, Christine McVie, had to feel comfortable with Nicks.

They met over dinner in Los Angeles, and McVie, finding Nicks “funny and nice, but also, there was no competition”, waved her through. That decision led to the enlarged band becoming the sultans of soft rock, underlining McVie’s status as the quiet pillar of the Mac apparatus. (And she was right; Nicks complemented rather than competed. She was the ethereal conjuror, McVie the “very, very, very English” – in Nicks’s appraisal – countermeasure, and neither ever upstaged the other.)

McVie, who has died aged 79, was co-lead singer, keyboardist and author of many of the group’s canonical tunes, including Say You Love Me, Over My Head and You Make Loving Fun. Understatement shaped her identity, with Rolling Stone magazine rather insultingly calling her “the epitome of rock’n’roll sanity”. That kind of thing riled her: “I was probably the most restrained, but I was no angel,” she protested, claiming that one of her most acclaimed compositions, Songbird, owed its existence to “a couple of toots of cocaine and a half-bottle of champagne”.

Nevertheless, she avoided the spotlight, often literally. At gigs her domain was a relatively modest keyboard set-up at the side, safely away from stage centre, and despite her talent – “the finest blueswoman and piano player in all of England,” the drummer, Mick Fleetwood, maintained – she was self-deprecating about her abilities.

Deeply melodic love songs, burnished by her warm alto, were McVie’s stock in trade, but she could address her unhappy ex-husband, John McVie, with equal tenderness. The 1977 Top 3 hit Don’t Stop, later used as the theme tune for Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, did just that. Written during sessions for the landmark Rumours album, when relations between the pair were at their worst, it sunnily encouraged John, the band’s bassist, to look forward rather than brood about the past. (She blamed their periodic break-ups, culminating in divorce in 1976, on the stress of being in the same group, and her husband’s heavy drinking: “John is not the most pleasant of people when he’s drunk,” she said in 2003. “I was seeing more Hyde than Jekyll.”)

She didn’t deliberately write commercial songs, she insisted; they just came out that way. Which was just as well – in 1975, as the group were grinding through an American tour, their US label chose Over My Head to soundtrack a radio campaign for their self-titled new album. The LP duly became their first real smash, selling more than 9m copies. For that matter, the 1977 behemoth Rumours arguably owed a good chunk of its 45m sales to the two McVie tracks released as singles, Don’t Stop and You Make Loving Fun, which remain soft-rock touchstones to this day.

The younger child of Cyril Perfect, a music teacher, and his wife, Beatrice (nee Reece), Christine was born in Bouth, then part of Lancashire and now in Cumbria, and raised in Bearwood, West Midlands. Her mother’s avocation was spirituality and Christine was uncomfortable around her circle of faith-healer friends, but an even heavier burden was being saddled with the name Christine Perfect. “Teachers would say: ‘I hope you live up to your name, Christine.’ So, yes, it was tough.” She so disliked it that after her divorce she kept her married name.

As a child, she studied classical piano and cello, only becoming interested in rock at 15, when her brother left Fats Domino sheet music on the household piano. She was an instant convert to the blues, developing a driving, boogie-woogie left-hand piano style, but music became secondary to her other consuming interest, art. Five years at Birmingham Art College yielded a sculpture degree, but she emerged with a revived passion for music, thanks to having spent her university time busking with her friend Spencer Davis and playing bass in a band called Sounds of Blue, led by Stan Webb.

Listlessly working as a window dresser at Dickins & Jones department store in London after graduation, Christine was delighted to be asked to join Webb’s new outfit, Chicken Shack, as keyboardist and vocalist. One of the only women in the mid-1960s British blues scene to both sing and play an instrument, she got noticed. Though she later dismissed Chicken Shack as a “mediocre sort of white blues band”, she sang lead on their only Top 20 song, a dreamy cover of Etta James’s I’d Rather Go Blind, and was voted Melody Maker’s top female vocalist of 1969 (she won the same award in 1970, after releasing a solo album entitled Christine Perfect).

She fancied the guitarist Peter Green of the rival blues act Fleetwood Mac, but it was John McVie who asked her out. “It was Peter Green I had a bit of an eye on,” she said during a Desert Island Discs broadcast in 2017. “I started talking to John and fell head over heels with him.” They married in 1968, and a few months later, deciding she was not seeing enough of her husband, she left Chicken Shack with the intention of being a housewife. It lasted only until her manager persuaded her to make the solo LP, an “immature” effort she later preferred to forget. The next step was joining Fleetwood Mac as a permanent member in 1970, having already played uncredited on several studio sessions.

She was dubious about the band’s decision to relocate to Los Angeles in 1974, but reconciled herself to Californian rock-star life, buying Anthony Newley’s old house and a pair of Mercedes-Benzes with her lhasa apso dogs’ names on the number plates. While making the follow-up to Rumours, Tusk, she dated the Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, but her next significant relationship, with the Portuguese keyboardist Eddy Quintela, was happier and more productive. He played on her second solo album, Christine McVie (1984), and after their marriage in 1986 the pair wrote one of Mac’s biggest hits of the 80s, Little Lies. The marriage foundered, however, when McVie found herself craving a quiet life in England; she quit the band in 1998 and bought a Tudor house in Wickhambreaux, Kent.

Fifteen years of “this country life with the welly boots and the dogs and the Range Rover” proved enough, and matters definitively came to a head when she fell down a flight of stairs and became dependent on prescription painkillers. It was, she said, a bleak time, not least because another attempt at a solo career had failed to launch. She had made the album In the Meantime with her nephew, Dan Perfect, in 2004, purposely veering away from Fleetwood Mac’s big-ticket lushness. But without it, the relaxed, mid-tempo songs had little zing; moreover, a fear of flying kept her from travelling to promote it. Innately a team player, after therapy to overcome her phobia she rejoined Mac permanently in 2014.

Reaction to her return was roaringly positive, both from fans and the band themselves; to Mick Fleetwood, it made the group “complete” again. In the same year, she received an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award. McVie’s last recording was a self-titled joint album with Buckingham, a Top 5 British hit in 2017. It caught her in a reflective mood but her gift for melody was undimmed. Her final public performance was at a tribute show for Green in London in February 2020.

In June this year, a solo compilation, Songbird, was released, but McVie was adamant that she wouldn’t tour again. “I don’t feel physically up for it. I’m in quite bad health. I’ve got a chronic back problem, which debilitates me. I stand up to play the piano, so I don’t know if I could actually physically do it.”

She and Quintela divorced in 2003. Her brother, John, and nephew survive her.

🔔 Anne Christine McVie, musician, born 12 July 1943; died 30 November 2022

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[bilgeau-blog]

Postemotional Society - Nick Sheffield

Stjepan G. Mestrovic

Sage Publications: London 1999

We currently live in an age of crocodile tears and manufactured emotion. This is a society of synthetic feeling where we have all become progressively indifferent to the suffering of others. How else, charges Mestrovic, are we to understand the West's indifference to the practice of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia? The globalisation of the media and communications and the commodification of mass suffering means that we can no longer claim that we did not know. Civilisation in the Western world has come to mean the ability to exhibit refined manners while exhibiting a cool indifference to televised murder. The postemotional society values 'being nice' over the collective ability to be able to act on our emotions and to intervene to help others. Hence the capacity to be able to feel real deep emotions in an age which endlessly simulates sentiment through news bulletins, talk shows and soap operas is being progressively undermined. The display of feeling is short lived, useless, aesthetic and luxurious and rarely becomes connected to a sense of justice and a genuine concern for humanity.

Despite Mestrovic's overriding concern with the war in the Balkan's, the best illustration of his argument comes from an intriguing discussion of death. Unlike many traditional societies (and it is part of Mestrovic's thesis that society is becoming progressively worse) our collective rituals in respect of human mortality have become emptied of anything other than the most superficial sentiments. Death has become MacDonaldised with the modern funeral emphasising speed and efficiency. The emotional out-pourings that are needed to collectively reaffirm society of its common bonds have been replaced by the media spectacle of death and the standardisation of feeling. The postemotional society then is one of mass manipulation, fragmentation and cynicism.

Mestrovic gives a diversity of examples to support the thesis of postemotionalism. They range from the decline of dating, fast divorces, the disappearance of the Parisian cafe and the fact that lecturers no longer flirt with their students. What all these examples point towards is a society where emotions are progressively socially regulated. Postemotionalism disallows the possibility of emotions becoming chaotic and are increasingly subject to 'politically correct' forms of regulation. This cleaned up universe then leaves as little room for flirting as it does for our desire to intervene in humanitarian disasters.

This is undoubtedly a richly provocative book. Mestrovic asks some disturbing questions (particularly in respect of the West's moral indifference in respect of the Balkans) and his book sits well with other contemporary theories from Foucault to Ritzer and from Adorno to Baudrillard who have sought to warn us about some of the de-humanising effects of instrumental reason. However, this work is less than convincing in many of the conclusions that it seeks to draw, and offers a picture of modern societies that I take to be irredeemably flawed. Here I shall confine myself to only three objections (although there are others). The first is that the book seems to advocate a certain masculine logic when it comes to analysing the emotions. Emotions that do not directly lead to immediate forms of action are labelled as useless. This is not only a very instrumental view, but also takes as its touchstone an idealised masculine subject who has banished uncertainty and is able to confidently act in the world. The values of introspection, ambivalence and doubt are quickly dismissed as a form of cruelty that is indifferent to the needs of others. Secondly, we might also question the rampant moral pessimism of this book. The end of the cold war, collapse of communism, the rise of new social movements and the development of new and more global media are all potentially more 'progressive' phenomenon than Mestrovic thinks. He might equally have argued that emotions are becoming democratised and that ideas of respectful recognition are pushing a more concerted agenda within Western societies. Such a view might have lead Mestrovic to have offered a more complex analysis of modern society. Finally, while many of the examples are thought provoking, I did not come across a single one where it might not have been interpreted in a different way. This raises the question as to what is to count as evidence in such a sweeping account? How, without more 'empirical' support, can Mestrovic be so certain of the range of emotional reactions that ordinary people had to questions like Bosnia? The fact that Mestrovic rarely considers counter examples, questions of cultural variability, or arguments that might challenge his view, means that his book often reads as an enraged polemic. This only adds to the impression that the book's central arguments are not only over stated, but severely limited.

Nick Stevenson University of Sheffield

https://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/3/mestrovic.html

[albusgellertalways]

Stripped Alpha/Omega fic

Ch 8:  The Blood Troth

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39923829/chapters/118907008

Summary:   Gellert holds another rally to expose the Ministry's treacherous future plans for Omegas. Albus and Gellert travel to Stonehenge, where they make a blood troth to bind their souls. Not long after, Albus is in for a surprise.

Excerpt:  Gellert’s clothes vanished, leaving him completely starkers.  “I come here freely tonight, stripped bare before you.”  He gazed deeply into Albus’ eyes, which had darkened with anticipation.  “In the presence of Merlin, I bind our twin souls together in sacred union, for all eternity. Liebling, I am yours and you are mine.  Let the mixing of our blood be a never-ending symbol of our eternal love. I pledge to always be true and to always treat you with dignity and respect.  I will never love another.”  

Gellert took a deep breath before declaring, “I pledge my troth to thee, my Omega, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. My body, heart, and soul are yours and only yours forevermore.” Gellert nodded at his mate, who was barely holding back tears. “I pledge myself to thee, my Alpha, Gellert Grindelvald,” said Albus, perfectly pronouncing Gellert’s name according to German tradition.   “My body, heart, and soul are yours and only yours forevermore.  You are my perfect mate, my perfect complement, my constant and touchstone.  I remain yours for all eternity.” 

“Now, we make it official.”  Gellert used his wand to superficially cut his left palm.  “Your turn.” Albus held out his right palm and Gellert slightly nicked it. Their palms kissed as a few droplets of blood trickled down their hands. After interlocking their fingers, Gellert pressed his lips to Albus’.  They melted into each other for a moment until something caught their eye. A tiny white sphere formed in the air, encasing two drops of their blood.  Albus watched, enthralled as a glimmering silver pendant formed around the sphere.  A long, silver chain attached to the necklace as it dangled in the air.

[gmqazi19739]

Hollywood Movies - Top 10 Actors Played Several Iconic Roles

In the vast Hollywood Movies, few actors manage to transcend their roles and leave an indelible mark in the hearts of audiences worldwide. Even fewer have the talent to do this more than once, creating characters who not only define their careers but are also cultural touchstones. These actors proved versatile and became synonymous with the characters they portrayed. From consumer action heroes to complex villains, from legendary magicians to unforgettable detectives, these actors have shown us the true meaning of the part Let's find out 10 such actors who many iconic figures have been brought to life.

Hollywood Movies - Actor Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson is a powerful figure in the film industry, known for his commanding presence and unparalleled ability to bring a variety of characters to life. He is one of those rare actors who can switch performances effortlessly, making every role memorable. Club point in "Star Wars." Jackson's portrayal of Mace Windu in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy brought new gravitas to the Jedi Order. With his purple lightsaber and unwavering devotion to the Force, Mace Windu has become an iconic character in the "Star Wars" universe. His firm but powerful presence set him apart among old legends. Nick Fury of the MCU Another of Jackson’s impressive roles is Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). First appearing in the post-credits scene of "Iron Man" (2008), Nick Fury became the glue that held the entire MCU together. Jackson's portrayal of Fury as a no-nonsense, strategic leader has been crucial to the franchise's success, appearing in more than 10 MCU films. Jules Winfield in "Pulp Fiction." Arguably one of Jackson's most unforgettable characters is Jules Winfield from Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (1994). His role as a philosophical assassin who likes to quote biblical passages is not a myth. Jules Winfield is the role that not only cemented Jackson’s place in film history but also became a pop culture phenomenon.

Hollywood Movies - Actor Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford is synonymous with adventure and courage, having played two of the most famous characters in movie history. His ability to execute these larger-than-life roles made him a household name for generations. Han Solo in "Star Wars." Ford first captivated audiences as Han Solo in the original "Star Wars" trilogy. The handsome, evil sucker with a heart of gold became an instant fan favorite, and his dynamic with the likes of Princess Leia and Chewbacca is still celebrated today undeniably as Han Solo’s influence on pop culture, so Ford is iconic in this vein. Indiana Jones in the "Indiana Jones" series As if one iconic character wasn’t enough, Ford also took on the role of Indiana Jones, an intrepid archaeologist with a knack for getting into trouble in his signature fedora, whip and Indiana Jones became the quintessential action hero that inspired film and TV shows many kinds of Ford's portrayal of Jones not only showcased his versatility but solidified his status as one of Hollywood's biggest theater stars.

Hollywood Movies - Actor Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone is the epitome of the self-made star, having written and starred in two of the most popular roles in film history. His dedication to his art and ability to create relatable and engaging characters has made him a legend. "Rocky" is Rocky Balboa's rights Stallone's portrayal of Rocky Balboa, a wrestler from Philadelphia, is uninspiring. The "Rocky" franchise, which began in 1976, became a cultural phenomenon, and Rocky Balboa's journey from small-time hero to world champion is one of cinema's favorite stories Stallone's performance is heartfelt and enduring, making Rocky an enduring symbol of endurance and perseverance. John Rambo in the "Rambo" series It was only a few years after Rocky that Stallone introduced audiences to John Rambo, a troubled Vietnam War veteran with unparalleled survival skills. "Rambo: First Blood" (1982) was another iconic franchise that would solidify Stallone's position as an action star. Torn between a violent past and a desire for peace, Rambo’s complex personality adds depth to the classic action hero, making him one of the most memorable characters in the genre. Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves has a unique ability to reinvent himself, taking on a role that not only defines his career but also marks a cultural milestone. His calm demeanor and dedication to his roles made him one of the most beloved actors of his generation. Nine in "The Matrix." Reeves' portrayal of Neo in "The Matrix" (1999) was a game-changer. The film itself was a fantastic sci-fi epic, and Reeves’ role as “the one” to save humanity from the machines quickly became iconic. Neo’s journey from regular guy to cyber savior is one of the most compelling character arcs in cinema, and Reeves’ performance was key to the film’s success. John Wick in the "John Wick" series In 2014, Reeves redefined the genre by playing John Wick, a retired assassin seeking revenge for the death of his beloved dog. The "John Wick" series quickly became a fan favorite, with Reeves delivering emotionally resonant performances and masterful brutality. The character of John Wick has become synonymous with the next generation of action films, demonstrating Reeves’ ability to create lasting roles. Hollywood Movies - Actor Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart has a presence that commands attention, whether he's leading a starship or guiding young mutants. His roles had a lasting impact on both science fiction and superheroes, making him a beloved figure in both. Lieutenant Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Journey." Stewart's portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is not legendary. As the wise and compassionate leader of the USS Enterprise, Picard became one of the most respected figures in the "Star Trek" universe. Stewart’s performance brought sophistication and gravity to the role, making Picard an enduring symbol of leadership and morality. Charles Xavier (Professor X) in "X-Men." Years after starring as Captain Picard, Stewart took on the role of Professor Charles Xavier in the "X-Men" franchise. As the wise and powerful leader of the X-Men, Stewart brought a sense of authority and empathy to the character, making Professor X one of the most respected characters in superhero cinema and his portrayal essential for "X-Men"'s successful " series, further cementing its legacy in pop culture." Actor Ian McKellen

Ian McKellen is one of the most versatile actors of his generation, bringing depth and complexity to every role. His contributions to the fantasy and superhero genres have left an indelible mark on cinema. Gandalf is in the "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" franchises McKellen’s portrayal of Gandalf, a wise and powerful wizard, is one of the most brilliant performances in fantasy cinema. As Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White, McKellen brought warmth, wit, and a sense of adventure to the role. His roles were key to the success of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit," making Gandalf one of the most beloved characters in literary and film history. The magnet of "X-Men." In addition to Gandalf, McKellen also brought to life the complex character of Magneto from the "X-Men" franchise. McKellen's portrayal of Magneto as a powerful mutant with a tragic past added a touch of depth and humanity to a typically villainous character and his power in Patrick Stewart's Professor X is series one of the highlights of the series, and shows McKellen’s ability to play multi-faceted characters.  Actor Al Pacino

Al Pacino is a living legend, with a career that spans decades and roles that have defined the mob. His performances are intense, spectacular, and unforgettable, making him one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. Michael Corleone in "Godfather." Pacino's portrayal of Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" trilogy is one of the most iconic performances in film history. As the unwilling son who becomes the ruthless head of the Corleone crime family, Pacino’s performance is chilling and gripping. Michael Corleone’s journey from innocence to power is one of the iconic characters, making Pacino’s role one of the most celebrated in film history. Tony Montana in "Scarface." In 1983, Pacino had another breakthrough performance as Tony Montana in "Scarface." His portrayal of an ambitious and violent drug lord is one of the most quoted and cited songs in pop culture. The rise and fall of Tony Montana is a classic tale of power and corruption, and Pacino’s performance is no legend. The character became a symbol of transcendence and noble ambition, further enhancing Pacino’s on-screen reputation. Actor Robert Pattinson

Robert Pattinson has proven that he is far more than a teenage heartthrob, playing roles that showcase his talent and versatility. From fantasy franchises to gritty dramas, Pattinson has continuously reinvented himself, earning respect in the industry. Cedric Diggory in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Pattinson first gained fame when he played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Even in just one film, the character of Cedric became a fan favorite, and his tragic death had a lasting impact on the series. Pattinson's role as the brave and noble Hogwarts student stood out, making him a memorable part of the "Harry Potter" legacy. Keep Reading: Horror Movie, Shrek-5. Edward Cullen in the "Twilight" story Pattinson gained worldwide fame when he portrayed the brooding vampire Edward Cullen in the "Twilight" storyline. This role made her a household name and teen idol, and the movie "Twilight" became a cultural phenomenon. While the series received mixed reviews, Pattinson’s portrayal of Edward was praised for capturing the character’s inner turmoil and passionate love for Bella Swan. Bruce Wayne/Batman in "Batman." In 2022, Pattinson took on one of the most iconic roles in movie history: Bruce Wayne aka Batman. His performance in "The Batman" was critically acclaimed, with many praising his dark, introspective take on the character. Pattinson’s Batman is a departure from previous films, offering an interesting new perspective on the iconic superhero. His ability to bring freshness to such a popular character is a testament to his maturity as an actor. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch

Benedict Cumberbatch is known for his intelligence and wit, and he tends to be sophisticated and complex. Her roles in television and film made her a global star, and she was praised for her versatility and depth. Sherlock Holmes in "Sherlock." Cumberbatch's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series "Sherlock" was a revelation. His modern take on the classic detective was sharp and interesting, bringing a new vitality to the character. Cumberbatch's Sherlock is quick, mysterious, and deeply flawed, making him one of the most interesting interpretations of the character ever portrayed The series was a huge success, and Cumberbatch gained international fame. Doctor Strange is in the MCU Besides Sherlock, Cumberbatch has also made his mark in the MCU as Dr. Stephen Strange. Portraying the arrogant neurosurgeon-turned-mystical superhero has been an integral part of the MCU's success. Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange is charming and powerful, bringing a unique blend of humor and gravity to the role. His performance is highly praised, making Doctor Strange one of the standout characters in the ever-expanding Marvel Universe. Actor Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews is a true stage and screen icon, known for her impeccable voice and timeless acting. Her roles in classical music made her a beloved figure in Hollywood, a career that spanned more than six decades. Mary Poppins in "Mary Poppins." Andrews' portrayal of Mary Poppins in the 1964 Disney film is far from magical. His performance as a near-perfect director earned him an Academy Award and became one of the most iconic roles in musical cinema. Mary Poppins' blend of whimsy, wit, and warmth is brought to life by Andrews' incredible talent, making the character timelessly appealing to audiences of all ages. Maria von Trapp in "The Sound of Music." Only a year after "Mary Poppins," Andrews accepted the role of Maria von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," another musical masterpiece that would become the cornerstone of her career. His portrayal of a spirited governor who brings music and joy to a difficult home is unforgettable. "The Sound of Music" became one of the most beloved musical grooves of all time, and Andrews' performance as Maria is a major reason for its enduring popularity. Her ability to convey strength and vulnerability in the role made Maria von Trapp one of the most beloved characters in film history. Conclusion These actors did more than just characters; they have created cultural icons that have shaped the film industry and influenced generations of moviegoers. Their popular versatility is a testament to their talent, versatility, and dedication to their craft. Whether using a lighthouse, a whip, or a cane, these actors have left an indelible mark on cinema and their legacy will continue to inspire future generations. FAQs What makes an actor’s character stand out? Icons are those that profoundly speak to the audience, often symbolizing an era, style, or theme. It’s a combination of the actor’s acting, the character’s development, and the character’s impact on pop culture. Why are versatile actors important? Versatility allows actors to play multiple roles, not be typecast, and be able to showcase their full range of talents helping them remain relevant and attractive to audiences throughout their careers. Which actor played the most iconic character? While this can be subjective, actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Harrison Ford are often mentioned for their extensive careers and the number of beloved characters they portray. How do these roles affect an actor’s career? Playing an iconic role can elevate an actor’s career, making them a household name and often leading to more top opportunities. But it can also lead to tank casting, where the actor is only seen in a certain light, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Can an actor be typecast after several iconic performances? Yes, it’s possible to type-cast actors even after playing multiple iconic roles, especially if those roles share similar qualities. But many actors have successfully come out of typecasting by playing different roles and constantly testing themselves in their craft. Read the full article

[art-of-manliness]

Odds & Ends: July 12, 2024

SABANI Portable Charger 35000mAh Power Bank. I use the downloadable maps on the AllTrails app to navigate on backpacking trips. The problem is that if you’re out for more than a day, your phone’s battery will die, and there’s nowhere you can charge it in the middle of a national forest. To solve that problem, I bought this power bank before our last backpacking trip to New Mexico. It worked like a champ. Used it to charge my phone and Apple Watch twice while we were out. You can charge your iPhone up to five times with this power bank, and it comes with four built-in cables. The one downside is you can’t bring this charger on a plane, so save it for outdoor excursions.  The Founder. After watching this movie when it first came out in 2016, we watched it recently as a family. The Founder shows how Ray Kroc, played by Micheal Keaton, went from a struggling, middle-aged, Willy Loman-esque salesman to building an international fast food restaurant empire through doggedness, ruthless cunning, and a dose of motivational Norman-Vincent-Peal-esque self-talk. Keaton was fantastic, and the best scenes in the film are the tense phone calls between him and Dick McDonald, McDonald’s original co-founder, who’s played by Nick Offerman. After watching this movie and also The Social Network recently, I’ve been thinking about my own business philosophy, which is a paraphrase of the counsel George Washington gave in his farewell address: avoid entangling alliances.  The Enduring Appeal of “Mr. Brightside.” You all know I’m a die hard Killers fan. It’s the 20th anniversary of their breakthrough album Hot Fuss, which includes some of the Killers’ biggest hits, including my go-to deadlifting PR pump-up song: “All These Things That I’ve Done.” But the song on that album that has become the biggest cultural touchstone is “Mr. Brightside.” As soon as this timeless anthem is played in any large group, like at a stadium or party, everyone starts singing it. What’s the lasting appeal of this song? Mike Hilleary attributes it to its universal theme of romantic betrayal and its catchy sing-along structure. After you read the article, go give the song a listen. Destiny is calling you.   Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly by John Kay. I read this book over a decade ago, but still think about its ideas today. In Obliquity, economist John Kay makes the case that big, complex goals are often best achieved through indirect approaches rather than straightforward paths. Kay argues that problem-solving, success, and happiness are often the result of adaptability, experimentation, and flexibility — a process that he calls obliquity — rather than rigid, linear strategies. Lots of food for thought in this book.  Quote of the Week He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.  —Francis Bacon Help support independent publishing. Make a donation to The Art of Manliness! Thanks for the support! http://dlvr.it/T9WMyq

[lizzygrantarchives]

The Huffington Post, February 20, 2009

Lizzy Grant: I like things that go fast, things with bright colors, things that taste good. At Coney Island, you can get a Coca Cola, ride the roller coaster, and watch everybody.

New York City songstress Lizzy Grant makes her debut into the music world with a video for her single, "Kill Kill." Armed with her three-track EP, devastatingly retro-sexy look, and haunting, soulful voice, Grant is one to watch in 2009. Lizzy Grant is the kind of singer/songwriter that walks into your home and has no intentions of leaving. And just when you were about to draw an easy comparison to Cat Power, Billie Holiday, or Aimee Mann, Grant's voice pulls the proverbial rug right from under you.

Grant's music is impossibly original, her sound decidedly anti-genre: the songs on her splendid debut, Kill Kill offer an eclectic mix of jazz, pop, electronica, rock, blues and hopeful melancholy. Her videos are quirky, odd, magical and infatuated with Americana. And while scores of other artists attempt to craft pithy esoteric poetry, Grant's lyrics are wholly dark, elegant, and beautiful.

Where is the strangest place you've ever performed? Ever written a song?

Strangest performance: Alone in a basement for a handsome record executive. Strangest ever written: Back at his office while I was making out with him.

I love that Coney Island figures so much on this album, indirectly or otherwise. You feel the evocation of a place in Brooklyn, New York that's at once a symbol of the beautiful and macabre. A place that has this magical boardwalk but also a ghoulish House of Horrors. A place that's real but isn't -- a place that symbolizes escape. Can you talk about why the amusement park was a touchstone of the new record?

I like that, "...real but isn't." All the good stuff is real but isn't, myself included. Coney Island is a place people go to escape, but whatever you choose to be your reality is your reality. So, in a way it's just as real as anything else. I mainly let my imagination be my reality. Fantasy is my reality.

I never saw Coney Island when it had all its big attractions, but there was something desperate about the boardwalk, and I related. There was no end in sight to it, and there were people in bars you didn't know were there. Maybe the amusement park was the touchstone because I have such a history with cheap thrills. I like things that go fast, things with bright colors, things that taste good. At Coney Island, you can get a Coca Cola, ride the roller coaster, and watch everybody.

As an author I often tell people that I'm sometimes more influenced by a David Eggleston photo or a Nick Cave song as opposed to immersing in the work of other writers. In the end, I find my influences or inspirations where I can. If a song or image gets me where I want to go, I'm happy. So where do you find your influences and inspirations? Who or what affects the songs you write? The videos you produce?

It seems to be that way for me too. Mark Ryden's pictures drive me crazy, and Vegas makes me shine. Daytona and the Jersey Shore just kill me. Yes. Even pictures of other performers do it for me. I knew Elvis' songs would be the soundtrack to my life as soon as I laid eyes on his photograph. I know when I love something as soon as I see it. Then, I write about it. Speaking of Elvis, it's unfair not to mention the Beach Boys and The Flamingos as my other constant companions.

My mood affects the songs and videos I make the most. Only when I'm in a good enough mood will I write about, and film, myself. I definitely won't get on camera when I'm not feeling hopeful.

What I love most about Kill Kill is my inability to easily classify it, to place it in any one genre. It's blues, but it's jazz, and it's also pop. "Yayo," for instance, is more haunting and melodic, while "Gramma" has more of pop feel. When writing these songs, were you conscious of your sound's direction? Of what form each song will take?

Writing to me doesn't feel that much different from talking, and my new shrink says that I talk differently from most people he sees. Maybe that has something to do with why the songs sound unique.

I knew how the songs felt to me, but I was surprised when they translated the right way to other people. It's the only thing I've ever done the right way.

My producer, David Kahne, and me got along very well because he knew that I lived in my songs, and so he just tried to make them better. He asked me in a letter what I wanted the record to sound like, and I said, "I want it to sound famous, like a sad party." He thought that was a wonderful idea, and we began working the next day. I like to think we're birds of a feather.

Many artists today are deliberate in the way their image is packaged and how their music is positioned. Their sound is neatly manufactured; one sometimes wonders if lyrics were written by committee. And then there are other artists -- renegades and risk-takers. Their sound is a hybrid of genres; their videos are odd, magical, unexpected -- a visual representation of the songs and stories in the artist's head. I dare say that I'd include you in the latter. Your music is organic and daring in the way that artists who try to find their story, work out their obsessions, and find themselves, often is. Have you considered yourself an artist who refuses to color in the lines? How important is it for one to be as unpackaged as possible?

I guess I haven't colored in the lines of a corporate picture, but making up the rules for myself comes with just as many problems as following someone else's. It's not important to me to be unpackaged. If it looks like I don't know what I'm doing, it's because I don't. But, if someone came along with a better idea of how to do things, I would take it.

I think obsession is a good word to talk about. I live in my obsessions and then the music comes from there. Living that way and writing from that place doesn't make for a "color in the lines" mold. And yet, the songs and the videos and the image go together well because they all come from the same place. So, maybe I'm not deliberate about the packaging, but I am deliberate at trying to do things that I adore.

Would it be safe to say that the songs on Kill Kill tell the story of precocious, but strong-willed woman on display -- whose uncertain of herself and how unique she truly is -- trapped in a dismal trailer park, and her dreams of escape, of being whisked away by the good, decent man she deserves?

Well, I would say I do well on display. . . as long as I don't have to talk. So that part is true. But, no one has put me there. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. I write about what I know, and I know about putting on a show.

I didn't feel trapped in a trailer park. I felt trapped before I got to the trailer park because I had nowhere to live. When I got my trailer, everyone there had the same taste as I did. We all liked giant, lush, fake flower gardens and liked to decorate the walls with streamers even if it wasn't our birthday. I couldn't have been happier there. Before that, I did dream of escaping. I always just figured it was gonna be a man who would take me away. I don't know if I deserve a good man, but I think about it sometimes.

Did you know that as with other Long Island barrier islands, Coney Island was virtually overrun with rabbits (which makes me think of children) in the 1600s -- Coney Island's name was actually derived from the Dutch Conyne Eylandt, and rabbit hunting was common until the resorts were developed? And then in the 1800s it became a resort, a refuge from daytrippers wanting to escape Manhattan summers?

I didn't know that! Saying that it reminds you of children reminds me of the story "Runaway Bunny." I love bunnies.

From American flags and classic cars in the "Kill Kill" to Calico Hills, Las Vegas, sparklers, Planet Hollywood and images of you as a flower child and Marilyn in "Yayo" -- your videos have such a wonderfully nostalgic, classic American feel. Even the way the videos are shot is retro -- at times you feel as if you're transported back to 1950s-1960s America. Can you talk a bit about how your videos are conceived and how it's a visual representation of the album?

Vegas is a place that seems magical to me. I'm very swayed by how things look on the outside. Though I have been burned by what's on the inside of them so many times -- don't get me wrong, but I still have love for something that hits my eye right. A flag waving or a Pontiac Grandamn -- I didn't even have to know what those things stood for to know they were beautiful.

I once had a boyfriend who talked about all the reasons why he loved flags, Rock-and-Roll, and America. I didn't know much about all of that, but I did love him and I wanted to be just like him. So everything in the videos -- the Vegas pyramid, the brides' smile, the groom motioning "cheers" -- they're all different expressions of the happiness I had when I loved a man who loved me and America.

Vegas and sparklers and the 50s are all things that are beautiful, and they're all a big part of my film world.

Originally published on huffingtonpost.com with the headline Singer/Songwriter Lizzy Grant on Cheap Thrills, Elvis, The Flamingos, Trailer Parks, and Coney Island.

[acheronist]

hello!!!! thank you so much for your tarot analysis of our beloved captain dylan ♥️🤍 i am here to say that i will be a devoted audience to any and all drw tarot content (for the next forever) but also specifically to ask about hank being the empress and sergei as the chariot, if you have time 😭 you can’t just “btw” that in the tags and expect us to be NORMAL about it??

omg please.... i am not the oracle of detroit for no reason. i have been pulling season overview tarot spreads + cards for every wings game since 2019. if i'm qualified for ONE thing on this earth it's talking about card associations to players ✋🏻

empress - 40

i know you can find a lot of shit about how the empress is supposed to be about embracing this ~feminine energy~ but i think that's kind of bullshit. i see it more as like.. tending the hearth? and being gentle and loving but still a protector and a teacher? guarding what is beloved and dear to you and carrying yourself with a sense of grace and confidence. which is very much the way hank's captaincy panned out, dont u think?

in the halls of drw captaincy, his was interesting because he wasn't a leader for years and years and years like nick or steve, but he was really crucial to the team in a transitional sort of time. the championship team legends were retiring, new guys were coming in, there was sort of a new identity getting built in the lockerroom? on top of the um *cough* questionable choices kenny holland made as gm? hank's presence on the team as a touchstone through dramatic changes is what always struck me the most about his nhl career. he was a security that fans (new and old!) had absolute faith in. that steadiness is not something you see in every random nhler yknow.

which leads me into the fact that the empress also is a card of creativity. the empress sits with a crown of stars above her head, which ALSO suits hank a lot i think. he was a rookie when nick was captain. he was captain when dylan was a rookie. that's quite a long stretch of time if you stop to think about it. he spent his whole career being surrounded by stars and players with insane levels of creativity and ability to play the game. AND HE HAD THAT ABILITY HIMSELF TOO which is why he lead the forefront of it all. the red wings weren't the red wings without the eurotwins leading them to victories for a long time.

and i think there's a very loving quality to the empress as well, which of course extended to the younger guys in the room, but really shone most bright in the way that hank took dylan under his wing immediately & still is there, post retirement and off the ice, in the way that he still mentors dylan through hard times in the rebuild. i think the passing of that torch was obvious from dylan's first game, and hank did a really beautiful job teaching dylan how to act and grow up and be the kind of captain that's worthwhile, and truly means something in this city. and that devotion / mentor / compassion ties back into the meaning of the empress in a really special way I THINK!!!!!!!!!!!

chariot - 91

oh boy where do i start... even going all the way back to his initial defection from russia, there's always been such a furious independence streak in sergei that i just know it's impossible to tell him to do anything. there's a direction and confidence and borderline audacious(!?) attitude / motivation that's been in his freaky little Sagittarius heart since he was 18. and i think when u boil him down to his barest essential traits, that's one of the more foundational ones!?? and there really is not a card better suited to that attitude than the chariot

there's also something to be said about the chariot card imagery where the driver is being pulled along by the black and white sphinxes.

yeah uh huh. yup.

but also essentially the chariot is about overcoming obstacles, having the willpower and the determination to keep moving forward, the self discipline to get better, etc WHICH ALL I CAN PULL UP QUOTES FOR PRECISELY HOW THESE IDEAS CONNECT BACK TO SERGEI.

defecting from 1990s russia and his whole family and his entire life to go to a country where he didn't speak the language because he had enough confidence in himself to become a star.

growing up learning to skate on frozen rivers until he was a child and able to outskate and outplay adults.

the toughness it took in his heart to go back to the rink every day after his best friend was in critical condition and win something that'll always be bigger and more important than his whole life as an act of devotion.

the way he didn't let getting exiled ruin his career, but instead used it as a doorway to the next great joy of his career.

the way he's only just stopped skating and yet he still is winning back to back cups and achieving records and making history in his own way.

there's a stubborn need to always one-up his own achievements that haunts him soooo bad & you dont have that drive without completely embodying everything that the chariot stands for.