#at some point danny and jenny would eventually break up

[reanimatedgh0ul]

ik my dp x mlaatr crossover is set after jenny and danny are out of highschool but the idea of two crossing paths and it resulting in a love triangle that's not really love triangle btwn jenny danny and sheldon

it being resolved by all of them realizing they're gay in some way is funny and intriguing to me

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

Will the real Taylor Momsen please stand up?

Think you know Taylor Momsen? Think again. After years of personal turmoil and soul-searching, The Pretty Reckless singer is back with a new album and a brand new outlook on life

On the cover of The Pretty Reckless’ upcoming album Death By Rock And Roll, lead singer Taylor Momsen lies naked on a grave. White hair flowing beneath her, gone are the eyeliner-rimmed raccoon eyes. Instead, it’s a stripped back image, one that radiates vulnerability rather than her usual defiance.

Shot by Danny Hastings, who was also responsible for 2013 album Going To Hell's more provocative cover, Momsen is proud of what it communicates. “It’s an untouched photograph," she tells Louder over the phone from her home in Maine.

"That was my intent, trying to show complete purity and baring myself. I wanted to express that you come into this world with nothing but your soul and that’s all you leave with, too.” She pauses. “I’m pretty proud of it, if I’m being honest.”

That vulnerability seems to be something Momsen is starting to feel comfortable with after a lifetime in the spotlight. Now just 27, she started a modelling career aged just two. She later became known as Jenny Humphrey, the Gossip Girl character audiences loved to hate, before leaving to focus on her music career, forming The Pretty Reckless and releasing their first album in 2010. She must be exhausted, we motion. “I don’t know if I feel older or younger," she replies. "I have experienced a lot. I feel like I have lived a billion lives. Some days I feel like I’m two years old and sometimes I’m 107. It depends on the day."

Speaking carefully but freely, Momsen’s answers are peppered with small, shy laughs. She’s spent the last several months locked down, leaving only briefly to film a music video for recent single 25. “I feel like I’ve been handling it relatively well, but I’ve certainly had my moments. I think everyone has their breaking point. It’s a lot! It’s a really fucked up year!” She pauses, before finding her way to a bright side. “I think this is a really humanising time.

"Everyone’s lifestyle is different, and where you come from and how you’re handling the situation is different, but we are still all in essentially the same space and point in time together.”

The peace in Momsen’s voice is hard won after a painful couple of years for her and her band. The first blow came in 2017, when The Pretty Reckless landed a spot supporting childhood hero Chris Cornell. He died by suicide on the tour, shaking Momsen to the core: “After we were on that Soundgarden tour and we played the last show – when I woke up to the news the next morning I was beyond devastated. I still don’t have words to express how crushing that was. I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t in a good place to be public. I removed myself from the public eye. I cancelled everything. I needed to go home and reflect on what had happened.”

She fell into a deep hole, spiralling and cancelling any upcoming shows. In 2018, feeling ready to rebuild her life, the band started speaking to their friend and longtime producer Kato about the next step. Just as they had pulled themselves together, they got another tragic phonecall: “He’d died in a motorcycle accident. That was the fucking nail in the coffin I guess, for lack of a better term."

“I just went so, so down into this hole of depression and substance abuse. I was a train-wreck and I didn’t know how to get out of it, I didn’t know if I would get out of it. I didn’t care. I had kinda given up on everything. I was like, I don’t even know if I want to do anything ever again.”

Eventually, Momsen had to make a decision: “It was either death or move forward. Luckily I chose to move forward, but it was tough there for a while.” She’s candid about how much she struggled: “I was not well. I returned to music because it was the only thing I knew how to do. It’s the only thing in my entire life that’s always been there and supported me. I started listening to records that I love and started from the beginning again.” She sat down to write, finding that it took no effort – Death By Rock And Roll poured out of her, in part inspired by Kato.

The album is named for a song, the first single, that Kato suggested ten years ago: “He said “write a song called ‘Death By Rock and Roll,’” and we started it and never finished it and nothing came of it. When he passed it became very relevant again, and so we finished it.”

The song starts with his footsteps walking down the hall. She’s insistent that it isn’t morbid, but an homage and an optimistic battlecry: “I have one life and I’ll live it the way I want.” The band wondered whether they could even work without Kato – “the hole and loss was so grand”. They chose to, eventually finding a kindred spirit in the producer Jonathan Wyman. “He is the sweetest, kindest soul on the planet, a great engineer and producer, an amazing friend. We called him up and made the record in Maine,” she says, adding that it was the first album she and bandmate Ben co-produced. “He allowed us to be the train-wrecks that we were at the time and let us go through all the range of all the emotions and was so supportive throughout the entire thing. He really helped us to accomplish something.”

The album itself is classic Pretty Reckless: big guitars, old school rock'n'roll influences, with touches of jukebox Americana. But there’s something different, too, and maybe it’s the feeling of “complete rebirth” that she wanted to imbue it with. Around the middle there’s a turning point, with more vulnerable, personal touches. On 25, Momsen breathily sings of her disbelief that she made it this far: 'and all through my teens, I screamed that I may not live much past 21, 22, 23, 24.'

It’s an honest declaration: “We recorded it right as I turned 25. It’s very much just an autobiographical song of me at my lowest reflecting on my life and trying to put that into music somehow. I’m really proud of that song. I’m proud of the whole record, but I think that song was a shift in my writing.” She calls 25 the first “stepping stone towards that light.”

Those moments of tenderness and reflection are wrapped up, of course, in the in-your-face rock and roll that Taylor Momsen has always loved. Cynics and critics have questioned her authenticity, and that of The Pretty Reckless. But ten years into her music career, it’s pretty clear rock runs through her veins. She’s dorky and obsessive, running through rock'n'roll history from the 60s through the 90s, sheepishly apologising when she hasn’t heard of a newer artist I mention. “I don’t pay attention to new stuff. It’s bad, I should,” she laughs. She references music with an ease that only comes to a true nerd, gushing about rock: “It’s ballsy and cooler than everything else. If you’re not afraid of it, you find the freeing aspect of it. Nothing beats it.” True to its word, Death By Rock And Roll is full of heavy guitars and snarling vocals. A true catharsis.

In the last two years, Momsen feels like she’s aged ten. “They were extraordinarily hard. To the point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through them. I think there’s no way to go through that tragedy and trauma and not come out, if you make it through, not as a different person but with a new perspective,” she tells me. Her fight with her mental health is ongoing, but she’s learned to manage it: “If you don’t, it’s very easy to take a wrong turn and that can be hard to come back from.”

She’s found that music has been her one grounding stone, holding her down to earth: “I can listen to music and it brings me back, almost like meditation. It brings me to reality and completely takes me away, too.”

Momsen is reflective, reckoning with thoughts she had long held. Starting her music career as a 17-year-old girl, she was often indignant about the idea that misogyny impacted her possibilities. With time, though, she’s reconsidered: “I was so in denial for so long about sexism, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realised it exists. Misogyny is a real thing, and it’s unfortunate that it is, but it is. There are a lot of shitty things in life but we have to deal with them, and hopefully we progress as a society and this becomes a topic we don’t ever have to discuss again,” she laughs.

“I’ve recognised it more as I’ve gotten older that there is a boys’ club when it comes to rock'n'roll and it is a struggle to break into that and be accepted and treated with the same respect as if you were a man.”

Recently, Momsen appeared on Evanescence’s Use My Voice, a song Amy Lee wrote when inspired by assault victim Chanel Miller. Momsen is open in her adoration of Lee, who took The Pretty Reckless’ on their first big tour, telling me that Amy’s perspective on misogyny in rock is far “more developed” than hers. “I love Amy, she’s just the kindest person and so talented. We really learned a lot from that experience in so many ways. I have the utmost respect for her, I love her.” She adds that she was impacted by seeing Evanescence when she was nine: “It was very cool to have that be our first proper tour, suddenly I was opening for a band that I had gone to see with my dad. It was very full circle.”

Understandably, after a lifetime of scrutiny, Momsen is at times reticent to answer certain questions, aware of how things can get twisted. She avoids the internet, finding that, “maybe it’s because of how I grew up, but it can get very toxic very quickly.” But she indulges more annoying questions with patience and grace. I ask her, is the 'Jenny died by suicide' line in Death By Rock and Roll a sly reference to her Gossip Girl character Jenny Humphrey? She laughs: “I’ll leave that to the listener’s interpretation.”

She’s willing to explain, however, in far greater depth, why she feels that way: “I think it’s unfair to the listener when the artist explains things directly, I think it takes away from the magic.”

“Once you put the music out into the world, it’s so exciting, but on the other hand it’s almost sad. The body of work you’ve been slaving over is so precious and it’s so yours and so intimate, and suddenly it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to everyone else,” she pauses, “I think that’s the beauty of music but it’s a strange thing because it doesn’t matter what the song means to me, it matters how it connects to you and whatever you relate to it." She says that hearing Roger Waters elaborate on Pink Floyd lyrics that meant a lot to her once spoiled the magic: “Since then I’ve been very cautious to not over-explain. I really do think that it’s unfair to the listener. It’s not about me, it’s about you, it’s about the audience.”

Death By Rock and Roll is, conversely, a commitment to life. After a year relaxing at home and three years attempting to recover from a constant succession of blows, Momsen is aching to get back out on the road and see her fans again. “I get to go on stage every night in front of an audience who care and connect to music that I slaved over and worked over and hypothetically move them and give them the experience of a lifetime,” she laughs, calling it the “greatest job on the planet.”

“I really miss it. There’s nothing else like it, that high that you get from playing a show, that adrenaline, that feeling. It’s the best drug on the planet. I feel like an addict and I’m going through withdrawal.”

The last few years have taken it out of Momsen, but she has come out of the other side with peace and an enriched perspective. That growth is audible as she speaks, and it’s woven into the fabric of Death By Rock And Roll.

“You can’t beat that feeling of complete rebirth,” she tells me. Maybe for once, she doesn’t seem either two years old or 107, but a very wise 27.

[kitkatt0430]

Was not careful enough with my fanfiction-y thoughts while re-watching Primeval and had an old plot bunny resurface.

What if after Stephen’s death, Helen went back for one last hurrah with him in the past.  She’s got access to future tech, so probably something in there lets her look more like her younger self so that she can show up the night she was really headed to the Forest of Dean and her anomaly related destiny.  Or maybe it happens after Nick dies because when Nick ‘disappoints’ Helen, she always goes running to Stephen and it’s too ingrained a habit to break even now with both men dead.

Helen doesn’t think there will be consequences.  Even though she has consistently underestimated Nick and misjudged how far she can push Stephen, Helen still thinks she can get away with this without altering the timeline.

Except it does alter the timeline.  Because Helen disappears immediately after sleeping with Stephen, that makes him the last person to see her.  And he sees what Nick’s going through and he’s just so, so guilty about it.  More guilty than he felt about cheating with her in the original timeline because of the timing of it all.  Guilty enough to step forward, tell Nick the truth.

And Nick is pissed off of course.  He suspected Helen of cheating.  It’s probably not the first time she’s done it and he knows she does it for the thrill.  The challenge.  And he absolutely hates that she abused her position of power over a student.  But... he’s also impressed by Stephen.  Because as guilty as Stephen feels, Nick thinks it must’ve taken courage too to come forward like that.

It cements their friendship in a way it wasn’t in the other timeline.  (Or if I’m feeling like writing slash, it leads them to eventually hooking up once Stephen is no longer Nick’s student.) 

I’d probably want to work in the Claudia Brown/Jenny Lewis change in reverse somehow.  And season 2 plays out so differently because when Helen tries to use her sleeping with Stephen in the past as a wedge between Stephen and Nick in the present, it fails spectacularly.  Stephen never doubts Nick about the gun jamming during the raptor attack and all the little things that led to their falling out during season 2 actually leads them to figuring out that Helen is involved with whoever the traitor at the ARC is.

It winds up leading to Stephen not dying.  

They still get Sarah in season 3, and Danny too, who annoys Claudia as much as he annoyed Jenny.  I didn’t ship Nick/Jenny or Nick/Claudia particularly much (saw them as flirty friends, but never shipped them especially since Nick kept calling Jenny by Claudia’s name which was kind of awful of him), but I kind of had the impression Danny had a bit of a crush on Jenny?  So maybe Danny/Claudia would happen since by this point of story we’d have Claudia instead of Jenny.  

But there’s also the Nick clone and Nick’s death to contend with in season 3.  And Helen hedged her bets in this timeline, clones both Nick and Stephen.  But there’s too much of the originals in her clones.  The Nick clone won’t hurt Stephen.  Tells him to run like the clone told original Nick in the episode.  Stephen clone is still in the building after the explosion and saves original Nick when he goes back inside for the device Helen wanted to know about so badly.

Helen still gets away, but only the clones die.  But not before clone Stephen tells Nick when/where the cloning complex is hidden and asks Nick to stop her from creating more expendables.  Helen’s programming means they’re born brainwashed with no purpose but to obey her and die for her and it’s no life worth living.  He doesn’t want anymore clones like him and clone Nick and the Cleaner army.

So that’s what they do.  They’re still there, destroying the cloning facility, in fact, when Helen returns from her last night with Stephen, still thinking she’s in the timeline where they’re both dead.

She... freaks out when she learns they’re still alive.  Just completely looses it and winds up taken into custody because she cannot understand what’s happened.  She figures it out quickly enough once she’s calmed down and paced her new cell a few dozen times, but that just makes her wonder how many times she’s changed the timeline and never noticed.  And it unnerves her.

Has she contributed to the downfall of humanity and the rise of the unnatural predators of the future?  The very thing she’s accused ARC of facilitating... how much is she also responsible?

Helen makes for a fascinating villain in the show, in a large part because every gap between seasons is clearly longer for her than anyone else.  And every time she learns more about the end of humanity, she breaks a little more.  The woman from season one was a threat but not necessarily evil.  The Helen from season 2 is manipulative, using everyone and anyone to further her enigmatic goal of discovering specific information about the future.  Certainly her use of clones as disposable people pushed her across the moral event horizon for me.  By season 3 she’s unhinged, murdering even Nick in a desperate ploy to stop ARC and when that fails she attempts to prevent the rise of human evolution as we know it.  

But it’d be nice to see her get rehabilitated in prison.  Maybe she realizes the problem isn’t necessarily the ARC, but Christine Johnson and people like her who keep trying to use the ARC and the anomalies for nefarious purposes.  But she’s still convinced the ARC is ultimately responsible for the anomalies and eventually explains that reasoning, the evidence, when and where to find it.  And of course she’s still manipulating behind the scenes and she never truly admits to being wrong (because Helen’s obsessed with being the brightest, smartest, most knowledgable, and she could never live with herself if she admitted to truly being wrong), but we could have some very interesting enemy mine situations with her. 

At some point Helen probably would escape and get herself killed dramatically, maybe with some uncertainty surrounding her death and whether or not it was really her or she faked it somehow.  Because, honestly, the best villains never die but live on through the question marks they leave behind.  

I’m not really sure whether the season 4/5 elements would get included and I never have actually watched the spin off that ran for a season.  (Though I’ll be remedying that after I complete my rewatch.)  I did like the idea of there being more people like Helen who were displaced through time and learned how to navigate the anomalies to travel from time period to time period as they pleased.  And I liked that there was a faction from the future trying to avert the apocalypse by infiltrating ARC in the present... but I also felt like both story arcs (hehehe, sorry) were introduced way too late.  So if I were to use them, I’d start at least seeding the story lines earlier.  Especially the future faction.  (They did their audience no favors introducing that arc in the webisodes that aired before season 4.)

Dunno if I’ll get around to writing this one as I’ve got enough Flash related WIPs to worry about, but... every time I rewatch this show the same plot bunny hops out of hiding, so at least this time I’ve written down the gist of it.

[daresplaining]

Luke Cage Countdown: 5 Days

Bushmaster

    In addition to bringing back excellent antagonists from Season 1, we are getting a few exciting additions this season. The primary new villain Luke will be facing is Bushmaster-- who has a longtime connection to Luke and friends in the comics, and looks absolutely amazing in the show. 

    Bushmaster (John McIver) was introduced in the pages of Iron Fist volume 1. At that point he was new on the scene-- a European mobster (he would later become Caribbean, because... eh, Marvel continuity). He grew up poor, but over time achieved wealth and power as a criminal, and is now aiming to extend his influence across the Atlantic. While Misty Knight is no longer on the NYPD, she still has close ties to them via her former partner Rafael Scarfe. When D.A. Tower needs someone to do the dangerous work of infiltrating Bushmaster’s base of operations, he calls in Misty. 

Tower: “...His name is John Bushmaster, and that’s about all we know about him. Except that over the past few years, he’s taken absolute control of the European mobs. Intelligence says that he plans to expand his activities to the United States, starting in New York. Interpol, the FBI-- even the CIA-- have tried to infiltrate his organization, without success. Now it’s our turn.”

Scarfe: “Tell it all, counselor! Every agent who was sent in came out dead. If Bushmaster sees through Misty’s cover--”

Misty: “I can take care of myself, Rafe.”

Iron Fist vol. 1 #15 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and B. Patterson

    Misty accepts the job, and takes up residence on Bushmaster’s yacht under the alias Maya Korday. Bushmaster is a classy criminal, who quickly becomes popular within New York’s high society, despite his shady dealings. For several months Misty remains undercover, earning his trust, and eventually-- to her disgust-- going so far as to start up a romantic relationship with him. However, she prematurely jumps ship when she discovers that Bushmaster has placed a hit on Iron Fist. She breaks cover, beats the snot out of Bushmaster, and runs to save her (at that point) future boyfriend.   

Bushmaster: “Wha--?! Maya! Have you gone mad?!”

Misty: “Not the way you mean, pal-- but if I get mad, you’re gonna get very dead. [...] Where’s the ‘hit’ planned for? And when?”

Marvel Team-Up vol. 1 #63 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Dave Hunt

    Misty escapes, but Bushmaster is furious about being duped, and vows to have his revenge. He discovers her real identity, and goes shopping for a suitable candidate to capture her. 

    He sets his sights on Power Man, Hero for Hire. Luke has gained a serious reputation by this point as a man who gets things done, and his strength and invulnerability make him an attractive pawn for Bushmaster. But he’s also a good guy, so Bushmaster knows he’ll need extra motivation to convince Luke to commit a kidnapping. He summons Luke to his house in Chicago, and presents him with an ultimatum. 

Luke: “I heard o’ you on the street, man. You’re the European brother been given’ the Maggia so much grief-- wipin’ them out so you can take over. You got the wrong man, Bushmaster. I’m a Hero for Hire.” 

Bushmaster: “And I am most definitely a villain. Nevertheless, Cage, you will do this job for me. Because, you see, Claire Temple and Noah Burstein are my... ‘guests’. And if you turn me down... I’ll have no alternative but to order my men to kill them.”

Power Man #49 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, F, Mouly, et al.

    He also offers Luke a carrot in addition to the stick-- a videotape proving that Luke was innocent of the crime for which he was imprisoned. Claire and Burstein are two of the most important people in Luke’s life at this point, and he is desperate to escape his status as a criminal. As bad as he feels about the whole thing, he doesn’t have any emotional connection to Misty, and so he agrees to deliver her to Bushmaster to save the lives of his loved ones. 

    Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), things don’t go to plan. Luke’s attempt to kidnap Misty flings him right into the path of her loved ones: Danny Rand and Colleen Wing. A massive fight ensues, and Luke nearly commits murder several times over before realizing that he can’t go through with this. Danny, Misty, and Colleen have heard of Power Man’s good reputation, realize something is wrong, and offer to help him. Together, they infiltrate Bushmaster’s base to rescue Claire and Burstein-- only to make a horrifying discovery. In the short time between their encounters, Bushmaster has convinced Burstein to replicate the procedure that gave Luke his powers. When Luke encounters Bushmaster again, he finds himself facing someone who is physically his equal, if not his superior. 

Bushmaster: “You’re a fool, Cage! I am the ultimate product of Burstein’s experiments. In all respects, my power dwarfs yours! You can no more stand against me than against a tidal wave!”

Luke: “The man may have a point there. For each shot I give him, I get two back-- with interest. At most, I’m annoyin’ him. He’s hurtin’ me.”

Power Man #49 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, F, Mouly, et al.

    The fight ends in an explosion, allowing Luke and friends to escape with the hostages and the tape-- which Danny’s lawyer Jeryn Hogarth later uses to prove Luke’s innocence in court. Bushmaster vanishes, and everyone foolishly assumes he’s gone for good...

    Eighteen issues later, the Heroes for Hire are doing a routine job, beating up some bank robbers, when they both get knocked out by sleeping gas. When Danny wakes up, Luke is gone. After a long, desperate investigation, Danny makes a shocking discovery about the bank that was being robbed. 

Danny: “Heart of the dragon! [...] This letterhead stationary... the second name on the bank’s board of directors...”

Jennie: “John Bushmaster, the Caribbean financier. Do you know him?”

Danny: “You bet I do! He’s the man who brought Luke and me together... and very nearly destroyed us both.”

Power Man and Iron Fist vol. 1 # 67 by Mary Jo Duffy, Kerry Gammill, and Ben Sean

   Realizing the whole thing was a setup, Danny hunts down and sneaks into Bushmaster’s new base of operations. There, he finds Luke, Noah Burstein, and a Bushmaster who is rapidly dying. The procedure that gave him powers didn’t work quite as well as it did for Luke, and has caused his whole body to atrophy. He demands that Burstein use Luke as a guinea pig to figure out a way to reverse the process, or kill him trying, and has kidnapped Burstein’s wife to provide extra motivation. Danny bursts in and rescues Luke, just as Bushmaster turns to metal. 

Danny: “I... don’t understand.”

Burstein: “Bushmaster’s become a creature of metal... like a statue! I don’t know if he’s even alive!”

Power Man and Iron Fist vol. 1 # 67 by Mary Jo Duffy, Kerry Gammill, and Ben Sean

    And that, again, could have been the end of him... but this is a superhero comic, and such things are almost never permanent. Years later, after Danny’s “death”, Luke moves to Chicago and starts over as a solo act. There, he encounters a villain named Hardcore-- a super-smart, super-skilled combatant who sets about ruining Luke’s life. He also co-runs a crooked prison in Colorado, which-- with the help of a kidnapped Noah Burstein (the poor guy goes through this a lot...)-- facilitates experiments in an attempt to perfect the Power Man procedure. It turns out that Hardcore works for Bushmaster’s son, Cruz. After months of physical and psychological attacks, Cruz captures Luke and uses him to siphon power into his father’s corpse. Bushmaster lives again...

Burstein: “I can only surmise-- that he’s somehow using the viral aspects of the process-- he’s leeched the power, and the very life, from his son! And somehow, Bushmaster lives!”

Bushmaster: “No. No more. That name is but a pseudonym, a useless label for a past life. Now-- call me Power Master!”

Cage vol. 1 #12 by Marc McLaurin, Dwayne Turner, and Kris Renkewitz

...before absorbing too much power and exploding. This, amazingly enough, actually does kill him for good. 

    All of the glimpses we have so far of the MCU’s Bushmaster suggest that he will be infinitely cooler in this universe than he is in the comics. Every shot we’ve seen of him so far looks amazing. We know that he is a crime boss in some form, and will be battling Mariah for control of Harlem. We know that he will have Luke’s powers, but are curious whether he’ll receive him the same way. The final scene in Luke Cage Season 1 showed Burstein working on Diamondback, so we know that he’s still out there doing his thing. Maybe he’ll end up getting kidnapped by Bushmaster in this universe too. After all, it’s a tradition! 

    Cheo Hodari Coker has also mentioned in interviews that Bushmaster’s nationality will play a big role in the story. In this universe he is Jamaican, and so Jamaican culture will be explored in this season in much the same way that Harlem’s was last season. This should add an interesting extra layer to his character, and we’re eager to see how this is integrated into the show’s already rich cultural landscape. 

    And we know that unlike in the comics, MCU Bushmaster has some serious martial arts (capoeira, specifically) training. 

    This combined with his powers should make him great fun to watch, and a serious threat to the other characters in the show. We can’t wait to see more of him. 

[save-the-cronch]

Flowers and Tattoos

Merry Christmas to @trans-space-prince !! I really hope you enjoy this!

This is for the DEH Secret Santa from @dearevanhansensecretsanta

Evan wiped his brow with his sleeve, as soon as he had placed the final load of flowers for a wedding in the buyer’s truck. It had taken all day yesterday to find all the needed flowers and sort them in the order that the bride and groom had asked for. It had only taken half an hour to load the truck.

Once the truck had driven away, Evan walked back inside his mother’s shop and went to the counter to sit on the stool behind the cash register. He didn’t have any orders he needed to work on, so he pulled out his phone and waited for anyone to walk through the doors with any last minute arrangement.

About ten minutes later, Evan looked up at the sound of the bell on top of the door ringing. In walked a tall, lanky boy, around the same age as Evan, twenty-three. He has long brown hair and wore ripped, black, skinny jeans, and a black hoodie with the sleeves rolled up, revealing a few tattoos littering the boy’s arms.

“Hi! W-welcome to Hansen’s Flowers, how, um, how can I he-help you?” Evan asked, placing his phone into his apron pocket.

“Oh, I was just wondering if I could look at your flowers for references? I work at the tattoo shop two shops down, and I realized that I didn’t have any flowers in my reference book.”

“O-oh! Yes! That’s to-totally fine!” Evan said, beaming at the man in front of him.

“Thanks…”

“Evan.”

“Thanks, Evan. I’m Connor by the way.”

Evan nods at Connor, as the tattooed man makes his way over to the flowers placed on display at the window.

Connor stays in Evan’s shop for half an hour, before he stands up, gives Evan a small wave, and exits the shop. The whole time that Connor was drawing, Evan couldn’t take his eyes off of the long-haired boy. Evan liked how Connor pulled his hair back into a messy bun right before opening his sketchbook. He thought that the tattoos on Connor’s body were beautiful. He admired how Connor was able to concentrate so intensely on his drawing. To Evan, Connor seemed to be that kind of person that had a lot of secrets, and he just needed someone to share those secrets with. For some reason, Evan wanted to be that person.

Two days later Connor showed up in the shop just as Evan was walking out of the back room.

“Hey, Evan, what’s the best way to say ‘congrats on your engagement, I’m sorry for being a bitch when we were in high school, you and Alana totally deserve each other.”

Evan blinks, not completely sure where that came from. “Uh, ye-yeah, one second.” Evan heads off, in search of the perfect flowers for Connor. Five minutes, he returns with plenty of different flowers in his hands. “Okay, so we have red carnations for love and pride, a bunch of daffodils for joy and happiness, yellow roses for a new beginning, and goldenrod for good fortune.”

“Thanks, Evan, these look fantastic.”

Evan smiles at that and goes to wrap the flowers up. “I-if you don’t, um, don’t mind. Who are the-they for?”

“My sister, her wedding is tomorrow, and the rehearsal dinner is tonight, she’s marrying her college roommate, super cheesy, but they are good for each other.”

“That’s ni-nice,” Evan finishes tying a bow around the flowers and then hands them to Connor, “Ten fifty please.”

Connor hands over the money, gives Evan another smile and then leaves with the bouquet in hand.

For the next two months, Connor continuously comes into Evan’s shop. They’ve developed a sort of routine, Evan brings them both drinks in the morning, coffee for Connor and tea for Evan, then during lunch, Connor comes into Evan’s shop to eat with him in the break room, sometimes they go out though. Their shops close at the same time, so occasionally they will grab dinner together, on Wednesdays, Connor comes up to Evan’s apartment, which is just above the shop and where his mother lived before she moved in with her boyfriend, well fiancé now, Kyle Heere. They watch the episode of Survivor that airs, while eating a bunch of stove popped popcorn.

On Saturdays, Evan goes with Connor to his apartment to do a movie night. They order out, and share a pint of ice cream, while watching whatever movie they had randomly selected that night. Usually, Wednesday nights end up with Connor’s head in Evan’s lap, while Evan mindlessly rakes his fingers through Connor’s long hair. On Saturdays, Evan is usually asleep before the movie is even over, his head resting in Connor’s lap, or on his shoulder. Connor always wakes him about ten minutes after the movie ends, prolonging the feeling of Evan sleeping on him.

Both boys wished that this could happen every night. Both boys wish that their friendship was more than that. Both boys wished they could have the courage to tell the other this. Both boys knew it would be awhile before they did.

Six months after they had first met, Connor was sitting on the counter, next to the cash register in the flower shop, when a guy, most likely around his and Evan’s age, walked in the door. He was shorter than Connor, defiantly taller than Evan. He wore glasses, and his hair was a dark brown.

“Yo, Evan!” The guy shouts, completely ignoring Connor, as Connor openly stared at him.

Evan hurried out of the back room, wiping the dirt on his hand, onto his jeans. “Jared, you’re early.”

“I got bored, my class was canceled because the professor is sick. So, I decided to come here early! Obviously, I’m better than just sitting here alone.”

“Jar-Jared, I’m not alone, remember whe-when I mentioned Con-Connor?”

“Yeah? So?”

“That’s Connor.” Evan points to Connor, who was still sitting next to the cash register.

“Oh, hey man,” Jared greets, giving a small wave. “Evan has told me a lot about you, is your hair really as soft as Evan says it is?”

At that comment Evan sends a glare to Jared, as Connor laughs, a light blush dusting his cheeks.

“I believe it is, my sister gave me dove shampoo as a joke one year for Christmas, and I liked how it made my hair feel, so I kept buying the stuff.” Connor shrugs his shoulders as he hops off the counter. “Anyway, I should be getting home, Zoe and Alana are coming over for dinner, and since Zoe is pregnant now, she has really weird cravings. I’ve gotta get prepared for that.”

“Al-alright! I’ll see you tomorrow morning, right?” Evan asks, twisting his hands in the hem of his shirt.

“Course Ev.” Connor pulls Evan into a hug, waves at Jared, then leaves the store.

One minute of silence later, Jared turns to the nervous blond haired boy. “Dude, he is so into you. When are you planning on turning those movie nights of yours into date nights?”

“Shut, shut up Jared. He isn’t in-into me.”

“I dunno what planet you’re living on, but Connor is totally in love with you. The way he looked at you is the way my Dad looks at my mom when she’s babbling on about whatever story she’s currently writing.” At Jared’s words, Evan’s face gets as red as a rose. “Look, man, all I’m saying is, if you don’t ask him out soon. You might miss your chance.”

“But How am I su-suppose to do that!” Evan cries out. He’s never asked anyone out, and has only gone on a grand total of three dates. He doesn’t know how he should ask Connor out, much less how to proceed with the date if he even says yes.

“Relax dude, I know exactly how to handle this. Connor seems to be exactly like my sister’s boyfriend, and she asked him out so, we’ll base it off of what she did.”

“Bu-but Jenny is a lot mo-more comfortable around people!”

“And you’re comfortable around Connor. Please Evan, just trust me.”

Evan thinks for a moment. Honestly, he really does want to ask Connor out, and since he has no idea how to do that, Jared could help. He just hopes this doesn’t ruin what he already has with the tattooed-covered boy.

Two days later, as Connor walks into the flower shop, he notices that Evan is in the back room. Connor, deciding that he should sneak up on his friend, quietly walks around the counter, and goes to push open the half-cracked door when he hears Evan on the phone. Initially, he wasn’t going to listen in, but that was before he heard Evan mention his name.

“-Okay, but I’m still nervous. I always am! What if Connor doesn’t like me as more than a friend, and he thinks I’m really creepy, and never wants to talk to me again!”

Connor is a surprised at hearing that Evan likes him, but his happiness soon takes over that surprise, as he shoves the door open, and runs towards a shocked Evan.

“Trust me Ev, if I thought you liking me was creepy, I’d be a huge hypocrite.” Connor pulls back from the hug, smiling down at Evan.

“I, uh, you heard that?”

“Yeah, sorry about that, I didn’t mean to listen in, but I’m glad I did. What do you say we go out to dinner tonight? It’ll be like normal, except this time we call it a date, yeah?”

“Yeah, that sounds perfect.”

“Perfect,” Connor repeats, as he places a soft kiss on Evan’s cheek.

“And that is how I met your papa.” Connor finishes, placing a soft kiss on Evan’s head, hugging him from behind.”

“Damn dad, why didn’t you wait to see how papa was going to ask you out?” Their daughter, Vivian, asks.

“Well, Viv, I was just too overjoyed by the fact that someone as amazing as your papa liked me, that I just couldn’t wait. Plus, who knows if Ev would have actually followed through with it.”

Vivian and Danny laugh, knowing all too well how nervous their papa can get.

“Hey, I would have asked you out! Eventually, probably with Jared doing most of the work, but it would have happened.” Evan counter reacts, swatting at his husband’s hands that were still placed around his waist. “Now come on, your first day of finals are tomorrow, you need to rest up. Junior year is important.

The teens grumble as they walk down the hall to their respective rooms.

“We did good with them, didn’t we.”

“Yeah, we did.”

Connor turns Evan around in his arms, and leans down to give Evan a slow and soft kiss. Even after being together for twenty years, Evan still feels like a teenager, in lover for the first time, when kissing Connor. He never wants this feeling to go away.

[the-desolated-quill]

Death In Heaven - Doctor Who blog (Fuck You Moffat)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Remember when I said The Name Of The Doctor was the worst series finale in New Who. Turns out I was wrong. This is the worst series finale in New Who. And I do hope Moffat isn’t interpreting this as a challenge, trying to come up with finales worse than the previous year’s. How about writing some good shit for once in your career?

Dark Water was an incredibly bad episode, but Death In Heaven takes it to new, insulting extremes. It’s utter bollocks from start to finish. It’s a mountain of bullshit so rock hard, not even diamond tipped drills could penetrate it. It’s an entire hurricane of piss. It’s... It’s... I didn’t like it.

Having fucked up the Daleks back in the previous series, it seems Moffat is now determined to ruin the second most popular monsters in the show the Cybermen, and he succeeds with flying colours. Is there anything the Cybermen can’t do now? They can fly, they can convert the dead, they can create clouds of Cyber-pollen, and apparently every atom of a Cyber body contains a program to upgrade the human race. At this stage the Cybermen have become so over-powered that they’ve just become utterly boring, evading anything the Doctor throws at them by pulling another random superpower out of their arses.

Also, like I said in my previous review, why are they converting the dead? Why not convert the living like they usually do? And why, once they’ve been converted, do they just stand around doing bugger all? It’s a bit hard to find Cybermen threatening when they pose no fucking threat whatsoever.

And then, as if you couldn’t undermine the Cybermen anymore than he already has, Moffat decides to go in for the kill with Danny Pink. I’m sorry, but Danny the droopy Cyberman has got to be one of the most pathetic sights I’ve ever seen. He wants to erase his emotions because of Clara (which seems like an overreaction to me) and asks Clara to do it for him even though there’s no reason why he can’t just do it himself. It must be out of spite. That’s the only reason I can think of. Oh, but Moffat still wants us to think that Danny and Clara are the perfect couple as opposed to a highly dysfunctional and toxic pairing that would seem more at home on The Jeremy Kyle Show than Doctor Who. 

Also, even in Cyber form, Danny can’t resist chastising the Doctor even though he’s actually trying to help the ungrateful bastard. In fact there’s a lot of Doctor-blaming going on in this episode and I really don’t get why because, as far as I can see, he hasn’t actually done anything wrong. At this stage I wanted nothing more than for Danny to fuck off and die, and I thankfully got my wish, except it had to take the form of a stupid, heroic self sacrifice. This isn’t the first time the Cybermen have been defeated by the power of love, and it’s always been really stupid every time, but this has got to be the most nonsensical. Danny’s love for Clara reverses the Cyber conditioning? Are you seriously telling me that Danny is the only person in the entire world who has loved someone enough to want to save the world? And if that’s not bad enough, Danny gets not one, but TWO stupid self sacrifices when it’s revealed the Master’s teleport randomly only has enough power for one trip (bit fucking convenient) and so he chooses to save that kid that died in that war zone. A series worth of buildup for this cliched pile of shit? Cheers Moffat!

Since I’ve mentioned the Master (I categorically refuse to call her Missy), let’s talk about her. I didn’t think it was possible to be more annoying than John Simm, but Michelle Gomez somehow managed to pull it off. I utterly detested her in this. I’ve never really liked the Master anyway, but I swear the character never used to be this fucking childish. She’s weird, obnoxious and goofy for no other reason other than she’s ker-RAYzay. (seriously, is that the only way Moffat knows how to write villains? She’s basically Andrew Scott’s shitty version of Moriaty in a dress). What’s worse is that the only way to make her come across as even remotely threatening is by making the characters around her act like fucking morons. UNIT have met the Master before. They know how dangerous she is. Why do the soldiers guarding her not react when she very visibly activates her bracelet, breaks out of her restraints and puts on her lipstick? Why does Osgood, who has apparently read all the dossiers about the Master, get so close to her to listen to her whisper and not scarper when the Master threatens to kill her?

Also, what is the Master’s plan exactly? Why Cybermen? Considering these Cybermen have pretty much nothing in common with actual Cybermen, I can only assume they’re there for rubbish fanservice and that Moffat is too fucking lazy to come up with his own ideas.

Apparently the Master wants to give the Doctor his own army to prove the two aren’t so different. It appears Moffat is going for a Killing Joke vibe, but it doesn’t work because while Batman and the Joker are two sides of the same coin, the Doctor and the Master are so diametrically opposed that this whole plot point becomes fucking laughable. It has the same whiff of bullshit that Journey’s End had with Davros chastising the Doctor for ‘taking ordinary people and fashioning them into weapons.’ Like I said about that episode, there’s a world of difference between turning people into weapons and encouraging people to defend themselves. The Doctor is very much the latter, so spare me the ‘we’re not so different, you and I’ crap. Is the Doctor better than the Master? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY!

Yes, once again, it turns out this episode is all about the Doctor. That’s all this bastard series has been about. Characters talking relentlessly about whether the Doctor is a good man or not. It’s utterly tedious to sit through because we all already know the bloody answer. Hopefully the Doctor’s speech about how he’s just an idiot in a box with a screwdriver will finally put it to rest. Not that I’m praising the speech mind. Peter Capaldi does his best, but it’s badly written and stupidly over the top, plus it’s hard to really feel the emotional weight of this speech when all it does is state the fucking obvious. The Doctor isn’t a soldier or a hero. He’s just some guy. Yeah. We know. What, have you only just worked that out Moffat? Why are you boring us to death with shit everyone and their mums already fucking know? Can we move on?

If there’s one thing I hate more than Moffat trying to spin the bleeding obvious as surprising revelations, it’s the bullshit lies and fake outs. Why are the Doctor and Clara lying to each other at the end? What purpose does it serve? (Also trust Moffat for coming up with a pretentious bullshit reason why hugs are bad. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as this Doctor just doesn’t like hugs). What was the point of Clara pretending to be the Doctor to trick the Cybermen? That never goes anywhere. Oh no! Danny is going to be Cyberfied... oh wait. He’s okay. Oh no, Kate Stewart has fallen out of the aeroplane... oh wait, she’s fine. OMG, the Doctor is actually going to kill the Master... oh wait, that wasn’t an orange light. It was a blue light, which means she’s teleported, so she’s probably okay. Wow, the Doctor is finally going to find Gallifrey... oh wait. No. The Master was lying.

Like I said in my previous review, keep wrong-footing the audience and eventually we’ll get sick of the bullshit and stop trusting what we see. I mean look at Osgood’s death. That should have been shocking, but not only is she a one dimensional character that I don’t give even a sub-atomic particle of shit about and is clearly too stupid to live, the fact is none of Moffat’s characters ever actually stay dead, do they? Rory. River Song. Strax. Jenny. Clara. Nobody really dies in the Moffat era, so why bother getting upset about Osgood? She’s probably going to come back in the next series.

But the thing that angered me the most about Death In Heaven is the utter contempt and disrespect Moffat shows to classic series fans. And don’t pretend you don’t know what scene I’m referring to.

Cybermen are converting the dead. The Brigadier is dead. Moffat is an insecure, egocentric hack who desperately wants to stand out from the Who rabble. Take a random guess what happens.

I’ve seen bad Doctor Who episodes before. I’ve been pissed off by Doctor Who before. But never before has an episode filled me with such utter rage. Not even Kill The Moon managed that, and you all know how much I despised that load of garbage. I didn’t take the idea of the Brigadier being a Cyberman particularly well, and I’m not exactly proud to say this, but my reaction was quite extreme. I basically had a full blown screaming fit. I was so angry and so upset by this. I couldn’t believe Moffat would do something so fucking crass and so fucking disrespectful. Yes it’s just a TV show, but the Brigadier was one of my favourite characters in Classic Who and indeed one of the most beloved characters in the entire show. And when a talentless, arrogant smartarse like Moffat comes along and tramples all over those happy, nostalgic memories, I think you have every right to take it personally. This has got to be the most insulting thing Moffat has ever done, and if I wasn’t committed to reviewing the rest of these episodes, I think I can safely say I wouldn’t be watching this show anymore after that.

Death In Heaven is a fucking terrible finale to what has been a fucking terrible series. Yes some episodes had decent elements in them, but it’s largely been awful. Series 8′s only saving grace has been Peter Capaldi, who has done an amazing job in the role despite the material he’s had to work with.

Moffat, go flush your head down the fucking toilet.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 62

When I left the alt. school, I took with me three books unintentionally from the school – which turned out being great for me, and it probably didn't hurt the school too much (in any case I went back and returned them a year later). The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, The Painted Bird, and Native Son. In a way, I look back at these three books as having a very big impact on who I am, and I suppose it's in part because I think these books are fantastic and in part because books in general were replacing contact with other people. But a lot of my later insight was built off the ideas of the books I read for these years of my life They are hard to put into words. They effected my psychologically.

I was taken to go get my GED – so at least I would have that. I figured it would be easy enough. They in later years set up the tests a lot harder with mandatory classes you had to take for about four months, but when I got my GED it was definitely easy. I arrived early at the LCSC college, was taken down long confusing downstairs twisty college hallways. Most of the rooms were empty and silent. I wondered what schools did with all these empty rooms and facilities. I suppose they all serve a function and may not always  be empty, but they were that morning. I was put into the room they had mistakenly thought I was supposed to go to – and then twenty minutes in they realized I was not there for the courses. I was there to test out and I was in the wrong room. So I was lead into a room where I now had fifteen minutes to finish mathematics testing that I should have had all that other time I wasted in the other room for. Fortunately, I finished and passed it. Not with flying colors mind you, but it got finished. The rest of the tests were essentially basic grammar and being able to assess information that you read tests. I made a day of it, and I got out of there passing. Getting my GED wasn't ideal of course as opposed to a high school diploma, but given the circumstances, I still felt as though I had achieved something. I had at least – some filed away fact about the legitimacy of my basic abilities, and something to show for twelve years of getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to go to school five days a week.

I worried about fighting with my dad. We didn't fight, at least not that fall from what I remember, but I felt especially vulnerable given my new found set of circumstances that basically left me stranded with no future. I no longer had school to go to, or any friends to turn to. The idea of going out and becoming a musician on my own now felt a bit silly. I had to sort of face up to the fact that some of my younger teenage dreams didn't seem quite the same to me as they once had. It felt as though something had come and taken everything away from me. I felt very distant a lot of the time. I felt very alone. In a sense I enjoyed it. At best it had that pleasant tingly feeling of being in a quiet house that has been full of people for several days, and they just left, and now you are alone and you can hear the ticking of the clock and your own heartbeat and everything in the fridge is yours. I guess I was emotionally exhausted. I didn't know who I was really. I mean, I did know to an extent who I was, but I didn't at the same time. This was the first time I think I consciously realized that we can be more than one person when we are by ourselves, if we are with a significant other, coworkers, friends, a grocery store, in a position of authority, with our parents individually and together. I am particularly divided in this regard. There is no telling who I am actually. It can be a little frightening and confusing for me to this day. Identities are very fleeting, but seem very real and unshifting in the ever present moment.

Because of the fact that I was afraid of the emotional violence towards me from my father, I flirted with the idea of moving to my mom's. Allison and David would be left sure, but my mom worked a lot at the nursing home, these really long shifts that nurses sometimes work that are sixteen hours with a small break. I guess there are times when watching over the patients is relatively easy – like you can sit down and stuff, but still – who wants to be at work that long? My mother has/and does volunteer to take absurd amounts of hours whenever she can. She will go several months without a day off at these understaffed facilities. She didn't get paid all that well at the nursing homes she's worked at, but she worked so much that she managed to have money. And when she wasn't working, she was of course doting on her boyfriend Danny. She ended up getting this very cheap rundown apartment on the outskirts of town in some old buildings that were built in the seventies that occasionally got the cops called. It was for the most part quiet. I didn't mind the apartment or the occasional noises of the neighbors, in fact I rather welcomed the sound of people running water. I didn't feel so out of touch or alone. I don't know. The sound of people doing something in the next apartment has always given me this strange tingly sense of comfort.

I would be alone all the time in this apartment when I visited, sometimes for nights on end. There was no internet. We did have about forty channels of cable, most of them totally boring, but seeing as I was raised without television I found it really a step up for me to have it going. I sometimes would watch the History channel when there was history, or I would watch the travel channel or ghost hunting shows. I took a strange comfort in listening to insane religious infomercials in the middle of the night. I surely cannot be the only one that thinks there is something perfectly insane about television. Like, TV rapidly changes the dialogue or the premise for your thoughts. It subconsciously has recreated the thinking patterns of modern man – it's an altered image of our own creating that has taken the reigns and decided to recreate us. The media and it's effect fascinates me. I am not even per say going about that thought on the preconceived notion that television is bad and we should all be doing something else (though we probably should). I am just fascinated about the underlying psychology of it and how mindless it is. It made me feel extremely comfortable and unsettled and mysteriously empty at the same time. I like that madness and I do not.

It was a one bedroom and the bedroom was filled to the top with my mother's boxes – and it would never in my entire time with that place, ever be something you could call a proper bedroom, though people did manage to fit a mattress in there. My mother would sleep on the couch when she was home. She set up a bunk bed in the corner of the living room where I would generally sleep – and Allison and David when they came over. She always blasted the television so loud – and I found that rather frustrating to sleep through. On a good night she would turn it to old movies. So randomly in the night I would hear that old screamy noise from the intense moments of old movies. I would listen to Clark Gable or Bette Davis professing their love, or hear Shirley Temple hear once again that her parent had died and the innocent sobbing that came with that. I rather like old movies and could sleep any old time I wanted now, so it was okay for the most part. But she would also watch Lord of the Rings, and though I sort of like Lord of the Rings okay, it could get a little obnoxious. You would listen to Gimley's lines over and over. How many times did I wake up to Soromon and Gandalf the Grey having it out? She would set it on repeat. I would eventually sneak out of bed and try to turn it off, but as soon as I tried that she would wake up and be cantankerous about it.

I didn't exactly live at my mom's at this point, but I stayed there about half the week most of the time. My father had the internet while my mom did not. My mother didn't even know what the internet was fully, so I could not convince her to spend her money on it. I was mostly divided for this reason. I had to keep up with Sarah and I simply had to tend to my MySpace account. Just thinking of all those MySpace notifications gave me this strong incentive to never want to leave the computer. Having this time to myself though held a lot of value for me as well. It gave me sense of childlike peace I had almost forgot about for the years I had spent in school, living in delirious anger or despair about boys or longing for some big dream of the future. I had forgotten how to enjoy the small details. And in that I had lost my ability to really achieve anything since everything that ends up being big starts out being pretty small. I remember spending hours watching Bob Ross, just like I had when I had been four. I remember Jenni telling me that I was likely going to waste my time when I left school, and maybe she was more right than not, but I had to argue that I needed this time. Or I would listen to Neil Young, who was a new and permanent fixture of my musical existence. I would listen to Down By the River sometimes three or four times in a row. I connected with his guitar style very deeply.

I went to the nursing home with my mom on a couple of occasions. It was a very weird experience. Personal aspects about who my mother actually is to me aside, her working in the kind of jobs that she does really gave me this strong understanding of our society as a whole. Because she worked with the feeble, the mentally disabled, the unstable and the dysfunctional folks that we pay not to see. This is what we do in modern society. We hide it away. Just like we hide from death and decay in most everything we do. It's not something I particularly like to think about either, but we do it to the point of being dishonest with ourselves. We are afraid of it happening to us. I know that European sometimes saw the elderly differently. They were seen as examples of God cursing the wicked, or sometimes those with schizophrenia were seen to be possessed by God, or Lucifer himself. Nazi's would likely have done away with a society that cared for the unwanted and elderly by killing them in many cases had they won World War 2.

I got used to a lot of the elderly patients in the home. The atmosphere in the morning was very strange. These old people were unlike anything I was used to. It fascinated me that they all used to be highschoolers just like I had not long ago been. They had all had lives. And this was the end. One of them would be walking around the room. It would take him forty minutes to make one round. Some of them didn't move or blink anymore. They all seemed highly aware of me though. They all stared at me intently. Their eyes were gleaming with fascination. One old man named Olly who was senile would like his lips sadistically with this mad glint in his eyes as he looked at me. It was the most perverted look I have ever received – but I let it pass realizing his mind was gone. I am sure the teenage Olly would have been horrified by old man Olly's behavior towards women.

There was also an old man named Lou. He had had a stroke that had turned him from a fully functional elderly man who still chopped and brought in his own wood to a sort of vegetable. He would begin speaking randomly in this loud clear voice that was alarming in the quiet room, but it would soon fizzle out into the most insane gibberish I have ever heard. It was language and it was not at the same time. I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of it. It always degraded from gibberish into this weird buzzing noise that didn't sound even human. He would be silent then for five minutes before starting up again. I asked my mom about it, and she didn't seem as curious about what he was trying to say. Maybe I am more curious than most, and she had probably seen a lot of old folks come and go and she was pretty used to it.

Allison sometimes went too, but we always went on separate days. I don't know that the facility really wanted my mother's entire family coming in. Allison made friends with this old woman named Raquel. She didn't understand English, but it didn't particularly matter because she didn't understand very much. Her family did come and see her frequently which was good to see. She was a very sweet lady – though very far gone mentally. She would giggle and clap her hands in delight when Allison even used one or two Spanish words. It was also very easy to make her cry. She was afraid of spoons and nobody knew why. Getting her to eat was a challenge.

The old lady that latched onto me was this ninety five year old ex school teacher from I imagine the thirties through seventies named Jenny. It was amazing to look at her and know she had been around for so long. She had been born before world war one. She had been alive when pictures were black and white, and people danced to Al Bowlly and Glen Miller and stuff like that. I was told that she had been a very strict teacher in her day, and she had been a perfectionist. She first came up to me because she wanted me to straighten things in the room. She had lost most of her clarity and could no longer reason very well or speak very much, but she still knew when something was wrinkled or crooked. She was too old to fix these things herself and they must have constantly been eating at her that she no longer had control to do anything about it. So she came up to me and pointed to the corner of the table. The table cloth that was set up was slightly wrinkled. I went over and straightened it. She then started pointing to other tables, to random things in the room that were ever so slightly askew. If it was reasonable, I would attempt it. Occasionally she would point to someone's shirt, or to something hanging up on the ceiling and I would have to gesture that I couldn't do it.

The one thing I ever heard her say was she started calling this one other older woman who was there fat. It was a bit alarming. Jenny was of course too old to scold. The woman in question was this very obese woman who could no longer stand. She wasn't as old as the others were, but she had nobody to care for her and was eventually taken to this home which I imagine was very hard. Jenny would look at this other woman with this bitterness in her eyes, and she would sort of croak, FAT! And she would point at her as though she expected I might be able to do something about it or I would agree with her. I felt a little sheepish and embarrassed. It amused me though to realize that she had probably been that way her entire life. I imagine she had had this prejudice when she was a capable young school teacher. I stated earlier that identities are fleeting, but at the same time can really stick to our core perceptions of the world. It also was amusing to me, because I generally came in wearing a hoodie, and for that reason I could use my hands in my pockets to stretch the hoodie over my own belly. It seemed that in Jenny's mind, as long as there were no wrinkles in the clothing, and you couldn't see the fat, that therefore meant that there was no fat.

Lastly, there was this quiet mysterious woman who always sat in the corner. I never had any dealings with her directly. She was incredibly tiny. I guess she wasn't that old. She was in her early sixties, however, she had drank her mind away. She had once been a San Francisco hippie, well read with a liberal arts degree. But she couldn't put down the alcohol, and it took her mind away. What was really so shocking about her was that she had this flowing beautiful straight shiny hair without a single bit of gray in it. It looked honestly straight from an ad in a magazine. It would have been striking in a crowd of random people my age, let alone, on this vacant old lady in the nursing home. As far as I know, the only person who ever visited with woman was her ex husband, who would come in sometimes baring flowers.

Honestly, my mother was one of the nicer nurses. I never saw any mistreatment of the older folks who lived here, but there was an impatience in the eyes of most of the orderly. Allison eventually had to stop going because she got openly mad at one nurse who was aggressively and angrily trying to make Raquel eat from the spoon that she was afraid of. She started yelling at Raquel which made Raquel cry and throw herself on the ground. The woman was even angrier then, and she kept shouting at Raquel even though it was clear that Raquel didn't understand and had obviously not chosen this for herself. My mother came over and smoothed it over, but Allison ended up getting in this nurse's grill and it was unsaid after that, but my mom stopped bringing us.

I don't know why at this point my mom was dating Danny still. He was completely degrading. The situation was degrading. I didn't particularly care at this point, but it was degrading to watch. She would sometimes come home drunk, and it just seemed sad. She seemed uncertain if he even loved her or liked her at all. He would do the thing where he pushed her away and insinuate that they were no longer a couple, but then when she gave him space, he would call her up in the middle of the night accusing her of cheating on him. He was still cheating on her when he could get away with it. I sort of wanted to punch him in the face. He was still calling her stupid and gaslighting  her. And yet, their meaningless relationship went on and on. I remember once she came to pick Allison and David up on Friday after school to come to her house for the weekend. We went to the store to get our cheap ass dollar store food and cheap ass TV dinners and maybe some cheap ass dollar menu McDonald's (if we were lucky [gross]), and maybe a carton of cheap ass ice cream, and he drove by her house, noticed that the motorcycle helmet he bought her was no longer by her door and accused her of going out on a night ride with some other dude she didn't even know. He kept calling her and demanding she tell him the truth. I felt incensed enough to yell in the background while she was on the phone to confirm that yes, we were with her – it was Friday and that is what we all did on Fridays and in any case it was none of his business. He then accused all of us of being liars.

Soon after this, we were driving her car to go get Allison and David one night. It was getting to be winter  yet again and it got dark early. It was pitch black and probably not even eight pm yet. About four miles out of town with all of us in the car, the vehicle broke down in a very inconvenient place. There was nowhere we could legally park where we wouldn't get towed. We were not strong enough to push the car anywhere. My mother didn't have money to pay for someone to tow the vehicle. We were left in this conundrum. We had no one else to call except for Danny. He was amused and mean spirited about it over the phone. He seemed to want to use this as an opportunity to berate my mother on how worthless and stupid she was, which of course pissed me off, but furthermore was not helpful in any way. In an attempt to maybe bypass having to pay a towing company, my mother decided to push the car into gulch on the side of the road. It wasn't that deep, and she figured it would be cheaper to pay to have it towed out of that one area than it would to pay the money it would take to bring it all the way to the place where they take cars, which was quite a ways away. When Danny came to pick us up, he called my mother stupid for having done this. She then began talking in her pathetic baby talk voice, saying she had made a stupid mistake, and she should have not done that. Which Danny then told her was also a stupid idea. Basically, nothing she could have done was right. She apologized for calling him to have us pick us up, which he then humbly told us all was not a problem since he was 'a nice guy'. But then he just continued to berate her about any of the options. It got to the point where she was cornered and no matter which option she chose, she was stupid for it. He had never been quite so open about his psychological abuse around me before this. I had tried to hold my tongue initially. We all just wanted to get home, come what may – but it was getting to the point where I definitely couldn't listen to this anymore, and I was confused in a very technical way of what he was even trying to say logically. So I was like '..So, like, she couldn't just turn the car back on and continue driving. She had few options given the situation. She had those two options pretty much. There were not any better ones. What is it you think she should have done? I don't know what you are trying to say and I don't appreciate how many times you have called her stupid.' He got really annoyed then and sort of backed off. He low key accused us all of 'ganging up on him'. After this, I don't know that I ever had any personal contact with Danny at all, though my mother continued to see him for a time.

My mother ended up having a bunch of legal troubles for her driving. She had driven for years without insurance.  She didn't drive horribly, but she wasn't always a decent driver either. It started one night while driving back to Lewiston and there was this sting operation in Lewiston that night, about a month after my mother's vehicle had ended up getting towed regardless. We actually got pulled over for going two miles over the speed limit. It was more or less some excuse to pull everyone over. People were getting pulled over left and right and searched. There were a bunch of state police driving about. She not only didn't have proof of insurance on her, but she also didn't have her license on her at the time. My mother seems to not understand cops very well. She started telling the cop about how she was divorced and had to find work that she could barely feed us with on the weekends, and how she worked in nursing homes and had two older daughters and grandchildren and on and on.

The cop looked at her blankly and  bored, with no interest in her life story. I was a bit embarrassed for her actually since he wasn't going to let her off on the basis of anything related to her life as it was. He stated that he would have thrown her in jail if she hadn't had me, David and Allison with her. He wrote her up heavily. He then demanded that I get out of the car to be searched. I don't know that I would have minded on the account that I had nothing on me – though, on looking back. I don't trust that he might have slipped something on me. It would have been highly unlikely, but you never know. Fortunately for me, my mother started getting mad and telling him he was not allowed to search me. I was her daughter and he needed to leave me alone. He was caught off guard, his attitude softened and he complied. So we had to take a taxi home. Which ended up being really awful, because when we were nearly at the apartment, she realized she had left the apartment key and her wallet in her car that she needed to pay the taxi, so we ended up driving all the way back to the car. It costed sixty or seventy dollars.

She ended up driving anyway, and getting pulled over three times. The cop who kept pulling her over liked her car, and wanted her to sell it to him and kept asking every time, so she stood out like a sore thumb when she was commuting. Her fines were enormous. Then she got a  DUI from her drives home from the bar. Which I actually did understand since driving drunk is legitimately awful and dangerous. She eventually started walking home or getting rides which was good I guess. She tried to fight the DUI given she wasn't that high over the legal limit. In her fantastical silly vision of the world, she took this fighting back against her DUI as some kind of courtroom drama where she was going to change history by proving to the courts that the cops were corrupt for collecting money from DUI's and she was innocent and not even drunk. Which didn't work out. All told, I believe she was pulled over in one year period about ten times. Eventually, she got her license back and was insured. But it was a time consuming costly ordeal to say the least. I was in the car with her about six times when it happened, so I started wondering if I was bad luck.

When we weren't getting pulled over, or she was not working, we would sometimes drive up these strange roads that paralleled the Washington side of the Snake River till the sun would go down. In this really hard to describe way, my mother and I have some core similarities even though we function and express ourselves differently. It's not in how we talk (I don't see a lot of my behaviors being all that similar to hers), but I think in an inner self kind of way – like that part of us that exists before there are words to describe it. Like, I can tell that when she looks into the distance at a sunset, she gets that same sparkly delusional romanticism about life that I do. She has the same needs to express herself and live on a certain vibration that is hard for people to understand, feels suppressed by the world – much like I do. And I feel this wasn't something she raised me to be. We didn't do much talking growing up. Like, there is some kind of inner delusional traits that are similar enough to mention. It must be genetic. So even though I know there are elements to my mother that make her a truly awful person – I can't help but feel that kinship. I know what it's like to be one of our kind.

During these mini road trips, she would always want to listen to this Eagles Greatest Hits tape on the tape deck of the van she was driving (she avoided driving her white Camaro now at all costs). I would sing along even though I have never  been quite sure how to feel about the Eagles. On one hand, there is something incredibly cheesy about them. On the other hand, I associate them with a certain love I have for the area I grew up and all the good times I have had with my mother. I hate the culture as well as all the limitations of growing up where I did, but there is a certain love I have for the mountains and greenery of northern Idaho and the dry eastern Washington deserts, the dingy gas stations, the quiet streets at night, the rivers. The sky looks different somehow in every area you are in. I don't know why. Both of us were terrible singers, but it almost made it even funner and I will admit that I never tried to sing well in these situations. One time, skip to years later, we were singing You're So Vain by Carly Simon which was on the radio and for some reason I had a tape recorder in the car with us, and we decided to tape record ourselves singing, just the two of us. So we drove around just singing our hearts out, and we eventually ended up in some strange dead end part of Clarkston. We stopped at an empty church parking lot to listen back to our singing, and though we knew it was going to be bad, neither of us even imagined just how much worse it was than even our lowest of expectation. We both shrieked, and decided to never tell anyone what we had created. This is the first time I have ever mentioned it to anyone as a matter of fact.

I still spent a good deal of time at my father's however. Allison and I would share a bed to stay warm in the winter nights, and we would often talk till midnight or later. I ended up finding The Kink's album, The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society, and I adored that album, and grew over time to absolutely fucking adore The Kinks as well. It's unnecessary to make this some kind of contest since they are both decent, but The Kinks were so much better than what they ever got credit for. They were theatrical, experimental, I felt that they stayed decent a lot longer than any of the solo Beatles did – or the Rolling Stones. This isn't to say that the Rolling Stones and the Beatles don't deserve their due, but – had the Kinks not been banned from America for inciting a riot I feel like they would be remember with a lot more clarity for much more than just 'You Really Got Me'.

I would space off a lot and a part of me felt like I was almost living a double life. One side of me was here in the present, eating saltines, feeling poor, dirty, futureless, postmodern without prospects, lost and defining myself only by the past and if I let myself think about it – which I did everything I could not to – completely and totally unlovable and pointless in a very fundamental way where every breath I took seemed totally wasted. But there was this other version of me that lived in the 60's. I liked listening to older music, to Bob Dylan and others. I would reminisce about Woodstock when I most certainly was never there in any fashion. I would imagine a world where the late 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's had never happened at all. I tried to experience what living in that new reality of the 60's must have been like. I suppose I grasped the spirit of it to a certain extent. Though in reality obviously, I was never there, and I was/am very much a person from the age I was born in, whether I like it or no.

Winter was very cold that year I remember. My sister's friend's grandfather Harvey, who was mentally challenged and lived at the end of town found this cattle dog outside his house that winter. She was starving and sick. She seemed to have been dropped off by someone to die. Her leg was broken. Harvey had a problem with animals in the town swarming his home since he left food out frequently for some of the cats, and I believe he was afraid of dealing with this poor dog, so he ignored her and refused to feed her – probably taking on a false sense of harshness he gathered from the truckers down at the diner downtown who often bragged of taking unwanted kittens, putting them in a bag, tying that back to a brick and throwing that bag into the icy river. Harvey I suppose really just didn't know how to feel, or what to do in a number of different situations, this being a tragic example. My father didn't like the idea of that poor docile dog dying out there at the end of town, so he volunteered to take her in, and for a time we had a pet dog.

She was a very sweet girl. She was a little skittish, and you could tell that she was afraid of men, who had likely abused her. She never tired of being pet. Her leg was really messed up. It looked as though it had been broken, and had grown wrong, and wasn't very usable. She had a swollen bump on her chest that didn't look good. We tried to wash her, but she just wasn't well enough for a lot of that. And she smelled too bad to be in the house with us. We set up a bed for her in the back room. We gave her an electric blanket to lay in. I named her Pegasus. She didn't resemble the flying elegant mythological horse in any way – in a great many ways, she was the bitter opposite of mythology. A suffering old dog. I tried to pet her and visit her as often as I could. At some point though she stopped getting up. She stopped eating food. Obviously, dogs are natural gluttons so this gave us the strong indication that something was very wrong with her. She began to smell worse and worse. I pet her anyway. It sort of broke my heart. Someone had known she was sick and had decided to dump her to die alone. She was too old to be anyone's exciting new pet. She also didn't smell too good. But she needed to be cared about just as much as any social creature.

Obviously, we had to take her to the animal shelter eventually. I knew it was the right thing to do. She obviously had cancer. She was old, and her leg being broken as it was would be a major challenge. Her body was shutting down, hence the smell. And still, she was so sweet. I sat in the back seat with her, and pet her the entire trip to the animal shelter. She looked lovingly up to me for much of the time, with this glazed over look. I truly believed that dogs feel love. She cared more about being given affection than she cared about food or even her own freedom. When we got to the animal shelter she couldn't walk and this woman who worked at the pound had to grab her and carry her in. I pet her one last time. She looked scared, though I could tell that the people at the animal shelter felt badly for her, since she was such a sweetheart. Honestly, I am fairly confident they put her down. As I waited for my father to make some kind of of final contribution to her welfare, maybe giving the shelter a few weeks worth of food money, I sat in the area with all the caged up cats. There were so many of them. Some of them hissed at me, many looked at my inquisitive and bored. This one cat in particular was yowling for me desperately. Purring and cherishing every spare second of attention and contact that could be had. I felt so bad for all these animals. I know there are a lot of differences between human being's cognitive awareness and animals, but it was easy to tell all of these animals felt abandoned. I imagine many of them never found homes. I also imagine it would be very hard to work in one of these places, being put into a situation where the most financial and humane thing to do would be to put them all down. It really irks me to no end when people get animals and don't take care of them. I hate it when people don't get their cats neutered and spayed. Ignoring all the animals in the wild we ignore as they go extinct, or the slaughterhouses or whathaveyou, we aren't even good to our own pets. Between abandoned pet dogs and cats that people simple , puppy mills, and so on, we bring these creatures into the world that they cannot survive or thrive in on their own, and they suffer. Call me crazy, but I honestly believe in some wild reforms in pet ownership.

That Christmas was probably the best Christmas I ever had. I had professed that all I wanted for Christmas was paints, canvases and brushes. For whatever reason, possibly guilt from the years my father had primarily bought gifts for girlfriends, he spent close to three or four hundred dollars on Christmas just for me. We went to Michael's and he bought me brushes, every color of high quality acrylic paint I would ever need, several different sizes of canvases. He also bought me some art books, for inspiration. They were these strange little books that presented different kinds of Art. One was simply called The Art Book, and the other was 20th Century Art Book. There was a House book, a Face book (of photographed people). It was from these two little books that I would flip through and study for hours that I got some grasp of what it meant to fill a canvas with pure expression. It was to date I think, easily my favorite Christmas besides a few I experienced as a child because I believed in Santa and all that.

We had a perfect Christmas dinner, and my father had thought to get me Blue Velvet. He didn't know very much about David Lynch, but he knew enough to know that David Lynch was something I would really like. And he was correct. He didn't want Allison and David watching Blue Velvet, so he made them close their eyes when Dennis Hopper's character was being a disgusting pervert. Call me weird, but as long as you have good communication with your children, and given they are eight or older, I am not that strict about what children watch. Obviously not just pure out of context snuff films or porn for the most part. Though I am not apposed to strong violence or sex within context of the story. And i imagine it is possible to put context into what you are watching. For instance, you could show when Saddam Hussein was being hung in context to showing what capital punishment looks like. If you want to eat meat, you should watch the full reality of what the animal goes through. It’s painful, but life was never meant to be jolly.

Raising children into being aware adults, I think it's important for them to grasp complex concepts, moral dilemmas and realities of our depravity and fragility mentally and physically. Media can be a great way to show children this stuff - if put into context - i cannot stress enough. Obviously if your child shows strong levels of delusional behavior than perhaps it's not a good idea. If you child suffers from severe anxiety as well perhaps take baby steps. I mean, it’s individual with each case, but more or less i think you should always present the challenge as best you can.I think earlier than eight a child is more or less in strictly monkey-see monkey-do mode, and it's not useful or desirable to confuse them about what is appropriate when they are still learning how to engage with the world as an individual in a fundamental fashion. My father was trying to be decent by telling Allison and David to shut their eyes, but what I thought was funny was the fact that the disturbing Frank Booth scenes were even worse if you close your eyes and simply listen to his lines. God what a fucked up character.

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[theprogrocker]

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

Rating: 15/15

Best song: The Chain (or whichever song is playing at any given moment)

“Fleetwood Mac”. What comes to mind when you hear those words? Is it late 70s mainstream pop/soft-rock? The band that turned everything on the radio into soft mush way before the Police did? Stevie Nicks? Lindsey Buckingham? The other girl in the band? How about when someone says “I love Fleetwood Mac”, or “I’m a Fleetwood Mac fan”? Is it “mainstream pop sellout with no taste or artistic sensibility who should listen to King Crimson if they want to hear some TRUE art”? This is all completely understandable, but to a point, it’s also all wrong.

Quick history lesson (feel free to skip this paragraph if you already know or if you don’t really care): Fleetwood Mac started out as a British blues band, a spinoff of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and consisted of Peter Green on guitar, Jeremy Spencer on slide guitar, Mick Fleetwood on drums, and Bob Brunning on bass. Green named the band Fleetwood Mac after the rhythm section, and to entice John McVie into joining, and after a few gigs, Bob Brunning (who was only ever intended as a replacement anyway) was out and McVie was in. They released two hardcore blues albums, the latter of which featured a band friend named Christine Perfect on piano. Neither of these albums really established any sort of real identity, though; however successful their singles got (“Albatross”, “Black Magic Woman” (yep, THAT one), “The Green Maralishi”), they weren’t going to make it as a blues band. Green found guitarist Danny Kirwan playing in a basement somewhere and considered it such a shame Kirwan hadn’t made it professionally that he ended up adding him to the band. This added a severely needed change to the band, as Kirwan was more of a folksy guy than anything, and this new influence created an album called Then Play On, which was dark, gloomy, folksy, and bluesy, but definitely not faceless like the band’s previous blues output had been. Green’s schizophrenia overtook him eventually, and he had to leave the band. The next album was dominated by Jeremy Spencer, and it was a 50s parody album called Kiln House. Spencer then left, and John McVie married Christine Perfect. The band found a guitarist named Bob Welch and let him in the band without audition, and Christine Perfect (now Christine McVie) officially joined the band as well. They put out a prog-influenced soft-rock album called Future Games, which is notable for having the first contributions of both Welch and Christine (but pretty boring otherwise). Kirwan had become a serious alcoholic by this time, and his behavior became erratic (smashing guitars, refusing to go on stage, etc.), so there was one more album released with him (Bare Trees, which shows Christine and Welch perfecting their styles and Kirwan finally becoming a rocker) before he was let go. Fleetwood Mac fell into total chaos at this point, and hired a guitarist named Bob Weston and a vocalist named Dave Walker. Both of these contributed one subpar song to the next album, Penguin, which was otherwise dominated by Christine’s pop songs and Welch’s prog ones. Walker was fired, and John McVie became an alcoholic. The band released Mystery to Me, where Welch was given free rein to do songs in lots of genres (no, really, it’s pretty diverse), and it spawned their biggest hit to that point, “Hypnotized” (my favorite pre-1975 Fleetwood Mac song). The album didn’t do so well aside from that, and this, combined with the fact that Bob Weston was having an affair with Fleetwood’s wife, Jenny Boyd (sister of Patti Boyd, the star of a similar love triangle with Eric Clapton and George Harrison and the subject of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, incidentally), caused enormous tensions within the band. Weston was kicked out, the band’s manager created a band that toured as Fleetwood Mac but had nothing to do with the real band, giant legal battles ensued, the band relocated from England to Los Angeles and fired their manager, and the next album, Heroes Are Hard to Find, featured Christine and Welch fighting hard for creative direction, to subpar results. Welch finally left, and Fleetwood found Lindsey Buckingham in a studio and asked him to join on the strength of a song of his. Buckingham joined on the condition that his girlfriend and music partner Stevie Nicks could also join, and they released a mid-70s mainstream pop/soft-rock album called Fleetwood Mac (clearly a “rebooting of the franchise”- they knew this would be a New Thing), which featured three distinct songwriting personalities: Lindsey Buckingham, the Nervous Rock Guitarist of “Monday Morning” and “I’m So Afraid”; Stevie Nicks, the Mystical Balladeer of “Rhiannon” and “Landslide”; and Christine McVie, the Happy Popper of “Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me”.

Now why did I take the time to painstakingly type all of that out when you could have read it elsewhere online? For one thing, to show that “Fleetwood Mac” actually means a few different things, and that the story does not start and end with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, especially since Christine McVie had been at least involved with the band since almost the very beginning (though I don’t blame the public for thinking that); and much of the pre-1975 Fleetwood Mac output is underrated; don’t be afraid to try it out, because there’s at least one song I totally love on every single one of those records, barring the first two and Heroes, maybe. For another, to show just how much of a mess this band had been since the dawn of time. And for one more, to show how important historical context has always been for the band; it may have been named after the trusty rhythm section, but it always depended on the actual songwriters, and the nature of the members’ personal troubles often directly affected the quality of the music.

And there is no better proof of that last point than Rumours, one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums the world has ever seen, with a 99/100 on Metacritic. The context for this album (I know, more history, but we’re almost done) is this: Buckingham and Nicks were in a terrible on/off relationship, the McVies were divorcing after eight years of marriage, Fleetwood and his wife were on the verge of divorce after she’d had another affair with his best friend, Nicks became addicted to cocaine, one of Nicks’ songs was continually rejected by the others and she had multiple breakdowns about it (it was left off of the album initially, but restored to later pressings), and the tabloids loved every minute of this and blew everything up. Indeed, the album is titled Rumours in response to the stuff the press was saying, such as that Buckingham and Nicks were the parents of Fleetwood’s daughter (!). Essentially, the band had fallen apart emotionally, but their recording contract demanded a new album, and they all stopped speaking to each other except about the music and lyrics. It follows that the only album that really comes to mind as being as tremendously focused and as connected to its personal context in terms of quality that I can think of is Abbey Road.

Because the songs absolutely rule. You already know most of them from classic rock radio, probably, but if you don’t have this album, nothing I say will do it proper justice—go get it. Each of the three songwriters is at their melodic and emotional peak, which means this album goes off like a bomb. Stevie gets four songs, Christine gets four songs, Lindsey gets three songs, and there’s a collective Band Anthem as well. Describing each of these songs is a fool’s errand; most of them are so ingrained in our culture already that typing out what I think about the melodies of each of them would be like pouring a glass of water into the ocean. Suffice it to say that the whole record is unimpeachable from any technical standpoint; the production is crystal clear, the instruments all sound great, the harmonies are awesome throughout, the solo vocals are brilliant and full of personality (especially Stevie Nicks, whose voice has one of the most eerie, yet easy-to-listen-to timbres I can imagine), the instrumental melodies and playing are great (Lindsey Buckingham is one of the most underrated guitarists in the world, and his ability to depict any emotion, especially total desperation, is unparalleled; special awards for playing on this album go to the acoustic guitar playing on “Never Going Back Again”, the electric guitar soloing on “Go Your Own Way” and “You Make Loving Fun”, and John McVie’s bass solo that leads into the coda of “The Chain”), and the vocal melodies are simply among the best anybody has heard. Verses and choruses and bridges, all are brilliant on literally every song. A slight, slight exception might be Stevie’s closing “Gold Dust Woman”, whose verse melody has always been kinda hard for me to grab, but the “Well did she make you cry…” chorus is superb anyway, and besides, the song is great for other reasons I’ll get to. No, what I’d like to prattle about is the emotional content of the record, which is extremely thick, but often subtle enough so that the album doesn’t lose any accessibility.

A big way to describe this record is “Sunshine Through Tears”, the idea of putting on a happy face even when you’re completely breaking down, and this is exactly what the band was doing when creating it. Buckingham’s songs are just like that; the opening “Second Hand News” has a joyous-sounding melody, and fun acoustic strumming, and it’s a ton of fun to sing along to those “bam-bam-bam”s. But have you taken a look at those lyrics? The song is an ANGRY one, one about being replaced in a relationship and screaming to be left alone (“Won’t you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff”). Once you know that, it doesn’t take long to hear Lindsey singing this happy melody and imagining him really tearing himself up once he gets to the “I’m just second hand news, I’M JUST SECOND HAND NEWS, YEAH”. Pretty much the same things can be said for “Go Your Own Way”, perhaps Fleetwood Mac’s most famous song and deservedly so. This is also a song, however, of triumph; it may be an angry song at its core, but it’s clear that the subject going their own way will ultimately turn out to be a good thing, and Lindsey is proud enough of himself to admit that (“Loving you isn’t the right thing to do…”). His third contribution, “Never Going Back Again”, is the stripped-down acoustic one with the cute little riff and the trippy humming harmonies, and it’s got a happy folksy melody as well, but it’s a song about a lost opportunity with someone, and it can be fairly depressing if you really listen to it.

Somewhat more depressing are Stevie’s numbers. Stevie, like I said, had grown herself a nice cocaine addiction by the time this album was being made, and oh boy, it shows. “Dreams” is an incredibly subtle song, but really listen to it and tell me you’ve heard anything like that in your life—the stripped-down sound and two-note bassline/constant IV-V alternation that never resolves to I (especially at the end) is an awesome move and it creates an atmosphere of tension and bitterness, and the weird guitar bends and Stevie’s voice give the song a psychedelic swirl, while the passive-aggressive lyrics (basically “Okay, fine, go, but you’ll realize what you’ve lost eventually”) only add to it. As much as I love “Rhiannon”, this song grinds that one’s bones to make its bread. “I Don’t Want to Know”, written way before Stevie and Lindsey joined the band, is probably the song best described by the “Sunshine Through Tears” tag; it’s all based on Stevie and Lindsey practically screaming at each other to a joyful pop melody. This may be the weakest song on the album, and it’s still awesome. “Silver Springs” is a ballad with a fantastic build into another tense, endlessly rising melody, with Stevie screaming her head off (“I will FOLLOW you DOWN ‘til the SOUND of my VOICE will HAUNT you”—her voice certainly will haunt me). Oh, more context—this was the song that was left off the album and relegated to the B-side of “Go Your Own Way” on the pretext that it was weaker than the others, and that’s frankly utter nonsense; I’m not interested in any edition of Rumours that does not include “Silver Springs”. And finally, she gets to close the album with “Gold Dust Woman”, one of the creepiest songs EVER recorded; it’s about her cocaine addiction, and it’s one of the few songs on the album that drops the happy face. The hellish ending, with Stevie and Lindsey screaming over the spooky countryish groove while it slowly intensifies is a terrifying way to end the record, and all the better for it.

The absolute key to Rumours, though, is Christine McVie. Her contributions to this record, and therefore to the world of music, cannot be understated. Over the course of her time in Fleetwood Mac (and, therefore, her marriage to John McVie, which had just ended), she had honed the craft of writing one shiny-happy pop song after another—and her hooks got so good that she should have gone into corporate songwriting. She is the only one who saves the record from drowning in its negative emotions, and does her best to balance those with songs that depict nothing but pure joy and optimism. “Don’t Stop” (one of the most famous from the album, and used in Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign; it may be one of my least favorite songs here but it still totally rules, and it’s sung in duet with Buckingham), “Songbird” (just Chris and a piano this time, a practically perfect piano ballad, and in her words, “a little hymn” to “nobody and everybody”), and “You Make Loving Fun” (her, and Fleetwood Mac’s, first run at disco, with some phenomenal vocal moves like “I’d like to belie-ie-ie-ie-ieve…”) are all happy happy songs, some of the happiest ever made. It’s only near the very end of the record that we get her fourth contribution, “Oh Daddy”, and the walls come crashing down. This song is sarcastic, dark, and just plain defeated (“If there’s a fool around, it’s got to be me”, “And I can’t walk away from you, baby, if I tried”) with a sparse musical backing that really brings to mind poor Chris sitting alone at the piano with a blank expression on her face, defeated by everything; it turns out her other songs were probably a sham, no matter how much she might deny that by saying they were about her relationship with her new boyfriend or that “Oh Daddy” was about Mick Fleetwood. Not even Happy Happy Joy Joy Christine McVie could come out of all of that emotional turmoil in one piece, and that makes this song totally devastating, probably the most devastating on the album because of that. For what it’s worth, this was the song that came closest to knocking “The Chain” off of its perch as Best Song for me.

Oh! That’s right. “The Chain” is unbelievable. All five members (yeah, even the rhythm section for which the band is named) wrote this song together, and if you don’t believe that was a feat, well, I’ll direct you back to those “Context” paragraphs. You probably already know it, and if you don’t, well, like with the whole album, nothing I can say is ever going to do it justice. It does not pretend either; it lays all of that anger out there (“DAMN your love, DAMN your lies”), and I think “the chain” keeping them together could also be said to represent the band’s recording contract forcing out the album. Everything about this song is utter perfection, lyrics to intro to verse to chorus to harmonies to bass solo to guitar solo to coda. Man.

There are only a couple more things I want to talk about with this album. One of them is the brilliant sequencing, just about as brilliant as almost any sequencing on any album (maybe The Beatles and Skylarking beat it, but maybe they don’t). Fade in with that joyful acoustic strumming for an upset song, and this creates some ironic tension. The irony becomes REAL tension on “Dreams”, which famously doesn’t ever resolve, just keeps bobbing up and down until you’re ready to scream. Short acoustic interlude follows with more ironic tension, followed by one of the most optimistic pop-rockers ever recorded, just in case you forgot you were listening to a Mainstream Pop Album, and a necessary respite before the triumphant madness-kept-in-check of “Go Your Own Way”, which is then followed by a mellow, but resplendent love ballad. Then, on the reissue, “Silver Springs” starts out sounding kind of similar to “Songbird”, but grows into a screaming frenzy, and it’s the only way to bridge “Songbird” to the (for the first time) unbridled emotional hell of “The Chain” (do you see why I can’t do without “Silver Springs”? You’d get whiplash by going directly from “Songbird” to “The Chain”!), the climax of the album. An optimistic song is the only thing that could possibly save our nerves after that one, and “You Make Loving Fun” sure qualifies. But it’s a sort of false relief, because then Stevie and Lindsey then reach a total boiling point on “I Don’t Want to Know”, the last upbeat(-sounding) song of the album, and they have a screaming match until the band totally breaks down for “Oh Daddy” and “Gold Dust Woman”, and the record fades away with a haunting country groove while a clearly agonizing Stevie wails the night away.

So how did this become such a popular, mainstream record if it’s such a downer? Simple. The answer is subtlety. Each and every song on this album (except “The Chain” and the last two songs) is catchy and friendly-sounding and either fun or relaxing to listen to, even and especially “Dreams”. “Ross, doesn’t that mean the band sacrificed their artistic integrity to make the record popular?” Well, no. Irony is the record’s greatest emotional weapon, and I think Fleetwood Mac knew that going in. This is why Rumours works on multiple levels: it can work as just a collection of catchy mainstream 70s pop/soft-rock tunes that’s great entertainment to sing along to on a car drive (I have used it many times for that), and it can work just as well as a thrill ride through the entire spectrum of human emotions and interactions (I have used it many times for that as well). It may take a while to tap into that latter one, especially if you grew up hearing the songs out of their context on the radio like I did, but with some time, some education, and some good will, you’ll be as impacted and as thrown around by this record as I am.

The original purpose for any art form is the expression of human emotion. Rumours, therefore, is of the highest art form, because not only does it express those emotions (even if they take a while to uncover), but it creates memorable experiences out of those expressions by also being the catchiest album around. How the five members of Fleetwood Mac were able to go on after this album, which was obviously incredibly taxing on everyone involved, is a Mystery to Me (of course, you could say “Well, they made MONEY off of it”, and I would pretend I hadn’t heard you), especially since Fleetwood Mac couldn’t ever keep the same lineup for two albums in a row previously. But they would never manage to top it, or even come close; Tusk and Say You Will are both great records in their own ways, but the song quality and emotional resonance of either are nowhere near the level of this masterpiece, let alone Mirage, Tango in the Night, or Behind the Mask (and certainly not Time). I frankly wonder if anyone has ever really topped this record, and I’d sure like to hear it if they had. Do I need to listen to it that often? Not really; much of it’s been ingrained in my head since I was a kid. But is it worth anything when I do? You BET it is. What a well-written, great-sounding, ironic, self-contradictory, and utterly fascinating emotional rollercoaster of a record. Unless, of course, it’s just a bunch of simplistic radio fodder for the masses. That’s cool too.

[thebibliomancer]

100 Days of Comics! 048/100: DP7: Displaced Paranormals #25 (1988)

Today’s selection from the mysterious enigmatic box of 100 random comics brings a story from Marvel’s New Universe.

So the New Universe. For Marvel’s 25th anniversary, Jim Shooter proposed ending the Marvel Universe. And then restarting it but updated to the present era. This was rejected because it would be like shooting the golden goose.

So Shooter instead proposed creating a new universe, a brand new range of IP, which would be set in a more realistic, modern universe where crazy comic book stuff only started happening recently.

This got approved but around the same time, Marvel’s owners Cadence Industries threatened to sell off Marvel, which forced Marvel to cut costs and increase revenue. Shooter’s budget for the New Universe was cut to the bone and instead of top creators, Shooter had to use people new to the industry or who couldn’t get work otherwise. Shooter himself couldn’t devote as much time as he wanted to the line because of intracompany politics that eventually led him to leave his editor-in-chief position.

Damn. I know that a lot of people in the industry hate Jim Shooter but between this and Valiant Comics, it sometimes seems like Jim Shooter can’t catch a break.

ANYWAY. That’s the out of universe origin. Here’s the in-universe origin.

It began with the White Event, a mysterious astronomical phenomenon which bombarded the entire earth with unknown energies two summers past. In two persons out of every million, this energy triggered largely benign body-wide mutations resulting in paranormal forms and abilities. Few people were aware of the ramifications of the White Event. Its mutagenic energies affected people at vastly different rates so that it took anywhere from days to months to years before paranormality would manifest itself in a specific person. Consequently, the general public was unaware that paranormals walked among them for over a year.

Then came the Black Event, the total disintegration of the city of Pittsburgh through the misuse of the greatest paranormal power of all. Although no one knows who is responsible for the atrocity, it is widely believed among high government intelligence circles to be the work of a foreign paranormal. In the wake of the disaster, the president reinstated the draft in an effort to not only mobilize a standing army, but also to locate the nation’s paranormals so that they could be forged into an elite fighting force. But the army is not the only government agency interested in paranormals. The Central Intelligence Agency, among others, has its own paranormal recruitment program. This program is aimed primarily toward female paranormals who are not yet eligible for the draft.

This is the saga of seven of the many paranormals caught up in a world gone mad... Lenore Fenzl, Merriam Sorensen, Charlotte Beck, Stephanie Harrington, and Jenny Swensen, the first five recruits of the C.I.A.’s special paranormal task force... and Dave Landers and Randy O’Brien, two members of the U.S. Army’s first paranormal platoon...

And hey! This issue was written by Mark Gruenwald! Famous for his run on Captain America, the Squadron Supreme, Quasar, and this book. Original owner of the Captain America shield now owned by Stephen Colbert. Apparently the Patron Saint of Marveldom. And memetically killed by a really bad piece of Rob Liefeld art.

So we start off with some paranormal children shoplifting some groceries in Wisconsin. They are runaways from the Clinic of Paranormal Research and as they try to escape from the police, they accidentally drive through the guardrail and tumble down the incline.

Meanwhile: Dr. Randy O’Brien doing surgery on Dave Landers at Major General Truscott, Jr. Memories Hospital in Georgia. For some reason, Dave attempted to commit suicide while in solitary confinement. Impaled himself on a metal spike.

And Dr. O’Brien is wondering why. What happened to Dave during his special powers training in the two months they were separated? And did O’Brien let him down in some way? O’Brien doesn’t want to blame himself but if he hadn’t lost his powers, he would have been in the same training with Dave.

O’Brien’s ‘parability’ was the ability to summon five Antibodies from within his own body, a starscapey version of himself that can fly, become intangible, and transfer memories through physical contact. Each of the Antibodies had a slightly different personality and O’Brien had varied amount of control over them.

But he has lost that power. Just as he started boot camp, he stopped being able to summon Antibodies. And at first he thought he’d be happy to be normal again but now he just feels empty.

But a nurse cuts his musings short. Colonel McInery wants the entire medical staff assembled in the basement at once for an urgent matter.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin. The ambulance has arrived at the car crash and dang its a mess. We don’t see most of it but one of the kids went through the windshield (wear your seatbelts, boys and girls) and another is missing an unspecified piece of anatomy.

But while one of the kids, Evan something, is strapped to a gurney and the EMTs are distracted, the Shadowman comes out of him. We saw him help out with the shoplifting earlier. And he works very much like an Antibody for reasons. During the crash, he came out and covered Evan to protect him. Now, he surrounds Evan and flies off with him thinking of Dr. O’Brien, leaving the EMTs confused about what that was.

Meanwhile, back at the Georgia hospital basement, Colonel McInery shows the medical staff their new patient. The Famileech.

It (they?) are a twisted horrific amalgamation. The Robinson family was just outside Pittsburgh last December right before the Black Event. When it happened, their car was swept over the lip of the Pitt and slide all the way down the crater wall to the bottom where they were exposed to the mutagenic sludge that is the liquefied remains of Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

Somehow, their exposure to the Pitt-Juice caused the whole family to bond together on the cellular level. Also, the Famileech eats people. Even now its banging on the door shouting “HUNNNNNGRY! Need food! Want your bodies...”

Yeah.

With new and improved pressure suits to protect them from absorption (the previous model didn’t help Lieutenant Lancaster though) and piping halothane into the Famileech’s room to knock it out, the medical staff can go in to take a tissue sample for a biopsy and take measurements and any vital signs.

Dawn the next day, the Shadowman arrives at the hospital. Yup. He flew all night from Wisconsin to Georgia. He flies through the window as Dr. O’Brien is examining Dave Landers and pulls Evan out of himself.

The Shadowman gestures for O’Brien to examine Evan and then touches him to share memories of his time with Evan and the car accident.

And O’Brien realizes that this Shadowman is actually his renegade Antibody!

I said he had varied amounts of control over his Antibodies, right? Well this one strangled one of the clinic’s therapists to death. The man was a dangerous psychopath but realizing that his Antibodies could become killers, O’Brien disowned the Antibody, refused to allow him access to his host-body.

He had assumed that without access to him, the Antibody had withered up and died. He didn’t contemplate that another human being could sustain the Antibodies.

O’Brien finishes examining Evan. The kid has head trauma but his vital signs look good.

But before he can have it out with the Shadowman, an alarm goes off. Rushing out into the hallway with the Shadowman tagging along, O’Brien sees that the Famileech has somehow gotten out and is eating Nurse Ahrens.

The Shadowman flies away, leaving O’Brien to try to divert the Famileech from the wing Dave and Evan are in by getting it to chase him instead. He dead ends at a fire door that won’t open, defeating the entire point of being a fire door.

But then the Shadowman comes back to save him. It had only flown off to forehead kiss Evan goodbye.

The Shadowman envelopes O’Brien and tries to fly him over the Famileech but either O’Brien is too heavy or the Shadowman is too weak after flying cross-country all night.

So instead he tackles and tries to punch out the Famileech and gets torn apart for his troubles.

With the Shadowman disintegrating, the Famileech comes for O’Brien. The doctor prays to god not to let him die like this, trapped, frightened and alone.

And bam. O’Brien manages to summon his four Antibodies. But he realizes that individually they’re no match for the Famileech. But... the Shadowman showed him that one of his Antibodies could envelope his body like armor. So what if he did that with all four?

Luckily, they’re cooperate and O’Brien is protected by four layers of Antibodies and wields their combined strength. Nicely solving his issue with his powers where he felt that he wasn’t really directly in control.

x4 Antibodied O’Brien punches the Famileech back into its cell with a lot of wet sounding sound effects like SPLOOSH and SPLOK and barricades the door.

After, the four Antibodies peel off and fly back inside him, needing to recharge after that display.

And O’Brien is left thinking that the renegade Antibody which he disowned has given him a new lease on life by showing him there were possibilities with his powers that he would never have tried!

Eesh, this is getting long. And there’s a backup story. Starring THE ESPEOPLE called Night of the Mask.

Basically a bunch of dorky paranormal draft dodgers are sitting around playing probably-DnD in the guise of Psi-Lord, Purple Veil, Supernatural, the Apparition, Trancer, and Phantom Bullet when Walter (Psi-Lord) faints and Nightmask appears.

Danny/the Apparition immediately uses his illusion powers to cloak the ESPeople as their probably-DnD characters. They demand that Nightmask state name and business but since Nightmask’s powers are all about entering dreams, he thinks this is someone’s dream and decides to flee the ESPeople until he can figure out what brand of dream logic this particular dream is working on.

But the ESPeople manage to pin him down with their assorted cool powers (Phantom Bullet shoots phantom bullets from his fingers, Supernatural controls natural forces, Apparition as I said before does illusions, and Trancer and Psi-Lord seem to be psychics. Not sure if there’s a difference in their powers).

Trancer reads Nightmask’s mind and realizes that Nightmask thinks this is a dream. Psi-Lord comes to and erases Nightmask’s memories of this encounter (the ESPeople are draft dodgers after all and Nightmask has already been drafted).

Psi-Lord then wonders aloud whether the ESPeople should stop hiding out and maybe get involved to help the world before everything falls apart. The others just say “Nah.”

And the issue ends with a confused Nightmask wandering down the road toward his next adventure in Justice #25.

So for my first exposure to the New Universe, it was pretty good. Shame that the New Universe experiment ultimately failed. Some elements eventually made their way to the mainstream Marvel universe, like Starbrand and Nightmask and a new White Event.

[davedimartino-yahoo-blog]

Don’t Stop: Fleetwood Mac’s Grammy-Winning ‘Rumours,’ 40 Years On

CIRCA 1977: (L-R) Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and John McVie of the rock group ‘Fleetwood Mac’ pose for a portrait in circa 1977. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

It was the album of a generation — a bestseller boasting hits galore and a backstory that would rival Dynasty and Dallas and the other TV soaps soon to emerge.

It was made by a colorful, attractive band whose first Rolling Stone cover depicted all five band members in bed together.

The year was 1977, the band was Fleetwood Mac, and the album was Rumours.

Incredibly, it turns 40 this week, on Feb. 4.

To say that Rumours changed popular culture would not be an exaggeration. It was the album that lifted what had been a successful, long-lived, onetime British blues band into the sales stratosphere; that launched the unforgettable image of the bejeweled, twirling, scarf-bedecked, deliberately mystical singer Stevie Nicks; that was filled with catchy but often deeply personal songs about disintegrating relationships — and, not incidentally, a polished piece of pop perfection that sounds equally inspirational four decades on.

A significant amount of drugs were involved in its making.

But then, that was the ‘70s, wasn’t it?

Founded in 1967 in London by legendary blues guitarist Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac played wonderful music but changed band members with alarming regularity. By the time Rumours had come to be, gone were great slate of players including guitarists Green, Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan, and America’s own Bob Welch — and in were the colorful pair of Nicks and onetime romantic partner Lindsey Buckingham. They’d joined the band in 1975, and with remaining Mac members Mick Fleetwood and then-married couple John and Christine McVie, recorded an eponymous album that — unexpectedly for all concerned — hit No. 1 and would go on to sell more than 5 million copies.

Then things really got weird.

With the last album’s success of the Christine McVie-penned “Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me” and Stevie Nicks’s own, culturally myth-making “Rhiannon,” recording a follow-up might have been a breeze. But it absolutely was not. Not helping? The decaying personal relationships of literally every band member. The McVies had split and were barely communicating; Buckingham and Nicks were a couple no more; and drummer Fleetwood himself was facing an on-again/off-again relationship with wife Jenny Boyd, which finally ended in 1978.

And about the drug thing: “Those days were crazy,” drummer Fleetwood would later tell writer Craig Rosen in his book The Billboard Book of Number One Albums (Billboard Books, 1996). “It’s no secret that we were definitely abusing drugs in those days. It was one major lunatic party.”

Finally, there was an almost freakishly obsessive drive to record a sonically perfect follow-up. The band first moved en masse to Sausalito, spent nine weeks recording material they ultimately found unsatisfactory, stopped to tour a bit while Fleetwood Mac reached Billboard’s No. 1 slot, then watched in horror as their intended master tapes for the new album started wearing thin due to multiple overdubbing.

But when it was done, it was done, and Rumours — as it was called, at John McVie’s suggestion — was first announced by the December 1976 arrival of lead-up single “Go Your Own Way,” a top 10 hit with a telling title and lyric that well represented the coming album’s emotionally turbulent themes.

And then: BOOM!

Rumours soared to No. 1, knocking off no less than the Eagles’ Hotel California, and with its surplus of new hits including “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” and “You Making Loving Fun,” stayed there for 31 weeks. It would later win the 1977 Grammy for Album of the Year, sell more than 45 million copies worldwide, and in 2014 receive the extremely rare diamond (translation = even better than gold or platinum) certification from the RIAA for U.S. sales of over 20 million. And that was three years ago.

But back then, success — and excess–was taking its toll. There was rough emotional going, and while other albums by this diamond-version Mac would follow — the rewarding and experimental Tusk, a live set, the mildly disappointing Mirage, and the extraordinary (and soon to be re-released in a deluxe version) Tango in the Night — Lindsey Buckingham would then depart, and things were never quite the same again.

Sort of.

While there was an unexpected respite in 1993, when the full band memorably reunited for President Bill Clinton’s inauguration ball and gave “Don’t Stop” — Clinton’s chosen campaign song — an unexpected re-performance, solo albums by nearly every Mac member was the norm for most of the ‘90s.

***

Fast forward to May 22, 1997, and guess who’s back? Live on a Burbank soundstage, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rumours, it’s the newly reunited Fleetwood Mac: Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood, and the McVies. If making that album had been a case study of study of the impact of excess on business efficiency, time has changed much: From this reunion performance would come an MTV special, a separate VH1 special, a live album (The Dance), and eventually a home video release. And it all served as a preview for an upcoming live tour. Fleetwood Mac: They’re back!

It is still May 1997, a bit later, and I am sitting in a small waiting room in Conway Studios in Hollywood. In one of those uniquely journalistic scenarios, while I sit in the room, recorder and notes nearby, each of the members of Fleetwood Mac is brought in for questioning. Surreal? You bet.

Lindsey Buckingham is discussing his original reason for departing the band back in 1987. “It really was a survival move, emotionally and physically,” he says. “It was just the atmosphere was not very conducive to being creative. A lot of the people had personal problems. It was just in order to regroup — and get back on a track where I felt I was really grounded in the process again, and was sort of, in theory, doing it for the right reasons again.”

Rumours and all that it entailed did much for popular culture, but it’s a good bet it did even more for — and to — the five members of Fleetwood Mac who were a part of it.

Buckingham says the time away from the band has done him very well indeed. “I’ve settled down a lot emotionally, and a lot of that comes from just having been away,” he says. “Really, you break up with Stevie in ‘77, and then you work with her for the next 10 years. I mean, it’s just not normal. It’s just not the way it’s done.” He laughs.

“And you would think, ‘Well, 10 years, get over it, buddy,’ but certain things just did not get resolved until I removed myself from the situation. So there’s that, there’s the fact that everyone’s habits are little bit different now. I mean, Stevie especially — she’s like very reminiscent of the person I used to live with, the person I fell in love with. There’s a sweetness that was totally absent, or blank, before.”

Later, and separately, Stevie Nicks is sitting down, exuding warmth, candor, and the sort of difficult-to-pinpoint personal appeal that made her an entire generation’s most-favorite-ever Welsh Witch.

Did she ever wish things in Fleetwood Mac, back in those days, had gone down differently?

“Oh, it could never have been any different than it was,” she says with absolute conviction. “You know, Lindsey and I didn’t even drink when we joined Fleetwood. We couldn’t afford to drink. So we started drinking like anybody else starts drinking — just to handle the mental pressure. We were really young, you know? Twenty-seven years old, really, really young, and this was all so big and so heavy around us, and people expected so much from us. And all of a sudden we went from barely having enough money to pay for a small apartment to being rich overnight — and how do you deal with that when you’re 27 years old?

“You kind of don’t deal with it very well. And nobody dealt with it very well.

“But all of those problems, and all of those drugs, and all of the fun and all of the craziness, all made for writing all those songs. If we’d been a big healthy great group of guys and gals that just were, you know…” She looks for a word that conveys regular or ordinary. “…then none of those great songs would’ve been written, you know?”

Reconfirming that point of view with warmth, charm, and noticeably excessive height, lanky drummer Mick Fleetwood takes his seat at Conway and discussed the mythology of the Mac, of that Rumours time and all that came with it. And even later.

“No matter how many horrors stories people were told,” he says, “and how many horror stories we told, I think you’ll find when you speak with everyone — the reality is that we never lost, there’s a real underlying love, a true love that is fairly unique, in this band, in my opinion. We’ve all done terrible things to one another, just as lovers do. And now, we truly look at that and go, there’s business involved, but this is not business.”

It was an interesting time back then in 1997, for Fleetwood Mac and how Rumours was then perceived. Don’t forget, it came at the height of punk rock’s popular emergence, and in some ways the band and all they represented — dollars, lifestyle, conspicuous consumption — was the antithesis of all then deemed cool. But not for long. Conspicuous era hipsters like Billy Corgan and Courtney Love were singing Fleetwood Mac’s praises back then. Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins would go on to cover “Landslide,” and Love herself took on “Gold Dust Woman” and “Silver Springs.”

Buckingham mentions it when we speak of the timeliness of the Mac’s 1997 reunion. “You’ve got this whole younger group of people whose parents used to come see shows,” he says. “And they know the Fleetwood Mac music on record, and maybe because people like Courtney and Smashing Pumpkins have sort of been vocal about saying, ‘Hey, Fleetwood Mac is, whatever, not the enemy anymore — or whatever you want to say about that. The timing of that is great.”

And while the music of Corgan and Love continues to fall in and out fashion, in 2017 the 40-year-old Rumours sounds as fresh and inspiring as ever. These days, music reviewers refer to it when they want to describe a new musical work reflecting deep personal turmoil, frazzled relationships, even gleeful excess, etc. And its impact has only grown with time. As of today, “Go Your Own Way” has been played 110,903,863 times on Spotify — and I reckon that it will continue to be listened to long after that streaming music service ends its run.

Of all people, it might be Nicks who nails what it is that makes Rumours so special.

She is recounting what it felt like to perform that material again — with Fleetwood Mac, in front of that live audience. The reception could not have been more enthusiastic, I tell her.

“It makes you feel a little bit like you’re having a kind of a holy experience,” she says, a bit of the mystic apparently hitting her. “Like we’re all going back to how we were when we heard ‘Gold Dust Woman’ on the radio — when we were driving down the street with the top down on the car, we’re all back there, and the ‘silver spoon’ and ‘dig your grave’ lyrics, and ‘Don’t Stop.’

“It’s like, when I think of those songs, I remember where I was and what I was doing when I was hearing them. And I can see it in people’s faces. I can see… it’s like all of us get to go back. For a little while in time, we get to escape back there.”

[gretagerwigarchive]

Greta Gerwig On Directing Her Oscar-Nominated Movie "Lady Bird" And Why She Doesn't Write Stories That Revolve Around Men: BUST Interview

BY Jenni Miller

source: https://bust.com/movies/194102-greta-gerwig-lady-bird-interview.html

An indie-movie queen with festival hits like Frances Ha, Mistress America, and Greenberg to her credit, Greta Gerwig made the leap to big screen writer/director in November with the unapologetically woman-focused Lady Bird. Here, she talks candidly about the female gaze, the New York dream, and writing scripts where “the central story is not a question of whether a woman will or will not end up with some dude.” 

When Greta Gerwig sits down to breakfast at Café Cluny in N.Y.C.’s West Village, she is friendly and warm despite our masochistically early 8 a.m. meeting time. It seems impossible but entirely too tempting to believe her when she says she remembers me from previous interviews I’ve done with her over many years as a freelance film writer. That’s because, based on her screen persona, she seems like the ultimate ride-or-die best friend every woman wants—no, needs. An hour-long conversation with Gerwig is culturally nourishing; we veer from the joys of Virginia Woolf and nighttime walks to the unmasking of Elena Ferrante and even her love of passports. “You gotta wander around,” she says of her regular constitutionals. “It definitely helps the quality of thought. Actually, if I’m stuck, I always try to go walk, because usually it solves something. Even if it just solves my bad attitude.” She then adds, “I actually have trouble thinking or talking when I’m sitting. Sorry.” There’s nothing to forgive, of course. Gerwig, 34, is endlessly charming and fun to chat with, sitting or not.

“I love getting passports, because when you get a passport, it expires in 10 years, and you have this physical object, and you think, ‘What are the next 10 years going to hold?’” she muses. “I got my passport renewed right after I graduated from college, and I had to get it renewed again last year. I remembered holding my passport right after I graduated from college and I thought, ‘What am I going to be like at 32? And what are these 10 years going to be?’ Then when I got it again, I thought, ‘What’s 42?’ I don’t know. The persistence of objects over time never ceases to amaze me.” These anecdotes may make her sound as whimsical as some of her onscreen characters, like her breakthrough role in 2012’s Frances Ha—in which she plays an aspiring dancer whose life is upended when she’s ditched by her best friend—yet Gerwig is anything but.

Greta Gerwig has known she’s wanted to direct since she was in kindergarten. Although her childhood desire to lead her classmates in a theatrical production of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Starlight Express was never realized, the multi-hyphenate made her filmmaking dreams come true this past November with the release of her directorial debut, Lady Bird, a film she also wrote. Boasting powerhouse performances by Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird is a mother/daughter story bursting with heart and humor that established Gerwig as a filmmaking force to be reckoned with. But before she reached this career milestone, Gerwig made her name acting—first in micro-indies like Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Baghead (2008), and then in festival darlings including Greenberg (2010) and the aforementioned Frances Ha. Now claiming her place among the current vanguard of female auteurs taking charge of their careers and the movie industry—a group that includes Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Jane Campion, and Patty Jenkins—Gerwig is veering off the leading lady track and opting to go behind the camera. “What scared me most was the fact that I knew there was a perfectly good lane in which I never did this,” Gerwig explains when I ask about her decision to break into directing. “If I had never directed [Lady Bird], if I’d never written this, I would have been fine. I would have figured it out. I would have done things. But… if I wanted to carve out another path, no one was ever going to come to me. I would have to beat it out myself.” That path included a short stint in ballet before being told her body “wasn’t right”—“99.9 percent of bodies are not right for ballet,” she points out—and then a long stretch exploring other types of performance. Like her character in Frances Ha, “I kept dancing,” she says, “I still love dancing.” But she also took up theater in high school in California, including stints in community theater, which her parents encouraged. “I don’t think people think of Sacramento necessarily as a place where you can see a lot of theater, but there is a lot of great community theater there. I was seeing one or two plays a week, every week, for my entire childhood.” Eventually, she went to Barnard for undergrad, and during that time she continued to act while studying English and philosophy, subjects that would help her later as a screenwriter directing her own work. 

“My desire to direct and my determination to direct was a feeling of, ‘I’ve been given all these gifts, and I know all those women, and I know all those professors and all the women who came before me,’” Gerwig says. “And it’s not good enough if I don’t do it. I’m letting them down and I’m letting the next generation of those women down because—I felt like there was a sense of the gauntlet being thrown down to all of us.” Gerwig has picked up that gauntlet with record speed, starting with a co-writing credit on 2012’s Frances Ha, which she penned with her partner, writer/director Noah Baumbach. Gerwig currently lives in Manhattan with Baumbach, whom she initially met when he cast her in his 2010 film Greenberg, a veritable pageant of discomfort co-starring Ben Stiller. Baumbach split with his then-partner Jennifer Jason Leigh after making that film, and he and Gerwig started dating in 2011. She and Baumbach also co-wrote 2015’s Mistress America, in which she plays a hipster hustler who becomes friends with her stepsister-to-be, played by Lola Kirke. And in addition to writing, she continued to kill it on the acting front with memorable roles in Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan, and Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, among others. Gerwig’s early work on so-called “mumblecore” indies (a subgenre of low-budget films characterized by naturalistic dialogue and production) required her to learn everything from how to hold a boom to editing and finding costumes—all skills that served her well as a director. She also soaked up everything she could while working on larger film sets. Between this sort of on-the-fly film training and a rapturous love for movies—you can find Gerwig and Baumbach haunting N.Y.C.’s art house theaters all the time, and our conversation is peppered with references to the Chantal Akerman film Jeanne Dielman, and French writer/directors Claire Denis and Leos Carax—Gerwig realized she was ready to take her script for Lady Bird and fly. Lady Bird is a classic in the making, a quintessential coming-of-age story that’s usually the purview of male filmmakers and their boyhood stand-ins. Saoirse Ronan sparks as Christine, aka Lady Bird, a wild-haired teen who is prone to dramatics like throwing herself out of a moving car during a fight with her mother, the harried and excellent Laurie Metcalf. 

Lady Bird’s senior year is rife with discoveries, from her newfound love of theater to her interest in boys like Danny (Lucas Hedges), her sweet onstage co-star, and Kyle (Timothée Chalamet), a too-cool-for-school jerk whom Lady Bird longs to impress. She also struggles with embarrassment over her family’s finances; they’ve never been as well off as her peers, but things become even more fraught after her father, played by the legendary playwright Tracy Letts, loses his job. Still, Lady Bird has her sights set on life in the big city, and she’s determined to make it happen. Like Gerwig, Lady Bird grows up in Sacramento; also like Gerwig, she dreams of college in New York City where she can pursue her artistic dreams. However, that’s where the similarities ends. “I’m in every character in it, because they all came from a part of me or a part of other people who touched me,” Gerwig says. Relationships between women in Lady Bird are the connective tissue. Although the lead character dallies with boys, her relationships with her best friend and mother carry the narrative. “The idea of who women are when we’re not looked at by a man, that’s fascinating to me,” Gerwig says. “And to be a female filmmaker, what does it mean—is there a female gaze? What does that mean? How is it operative? What am I looking for on a screen that’s different than what a man in my position would be looking for?” “Maybe it’s not gender,” she continues. “Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it just has to do with personality. And I don’t ever want to reduce the accomplishments of female directors by putting them in the category of ‘female directors.’ But…how does gender play in art-making? It’s fascinating, and I think we’re just starting to dismantle it.” Gerwig’s scripts for Frances Ha, Mistress America, and Lady Bird all pass the Bechdel test with flying colors: each one features lots of female characters, these characters interact with one another, and the dialogue features women talking to each other about plenty of things other than men. “I’ve consciously tried to write female characters where their central story is not a question of whether she will or will not end up with some dude,” she says, adding, “I love those movies, I really do, and I’ll probably make one someday. But if you force yourself to find another plot, you’ll find there are endless narratives that don’t include it. I like writing about women in relation to other women—mothers and daughters, friends, sisters, mentors, employees and employers, et cetera—because men don’t know what women do when they aren’t there. These are powerful, complicated, rich relationships that deserve their own place in the collection of stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be human.” 

The complex humanity of women is at the forefront of Gerwig’s work at all times, no matter who’s behind the camera. And that’s no accident for the self-professed feminist. “I think about feminism and what it means all the time, and I’m always trying to figure out how to push it forward,” she says. “I wonder about what I’m still holding back, and how much of that gets internalized—that you stop yourself because it’s fucking hard for women to do what we’re not really supposed to do.” When she’s not on set, Gerwig eschews social media and cool events in favor of living a low-key life with Baumbach in N.Y.C., where she can enjoy an anonymity unavailable in the Hollywood bubble. “I get so much joy out of slipping by unnoticed. That’s a big part of how I feel I get ideas, and move through the world,” she explains. “What I will say is, having a partner who knows what it is that I do, and the odd requirements of the job, is very helpful, because there’s a deep understanding of what it asks of you and what it doesn’t ask of you, and how you ride these waves of certain things working and other things not working. It’s kind of an all-or-nothing job. You’re either working for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or there’s nothing. Which is an odd combination, and to be able to share that is good.” As we speak, it’s unclear whether anyone at the café notices or cares that an actor/writer/director on the rise is in their midst or if they’re doing the cool “ignore a famous person” thing New Yorkers are famous for. Either way, we’re left in peace except for the stellar waitress who keeps bringing us endless utensils to replace the ones we both keep dropping as we gesticulate. “I think I’ve always felt that getting to live in New York was living the dream,” Gerwig muses. “For me, just being here always has a quality of fulfillment. It’s wonderful that I have been able to act and write and produce and direct. But in a way, the enjoyment of being in New York has always been separate from that. I would want to be here no matter what.” As we wrap up our interview, Greta Gerwig takes out her wallet and tries to split the bill with me. “Here, let me throw some stuff down,” she says, relenting only when I point out that I can write off the breakfast as a work expense. Then she slips out the door into the sunshine, unnoticed, just the way she likes it. 

[malcolmteller-blog]

[HORROR] The Kingmaker and Me

I don’t like to think of myself as an addict. I mean, alright, that’s what I am, but I like to think of myself as something more than that, you know? I’m an adventurer, a dreamer, a wannabe scholar. A lover.

Okay, the hell with it - I’m an addict. It’s something I need to face, especially as it got me into the mess I’m in now.

I was born about thirty years ago in Halifax, Nova Scotia - Eastern Canada. I had a good life. Middle-class household, loving Mom and Dad, loving sister. Everything was perfect, except that it wasn’t.

Mom and Dad had various problems, namely that Dad was an adulterous dirtbag. Me and Jenny, my sister, seven years older than me, would hear them fighting when we were lying in bed at night. Finally, it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to cope some way or another, so, when I was fifteen, I started dabbling in drugs. Stuff like marijuana. Honestly, I loved it - it was the perfect escape for me. Eventually it got to the point where it was the only way I could wind down. A year later, Mom finally packed her stuff up and left and took Dad to the cleaners in the divorce. Real nasty stuff, a hell of a lot of hatred and bitterness between the two of them that Jenny and I definitely noticed. Like I said before, I needed to cope. So, I retreated into my friend group - who by this point were made up of mainly scumbags and juvenile delinquents - and, with one thing leading to another, I got into the harder stuff. Coke, ecstasy, that whole deal. Then, a few months later at a party, I tried heroin for the first time in an attempt to impress some girl. Boy, were we ever off to the races, then.

So, by the time I was eighteen my older cousins were dragging my struggling and fighting body out of Mom’s house, Jenny holding her as she sobbed so hard that her body wouldn’t stop shaking. I still remember that. She’d told me that I was out of her life until I ‘was her son again’. It breaks my heart now when I think about it. Of course, then I just hated her and thought she was being a total bitch. That’s what drug addiction does to you, though.

So, by the time the 2016 presidential election is happening, I’m hustling on the streets of Vancouver, just a slave to the junk.

That’s when I discovered Elfa.

How to describe Elfa? It was the most amazing shit imaginable. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s what I imagine Heaven must feel like. It’s amazing. There was a bunch of other stuff too, which I’ll get to, but it was the best drug I’d ever taken.

I’ll do a quick rundown. I get into the squat where I’m living with some other fiends, and I popped a pill - just one, to start off with.

Within ten seconds of me swallowing the thing, I was on the top of the world. It felt like that first high I got the first time I ever did heroin. Fuck chasing the dragon, with this shit I’d damned well caught the dragon.

But that wasn’t it. For the first few hours, I laid on my dirty mattress in this state of ecstatic bliss. Just, I’d never thought this kind of feeling could exist. For the first few hours, I just laid there, this huge smile on my face. Life was perfect at that moment. Then, I drifted off to sleep.

In that sleep, I saw things. Things you’d never imagine. Cities as ancient as time itself. Entire galaxies filled with song. Then… then beasts, beasts that anyone would see as horrific and terrifying if they saw them, but I saw them as beautiful. I think that’s the crew the Kingmaker was from.

We’ll get to him.

But by the time I was on hour twenty six, I was drifting in and out of sleep, and the whole way through I had become enmeshed in this other world, this higher state of consciousness and being. My entire body felt warm, and I felt as if I was floating in water. I felt like I was connected to every atom in the world, that I was one with everything. Like I was back in the womb, honestly. In a lot of ways it was like a lot of other highs I’d had, but with Elfa, it was far better than anything I’d ever had and could ever have imagined. I’d been using for a little over a decade, and I hadn’t ever experienced anything like this.

Then I crashed.

Out of nowhere, I was snapped out of the high and back into the real world. Believe me, it was a jarring shift. One minute I was basically in the highest level of paradise imaginable, and the next I was laying on my mattress in a dirty squat, feeling like absolute garbage.

I started to panic almost immediately. The sheer goodness of the high and the abrupt end to it led to me needing the high really bad. So, scrambling to the baggie across the room, my hands shaking, I picked up the baggie, opened it, and shook a couple pills out onto my palm. I wasn’t even thinking when I swallowed both of them at once. I waited. For fifteen minutes. Fifteen of the longest, most agonizing minutes I’d ever spent in my entire life, and all for nothing. Nothing happened. The two other pills didn’t work.

I tried some more. Still nothing. In a rage, I threw the baggie at the wall, most of the pills scattering all over the place. I sat down, shaking - with rage, and with the mad, desperate need for a fix. I was so. Fucking. Furious. As far as I was concerned, I was ripped off in one of the worst ways possible. The little bastard gave me a baggie that had one good pill in it, the rest garbage, probably so he could rope me in to buy the real stuff at double the price.

So there I am, sitting on the floor of my room, my mind racing with plots and plans of how to expertly fuck over the bastard who did this to me.

That’s when I heard a voice inside my head.

Like, not the voice of me thinking something. No, this was something different. It was as if someone was in the room with me.

I’m sitting on the dirty floor, shaking with rage and with the need for a fix, and trying to work out how I’m gonna beat the living fuck out of the little bastard who ripped me off. I’m sitting there, and I hear the voice - of a man - this slow, young (as in early forties), smooth, well-spoken voice. The kind you’d imagine an Ivy League professor to have.

“Danny.”

My head shot up and then swerved around as I desperately tried to track down who spoke to me. No one was in view. I got up and walked to my door and peeked around the corners. Still nobody. Then it spoke again.

“I’m not in the building, Danny.”

I stood there, frozen, my blood pumping and feeling like ice in my vein. What the hell was going on? Was I going nuts?

The voice responded to that thought, interestingly enough. “No, you’re not going nuts. Sit down, and we can talk.”

I slowly - shakily - walked back to my mattress and sat down on it. Then, the voice continued.

“You can call me the Kingmaker. I’m the one who controls the highs you get from Elfa. I can switch it on and off at my pleasure.”

My heart was pounding at this point because I was starting to freak. The fuck. Out. I’m sitting here, and some disembodied voice is telling me that it controls whether I get high or not from a drug that I took. This was way, way too crazy for me. Evidently, though, the Kingmaker sensed my panic and so kept talking to me.

“Just calm down. Everything will be alright.” Not listening, I started to - in an internal panic - try and figure out how to get out of this situation. The Kingmaker noticed that too, and this time spoke more firmly. “I said calm.” Something in the voice… it made me calm down. What I know now, but didn’t quite notice then, was that the voice at that point had struck fear directly into my heart.

So I was forcefully calming myself down, just sitting there, and it continued.

“Now, we can begin. I’m happy to let you keep getting high off of Elfa. You’ve already caught a glimpse of what’s out there.” It paused, then continued, answering a question that popped into my head as it said that. “No, what you saw - the cities, the beings, everything - it’s all real. Beautiful, wasn’t it? Now, like I said, I’m happy to help you get high, but you have to do some things for me.”

I started to answer hesitantly, but the hesitancy was all for show. I was trying my hardest to not answer quickly and eagerly, because I was willing to do anything - anything - for some more of that high.

“So,” I said, trying to sound sufficiently slow and reluctant, “what do you need me to do?”

Then he told me, and left. Now, many of you may think that what I ended up doing was just fucked up, and I’ll be honest with you, it kind of was. But, I was a fiend, I needed my fix, and so I was able to justify it to myself.

It took me a full day to find a stray cat, and then a couple of hours later I’m out in the forest cutting its throat open and bleeding it out into this bowl I’d brought with me. Then, when the cat was fully bled out and completely dead… now stay with me here, when it was fully bled out and completely dead, I drank its blood from the bowl. All of it. It tasted fucking bitter, and I felt like I was gonna vomit, but I forced it all down. I know, I know how this sounds and even looks. I murdered a cat and drank its blood because a voice in my head told me to. What can I say? Elfa did so much for me, and I needed it just that badly.

So I get home, pop an Elfa, and sure enough, I’m brought to heights I’d never conceived of. This was even better than the first high I’d gotten. I felt like I didn’t even have a body, like… how do I describe this… like I didn’t even exist, like I was just the peaceful background radiation of the universe.

I saw things, too, this time immediately. I saw entire cities of stone and glass suspended in the stars, with beings I can’t even begin to describe scurrying back and forth in them. I saw flights of angels streaking across an endless sky, bright trails of light being left behind in the wake of their wings.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of bliss, I woke up in bed, as if I’d had the best sleep of my life.

I got up, and made myself breakfast, then hit the town. I didn’t feel the craving then. I never did right after I used Elfa - that was the trick of it, and I do think it was how the Kingmaker managed me. He would manipulate the high and my need in some sick sort of alternating balance, I’d soon discover.

The sky was clear of clouds, and the sun was so bright. As I walked, I just started… thinking, about life, about me. I started to think about my sister. Jenny, oh God, Jenny. Her dark hair, her warm but mischievous smile, and how she’d always been so full of light and energy. I remembered all that, and most of all I remembered how much she loved me, even when everything turned to shit.

As I was walking through the city, ignoring people’s stares (let’s face it, my clothes were ratty as fuck), I started to miss her. I hadn’t missed her in the time I’d been gone. I mean, to be honest, that was because I didn’t let myself miss her, because I didn’t want that level of hurt. This time… this time, though, I started to think on her, and I started to wonder what it’d take for me to get back into her life.

I thought a lot about that as I walked, and then I made my way back home. Then, for the next week, I lived in a blissful haze of Elfa and heroin.

Then the high stopped, and the Kingmaker called on me once again.

“Danny.” That calm, smooth voice. It didn’t sound any different, but… well, something about it this time, it chilled me to the bone. I guess I somehow sensed the true nature behind it.

I was laying in bed, blissful in the afterglow of Elfa - the high having dissipated hours ago, but traces of it still present. Hearing the voice, I shot up in bed, my entire being at full alert.

“Yeah?” I asked sleepily. The Kingmaker didn’t waste any time in responding.

“I need you to do something for me again.” Short, and to the point.

“What?” I answered, curious.

“There is a man who will be leaving his work place tomorrow evening, at a particular office building downtown, I’ll direct you to it when the time comes. You’ll know who he is when you see him.” Then an odd silence.

I waited, then asked, somewhat impatiently, “And? What am I supposed to do then?”

“You are to kill him, with a knife, and cut his heart out and eat it.”

My eyes widened, and after a moment of confusion, I started to laugh.

“Okay, no, you’re fucking me. You don’t want me to do that.”

“I do.” His voice was flat, deadpan.

The reality of the situation sunk in, and I started to shake - not from withdrawal this time, but from fear.

“No, no no,” I started to mutter, shaking my head. “I-I can’t. No, I won’t.” Murdering an animal? Fucked up, but doable. But this? I mean, Christ, there’s a huge difference between a stray cat and a fucking person. I wasn’t gonna do it, and that was that.

The Kingmaker remained silent for a few brief moments, and then spoke again. “Fine. Have it your way. But I have a feeling you’ll see things my way eventually.” That was it. He said that, and didn’t say anything to me for a long time after that.

At first I thought I’d got off easy. Like, ‘oh, you’ll see things my way eventually’. Pfft. What the hell was that, anyways? No, asshole, I’m not gonna see things your way, so fuck off. As for the Elfa… well, even a dope fiend has his limits.

Or so I thought.

The craving hit hard in under half an hour. At 1PM, I was cooking myself some breakfast. By 2PM, I was pacing back and forth, in physical agony and not even able to think about anything but Elfa. God, Elfa. The things that drug could do to me, would do to me if I’d only see reason, I was thinking. But I still had my resolve, my will. I wasn’t gonna go and murder someone for a fix. That wasn’t me.

But then the evening came. Before then, during the day, I’d slammed some heroin to take the edge off. I got some high, but not nearly enough to make myself comfortable again, even after taking an amount that would have killed me had I taken it a month ago. The pain felt like it was in my very bones, and my body was slick with sweat, and I really felt like I was gonna die. I didn’t know if I’d make it to tomorrow. Then… and, look, I get it. When I tell you this part, you’ll hate me. I know you will. But you need to understand - junkies, when the junk has got ahold of us, it… it takes over our lives. It takes over everything. When the need is bad enough, well…

Basically, I started to rationalize it all to myself. What the Kingmaker wanted me to do. Like, everyone dies, right? Life is full of tragedy, and a lot of it senseless. Besides, who’s to say the guy wouldn’t get in a terrible car accident, or something like that, a week down the road? What’s one week taken off his lifetime? Really? And, I mean, maybe this Kingmaker person was actually God, which did make a weird sort of sense given how he could control my high. If he was God, then wasn’t I doing God’s will by killing this guy? Who could argue with that?

Long story short, the next evening I was in my hoodie crouched behind this poor bastard’s car, a knife gripped in my hand. What had put me there was a bunch of half-assed, shaky as hell justifications and rationalizations that would have collapsed the second they were critically examined by anyone other than myself.

So I’m there, and I’m waiting. The craving had gone way way down since I decided to go for this. It was the Kingmaker’s doing, I knew. Finally, after a few minutes, I caught sight of the guy. He looked to be mid-forties, with graying temples. He was dressed in a sleek business suit that must have cost a fortune, and was carrying a black briefcase. He impatiently checked his phone as he approached the car, and was putting it back into his pocket just as he reached the car and as I jumped out.

The parking lot was clear except for his car, and the two of us. He’d worked late. So no one heard as I forced my body against his, or as I started stabbing the knife into his neck - over and over again, as hard as I could - as he screamed his head off. No one heard as I was straddling his lifeless body minutes later, blood covering my hands and arms as I started to cut into his chest. No one heard that, and no one heard as I bit into his wet, meaty, red heart, forcing the meat and the blood down in hard swallows as I desperately tried not to vomit it all back up.

I was back at my place a couple hours later. I was sobbing harder than I’d ever sobbed before as I entered my room. I felt like I didn’t deserve to live, because I knew I didn’t. I couldn’t get that next hit of Elfa in me fast enough. I needed to kill the pain. More than anything else, I needed to.

I don’t need to describe the high. It was, as usual, amazing, and it did drown out the pain and horror I felt at having done what I did. Just blissful, peaceful eternity. Then it ended, and the Kingmaker called me again.

“Danny.” Smooth, calm, collected as ever. Me hearing it as I laid on my bed, perpetually growing traces of withdrawal stabbing their icy fingers into my bloodstream as he spoke to me.

“What do you need?” I asked flatly. I was drained, powerless, lacking all strength and energy. I was his slave, and we both knew it. I felt so horribly small, so weak.

“Go to the beach tonight. Make a bonfire, and bleed over it. The flame will turn green, and that way you’ll know it worked.”

“Know that what worked?” I asked, but he didn’t respond. He was gone, and almost immediately, I started to feel the withdrawal far, far more.

So hours later, with the moon shining bright above me, I carefully and steadily cut my arm open over the bonfire I’d prepared. The flames eagerly licked the air with the sheer heat from it bathing my face and body. As my blood hit the fire, the flame turned green and jumped high into the air. Then something weird happened. I saw, for a brief moment in the flames, a horrifying beast. I can’t describe it. The ripples of its muscles, the sharp, bloodied claws, the skin that looked like it had been boiled… our eyes met briefly, and I felt - I knew - true fear at that point. True, overwhelming, absolute fear.

An hour later, I was in my bedroom rolling on Elfa. Something was odd, though. The high didn’t penetrate me quite fully. I still felt anxious, unnerved, scared, based on what I’d experienced back at the bonfire. Eventually, the high wore off and as it did, I finally found the strength inside of me to try and get out. To try and put the Kingmaker, and the Elfa, behind me. I was unsure and unsteady, but something about what I saw at the bonfire changed something inside of me. I had to at least try to get out. To do that, I’d start with my sister. I guess I’d found a small kernel of strength in me, powered by hope.

The next day, after I’d dug up enough information on her on the Internet, I was walking to a nice-looking office high-rise downtown. I was going to meet my sister as she left work that day. This would be the first time I’d seen her in years, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. But the truth was, I had nothing at that point. Nothing - apart from Elfa and the Kingmaker. I wanted to get out, but I needed support. I knew I couldn’t do it alone. That was why I wanted to go to Jenny - she was my sister, and I really felt that, somewhere deep down, she still loved me. I didn’t even consider going to my parents - too ashamed.

Anyways, I made it to her building and waited at the foot of the steps leading up to the main entrance. It was huge and all glass, the sun shining through and reflecting off of it. I had timed my arrival to be right at the end of her day, so I didn’t get ambushed by security before she showed up.

Sure enough…

I spotted her coming down the steps, briefcase in hand and her clad in a sharp pantsuit. She was even more beautiful than she looked in the pictures - a sharp face, with jet black hair tied into a short ponytail, and bright green eyes. She looked so different, yet at the same time, just how I remembered her.

As she approached, I stepped forward and called out her name. “Jenny!”

She looked up and, catching sight of me, automatically recoiled - in fear, horror and disgust. Then she just stopped, and squinted a tiny bit, really looking at me, and then her eyes went wide.

“Danny?” she whispered, in a kind of half-gasp.

Later we were standing outside a coffee shop across the street from her work. We couldn’t go in because the owners wouldn’t let me - me personally - inside. I looked like a fucking mess, and I hadn’t showered since I started using Elfa. Still, I was excited, even though Jenny was… not. She kept glancing around, the only consistent movement with her eyes being that she refused to meet mine. I sensed this odd coldness coming from her. Later, I’d realize why.

“Jenny,” I gushed, the withdrawals starting to come on, but just barely. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” she responded immediately, all too quickly, before asking a question. “What do you want?”

I was taken aback by her shortness with me, but I didn’t think too much of it, even though I guess I should have.

“I wanna get clean.” I had such hope and energy in my voice.

Finally, her eyes met mine - and in them, I saw. I really, really saw. Just this coldness - hatred, even. It finally sunk in - she wasn’t going to be my saviour. My soul sank as I realized, and started to internally curse myself for being so stupid.

“So,” she said, her voice like ice, “you think you can just forget about everything - what you put all of us through - and try to worm your way back into my life?” I found it odd that she said ‘my life’, and not ‘our life’, as in her, Mom and Dad. I filed that away as I responded.

“Jen, come on,” I said, laughing nervously, “don’t be like this. I’m really trying he-” but she cut me off.

“You’re not gonna get clean and we both know it, let’s be honest with ourselves.” Her voice was flat and cold. I just stared at her. She’d changed. Something inside of her - she wasn’t the warm, bubbly teenage girl and then young woman that I once knew. In the dead silence between us, she said one final thing.

“Don’t contact me again. If I see you again, if I hear from you again, I will get the police involved.” With that, she abruptly brushed past me and started to quickly walk away.

A mix of emotions flooding into my being, I thought quickly and then, deciding on one last gamble, called out to her.

“Jen! What about Mom and Dad? How are they?”

She stopped abruptly, and slowly turned around, a look of confusion on her face. The kind of look that said “how could you not know?” Then it softened, with her realizing that whatever it was, there was no way for me to know. She called out, “Mom died of cancer five years ago, and Dad died of a heart attack last year.” Then she turned, and walked off, quickly rounding a corner.

I just stared after her, completely silent with everything inside of me crashing down all around me. My God, Mom and Dad… As I thought on that, the tears just started to run forth. Everything I’d done - to them, to Jen, to myself - it was all a fucking waste. Now I truly had nothing. Not just no family, but no hope, either. It all started to sink in. I wasn’t going to get clean. I wasn’t going to break free of the Kingmaker. It was all a sucker’s game. That’s all it was and was all it’d ever be. How could I have been so goddamned stupid?

I made it home quickly enough. Sure enough, as I entered the door, I heard that smooth voice of his.

“Danny. I need you to do one more thing for me, then we’ll be done for now.” The withdrawals weren’t that intense when he asked - I guess he knew where my mind was at with him at this point.

“What do you need?” I asked immediately. He answered, and I set about carrying out his wishes immediately. I was fully intent on doing whatever he needed. I’d learned to face the facts - this was my life now. Elfa, and the Kingmaker. The three of us tied together in a sordid and twisted dance of dominance, craving and power.

It didn’t take long for me to get to the dilapidated, run-down hotel in the ghetto of my city. I was steadfast as I walked through the lobby, its cracked and graffiti-laden hallways appearing to widen ahead of me, a sort of ceremonial sign of respect to the representative of a king. I wasn’t nervous as I knocked on the door on the top floor, and I wasn’t nervous when I saw her as she opened the door. Looked to be about mid-twenties, shaved head, various tattoos up and down her arms. I noticed the signs of early addiction - the track marks on her arms, and the visual signs on her face of the drugs wearing her down. I stepped in and closed the door behind me, and we went to work.

The sex was frenetic and hurried, but not passionate, but rather mechanical. All that was in my ears was the sound of our bodies pressing against each other, and our respective gasps. Finally, I climaxed, and it was over. My part was done.

I headed home immediately after, and popped some Elfa. I laid on my bed and closed my eyes as I drifted off into the blissful haze of the drug.

Except instead of encountering what I wanted - needed - to encounter, I encountered something else.

I opened my eyes and felt a massive, overwhelming wave of horror and terror. I saw a fast, jumbled montage of images, each with its own complex set of emotions. First was imagery of the tasks the Kingmaker had had me carry out - the killing of the stray cat, the murder and the cannibalism, the bleeding, the sex. Then the sight of the moving bodies of myself and the woman shifted and twisted until there was a vision of a woman in a room, giving birth. The baby screamed as it came out, but something about the sight of it chilled me. Before I could get a closer look, there was now a vision of a group of black robed figures in a warehouse. Then a person in a white robe stepped forward, with a woman’s figure. She lowered her hood, and… God, she wasn’t even human. Her skin was red - too red - and scaled as well. It looked like it had been boiled in water for hours.

She lowered herself to her knees, leaned forward and started to retch. Finally, she vomited forth a human heart - at least that’s what it looked like. Black, wet and pumping by itself on the floor. Then… then the heart started to grow. It got bigger, and bigger, and by the time twenty seconds had passed, it was the size of a person. Then a claw - twisted and curled, with long, incredibly sharp claws - burst out of the giant heart, with another claw bursting forth and ripping the flesh of its prison open. Finally stepping out was a beast, and… I recognized it. It was the beast I’d seen in the green flame at the beast, and it was horrifying. I felt fear - true, raw fear - stab into my heart with a fierceness I’d never known before, and more than I ever will again for the rest of my short life. And I knew - somehow, I don’t know how, but I knew - that this was the Kingmaker. The rest of what I saw… I can’t. It’s too terrible to describe.

The imagery and visions abruptly ceased and I shot up in my bed, shaking with raw fear and feeling completely vulnerable, more vulnerable than I’d ever felt before.

I spent the next five hours shaking and sobbing wildly, not even able to think. This was too much. This was too fucking much. I sobbed and shook, but in the end, I stopped myself. In the end, I forced myself to calm down, because I had to. Then, when I calmed myself down, I thought for about an hour, and decided what to do.

First thing, I flushed the rest of the Elfa. Something must have interrupted the Kingmaker’s high - I didn’t know and I didn’t really care. Then, I headed east - to Calgary. Get clean, that was my main goal. Before I thought I needed a saviour to get clean, that I needed my sister. That was bullshit, I realized - I just needed a big enough kick in the ass. I managed to get into a program, and I did the whole nine yards - stayed in that place for months. When I got out, I was a new man. Fresh, a new lease on life, a new hope. A new hope… what a weird thing to call it.

Anyways, the people in the program wanted to hook me up with a job, but I hit the road before they could. I had bigger plans. I spent the next three months tracking the woman who I’d seen in my vision - the one who gave birth. I was able to survive because I’d been hustling for years, and on the tracking side, I felt drawn to her. Deep down, I had this small, quiet feeling that told me where to go. Call it a divine connection or something. Whatever it was, it worked.

The first time I ever saw her - this virgin mother - she was living in a homeless shelter in Toronto, three months pregnant. I didn’t move on her then - I waited. I waited for a week, biding my time. Waiting for the right moment. Moments - especially crucial ones - are important, and the last thing you want to do is squander everything by moving in too hastily. Finally, the right time came.

She was heading back to the shelter late in the evening. The city was illuminated by the city lights - both those of the high rises and other buildings, and that of the street lights. I was walking toward her from behind, a few metres behind her, masses of moving people surrounding both of us. I sped up. Finally, I was right behind her, and I think she sensed me, because she was turning around to face me just as I raised the knife in my hand and jammed it into her ribs.

She cried out, screaming at the top of her lungs. I didn’t have long, so I stabbed her over and over all over her neck and body, including - especially - in her stomach. I needed to move fast, so that’s what I did. My movements were quick, but furious. I needed to get the job done right the first time, and in the end, I did. In less than a few seconds, she was on the ground, blood pouring out of her neck and body wounds. I knew my part was done. I could feel her dying - dunno how to explain that - and most importantly, I felt the child inside of her die.

I didn’t stick around. My panic rising and my need to escape taking over, I took off running, some Good Samaritans in hot pursuit. After racing through some alley ways and jumping some fences, I managed to lose them. But I knew the police would be there soon.

I kept moving, glancing all around me as I did. I needed to find cover - needed to find a place to hide. In managed to spot the back door of a high-rise open in an alleyway. I ducked in. Making my way up the stairwell and through a door, I found myself in an brightly lit, impeccably clean hallway. Expensive apartment building, for sure. I made my way down the hallway, my pulse racing and my heart pounding and the adrenaline pumping, but not sure of what to do. Finally, I happened on a maintenance room, the door slightly ajar. I peeked inside, and seeing no one, stepped inside and shut the door.

It had the usual things you see in a maintenance room. Interestingly, it also had a powered and logged in laptop, presumably belonging to the maintenance guy who stepped out. I closed the door behind me, locked it, and my adrenaline going haywire inside of me, I started to think. Shaking from the adrenaline and out of sheer nervousness and fear, I thought, and in the end, I finally decided what to do.

So here I am. I’ve written this story, because I need to leave an account of what happened. I need everyone to know why things happened the way they did. I need everyone to know why the woman died, why she had to die, and why I ended up where I am. I need to leave this account because I won’t be around to explain in court.

The knife is in my hand. After this is posted, I’ll slice my throat open to end everything. My suffering will end, and so will my role in this twisted, fucked up play I’ve found myself in. It’s hard. I’m crying my eyes out because I never imagined I’d find myself in this situation. It’s fucked, right?

Okay. Okay. I think I’m ready now.

But before I go, one last thing: if you ever hear of a drug called Elfa, or a person called the Kingmaker, well, do yourself a favor and run as far and as hard as you fucking can.