#drifters Birmingham

[thebirminghammusicplug]

Alabama gate keeper K.Digga is set to be released & says he’s back to being the greatest at what he do. The Alabama native has been the key to some of your favorite rappers like MoneyBagg Yo, HoneyKomb Brazy, Rylo Rodriguez, Doe B, Yo Gotti, just to name a few. He’s also stated his mission is to bring the music community of Alabama together for his 'State Of Emergency' Celebrity Basketball Tour (Stop The Violence Campaign).

[bijouxcarys]

𝐓𝐨 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐒𝐨 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 (𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧)

Masterlist

Robert Plant x fem!OC

Description: Sometimes the pain of what should have never been, opens your eyes to what can be.

Tags: @celestial-dragoness @whothefuckisanja @callmethehunter @ourshadowstallerthanoursoul @strsmn @firethatgrewsolow @chromations @brownskinsugarplum76 @angrychicksposts (if you'd like to be added, just let me know!)

Elena practically flew forwards, her hand only just managing to stop the rest of her from slamming into the dashboard. She blinked once and slowly looked to her right.

“Are you joking?” she asked monotonously. “What the fuck was that?!”

“Don’t blame me, blame the fucking pigeon on the road!” John pointed ahead of him, one hand gripping onto the steering wheel. Elena followed his pointed finger and sighed.

“Bon…” she began. “That’s a fucking badger.”

“Huh?” He squinted, struggling to see a thing through the persistent sun. “Gah!” he grunted, waving his hand relatively in the same direction of the sun as he started the car up again, continuing their drive. “El, will you pass me my sunnies from my bag?”

Elena looked at John as if he was speaking an unfounded language. “You’re such a diva now,” she huffed, but smirked to let him know she wasn’t serious. Though she was certain he knew her enough to know she could never be snarky to him. 

With an exaggerated sigh, she turned and stretched over in between the two car seats, reaching for John’s bag. She pulled it over to her and got to unzipping it, just as he made quite a sharp turn, causing her to fall sideways into him.

“My God, get your arse out of my face.”

“Stop making stupid driving decisions, then!”

“Why don’t you bloody drive? You’re old enough now.”

“I’ll end up killing someone, mate.” Elena rummaged through his bag, looking for his sunglasses. She snorted when she came across handfuls upon handfuls of spare drumsticks. “You got enough sticks in here, Bon-Bon?” she asked rhetorically, finally finding his sunglasses and retrieving them.

“Here y’are,” she plopped back down into the passenger seat, holding the shades out for John. 

“Cheers,” he thanked her, clumsily putting them on his face with one hand, poking his eye in the process. “We’re almost there, by the way.”

Elena nodded, taking in the more urban character of their surroundings. It was a contrast to where she and John had grown up and spent most of their time. Sure, they weren’t all the way out in the countryside, but everything was within walking distance from each other. The closer into Birmingham you got, the more bus stops and taxi ports came into view, and the more reclusive passers-by seemed to be.

John had learned the ins and outs of Birmingham for the most part, ever since he started to pursue drumming full time and had to make these journeys in and out of the city. His recent endeavour, a band eccentrically named Crawling King Snakes, had inspired new confidence in him. The colourful landscape of musicians he had come across had never been more vibrant than the one he found himself in the middle of now. More than anything, hope was peeking over the horizon.

“So, what should I expect from your new bandmates?” Elena asked, resting her legs on the dashboard and tracing her finger across the grooves on her brown corduroy trousers.

“Nothing too crazy. Expect a lot of Welsh from Dave. Paul’s quiet… Dunno, they’re just chilled out guys.” He shrugged.

“Not really giving too much away, are you?”

“They’re hard to describe, to be honest with you. You just have to meet them,” John chuckled. 

Elena left it at that and sat back, enjoying the rest of the car ride. The radio had treated them nicely that day, feeding them with the slick tunes of Little Richard and The Drifters, to Elvis and The Everly Brothers. All music the two friends enjoyed throughout the years. Elena had taken a recent interest in The Rolling Stones, a sharp turn from what she was used to listening to. Growing up, she found her place in the Blues, and Soul. She could listen to the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole for hours and never tire of their silky vocals; the pure emotion and heart that went into each stave and syllable rang deep within her, and she felt every word like kitten kisses upon her ears. 

Since John decided to become a full-time drummer, she’d been exposed to a wider variety of music that seeped from the essence of da blues to form a complete musical revolution that had quickly grown on her. The first time she heard the Stones was during her late night shift at work. Minimal pay for a 17-year-old, but the pub’s great company and tunes cancelled out the meesely wage. Satisfaction stuck with her all night. I can’t get no…neh neh neh nene neh neh… All. Night. 

The flood gates were swung open once she stepped foot into the record shop in search of more Stones. That’s when she first came across Bay City Rollers, Cream, The Yardbirds… it was a whole different world and Elena hoped with her entire being that there would be more of it to come—that it wasn’t a mere diversion in the chaotic lineage of music evolution.

Bag over his shoulder, John led Elena inside the building, where Crawling King Snakes had booked out a small space for a couple of hours in exchange for £100. Dave was somewhat peeved that they had to spend that much on a couple of hours, but was easily convinced nonetheless. 

“Ayy, there he is!” Paul exclaimed, raising his arms in the air as he spotted John at the door with his female companion.

“Ayy, y’alright, mate?” John greeted him with a manly hug, slapping each other’s backs in the process. It amused Elena greatly when she witnessed John in the presence of other guys; his entire demeanour toughened and he gave the facade of a sharp-tongued lad’s lad. Yes, he had it in him. But the correlation between that and his surroundings was too coincidental for it not to be causational.

The room really was small for a jamming session. Four yellow strip lights hung above, and the carpet was worn and colourless, as though waiting to be quenched by the kaleidoscopic symphonies of talented musicians. 

“Dave, get your arse over ‘ere,” Paul waved his hand over to the other male in the room, long-haired and lost in thought with a blue bass guitar slung over his shoulder. 

“El,” John began, slinging his arm around Elena and bringing her beside him. “This is Paul Martinez and Dave Edmunds—guitar and bass. They’re mental. Beware.”

Elena laughed and shook her head, holding out her hand to greet the two men politely. They reciprocated the greeting with friendly smiles, one accompanied by a cigarette hanging from his lips.

“This is Elena. She’s my best friend, partner in crime, and primary critic. If anyone knows what sounds good, it’s this girl, here,” he proudly introduced with a squeeze of her shoulders against him. 

“Good to meet you,” Paul said through the muffle of his cigarette. 

“Right, El, I need to set up properly, you’re alright just hanging about, yeah?” John checked, putting his bag down on a nearby chair. 

“Mhm,” Elena nodded with a smile. “I’ll be here.” She watched as John made his way over to the drum riser to get to work on tightening the drum skins and double checking placements.

With her arms folded comfortably, she took a small step backwards, only to collide with something, or someone, coming through the door behind her. She turned her head and moved out of the way immediately. “Oh, sorry…” she instinctively apologised before looking up at the person in question. 

“Nah, yer alright, luv, I was just gunna skim past you.”

Her chestnut eyes fell in line with two striking orbs of blue—expressive and welcoming. He had thick, curly hair that traced the fine line of dirty blonde. It looked like it could easily switch up in the glare of the sun, with how delicate it seemed. It fell into strong sideburns that stopped just short of his chin, framing a dimpled grin that dismissed her apology.

“Ah, Bobby!” Paul called in the midst of lighting a cigarette. The blonde grunted and looked over at him with a dissatisfied glare.

“Will you stop calling me that?”

“Bobby Bobby Bobby Bobbehhhh,” John joined in, in a crouched position by one of the snares. With a boisterous laugh, he popped his head up, gesturing a drumstick at Elena. “Elena, Robert, Robert, Elena.”

Robert’s brows lifted in realisation, a smile once again taking over his features as he turned back to Elena with his hand held out. “Ah, you’re the one he’s been talkin’ about, then.” Clasping his hand in hers, he leaned in to give her a welcoming peck on the cheek, as he did with all the women he came across.

“Great to know he’s been talking about me,” Elena responded loud enough for the drummer to hear, earning a distracted middle finger from him in retaliation.

“Oh, he’s mentioned you a fair bit, yeah,” Robert nodded.

“That’s disconcerting…”

“No, all good things, luv, don’t worry.” Robert waved his hand in dismissal. 

They naturally drifted further into the room as everyone hooked themselves up to the few amps they had lying around. Robert was itching to get started. He’d been looking for other strong musicians with a similar zest for life to jive with for a while, and hoped that Crawling King Snakes could at the very least lead to something magnificent. It made him all the more nervous to test out new material, though, now that he had an audience. Not just any audience, either. The presence of John’s female companion, who Robert wasn’t blind enough to recognise as physically stunning. 

Even though this was simply an opportunity to jam and test out different sounds, he knew he had to get it right. Whatever it was. Early on, he learned that leaving a not-so-impactful impression on the ladies was the last thing anyone should do when performing. It would be a notch on his ego, an ego he was subconsciously trying to craft around the slightly sensitive, yet lively, 18-year-old boy that he was.

Little did he know he had already made a lasting impression, simply by the way he greeted Elena at the door. There was something extremely European about his way of saying ‘hello,’ in a sense that it held the weight of a respectful, gallant gentleman. To Elena, that was extremely comforting and unique; exactly the kind of person she’d enjoy surrounding herself with.

The way he chose to dress himself… wow. She’d very rarely seen men adorn their bodies with such delicate material, bohemian and Eastern-inspired all at once. If there was one thing Robert was, it was remarkable, exceptional… abnormal—everything the world was missing but didn’t know it needed. And that was just by the way he dressed.

It was fair to say Elena’s interest in this eccentric boy was piqued.

Incidentally, the feeling was mutual. Robert was instantly caught up in the way her deep brown hair fell in natural waves down her back, tamed, yet allowed to sway freely with every movement she made. And her eyes, fuck, they were so big and captivating. He’d already picked up on her accent, always one to take note of such things. Alluring, unapologetically informal. So care-free. He only hoped that his first impressions of her were accurate. It would be a shame to see something so beautiful turn out to be the complete opposite.

“Bonzo’s a great drummer, isn’t he?”

Elena, leaning against the wall with her hands behind her back, cocked her head in Robert’s direction. “Bonzo?”

“John.” He nodded his head towards him.

“He’s a fantastic drummer. Always thought that of him.” Elena’s voice was soft as she admired him from afar. 

“How long have you two been together?”

The brunette had to steal a minute to confirm she had heard correctly. She had paused amid her smile in John’s direction. “Who?” she checked, glancing at Robert.

“You and John.”

“Oh God, no,” she was quick to shake her head, face falling flat. “No, no…”

Robert’s light smile fell slightly, and a soft shade of pink infiltrated his cheeks. “No?”

“Yeah, no.”

“No, what?”

“We aren’t together,” she insisted with a gesturing finger between herself and her best friend. “Hasn’t he told you he’s married?”

Robert’s eyebrows scrunched up, sending a curious glance over at John. “It’s never come up in conversation, I guess.”

“It was recent, to be fair.” Elena watched Robert’s analytical observation. “He’s got a one-month old son, as well.”

“Well, shit,” Robert breathed, running a hand over his face. “Sorry, I just assumed ‘cause of how close you two seem to be…” Behind the comfort of his hand, he scrunched up his face in embarrassment and shook his head. “Fuckin’ Bonzo…” he muttered. Crawling King Snakes hadn’t been together for longer than a couple of months, and none of the eight sessions they'd had thus far consisted of private-life talk. Each of them were too preoccupied with the music and forming a cohesive combination of personalities to delve into the lives of one another.

Elena’s swift dismissal may have translated as abrasive, and she became quickly aware of that as soon as Robert hid his face behind his hand, inaudibly scolding himself. She didn’t jump to reassure him, however. His sensitivity to the smallest misunderstanding was captivating. Rare. There was no need to maintain emphasis on something that clearly left him unwillingly flustered.

So, she changed the topic, focusing on the nickname Robert had used twice now.

“You call him Bonzo?” Elena smiled, not only at the name, but the way it sounded on a Black Country tongue. 

“Yeah, well,” Robert chuckled, showing an off-centre slant in his smile that emphasised the dimple on his right cheek. “He was insistent on calling me Bobby, so I thought I’d call him something that would piss him off even more, but…” He shook his head, watching his bandmate test out each drum to perfection. “He actually didn’t mind it, so it’s stuck.”

“Bonzo…” Elena tested the name in her own mouth, the cadence different in her Lancashire drawl. “It fits him, dunnit?” She said through a grin. “I’ve always called him Bon-Bon.”

“Like the sweet?” Robert looked down at her, resting his hand on the wall beside her head casually, the small blip in their conversation fading into obscurity.

She nodded, still looking at John. “Mhm. It was actually an accident,” she pointed out, glancing at Robert. “I guess I struggled to say ‘Bonham’ when I was 4.”

“Blimey, you’ve known him for that long?”

Elena turned her head to him fully, her mouth dropping open a bit. “Alright, calm down, how old do you think I am?”

“I-I didn’t mean it as in ‘you’re old’!” Robert laughed. “You can’t be much older than us!”

“I’m actually younger than John by a year, so…”

“Well, I’m younger than him by a few months.” 

“So, there you go, I’m not old.”

“Listen, luv, I was simply shocked by how long you’ve known him,” Robert incessantly defended himself, much to Elena’s amusement. She smiled at him, looking back at John.

“Nah, I bloody wish I was older.”

“And why’s that?”

“Can’t drink yet, can I?” She gave Robert a pointed look.

“That’s right, you can’t.” He feigned distress, letting out an exaggerated sigh. “The struggles of being 17 in England.”

“Oh, I know, it’s torture,” she played along, resting her head back against the wall.

He smirked. “So, you’re a drinker, then, eh?”

“Well…” she shrugged, “A bit, yeah. I work in a pub as a waitress, so sometimes I can have half a pint at the end of the shift if there aren’t that many people in. Which hardly ever happens.” She rolled her eyes.

“I’ve only recently turned 18, so I’m still trying to get used to buying alcohol in the shops without worrying about being caught,” Robert chided. “What pub d’you work in?”

“The George Inn. It’s like slam in between here and up in Walsall.”

“I see…” Robert nodded, chewing his lip in thought.

“That being said, I want to move a bit closer to here, eventually. Not entirely in the city centre, though, I like the countryside a bit too much.”

Robert just smiled as she spoke. He took in every piece of information, enjoying the way she’d speak in her hometown slang every now and then. She definitely spoke a lot, but Robert didn’t mind. He admired it.

“Like, closer to the city, but not completely in the city… d’ya get what I mean?” She looked up at Robert, completely unashamed of her rambling. 

“I get what you mean, luv,” he reassured.

“I know this might be weird, but I just love being surrounded by nature. It’s how I grew up—how both of us grew up,” she gestured between herself and John, who was almost done. “And I have a thing for plants. Being in the city doesn’t really reward you with that stuff, does it?”

Elena watched as Robert’s smile widened, seemingly proud of himself. She raised an eyebrow. “What’s that look for?”

“You have a thing for plants?” he asked.

“Alright, I know it’s a bit… nerdy, or whatever, but yeah, I do. I like the smell of them when you’ve just watered them, and the reflections they make when the sun hits them in the right spot. They brighten up a room. There’s just something… comforting about them.”

“You really don’t need to defend yourself, Elena.” She liked the way he said her name. It was almost like he was testing it out for the first time. “I’m a bit like that with nature. My parents used to take me over to Wales every year on holiday, and we’d stay right in the heart of nature. Right on the coast. It was great.” He folded his arms, glancing over at John. “Aren’t you bloody done, yet?”

“You’re the one yappin’ on over there ‘bout God knows what, don’t have a chomp at Bonz!” Dave scolded, punctuated with a funky run of notes from his bass.

“Oh, shit,” Robert snorted, his face flushing where his sideburns faded out into a light beard. “Guess that’s me cue,” he said to Elena, a small boost of confidence overtaking him in the dawn of stepping in front of a band. “Oh, by the way, my last name is Plant. And I’ve been known to brighten up any room,” he teased with a boyish wink.

Elena couldn’t help but grin, as much as she tried to resist looking silly, as she watched him walk up to the mic stand.

If Robert didn’t feel some kind of pressure before, he certainly did now. He’d just bigged himself up in the most pretentious way possible, in his mind, by using his name. His bloody name! If he could, he would have slapped himself, right in the face. As he stood there, right in between his bandmates and the inquisitive gaze of Elena, he felt it brewing in the pit of his stomach. A certain drive. A metaphorical shove to let go. To show off. To submerge himself in the euphoria he called music. To do everything he’d admired his idols for for so long now. 

In this moment, he finally caught the essence by a fleeting blink of an eye, and he grasped it as firmly as he did the microphone, determined to never let it go.

Unsure of what she was expecting from the seemingly delicate, unruly-haired, sapphire-eyed young man in front of her, Elena sat on the edge of her seat as Robert exorcised such visceral sounds from his mouth. Unlike anything she’d ever heard. She watched as he got completely lost in the rhythm, shaking his curls around in time with each riff. 

The perfect combination of what she’d grown up on and what she’d recently ventured into.

It left her speechless; a big deal for someone like Elena, who rarely managed to keep her mouth shut. She had to distract herself, keep herself from acting like a babbling idiot before Robert even thought about asking her for feedback. So, whilst Robert helped John with some wires at the end of their session, Elena struck up a conversation with Paul, eager to know about his influences. But as much as she tried to focus on what Paul was saying, her eyes betrayed her mind, and made brief but definite glances at the singer on the drum-riser.

Robert bit onto his tongue as he concentrated on winding up one of the wires that had previously been connected to his microphone. John was busy complaining about how they had to make sure they left the room the way they found it, despite the state they found it in. They’d be blamed for it either way. Young, aspiring musicians were blamed for everything these days.

He made sure to nod along, but stayed entirely fascinated by Elena, making hidden glances over at her as she chatted with Paul. Her hair that struck him upon impact now became an accomplice to the rest of her; the two hours he’d been in her presence was enough for him to know he wanted to see more. He wanted to know her, learn from her. 

“Uh, Bonz’,” he interrupted John’s rant. He took another moment to succumb to the temptation Elena unknowingly laid out for him, her own cheeks adorned with faint dimples when she laughed. Finally able to tear his eyes from her, he looked at John. “Is, uh…” He nodded his head in the relative direction of Elena. “Is Elena gunna be around a lot, d’you think?” He tried to make his inquisition as casual as possible, nonchalantly hanging the wire in his hands up on one of the hooks behind the drumset. 

Whilst John Bonham enjoyed his off-peak ramblings, he wasn’t naive, and he most certainly wasn’t an idiot. This wasn’t the first time another guy had come up to him with a question about his childhood best friend, wondering if she was single, if they were a couple, or anything of that nature. It wasn’t a common occurrence, but it happened enough for him to recognise that tone and look in the eye of any man who asked about a woman with an underlying interest in getting to know her. 

He stood from his seat, stretching his back out with an exaggerated groan to cover up the smirk on his face. “If she’s not working, I should imagine she’ll be around us a lot,” he responded, watching intently at Robert’s reaction. But Robert knew he was being watched, and tilted his head in an attempt to cover his expressions with the curls atop his head. This’d be fuckin’ easier if my hair was long…

“You don’t have an issue with her bein’ around, do you?”

“No,” Robert answered immediately, lifting his head up to meet amused eyes. “Just… it was just a question,” he sighed, giving up as Elena appeared at the bottom of the drum-riser, smiling at John.

“Yep, almost done, El,” he responded to a silent question he knew she was about to ask. “What time you s’pposed to start your shift?”

“Five,” she answered, folding her arms and sending a comfortable smile over to Robert.

“What’d’ya think?” Robert asked, jumping down from the riser.

Elena’s smile widened, but her response was cut off before she could even begin.

“What do you mean, ‘what’d’ya think’?” John chuckled. “El loves anything I do, isn’t that right?”

“‘Ar Bon-Bon is clearly very modest,” Elena teased, sending John a wry grin before turning her attention back to Robert. She considered him for a second, the earlier elation settled in her chest for now, and she was able to respond with a coherent elegance. “Not bad, Plant.”

Robert answered with an equally elegant nod of appreciation.

“Right, all done, love,” John huffed, joining them. “Ready to go?” he asked Elena. She nodded with a hum of approval. “Same time next week, yeah?” John turned to Robert, offering a manly hug once again, which consisted of a half-hug and a slap on the back. Receiving confirmation, John fished out his cigarettes in preparation for the ride to Elena’s work.

Before leaving, Robert made sure to give Elena another gallant kiss on the cheek, letting her know it was nice to meet her. She responded in kind, giving his arm a small squeeze in the process.

And as he watched the dynamic duo leave, Robert found himself already restless for next week’s session, where he’d hopefully get to see Elena again.

[the-hindu-times]

Shrek The Musical - New Victoria Theatre, Woking - 31/10/23

On Halloween, with Christmas fast approaching, Shrek opened like a pantomime would but as the production proceeded, it actually lacked the full festive fun you’d expect.

Although the show didn’t quite measure up, the supposedly small Lord Farquaad ironically did; as the actor playing the role is no longer on his knees, to fit in with the musical’s well mannered moral. James Gillan possibly was the shortest person on stage but wasn’t noticeably enough for the one reference joke to work. Despite wishing these two elements were switched around, he was fantastic; simultaneously rescuing and stealing the show in the second half.

In fact, the shortfall was in the substance, which meant that the panto-style simplistic set felt more substandard than chic. Having seen many phenomenal productions over the past few months at the New Vic, it’s no wonder it felt dulled down.

Cherece Richards had her fan club with her in the audience as she transitioned from the smaller Rhoda McGaw Theatre (on opposite side of the room to the rear stalls entrance) to the main stage, to take on the role as the dragon. Antony Lawrence did an adequate job as Shrek, as he returned to the area he trained in acting, whilst Strictly Come Dancing’s Joanne Clifton (Princess Fiona) left the top twirling to the talented tribe of fairytale misfits.

With the orchestra pit consisting of drums, double bass, ukulele, trumpet, flugel, clarinet, sax, acoustic and electric guitars, the mediocre melodies in Himelstein/Darnwell’s boring ballads made these forgettable songs a chore to sit through until the “Shrektacular” finale we were promised; with an all dancing singalong for ‘I’m A Believer’. Written by Neil Diamond, and released by the Monkees in 1967, it proved that the old ideas are still the best; there was nothing for the children to really relish, let alone get involved with, up until this end point. When you think that such a simple showbiz idea, such as the 1899 folk song ‘Bobbing Up And Down Like This’, has worked so well at these young family affairs for years, it’s surprising that something as straightforward, yet excitingly enjoyable for the kids as being able to bob and down in their own theatre seats, wasn’t used here.

Shrek continues in Woking until Saturday, before heading to Eastbourne, Cardiff, York, Blackpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Coventry, Sunderland, Liverpool, Southampton, Milton Keynes, Hull, Cheltenham, Nottingham, Norwich, Belfast, Birmingham, Derry and Northampton, whist the New Voctoria Theatre prepare for The Magic of Motown, Frankie Boyle, Judi Love, BBC Rado 2 Sounds of the 80s, Fairytale of New York, Fastlove - A Tribute to George Michael, Cirque - The Greatest Show, The Drifters Girl and Pretty Woman all in this month of November.

Nic Bennett

[honeyboy-85]

Ichor Noire

Central Park welcomed me with the bite of its 15 degree frost-laden air. I was in the throes of delirium, with only my ex’s flannel for warmth, and socks that were already tattered during my brief flight from my apartment, back over on 5th Avenue. My muscles burned in protest, and my extremities stung with numbness, but my home was no longer my sanctuary. Emanating from my flat, the police station, Coney Island, and through every congested street of the city, was a pall that hung in the atmosphere. Somehow I could just tell, this biohazard was an event that was going to change the course of humankind; even if that meant we were careening to a dead end. My mind was erratic with the terror a cat might experience while fighting its way out of a burlap bag, after being hurled into a lake. The human faculties that proudly developed over the course of 6 million years flickered in my being, like the ostentatious Sony billboard that could be seen all the way from 42nd Street. I had to find some place to hide in this squalid, rectangular woodland. Existential despair threatened to halt me in my tracks, but I pushed it to the gnarled, ugly cellar of my disintegrating mind. My feet might be taken by frostbite before sunrise, but I didn’t feign a flowery smile through years of fear from Russian ICBMs, only to fall apart before this new, shapeless fear. Or was it actually new? I guess I should start from the beginning. My name is Ellie Marsh. I grew up in Winnfield, Louisiana. I thought about going to Tulane for Journalistic studies, but decided New York City might be the change of pace that I needed. Summer and Fall ran their courses, and even though the city was ragged with homeless colonies and needed a fresh coat of paint, there was a certain rugged hominess to this crazy, neglected city. I felt like here, history was constantly being rewritten. What more could a journalist ask for? It was shortly before Valentine's Day, when entire cities became derelicts. First, it would start with a few missing persons cases; a drifter here, a few college students there. Through the course of several days, the population would plummet by tens of thousands. Downward that number would spiral, until it flatlined. This happened all over the world, too - Hong Kong, Morocco, Shinjuku, Dallas, Rio, Birmingham, the list went on. Police were stretched tight enough to snap, trying to address the disappearances while also maintaining order among the destabilizing populace. Looting reigned supreme, between the business and residential districts. Arson, murder, and a general state of anarchy danced over the jaded cityscapes. The police couldn’t even bother with the blockades for the highways leading out of town, which allowed the smart residents to escape.

Later on, deserters would be questioned by authorities, and their testimonies would make no sense. Regarding family or friends that didn't escape, they wanted those people dead instead of rescued. Media experts were blaming it on a mass psychosis, a symptom of the as yet unexplained phenomena that was striking cities on a global scale.

There was no pattern to how these cities were hit. No cult had this level of mass influence. No known virus could cause this, no matter how unstable the mutation. It seemed the only alternative left was too preposterous for me to entertain.

As soon as New York's population began to get culled, the other field journalists and I set out to investigate our scoops. Was this really how I was meant to get my Pulitzer? By leveraging an international panic and attaching it to an alien invasion? I went to the police, just to look into missing persons cases.

Much of the force was out in the streets. They screeched away from West 20th, in the direction of a plume of fire that sprouted northwards. Every car I passed was free of tickets; apparently the police actually had real problems, for once.

I entered the station’s foyer. There were so few cadets and interns compared to usual, but the air was frenetic and tense. The receptionist was livid with stress as he was keying data into one of the latest IBM computers. He was terse and completely disinterested in indulging me with any sort of interview or comment. As I was being turned away though, I spied some officers going through the fire escape with tall stacks of paperwork. I trusted my intuition and came out to the side of the building.

 I bumped into a young man, possibly too young to even drink. He was quite apologetic to me, even though I was the one that sent his stack of paper and files tumbling. I knelt down to assist him, but also took the time to skim his paperwork for anything of interest. The idea that lept in my mind was rather mean, and might even cost him his job in a typical crisis, but I had to get unfiltered and reliable information. Thankfully the others were too wound up to assist him as I had already volunteered for it, and they dashed back into the station to fetch whatever remained of their files to be stored in the armored van next to us.

Taking my share of his papers, I placed them on top of his stack as he held it in waiting. Then, I leaned in close and left a light kiss on his cheek, telling him to keep up the good work in my best Southern drawl, before I teasingly dragged the brim of his hat down over his eyes, using his brief surprise to reclaim the stack I gave him.

The cadet let his stack tip over again. Perfect.

I promptly left the station behind me. My heart was racing out of control as I took the papers to the nearest alleyway. I sank against the wall, waiting for my palpitations to calm down, gripping the wadded up notes in my fist. There was a hobo curled up beneath some newspapers, but I wasn't too concerned about him ratting me out. Trembling, letting my breath get steady in the cool air, I finally sorted out the notes in whatever passed for sequential order.

There was a healthy garnishing of the usual destabilizing incidents that characterized this panic. However, two detective reports that made me stop breathing as I read were the following - One, Mayor Cochran had apparently murdered his entire family at his estate. He had been moved to the hospital to be treated for his injuries before awaiting questioning from authorities. The other was an unexplained wildfire that was currently razing Yankee Stadium to the ground. There was much less information available on this fire, but judging from the clouds turning charcoal black on the horizon, that seemed to be from Yankee Stadium.

It was clear at this point: I had to assume I only had the time to chase one of these leads. With the nature of the emergency at the stadium, everyone in the city would probably be clamoring to get a look at the action. Naturally, any sports journalists that were in the area would already have a front seat to their scoop. It seemed like it would be a wasted gesture to report on it from the back of the crowd, only to write on what most of the other editors would already be preaching at greater depth; I'd be stuck with crumbs whether I went there or not.

The mayor's family massacre definitely made for a byline that would practically write itself as a virtuoso. But getting to question him held an equally steep level of difficulty to the stadium, though with far fewer elements - he was under armed watch as the key suspect.

Stopping briefly at a local bistro for the strongest cup of Colombian coffee they had, I gulped it down with cream and made my way back to my apartment. I phoned up a friend of mine that worked at the hospital as a registered nurse, named Alison Sinclair. The incredulity of her voice was not hard to pick up on as I asked her to lend me a nurse’s uniform, so that I could sneak into the Mayor’s hospital room unopposed. I knew quite well how much I was jeopardizing her career, but I was amazed to see she relented. Perhaps she was also curious as to the nature of the Mayor’s meltdown.

Taking the time to grab a curly dark wig and set it convincingly in place on my head, I left it messy in front of my face and took the next taxi to Kings County Hospital Center. Making my way through the lobby, it seemed to be too much a scene of pandemonium to keep track of a girl just wearing street clothes. Good. I crept into the bathroom and, locking myself in the stall Alison told me about, I reached into the unlatched vent and retrieved the nurse’s uniform she left for me. Hurriedly changing into it, I came out, approached the mirror, put my hair in a bun, and applied some light makeup. I had no idea if my clothes and wig would remain undiscovered in the same hiding place, so I had to make this count.

I came out from the bathroom, with Alison casually waiting and bantering with me about how I’d forgotten the badge she handed me. I gave a quick glance before clasping it to my collar - Susan Greer, Dietician. The hospital barely had a little more than half of its usual staff to address the patients growing by the hour, and I tried my best not to let myself blanch at the thought of having to do anything related to medicine. Apparently Susan’s tag was chosen because the Mayor was also being treated for gout.

Some rather unpleasant thoughts caused me to stumble a bit on my heels. I caught some curious looks from hospital personnel, but I did my best to simply look like I was exactly where I belonged. My attention turned to my surroundings, however; the patients that got priority seemed to be in a state of despondence. No, not despondence, more like detachment. I could hear doctors as we passed by, asking the patients if they had any sensations despite not having a pulse. One of their answers was a little on the cryptic side: “We feel everything. It’s actually your pulse we feel, Doctor.”

What a time to not have my notepad out. I couldn’t be seen with it though. I didn’t want to attract more attention than I’d already done. But one woman in particular had a strange series of….stigmata, on her skin? As the doctors restrained her, I found myself lingering a bit to watch the phenomena dance on, no, out of her skin, as they began emergency treatment on her in the middle of the hallway. Her blood ran in rivulets down her throat, but it also seemed to oxidize in contact with the air, dancing like some strange green cosmic fire. The doctor, only briefly daunted, tried to snuff it with the white towels that would have been used to operate. I saw the markings creep out from under the cloth, however. And it seemed to manifest as some strange black vines or ivy. It was beautiful, but also ghastly in its predatory dexterity, lashing the doctor’s hand.

My thoughts were jostled by the touch of Alison’s hand on my shoulder. She nudged me back to our task. She was right, I should not be so carefree about this ruse. I followed her, making the mental note to perhaps approach the intrepid doctor later for comment. His groans of pain faded behind us, and we finally approached our destination, guarded by three uniformed officers.

The mayor was right in front of me, in room 422.

I tried my best not to avoid eye contact with the police. They were incredibly on edge with everything they’d witnessed in this hospital, and they’d be more perceptive of suspicious behavior than even the staff. I told them that the patient had gout that would likely cause his state to deteriorate, and we were going to weigh different nutritional options that might speed his recovery. They slowly nodded, their gaze not breaking from mine as they let me in the door. Alison stayed outside to chat with them, likely to give me extra time to squeeze whatever details I could from the suspect Mayor.

I swiftly slid out my notepad from beneath my dummy patient notes, and pinned it in place on top of my clipboard. My breath caught in my lungs though, as I saw Mayor Cochran sitting up at the side of his bed. He seemed to be basking in the moonlight that streamed in through his window. There was a strange tightness in the room that made it seem much more narrow than it actually was. He turned toward me, the age lines etched deeper in his features than what I had seen on the television, just the other day. The things he spoke did not seem to pertain to any questions I posed to him. His sanity seemed fractured, steeped with anguish over what he did to his family, what they had supposedly become. He spoke of the fire at Yankee Stadium, and how so many more blazes just like that one illuminated the planet like candles in the blackness of space. He dug his fingernails into his cheek as he spoke, growing agitated as he described a certain entity that had orbited our planet for some time, using the sun itself as a blindspot to avoid detection from our satellites and telescopes.

A scratch at the window interrupted his stream-of-consciousness rambling. A small yelp escaped my mouth as I tripped backwards. Three silhouettes loomed well in front of any potential footing that window ledge may have offered. The Mayor cried out in a peal of uncanny horror I didn’t expect to hear from a man. The figures reached to the glass, sliding their fingers through. What caused my brain to start doubting itself though, was that the slender fingers parted the glass, as if it had the same substance as a curtain. It was the Mayor’s family!

They had phosphorescent threads hanging over their heads, stretching out into the endless night sky. And hints of the same strange markings I saw on the earlier patient.

Wrenching the door open and entering, a guard from the group outside opened fire. While the bullets sent fragments of their heads and clumps of their golden hair flying, the gun ultimately proved ineffectual as the Mayor’s wife and daughters were already in much worse shape. Did Cochran fire at them with a shotgun, back at their estate?? I edged my way along the wall, only now realizing that there were gunshots popping from outside the room, as well. I may very well be wandering into a death trap, but every instinct in my body was telling me to vanish from this situation. One of the daughters pinned the cop to the floor. Despite her face being ghoulishly half-erased from buckshot, it was still quite sufficient in taking a bite out of the officer’s throat. The other two crawled onto the Mayor’s mattress, crooning at him as his cries of terror were reduced to the whimper of a dumb animal. I slipped out the door, the death-rattling screams of the two victims following me out.

Vampires. This was the secret behind this world-threatening event - vampires?

The lights were still on in the hallway. I found myself very appreciative that there were no floorboards to creak with each careful and deliberate step I took. Wheelchairs and drip stands and gurneys were turned over, as if a hurricane had torn its way through the hallway.

My thoughts were racing, but also sticky. Should I go for the slower but more discreet exit down four flights of stairs? Or should I stress test my already rotten luck with the elevator? My cup runneth over with all these delightful decisions!

A ceiling panel came crashing down, just behind me.

I froze. My heart thumped harder than the speakers at the Danzig show I went to a couple months back. The dust from outdated insulation spread around me, which caused my knees to bend lower. I hoped like mad the dust was making me just a tiny bit closer to invisible. The animalistic rasping betrayed the presence of something behind me.

Slowly, slowly my head turned. More ceiling fragments fell down, but mixed with that was the sing-song giggle of a little girl. I spun, and at my feet was Alison. She let out a whimper, as the child I heard sat beside her, dabbing her fingertips with blood from Alison's throat. She then folded open a coloring book, scrawling the blood from her fingers within the flowers illustrated. Also, the child's mouth and chin were caked with blood.

She asked me to help her color the roses. They were always best when they were red.

I knelt down, reaching for a white towel lying nearby to compress Alison's wound. The child snarled, with the lines in her face briefly warping into something that didn't even vaguely look human, before reverting to a firm and forceful child’s scowl. I froze, and forced myself to nod in compliance. I reached down, smothering my nausea in my stomach as I allowed a couple rivulets of blood to dab on my fingers.

I brushed my fingers on the page. Alison was going cold.

As the child busied herself with her little tapestry, Alison gestured to her own hand - she held a shard of glass, concealed under her wrist. With the most invisible and static of movement, I slowly took the glass piece while my free hand continued to draw whatever strokes of blood that hadn't dried from my fingers.

I blacked out for a fraction of a second, as I watched the little girl feed off the bite wound from Alison's throat. I leaned back behind the girl, ready to put this crude and ugly implement to work to save my friend. Before I touched it to her throat though, I saw what seemed to be an ethereal circuit running from the girl's head to the night sky, outside the broken window.

I grasped the cord. So the threads hanging from the heads of those women weren’t just a hallucination. The girl's head jerked back, her eyes rolling back in her head. Two needle-like fangs stretched out of her mouth as her guttural deluge of agony rang through the halls. The pure and dainty innocence of this child was erased in the concussive roar of a creature that one could only describe as rabid and not of this planet. She - it was seized in pain, but there was no way I could let it go again. Its feral arms flailed and the skin rushed with blood beneath skin that became less opaque.

I drew the glass across the cord. Like a puppet relinquishing its strings, she crumpled where she sat on the floor.

The skin rapidly turned to cinders, and I pushed the horror and dread of my experience to the back of my mind as I knelt down beside Alison, letting her walk me through the steps on how to treat her wounds. Thankfully there wasn’t much beyond applying some antibacterial ointment and dressing her up with bandages.

She leaned on my shoulder as I guided us down the stairs. We thankfully had no more insanity to encounter, at least while on the premises. We got in her car and drove off to my apartment, where I got her some food to regain her lost iron and let her rest in my bed.

And there I was in my office, making the final touches on my byline with an old analog typewriter, beneath the glow of a few candles I had in my wardrobe. Electricity went out for the block a couple hours prior. I sighed between cupped hands and leaned back in my seat, staring at the ceiling as I sucked my cigarette down to its filter. I went through whatever extra care and steps I could to treat Alison’s injury, but the glow of the cigarette’s cherry reminded me of how the child erupted with cosmic energies, as if a filament had burned itself out within her. Gore and disintegration blossomed in the peripheral vision of my memory, and I tried to pretend the ashes were just dust from the insulation, and my instincts as a journalist fought for but a glimpse as I carefully wrapped my friend’s throat up.

What was even happening to me. I had no time to think about what side of me this crisis was bringing out before I felt a movement in the office doorway. Alison stood there, a calm and pleasing smile on her face, and her lips a more stark crimson than I’d ever seen on her usually peach-hued mouth. Her skin held a serene glow in the candle light, and she asked me to change her bandages. It was but a flicker, but I saw the thread-like cord hanging above her head. It was at this point I dove out the window, landing on the fire escape on the rickety old balcony. I had to run - Alison had been infected.

Central Park was my last place of refuge. I could only hope that running and hiding through the park would buy enough time for daylight’s salvation, just as it was in the movies. I ran for refuge at Belvedere Castle, feeling my extremities start to shut down in the cold. I reached down as I moved, grabbing a bunch of newspapers to wrap around myself for any extra bit of insulation I could manage. I shut out the thoughts that I was going to become one of them, and hobbled my way to the antiquated tower.

4:55. That was what the clock hands read. The daylight would be here very shortly.

The door creaked open before my hand touched it. Alison stepped forth from the pitch darkness, grasping me before I could do anything. Her arms snaked around me, and she trilled in a low voice about how sweet my blood smelled.

I told her she should let me go and hide back inside, and she giggled playfully at the idea. Was she seriously not scared of the sun? It couldn’t be true, but she held my head up to look at the sky. Backlit by flashes of lightning - no, missile fire from both fighter jets and anti-air turrets, there was an unimaginably gargantuan mass of what seemed to be….aquatic muscle? Tendrils flicked out and stabbed down to the ground. The gunfire that erupted was not pointing upwards, but rather level to the ground.

This thing, Alison’s sire, was not of this world. What concern was the sun to this monstrosity, when it drifted through space to visit us?

[fanfictionsandtea]

Broken Hearts And Broken Bones [John Shelby x reader]

Warnings: angst, injuries, abuse, language, but also fluff

Pairing: John Shelby x fem!reader

Summary: (y/n)´s brother, Eric, hated the Shelbys but (y/n) loved them, especially John. To ensure that the Shelby boy keeps his distance from (y/n) Eric beats him up.

There is a happy end. And also some fluff.

The sun set a long time ago and the streets were empty. It rained heavily.

Every Monday night (y/n)’s brother was in a pub on the other end of Birmingham, which is why John Shelby went to (y/n) every Monday night. Her brother, Eric, hated him, which is why they had to meet secretly. Eric hated all the Shelbys. He thought they were lying, manipulative idiots who would sooner or later regret not having obeyed the law. He didn't want his little sister to have contact with such drifters.

John had to hurry because Tommy had stopped him at the Garrison. He actually wanted to go home first to get an umbrella, but now there was no time left. He was cold and his clothes were almost completely soaked, but he was looking forward to (y/n)´s warmth and pictured them taking a hot bath together. The thought made him smile, but that smile quickly faded.

A dark figure stood at the end of the street. A tall man, John guessed. Carefully he went on and prepared himself for the worst. As he got closer, he realized it was Eric. He stopped and clenched his fists. John wasn't afraid of Eric, but he was afraid of losing (y/n). He loved her from the bottom of his heart and really only wanted the best for her, but unfortunately Eric saw it differently.

"Where are you going?", asked Eric. If John were to go down the street and turn left at the end, he would be in front of Eric's house, where (y/n) lived as well. Eric also knew that there was nothing else here that a Shelby could be interested in. No rich families, everyone went to church on Sundays and everyone was absolutely average. Humble citizens who did not want to be involved in any wrongdoing.

John didn't answer. He couldn't lie, but he couldn't tell the truth either.

"Where are you going?" Eric asked again, only this time louder and full of anger.

"I want to visit (y/n).", John said and he tried not to appear intimidated. Eric was tall, but by no means experienced. But the fear of losing (y/n), of never being able to see them again was just too hurtful.

"Say that again!" He yelled and John was amazed at Eric's dark side, which probably no one has seen before.

"C'mon, I want to visit your sister.", John said with a little more self-confidence.

"I'll break your dirty skull, you gypsy scum!"

He ran towards him with his fist raised. John stood motionless. He didn't want to hurt Eric, he wanted to talk to him and maybe even have a drink at the Garrison. He wanted them to become friends and celebrate Christmas together after he and (y/n) got married.

Pain ran through his jaw and he stumbled backwards.

"(y/n) deserves better than you! She's a good girl. She's smart and something can be made of her!", he shouted, punching him in the liver with his fist.

John stumbled backwards again.

"Come on! Defend yourself, you dumb twat."

"Shit! Eric, let's talk about it.", John replied, clutching his stomach with his arms.

"Talking? You fuck my sister! I'll knock your fucking teeth out!"

Eric slapped him in the face again, but John hadn't even fucked her because, like Eric, he wanted her to lead a decent life. For a moment his vision war blurred, but Eric's loveless and cold voice brought him back.

"You don't seriously think I'll ever forgive you?", said Eric and grabbed him. He punched him several times in the stomach. John groaned in pain.

"You'll never talk to her again, understand? You won't look at her either! You won't think about her! You'll just forget that she exists, okay? Otherwise you'll wish I never heard of the Shelby name."

Then Eric pushed him to the ground and kicked him in the face.

He lay still and said nothing more. Eric spat on him and disappeared back into the darkness from which he had come.

All the pain John felt was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. He didn't know how to live without her. He had even told his children about (y/n) and now they will never get to know her.

He wanted to stay on the street, but a car honked at him. The bright headlights blinded him. He got up and went to the sidewalk.

"Do you need help, boy?", asked the worried driver.

"Leave me the fuck alone!", said John and walked away.

(y/n) wondered where John was. It wasn't his way to be late and she was worried that something might have happened to him.

"I'm at home, (y/n).", Eric called. He was drunk. "What were you doing tonight?" He asked while walking up the stairs. Eric slammed (y/n)´s door open.

"Huh?" He asked and stared at her.

(y/n) got up from her bed. She knew what was going to happen now. Every time Eric had had a drink, he would hit her. Only this time he really had a reason to.

"I forbade you to meet these fucking gypsies!", he said in a calm voice. "But you just can't listen to me."

He raised his hand, but (y/n) escaped it. In the heat of the moment she reached for the bottle of wine she had kept for herself and John. (y/n) hit her brother over the head with the bottle. He went down and a red liquid flowed over the wooden floor.

(y/n) put her hands over her mouth in shock. But her brother was still moving, so she jumped over him and ran down the stairs. She quickly packed the essentials and ran to her bike, which was parked next to Eric's car.

(y/n) drove to the Garrison. She knew she could find at least one of the Shelby brothers. She hoped to find John there. How did Eric know what I was up to tonight, she wondered, and then the thought struck her that Eric might have met John, if that was the case, then he surely beat him up. (y/n) drove faster.

When she got there, she threw the bike next to the door. She stormed in. Thomas stood by the bar and looked in amazement at the completely wet (y/n).

"What are you doing here?", he asked, walking quickly towards her.

"Where's John?", asked (y/n), trembling with fear.

Thomas noticed how her make-up had run from the rain and worried about his brother's love.

"I don't know. I thought he wanted to see you? Arthur, we're going, come on!"

Arthur finished his whisky and joined us. He looked worried.

"We'll talk more in the car.", said Thomas and led the way.

Arthur got in the back and (y/n) sat in front next to Thomas.

"What happened?", he asked.

"I don't know. John wanted to come to me today, but he didn't come and then my brother came home. He was drunk and wanted to hit me. I think he knows that John wanted to see me."

"And what happened then?", asked Arthur.

"I knocked Eric down with a bottle."

"Well, we'll take care of your brother later, first we have to find John. Do you think Eric did something to him?", asked Thomas and started the car.

"Probably. He gets very aggressive after he's been drinking."

"Does he hit you more often?", asked Arthur, putting his hand on my shoulder.

I turned to him and just nodded with tears in my eyes.

"That wanker! Don't worry, (y/n), John loves you, so you are part of our family and we protect our family."

"Thank you, Arthur."

When they got to John's house, Thomas opened the door with the spare key he had been carrying since John's children locked him out in January. (y/n) ran inside.

"John.", she said and ran to the sofa in front of which she fell on her knees. (y/n) took his cold hand and pressed it to her heart.

His coat, shirt and bow tie were on the floor. John's torso was green and blue, his lip was split open, and dry blood was under his nose and down to his throat.

He opened his eyes and was blinded by the light that Thomas had switched on.

"(y/n), you are here.", he said and tried to sit up.

"Oi, come on, let me help you, Johnny Boy.", said Arthur, helping him to sit up.

"(y/n), go to the bathroom and get some wet towels for John," said Thomas.

(y/n) got up and did what Tommy asked.

"John, we have to kill him. He's not only a danger to you, but also to (y/n). He beats her when he drinks and at some point he may endanger our business."

"That bloody arsehole!", John growled and tried to get up. His face was twisted with pain.

"Keep calm, John, take a rest for now. (y/n) will take care of you."

At that moment (y/n) came back into the living room.

"We'll leave you two alone then," said Thomas and disappeared with Arthur.

(y/n) sat down next to John and carefully dabbed the blood away with the towel.

"I was so scared of losing you, (y/n).", he said and only now did she notice that tears were almost running from his eyes.

"Eric will never part us.", she said and kissed him gently.

John put his forehead on hers.

"I'll protect you from that maggot.", he said.

[itsstreetlove]

The Tower Ballroom ~  Edgbaston

This famous old landmark is earmarked for demolition, but once it was the place to be in Birmingham. It started its life in 1827 as a roller skating rink and over the years has been used as a Mecca Dance Hall, a music venue and a sports arena. Many famous bands have played here including The Who, The Searchers,The Merseybeats, The Smiths, Dead Can Dance,New Order,The Drifters,The Damned.....to name just a few.

June ~ 2021

[forcri]

The Andy Bird Diaries

The penniless Englishman who seduced Madonna"

PART ONE Exclusive by Alice Fowler.

The letter was and, heartfelt, and surprisingly vulnerable especially when one considers that the writer is perhaps the most famous woman on the planet.

'I will never get over you,' it said. 'You have touched me in an unfathomable and unexplainable way.   'You say that there can be no love without trust and I couldn't agree more. But you mistrusted me long before I behaved in an untrustworthy fashion.   'All of this just perpetuated more negative and reactive behaviour in both of us. We went to our corners and drew our swords. 'The irony now is that I'm alone completely. Alone with my thoughts and my memories. I have so many fond memories of you in my house and, m fact, they we the happiest memories of my life. It is so very hard to let go of them. 'I wish so many things. I wish that we were together and happy. I wish that we'd had a child wish that you were feeling fulfilled, artistically and creatively you have such a brilliant mind I wish I wish, I wish...' 'Most of all, I wish you happiness and peace in your heart and mind. Please know that you are my last thought before I go to sleep and my first thought when I wake up. 'My love for you is profound and immense. Confusing and mysterious. I long to put my arms around you.'

These were the words that Madonna wrote to the man who was the last great love of her life before her marriage to film maker Guy Ritchie a dreamy impoverished Englishman named Andy Bird. They came towards the end of their tumultuous 18 month affair. For Madonna, Bird followed a long list of high profile partner's including Sean Penn and Warren Beatty, pop singer Prince and John F Kennedy Jr. But as her letter suggests, this anonymous figure stirred deeper feelings in her than any of his celebrity predecessors. Indeed, had fate taken a different twist, perhaps Andy Bind rather than Guy Ritchie might have followed Seen Penn as Madonna's second husband. Certainly, but for a harrowing abortion that we will return to later, he would now be the father of Madonna's child. Few would recognise Andy Bird's name today. Yet his relationship with Madonna spanned a crucial period in her life, ending in bitter arguments around the time she met Ritchie. At the start, they were blissfully happy. The lyrics of Madonna's song Beautiful Stranger To love you is to be part of you, I've paid for you with my tears, And swallowed all my Pride - were inspired by Andy Bird.

Extraordinarily, Madonna, wealthy, ambitious and famously astute lost her heart to this charming drifter who slept on friends' sofas. It was an attraction of opposites the material girl and the man with nothing; the health conscious singer and the chain smoker; the glamorous star and the face in the crowd. But together as we are about to discover, their life ran a rollercoaster course from the heights of emotion to arguments about Bird's sweaty feet (she would make him disinfect them before he came to bed). The affair wrenched this unassuming figure from the provinces born in Birmingham, the son of an accountant and an educational social worker to the centre of a very different and dazzling world. Bird came to know the private Madonna: the woman who would sing snatches of opera as she cooked Pop Tarts for breakfast, whose hopeless driving would cause havoc on the roads, who gave him clothes that ware invariably the wrong size.   To learn the inside story of their relationship - as we will do during this exclusive Mail series, which continues on Monday - is to gain an entirely new insight into the world's most scrutinised woman. She emerges as a far more tender and attractive figure than previous accounts have suggested.

Over the coming days, we will discover the truth about that abortion which left them both drained and distraught; their extraordinary life together with Sting, Stella McCartney and some of showbusiness's greatest names and the very public clash in which Ritchie scuffled with Bird at a London bar. Until now, Bird has never talked publicly about his love for Madonna. He has shrunk instinctively from the public gaze. The reason he has chosen to speak out now, he says, is to put right the many inaccuracies which continue to be written about him. By telling the truth, he hopes, he can draw a line under the past and move on. It is not a task he finds easy. At times, as we talk, he squirms with reluctance. That Madonna should fall for this likeable, irresponsible man far younger than his years, is the greatest surprise of all.

Madonna, after all, is famed as a manipulator, renowned for her need to control - most notably in her affair with Carlos Leon the handsome fitness instructor seemingly picked out to father her child. Lourdes, then cast aside. Perhaps the clearest sign of the depth of Madonna's feelings for Bird is that she found it impossible to discard him in the same way, He was her 'beautiful stranger' and for many months, even after she had met Guy Ritchie, impossible to let go. They met in the summer of 1997 through a mutual friend. Alek Keshishian the moviemaker, who had directed Truth or Dare: In Bed With Madonna, the film of her 1990 world tour. Andy was 32 seven years her junior and living a bohemian life in London's Notting Hill. A former art, student, he was Involved on the outer edges of the film industry, working as a runner for production companies and creating film scenarios of his own. He earned money sporadically, sleeping on friends' sofas for weeks at a time, and wrote a script for an off-beat comedy that he showed to an American film producer he met In London. The American agreed to fly him to LA, using her surplus air miles to try to develop the project.

The week before he was due to leave, Andy went to see Keshishian in Paris to talk about his LA trip. Alek was well known in Hollywood, with no shortage of contacts. 'On a couple of occasions he let slip: Oh I know someone who'd likes you,' Bird recalls. 'He said it was someone I'd really get along with, but he never mentioned who it was. He's the kind of person who knows everyone and likes to show off the fact. 'While I was there, he was on the phone and suddenly said: 'Andrew, say Hello to Madonna, 'Why he did it I still don't know. 'Anyway, I took the phone and said "Hello to Madonna and there was a little giggly voice at the other end. Though he knew Alek was a friend of Madonna, Andy was still unsure whether he really was talking to the singer. It could just have been some strange joke. 'But we chatted for a bit and by the end of the call she seemed like a really nice person, whoever it was I was talking to. The conversation ended with her saying: 'Tell Alek to give you my numbers in L.A'

It seems extraordinary for a star like Madonna to give me her telephone number so freely. Perhaps, says Andy, Alek had already mentioned him to her. He took the number, and. on the Eurostar back to London, decided to find out if they were real, 'I rang up and said: Hi, how are you doing?' and she said 'I'm practising yoga,' or whatever. 'I remember thinking she sounded sweet. She's got a very nice phone voice; quite low and soft. There was a connection between us.' By now there was no doubt he was talking to Madonna herself. 'I suppose other people would have found it really weird to be taking to her, but somehow it didn't feel that strange,' says Bird. I just thought I was speaking to a girl I was getting on really well with. I was speaking to the person, not the icon. 'To start with, we just chatted about Alek. But she also was making an album with the producer William, Orbit, whose work I really admired, and I was very Interested in that.'

Even though Andy hadn't been looking for a relationship, one soon started to develop. 'We spoke several more times. It ended with us talking for a couple of hours a day on the phone before I even got to LA. She was flirty - she's a very flirty person, and I just flirted back, I asked her: 'Do you want me to bring you a present when I come over?' She said; 'Yes some of those waffle biscuits they sell on the Portobello Road.' 'Our conversations, were a first-thing-in-the-morning, last-thing-at-night kind of deal. There was certainly a degree of intimacy at that point. By the end we were actually saying, 'I miss you'" when we hadn't spoken for a few hours. There was a genuine keenness to meet.'

Back in London for the few days before he left for LA, he made no secret of his strange new friendship. My phone would ring in a bar, and it would be Madonna saying 'How are you?" My friends were a bit surprised and it was a big joke for five minutes, but after that they got used to it,' Perhaps his friends were too anxious to seem 'cool' to exhibit mere excitement. Whatever the explanation, Andy admits this lack of interest was one of the reasons why, later, he was unprepared for the frenzy of attention when their relationship became more widely known.

Full of anticipation, he flew to LA and went to stay with his producer friend. The next day, he called Madonna. 'It was three clays before we eventually met up. I was a bit nervous.   I met her at this photographer's studio where they were shooting a cover for Rolling Stone magazine, 1 had to wait outside because I couldn't smoke in the studio. 'I had a Safeway bag with her biscuits from Portobello Road in it. I was wearing a fake-fur coat a mate had given me. At that stage I was into wearing ripped?up clothes and holding them together with tape.   'After 20 minutes I was called in. She war hiding behind a curtain. I think her first words were: "Hello, you!" My first impression was: 'Isn't she tiny?' She had very long, blonde Goldilocks-style hair at the time, and she was dressed all in black. 'We chatted for a bit, and then we got into her car and she drove us to a dinner party she'd been invited to.' Madonna, it appeared, was nervous, too. 'She reversed into a wall as she was turning round, She was screaming: "'Andy, I hit something I think I probably swore - but it was only surface damage' he adds wryly. The dinner was informal. 'Everyone was in the kitchen, sitting on benches. Even so I felt a bit like a fish out of water, because I didn't know a soul, including her. People always ask questions when they don't know you, and I hate being asked questions. 'Somebody asked: 'Where do you live in London?' Madonna piped up 'He's a sofa surfer' because she knew I slept on friends' sofas. We were teasing one another from the outset.' Madonna seemed to be testing his reactions, checking out if he could really handle the prospect of a relationship with her. 'We were driving back after the dinner and she said: 'Shall I drop you at a hotel, because that's what I usually do with my dates, or do you want to come back to mine and call a cab from there?' 'It was all very flippant so I just said: 'I'm bloody going to yours.'She made some coffee and called a cab. I think we kissed.'

By then we were feeling at case with one another. We'd spoken so much already that a lot of barriers had gone down.' Andy also had his first glimpse of her LA home, an old Spanish-style house, filled with antique furniture and paintings. It was, he says, stylish but understated - a place where a guest could feel at home. 'It felt very natural, not at all forced. And she wasn't at all Madonna-ish, in a predatory way. She was warm and affectionate and womanly. She's really very normal: a lovely, traditional, sweet person. 'There was no problem being alone with her. I was more worried about getting back and waking up my producer friend to borrow some U.S. dollars to pay the taxi.'

Next evening, the two went out to dinner alone, at a restaurant near Madonna's studio. This time it was Andy's turn to tease her. I remember saying to her: "Kindness costs nothing," when she got fed up with waiting for a table and snapped ever so slightly at the waiter. 'Funnily enough, she seemed to think I spouting 'from some fount of knowledge. For me it was just a proverb, but perhaps in California it sounded like a deep spiritual insight. 'And after all, it was only our second date. We were hanging on each other's every word.' That evening. Andy mentions in passing, was also one of the few times he paid for dinner. In the excitement of a new relationship, such disparities - her vast wealth, his total lack of it - seemed not to matter. Perhaps, I suggest, it even added to the romance. In hindsight at least. Andy thinks otherwise. 'She's very much a realist: she probably saw it as problematic but chose to ignore it,' he says frankly.

Already the relationship had developed a sexual spark. 'It was brilliant: warm and exciting but quite gentle,' Andy remembers. 'We were holding hands, she was taking my arm, pretty much from the outset. 'It all seemed very natural. I'm a romantic anyway, and she's got a very big heart.' When he arrived in America, Andy had scant knowledge of Madonna's life. 'I knew she had a daughter, but what her name was I didn't know. 'I was aware she'd had relationships in the past, but none of them was an issue. I'd kind of separated Madonna as a pop star from the person I was with. 'You get so wrapped up with the person that their past really doesn't matter. We were in the throes of becoming infatuated, falling in love. 'The magic that goes on inside you when just sitting in a traffic jam can be brilliant, because you get to spend time with that person. That's probably why I was oblivious to the whole fame issue.'

Perhaps, for Madonna, that ability to see her as a normal person was the clue to Andy's appeal. In him - in contrast to so many hangers-on, she may have felt she'd met a man who valued her purely for herself. Whatever the reason, within the space of a week, Andy Bird and Madonna became lovers. Was he nervous, I ask, and Andy looks mortified. 'It wasn't like that. I was having a relationship with a woman called Madonna. I was no more nervous with her than I've been with anyone, before or since. She was an individual I wanted to share a closeness with.' He pauses, looking wistful. 'It was quite a soulful thing.'

So who really is this Englishman who captured Madonna's heart. When I first speak to Andy Bird, by telephone, his voice is deep and laconic: the kind that might, indeed, suggest romance.   When we meet, he is more shy and diffident than I expect. He is tall, with long dark hair swept back from his face, and striking green eyes. But at 36 he displays an unhealthy pallor, honed on a diet of Diet Coke and Marlboro cigarettes. Later, when he shows me a photo of himself with Madonna and Lourdes, I am surprised by how much brighter and healthier he appears, the intervening years you sense, have left their mark on Andy Bird.

His parents, he says, were middle-class mavericks who left the city to start a new life in the Warwickshire countryside when he was two. They kept pigs and lived their version of The Good Life. At school - first a local primary, then a nearby prep school, followed by a comprehensive Andy was an unacademic student, spending most of his time 'messing wound with friends in bands'.   After school, he went to London to study design at Kingston Polytechnic. When he left, he drifted. Good-looking and easy-going, he began modelling, his trip to America was partly financed by a fleeting appearance in a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial - and made karaoke videos. Affable and relaxed, he made friends easily 'I was meeting lots of different people, going to trendy bars, being put on the right guest lists,' he recalls. By the time he had met Madonna, he had, he says seriously, 500 friends. His social life revolved around fashionable restaurants such as 192 in Notting Hill, his gym on Portobello Green and the Met Bar, where he was friends with the manager. Many of his friends were connected to the media. It should have been obvious that, when he began a relationship with Madonna, there was no chance of it staying secret. Five hundred 'friends' were ready to sell information to the newspapers. To Andy's surprise if no one else's - his old, bohemian existence would blow up in his face.

Back in the autumn of 1997 though, Notting Hill felt far away. Andy was in LA caught up in a burgeoning love affair. Madonna was working in the studio, finishing her best-selling album, Ray Of Light. Andy spent almost every night with her, staying at her house in Los Felix. Quickly Andy's life fell into a routine. In the morning, he and Madonna would wake up early and takes it in turns to make coffee. Then, while she practised yoga for a couple of hours, he would play with Lourdes - Lola, as her mother called her, or 'set up meetings on his still unrealised film project.   In the evenings they would meet for dinner, sometimes at the tiny macrobiotic restaurant 'really good and cheap' and maybe watch a film. He also spent time with the rest of the household: Daisy the maid, Lola's nanny Clara, and Manual the gardener. When I meet Andy at a hotel in England, he swiftly befriends every waiter; in LA, though he was dating a superstar, his behaviour was no different. He rented a Dodge pick-up and often would meet Madonna and follow her in his car. It was a rapid introduction to one of his new girlfriends surprising quirks - her terrible same of direction. 'I'd only been there a short time, but I'd still work out we were going completely the wrong way,' he remembers. 'Following her was a nightmare. You'd be at traffic lights, and out of nowhere she'd edge her way across the lanes and in the lane for turning left, and there was no way you could follow her. It's ironic really somebody with so much direction in their life not to have a clue where they were going.'

While he struggled with her driving, Madonna would try to get him to wear new clothes. 'She's given quite a lot of stuff by designers and fashion companies, and so a black velvet suit showed up that, thankfully I didn't fit into. Then there was a velvet double-breasted coat all Dolce & Gabbana that was too big. 'It was a bit like getting presents from your granny at Christmas things you'd wear for a couple of days just to please them, and then forget about.'

For the most part, though, the couple enjoyed their new found closeness. 'For both of us there was a real sense of familiarity. You know, when you feel you've met somebody before.' says Andy. 'My feelings were strong, and so were hers. There was a powerful physical and emotional attraction between us. 'There was also a sense of vulnerability the way there is when you meet someone new. She would ask my opinion on a lot of things. 'At that time, Lola was less than year old. Madonna was unsure about motherhood what was normal and what wasn't. I helped out as much as I could.' In the beginning, Andy had intended to go to LA for just three weeks. In fact, swept up in the passion of a new relationship, three months passed before he begun to think about coming home. That November, Madonna was visiting Britain to prepare for the release of Ray Of Light. Andy was short of money and starting to feel homesick. They decided to come to London together, as a couple. Andy came over a few days before her 'It was brilliant to be back. I knew I'd missed my friends, but I'd been in such a cocoon I hadn't realised how much,' he says.

Three days later, Madonna's private jet landed at Luton airport. Andy picked her up in a Range Rover with blacked out windows. 'It was great to see her again. She was staying at a house in Tregunter Road, close to The Boltons, one of the most exclusive areas of South Kensington. It was a kind of unspoken assumption that we'd be there together'   For a day or two, no one knew about it. Then Andy took her to a friend's birthday party. Next day, he says ruefully, everything went crazy: their relationship was front-page news.   'It was just awful.' Andy remembers, shrinking into his chair, 'My phone rang incessantly; stories were being written about me. I was being followed. 'One of the red-top tabloids printed a number for anyone who knew mystery man Andy Bird to call. There was even a phone in on Radio 1 for people to say what they thought about Madonna's latest choice of boyfriend.'

For Andy, the media onslaught was a total shock. I knew they'd all be interested in her, but I didn't really think they'd care about who she was dating. 'I know it sound, ridiculous now, and I was obviously being downright stupid but 1 just perceived me as being me and I knew her as somebody else my girlfriend.' Surely Madonna herself must have known what would happen? 'You would have thought so, but I don't think she wanted to acknowledge the fact it might have a detrimental effect on us, or on me. 'Also, after 15 or 20 years in the spotlight it becomes normal, I imagine. It only became an issue after my reaction to it. It made me really withdrawn. 1 felt paranoid. I hadn't realised I would care what anyone wrote about me, but it really did upset me. 'Most hurtfully, says Andy, he was labelled a 'wannabe'. 'The implication was that the only way I was going to get fame and success and some semblance of a career was by hanging about with Madonna. That hurt my pride a lot.' The differences between them, which in America had hardly mattered, were rammed in their faces in Britain. At the same time, Andy was still trying to treat Madonna like any other girlfriend. He took her to friends' flats in West London. 'Most people were fine, but some were horrified at the idea of this superstar coming into their homes. 'No! It's filthy!' they'd say. 'You mustn't come!' 'Others went wild with excitement and you'd think: 'For God's sake, calm down.' Madonna, he says, was charming add polite I think maybe she felt like a novelty, being wheeled about. I think she quite shy in a certain way. But she was my girlfriend and I wanted her to meet my friends.'

Andy was also keen to introduce Madonna to his parents, Horace and Kathleen. 'I wanted to show her another side of me, to show her where I grew up. I didn't envisage spending a lot of time with them; just introducing her and going for a country drive perhaps. 'I rang my parents and said please don't make any more effort than you normally would," and they were fine.'   On a Sunday afternoon, Andy drove Madonna and Lola to the large house his parents built 30 years ago near the village of Clifford Chambers in Warwickshire. With its wide, pitched roof and adjoining garage, it looks like the kind of house stockbrokers retire to. The three of them arrived late. 'It took us ages to get out of London because we were having to sort the baby out and deal with the paparazzi waiting outside our house. 'And, of course, Americans only drive at 50mph, so me doing 90mph down the motorway isn't go down very well at all. 'We didn't actually get there until 4pm, and when my parents opened the door they were dressed in their best clothes. They saw my face and said: 'This isn't for you we're going to a drinks party. We can only stay 20 minutes.' My mum said to Madonna something like: 'Oh, let me give you a kiss because I always kiss Andrews girlfriends.'Then she got the baby photos out: 'Here's Andrew naked in the sink at three months old.Few families you imagine, would have reacted so calmly to a pop icon sitting on their sofa. Andy's, he explains, is different: 'They hardly watch TV and don't read tabloid newspapers. I suppose you could say the whole cult of celebrity has passed them by 'They were at their ease they're very down to earth people They were more worried about being late for their drinks party than anything else.' There was, however, one unexpected hitch. A paparazzi photographer had followed them from London and was waiting outside the house. 'That made it very difficult,' says Andy, still indignant at the intrusion. 'We had to close the curtains so he couldn't see in.' Andy was angry most of all with himself, for bringing his parents into the public eye. All the same, he adds, he eventually took the photographer a cup of tea and some homemade cakes. 'I felt sorry for him' he explains helplessly.

Next day, he was shocked to find the visit was a major news story. I still had no idea that my parents' house would be on the front page of one of the tabloids. When I saw that, I realised the whole visit was a mistake. I didn't want to involve my parents in all that.' For both him and Madonna, the strain was starting to tell. 'I was starting to withdraw into myself. She could tell I wasn't happy. 'We tried to make light of it, but the situation had changed. It did get to me, and I didn't handle it very well, I was frightened to answer my phone. My stomach churns just talking about it, 'We still really cared about each other, but I was becoming much more aware of how difficult life would be with her. She was frustrated that this stuff upset me. At one point she said to me 'Oh Andrew you love me, but you hate my life.'That was completely true. But what do you do in that situation? I still loved being in her company. I thought the papers would get bored. But I wanted my freedom back.' Late one night, when their visit to London was close to an end, he went for a drive on his own. 'I needed to forget about the whole situation. 'I was questioning everything. I'd begun to feel that perhaps I really was this no-hoper everyone said I was. I didn't want to end the relationship, but I had to prove I wasn't just trying to ride on Madonna's coat tails.' Finally, after driving for many hours, Andy made his decision. He would not go back to America with Madonna, but stay in London and rebuild his life. He hoped their relationship could survive; if not, he would have to accept it.

When he got back to Tregunter Road, Madonna was waiting for him. 'She wanted to knew where I'd been for all this time. 'I just said: 'Listen I've been thinking and I've get something to tell you.'Before I could say another word, she said: 'Well, I've got something to tell you, too.'And that's when she told me she was having a baby.' The pregnancy was totally unexpected 'We were careful.' says Andy, his voice a whisper. 'I was numb, shocked, happy, panicked, sad, tired. I was looking into her eyes, trying desperately to see how she felt. 'When you're really fond of someone, there's a part of you that's happy in that situation; another part that thinks 'Oh no.'It was very early days in our relationship, and I was beginning to realise events were running me, not the other way round. 'I was full of self?doubt anyway, because of all the things being written about me in the newspapers. I wasn't sure I should even be allowed to father a child. I was in a tumultuous state, but trying my hardest to be calm.' His main concern was for Madonna. 'When someone tells you that kind of news, your overwhelming sense is to know how they are. A man feels that even more keenly, because it's something that goes on in the other person's body and you are completely cut off from it.' He pauses, looking helpless. 'I wanted to do the right thing,' he says. 'Whatever that was.'

Daily Mail - 21 January 2002

"The penniless Englishman who seduced Madonna"

PART TWO Exclusive by Alice Fowler

Madonna was pregnant and the timing could hardly have been worse. It wasn't that she didn't want another baby, it was no secret that she was keen to provide her only daughter, Lourdes, with a brother or sister. But November 1997 simply wasn't the right moment. Her relationship with the unborn baby's father, Andy Bird, was just three months old. And already their passionate affair, Madonna's last great romance before her marriage to Guy Ritchie, was under enormous strain.

Andy, a charming English drifter whom she'd met through a mutual friend, was finding the publicity surrounding their unlikely liaison impossible to live with. Virtually penniless, and a stranger to the public eye, he'd been sucked into a world that was utterly alien to him. As we saw on Saturday in the first part of this series, his very indifference to fame had enabled him to stir deeper feelings in Madonna than any of the celebrity lovers of her past. Later, she would describe her memories of their times together as 'the happiest of my life'. For once, it seems, she felt sure that her boyfriend valued her for herself, rather than her public image. But was he the right man to father her baby? Could their relationship survive the worldwide attention that her pregnancy would attract? The events of the next few days were to be pivotal in Andy's life and Madonna's.

'I wish that we were together and happy she wrote to him later, when the relationship finally began to unravel. 'I wish we'd had a child.' On the night that Madonna learned she was pregnant, Andy was driving through London on his own. He wanted time to think about his future and had made up his mind not to return with Madonna to America when she left to promote her new album. Ray Of Light. Instead, he intended to stay in Britain and hide from the glare of the media. If that meant the end of their relationship, it was a risk he was reluctantly prepared to accept.

But before he could reveal his decision Madonna stunned him with her own momentous news. 'I don't think she was sure how she felt,' he remembers. 'She was experiencing the same turmoil I was. Everything about the relationship was in flux'. They had little chance to talk on what was the last night of her stay in London 'We were packing, getting everything done, there were people calling up. We weren't alone, there were nannies and assistants, and her friends coming over to say goodbye. For Andy, already questioning every aspect of his life, there was no one he could turn to for support, I couldn't tell a soul, because I didn't know whom I could trust. I didn't even tell my parents.' Instead, next morning, he and Madonna flew to Miami.

For Andy all thoughts of staying behind in London had evaporated. They spent a few quiet days together at Madonna's three?storey Twenties house in Coconut Grove, next to Sylvester Stallone's estate. For a while, the pregnancy increased their closeness. But, for Madonna in particular, pressures were mounting. 'She was working very hard,' says Andy. 'She'd just finished Ray Of Light and was preparing for the videos. She had a Vanity Fair shoot coming up with Mario Testino the top photographer, and Dolce & Gabbana, had made all these clothes specifically for the shoot. 'There's no getting out of things like that. And they take forever.' They talked about what to do about their unborn child. 'I wanted to support her in her choice, whatever it was,' says Andy. According to the line pedalled by one of Madonna's most recent biographers that choice was made for her. In this version of events she had a miscarriage in her seventh week. The same biographer even repeats claims by Madonna's friends that Andy Bird knew nothing of her condition until after the event. The facts are rather different and sadder. For a few days, the singer wrestled with the decision. In the end, she had an abortion. 'I felt terrible. Absolutely terrible,' says Andy, with painful emphasis. Even now he is unable to talk about a loss so personal he refers to it only as 'the event'.

For them both, it sounds a lonely, desolate time. 'We didn't even have that much time to talk together' he says quietly. 'She had to go to New York for a tribute to her murdered friend Gianni Versace, but she wanted me to go back to her house in LA to get things ready for when she joined me in a few days. 'I felt estranged from everything, and I assume she did, too. It was terribly sad. We were deeply upset. 'Perhaps it would have helped to sit down together, without even talking, and to share a closeness. But long, shared silences don't work the same way on the telephone. They're just long silences and I do remember quite a few. I tried to be supportive, though whether I succeeded is another matter.'

On his own, he felt an overwhelming sense of loss. I wanted to be able to compensate in some way for what had happened. But at the time I was flat broke, I didn't even have a credit card. 'I couldn't arrange for a bunch of flowers to be delivered to her, let alone arrive with one myself. I felt guilty about that as well.' Why didn't he ask Madonna to fly him to New York so they could be together? 'I didn't want to impose on her,' he says awkwardly, 'I wanted to be able to do these things without asking her permission. Perhaps, after such a traumatic event, neither was behaving rationally, but was there not, for Andy at least an element of relief at avoiding the responsibility of becoming a father? 'After three or four years, yes,' he says honestly. 'At the time, not even remotely.' In the past, Madonna had undergone other abortions, including one in 1990 when she began pregnant during a short-lived relationship with the bisexual film extra Tony Ward. The foetus was unhealthy and doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy.

Throughout her 30's, the singer had given public hints of her hopes of another child. By the time she became pregnant by Andy she was 39. It is not hard to imagine why, this time, Madonna was so devastated by the choice she had made. When she returned to LA from Miami, she and Andy tried in vain to recapture the happiness of their first three months. 'It was coming up to Christmas, and I was very pleased to see her and Lola (her nickname for Lourdes),' he remembers. 'But things were never the same after that. The innocence in the relationship had already started to disappear. We couldn't go back, no matter how hard we tried.' Andy, normally laidback and gentle was becoming increasingly volatile. 'I was going to ridiculous lengths to keep out of the headlines, trying never to appear in public with her. 'But she had to do all this work: the organisation of the album and the promotional tour. My moods were very up and down, and it was difficult for us to get time together.'

In February, he decided to move out of Madonna's and rent an apartment of his own, in a part of LA known as Venice Beach. 'She was about to embark on a tour around America and Europe, and I didn't fancy the prospect of staying in the house on my own,' he says. He also wanted more autonomy, to arrange his life as he wanted, rather than constantly fitting around hers. It sounds like the beginning of the end of the relationship, but that is to underestimate the strength of their bond. Through the months that followed, as Andy tried (without much success) to establish a career as a Hollywood screenwriter, he and Madonna continued to share a deep commitment.

For Andy's birthday on February 3 the first they had spent together. Madonna threw a surprise party. 'We went to my favourite restaurant just off Hollywood Boulevard, and when we walked in I saw this huge table, full of people I knew. 'She had called up all the people I knew in Los Angeles and asked them to be there. 'Just as I sat down, two friends of mine from London - Ben and Martina walked through the door. They were the manager and assistant manager at the Met Bar, one of my favourite hang-outs in London, and she'd met them when we were in Britain. She'd paid for their flights and put them up at the Mondrian hotel, one of the best in the city. 'It was a really lovely thing to do. She knew how homesick I was. 'Martina and I were pretty close and Madonna watched us hugging and kissing each other. On our way home from dinner she turned to me and said: "Why do you like me, Andrew, when Martina is so stunningly beautiful?' It's quite sweet to think that somebody like Madonna could feel a little bit insecure and admit it.

But as Andy says it just goes to show that she's a thoroughly normal person.' For Valentine's Day that same month, she bought him a silver Swiss Army knife from Tiffany with 'Birdy be my Valentine' inscribed on it. 'Which I subsequently lost,' adds Andy, looking sheepish. With money he had saved he bought her a Tiffany necklace, with a tiny diamond. 'I used to joke with my friends, 'What do you buy the woman who has everything?' but she was actually really easy to buy presents for. She was always really gracious when she received gifts.'

Andy, meanwhile, was living a life of extraordinary contrasts. On impulse he had bought a battered 1971 Chevrolet Impala coupe. Because it broke down so often, he got to know the owners of a garage in Santa Monica. Soon, he got a job helping out there, to supplement his income from 'bits and pieces' of film work. With Madonna, meanwhile, be was attending some of the glitziest premieres and events in Hollywood - even though, to avoid the cameras, he usually joined her only at the parties afterwards.

Parties like that are work to Madonna, 'he says. 'Deals are done there, and she is brilliant at networking. Occasionally, we would catch each other's eye and have a quick chat but most of the time I just let her get on with it.' When she presented the Best Song statuette to Celine Dion at the Academy Awards, Andy missed the event itself but went to the famous post-Oscars party given by Vanity Fair magazine. 'She'd gone on ahead but had given me the passes to get in. It was great turning up at this fantastic restaurant, behind a line of presidential limousines, in my ridiculous old car.' At the party guests were given cookies decorated with the cover of the magazine in icing. It was meant to be the ultimate going-home present, a sign they had been at the most coveted social event of the year. Andy typically, was unimpressed 'I got very hungry, an I ate mine,' he says, looking mischievous.

On nights on the town like this he would rub shoulders with stars such as Jack Nicholson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. 'I was always trying not to stare,' he says. 'I remember seeing Tony Curtis, whom I'd watched in Some Like It Hot and Spartacus. It was a shock to see a really old man with a well built platinum blonde on his arm.' He met Madonna's friend, Stella McCartney, the celebrity designer, a couple of times 'a lovely girl' and quite often saw her close friends Sting and Trudi Styler. His happiest times, however were spent at home with Madonna and her daughter Lourdes. 'In some ways, Madonna's a very ordinary woman who enjoys doing ordinary things,' he says.

'Like eating liquorice sticks, watching videos in bed or reading the newspapers over breakfast and not saying a word. 'A lot of people see Madonna as being quite an unhappy moody figure, but she spends far more time being happy than she does being sad. When she wants to, she can have a great sense of humour about herself. 'She used to send herself up by calling herself a creamy smooth pop icon goddess and then she would sing opera when she was heating up Pop Tarts for breakfast. 'A lot of the time we would spend playing with Lola or we'd go on family outings to Disneyland. That was probably the most fun we had, being together like a normal couple with a child. 'She got so much joy from her daughter. Just watching Lola trying to run in the park with her little legs flailing about, would set her off laughing. Nannies would take Lola over to the studio when Madonna was recording and she would take at least a couple of hours out to play with her.

I remember the first time she ever spent a night away from Lola. She had to go into the desert to shoot a video and she was so tearful at being apart from her daughter. 'I stayed at the house with Lola and the next days a car was suppose to take her out to the desert to meet her mother but it broke down. 'Madonna was just distraught she was in a state of panic until the car finally arrived and she could see Lola was safe.' Andy also met members of Madonna's family, including her brother Christopher and her father, Tony Ciccone, who owns a vineyard and winery in northern Michigan. 'He's a lovely man, very down to earth. I remember him talking about special varieties of grape that grow under heavy snowfall. 'One Christmas she bought him some piece of irrigation equipment because that was all he wanted. That's how star-struck he is.'

Madonna spoke little of her mother who died of breast cancer when she was five. 'Everybody knows she lost her mother when she was very young, and I can't even imagine how traumatic that must have been for her,' says Andy. 'I think there is probably an element of that loss in some of the lyrics she writes. You can sense it in her work. 'Her mother was deeply religious and quite passionate about the shrine at Lourdes, which is why Madonna gave that name to her daughter.'

With a flair for art and style, Madonna had many friends in the world of fashion, including the designers Donatella Versace and Stefano Gabbana. 'Because she was quite influential in launching Dolce and Gabbana by wearing their clothes in her videos, they look after her very well,' says Andy. 'At their studio in Milan they have a mannequin with her measurements and a bootmakers last in her shoe size. Vans would regularly turn up at the house with rails of their clothes for her to choose from.' Even so, not all her clothes were from designers. 'She could wear the tattiest pair of jeans and still look good in them. Often she'd walk round the house in just a Hennes vest and look fantastic. She once said to me if she didn't do what she did, she would love to have been in fashion journalism. She is very creative.' There is affection and admiration in his voice; Madonna's, he says often, is a lovely woman.

Yet, for Andy at least something had changed. For all the happy times they shared together, and his growing fondness for Lola, the differences between them, those that had first surfaced in London only to be pushed aside were becoming harder to ignore. Andy's self confidence was suffering, trying to develop film projects of his own, he felt he was only taken seriously as Madonna's boyfriend. 'I felt cheap in a way, that I'd got where I was through no merit of my own. 'When opportunities were offered. I didn't take them. I was suspicious of everyone.' Madonna, who had encouraged Andy's career was disappointed at his lack progress. 'I think she thought I had to have a career within that world in order for us to continue a successful relationship. 'Her work is so important to her, and she needed someone whose career was equally important to them. She's very driven, and she ended up wishing I was more driven, too.'

At the start of the relationship, Andy's lack of money had never seemed a problem. Now, his pride became an issue. Simple things, such as Madonna's effort to make her unashamedly scruffy lover wear new clothes, made him angry. 'I eventually bought myself some smarter outfits, but not until we'd been seeing one another for quite a while. I'd hate to think of myself m someone who can be bought. We were fighting more: such as 'Where are my socks?' - 'In the bin' - 'But they've got months left in them.' Our relationship was gradually breaking under the strain of all the things I didn't like about the situation. 'It was changing me: I certainly wasn't the person she had met. I knew I didn't belong in LA. I felt like, a child among a group of adults. And Madonna was changing, too. As time went on, she was less ready to look at the problems between us in a rose-coloured way.' Both recognised the pressures they were under 'I'm so sorry that you were threatened by my career and fame and past,' wrote Madonna sadly to Andy, later in their relationship. 'I wish I could erase all the bad memories between us and go back to LA before we left for New York and London. Before we both got scared.'

The passion that remained between them led to fierce, arguments. 'That in itself can almost make a stronger link between you, because you become locked in battle,' says Andy. 'Everything was heightened.' It was clear the situation could not go on. Finally, Andy decided to leave LA and return to London. Even then, their relationship continued, in angry phone calls and long, heartfelt letters. Neither could let go completely. It was not until late 1998 that the situation began to change.

By then, as we will see tomorrow, Madonna had met the man who would transform her life once more: a little known film-maker named Guy Ritchie.

Daily Mail - 22 January 2002

"The penniless Englishman who seduced Madonna"

PART THREE / FINAL Exclusive by Alice Fowler

Andy Bird remembers clearly the moment his girlfriend Madonna first set eyes on Guy Ritchie. There was, he notes carefully, a 'chemistry' between them. Ironically it is the very word he uses to describe the start of their own extraordinary love affair, just a year before. Bird, an unassuming and virtually penniless Englishman, who was scratching out a living as an aspiring film screenwriter, had been introduced to her through a mutual friend. A sexual spark was struck, and he suddenly found himself the boyfriend of the most famous woman on the planet. It was one of the most unexpected but tumultuous affairs of Madonna's amazing life.

As we have already seen, in this series, she was carrying Andy's child within three months. But although he stirred profound feelings in the singer touching her more deeply than previous celebrity lovers such as Warren Beatty and John Kennedy Jr, Andy was unable to cope with the constant blaze off publicity in which she lived. Uncertain of their future together Madonna aborted their child. And by the time she met Ritchie in the summer of 1998 she and Andy were living apart. Madonna was in the US with her daughter Lourdes (known as Lola), promoting her album Ray Of Light. Andy was in London, resuming his bohemian life in Notting Hill. His first job when he returned was to work on the door of his old haunt, the Met Bar in Mayfair, not surprisingly, the fact that Madonna's boyfriend was working as a glorified bouncer instantly made the papers.

'I was flat broke.' he explains shrugging apologetically 'The manager was one of my friends, and I needed the money.' His relationship with Madonna continued in long, fraught phone calls and letters in which they tried to make amends for the rows. 'It's Mother's Day, and I have just put Lola to sleep,' wrote Madonna in one typical letter. 'The past few hours I've been distracted with thoughts of you and our last conversation. 'I hate to fight with you especially around Lola. I hate it when you call me names. The whole time we argue, all I really want to say to you is that I wish you were here and I was looking to your eyes. 'It's been so long since we've seen each other - and nothing would make me happier. But we never seem to get to tenderness because you we still so angry with me. You save your tender words for Lola and it hurts me so.' Both of them feIt anxious and insecure.

When the newspapers discovered that Andy was back in London, they labelled him 'broken-hearted Andy Bird' and were quick to speculate that Madonna had moved on to other men. Andy says: 'I read one report that Robbie Williams had been having dinner with her. In fact, it was all down to some over-zealous public relations person, met they'd never even met. 'But when you're on the other side of the Atlantic, you think: 'What the hell are you doing?' It would frustrate her that I would suddenly start quizzing her about stuff in the papers.' Madonna had questions of her own. 'She knew I'd recovered if not all then certainly some of my anonymity. To a certain extent I could run around and do what I wanted to do. If I'd have wanted to have an affair, I could have done. 'There was hostility on her side.' How would I know if you were doing anything?'she would say. It wasn't really jealousy, but it was definitely uncertainty.' Did they stay faithful to one another? 'I can only speak for myself,' says Andy. 'But yes, I did. The trust in the relationship had pretty much disappeared by then, but not because we'd started having other relationships. It's just that when you're arguing all the time, you do lose your trust.'

Despite the tensions, neither was prepared to give up on each other - or as Andy puts it, 'concede defeat.' Almost every other weekend he would fly to the U.S. 'I'd spend two or three days In New York, then fly back to London for a couple of weeks. It sounds glamorous but it wasn't at all. It was actually quite laborious. 'We couldn't really communicate. By the time we'd be getting used to being with one another again, it would be time for me to leave. 'Madonna was still very helpful, she paid for the flights far more regularly than I did. But you have to be very solid to continue a long-distance relationship and our foundations were really non-existent.' At times, the affair seems to have descended into farce. 'There was always an issue about how smelly my feet were, especially when I was travelling backwards and forwards to New York. When I got to her apartment and took my shoes off, Lola would be going, 'Pooh! Stinky Andrew!' Madonna used to make me wash my feet before I got into bed, with hydrogen peroxide, which Americana use as antiseptic.

'Her apartment in New York had a balcony overlooking Central Park, with a big urn on it. Once. I ran out there in my stockinged feet to have a cigarette, and took my socks off and put them in the urn. 'I got a call from her three weeks later saying Lola had been pointing at this urn saying "Stinky Andrew" because she'd found my socks. That kind of thing was very funny. But I think I as beginning to stretch Madonna's sense of humour somewhat.' Yet - remarkably, perhaps - a deep well of affection remained as Madonna's letters show. 'We haven't spoken for a week and it makes me very sad, but there's nothing I can do, so I'm sending you this note and some music I'd like you to listen to,' she wrote after one argument. 'I think of you so often when I listen to music. I feel it's the one thing we have that has not been tainted is a love of good music. 'You have a very good ear. The fact is there is nothing you wouldn't be good at, given the right circumstances. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you have so much talent and creativity inside you. It just needs to be manifested. 'You have so much to offer the universe I look forward to seeing into your heart. You are still so deeply embedded in my heart.'

Sometimes she would send Andy touching presents. 'After one bout of arguing, she put together a lovely little parcel for me, with a scented candle, some magazines, a little picture Lola had drawn, a letter and a CD,' he remembers. 'Occasionally, she would send money. That would make me feel pretty rough, and I'd invariably give it away. But I suppose she wanted to help and show she cared.'

For weeks the relationship waxed and waned. 'Just when I thought I couldn't take any more, something would happen to give us breathing space for the next round. She'd write me letters and I'd write to her. 'We'd be breaking up all the time, maybe not talking for a few days. Then we'd call each other up, or send long faxes. There was never a point when it really ended.' This was the stormy, uncertain background against which Madonna first met Guy Ritchie another handsome Englishman, also involved in film-making, although with rather more success than Andy Bird. The singer had come to London for work, and had been invited to a barbecue at the Wiltshire home of Sting and his wife Trudi Styler. Trudi was a close friend of Madonna and was also involved in Ritchie's new film, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.

For Andy and Madonna's, the day of the barbecue had started badly. She was keen for him to come with her, while he wanted to see some of his friends. 'I was heading home after seeing her at her hotel when she rang me on the mobile, asking if I was sure I didn't want to go,' he remembers. 'I wasn't keen because I was still wearing the clothes I'd had on the night before and was hardly dressed for barbecue, but I agreed to go with her. 'Her chauffeured Mercedes people-carrier picked me up on Pack Lane and I just jumped in next to the driver. Madonna - who was in the back with one of her assistants and Lola - interpreted this as a snub. 'It wasn't meant that way at all - but things went downhill from there. By the time we got to the party we were hardly speaking to each other.

'Trudi introduced us both to Guy and I could see a chemistry between him and Madonna. They looked good together - they kind of fitted. There was an instant interest and they started chatting straight away.' When they all sat down for dinner Madonna wanted Andy to sit next to her. Instead, he sat at the other end of the table with Lola. At least sitting next to Lola, I knew we wouldn't have an argument. Madonna ended up sitting next to Guy and they seemed to be getting on really well. Surprisingly, perhaps, Andy insists he felt no jealousy. 'There didn't seem to be anything to be jealous about. I'd seen that they'd hit it off at the start but now they were just two people at a party, chatting away like everyone else.

To this day, Andy insists that he knows nothing of how Madonna's relationship with Ritchie developed over the following months. But by March 1999, when he next met Guy, his own relationship with Madonna was over and Ritchie had very obviously taken his place. Their chance encounter at the Met Bar was to generate sensational headlines suggesting Ritchie had flattened his supposed rival in an ugly brawl. But that's not how Andy Bird remembers it. 'I was there with friend, and he was, too,' Andy says. 'We ended up having a chat. It was very loud and we went to have a talk about things in the lobby, which was quieter. 'I suppose I was saying 'no hard feelings', which was obviously a one-sided sentiment. Probably I said something derogatory about her, or about her life. Whatever it was, he suddenly pushed me over. 'It was out I nowhere - I was sitting on a chair and he pushed me off. But it wasn't the big brawl that some people have claimed.' Wisely, Andy did not respond and returned to the bar, while the doormen threw Ritchie out.

Why, though, did Guy react so violently? Perhaps he saw Andy as a threat, or at least a thorn in his side. Bird remains mystified by the scuffle, but refuses to speak harshly of the man who displaced him in Madonna's affections. 'Who knows what Madonna might have told him about me?' he says. 'But it wasn't like I was standing in his way. I wasn't in touch with Madonna by this stage and I don't think I even had her phone number. 'He clearly had - and has - very strong feelings for her. He'd had a drop to drink, and love can make you do silly things,' Possibly, Ritchie was simply aware of how intensely his girlfriend still cared for Andy.

In the months after Guy and Madonna met, she had continued to see Andy regularly. For her 40th birthday in August 1998 - not long after her first meeting with Guy it was Andy whom she flew but to be at her side. 'I went over to New York for a week and we had a couple of days together at her apartment,' Andy remembers. 'Then she chartered a small sea-place to take us from Manhattan to this gross Hugh Hefner-style mansion in the Hamptons that she had hired for her birthday. 'There were the two of us, her brother Christopher, her assistant, plus Lola, the nanny and a couple of friends. Then we were joined by about 30 people at the mansion and we had a lovely dinner party. 'We played silly party games and everyone seemed to have a great time. Her masseuse came along and gave everyone massages as her present to Madonna. 'After dinner, we went into this huge cinema that was in the mansion and watched the new film of The Avengers. But it was so awful that I went off into the video library and came back with In The Heat Of The Night, with Sidney Poitier, which everyone enjoyed.' At the time, Madonna was deeply influenced by Memoirs Of A Geisha. Arthur Golden's compelling novel about the eroticism and exploitation of a Japanese geisha. Back in London, Andy had bought an antique kimono for Madonna and a smaller one for Lola. 'I also got a huge chunk of silvercoloured metal and, with a friend of mine, carved her out a huge silver heart, which I took over for her. It must have weighed more than a house brick and she seemed to appreciate it. 'But we still had an argument, even on her birthday. I wasn't feeling well and kept disappearing to throw up, and she accused me of being ill on purpose to spoil her birthday.'

For months the arguments dragged on. 'One of us would slam the phone down and ring back just to slam it down again,' says Andy. 'She changed her numbers, I changed mine. It was almost like a competition, neither of us wanted to admit defeat. Neither of us was very good at saying sorry and we would never admit to being in the wrong.' For Madonna, Andy's whole approach to life was the easy-going, impulsive style that had helped bring them together in the first place - was wearing thin. 'I'm irresponsible in fundamental ways, which did become an issue' he concedes. It was about whether I could say to Madonna: 'I can look after you.' That was important, Madonna may have grown up looking after herself and everyone else around her, but I think she does want to be looked after. 'Not looked after financially, necessarily - that would be a daunting task. But to have someone who at least contributes to the household, who organises things, takes responsibility for things. 'Even if you can look after yourself particularly well, as she can, you want that.'

Certainly, Madonna had always been frustrated by Bird's laid back attitude to his career. In Guy Ritchie she found a man whose ambition matched her own.' But it was also a matter of emotional commitment. The truth is, with seven years between them, Andy and Madonna may simply have wanted different things. 'I think she was looking for a caring, stable relationship. I know she wanted another child, but I knew that I wasn't ready to become a parent.' Had fate run a little differently, it is conceivable that Madonna could have ended up marrying Andy Bird rather than Guy Ritchie. But Andy remains sceptical - even if they'd had a child, he says, it would not have made a difference. 'We would still have broken up. There were serious difficulties. Having a child wouldn't have changed our personalities, it ought have made us a little less headstrong but I don't think, ultimately, we would have stayed together. The relationship might just have lasted a little longer, that's all.'

Indeed, looking back, he is unsure how deep their feelings really were. 'In hindsight I'd have to look deep inside me to say we fell in love. 'It's very difficult to quantify those feelings when you're in the moment, whether it's infatuation, or desire, or love. But I don't really think we were in love.' It's a difficult claim to accept when you look back at Madonna's letters to Andy, where she talks of a love she describes as 'profound and immense' add tells him, 'I will never get over you.' The evidence, indeed, appears to entirely contradict his self-effacing verdict. But then, even though he has chosen to tell his story, Bird is a touchingly diffident man, determined not to exaggerate his role in Madonna's life.

In July 1999, over two evenings, they saw each other for the final time. Madonna had flown to London and was staying at the exclusive private members' club, Home House. Out of the blue she phoned Bird and invited him over, after seeing Guy Ritchie earlier that evening. 'I don't know why we saw each other then,' Andy says. 'Maybe it was just so that we could, in some kind of way, say our goodbyes to each other. The chemistry was no longer there. 'The anger still flared up because we are a couple of fighters, but our feelings had changed. The passion that had been there at the beginning of our relationship had gone by that stage. 'We had dinner together and chatted about what we had been doing, I can't remember what our last words were that night, I remember the emotions more than the words. There was resignation and a certain amount of sorrow, but no regrets that it hadn't worked out between us. 'She's certainly not one for regrets, She's very forward-looking and positive, as you can see from what she's achieved in her life.'

Even then, Madonna could not part from Andy completely. She called him the next day and arranged to meet him for dinner at a restaurant called Bali Sugar in Notting Hill. 'We actually got on much better that time. She had just got back from staying at Donatella Versace's place on Lake Como, and she'd bought a video camera with her so I could see where she had been staying. We had a pleasant conversation and then she went back to Home House, packed and got on a plane that night. Even then, we couldn't say we would never see each other again and we spoke subsequently on the phone. 'I was supposed to go over to Miami for her birthday the following month but it was at the height of the season and I couldn't afford the £800 for the flight. 'She was saying things such as 'If you really loved me you would find the money and I was saying, if you really loved me you would understand my situation.' So we didn't see each other again. I think we were both exhausted and had finally ground each other down.'

That Christmas, Madonna wrote to him one last time. 'It was just before she and Guy announced her pregnancy, She just said 'Hi, I hope things we OK with you. Lola still mentions you occasionally. Maybe we should meet it would be nice to have a chat about things.' Andy did not respond. 'It didn't really warrant it. It was just a few words on a Christmas card. She sent it to a restaurant I used to go to, and I only got it a month and a half later.' By then, he explains, the moment had passed: the world knew she was having a baby. 'I felt she was opening a new chapter in her life. By that stage, I definitely had as well.' How did he feel, after the loss of their own child, hearing Madonna was pregnant with another man? It didn't affect me,' he says evenly. 'By then, my head was somewhere else. Already it seemed another life. 'I did feel pleased for her. And from the little bits of information that filter through to me I understand they we very happy.'

It seems an odd coincidence that, after Andy, Madonna should go on to marry another Englishman. Andy, however says he saw little sign of a hankering for English men. 'She was married to Sean Penn and had a long relationship with Warren Beatty, and there's nothing remotely English about them. 'Since she and Guy got together, she's probably discovered quite a lot of nice things about England. But I don't think she was looking for an English husband.' While Madonna has found happiness with Ritchie - and given birth to a son Rocco - Andy has stepped back into the shadows. Today, he has another, happy relationship. He has grown up, it seems, in the past few years. Even now, his phone still rings with people wanting to talk to him about Madonna.

There have been some false suggestions that he is planning to write a book about his experiences, in fact, he hopes that by telling his story in this series, he can draw a line beneath the whole episode and get on with the rest of his life. He has, he says fervently, few regrets. I can look back and categorically say Madonna's a lovely, lovely person. But I definitely wasn't the right person for her, add she wasn't for me.' In the end, the contrasts that once seemed so alluring tore the relationship apart. Then love was at its best, an extraordinary fairy tale. Sadly, as with most real-life fairy tales, there could be no lasting happy ending.

[blackkudos]

Jonathan Butler

Jonathan Kenneth Butler (born 10 October 1961) is a South African singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music is often classified as R&B, jazz fusion or worship music.

Biography

Born and raised in Athlone,_Cape_Town, Cape Town, South Africa, during Apartheid, Butler started singing and playing acoustic guitar as a child. Racial segregation and poverty during Apartheid has been the subject of many of his records. His first single was the first by a black artist played by white radio stations in the racially segregated South Africa and earned a Sarie Award, South Africa's equivalent to the Grammy Awards.

He began touring at the age of seven when he joined a travelling stage show, and was later signed up to perform on a string of hit recordings, turning him into a local teen idol. In 1975 his cover of "Please Stay (song)" by The Drifters reached number 2 in South Africa. The same year his cover of "I Love How You Love Me" by The Paris Sisters reached number 4. "I'll be Home" reached number 16 in 1976.

In 1978 he found the inspiration and encouragement to begin expressing himself as a composer and songwriter when he joined Cape Town's best known jazz/rock outfit, Pacific Express. Two albums were recorded with the Express personnel, and some Pacific Express songs were later released on the 1988 7th Avenue album. All three releases were issued by Mountain Records.

Butler was signed to Jive Records in 1977, and in the early 1980s he moved to the United Kingdom, where he remained for seventeen years. His international breakthrough came in 1987 with his Grammy-nominated hit single, "Lies" which reached #25 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, and his cover version of the Staple Singers song "If You're Ready (Come Go with Me)", which he performed with Ruby Turner.

In 2001, Butler was featured in a compilation album that was a jazz tribute to Bob Marley produced by Lee Ritenour, A Twist of Marley. Butler's contribution to the album was a jazz cover of No Woman No Cry.

Butler maintained a loyal following in the 1980s and 1990s, in South Africa, the United States and Europe.

In 2006, Butler was a featured vocalist on the album Gospel Goes Classical, produced by University of Alabama at Birmingham music professor Henry Panion. This recording, featuring arrangements by Panion, Tommy Stewart, Michael Loveless, and Ray Reach, rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Gospel chart, and No. 3 on the Classical Crossover chart. He was also nominated for a Grammy Award for his single "Going Home".

Also in 2008, Butler guest-starred on George Duke's Album Dukey Treats, alongside the late Teena Marie on the track Sudan, talking about the disasters of Darfur.

Discography

Albums:

Introducing Jonathan Butler (1985)

Jonathan Butler (album) (1987)

Inspirations (1987)

7th Avenue (1988)

More Than Friends (1988)

Deliverance (1990)

Heal Our Land (1990)

Head To Head (1994)

Do You Love Me? (1997)

Story Of Life (1999)

The Source (2000)

Surrender (2002)

Worship Project (2004)

Gospel days (2005)

Jonathan (2005)

Brand New Day (2007)

So Strong (2010)

Grace and Mercy (2012)

Merry Christmas to You (2013)

Living My Dream (2014)

Free (2015-10-30)

Live Albums

Live in South Africa

Compilations:

Best Of Jonathan Butler (1993)

Ultimate Butler (2002)

Christmas Goes Gospel: Tis The Season (2014)

Divine Voices: Pastors of Praise (2015)

Collaborations

Gospel Goes Classical (2006) (with Juanita Bynum)

[visionaria]

Visionaria Playlist

Here are most of the songs referenced in the blog. I think I’ve got them all. It does not including songs I listened to while writing. Those are separate lists. Enjoy!

-Visionaria

Supposed to Make You Happy - Tift Merrit

A Change is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke

Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens

Rain - Patty Griffin

Snow - Harry Nilsson

America The Beautiful - Ray Charles

Some Rain Must Fall - Ella Fitzgerald

Sadness - Enigma

This Love Will Carry - Dougie MacLean

Come Away, Come Sweet Love - John Dowland

That’s How Strong My Love is - Otis Redding

Long Long Time - Linda Ronstadt

This Dirty Little Town - Tracy Grammer

Red Hill Mining Town - U2

Arrow - Cheryl Wheeler

Damn Your Eyes - Alex Clare

You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To - Julie London (although most versions are good)

Love is Blind - Eve

One Way or Another - Blondie

Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac

Not Ready to Make Nice - Dixie Chicks

Crucify - Tori Amos

Adam & Eve - Ani DiFranco

Not A Pretty Girl - Ani DiFranco

Drive - Melissa Ferrick

Piece of My Heart - Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)

Pissing In a River - Patti Smith

Crazy On You - Heart

Howl - Florence and the Machine

No Light, No Light - Florence and the Machine

Lighthouse Light - Redbird

You May Be Right - Billy Joel

There’s a Long, Long Trail - Ada Reeve

Ten Year Night - Lucy Kaplansky

The One That Got Away - Pink

Essence - Lucinda Williams

Cry To Me - Solomon Burke

Winter Song - Sarah Bareilles

You Are My Lucky Star - Debbie Reynolds

You Belong To Me - The Duprees

Boulder to Birmingham - Emmylou Harris

Swan Dive - Ani DiFranco

Sweet Baby James - James Taylor

Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen

Purple Rain - Prince

Boots Of Spanish Leather - Bob Dylan (Mandolin Orange has a pretty version)

Don’t Think Twice - Bob Dylan 

Better Be Good To Me - Tina Turner

Kiss - Faith Hill

Lawyers Guns and Money - Warren Zevon

Probably Wouldn’t Be This Way - LeAnn Rimes

Breathe (2AM) - Anna Nalick

Thrift Store Chair - Everclear

Wish it Was True - While Buffalo

Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison

Reminds Me of You - Van Morrison

Juice and June - Kris Delmhorst

Round Midnight - Sarah Vaughn

Stupid American - Eddie From Ohio

The Very Thought of You - Billie Holliday

We Belong - Pat Benatar

Cry Me A River - Julie London

Save The Last Dance For Me - The Drifters

’Til It’s Gone - Po’Girl

Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley

Come Pick Me Up - Ryan Adams

Lucky Now - Ryan Adams

Dirty Rain - Ryan Adams

If I am A Stranger - Ryan Adams

The Eye - Brandi Carlile

Wherever Is Your Heart - Brando Carlile

Sweet Kate - Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

Gentle Soldier of My Soul - Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

41 Thunderer - Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

Number of My Love - Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

Mockingbird - Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons

Born Again - Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons

What Do You Need - Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons

Your Love is So Wrong For Me - Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons

Kingdom Come - The Civil Wars

Devil’s Backbone - The Civil Wars

Time and Time Again - Counting Crows

Sullivan Street - Counting Crows

Angels Would Fall - Melissa Etheridge

Don’t You Need - Melissa Etheridge

The Late September Dogs - Melissa Etheridge 

Bring Me Some Water - Melissa Etheridge 

Like The Way I Do - Melissa Etheridge 

Mesa Arizona - Jeffrey Foucault

Northbound 35 - Jeffrey Foucault

Voices Talking - Jeffrey Foucault

Love is Our Cross to Bear - John Gorka

I Saw A Stranger With Your Hair - John Gorka

The One That Got Away - John Gorka

Blood and Fire - Indigo Girls

Kid Fears - Indigo Girls

Prince of Darkness - Indigo Girls

Ghost - Indigo Girls

Stockholm - Jason Isbell 

Cover Me Up - Jason Isbell

Goddamn Lonely Love - Jason Isbell

Songs She Sang in the Shower - Jason Isbell

White Man’s World - Jason Isbell

Hope the Highroad - Jason Isbell

Traveling Alone - Jason Isbell

Live Oak - Jason Isbell

Mean - Pink

So What - Pink

Come Back Home - Chris Pureka

Burning Bridges - Chris Pureka

31 And Falling - Chris Pureka

Sweet Mistakes - Ellis Paul

Speed of Trees - Ellis Paul

Citizen of the World - Ellis Paul

Love Has No Pride - Bonnie Raitt

Angel From Montgomery - Bonnie Raitt and John Prine

Nora - Richard Shindell

Reunion Hill - Richard Shindell

4th of July, Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen

I’m on Fire - Bruce Springsteen

Brilliant Disguise - Bruce Springsteen

Mercy of the Fallen - Dar Williams

Iowa - Dar Williams

It’s Alright - Dar Williams

As Cool As I Am - Dar Williams

The Ocean - Dar Williams

You’re Aging Well - Joan Baez and Dar Williams

[thesevenseraphs]

Bungie Weekly Update - 9/20/18

This week at Bungie, Power is enabled.

Lord Saladin has returned once more to host the Iron Banner. Power matters, and players are feeling it. Some who conquered the “Last Wish” raid are taking their newly earned rewards out for a spin, while others are completing their weekly challenges in search of powerful rewards.

Across the pond, we’ve deployed our away team to EGX! If you happen to be in Birmingham, UK, make sure to stop by. We have opportunities to meet the developers, and a panel that goes deeper on the creation of the Dreaming City. If you’re unable to make it, the discussion panel will also be streamed.

Developer Meet and Greets

Virgin Media, Destiny 2: Forsaken StandFriday, September 21, 5:15 PM BSTSaturday, September 22, 11 AM BST

Discussion Panel—Building the Dreaming City

Friday, September 21, 4 PM BST (8 AM PDT)Livestream: https://www.twitch.tv/egx

That’s not all that we have going on this week. We’re still in the midst of celebrating many players throughout the community who’ve taken on one of the most challenging activities in the Destiny universe to date.

Toppling a Giant

On September 14, Petra invited Guardians from around the world to launch into the “Last Wish” raid. The race for World First was exciting as always, and Clan Redeem once again earned the title. This fireteam truly knows the definition of teamwork, as each member provided the skill and puzzle-solving knowledge to overcome the activity as a whole before anyone else in the world. We have a few words from their fireteam to share with you:

Clan Redeem: “Last Wish” was everything we as a clan could have wanted out of a World First race, and more: a grinding experience with massive ups and downs, incredible challenges, and a true test of mental fortitude. This was the first raid we’ve ever done in which we learned more than just mechanics. We learned about our own resilience, and that we would never give up, no matter how bleak the situation seemed. Getting to the boss room almost six hours after other teams was demoralizing, and it had us on the verge of collapsing as a team. We knew this was the moment we had to step up or let the race slip away from us. We pushed through the exhaustion and started playing to each member’s strengths. We want to thank all teams that attempted the raid on day one; without your fierce competition, it wouldn’t have been as intense. A big thank-you as well to anyone who came out and supported us during this nearly 19-hour marathon. It means more than you could ever imagine.

Many throughout the studio were glued to their screens for the entirety of the raid, eagerly waiting for the first players to crack puzzles and beat the final boss. Some of us even stuck around in the Bungie Theater for 18 hours to track progress.

Senior Designer Joe Blackburn was on site to verify the first completion alongside our analytics team. With the raid conquered, he’d like to say thank you on behalf of all who worked to bring this experience to Destiny 2:

Joe: Last Friday, we were excited to reveal the latest chapter in Destiny raids: “Last Wish” was released into the wild. After a monumental 18+ hour adventure, six Guardians slew Riven and changed the Dreaming City forever. To everyone who ventured into the heart of the Dreaming City, thank you. It was a privilege to get to watch players tackle the Taken scourge. Whether you finish as World First or simply World’s Most Recent, we can’t wait for you and your fireteam to topple the last known Ahamkara. It takes a small army of very passionate developers to create content like this, and getting to see it in your hands puts a huge smile on all of our faces. Until next time.

If you have yet to visit the Dreaming City since the Raid was beaten, these six Guardians have unlocked some new areas for you to explore. You can find a new strike, ”The Corrupted,” and the new Gambit map, “Cathedral of Scars,” available in their respective activity playlists.

Break On Through

Starting Tuesday, September 25, the new Crucible game mode Breakthrough will become available to all players of Destiny 2. There will also be new maps that were crafted to complement this game type. Here’s a quick overview of how Breakthrough works:

At the beginning of each round, players will fight to capture a central zone. Once the zone is captured, your team will deploy the Breaker. As players work to deploy the Breaker, the zone can be contested, resulting in an epic tug-of-war between the two teams. Once the Breaker is captured, it will be used to assault and hack the enemy team’s Vault.

If you hack the enemy team’s Vault, you win the round. If you fail to hack the enemy team’s Vault within the round time limit, you lose. If you are in the process of hacking the enemy team’s Vault when time runs out, you will enter Sudden Death until you either hack the Vault, or the enemy removes all your progress.

First team to win three rounds takes the match.

Breakthrough will first be available as the Weekly Featured Playlist for the week of September 25. Then, it will be added to the Competitive playlist starting October 2. Owners of Destiny 2: Forsaken may begin to play Breakthrough in Private Matches on September 25 as well.

As for maps, here are some sneak peeks at what every player looking to deploy some Breakers might expect next Tuesday:

Equinox

Firebase Echo

The Citadel

For those who have yet to play since Iron Banner went live, Convergence will also be available as a Breakthrough map.

Players on PlayStation 4 will also have access to the map Gambler's Ruin.

Weekend Programming

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend in

Destiny 2, we have two offerings that may appeal to your interests.

Gambit Free Trial

Start: 10 AM PDT on September 21

End: 10 AM PDT on September 23

If you’re looking for some pure PvP action without having to bank motes for the Drifter, Lord Shaxx is your man.

Double Valor Weekend

Start: 10 AM PDT on September 21

End: 10 AM PDT on September 25

Double Valor will be available in all Crucible Playlists, including Iron Banner! Get out there and make Shaxx proud.

Nuts and Bolts

Over the last few weeks, we’ve shipped a few updates and hotfixes to address various known issues in Destiny 2. Just today, we released Hotfix 2.0.3.1 to address a few issues impacting rewards and Gambit matchmaking. Destiny Player Support is with you each step of the way, from the first report of an issue to the deployment of a fix. Read on for the status of current investigations, and more!

Destiny 2 Hotfixes 2.0.3 and 2.0.3.1

This week, we deployed Destiny 2 Hotfixes 2.0.3 and 2.0.3.1 to players. These hotfixes resolved a number of newly discovered issues that directly affected the player experience and game economy.

Some of these fixes include:

Offering to the Oracle has been moved to the Pursuits inventory and is no longer erroneously removed when the player fast travels

Activity reconnection has been disabled in the Gambit playlist to allow for faster backfilling of lopsided teams

The Ace of Spades quest no longer requires defeating enemy invaders in Gambit but can now instead be completed by defeating either combatants or enemy invaders with Hand Cannons in Gambit matches

Fixed an issue where the mission “Homecoming” weapons—Traveler’s Chosen, Origin Story, and Last Dance—could not be dismantled or transferred to the vault

To see the full patch notes for these releases, players should follow the links below:

Destiny 2 Hotfix 2.0.3

Destiny 2 Hotfix 2.0.3.1

Iron Banner Rewards

With the launch of the first Iron Banner of Season 4, we have become aware of an issue where Iron Banner rank-up packages incorrectly display “Powerful Gear” as rewards.

It is intended that Iron Banner rank-up engrams award players with gear at the same level as other generic faction rank-up rewards. Only Lord Saladin’s “Unrelenting” and “To Be Precise” bounties are actually intended to offer powerful gear. We are investigating a fix for this issue for a future update.

Tincture of Queensfoil

As players have begun to explore the depths of the Dreaming City, confusion has emerged about the expected behavior of the Ascendant buff granted by the Tincture of Queensfoil consumable. Provided below is a brief overview of this buff’s behavior:

The Ascendant buff provided by the Tincture of Queensfoil is removed after players return to orbit or launch a new activity

If players return to orbit or launch into another activity, they must consume another Tincture of Queensfoil to reactivate the Ascendant buff

To make sure Tincture of Queensfoil consumables are not wasted unintentionally, it is recommended that players check that they have successfully landed in their desired activity before using this consumable

Players who believe they are encountering issues with behaviors not listed above should report them to the #Help forums.

Edge Transit

Since the launch of Destiny 2: Forsaken, we have heard player feedback regarding the aggressive drop rates of the Edge Transit Grenade Launcher. Our investigation has confirmed that this weapon is dropping more frequently than intended, and we are pursuing a fix for a future update. For more information when it is available, please stay tuned to our Updates page.

Destiny 2: Forsaken Known Issues

In addition to the items listed above, Destiny Player Support is tracking the latest issues reported by players on the #Help forum. Provided below is a brief overview of the latest known issues in Destiny 2: Forsaken.

Under-levelled Powerful Gear Drops: We have identified an issue causing powerful gear to sometimes drop below expected power levels, and are working to resolve this issue in a future update.

Menu Load Times: We are investigating an issue where some players are experiencing longer-than-usual load times in menus and UI on consoles

Cataloguer Emblem at the Postmaster: We are investigating an issue where the Cataloguer emblem always returns to the Postmaster if stored

Weapon Perks in a Rift or Well of Radiance: We are investigating an issue where some weapon perks may not activate while players are standing in a Healing Rift or a Well of Radiance

Nova Warp: We are investigating an issue where the Nova Warp Super may not fully activate when used

For the latest known issues as soon as they are available, players should visit our Forsaken Vital Information and Known Issues list.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week - #82

My first film with actor Tom Hardy - a movie about cement. Locke is a character piece that features only one person, and takes place exclusively inside a BMW driving from Birmingham to London at night. Like the Danish thriller ‘The Guilty’, its power comes from the gripping roller-coaster story that unfolds in stages. It tells of a responsible construction foreman whose life unravels as he drives to be present for the birth of a child conceived during a one-night stand. Highly recommended!

The unique film of the week!

🍿

2 Peak Jack Nicholson Roles:

🍿 ...”I’m tired of what’s right and wrong”…

Re-watch: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981 version). Peak Jessica Lange and another depression-era Jack Nicholson drifter in a hard-core, sadomasochistic and “steamy” affair. The first hour of their sexual attraction was sensational, and their plan to kill her husband riveting. The second hour, from the moment the husband was dead, was very weak.

RIP, Bob Rafelson!

🍿 The Pledge, the third film directed by Sean Penn, and one of Nicholson’s last great roles. And what an ensemble cast: Benicio del Toro, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Helen Mirren,  Patricia Clarkson, Robin Wright Penn (with a chipped front tooth), Lois Smith and Aaron Eckhart. Also, a terrific Hans Zimmer score. 7/10.

🍿

A newer Werner Herzog thriller with Michael Shannon I never heard of? With a hostage taking plot against an ecological disaster on the salt flats in Bolivia? Sign me up. However, Salt and Fire, written by Herzog in only 5 days, was BAD! Stilted dialogue, terrible acting, meaningless story. The only positive was the lovely score. 2/10.

🍿

2 Older Korean women protecting their difficult sons/grandsons:

🍿 Poetry, my 4th lyrical masterpiece by Lee Chang-dong, (After ‘Burning’. ‘Peppermint Candy’ and ‘A girl at my door’). He is now one of my all-time favorite directors. Another 100% “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, and deservedly so.

A 66-year-old grandmother discovers that her growing memory loss is caused by early-onset Alzheimer, but the story is not about how her life deteriorates. Instead, it tells about her enrolling in a poetry class, and her dealing with her rebellious grandson. Wistful, poetic and moving. 10/10.

🍿I thought that the story of Bong Joon-ho’s Mother would be similar, as the write up sounded somehow similar. But it didn’t compare. Here, the mother of an intellectually-challanged boy accused of murder, becomes an investigator in order to clear his name. But there was no depth to the story, and no ‘poetry’ to the film-making. 3/10.

🍿 

In the last year I saw 5 of Roy Andersson’s 6 Feature films (I can’t find ‘Gilliap’ anywhere!), but I had to watch A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence again today. (Photo Above).

It’s so Swedish, so funny and so sad.

🍿

My first two by Takashi Miike:

🍿 Audition - Sammy challenged me to see it, “one of the most fucked up movies that he ever saw”, and I was apprehensive for quite a while because I won’t watch horror films. But it wasn’t straight ‘torture-porn’. Before it turns into a sadistic revenge-shocker at the third act, the story of a widower producer who uses a false casting audition to find a woman to marry was nuanced and well-done. The ‘normal’ psychology of the first half, felt extra unsettling at the end. 7/10.

🍿 His completely different The Happiness of the Katakuris. A bizarre genre-bender: A surrealist and lovely comedy about a family of six (plus their dog Pochi) who buys a bed & breakfast out in the country, but nobody visits it, and the few that do, end up dying. The Macabre and insane story is broken up with stylistic anomalies: Wild Claymation and dream sequences, a karaoke-style sing-alongs, and every few minutes over-the-top song and dance numbers, like ‘The feeling of love’, and ‘That’s happiness’. Unique and delightful. 8/10.

🍿  

The milk of sorrow, my first award-winning film from Peru about violence and trauma, directed by Claudia Llosa (the daughter of Mario Vargas Llosa). Magaly Solier, who was also wonderful at ‘Lina from Lima’, stars as a impoverished woman tormented. The suffering of the local women has passed from one generation to the next in fears which paralyze their lives. Tragic magical realism, troubling and transcendental. 8/10.

🍿

How to make a masterpiece with a near-zero budget - Where Is My Friend's House? My 4th film by Abbas Kiarostami, and again, like ‘Homework’, about ordinary first graders at a poor Iranian village. An 8-year-old boy have to return his friend's notebook that he took by mistake, or the friend will be punished. One of Kurosawa's favorite films and one of the greatest films about childhood I’ve ever seen. The final shot is heart-stopping. 10/10.

🍿

Laugh or Die, a strange comedy from Finland, about a a group of theater actors in a prison camp, who must stage a comedy play for the camp commandant - or be executed. This is during the Finnish civil war of 1918, on which I knew very little beforehand. 🍿 

”… The horse blew first…”

Between the two verifiable masterpieces ‘The Gold Rush’ and ‘City Lights’, Chaplin directed The Circus. The sentimental, melancholy story of a selfless clown, who can only be funny unintentionally. Also, I never realized how much makeup he used for his eyes. Re-watch.

🍿  

Making It Big: The History of Gay Adult Film, a feature-length documentary (or rather a YouTube video essay, made and narrated by one guy) about the history of gay porn in America. Not XXX-explicit, but about hard-core gay porn. "I did not know that!..."

🍿 

Picnic, about a no-good vagrant who comes to a small Kansas town and messes up wherever he goes. A cheesy drama of 1955 social and sexual morals, that rings fake and cringy today. With young Kim Novak and Cliff Robertson, and starring 37-year-old William Holden, who looked 47, and was wooing in the movie Novak’s high-school little sister.

I could only finish this stagey, artificial Oh shucks Mid-America Mid-century hokum with gritted teeth and by giving myself small hits on the head.

🍿

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman X 2:

🍿 As much as I didn’t like the movie, Paul Newman made his Broadway theater debut in the original 1953 production of ‘Picnic'.

I learnt that in Ethan Hawke’s new 6-part series The Last Movie Stars, a double biography of the classy, handsome Hollywood couple, who were super successful actors, as well as a loving husband and wife for 50 years.

The self-indulgent framing of the project as a Covid / Zoom interviews was unnecessary, but the bulk of the documentary was fascinating and absorbing. I binged it all in one day - 8/10.

(Also, I didn’t realize that Joanne Woodward was diagnosed with Alzheimer in 2008, just as her husband died, and is still alive today at 92).

🍿 So I’m going to go through as many of their films as I can find, the 16 films they did together, as well as the many others they played separately.

Unfortunately, my first random pick, Paris Blues, was disappointing. A Martin Ritt romantic melodrama of expat jazz cats Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman who fall in love with two American fans, one black and one Joanne Woodward. All the cliches of 1961 bohemian Paris were there, from the snapping of the fingers to the groovy beat, and the cocaine-addict gypsy guitarist, to the loaves of baguettes sticking out of paper shopping bags. Two scenes with Louis Armstrong and the Duke Ellington score elevated this banal soap opera a bit. 3/10.

🍿

Before becoming an irreverent critic of right-wing hypocrisy (and more recently, an old man shouting at ‘woke’ kids to get off his libertarian lawn), Bill Maher was a youngish actor wannabe, trying his luck in Hollywood B-movies. His 'greatest’ success was in the ridiculous ‘comedy’ Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, a soft-porn fantasy written by a 14-year-old for an audience of 11-year-olds. But even his piggish guide “Jim” was not the stupidest part of this moronic, childish story. Even though it was obviously shot at the University of Riverside, the ditzy, scantly-clad bimbo joining the mission, had never been to San Bernardino ‘on the edge of the California avocado belt’. 1/10. 

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

[myremains]

Desert Storm - Sentinels

Track List:

Journey’s End

Too Far Gone

The Brawl

Kingdom of Horns

Gearhead

Drifter

The Extrovert

Convulsion

Capsized

Outro

These fellow UK lads are one of the few random journalist finds from years ago coming full circle for me, Forked Tongues randomly popped through my door many years ago and I thought there was some great potential on display. After this life moved forward and I never kept up with their career until I hit Hard Rock Hell in birmingham where they were quite high up on the second stage bill who put on quite the groovy set for us. This is album number 6 and 4th since the illustrious Forked Tongues record, let’s see how Sentinels stacks up, at this point I am expecting a lot of refinement.

The way in which I will go forth and describe this album, will put them with a very select amount of bands, they actually sent me to sleep. This is not a bad thing however because I was very tired and the material on this album is very hypnotic in nature. To put this in perspective the only other bands who have put me to sleep are Tool and Dream Theater. “Brawl” is a good taster of the rest of the record to come, you can get a feel for what I mean by a heavy yet steady groove, rather than blasting through its got one of those extended headbanging feels from deep down in alabama with a zest of growling much like the heavier “Too Far Gone” which just has more grit. Album Opener “Journey’s End” is one I remember from a recent live set I caught at HRH birmingham, I even remember saying at the time “good god this song never ends” even though I’d got my own little groove going on in the corner at the time. Everyone knows it is very rare I like songs longer than 5 minutes, the only bands on that exception list are Tool, A7X, Metallica and Dream Theater that come to mind straight away and these guys can’t make my list with it as their songs are up and down throughout 6-8 minutes at times, which is why I’m so glad they’ve mixed them in amongst more manageable length tracks.

Definitely the kind of music you wanna take on holiday with you to Amsterdam if you get what I mean? There's something soothing about the rhythm of the chaos that ensues that sets it aside to most other similar types of music, at times you’d think it was going to be another southern rock band like Black Stone Cherry for example then they just run with it and show the real roots of progressive metal whilst sipping moonshine.

[8/10]

[dichenlachmandaily]

Gil Birmingham (Wind River) and Dichen Lachman (Altered Carbon) are set for recurring roles alongside Denis Leary on the upcoming third season of TNT’s Animal Kingdom.

Birmingham will play Pearce, an unflappable law enforcement officer with a dry sense of humor and more than 20 years on the job. Smart, dogged and patient, Pearce has been tracking the Cody family for years. Lachman will portray Frankie, an edgy, free spirit who arrives at the Cody house with her partner, Billy (Leary). They’ve been living in a car up and down the West Coast. She seems innocent, but she’s dangerous.

They join series regulars Ellen Barkin, who plays the matriarch of the Cody clan, along with Scott Speedman, Shawn Hatosy, Ben Robson, Jake Weary, Finn Cole, Molly Gordon and Carolina Guerra. Leary will play Billy, Deran’s (Weary) drifter dad who Smurf (Barkin) kicked out years ago.

Inspired by the 2010 Australian movie of the same name from David Michôd, Animal Kingdom centers on teen Joshua “J” Cody (Cole), who moves in with his freewheeling, criminally inclined relatives in their Southern California beach town after his mother dies of a heroin overdose.

[peterandersonaj]

Netflix Originals Coming in Fall 2020

There are hundreds of television shows and movies on Netflix. And when you try to find something online, it cannot be very clear. Netflix Originals has plenty of such options and brand new content. However, not every series has been a success. And some receive a lot of appraisal from audiences and critics. Netflix is premiering news shows in the coming weeks. In this article, we will list down some most and least appealing contents.

The Haunting Of Bly Manor

The Haunting of Bly Manor is the American horror drama television series, directed and created by Mike Flanagan for streaming content of Netflix. The show is loosely based on the novel written by Henry James titled The Turn of the Screw. It will be a sequel series of Haunting of Hill House. The show is scheduled to premiere on 9 October 2020. The plot follows a young governess hired to take care of a man’s nephew and niece at the family country. After arriving at Bly estate, she experiences ghostly features that proceed to haunt.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mike said that until Paramount, Netflix, and Amblin want one, he does not wish to speculate on season two. He added the story of the Crain family is told, and it’s done. However, Bly Manor will not have any dramatic link with Hill House, apart from two actors Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Victoria Pedretti, as new characters. The series and shooting production started from 30 September 2019 and wrapped up on 21 February 2020.

Mike Flanagan has proved his excellence in large and small screens, and fans desperately wait for 9 October.

The Princess Switch: Switched Again

The Princess Switch is an American romantic comedy, screenplay written by Robin Bernheim and Megan Metzger, and directed by Mike Rohl. The movie stars Sam Palladio, Vanessa Hudgen, and Nick Sagar. The sequel of the franchise title The Princess Switch: Switched Again is under production, and the team could release it anytime in 2020. The first season was released on 16 November 2018 on Netflix, and the plot revolves around a young baker Stacy DeNovo, who owns a successful pastry shop in Chicago. DeNovo manages the shop with her best friend Kevin; the latter has a daughter who is a young ballet dancer. Stacy has broken up with her boyfriend Paul, and Paul entered their business in a baking competition in the Kingdom of Belgravia. Although she was reluctant to participate in the competition as Christmas is an awful reminder of her relationship with Paul. If you did not enjoy the first movie, then probably the second one is not for you. The plot is very similar to a lot of movies out there; it has nothing new to serve its audiences. It will release around December this year.

The Devil All The Time

The Devil All The Time is the upcoming American psychological thriller movie based on the Donal Ray Pollock’s novel of the same name. The film is produced by Jake Gyllenhaal and Randall Poster and co-written and directed by Antonio Campos. The movie stars Tom Holland, Riley Keough, Bill Skarsgard, Sebastian Stan, Jason Clarke, Robert Pattinson, and Eliza Scanlen. The Devil All The Time is scheduled to be released on 16 September 2020 on Netflix. The movie’s shooting started on 19 February 2019 in Alabama with locations Pell City, Anniston, Birmingham, and Montevallo, and the filming finished on 15 April 2019.

Tom Holland is in Arvin’s character in the movie, and he will trip into the dark side of the battle, murderous drifters, and scarred memories of his past. According to the trailer, the movie will be dark and horror-noir.

Julie And The Phantoms

Julie e os Fantasmas aka Julie and the Phantoms is the Brazilian television series produced by Rede Bandeirantes along with Nickelodeon Brazil. The show was divided into two phases, the first one in 2011, and the second one in 2012. The screenplay of the series is written by Tiago Mello Fabio Danesi, Paula Knudsen, Ricardo Tiezzi, Daniela Garuti, Dani Garuti, and five more. Mariana Lessa is in the role of protagonist Julie. The plot revolved around her life and experience when she met three ghosts: Daniel, Martim, Felix — played by Bruno Sigrist, Marcelo Ferrari, and Fabio Rabello. The show won the APCA Trophy in the category for “best children’s program” and was also nominated for Kids Emmy Awards, My Nick Awards, and Kids’ Choice Awards.

If teen musicals are your genre, then this film is for you. However, the twist about the phantom in the series is formulaic. But if you want to watch something less predictable, then you should watch something else.

Rebecca

Rebecca is the upcoming British romantic thriller movie, screenplay written by Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse, and Jane Goldman, and directed by Ben Wheatley. The film is based on the novel of the same name written by author Daphne du Maurier. It stars Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Tom Goodman-Hill, Sam Riley, and Ann Dowd. Rebecca is scheduled to release on 21 October 2020 on Netflix.

Lily James is playing the woman who married widower Maxim de Winter and found herself living under the shadow of Winter’s dead wife, Rebecca. Director Wheatley promised to add a fresh spin to surprise its audiences who are familiar with the novel.

Mank

Mank is the upcoming American drama, written by Gary Oldman along with Howard Kelly “Jack” Fincher, directed by the latter’s son, David Fincher. In the cast, Gary Oldman as the protagonist, Lily Collins, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, and Tom Burke lend their fantastic support as the rest of the characters. Fincher is famous for his movies like Fight Club, Mindhunter, and Citizen Kane. Mank is one of the most awaited films and is widely expected to receive Oscars. Mank is the film about the classic screenwriter of 1941 of the same name as the title; the plot will follow his professional and personal setback during the making of the film.

The above are some upcoming Netflix Original content that might help to choose your next movie or series.

Tim Cross is from Ohio USA. Before he started writing blogs he went through various occupations such as teaching, programming and travelling. But his favorite job is writing blogs for antivirus technology for mcafee.com/activate.

Source : Netflix Originals

[chvrlic]

hlo friends!!! i’m trace, i’m 26 in the est, and this is my newest son charlie, bcus i’m obsessed w/david harbour atm what can i say. he’s still slowly being developed, but he’s coming together very nicely!!

( DAVID HARBOUR / CISMALE ) He is an interesting one, huh? With a name like CHARLIE BENTON and at the ripe age of 38, why wouldn’t they be? Of course, they can be both +LOGICAL and -CURMUDGEONLY, but that’s what makes them interesting. Around 13Park, people call them the VETERAN. Guess we’ll have to see. ( trace / 26 / est / she/her )

his about can be found here, but under the cut is a quick rundown of some more things

just like the song, his daddy was a drifter and mama died young. his mother died when he was only a baby, and his dad was in and out of his life

his aunt on his father’s side took him in and raised him, kept a roof over his head and kept him clothed and fed, she was only a kid when she took him in, she was 22 and he was 8.

he has no contact with his father anymore, and likes to pretend that he doesn’t exist.

he grew up with his cousin, his aunt’s daughter, and was very close with her, to the point where she was like his sister. she now has her own child, who he views as his niece rather than a second cousin

as soon as he turned 18 after graduation he enlisted in the army

was in the army for 12 years

served two tours overseas, has seen a lot of shit

got married when he was only 21, they managed to make it last for seven years before they divorced in ‘07

hasn’t been in a long term/serious relationship since, mostly flings

moved to birmingham and 13 park in 2010 after he left active duty

decided to start a diner and indulge his love of cooking, that became a local favorite haunt, pop’s soda shoppe

is a Grump™ of ultimate proportions

literally says things like “get off my lawn”

suffers from PTSD

is secretly a giant teddy bear and very loving, just has a very rough exterior

i’m down for any and all plots for this big boi, so let’s do it!!!

[easyfoodnetwork]

Here Are the 2020 James Beard Awards Restaurant, Chef, and Media Finalists

Getty/Victor Spinelli/WireImage | Getty/Victor Spinelli/WireImage

The full list of nominees

Today, on what would have been the 30th annual James Beard Awards ceremony, the James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for the 2020 James Beard Awards, which honors the year’s outstanding restaurants and chefs, as well as food journalism, books, and broadcast media. The announcement was originally scheduled for March 25, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the Foundation to cancel the planned Philadelphia event and postpone both the finalists reveal and the awards themselves.

COVID-19 has left the restaurant industry in a precarious position, to put it mildly. Restaurants are pivoting their operations to stay in business, closing temporarily, and in some cases, closing for good. When the Foundation opted to postpone the finalist announcement, it acknowledged that it did so in part to focus on rebuilding the restaurant industry, awards being the last thing on anyone’s mind. And so it came as a bit of a surprise when on April 27 the Foundation announced plans to move forward with a virtual finalist announcement and, eventually, the 2020 James Beard Awards. Today, the Foundation revealed the Restaurant and Chef Awards Gala will take place in late September, and the Media Awards will take place in late May.

In a post on the James Beard Foundation website, chief strategy officer Mitchell Davis explained that the Foundation consulted with chefs, restaurateurs, and others in the industry and determined that the James Beard Awards finalists, like the list of semifinalists announced in late February, deserved recognition for their work in 2019. “Those we consulted felt the Awards could also offer a glimmer of hope to an industry looking for light in a very dark time,” he writes. Davis acknowledged that it is also a particularly dark time for the media, which will be recognized for the first time in the 2020 James Beard Awards cycle with the finalists announcement.

Given the ongoing restrictions related to COVID-19, the format for the 2020 James Beard Awards is still undecided — but they will go on, and “take place” in Chicago at some date later this year. “We want every James Beard Award winner to have a chance to have their moment in the spotlight,” Mitchell writes. “We have partners who support this industry, who support the Foundation, who are willing to work with us to figure out what’s best for all.”

Visit Philadelphia, which stands to lose millions due to the coronavirus pandemic, is still sponsoring the virtual event. Last year, Houston hosted the finalist announcement and although there was plenty of Texas representation on the semifinalists list, including 11 chefs and restaurants from Houston, the city’s restaurants and chefs were completely shut out of the whittled down finalists list. Philadelphia didn’t see the same fate.

Below, the 2020 James Beard Awards finalists.

James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards Finalists

Best New Restaurant

Automatic Seafood & Oysters, Birmingham, AL

Demi, Minneapolis

Eem, Portland, OR

Fox & the Knife, Boston

Gado Gado, Portland, OR

Gianna, New Orleans

Kalaya, Philadelphia

Nightshade, Los Angeles

Pasjoli, Santa Monica, CA

Verjus, San Francisco

Outstanding Baker

Graison Gill, Bellegarde Bakery, New Orleans

Zachary Golper, Bien Cuit, NYC

Lisa Ludwinski, Sister Pie, Detroit

Avery Ruzicka, Manresa Bread, Los Gatos, CA

Maura Kilpatrick, Sofra Bakery, Cambridge, MA i

Outstanding Bar Program

Anvil Bar & Refuge, Houston

Expatriate, Portland, OR

Kimball House, Decatur, GA

Lost Lake, Chicago

Trick Dog, San Francisco

Outstanding Chef

David Kinch, Manresa, Los Gatos, CA

Corey Lee, Benu, San Francisco

Donald Link, Herbsaint, New Orleans

Missy Robbins, Lilia, NYC

Ana Sortun, Oleana, Cambridge, MA

Marc Vetri, Vetri Cucina, Philadelphia

Outstanding Hospitality

Brigtsen’s, New Orleans

Canlis, Seattle

Saison, San Francisco

Swan Oyster Depot, San Francisco

Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Ann Arbor, MI

Outstanding Pastry Chef

Lincoln Carson, Bon Temps, Los Angeles

Juan Contreras, Atelier Crenn, San Francisco

Margarita Manzke, République, Los Angeles

Diane Moua, Spoon and Stable, Minneapolis

Natasha Pickowicz, Flora Bar, NYC

Miro Uskokovic, Gramercy Tavern, NYC

Outstanding Restaurant

FIG, Charleston, SC

Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, CO

Jaleo, Washington, D.C.

Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix

Quince, San Francisco

Outstanding Restaurateur

Paul Bartolotta, The Bartolotta Restaurants, Milwaukee (Ristorante Bartolotta, Harbor House, Lake Park Bistro, and others)

Jamie Bissonnette and Ken Oringer, JK Food Group, Boston (Little Donkey, Toro, Coppa)

JoAnn Clevenger, Upperline Restaurant, New Orleans

Alex Raij and Eder Montero, NYC (La Vara, Saint Julivert Fisherie, Txikito)

Jason Wang, Xi’an Famous Foods, NYC

Outstanding Wine Program

Bacchanal, New Orleans

Canard, Portland, OR

COTE, NYC

Miller Union, Atlanta

Night + Market Sahm, Venice, CA

Spiaggia, Chicago

Outstanding Wine, Beer or Spirits Producer

Scott Blackwell and Ann Marshall, High Wire Distilling Co., Charleston, SC

Cathy Corison, Corison Winery, St. Helena, CA

Drew Kulsveen, Willett Distillery, Bardstown, KY

Todd Leopold and Scott Leopold, Leopold Bros., Denver

Rising Star Chef of the Year

Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson, The Catbird Seat, Nashville

Irene Li, Mei Mei, Boston

Gaby Maeda, State Bird Provisions, San Francisco

Ashleigh Shanti, Benne on Eagle, Asheville, NC

Paola Velez, Kith/Kin, Washington, D.C.

Jon Yao, Kato, Los Angeles

Best Chef: California

Jeremy Fox, Birdie G’s, Santa Monica, CA

Brandon Jew, Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco

Jessica Koslow, Sqirl, Los Angeles

Mourad Lahlou, Mourad, San Francisco

Joshua Skenes, Angler, San Francisco

Pim Techamuanvivit, Kin Khao, San Francisco

Best Chef: Great Lakes (IL, IN, MI, OH)

Gene Kato, Momotaro, Chicago

Jason Hammel, Lula Cafe, Chicago

Noah Sandoval, Oriole, Chicago

John Shields and Karen Urie Shields, Smyth, Chicago

Erick Williams, Virtue, Chicago

Lee Wolen, Boka, Chicago

Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic (D.C., DE, MD, NJ, PA, VA)

Amy Brandwein, Centrolina, Washington, D.C.

Nicholas Elmi, Laurel, Philadelphia

Rich Landau, Vedge, Philadelphia

Cristina Martinez, South Philly Barbacoa, Philadelphia

Jon Sybert, Tail Up Goat, Washington, D.C.

Cindy Wolf, Charleston, Baltimore

Best Chef: Midwest (IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD, WI)

Steven Brown, Tilia, Minneapolis

Michael Corvino, Corvino Supper Club & Tasting Room, Kansas City, MO

Michael Gallina, Vicia, St. Louis

Jamie Malone, Grand Café, Minneapolis

Christina Nguyen, Hai Hai, Minneapolis

Best Chef: Mountain (CO, ID, MT, UT, WY)

Carrie Baird, Bar Dough, Denver

Jen Castle and Blake Spalding, Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm, Boulder, UT

Jeff Drew, Snake River Grill, Jackson, WY

Caroline Glover, Annette, Aurora, CO

Dana Rodriguez, Super Mega Bien, Denver

Kelly Whitaker, The Wolf’s Tailor, Denver

Best Chef: New York State

Sean Gray, Momofuku Ko, NYC

Brooks Headley, Superiority Burger, NYC

Junghyun Park, Atomix, NYC

Daniela Soto-Innes, ATLA, NYC

Alex Stupak, Empellón, NYC

Best Chef: Northeast (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)

Vien Dobui, CÔNG TỬ BỘT, Portland, ME

Ben Jackson, Drifters Wife, Portland, ME

Tiffani Faison, Orfano, Boston

Krista Kern Desjarlais, The Purple House, North Yarmouth, ME

Greg Mitchell and Chad Conley, Palace Diner, Biddeford, ME

Cassie Piuma, Sarma, Somerville, MA

Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific (AK, HI, OR, WA)

Peter Cho, Han Oak, Portland, OR

Gregory Gourdet, Departure, Portland, OR

Chris Kajioka and Anthony Rush, Senia, Honolulu

Katy Millard, Coquine, Portland, OR

Kristen Murray, MÅURICE, Portland, OR

Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi, Joule, Seattle

Best Chef: South (AL, AR, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, FL, LA, MS)

Jose Enrique, Jose Enrique, San Juan, PR

Kristen Essig and Michael Stoltzfus, Coquette, New Orleans

Michael Gulotta, Maypop, New Orleans

Mason Hereford, Turkey and the Wolf, New Orleans

Isaac Toups, Toups’ Meatery, New Orleans

Best Chef: Southeast (GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, WV)

Katie Button, Cúrate, Asheville, NC

Cassidee Dabney, The Barn at Blackberry Farm, Walland, TN

Cheetie Kumar, Garland, Raleigh, NC

Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman, Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Memphis, TN

Julia Sullivan, Henrietta Red, Nashville

Best Chef: Southwest (AZ, NM, NV, OK)

Dan Krohmer, Other Mama, Las Vegas

Jonathan Perno, Campo at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, NM

Chrysa Robertson, Rancho Pinot, Scottsdale, AZ

Silvana Salcido Esparza, Barrio Café Gran Reserva, Phoenix

Jeff Smedstad, Elote Cafe, Sedona, AZ

James Trees, Esther’s Kitchen, Las Vegas

Best Chef: Texas

Kevin Fink, Emmer & Rye, Austin

Michael Fojtasek, Olamaie, Austin

Anita Jaisinghani, Pondicheri, Houston

Steve McHugh, Cured, San Antonio

Trong Nguyen, Crawfish & Noodles, Houston

America’s Classics Awards

Previously announced

El Taco de Mexico, Denver, Colorado

Lassis Inn, Little Rock, Arkansas

Oriental Mart, Seattle, Washington

Puritan Backroom, Manchester, New Hampshire

Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que, Brownsville, Texas

Zehnder’s of Frankenmuth, Frankenmouth, Michigan

Humanitarian of the Year:

Jessica B. Harris

Leadership Awards:

Phillip and Dorathy E. Barker, Operations Spring Plant

Rosalinda Guillen, Community to Community Development (C2C)

Abiodun Henderson, The Come Up Project

Mark and Kerry Marhefka of Abundant Seafood

Caleb Zigas, La Cocina

James Beard Restaurant Design Awards

Design Icon

Chez Panisse

Outstanding Restaurant Design, 75 Seats and Under:

SIMPLICITY for HALL by o.d.o

Heliotrope Architects for Rupee

Vermillion Architects, LLC for Spoonbill Watering Hole and Restaurant

Outstanding Restaurant Design, 76 Seats and Over:

Hacin + Associates for Shore Leave;

Ken Fulk, Inc for Swan & Bar Bevy

Klein Agency and ORA for Auburn

2020 James Beard Foundation Book Awards

For cookbooks and other non-fiction food- or beverage-related books that were published in the U.S. in 2019. Winners, including the Book of the Year Award and the Cookbook Hall of Fame inductee will be announced on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

American Books with recipes focused on the cooking or foodways of regions or communities in the United States.

Cook Like a Local: Flavors That Can Change How You Cook and See the World; Chris Shepherd and Kaitlyn Goalen, (Clarkson Potter)

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking; Toni Tipton-Martin, (Clarkson Potter)

South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations; Sean Brock, (Artisan Books)

Baking and Desserts Books with recipes focused on breads, pastries, desserts, and other treats.

Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers; Nicole Rucker, (Avery)

Living Bread: Tradition and Innovation in Artisan Bread Making; Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman, (Avery)

Pastry Love: A Baker’s Journal of Favorite Recipes; Joanne Chang, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Beverage with Recipes Books focused on recipes for how to make beverages.

Last Call: Bartenders on Their Final Drink and the Wisdom and Rituals of Closing Time; Brad Thomas Parsons, (Ten Speed Press)

The Martini Cocktail: A Meditation on the World’s Greatest Drink, with Recipes; Robert Simonson, (Ten Speed Press)

The NoMad Cocktail Book; Leo Robitschek, (Ten Speed Press)

Beverage without Recipes Beverage-focused books and guides that either don’t contain recipes or that may have minimal recipes but aren’t recipe-centric.

The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks: Sake, Shochu, Japanese Whisky, Beer, Wine, Cocktails and Other Beverages; Stephen Lyman and Chris Bunting, (Tuttle Publishing)

Red & White: An Unquenchable Thirst for Wine; Oz Clarke, (Little, Brown Book Group)

World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition; Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson, (Mitchell Beazley)

General Books with recipes that address a broad scope of cooking, not just a single topic, technique or region.

All About Dinner: Simple Meals, Expert Advice; Molly Stevens, (W. W. Norton & Company)

Milk Street: The New Rules: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook; Christopher Kimball, (Voracious)

Where Cooking Begins: Uncomplicated Recipes to Make You a Great Cook; Carla Lalli Music, (Clarkson Potter)

Health and Special Diets Books with recipes related to health and nutrition, or that address specific health issues, such as allergies or diabetes.

The Beauty Chef Gut Guide: With 90+ Delicious Recipes and Weekly Meal Plans; Carla Oates, (Hardie Grant Books)

Cannelle et Vanille: Nourishing, Gluten-Free Recipes for Every Meal and Mood; Aran Goyoaga, (Sasquatch Books)

Gluten-Free Baking at Home: 102 Foolproof Recipes for Delicious Breads, Cakes, Cookies, and More; Jeffrey Larsen, (Ten Speed Press)

International

Books with recipes focused on food and cooking traditions of countries or regions outside of the United States.

Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes – Through Darkness and Light; Caroline Eden, (Quadrille Publishing)

Ethiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa; Yohanis Gebreyesus, (Interlink Publishing)

The Food of Sichuan; Fuchsia Dunlop, (W. W. Norton & Company)

Photography

American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta; Eric Wolfinger, (Chronicle Books)

Le Corbuffet: Edible Art and Design Classics; Esther Choi, (Prestel)

Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico; Quentin Bacon, (Abrams Books)

Reference, History, and Scholarship Includes manuals, guides, encyclopedias, and books that present research related to food or foodways.

Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind; Nico Slate, (University of Washington Press)

A South You Never Ate: Savoring Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia; Bernard L. Herman, (The University of North Carolina Press)

The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration; Chris Smith, (Chelsea Green Publishing)

Restaurant and Professional Books written by a culinary professional or restaurant chef with recipes that may include advanced cooking techniques, use specialty ingredients, and require professional equipment. This includes culinary arts textbooks.

Dishoom: From Bombay with Love; Shamil Thakrar, Kavi Thakrar, and Naved Nasir, (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter, Revised and Unlimited Edition; Daniel Humm, (Ten Speed Press)

The Whole Fish Cookbook: New Ways to Cook, Eat and Think; Josh Niland, (Hardie Grant Books)

Single Subject Books with recipes focused on a single or category of ingredients, a dish, or a method of cooking – such as lobster, seafood, grains, pasta, burgers, or canning. Exceptions: baking and desserts books, vegetable-focused books, health and special diets books, restaurant and professional books, and beverage books should be entered in those respective categories.

From the Oven to the Table: Simple Dishes That Look After Themselves; Diana Henry, (Mitchell Beazley)

Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook: The Secrets of Italy’s Best Home Cooks; Vicky Bennison, (Hardie Grant Books)

Sour: The Magical Element That Will Transform Your Cooking; Mark Diacono, (Quadrille Publishing)

Vegetable-Focused Cooking Books that feature recipes for how to prepare and serve vegetables and plant-based ingredients. Books may be vegetarian, vegan, or vegetable-focused with minimal reference to meats.

Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables; Abra Berens, (Chronicle Books)

Vegetables Illustrated: An Inspiring Guide with 700+ Kitchen-Tested Recipes; Editors at America’s Test Kitchen, (America’s Test Kitchen)

Whole Food Cooking Every Day: Transform the Way You Eat with 250 Vegetarian Recipes Free of Gluten, Dairy, and Refined Sugar; Amy Chaplin, (Artisan Books)

Writing Narrative nonfiction books, including memoirs, culinary tourism, investigative journalism, food advocacy, and critical analysis of food and foodways for a general audience.

Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer; Bren Smith, (Knopf)

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir; Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein, (Knopf)

Women on Food: Charlotte Druckman and 115 Writers, Chefs, Critics, Television Stars, and Eaters; Charlotte Druckman, (Abrams Press)

2020 James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Awards

For radio, television broadcasts, podcasts, webcasts, and documentaries appearing in 2019. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

Audio Program

The Food Programme – The Search for Esiah’s Seeds; Airs on: BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

It Burns: The Scandal-Plagued Race to Breed the World’s Hottest Chili; Airs on: Audible

The Sporkful – When White People Say Plantation; Airs on: iTunes, Sporkful, Spotify, and Stitcher

Audio Reporting

California Foodways – The Curious Second Life of a Prather Ranch Cow: Biomedical Research; Trans Man Finds – and Creates – Refuge in His Family’s Small-Town Cafe; Legalizing Cannabis Impacts Food, Farming in Humboldt; Reporter: Lisa Morehouse; Airs on: KQED, California Foodways, iTunes, Google Play, Radio Public, SoundCloud, and Stitcher

Food Actually – Junk Food Actually; Reporter: Tamar Adler; Airs on: Luminary

Gravy – Mahalia Jackson’s Glori-Fried Chicken; Reporter: Betsy Shepherd; Airs on: southernfoodways.org and iTunes

Documentary

Harvest Season; Airs on: PBS

Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy; Airs on: Premiered at SXSW in March 2019

That’s My Jazz; Airs on: Vimeo

Online Video, Fixed Location and/or Instructional

Chef Studio: The Crumby Bits – Cricket Macarons; Airs on: YouTube

Grace Young – Wok Therapist; Airs on: GraceYoung.com and YouTube

Ready Jet Cook - How to Make Pad Thai with Jet Tila; Airs on: FoodNetwork.com and YouTube

Online Video, on Location

Eat, Drink, Share, Puerto Rico Food – El Burén de Lula; Airs on: YouTube

Handmade – How Knives Are Made for New York’s Best Restaurants; How a Ceramics Master Makes Plates for Michelin-Starred Restaurants; Airs on: Eater and YouTube

In Real Life – Why Eating This Fish Could Save Coral Reefs; Airs on: YouTube and AJ+

Outstanding Personality/Host

Alton Brown, Good Eats: The Return; Airs on: Food Network

David Chang, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner; Airs on: Netflix

Roy Choi; Broken Bread with Roy Choi; Airs on: Tastemade and KCET

Television Program, in Studio or Fixed Location

Good Eats: The Return – American Classic: Chicken Parm; Airs on: Food Network

Lidia’s Kitchen – Trattoria Favorites; Airs on: PBS

Pati’s Mexican Table – A Local’s Tour of Culiacán; Airs on: WETA; distributed nationally by American Public Television

Television Program, on Location

Chef’s Table – Asma Khan; Airs on: Netflix

Las Crónicas del Taco (Taco Chronicles) – Canasta; Airs on: Netflix

Street Food – Bangkok, Thailand; Airs on: Netflix

Visual and Audio Technical Excellence

Chef’s Table; Adam Bricker, Chloe Weaver, and Will Basanta; Airs on: Netflix

Street Food; Alexander D. Paul, Matthew Chavez, and Shane Reed; Airs on: Netflix

The Taste of Place – Wild Rice; Jesse Roesler and Kevin Russell; Airs on: Vimeo

Visual Reporting (on TV or Online)

Fork the System – Moro Food of Muslim Mindanao: This is Filipino, Too; Reporters: Joi Lee and HyoJin Park; Airs on: Al Jazeera English Digital, YouTube, and Facebook

In Real Life– Why This $300 Clam Is so Important to Native Americans and China; Reporters: AJ+ Staff; Airs on: YouTube and AJ+

Rotten – The Avocado War; Reporters: Christine Haughney, Erin Cauchi, and Gretchen Goetz; Airs on: Netflix

2020 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards Finalists

For articles published in English in 2019. Winners, including the Emerging Voice Award, will be announced on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

Columns

What She’s Having: “Popeyes’ Fried Chicken Sandwich: A Delicious Distraction, a Cultural Lesson”; “Every Season Is Soup Season”; “Why a Somali Nook in East Boston Is One of the Country’s Best New Restaurants” — Devra First, The Boston Globe

Power Rankings: “The Official Fast Food French Fry Power Rankings”; “The Official Spicy Snack Power Rankings”; “The Official Domestic Beer Power Rankings” — Lucas Kwan Peterson, Los Angeles Times

Rooted in Place: “In Service”; “Hair, Food, and Hustle”; “The Best That We’ve Got” — Rosalind Bentley, Gravy

Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award

“Le Colonial Is an Orientalist Specter”; “The Ultimate Chaat Truck Crawl”; “The Fantasy — and Reality — of Dining at Chez Panisse” — Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle

“NYC’s Buzziest New Sushi Parlors Are Transcendent, If You Can Handle the Bros”; “Wall Street’s Underground Russian Spa Is a Dining Destination for the Soul”; “Estiatorio Milos Is One of the Last Big Restaurant Scams in New York” —Ryan Sutton

Eater New York

“Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters.”; “The 20 Most Delicious Things at Mercado Little Spain”; “Benno, Proudly Out of Step With the Age”

Pete Wells

The New York Times

Dining and Travel

“In Pursuit of the Perfect Pizza”

Matt Goulding

Airbnb Magazine

“Interview With the Vampiro”

Dylan James Ho

Taste

“These Are the World’s Best Restaurants: North America, South America, Africa and Middle East”

Besha Rodell

Travel + Leisure and Food & Wine

Feature Reporting

America’s farmers in crisis during Trump’s trade wars: “Left Behind: Farmers Fight to Save Their Land in Rural Minnesota as Trade War Intensifies”; “’I’m Gonna Lose Everything’: A Farm Family Struggles to Recover after Rising Debt Pushes a Husband to Suicide”; “In Trump Country, a Season of Need on Family Farms”

Annie Gowen

The Washington Post

“The Great Land Robbery”

Vann R. Newkirk II

The Atlantic

“Value Meal”

Tad Friend

The New Yorker

Food Coverage in a General Interest Publication

The Bitter Southerner

Gastro Obscura

The New Yorker

Foodways

“An Indigenous Community in Mexico Finds Its Voice — and Strength — in Wild Mushrooms”

Michael Snyder

Los Angeles Times

“On Hawaii, the Fight for Taro’s Revival”

Ligaya Mishan

T: The New York Times Style Magazine

“A Real Hot Mess: How Grits Got Weaponized Against Cheating Men”

Cynthia R. Greenlee

MUNCHIES | Food by VICE

Health and Wellness

“The AGEs Puzzle: How We Cook Food Is Killing Us. Scientists in SC Know Why.”; “9 Easy Ways to Eat Fewer AGEs: A Stress-Free Guide”

Tony Bartelme

The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

“How Washington Keeps America Sick and Fat”; “Meet the Silicon Valley Investor Who Wants Washington to Figure Out What You Should Eat”

Catherine Boudreau and Helena Bottemiller Evich

Politico

“Protein Nation”

Shaun Dreisbach

EatingWell

Home Cooking

“6 Holiday Cookies That Will Win You the Cookie Swap”

Hilary Cadigan and Rick Martinez

Bon Appétit

“Fry Time”

Nancy Singleton Hachisu

Saveur

“In Praise of Schmaltz”

Rachel Handler

Grub Street

Innovative Storytelling

“Best New Restaurants 2019”

Kevin Alexander, Nicole A. Taylor, and Adriana Velez

Thrillist

“Food and Loathing on the Campaign Trail”

Gary He, Matt Buchanan, and Meghan McCarron

Eater

“Made in America”

Tim Carman and Shelly Tan

The Washington Post

Investigative Reporting

“How USDA Distorted Data to Conceal Decades of Discrimination Against Black Farmers”

Nathan Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki

The Counter

“‘The Man Who Attacked Me Works in Your Kitchen’: Victim of Serial Groper Took Justice into Her Own Hands”

Amy Brittain and Maura Judkis

The Washington Post

“The Young Hands That Feed Us”

Karen Coates and Valeria Fernández

Pacific Standard

Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award

“Forget Democratic Votes. Which Presidential Hopeful Will Eat 16 Iconic SC Foods First?”; “A James Island Meat-and-Two Secretly Switched to Carolina Gold Rice. Here’s What Happened.”; “In Prisons Across South Carolina, It’s Not a Birthday Without Cake Made by a Fellow Inmate”

Hanna Raskin

The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

“In Search of Hot Beef”; “Chef Jack Riebel Is in the Fight of His Life”; “Harry Singh on the Perfect Roti, Trinidad, and Life in the Kitchen”

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl

Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

“In a Wheelchair and Hungry”; “Where to Eat Regionally Inspired Mexican Food in New York City”; “How Sichuan Became NYC’s Dominant Chinese Cuisine”

Robert Sietsema

Eater New York

M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award

“A Mind to Stay Here”

Rosalind Bentley

Gravy

“My Mother’s Catfish Stew”

John T. Edge

Oxford American

“An Undeserved Gift”

Shane Mitchell

The Bitter Southerner

Personal Essay, Long Form

“The Dysfunction of Food”

Kim Foster

Kim-Foster.com

“Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri”

Rax King

Catapult

“Seeking Jewish Identity at the Sabra Hummus Factory”

Orr Shtuhl

The Forward

Personal Essay, Short Form

“For 20 Years, happy hour has seen us through work — and life”

M. Carrie Allan

The Washington Post

“How the Starbucks Macchiato Ruined My Indie Coffee Shop Experiences”

Nicole A. Taylor

Thrillist

“In Memoriam of Hominy Grill, the Restaurant That Defined Charleston”

Ali Rosen

Plate

Profile

“First Course”

Zoe Tennant

Granta

“The Fruit Saver”

Tejal Rao

Women on Food

(Abrams Press)

“The Provocations of Chef Tunde Wey”

Brett Martin

GQ Magazine

Wine, Spirits, and Other Beverages

“How Climate Change Impacts Wine”

Eric Asimov

The New York Times

“May I Help You With That Wine List?”

Ray Isle

Food & Wine

“Seltzer Is Over. Mineral Water Is Forever.”

Jordan Michelman

PUNCH

Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Foundation Awards.

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The full list of nominees

Today, on what would have been the 30th annual James Beard Awards ceremony, the James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for the 2020 James Beard Awards, which honors the year’s outstanding restaurants and chefs, as well as food journalism, books, and broadcast media. The announcement was originally scheduled for March 25, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the Foundation to cancel the planned Philadelphia event and postpone both the finalists reveal and the awards themselves.

COVID-19 has left the restaurant industry in a precarious position, to put it mildly. Restaurants are pivoting their operations to stay in business, closing temporarily, and in some cases, closing for good. When the Foundation opted to postpone the finalist announcement, it acknowledged that it did so in part to focus on rebuilding the restaurant industry, awards being the last thing on anyone’s mind. And so it came as a bit of a surprise when on April 27 the Foundation announced plans to move forward with a virtual finalist announcement and, eventually, the 2020 James Beard Awards. Today, the Foundation revealed the Restaurant and Chef Awards Gala will take place in late September, and the Media Awards will take place in late May.

In a post on the James Beard Foundation website, chief strategy officer Mitchell Davis explained that the Foundation consulted with chefs, restaurateurs, and others in the industry and determined that the James Beard Awards finalists, like the list of semifinalists announced in late February, deserved recognition for their work in 2019. “Those we consulted felt the Awards could also offer a glimmer of hope to an industry looking for light in a very dark time,” he writes. Davis acknowledged that it is also a particularly dark time for the media, which will be recognized for the first time in the 2020 James Beard Awards cycle with the finalists announcement.

Given the ongoing restrictions related to COVID-19, the format for the 2020 James Beard Awards is still undecided — but they will go on, and “take place” in Chicago at some date later this year. “We want every James Beard Award winner to have a chance to have their moment in the spotlight,” Mitchell writes. “We have partners who support this industry, who support the Foundation, who are willing to work with us to figure out what’s best for all.”

Visit Philadelphia, which stands to lose millions due to the coronavirus pandemic, is still sponsoring the virtual event. Last year, Houston hosted the finalist announcement and although there was plenty of Texas representation on the semifinalists list, including 11 chefs and restaurants from Houston, the city’s restaurants and chefs were completely shut out of the whittled down finalists list. Philadelphia didn’t see the same fate.

Below, the 2020 James Beard Awards finalists.

James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards Finalists

Best New Restaurant

Automatic Seafood & Oysters, Birmingham, AL

Demi, Minneapolis

Eem, Portland, OR

Fox & the Knife, Boston

Gado Gado, Portland, OR

Gianna, New Orleans

Kalaya, Philadelphia

Nightshade, Los Angeles

Pasjoli, Santa Monica, CA

Verjus, San Francisco

Outstanding Baker

Graison Gill, Bellegarde Bakery, New Orleans

Zachary Golper, Bien Cuit, NYC

Lisa Ludwinski, Sister Pie, Detroit

Avery Ruzicka, Manresa Bread, Los Gatos, CA

Maura Kilpatrick, Sofra Bakery, Cambridge, MA i

Outstanding Bar Program

Anvil Bar & Refuge, Houston

Expatriate, Portland, OR

Kimball House, Decatur, GA

Lost Lake, Chicago

Trick Dog, San Francisco

Outstanding Chef

David Kinch, Manresa, Los Gatos, CA

Corey Lee, Benu, San Francisco

Donald Link, Herbsaint, New Orleans

Missy Robbins, Lilia, NYC

Ana Sortun, Oleana, Cambridge, MA

Marc Vetri, Vetri Cucina, Philadelphia

Outstanding Hospitality

Brigtsen’s, New Orleans

Canlis, Seattle

Saison, San Francisco

Swan Oyster Depot, San Francisco

Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Ann Arbor, MI

Outstanding Pastry Chef

Lincoln Carson, Bon Temps, Los Angeles

Juan Contreras, Atelier Crenn, San Francisco

Margarita Manzke, République, Los Angeles

Diane Moua, Spoon and Stable, Minneapolis

Natasha Pickowicz, Flora Bar, NYC

Miro Uskokovic, Gramercy Tavern, NYC

Outstanding Restaurant

FIG, Charleston, SC

Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, CO

Jaleo, Washington, D.C.

Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix

Quince, San Francisco

Outstanding Restaurateur

Paul Bartolotta, The Bartolotta Restaurants, Milwaukee (Ristorante Bartolotta, Harbor House, Lake Park Bistro, and others)

Jamie Bissonnette and Ken Oringer, JK Food Group, Boston (Little Donkey, Toro, Coppa)

JoAnn Clevenger, Upperline Restaurant, New Orleans

Alex Raij and Eder Montero, NYC (La Vara, Saint Julivert Fisherie, Txikito)

Jason Wang, Xi’an Famous Foods, NYC

Outstanding Wine Program

Bacchanal, New Orleans

Canard, Portland, OR

COTE, NYC

Miller Union, Atlanta

Night + Market Sahm, Venice, CA

Spiaggia, Chicago

Outstanding Wine, Beer or Spirits Producer

Scott Blackwell and Ann Marshall, High Wire Distilling Co., Charleston, SC

Cathy Corison, Corison Winery, St. Helena, CA

Drew Kulsveen, Willett Distillery, Bardstown, KY

Todd Leopold and Scott Leopold, Leopold Bros., Denver

Rising Star Chef of the Year

Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson, The Catbird Seat, Nashville

Irene Li, Mei Mei, Boston

Gaby Maeda, State Bird Provisions, San Francisco

Ashleigh Shanti, Benne on Eagle, Asheville, NC

Paola Velez, Kith/Kin, Washington, D.C.

Jon Yao, Kato, Los Angeles

Best Chef: California

Jeremy Fox, Birdie G’s, Santa Monica, CA

Brandon Jew, Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco

Jessica Koslow, Sqirl, Los Angeles

Mourad Lahlou, Mourad, San Francisco

Joshua Skenes, Angler, San Francisco

Pim Techamuanvivit, Kin Khao, San Francisco

Best Chef: Great Lakes (IL, IN, MI, OH)

Gene Kato, Momotaro, Chicago

Jason Hammel, Lula Cafe, Chicago

Noah Sandoval, Oriole, Chicago

John Shields and Karen Urie Shields, Smyth, Chicago

Erick Williams, Virtue, Chicago

Lee Wolen, Boka, Chicago

Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic (D.C., DE, MD, NJ, PA, VA)

Amy Brandwein, Centrolina, Washington, D.C.

Nicholas Elmi, Laurel, Philadelphia

Rich Landau, Vedge, Philadelphia

Cristina Martinez, South Philly Barbacoa, Philadelphia

Jon Sybert, Tail Up Goat, Washington, D.C.

Cindy Wolf, Charleston, Baltimore

Best Chef: Midwest (IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD, WI)

Steven Brown, Tilia, Minneapolis

Michael Corvino, Corvino Supper Club & Tasting Room, Kansas City, MO

Michael Gallina, Vicia, St. Louis

Jamie Malone, Grand Café, Minneapolis

Christina Nguyen, Hai Hai, Minneapolis

Best Chef: Mountain (CO, ID, MT, UT, WY)

Carrie Baird, Bar Dough, Denver

Jen Castle and Blake Spalding, Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm, Boulder, UT

Jeff Drew, Snake River Grill, Jackson, WY

Caroline Glover, Annette, Aurora, CO

Dana Rodriguez, Super Mega Bien, Denver

Kelly Whitaker, The Wolf’s Tailor, Denver

Best Chef: New York State

Sean Gray, Momofuku Ko, NYC

Brooks Headley, Superiority Burger, NYC

Junghyun Park, Atomix, NYC

Daniela Soto-Innes, ATLA, NYC

Alex Stupak, Empellón, NYC

Best Chef: Northeast (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT)

Vien Dobui, CÔNG TỬ BỘT, Portland, ME

Ben Jackson, Drifters Wife, Portland, ME

Tiffani Faison, Orfano, Boston

Krista Kern Desjarlais, The Purple House, North Yarmouth, ME

Greg Mitchell and Chad Conley, Palace Diner, Biddeford, ME

Cassie Piuma, Sarma, Somerville, MA

Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific (AK, HI, OR, WA)

Peter Cho, Han Oak, Portland, OR

Gregory Gourdet, Departure, Portland, OR

Chris Kajioka and Anthony Rush, Senia, Honolulu

Katy Millard, Coquine, Portland, OR

Kristen Murray, MÅURICE, Portland, OR

Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi, Joule, Seattle

Best Chef: South (AL, AR, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, FL, LA, MS)

Jose Enrique, Jose Enrique, San Juan, PR

Kristen Essig and Michael Stoltzfus, Coquette, New Orleans

Michael Gulotta, Maypop, New Orleans

Mason Hereford, Turkey and the Wolf, New Orleans

Isaac Toups, Toups’ Meatery, New Orleans

Best Chef: Southeast (GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, WV)

Katie Button, Cúrate, Asheville, NC

Cassidee Dabney, The Barn at Blackberry Farm, Walland, TN

Cheetie Kumar, Garland, Raleigh, NC

Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman, Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Memphis, TN

Julia Sullivan, Henrietta Red, Nashville

Best Chef: Southwest (AZ, NM, NV, OK)

Dan Krohmer, Other Mama, Las Vegas

Jonathan Perno, Campo at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, NM

Chrysa Robertson, Rancho Pinot, Scottsdale, AZ

Silvana Salcido Esparza, Barrio Café Gran Reserva, Phoenix

Jeff Smedstad, Elote Cafe, Sedona, AZ

James Trees, Esther’s Kitchen, Las Vegas

Best Chef: Texas

Kevin Fink, Emmer & Rye, Austin

Michael Fojtasek, Olamaie, Austin

Anita Jaisinghani, Pondicheri, Houston

Steve McHugh, Cured, San Antonio

Trong Nguyen, Crawfish & Noodles, Houston

America’s Classics Awards

Previously announced

El Taco de Mexico, Denver, Colorado

Lassis Inn, Little Rock, Arkansas

Oriental Mart, Seattle, Washington

Puritan Backroom, Manchester, New Hampshire

Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que, Brownsville, Texas

Zehnder’s of Frankenmuth, Frankenmouth, Michigan

Humanitarian of the Year:

Jessica B. Harris

Leadership Awards:

Phillip and Dorathy E. Barker, Operations Spring Plant

Rosalinda Guillen, Community to Community Development (C2C)

Abiodun Henderson, The Come Up Project

Mark and Kerry Marhefka of Abundant Seafood

Caleb Zigas, La Cocina

James Beard Restaurant Design Awards

Design Icon

Chez Panisse

Outstanding Restaurant Design, 75 Seats and Under:

SIMPLICITY for HALL by o.d.o

Heliotrope Architects for Rupee

Vermillion Architects, LLC for Spoonbill Watering Hole and Restaurant

Outstanding Restaurant Design, 76 Seats and Over:

Hacin + Associates for Shore Leave;

Ken Fulk, Inc for Swan & Bar Bevy

Klein Agency and ORA for Auburn

2020 James Beard Foundation Book Awards

For cookbooks and other non-fiction food- or beverage-related books that were published in the U.S. in 2019. Winners, including the Book of the Year Award and the Cookbook Hall of Fame inductee will be announced on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

American Books with recipes focused on the cooking or foodways of regions or communities in the United States.

Cook Like a Local: Flavors That Can Change How You Cook and See the World; Chris Shepherd and Kaitlyn Goalen, (Clarkson Potter)

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking; Toni Tipton-Martin, (Clarkson Potter)

South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations; Sean Brock, (Artisan Books)

Baking and Desserts Books with recipes focused on breads, pastries, desserts, and other treats.

Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers; Nicole Rucker, (Avery)

Living Bread: Tradition and Innovation in Artisan Bread Making; Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman, (Avery)

Pastry Love: A Baker’s Journal of Favorite Recipes; Joanne Chang, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Beverage with Recipes Books focused on recipes for how to make beverages.

Last Call: Bartenders on Their Final Drink and the Wisdom and Rituals of Closing Time; Brad Thomas Parsons, (Ten Speed Press)

The Martini Cocktail: A Meditation on the World’s Greatest Drink, with Recipes; Robert Simonson, (Ten Speed Press)

The NoMad Cocktail Book; Leo Robitschek, (Ten Speed Press)

Beverage without Recipes Beverage-focused books and guides that either don’t contain recipes or that may have minimal recipes but aren’t recipe-centric.

The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks: Sake, Shochu, Japanese Whisky, Beer, Wine, Cocktails and Other Beverages; Stephen Lyman and Chris Bunting, (Tuttle Publishing)

Red & White: An Unquenchable Thirst for Wine; Oz Clarke, (Little, Brown Book Group)

World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition; Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson, (Mitchell Beazley)

General Books with recipes that address a broad scope of cooking, not just a single topic, technique or region.

All About Dinner: Simple Meals, Expert Advice; Molly Stevens, (W. W. Norton & Company)

Milk Street: The New Rules: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook; Christopher Kimball, (Voracious)

Where Cooking Begins: Uncomplicated Recipes to Make You a Great Cook; Carla Lalli Music, (Clarkson Potter)

Health and Special Diets Books with recipes related to health and nutrition, or that address specific health issues, such as allergies or diabetes.

The Beauty Chef Gut Guide: With 90+ Delicious Recipes and Weekly Meal Plans; Carla Oates, (Hardie Grant Books)

Cannelle et Vanille: Nourishing, Gluten-Free Recipes for Every Meal and Mood; Aran Goyoaga, (Sasquatch Books)

Gluten-Free Baking at Home: 102 Foolproof Recipes for Delicious Breads, Cakes, Cookies, and More; Jeffrey Larsen, (Ten Speed Press)

International

Books with recipes focused on food and cooking traditions of countries or regions outside of the United States.

Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes – Through Darkness and Light; Caroline Eden, (Quadrille Publishing)

Ethiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa; Yohanis Gebreyesus, (Interlink Publishing)

The Food of Sichuan; Fuchsia Dunlop, (W. W. Norton & Company)

Photography

American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta; Eric Wolfinger, (Chronicle Books)

Le Corbuffet: Edible Art and Design Classics; Esther Choi, (Prestel)

Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico; Quentin Bacon, (Abrams Books)

Reference, History, and Scholarship Includes manuals, guides, encyclopedias, and books that present research related to food or foodways.

Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind; Nico Slate, (University of Washington Press)

A South You Never Ate: Savoring Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia; Bernard L. Herman, (The University of North Carolina Press)

The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration; Chris Smith, (Chelsea Green Publishing)

Restaurant and Professional Books written by a culinary professional or restaurant chef with recipes that may include advanced cooking techniques, use specialty ingredients, and require professional equipment. This includes culinary arts textbooks.

Dishoom: From Bombay with Love; Shamil Thakrar, Kavi Thakrar, and Naved Nasir, (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter, Revised and Unlimited Edition; Daniel Humm, (Ten Speed Press)

The Whole Fish Cookbook: New Ways to Cook, Eat and Think; Josh Niland, (Hardie Grant Books)

Single Subject Books with recipes focused on a single or category of ingredients, a dish, or a method of cooking – such as lobster, seafood, grains, pasta, burgers, or canning. Exceptions: baking and desserts books, vegetable-focused books, health and special diets books, restaurant and professional books, and beverage books should be entered in those respective categories.

From the Oven to the Table: Simple Dishes That Look After Themselves; Diana Henry, (Mitchell Beazley)

Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook: The Secrets of Italy’s Best Home Cooks; Vicky Bennison, (Hardie Grant Books)

Sour: The Magical Element That Will Transform Your Cooking; Mark Diacono, (Quadrille Publishing)

Vegetable-Focused Cooking Books that feature recipes for how to prepare and serve vegetables and plant-based ingredients. Books may be vegetarian, vegan, or vegetable-focused with minimal reference to meats.

Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables; Abra Berens, (Chronicle Books)

Vegetables Illustrated: An Inspiring Guide with 700+ Kitchen-Tested Recipes; Editors at America’s Test Kitchen, (America’s Test Kitchen)

Whole Food Cooking Every Day: Transform the Way You Eat with 250 Vegetarian Recipes Free of Gluten, Dairy, and Refined Sugar; Amy Chaplin, (Artisan Books)

Writing Narrative nonfiction books, including memoirs, culinary tourism, investigative journalism, food advocacy, and critical analysis of food and foodways for a general audience.

Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer; Bren Smith, (Knopf)

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir; Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein, (Knopf)

Women on Food: Charlotte Druckman and 115 Writers, Chefs, Critics, Television Stars, and Eaters; Charlotte Druckman, (Abrams Press)

2020 James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Awards

For radio, television broadcasts, podcasts, webcasts, and documentaries appearing in 2019. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

Audio Program

The Food Programme – The Search for Esiah’s Seeds; Airs on: BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

It Burns: The Scandal-Plagued Race to Breed the World’s Hottest Chili; Airs on: Audible

The Sporkful – When White People Say Plantation; Airs on: iTunes, Sporkful, Spotify, and Stitcher

Audio Reporting

California Foodways – The Curious Second Life of a Prather Ranch Cow: Biomedical Research; Trans Man Finds – and Creates – Refuge in His Family’s Small-Town Cafe; Legalizing Cannabis Impacts Food, Farming in Humboldt; Reporter: Lisa Morehouse; Airs on: KQED, California Foodways, iTunes, Google Play, Radio Public, SoundCloud, and Stitcher

Food Actually – Junk Food Actually; Reporter: Tamar Adler; Airs on: Luminary

Gravy – Mahalia Jackson’s Glori-Fried Chicken; Reporter: Betsy Shepherd; Airs on: southernfoodways.org and iTunes

Documentary

Harvest Season; Airs on: PBS

Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy; Airs on: Premiered at SXSW in March 2019

That’s My Jazz; Airs on: Vimeo

Online Video, Fixed Location and/or Instructional

Chef Studio: The Crumby Bits – Cricket Macarons; Airs on: YouTube

Grace Young – Wok Therapist; Airs on: GraceYoung.com and YouTube

Ready Jet Cook - How to Make Pad Thai with Jet Tila; Airs on: FoodNetwork.com and YouTube

Online Video, on Location

Eat, Drink, Share, Puerto Rico Food – El Burén de Lula; Airs on: YouTube

Handmade – How Knives Are Made for New York’s Best Restaurants; How a Ceramics Master Makes Plates for Michelin-Starred Restaurants; Airs on: Eater and YouTube

In Real Life – Why Eating This Fish Could Save Coral Reefs; Airs on: YouTube and AJ+

Outstanding Personality/Host

Alton Brown, Good Eats: The Return; Airs on: Food Network

David Chang, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner; Airs on: Netflix

Roy Choi; Broken Bread with Roy Choi; Airs on: Tastemade and KCET

Television Program, in Studio or Fixed Location

Good Eats: The Return – American Classic: Chicken Parm; Airs on: Food Network

Lidia’s Kitchen – Trattoria Favorites; Airs on: PBS

Pati’s Mexican Table – A Local’s Tour of Culiacán; Airs on: WETA; distributed nationally by American Public Television

Television Program, on Location

Chef’s Table – Asma Khan; Airs on: Netflix

Las Crónicas del Taco (Taco Chronicles) – Canasta; Airs on: Netflix

Street Food – Bangkok, Thailand; Airs on: Netflix

Visual and Audio Technical Excellence

Chef’s Table; Adam Bricker, Chloe Weaver, and Will Basanta; Airs on: Netflix

Street Food; Alexander D. Paul, Matthew Chavez, and Shane Reed; Airs on: Netflix

The Taste of Place – Wild Rice; Jesse Roesler and Kevin Russell; Airs on: Vimeo

Visual Reporting (on TV or Online)

Fork the System – Moro Food of Muslim Mindanao: This is Filipino, Too; Reporters: Joi Lee and HyoJin Park; Airs on: Al Jazeera English Digital, YouTube, and Facebook

In Real Life– Why This $300 Clam Is so Important to Native Americans and China; Reporters: AJ+ Staff; Airs on: YouTube and AJ+

Rotten – The Avocado War; Reporters: Christine Haughney, Erin Cauchi, and Gretchen Goetz; Airs on: Netflix

2020 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards Finalists

For articles published in English in 2019. Winners, including the Emerging Voice Award, will be announced on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

Columns

What She’s Having: “Popeyes’ Fried Chicken Sandwich: A Delicious Distraction, a Cultural Lesson”; “Every Season Is Soup Season”; “Why a Somali Nook in East Boston Is One of the Country’s Best New Restaurants” — Devra First, The Boston Globe

Power Rankings: “The Official Fast Food French Fry Power Rankings”; “The Official Spicy Snack Power Rankings”; “The Official Domestic Beer Power Rankings” — Lucas Kwan Peterson, Los Angeles Times

Rooted in Place: “In Service”; “Hair, Food, and Hustle”; “The Best That We’ve Got” — Rosalind Bentley, Gravy

Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award

“Le Colonial Is an Orientalist Specter”; “The Ultimate Chaat Truck Crawl”; “The Fantasy — and Reality — of Dining at Chez Panisse” — Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle

“NYC’s Buzziest New Sushi Parlors Are Transcendent, If You Can Handle the Bros”; “Wall Street’s Underground Russian Spa Is a Dining Destination for the Soul”; “Estiatorio Milos Is One of the Last Big Restaurant Scams in New York” —Ryan Sutton

Eater New York

“Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters.”; “The 20 Most Delicious Things at Mercado Little Spain”; “Benno, Proudly Out of Step With the Age”

Pete Wells

The New York Times

Dining and Travel

“In Pursuit of the Perfect Pizza”

Matt Goulding

Airbnb Magazine

“Interview With the Vampiro”

Dylan James Ho

Taste

“These Are the World’s Best Restaurants: North America, South America, Africa and Middle East”

Besha Rodell

Travel + Leisure and Food & Wine

Feature Reporting

America’s farmers in crisis during Trump’s trade wars: “Left Behind: Farmers Fight to Save Their Land in Rural Minnesota as Trade War Intensifies”; “’I’m Gonna Lose Everything’: A Farm Family Struggles to Recover after Rising Debt Pushes a Husband to Suicide”; “In Trump Country, a Season of Need on Family Farms”

Annie Gowen

The Washington Post

“The Great Land Robbery”

Vann R. Newkirk II

The Atlantic

“Value Meal”

Tad Friend

The New Yorker

Food Coverage in a General Interest Publication

The Bitter Southerner

Gastro Obscura

The New Yorker

Foodways

“An Indigenous Community in Mexico Finds Its Voice — and Strength — in Wild Mushrooms”

Michael Snyder

Los Angeles Times

“On Hawaii, the Fight for Taro’s Revival”

Ligaya Mishan

T: The New York Times Style Magazine

“A Real Hot Mess: How Grits Got Weaponized Against Cheating Men”

Cynthia R. Greenlee

MUNCHIES | Food by VICE

Health and Wellness

“The AGEs Puzzle: How We Cook Food Is Killing Us. Scientists in SC Know Why.”; “9 Easy Ways to Eat Fewer AGEs: A Stress-Free Guide”

Tony Bartelme

The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

“How Washington Keeps America Sick and Fat”; “Meet the Silicon Valley Investor Who Wants Washington to Figure Out What You Should Eat”

Catherine Boudreau and Helena Bottemiller Evich

Politico

“Protein Nation”

Shaun Dreisbach

EatingWell

Home Cooking

“6 Holiday Cookies That Will Win You the Cookie Swap”

Hilary Cadigan and Rick Martinez

Bon Appétit

“Fry Time”

Nancy Singleton Hachisu

Saveur

“In Praise of Schmaltz”

Rachel Handler

Grub Street

Innovative Storytelling

“Best New Restaurants 2019”

Kevin Alexander, Nicole A. Taylor, and Adriana Velez

Thrillist

“Food and Loathing on the Campaign Trail”

Gary He, Matt Buchanan, and Meghan McCarron

Eater

“Made in America”

Tim Carman and Shelly Tan

The Washington Post

Investigative Reporting

“How USDA Distorted Data to Conceal Decades of Discrimination Against Black Farmers”

Nathan Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki

The Counter

“‘The Man Who Attacked Me Works in Your Kitchen’: Victim of Serial Groper Took Justice into Her Own Hands”

Amy Brittain and Maura Judkis

The Washington Post

“The Young Hands That Feed Us”

Karen Coates and Valeria Fernández

Pacific Standard

Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award

“Forget Democratic Votes. Which Presidential Hopeful Will Eat 16 Iconic SC Foods First?”; “A James Island Meat-and-Two Secretly Switched to Carolina Gold Rice. Here’s What Happened.”; “In Prisons Across South Carolina, It’s Not a Birthday Without Cake Made by a Fellow Inmate”

Hanna Raskin

The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

“In Search of Hot Beef”; “Chef Jack Riebel Is in the Fight of His Life”; “Harry Singh on the Perfect Roti, Trinidad, and Life in the Kitchen”

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl

Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

“In a Wheelchair and Hungry”; “Where to Eat Regionally Inspired Mexican Food in New York City”; “How Sichuan Became NYC’s Dominant Chinese Cuisine”

Robert Sietsema

Eater New York

M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award

“A Mind to Stay Here”

Rosalind Bentley

Gravy

“My Mother’s Catfish Stew”

John T. Edge

Oxford American

“An Undeserved Gift”

Shane Mitchell

The Bitter Southerner

Personal Essay, Long Form

“The Dysfunction of Food”

Kim Foster

Kim-Foster.com

“Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri”

Rax King

Catapult

“Seeking Jewish Identity at the Sabra Hummus Factory”

Orr Shtuhl

The Forward

Personal Essay, Short Form

“For 20 Years, happy hour has seen us through work — and life”

M. Carrie Allan

The Washington Post

“How the Starbucks Macchiato Ruined My Indie Coffee Shop Experiences”

Nicole A. Taylor

Thrillist

“In Memoriam of Hominy Grill, the Restaurant That Defined Charleston”

Ali Rosen

Plate

Profile

“First Course”

Zoe Tennant

Granta

“The Fruit Saver”

Tejal Rao

Women on Food

(Abrams Press)

“The Provocations of Chef Tunde Wey”

Brett Martin

GQ Magazine

Wine, Spirits, and Other Beverages

“How Climate Change Impacts Wine”

Eric Asimov

The New York Times

“May I Help You With That Wine List?”

Ray Isle

Food & Wine

“Seltzer Is Over. Mineral Water Is Forever.”

Jordan Michelman

PUNCH

Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Foundation Awards.

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