#except from the fact that the south american shows seem to have been crazy

[thurnerstorms]

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[nightswithkookmin]

What you think of fetus V who said in front of everyone "You seem to really like men" to Jimin? Youthful ribbing? Or a moment of insensitivity ? FWI saying you like girls or guys? Or calling close same sex friends u a couple? is actually common where am from. This has happened in my friend circle too actually. Except all of us are hets so no one take it seriously. Cant think a closeted person would find it that funny. Jimins lack of denial or even laughing it off always stood out to me tho.

What do I think of that comment?

I think we both know very often when people say they think a man likes men, they mean to say they think that man is Gay and very often when the g-word is used in a sentence, it is not meant as a compliment- imma give it to you straight, no bs. Lol.

The parlance gay and variations of it, in my opinion, is often used ubiquitously and traditionally as a slur slang among ignorant, non-progressive, anti homosexual individuals and is often rooted in malice.

And when malice isn't intended, ridicule is. The sad fact is, people adopt the terminology as ammunition to blatantly attack, dehumanize, belittle and strip away the dignity of queer folks and when the term is used in reference to non queer people it has a similar effect. It degrades them as well through the irony and humor of comparing them to gay people.

Gay jokes, if you will, is a subtle art of passive aggressively slurring gay folks if you think about it. I mean let's be honest.

Personally, I don't think Tae's intentions in that moment were malicious at all. I don't think he blurted out those words with the intension to ridicule Jimin either- stay with me. It will make sense in a bit.

But he called Jimin gay nevertheless. His comment if a joke, I'm afraid, reinforces these bizzare stereotypes of masculinity and promotes toxic rhetorics prevalent especially within Kpop shipping communities where every Male idol interaction is hyper sexualised and romanticized thus, suggesting a man cannot love another man, be affectionate or be fond of them unless they secretly lusted after them and harbored a desire to lay down pipes in their behinds- which, honestly is crazy coming from a guy with a cultural background such as the Korean culture where kinship is commonplace but more on that later.

I think whatever which way we want to look at it, it was an insensitive comment especially if you believe he meant it as a joke. It was definitely not his most woke moment, socially and culturally- and that's putting it lightly.

That 'gay' comment to me is right up there with all the problematic statements some, if not all, of the members have made over the years- the colorism, racist jokes, the ' eww, you too black,' 'akekeke- you too tanned shoo,' implying if you're black or tanned you are ugly. The fat jokes, the misogyny and misogynior- please don't ask me to give you examples of these. I don't want to ruin BTS for you. Lol.

There are commentaries on these out there on the internet. You can look it up for yourselves- You welcome. Lol.

For the record, BTS have since retracted, acknowledged and apologized for most of these questionable moments throughout the years and so we cannot hold it against them, forever- not to make excuses for them but they are human too. They learn, they unlearn, they make mistakes, they correct them, they grow and as NamJoon said, they really were a bit 'unsophisticated' and rough around the edges in their earlier years- even if it was just five years ago from now, chilee. They is a mess. Lmho.

I think it's all part of the human process honestly- don't worry BTS, I have a lot of space in my heart for y'all to be human and still love ya. Keep going sweeties. Y'all's doing greatness de la grande kind!! Bless y'all.

In V's case he was, since that incident, put as a judge on a show that allegedly featured queer folks and he seemed more welcoming of them than the other judges on the panel, excluding RM of course.

A year later, he would make a song that the LBGTQ plus fraction of Army would rally behind as a highly pro gay song- Stigma, which I find debatable but whatever. I mean, just because JK has stars, clouds and the sky in his lyrics don't make him an astronaut or an environmentalist fighting the good cause for the climate but to each his own.

Stigma was still something, I'll give him that.

Flashforward to five years later, and he would be recommending songs by gay artists, appreciating and promoting gay art and the artists behind them, sporting rainbow outfits, designing a BT21 character that is genderless, incorporating sign language in his speeches- he polished up. Woke the hell up. Politically correct. Yadda yadda yadda.

I think, like some of the others, he too learned his lesson. It's not ok to trivialize the oppression of others or make light of it-

Now that we've gotten the woke bit out of the way, on to our shipping business. Follow me, chop chop. Lol.

Firt of all, I don't think that moment is a big deal. But I find it interesting nonetheless.

Do I think Tae was teasing Jimin in that moment when he made that statement? It's not quite easy as yes or no.

Personally, I think he was clocking him.

This interview was conducted at a point in the timeline where I feel Jimin was shedding his image as the Maknae obsessed hyung in the group. He was coming into his own and embracing himself for who he is and that I think included his sexuality.

Prior to, he had in my opinion, since debut, slipped into the role of the queer jest of the group supplying queer humor and entertainment for listeners at radio shows by offering himself up for ridicule as the 'gay guy' within the group- I hated every bit of it. Lol.

You'd often hear the members refer to him as the one good with the guys, the boy in love with the Maknae- There is still a fraction of Army that see him as this persona but he has since outgrown that label and that phase.

RM was basically the Black jest of the group, offering himself up for ridicule for his darker skin tone right down to his blaccent. Can you do your black accent? They will ask him at interviews and he would proceed to deliver a walmart version of the Black American English. Sigh.

Compared to the previous year where he literally gasped and panicked when the members hinted at his sexuality or made statements that put his sexuality into question, Jimin seemed more in control and mentally prepared during this interview.

When the question was asked of him, the question of why he liked JK, his instincts it seemed was to steer the conversation away from his sexuality- a tactic the rest of the members would employ to avoid discussing Jikook a few months from that interview...

I mean, when Tae asked Jimin on JK's birthday that same year what he wanted to give JK, RM cut in before JM answered. Jimin had done the same thing when in an interview JK was asked if Jimin wasn't his style and JK was stuttering not knowing what to say in response. JM asked him not to answer the question.

When interviewers ask these questions, they do so for entertainment purposes- because who doesn't like gay jokes, amirite?

For heterosexual idols I assume it's not slippery slope for them to engage in these kinds of humor. They can play gay without risking exposing their heterosexuality and when they do play gay it's for jest.

It's not the same for queer idols I think.

Jimin was basically done being the butt of the gay jokes in 2015, he was done selling himself as the JK shit rainbows and I'm the unicorn fixated on him kinda person and it reflected in that conversation.

'I don't like everything about this boy. He ain't all that. But he is the Maknae and he cute so whatever' lol.

Like I said, I think Jimin was steering the conversation away from his sexuality but Tae's comment steered the conversation right back to it. 'I just think he likes men.'

Most South Koreans I've met in person and on the internet spend a considerable amount of time and energy trying to dispel the western notion of gayness projected on to Korean men for their skinship culture.

We like to glamorize gayness in these streets but in reality gay is stigmatized especially in places like South Korea. People don't readily read gay in Male interactions unless they were being homophobic or socially unaware.

To me, Tae's statement was more of an observation about Jimin, one which he felt a need to contribute to the discussion they were having, perhaps to provide insight into the inner workings of Jimin rather than as a joke or jest- or may be he did both.

Jimin managed to avoid opening himself up for the gay jokes and to this Tae then responded, I just think you is gay sir- The emphasis has been mine. Lol.

The thing about Tae is, in the earlier days he used to have a habit of 'exposing' Jimin whenever Jimin told half truths and what not.

For example, in 2014 during an interview when JM was asked what he wanted to do on his free days he had said he wanted to spend time with his family or something and Tae immediately checked him saying he was lying. Jimin then said he wanted to be with Jungkook which had JK fuming.

Was he teasing JM when he called him out for lying about his true desires? May be but I think he meant it too. Know what I mean?

He did the same thing when during their Paris VLive, Jimin got nervous when JK was singing 'know you love me boy, so that I love you,' in the background and Tae asked Jimin if he was nervous. Jimin snapped out of whatever whipped trance he was in and asked 'why would I be nervous' or something along those lines.

Why would Tae assume JM was nervous listening to another man sing? And why would Jimin be nervous in the first place?

And if at an interview Jimin is asked, why don't you like listening to the Maknae sing and JM responded that he is cute but he can't sing and Tae says well I think listening to Jk sing makes him nervous- would that be youthful ribbing or tea? Do you see where I'm going with this?

I see Tae as very observant- If not more observant than Jk. Their jokes are punchier because it is rooted in truth. He is stating his opinion, his observations and when he felt JM's answers were dishonest or inconsistent of his general notion of him, he called him out on that.

It's like him saying JM likes to pretend to be drunk in order to tell Tae he loves him- allegedly. Was it funny, yes. Was it a lie? I don't think so.

Jimin likes to pretend, we been knew. His boyfriend don spilled that tea already. I mean Jk said JM faked being asleep when he noticed the cameras filming him. He said also JM knows he is cute so sometimes he intentionally acts cute.

Tae used to tease Jimin a lot- hell he still teases him a lot to this day. Lol. Had Jimin looking at the back of his head like he wanted to quick punch him in the throat in the recent run, chilee. Lmho.

But you gotta ask, where is the lie in all those jokes?

The question I ask myself, and I think we ought to ask ourselves as shippers is, what about Jimin gave Tae that impression of him in the first place?

What made Tae, coming from a culture and background where 'gay' is a taboo and skinship is prevalent assume that if Jimin liked JK then it was because he liked men or was gay?

Even if Tae meant it as a Joke- no one laughed. Lol. That awkward silence that ensued... now that's how you know he had deadass made a 'gay comment' for real. Lmho.

They were all silent, waiting for JM's response and only laughed when JM responded to Tae- isn't that how it usually goes when you are the one queer person at the het dinner table? The tasteless jokes, awkward silences and stares? Just me? Oh, never mind then. Keep reading. Lol.

Imagine if JM hadn't responded or had gay panicked like he did a year before that interview, when RM revealed JK had been sneaking into JM's bed at night?

Dude was legit ready to throw JK under the bus had it not been for the shady camera guy behind the cameras. Deadass, Jimin was pointing accusing fingers at JK and everything- so much for gay love. Lmho.

The question still remains, what makes you look at your heterosexual friend and go- hey, that's gay. Think about it.

If Tae thought Jimin liked men, even as a joke, it's probably because Jimin had been giving him a reason or reasons to believe he actually liked boys beyond the usual daily doze of gay prevalent within K-culture.

It's similar to JK feeling uncomfortable when Jimin in 2014 described their relationship as one between love and friendship. Jimin responding with male friends can love eachother too without being gay would imply JK was interpreting his words and actions towards him as laced with romantic and sexual subtext or intent.

Now why would JK assume this if men touching men and feeling up on eachother in their culture was a normal thing?

There are gay men in Korea you know?

Tae and Kook were both hyper aware and curious of Jimin's sexuality in that period- for different reasons of course. In my opinion.

Not sure if Jimin's androgynous features played a role in these suspicions and assumptions they had of him in the early days because androgynousity in men is often ignorantly profiled and stereotyped as queer.

Tae seemed convinced JM was queer at least and JK was projecting his own queerness on to Jimin a lot- cough, cough.

It seemed to me also that Tae for whatever reason had the impression JM had a thing for him? I'll save my VMin agenda for delulu Fridays but chilee I don't know, Jimin has been on an agenda to friendzone that man since those manly mans thawed off his chest. Lol.

VMIN... ok.

I mean Jimin's response to Tae was more to deflate Tae's ego than to deflect or evade the issue and I wonder why. 'You are so full of yourself' 'I may like men, but I don't like you' and Tae responds with 'really' as if he's been challenged or dared- ever had your straight friends assume you like them just because you are queer?

Anywho, for whatever reason, Jimin seemed to be the only member in the group around the early days whose words and actions were put through the queer litmus test.

Also, I think a distinction ought to be made between calling two same sex friends a couple and calling them gay.

Calling two friends a couple is inconsequential- except when their sexuality is on the line. Calling two same sex friends you know are straight a couple is nothing but a gay joke.

BTS do this all the time. Jimin called Namjin a couple, Tae kook a couple, himself and Suga a couple, himself and JK a couple.

Jk has equally referred to others within the group as a couple, made heart signs above them, and have even held his chest and said he never thought he would fall for a guy.

In none of these instances did he or any of them imply that they or the persons they were referring to were queer or liked men and I wouldn't make much of such comments.

When JK was called out for gifting a present to Jimin and not the others, Tae teased JK as well and his gestures implied to me, 'it's ok to like him, I know you like him, you like JM don't you, uWu' and other variations of these.

But he in no way hinted at the sexuality of JK explicitly or implicitly- not in a way that prompts a response or rebuttal from JK like it did in Jimin's case.

I guess what I'm saying is that, that moment is nothing but something at the same time. You look at Tae's personality and his reputation within the group as the one with no filter who blurts out things that often has BTS running helter skelter- that 'I want to see your children" comment at Festa almost gave RM an aneurysm. Lmho.

Then they had to literally take his mic away from him when he started talking about meeting a pretty chick or something at a fansigns.

You consider the history between him and Jimin, the context behind that comment and the things that was said after that comment- the interviewer said 'well JK is really handsome...' which means he took the 'joke' Tae had made to mean JM had romantic interest in JK- something I feel JM was trying to avoid.

I don't think Tae meant anything by it. I don't think he knew at the time JM was queer but I do believe he suspected he was.

Hope this helps,

Signed,

GOLDY

[snippychicke]

Aftermath--Three

Chapter Three is here! The last of the set up chapters, after this is mostly just...fluff. 

No warnings, I think. A surprise waits inside, however. 

First | Previous

 Otto had spent most of his adult life working for the commission. A few time jumps to different eras and decades, but mainly staying somewhere in the 1960s since it seemed the more precarious times. Nuclear war liked to develop at the drop of a pin, and even the most well-meaning change could spell Armageddon thanks to trigger-happy Americans and Russians. 

(Though a few times it was the UK and France. And once China, which the rest of the world hadn't realized had nuclear weapons until it was too late.) 

But no matter where or when he was, he was with his brothers. Oscar might have mingled with the civilian population once in a while, but he, like Axel, either had other responsibilities or would rather relax at their temporary home than deal with the locals. 

He wasn't used to civilians and their quiet, dull lives. Granted, Lorelei often had her radio on to break the silence if she were home, and the grainy black and white TV was usually turned to the news. (She also had a habit of chattering while changing the dressings on his eye every morning and every night. Even if half the time her southern drawl made her words hard to understand, her tone and lit were pleasing to listen to.) 

It was still dull, with nothing but the pain to distract him from his thoughts. Losing Oscar had been hard enough, the wound still fresh on his heart. Even now, he expected his younger brother to try and ambush him just to get a reaction out of him. Or hear him trying and failing to sing to the more upbeat music on the radio, stumbling over the English words. 

Then he lost Axel; his last memory of his older brother being of his hands around his neck and Axel's face twisted in both rage and grief of not controlling his actions. Otto found himself praying to some unknown power that Axel was out there, somewhere, carrying on. 

Otto feared if their position had been reversed, he wouldn't be strong enough. He struggled as it was, but the thought of finding Axel gave him strength. Believing his brother was out there gave him the motivation to keep trying to regain his strength. 

And startling Lorelei was becoming decent amusement as well.

"Why are you doing pushups?! Shit, your eye is bleeding again!" (It often did at inconvenient times, leading to her fretting like a mother hen. She wouldn't rest until he allowed her to fuss to her heart's content. )

"Why are all my kitchen knives impaled in the garage wall?" (Relearning to aim with just one eye was becoming a chore. And he gave in to the need to take a break just as she returned from work. She quickly forgot about the knives as soon as she saw he was bleeding, again,  and about five seconds from passing out.) 

"Jesus Mary and Joesph, I swear Otto, you may not be a serial killer, but you definitely have a screw or two loose!" (He swore she hadn't dusted the cobwebs from her ceiling in decades, but considering how small she was compared to him, he couldn't wholly blame her. To his amusement, she tried to steal the feather duster he had found, jumping pathetically to try and reach it as he held it out of reach. It reminded him of Oscar, and then it wasn't quite as amusing.)  

It wasn't that he was getting soft towards her; it was simply that he had a sense of honor. The reverse of an eye for an eye; she had been kind insane enough to help him. The lengths she went to and fussing over him as if she genuinely cared, made him feel indebted to her. He could tell Raymond didn't trust him, giving him a dark look when he visited every day. 

But he couldn't harm her. He had no reason to (and it certianly wasn't because she tried so hard to show him kindness. Like when she tenderly brushed his hair away from his forehad when she feared a fever. Being so careful during dressing changes, her voice soft and soothing, her touch gentle. She quickly picked up on his body language and did her best to distract him when his thoughts got dark.) 

It was nearly two weeks before he was feeling well enough to think about leaving seriously. Two weeks no sign of Axel. He kept an eye on the news for anything bearing his brother's mark, but there was nothing—no trail for him to follow, making him antsy. 

The longer he stayed, the farther Axel was. (He refused to believe there was any other reason. Axel was out there. Somewhere.) 

It felt a bit wrong to leave when Lorelei was at work with nothing more than a note saying thank you on the kitchen counter and assuring the small room was in perfect condition (or as best as could be, considering the old worn everything.)

It took him a while to find the small cat house, feeling like it was halfway across the suburb of south Dallas (or it could have been that he wasn't quite up to strength just yet.) The ragged curtains were still drawn shut; a few of the cats lounging in the windows  enjoying the sun while others relaxed on the small steps thanks to the little cat door Oscar had crudely cut shortly after they had 'moved in.'

The cats welcomed him with plaintive meows, rubbing and threading through his legs. The fact the place smelled like an unclean catbox was enough to confirm Axel was no longer using it as a base. The large bag of dry cat food was spilled across the kitchen and living room, yet the cats were far more interested in him as he searched the small house for any sign of Axel. 

But every trace of their residence had been cleaned away per protocol, with not even the vaguest of hints where Axel's next destination was.

Except, for some reason, his and Oscar's bags were still stuffed in the hallway closet, packed and ready for a quick retreat, just as they had left it. The ache in Otto's chest strengthened at seeing his little brother's pack buried beneath his, the white and black milkman hat sticking out from where Oscar had quickly stuffed it before that last mission. 

Otto could still remember chastening him to take better care of it if he honestly wanted to keep it, and Oscar had groaned he would fold it correctly when they got back. 

Except his little brother didn't return with them that day. 

Only the cats were witness to him, pulling the hat out and falling to his knees as he clutched it to his chest, biting his tongue to trap the scream of agony from escaping. 

                                                        --+--

Lorelei supposed she shouldn't be too surprised when she returned to an empty house. She had noticed a restless shift in Otto for the last few days. The kind she had seen before in others that had stayed with her to recuperate before they too moved on. 

At least he was kind enough to tidy up after himself (was it embarrassing that he was a better housekeeper than her?) And he had even left a piece of paper saying thank you that she pinned to her fridge. 

She knew Raymond would be relieved when he found out he had left. Even though Otto proved he wasn't about to hurt either of them, her soul brother was about as distrustful as could be when it came to him (granted it was somewhat earned.)

But she was going to miss him and his odd antics. Like how he had sat at the kitchen table, all of her knives laid out before him along with an old whetstone he had found somewhere in her junk drawer, and spend probably at least a few hours just sharpening the dulled blades. (Generally, after he used them for target practice.) His determination to find some odd house chore she had slacked on and finish it without so much as a word. 

 He had been silent, but it wasn't the oppressive silence like her father's had been, where she knew he was boiling about something (like her existence). Sure, once in a while, it would be broody or antagonistic when Raymond visited, or something reminded him of something dark in his frankly mysterious past. But otherwise, it had been amicable. 

Even when she was chatty out of nerves or after a particularly stressful day, he hadn't seemed annoyed. Instead, she sometimes would catch a faint smile as she prattled on. Or even a light huff of laughter when she made a joke, and he shook his head slightly because her jokes were usually terrible puns. 

"Oh, I'm an old biddy," she sighed to her comatose patient the next day, setting up another saline flush along with the IV antibiotics. "Here, I keep telling everyone that I'm fine being by myself, yet here I am getting attached to an absolute stranger. I should just get some cats, huh?"

The man was silent, which she expected. The doctors had just been in to check the healing stump of where his leg had been. Which meant the nurse had dosed him with plenty of pain meds just an hour before. Partially to help negate the pain from the procedure itself, but also so he wouldn't try to grab the nearest person as a hostage. 

That encounter still left many of the other nurses hesitant to enter the room. It had been the day after the John Doe had been brought in the emergency room, found by a couple of hunters just outside of town with a traumatic amputation of his left lower leg.

One minute he had been asleep (or assumed) as the doctors discussed treatment plans, and the next, he had jumped up, grabbed one of the nurses, and had a ballpoint pen pressed against her throat while swearing something in an odd language as everyone scrambled. 

What was with white-haired men and being violent? Granted, she had never seen Otto like she had the John Doe, his pale blue eyes wild with both rage and pain. 

Which was why restraints were now strapped to the remaining three limbs. The straps rattled against the metal sidebars as John Doe stirred, making Lorelei pause. His young face was twisted into a grimace, and she moved to brush his forehead out of instinct.

"Bror?" He mumbled, making her stomach twist in guilt. She didn't think her rambling would wake him.

 "Shh, it's okay, hun. Just get some rest," She smoothed his messy white hair, smiling as he relaxed back into sleep. 

"Lorelei, you know you're crazy, right?" One of her fellow nurses asked as she slipped from the secured room and into the nearby nurses' station, "Going into that room by yourself. You saw what he did to Mary Lou!"

"Well, how would you feel waking up without a leg and a bunch of people hovering over you, talking in a different language," she shot back defensively as she grabbed John Doe's chart.  

"Not homicidal," her coworker responded, working on her own chart notes. "I mean, I'd scream for sure, but I doubt I'd be able to move the way he did. Hell, I doubt I'd ever been that quick." 

                                                      ---+---

Lorelei supposed she shouldn't have been happy to see Otto sitting on the front steps of her home the next evening. She had a crappy day, her feet were killing her, and she was planning on just crashing in her bed. Yet seeing him on the cement step, two large backpacks sitting on the dilapidated porch, made the end of her day a little better. 

He looked up, the bandage still wrapped around half of his face, but she was pleased not to notice any blood staining the gauze. She wasn't so happy to see the melancholy expression on his face.

 She took a seat on the step next to him, feeling warmth radiate him to chase off the chilly December air. She wasn't brave enough to look at him, and instead plucked a piece of dead grass from the lawn. "Don't tell Ray, but you make a decent house guest. Not many men clean up after themselves, let alone fight me about dustin' or sweeping them cobwebs out." 

She peeked a glance after a pause and felt relief to see a faint smile on his face as he focused on the dusk colored sky. "I won't ask what you've been up to, as long as it ain't gonna be bringing any police around here." 

"No," he answered her joking comment gravely. 

"Kay, good."  She tore at the blade of grass some more. "So... Are you looking for a place to stay, or are you just here to say bye for good?"

This time he did meet her gaze. His dark eye looked haunted, and she could see the telltale marks of crying by the red rims and puffiness of his lids. Her fingers ached to reach out and try to soothe the crease around his good eye, to bring some sort of comfort, so she shifted to sit on her hand instead, hoping he would think her fingertips were cold. "Because like I said, you're a nice house guest. You do your own share of the chores, and you can stay as long as you like. Just no more using my good steak knives as darts, you got me?"

"Yes," he answered solemnly, making her heart jump. "...Do you like cats?" 

His question surprised her for a moment before she smiled. "Yeah, I do. I was just telling my patient that I should get a few."

He nodded his head without elaborating further, though she swore there was a thoughtful expression on his face as he watched the last glimmer of the sun fade away. 

The silence this time was broken by her stomach growling, earning an amused glance from Otto as she blushed. "Right. Well, I'm hungry,' she hurriedly jumped up and offered her hand to him. "Shall we?" 

He accepted her hand, the callouses firm against her skin. It still surprised her how tall he towered over her. "Let's see; I have fish sticks or hot dogs. It's up to you…."

                                                   ---+---

Lorelei woke the next morning to a blank and white angular-face cat kneading her pillow; its purr a deep growl. As soon as the cat realized she was awake, it butted its head against her as a greeting, its purr becoming louder. 

"Where did you come from?" She asked as she sat up, allowing him to crawl into her lap. The cat, of course, didn't answer but continued to knead her lap. She picked up the cat and descended the stairs, following the smell of sausage and the quiet mewl of other cats. A group of them were sitting expectantly at Otto's feet, jumping when he would toss a piece of an egg at them. All of them boney and looking as if he had found them wandering the streets. 

"Dare I ask?" She asked, shifting the cat to protect her modesty as he glanced over at her. She didn't miss the quick once-over before he shrugged and returned towards breakfast.

"You said you liked cats." 

Living with him was going to be fun, Lorelei decided as she allowed the cat down to join its brethren at his feet and instead shuffled towards the fridge. "True. I did say that." She just didn't expect so many. They were all weaving around him, eager for a treat, which made it hard to count, but she swore there were at least a dozen. "So… do they have names?"

"Bebis." 

She waited for him to elaborate and frowned when he didn't. "Are you saying they are babies, or that they are all named Bebis?"

"Both," he answered, shooting her a quick half-smile as he flicked another piece of an egg at them. 

"Oh no, that isn't going to work. I mean, I fully agree they're babies, but they need their own names." She busied herself with setting up the kettle for coffee, trying not to think how easy it was moving around each other, or how much happier she felt compared to the last two days. 

It was the cats; she decided as one jumped up on the counter to pester her. Definitely the cats. She blushed when she noticed Otto watching her out of the corner of her vision as she baby-talked to the small tabby that looked like it hadn't eaten in weeks. 

Just the cats.

Next Chapter 

[boat-dock]

“Snapshots” Chapter 1

Hello all! this is chapter 1 of my first ever Her Royal Highness fic. this is going to be a collection of oneshots which will start before they are together and will continue past the end of the book. I hope ya’ll enjoy and as always any and all feedback is appreciated and enjoyed

Chapter 1 “Her traitorous heart” is set between the visit to Skye and the surprise Thanksgiving. 

Millie laid on her stomach in her bed, with her laptop open staring at a blank screen where her essay was supposed to be. She’s been sitting there for half an hour trying to do her homework and not getting anywhere. Flora was in the room with her, not helping her distraction levels. Instead of trying to do work, Flora was rolling around the room in a rolly chair, the scraping of the wheels against the floor and her swishing blonde ponytail constantly pulling at Millie’s focus. It was a strangely childlike activity for a princess to be doing and brought a smile to her face.

“Can you please be a little quieter?” Millie groaned, causing Flora’s head to snap towards her, “I’m trying to work.”

Now the chair was being rolled toward her bed so Flora could rest her chin on the edge of her bed, so that she was only inches away from Millie. “But I’m bored Quint,” she whined, a strand of hair falling in front of her eyes. 

Millie rolled her eyes at that,” You could try doing some homework,” she offered, trying to nudge her away. Flora huffed at her and scrunched her nose. She was not deterred, however, she seemed even more determined to get attention. 

“Quiiiint,” she dragged out, poking her lightly on her arm. Millie ignored her and tried to bring her attention back to her essay, letting her fingers run quickly over the keys even though no useful words came out of it. “Millie,” she whispered and a shiver ran up her spine. She was so used to being called Quint that hearing Flora say her name caused her mind to go blank and her breath to hitch. Millie looked at her and blinked back to reality. 

“Yeah Flo?” she asked. The nickname she had heard Seb call her so many times, slipped out without her evening thinking about it. 

Flora’s face lit up, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the nickname or just from her attention in general. “I would like attention please.” 

It would have been so easy to drop everything and hang out with Flora, in fact she’d been doing that more and more these days and that was doing nothing but fan the flames of her pesky little crush. It was easy to follow Flora, she was powerful and confident in a way that only a princess could pull off. It was dangerous, because Millie found that her feelings were not nearly as aware that a relationship with Flora would only end in heartbreak as her brain was. “I can’t, “ she pushed back,” I have to write this paper.” 

The look Flora gave her could only be described as a puppy dog look and Millie’s resolve almost broke. They sat in silence as she tried to keep working, but Flora stayed next to her, watching with her large golden eyes. “Can I have your phone?” she asked. Normally Millie might have questioned this but she was desperate to actually make progress on this paper so she handed it over no questions asked. 

With a grin she rolled away from the bed to mess with Millie’s phone. A strange weight was lifted off of her shoulders and she could breathe again. Being that close to her old roommate, now friend, shouldn’t be this hard. The princess was now taking various selfies and saving them to Millie’s phone. “Couldn’t you do that on your phone?” 

“Perhaps, but I couldn’t use the fun snapchat filters,” she answered, shooting her a sly grin and snapping another photo. She forgets that Flora isn’t allowed to have social media by her family. 

“Go crazy then,” she says, leaving her to enjoy her selfies.

Flora flashed her a dazzling smile and left her to try and do her homework. Even with the new found quiet she still found it hard to concentrate, her mind wandered and all her thoughts seemed to find their way back to her ex-roommate. Somewhere along the way, her fingers stopped typing and her eyes glazed over. She’s snapped out of it when Flora’s voice disrupts the silence, except this time it wasn’t aimed at her. 

When she looked she found Flora talking to her phone, “Hi Americans,” she sang, waving at the camera. It was then that Millie noticed the blinking red button on the bottom of the screen that showed it was recording,” I’m..”

“What are you doing?” Millie cut in, scrunching her eyebrows. She shifted her weight so she was fully facing Flora and the camera. 

Flora turned toward her and spoke, while sliding the chair back closer to the bed,” I’m talking to the Americans and I’m going to post it to your story,” she said blatantly. She almost snorted but stopped herself, she had at most 20 friends on snapchat, four close friends, her aunt Vi and the rest were random kids she used to go to high school with but never really spoke to. 

She leaned forward and rested her head in her hands making eye contact with the camera,” and how many people do you think are going to see that?” she asked. 

“Don’t really care,” she commented,” I’m just bored, love.” she now turned back to the camera,” Amelia here, is very busy writing her essay and I have nothing to do.” Millie huffed and gave a small eye roll. 

“You could go do your homework ya know,” she was deliberately ignored. 

The door to her room flew open as Sakshi and Perry came in carrying snacks and coffee laughing with each other. Flora flipped the phone camera with ease, so that their friends were now in the shot, “ Say hello to the Americans,” she announced, startling them. 

Saks regained her composer quickly and answered,” Hullo Americans,” she grinned, waves of super model charms flowing from her. 

“Hi,” Perry murmmured,” we come bearing snacks.” 

Millie’s stomach growled loudly at the mere mention of snacks. The camera switched back to her and Flora and the filter snapped back into place, giving their skin a ethereal glow that made her kind of uneasy. Not that Flora needed any filter to be beautiful, she always seemed to glow all on her own. 

“Time to go,” she said waving,” Anything to say before we leave Quint?” 

She thought for a second before smirking and answering,” Send help,” she deadpanned, letting her eyes slide to Flora to see how she reacted. 

“Oi!” she exclaimed, in what Millie assumed was mock outrage. 

“Kidding,” she grinned,” Bye y’all,” she quickly grabbed the phone, effectively ending the video. Accepting a muffin and coffee from Perry, she tried to forget the video, knowing that Flora definitely was not going to. 

“Are we going to ignore the fact that Millie just said y’all,” Saks’ asked through a mouthful of muffin, in a surprisingly unlady-like manner for her. 

“...I’ve probably said it before,” Millie answered as Saks sat on her bed on the opposite side of the room. Flora abandoned her chair to join Millie on her bed so that Perry could have it. She sipped her coffee and scrunched her nose, in an annoyingly cute way, before setting it to the side. “I’m from the American south, it’s part of my vernacular.” 

“I like it, “ Flora replied, “ it’s got a cute twang to it.” 

Millie’s cheeks burned against her will and she ducked her head, avoiding eye contact with everyone. She had gotten used to hearing the Scottish accent around her now, but sometimes it still shocked her. It was strange to think that they might think the same things when they heard her talk. She didn’t have a good way to respond to this, so instead she just kept her head down, ignoring the weight of Flora’s eyes on her and the knowing look Sakshi was giving them. 

Her paper now forgotten, Millie closed her laptop and moved to put it on the desk simply so that she would have something to do with her hands. There was officially too much attention on her and she did not know what to do with herself. She was used to being in the background, not the center of attention and right now there was no doubt that all eyes were on her. 

Her phone dinged next to her annoyingly quickly indicating that someone had messaged her. She sighed knowing that it was about the video Flora had posted of all of them. The princess eyed the phone but before she could make a move to grab it Millie snatched it and clicked it on. 

She had a list of people from her old high school that she did not want to talk to and while the person she caught Jude cheating on her with was not on the top of said list he was definitely on it. Mason’s name sat heavily on her screen and she almost didn’t open it, but her curiosity got the better of her. 

She tried to make her fingers move but they sat stubborn and still. This was ridiculous, Mason didn’t know anything about her and Jude, there was no reason for things to be weird between them. Taking a deep breath, she clicked the message. 

Damn Millie who’s your friend? 

A distressed sound escaped from her throat, it started off as a yelp then turned into a groan. On instinct she threw her phone onto the bed face down trying to erase the words from her mind 

No. This was not happening. Not again. 

No. No. No. 

“What’s wrong with you Quint?” Flora asked, picking up the phone. Millie could see her eyes scanning the message. An all too familiar smirk formed on her lips and Millie could barely keep herself from staring, “Oh,” she says and an emotion that Millie couldn’t place flashed across her face, but disappeared as quickly as it had come,” Some American lad thinks I’m attractive. I don’t think that requires that level of a reaction.” she teased, her smirk returning causing Millie’s cheeks to heat up. 

By this point Saks and Perry were peering over Flora’s shoulder to read the message too. “It’s not the message as much as the person that sent it,” she backtracked. 

“Who is he?” Perry asked. 

She took a second too long to answer, “ his name’s Mason,” they all stared at her, waiting for more information. “He’s who I caught Jude cheating on me with.” she murmured and lowered her eyes. 

Saks gasped and before she could blink the phone was in her hand. “I want a picture of this boy,” she announced only to find that there was nothing for her to see. With a disappointed huff she and Flora glared at the home as Perry wheeled the chair across the room to join them. 

“Check his instagram,” he announced and then Saks’ fingers were flying over the screen. 

“Give me that,” Millie growled, taking the phone back to respond to the message. 

I thought you were with Jude?

Mason typed and deleted his reply at least three times before it finally came through. 

We broke up about 2 months ago.

I thought she would have told you

Her stomach knotted. She wasn’t happy about that, she wasn’t. But there was some sick satisfaction in knowing that the relationship had not worked out. She pushed down those feelings scolding herself. 

We haven’t talked much recently. 

Her friends were watching her intently but she made no move to let them read the messages. She deserved some privacy after all. 

That sucks

This conversation had turned painfully awkward fast. She started looking for ways to end it. 

For you too

She thought that would be the last of it and they would both go back to not speaking to each other for the next three months, until she was back in Texas for Christmas. Sadly she was mistaken. 

So is that a no from your friend? 

Just like that Millie closed the phone without answering and tossed it, determined to forget the entire conversation had ever happened. Sadly her friends didn’t agree with her. “Well…” Flora pushed, her eyes sparkling with the prospects of new gossip ,” What did he say?” 

“Nothing important,” she said bluntly, trying to put an end to this whole thing. They all moved in closer to her and she realized that the only way to end this was to give them what they wanted,” he just said that he and Jude aren’t together anymore and then he asked about you again.” 

An annoying smirk was again graced Flora’s face, she was relishing this, she was relishing how Millie was reacting to this. Millie hated how she was reacting to this situation, she hated that she wasn’t mad at Mason because of his relationship with Jude, she was upset because he was interested in Flora. Except she had no right to be possessive over Flora, Flora was not her’s. They were ex-roommates and barely even friends, nothing more. 

If only she could convince her traitorous heart that. 

[justamusicpodcast]

Episode 6 out today!

We’re talking about Blues music

Transcript under the cut

Sup, I’m Laura Cousineau and welcome to Just A Music Podcast, where I, Laura Cousineau, tell you about some music history, how it relates to the world around us, and hopefully, introduce you to some new tunes. This show is theoretically for everyone but I will swear and when it comes down to it and sometimes we may need to talk about some sensitive topics so ur weeuns might wanna sit this one out.

And boi unless you’ve had that talk with ur kids about systemic racism you might wanna let them sit this one out because we’re gonna be touching on a bunch of terrible racist shit this week Because we’re gonna be talking about the Blues and various different type of blues musics. I’m actually really excited to talk about it too because blues, as you guys will find out in the future is kinda the basis for a lot of other, what one might consider more modern, genres of American popular musics. So this one’s gonna be important for ur earholes and ur brainholes. Just like last time I will be airing a sensitive content warning for some graphic descriptions of violence and I will put the time stamps in the description for y’all for when that starts and ends. 

First though, I wanna issue an apology for being away so long, I tend to work on this podcast in my free time, and currently I’ve had none of that what so ever. It just so happened that October worked out this year that it was thanksgiving and my birthday and then a bunch of big projects due then Halloween and now I’m working on my fucking thesis proposal, I’m actually recording this episode at 1:35 am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, so needless to say all this in combination with trying to deal with my depression hasn’t been a cake walk but we’re making it work. I will likely run up against a similar time issue during the first couple weeks of December because that’s when all my final papers are due. After that thought I should have smooth sailing for about a month. I wanted to make sure I had an episode out this week because as I think… well everyone… is aware the American election took place this week and understandably people were stressed as shit about that. So I think we could all use a little music right now. 

Ok so Like all fuckin things we need to know where blues came from. Now blues is actually a lot older than a lot of people are gonna be expecting, like really damn old. Like pretty much everything in academia (and I mean EVERYTHING, at least in the humanities), the dates are contested, but it seems that the blues, or at least what began as the blues, started in and around the 1860s. For those who didn’t listen to last week’s episode on slave songs, spirituals, and gospel, or just those who don’t know their American history too too well, the 1860s marks a very important time for black people, many of which at that time had been enslaved, because in 1865 the thirteenth amendment was amended into the American constitution. For those who aren’t aware, the thirteenth amendment as stated by the national archives of the United States of America reads as such: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Now this of course was fantastic news of course! And for some people, this might be where you think oppression in the Americas ends for Black people but you would be incredibly wrong! Because this is the period where we see the start of a phenomenon referred to as sharecropping. Sharecropping or crop sharing as it’s known otherwise is considered part of what we historians sometimes refer to as the Jim Crow economy of the American South after the civil war. But what is Jim crow economy, what did it come from, why is it bad, why is sharecropping bad, how does any of this relate to the blues? Well lucky for u lil turnips imma tell ya.

  Jim Crow culture is something that I imagine most North Americans will have even the most basic knowledge of but for those that don’t the name Jim Crow as applied to economy, laws, and any other part of American culture during these time periods refers to sets of crazy fucking racist laws written and unwritten that kept black people subjugated under the whims of the government as well as their fellow white countrymen. The term Jim crow itself is reference to a song often featured in the supremely racist minstrel shows of the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s referred to as “Jump Jim Crow” in which a white man in black-face sings in a parody centric dialect about the life of a charicaturishly uneducated back-woodsy Black man named, you fuckin guessed it, Jim Crow. The significance of the Crow being that it was a pejorative term for black individuals which can actually dated back to the early mid 1700s. Now I wanna preface the excerpt of it with the fact that I’m uncomfortable listening to this, I understand if others are too. The thing is that acknowledging these uncomfortable things and knowing about them is necessary in order to understand the type of historical impact that they had. “So laura, you must obviously support statues being raised to commemorate things like slavery and secessionism!” Absolutely not. Where statues and monuments exist to praise the efforts of individuals, the listening to and learning about songs in a teaching context like this very podcast are meant to educate. Statues commemorating culture surrounding one of the worst atrocities to have taken place on American soil should never have been erected in the first place let alone celebrated. One is meant to celebrate while the other is to educate because one is a historical primary source that lets us think critically about the history, the other is a tertiary celebration. The purpose of listening to a clip like this is then to educate and understand a piece of actually history, not to replicate and enjoy. The version of the song that I have is sung without the charicaturish accent but uses the original words but with all that in mind here’s a bit of Jump Jim Crow:

In terms of laws I’m sure just about everyone knows separate drinking fountains and schools but this really permeated pretty much every sphere of life for Black peoples especially those in the south. I say especially those in the south but not exclusively those in the south because racial segregation, although not as supported by law but more socially, also existed in the Northern States as well as in Canada. Anecdotally, my mother grew up in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio, she remembers going into Cleveland when she was a kid when Cleveland was still a very racially segregated city, Black peoples lived in, shopped in, and attended schools in certain areas of the city and white people in other’s. My grandmother who was also raised in the area even remembers Black people having separate lunch counters if any at all in some of the larger department stores in the area.

It might also be handy when I mention the south to actually talk about what the south and particularly the deep south is for y’all outside of America. So when we talk about the south we are talking about a geographically bounded area just not the area that one might think of by looking at a map because where you might be thinking like ah just take the country and cut it in half, and the bottom half is the south that wouldn’t be correct. So, from the United States Census Bureau itself the south we’re talking about is Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Now some who live in the surrounding areas such as Kansas might also consider themselves as being from the “south” somewhat culturally but those states previously listed as the official ones. When we talk about the DEEP SOUTH however, that range closes a little more, and that would mainly just include Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and sometimes Texas and Florida due to their involvement as part of the confederate states of America, meaning states that were on the south side of the civil war. 

Also briefly just so we’re clear, again this is for those people who didn’t receive the best education on Slavery and the Civil War in general but to be clear, the civil war was fought over primarily states rights to use and perpetuate slavery. The common narrative you hear a lot in protests by those on the right, who would like to uphold the institutions set out by their forefathers in the creation of the abominable act, is that the civil war was primarily fought over states rights. What they then so often forget to elaborate is that those rights were perceived as the right to govern themselves independently so that they may still be able to employ slave labour in the operation of their economies and also to expand further westward to continue and be able to use slavery out in those areas as well. 

The reason that we hear about these Jim Crow laws particularly in the South is because where the Northern states and Canada did have (and still continues to have) some violent racist issues, the Jim Crow south was specifically really bad. And I mean fucking abominable. Though Black people were free from being directly owned, society at large and all it’s trappings found new ways to oppress them. This started with Black Codes which were individual state law codes that dictated where Black peoples could move, for how long they could stay, restricted their rights to vote (or made it extremely difficult to vote via poll taxes, literacy tests, etc), as well as where they could work, and in some cases even if their children could be taken away from them on the basis labour needs. So I really can’t drive home the point enough of how much life sucked for Black peoples under Jim Crow laws and economy in the southern states, to call it any less than abominable would seem to understate it in a major way. In the 1880s Jim Crow laws hadn’t started to be rolled into large southern cities yet so many Black peoples were inclined to move into them because life was actually slightly easier for a short while. White people being offended and upset at this, because “how dare a black person just try to live their lives in my good white pure Christian neighborhood,” then fully supported Jim crow laws being rolled out to remove them from areas where white people would normally interact with them. This included but was not limited to, barring them from public parks entirely, having entirely different theaters at one point and then segregated theaters after a while with separate entrances based on your race, restaurants, bus and train stations, water fountains, restrooms, most building entrances in general, elevators, amusement park ticket windows, public schools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails, elderly care homes and even fucking cemeteries. Of course being treated as diseased subhuman parasites is never enough for the racism machine that is the public conscious at this time so there was also a lot of violence both systematic and grassroots that accompanied this era. 

And here’s where I’m going to have to issue a sensitive content warning because I’m about to describe some truly heinous shit in a whole second. So by violence, I mean very public and very culturally accepted violence, similar to what we’re seeing more and more of in the states again. As many will know now in the light of the many many many police shootings of unarmed, unthreatening black people in the states, the police traditionally haven’t been on the side of black citizens. This is due to a number of reasons, for one, on the most basic of levels the police serve to protect the interests of those in power, in our case that means the property and lives of middle to upper class (mostly) white Americans. The natural extension of this is that many police forces in the states, especially in Southern states started out as slave catching forces bringing back runaway enslaved people to their owners. So as time progressed and Black peoples became a “free” population this still meant protecting mainly middle to upper class white people from the “threat” of black people. This was enforced in a number of ways, such as arresting black individuals found breaking these rules, framing black people for crimes committed by others and arresting them for population suppression, and turning a blind eye to the grassroots violence perpetrated by non-black citizens, which very often were white citizens. An example of just straight up police brutality can be found in the case of Isaac Woodard JR. who was viciously beaten by police only hours after being honorably discharged from the fucking military on February 12 1946. The bus driver driving Woodard and some of his fellow soldiers called the police after Woodard asked the bus driver if there might be time for him to use the restroom as they approached a rest stop. When the police arrived, the bus driver accused Woodard of drinking in the back of the bus and he was hauled off, dragged into an alley and beaten with nighsticks. That night he was thrown in the town jail, by morning he had been beaten so severely he was left permanently blind in both eyes. 

And that grassroots violence is just as nasty, really fucking nasty. The violence could be perpetrated for things as small as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, entering a white neighbourhood, “talking back to” the wrong person. Since black men have always been are still to some degree subject to the stereotype that they are all sex incensed monsters, being left alone in a room with a white woman could be enough to incite violence against them. In the Mississippi delta during the season where share cropping debts were settled up, there was a sharp uptick in violence against and killings of black people. If you were white, because let’s be real here some white people definitely were on the side of their oppressed countrymen, you could be hung on the basis of being an N-word lover, which could range from being found to being in a romantic/sexual relationship with a person of colour, to just being fucking friends with them. The violence was often varied too, where kidnapping and hanging someone either with or without brutalizing them first (also known as a lynching) is the form most commonly associated with Jim Crow era violence less extreme but still horrible harassment could perpetuate in any form. Mississippi had the highest amount of lynchings from 1882-1968 with 581. You might think that is a low number but first, similarily to when we were talking about slavery in the last episode, 1 lynching is too fucking many, and secondly these are only the ones that were officially recorded. Since lynchings didn’t always happen in broad daylight and since law enforcement really didn’t care about Black individuals, there were almost certainly more that happened that just never were recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. 79% of lynching happened in the South. So as I said before though, lynching was not the only form though, beatings were also entirely all too common forms of violence perpetrated against blackf people to make them scared and thus more compliant. A good example of this is the case of Emmet Till a 14 year old boy who made the mistake of playfully flirting with a white woman, who was beaten nearly to death, had one of his eyes gouged out, was then shot in the head, and tied to some cotton mill equipment before his body was thrown in a river. This wasn’t even that long ago, the beating happened on the 28th of August 1955. 

THE next parts are also gonna be not great but there wont be anymore descriptions of graphic violence, so I’m calling an end to the sensitive content warning. So the then how does sharecropping play into all this and what does it have to do with the blues (we’re getting there babes I promise.) So as I explained previously, sharecropping was a part of the Jim Crow economic era. It was part of the era of reconstruction meaning the period of rebuilding after the civil war. How it worked was that let’s say for a second, come with me into the theater of the mind for a second, take a seat, close your eyes, take a deep breath, Ok so lets imagine for a second you’re a farmer in the south, the civil war has kinda left you in a spot, if you’re black, you’re starting off without an awful lot, you don’t have any generational wealth you don’t have property likely aside from maybe a relatively small plot of land (but this was uncommon,) you probably didn’t have much if any equipment because that would have been way too expensive, and the land you may have had may have been of shitty quality. So what could you do to earn yourself a living?! Well you would go to a landowner, and ask him rather kindly if you might be able to work the land they lived on in exchange for some of the profits of the crops that you would produce. The landowner would provide you with the tools, seed, housing, land, store credits at local shops in order to subsist offa for food and other supplies and sometimes a mule in order to help you work the land seeing as motorized machinery was still few and far between in the united states at this point. The issue of this system is that how much you receive for you labour, the cut that you actually get from selling crops, that you grew with ur own backbreaking labour, is more or less decided by your landowner. And as I mentioned last episode, those who’ve ever had to rely on the benevolence of a boss for any period of time knows that this shit ain’t gonna cut it. So often you would end up underpaid, underfed, and in a debt hole that lasted as long as you did. If it sounds like legal slavery that’s kinda because it was. You would basically remain in indentured servitude to the landowner for as long as you were a part of this system. Like don’t get me wrong there were people who managed to not be a part of it but it was an incredibly largescale problem. 

It’s important to note that this wasn’t just a black phenomenon either, white tenants of sharecroppers existed and in incredibly large numbers as well. By 1900, 36 percent of all white farmers in Mississippi were either tenant farmers or sharecroppers (by comparison, 85 percent of all black farmers in 1900 did not own the land they farmed). This all sucks for various reasons but like partially because there was this whole other plan proposed that after the war, all the land that had been seized from slave owners would have been divvied up to the newly freed slave populations. It was colloquially known as the 40 acres and a mule plan but yeah unfortunately never happened cause fuckin president Andrew Johnson was like ”WELL AKSHULLY SWEATY I THINK THE LAND SHOULD GO BACK TO SLAVE OWNERS BECAUSE UHHHHHH” AND THEN IT DID AND THEN WE ENDED UP WITH SHARE CROPPING. But anyway that’s sharecropping. And of course I could go onto describe how all of this still affects black people in the united states and how the effects of systematic racism are still being felt generations later but… we’re gonna save that for a different episode. FOR NOW THOUGH, WHY IS THIS ALL IMPORTANT, WHY DID I TAKE ROUGHLY 3000 WORDS TO TELL YOU GUYS ABOUT THE HORRORS OF RECONSTRUCTION ERA SOUTH!? Well because we’re talking about the blues, and what does it mean when you have the blues, it means that you’re sad as hell, given all that I’ve just described to you is it no wonder that the blues emerged as the soundtrack to the lives these people lived?

So then what is blues? Well as I mentioned last time, blues sort of develops out of the field holler/spiritual tradition. A fair amount of field hollers, a type of work song that enslaved peoples would sing in fields while they were doing their work, were about regular ass things for regular ass peoples; this dude stole my girl, im gonna find me a girl to love, life sucks and im gonna sing about it, life doesn’t suck so much but I’m still gonna sing about it. Blues then tended to explore more themes related to the sadder points of those stories but in similar ways and styles. So where did blues come from specifically, what makes it a different genre than a field holler or a spiritual, and that’s a great question so let’s get in it.

Let’s say for a second you went through a real shitty period in your life, you significant other named steve dumped you, your pet armadillo, also named steve, died, ur mom (also coincidentally named steve) has taken away your showering privileges, you’ve forgotten how to speak ur native language and to top it all off you just burnt your gotdamn mac and cheese. You spiral into a deep situational depression that lasts quite a little while. During this time you listen to one album on repeat just over and over again, you know it all inside out and backwards and diagonal, you know every instrumental part by heart, you’ve got the lyrics tattooed on your ass, the whole 9 yards. And then you start working your way out of it, slowly but steadily the days start getting brighter, you move out of your abusive mother’s house, you find a new partner or get comfortable being single, you appropriately morn the loss of ur pet armadillo, hell you even learn to make a better mac and cheese, things aren’t all fixed, and life isn’t breezes and cakes but it is ever so slightly easier than it was before, at least you have ur freedom right? BUT NOW, everytime you listen to one of those songs from that album it mentally brings you back to the way things used to be and it’s not great. Well that’s kinda what happened with blues music but, ya know, infinitely worse. Essentially, black people wanted a new sound to accompany this new life and so they fuckin made it and it’s great.

The similarities of blues to field hollers and spirituals are relatively easy enough to hear if you know where to look which isn’t really surprising given that blues is the evolution of it. For example the basic structure stayed pretty similar, simple rhyming schemes, simple harmonies, melismatic vocal structures in places, and many times the lyrics were often very similar to those forms before them.  But it goes even further than that! Most of the early blues melodies were directly derived from their spiritual predecessors. So for some comparison here’s some songs, first one is gonna be a field holler, next one is gonna be a spiritual, and then the last one is gonna be a blues song mmk? And here we go:

AND ACTUALLY YOU KNOW WHAT WAIT, JUST CAUSE IM FUCKIN, OOO BABE, OK, SO WHEN I WAS RESARCHING THIS FUCKING EPISODE I WAS TRYING TO FIND GOOD AUDIO CLIPS TO USE, AND LEMME TELL YA MAN YOU WOULDN’T THINK SPIRITUALS WOULD FUCKIN EXIST OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY OF FUCKING CONGRESS CAUSE APPARENTLY THEY HAVE A GODDAMN STRANGLEHOLD ON ALL BLACK SPIRITUALS EVER RECORDED BY THE LOMAX’S. The thing is is that fuckin copyright at least in the states is supposed to run out 75 years after the death of the recorder or fucking owner of the rights, which it certainly has been for Alan Fucking Lomax BUT NOOOOOOO, I HAVE TO NEARLY PURCHASE A GODDAMN CD IN ORDER TO GET YOU GUYS A FUCKING ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF MUSIC THAT CAME OUT LIKE 100 YEARS AGO. To be clear I refuse to buy anything for this podcast other than my recording equipment, but man researching this podcast is big joab hours, god just keeps fuckin testing me. Just slap my ass and call me a pickle, ok, rage is over, time for songs:

These freed populations wanted a new music, a music that fit their current situation better, that didn’t rely on the imagery of the past in order to get across the situation they were in. And so that’s what blues did, it was a new sound for a new era and even more importantly it was a sound entirely their own. Whereas field hollers and various other types of music sung by enslaved peoples were by definition their invention, many of them still borrowed heavily from the dominant cultures of their oppressors, and so in creating blues what they had was something they could 100% call their own. Even if they didn’t own the land they worked/lived on, and had few rights to the crops they sewed and reaped, they did have blues, and that’s something beautiful. 

But when does it become a thing, like when does blues start becoming a thing? And that’s a hard part. Like any cultural phenomenon it’s hard to fuckin say, there’s some accounts that say 1865 like the fuckin second the civil war ended, then there’s some that attribute it to the 1920s. Most of the sources I’ve looked at put it around 1890-1910. It originates unsurprisingly in and around the Mississippi Delta Region and East Texas where you have a lot of farmland and thus a lot of poor folks just trying to scratch out a living for themselves. AND SO THE BLUES BECOMES A THING AND IT’S COOL AS HELL AND IT DEVELOPS IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS! And I’m sorry that I’m not gonna get enough time to do every subgenre of blues, but we’re gonna look at 3 of the big regions or subgenres of blues. 

So blues first of all have all those things that I mentioned before simple rhyming schemes, like ABAB or ABCC, simple harmonies, Call and response is definitely a thing that still happens in this specific style, but then they also have blues notes, for those who missed the last episode, blues notes are notes within a standard scale that are “bent” (or at least that’s how they were initially described.) These notes are lowered by a semitone making the overall colour of the sound a bit darker and more… emotional, sad? Like we ascribe emotions to the way things sound and that might be western centric, I’m actually gonna have to look into it later, but for western listeners we’re gonna read the emotion in these tones as sad. So the notes specifically are lowered the 3rd  5th and 7th degrees of a regular scale. I’m going to play you guys an example of blues scale in just a second but the guy playing the example is using the pentatonic version of the scale meaning only 5 notes of it.

In terms of instruments the most standard you’re going to find in any blues band is at it’s most basic one guitar and a person singing. You could even make an argument that just singing could be blues if you’re using a blues scale but usually there will at least a guitar and one dude singing. The rest of the intstruments are gonna depend on the region you’re playing from. So remember the moaning thing I mentioned last time? The moaning style vocals? Not pioneered by but made popular by a man that went by Blind Lemon Jefferson? This one:

Well he falls under the Mississippi/Texas type of blues which we’re gonna call texasippi. It differs from other types of blues in the united states for a couple reasons but one of them is that moaning style of vocals, in other parts of the country the style where the blues vocals function similarly to other styles of singing, clean and clear, no moaning. Another cool thing that texasippi blues also does is they incorporate a lot of metal into the way they play their guitars. Not like the heavy screamy kind that’s come to be MY fave, but like actual metal objects! How they incorporate this is through the strings of the guitar specifically causing a little extra twangy buzzing when the strings resonate but also a sort of pleasing screech when they’re shifted up and down the strings like this:

but what did they use to make this sound? Well just about anything small enough and metal you could thread between the strings or held against them while playing, this coulda been bottle caps, pocket knives, silverware. Remember, we’re still talking about a type of music that was very much being played by people without very much or no money, so you’re using what you can to make it. Nowadays you can purchase wee cylanders made of glass or metal that go over ur fingers that you press up against the strings to create the desired effect. In addition to this, something that’s pretty regional to the blues in this area is the harmonica. I’m assuming most of you know about the harmonica and have heard it but for those who don’t, the harmonica is a squanky reed instrument that you play with your mouth. I would tell you the physics of how it works but fuck if I ever studied physics. Basically when you blow in it, it vibrates the reed and makes a note depending on the holes you blow into, and when you suck air in it, it makes other sounds! They can be very very large or very very small thus changing how low or high the sound is respectively. They were invented somewhere in the early 1800s in Germany we think and they sound something like this:

How were harmonicas introduced into blues music? Well turns out, much like some of the other instruments we’ll see in a hot minute, harmonicas were often carried by soldiers during the American civil war, even President Abraham Lincoln himself was reported to have carried a harmonica with him in his coat pocket and would play it as he “found it comforting.” Thing about the harmonica was that it was relatively easy to make and it was extremely cheap to buy in comparison to other instruments at the time, even better was that you really didn’t need lessons to figure out how to make it sound good. So during the reconstruction period, as industrialization rapidized in America, and harmonicas became more available, and previous soldiers reminisced about the songs they heard played in their camps during the civil war, more and more people started picking up the harmonica. And so poor southern americans were able to incorporate the instrument into this new music they were developing like this:

Also I would big time recommend just watching the video for that song, dudes just sittin there legit just suckin on his harmonica at some point, that’s what I fucking call dedication bud. The cool part about blues from the texasippi way is then during the great migration, the phenomenon that I mentioned last episode, where black southerners just start heading northwards, is that the blues travels with them too. Just briefly on the great migration, remember all the shitty stuff I discussed earlier, the lack of work, sharecropping, lynching and what have you? That’s why the great migration takes place. Basically black people all around the south are going jesus fucking christ shit sucks let’s get out of here and find somewhere better to be, and so they do, and about 6 MILLION Black Americans head north to where it’s… better. I mean there’s definitely still racism and all sorts of jim crow era laws and practices up north but it is still some degree better than the south. So this great migration is how texasippi blues music then comes to be transplanted into Chicago, and turns into Chicago blues. 

“BUT LAURA” YOU SAY, UR HANDS CLENCHED INTO FISTS AT UR SIDES, “IF TEXASIPPI BLUES IS THE SAME AS THE ONES IN CHICAGO THEN HOW’RE THEY DIFFERENT!?” YOU CRY WITH TEARS FORMING AT THE SIDES OF YOUR EYES. And you’re right b, they are the same so why are they different? Well ya gotta remember that time does funny stuff to music similarly as it does with language and just abut anything else, things change over time, AND, things get invented over time. And time as we’re moving into now is like 30s and 40s era. So in the case of Chicago blues we get the additives of the piano, which has been around for some time but people are now just being able to put into their blues music due to becoming more financially stable, BUT WE ALSO GET THE COOL NEW INVENTION OF THE ELECTRIC GUITAR. Now there is some speculation over the invention of most things throughout history, for example, y’all might be familiar of Thomas Edison not actually inventing the lightbulb and being a bit of a dick about things, so when I talk about inventors of things, unless otherwise stated, please take it with some amount of a grain of salt. So Paul H Tutmarc may have been the first person to invent the first electric guitar when he managed, by some feat of science, which I will not explain because science is for wizards and freeks and while I am both of those I am not at all qualified or able to explain it, but essentially he managed to electrify a Hawaiian guitar! He supposedly invented this sometime in the 1930s. Here’s an example of what that sounds like:

Very Spongebobby… spongeboblike…spongebobesque… so EITHERWAY the electric guitar, as well as the electric bass is invented and so those are then infused into Chicago blues. In some cases you will also get the addition of drums and saxophone, but it is the electrified elements as well as the piano that really characterize the biggest difference between Chicago blues and texasippi blues. Overall, it sounds like this:

Something you also probably heard in there was just the level of intensity, the volume or what I’m gonna call the perceived volume, is louder. Whereas the songs of the texasippi blues is a little softer, quieter, very much just dude and his guitar volume, Chicago blues is gonna sound a little louder and a little more intense at most times. This is due to blues clubs becoming a big thing during this time period. And why shouldn’t they? In diaspora communities, that is communities consisting of people from a similar ethnic or national background, you often get patterns of similar settlement. So in our case, when Black Americans started moving northward, they would often settle in similar communities or move into similar communities based off of their ethnicity. Afterall you wanna be able to live in places where people understand your experience. There’s also the element of racism of course, homeowners associations making it hard for Black folk to move into white neighbourhoods and of course school segregation which didn’t end until the 1954. So while in some cases there was def an element of wanting to feel safe in a community of people who understand you, there’s also a big ol element of racism as there pretty much always is when we talk about anything. Seriously ur gonna be surprised at how far reaching and fucking just convoluted and stupid racism is, especially when we get into like Europeans being racist against other Europeans. So since we have all these people moving up north they need to be entertained, we all need entertainment after-all, but lo and behold! They can’t go to white clubs in a lot of cases because fucking racism (unless you are a performer in which case sometimes you can go to white clubs but only to perform, I’m gonna get more into that when we have our jazz episode.) So we start having blues clubs and because they’re a club and there’s drinking and talking and what not, often these songs tend to be a little louder or more rowdy to compensate. 

On the other end of the country we also have my favorite flavour of blues which is the New Orleans blues. I’m definitely 100 percent biased when I say this but why does everything in New Orleans just sound better? If I had to guess it’s the multiculturalism and thus people bringing in tonnes of different ideas, but it’s hard to quantify awesome so we’re just gonna leave it there. BUT YEAH so we have texasippi blues that travels down the river (cause things rarely travel up a river) and hits New Orleans. But again, if we’re talking about the same style of blues then what makes it different? A lot hunny, a lot. So as we talked about in our last episode there’s a lot of different cultural elements at play in Louisianna culminating in some cool ass musical styles and changes. It’s also absolutely something we’re gonna talk about when we go back and do the Jazz episode cause lord knows New Orleans jazz is just as fuckin hot and dangerous (like serious lemme just go fuckin hangout with you guys down there, that’s all I want, musical tour of louisianna) I will say though that the line between jazz and blues does tend to get a little blurry though when we’re talking about New Orleans Blues so just hold onto ur femurs there yall and strap in. 

So New orleans blues is different from other types of blues again by incorporating horns and piano into the music, most notably this will be the trumpet cause trumpets after the civil war just kinda leached out into the general public and since people got used to them in that capacity they became sorta naturally engrained into the soundscape of the music of the area. “but laura doesn’t Chicago also have horns?!” and ur right man they absolutely do, but there’s even more. So where texasippi blues relies on a rather standard rhythms in most cases, the New Orleans Blues scene takes from some of that different heritage and combines Caribbean inspired or based rhythms. We can find a good example of the inspiration for those rhythms in another genre of music that was popular at the same time, Calypso. Calypso is a genre of music which we will look more in depth in the future but just really generally for now it is popular in the Caribbean as well as certain parts, South America (particularly Venezuela), Mexico, and of course New Orleans during this time. It is usually up-beat and relies a lot on emphasizing the offbeat, and these are all things that we hear being incorporated into New Orleans blues during the time. So when we hear blues from New Orleans, one of the things we can usually use to tell the difference is merely just the upbeat tempo of things and slightly more rhythmically complex manner in which it existed. In fact Blues in New Orleans was so fuckin different it actually started what we know of as R&B or rhythm and blues which sounds like this:

Just a quick detour, I fuckin love like, blues and jazz names. The Man I played just there was Roy Brown but man the names really take off on occasion my personal favorite being Guitar Slim Jr., but we also got Fats domino (sometimes just known as fats, or the fat man), we god fuckin Professor Longhair, we got a dude who just goes by the name sugar boy, like… guys…. What happened to nicknames like that, I wanna walk around and when people see me comin at a distance they just point and go oh lord here comes swamp papa, like, that’s livin man, I dunno what to tell you but that’s absolutely livin. 

Anyhow, what ur gonna notice, or maybe you didn’t notice but I’m gonna tell you and you can go back and notice is that blues, (along with jazz but we’re gonna get to that) as it goes on and evolves starts sounding a lot like early rock and roll music, and that doesn’t happen by coincidence. Also you’re probably noticing that blues at least as far as it goes for the Chicago variety and the New Orleans variety we talked about, sound a hell of a lot like Jazz and again we’ll get more into the specifics later. The thing is when we talk about invention, whether it be music, or physical things, or even sometimes schools of thought and ideas is that things get borrowed and changed and moulded into something else by other people. Hell the phenomenon of something being invented in multiple different places at the same time is so common enough that it even has a name, it’s called multiple discovery. Generally people in North America prefer a more black and white “this thing was developed at this time and this place by this person because definitive reason definitive reason definitive reason.” Because we have this weird sense of individuality and crediting individuals with discovery as opposed to a group or the society itself as maybe it should more rightly be. This means that in our endless want to categorize and systematize and ize all these things, particularly things like music, it gets sorta difficult to discern what is what and why and how. Of course we’ve already seen this with spirituals and gospel, and now we’ve seen it with blues/jazz/and early rock.

I just wanted to bring it up sooner than later because, especially as we move into more modern north American Genres, and honestly genres from various other places throughout the world. I wanted to bring this up now before we go any further in this podcast because as we get into more modern genres and hell maybe even with this episode I imagine I might get some rather angry mail from elitests who will smash their foreheads on the keyboard in absolute blind fuckin dismay and rage accusing me of putting the wrong genre lables on the wrong songs. The thing is though, like most art, or definitions in life, things are salient. Just because music fits one genre doesn’t mean it only fits within that genre, in the case of the Rhythm and Blues song by Roy brown that I played earlier, while it is definitely Rhythm and Blues there’s also gonna be other people who strongly consider that Rock and Roll. And that’s alright! Music doesn’t have to rigidly fit into one genre, we give things genre titles or group things into genres to help more easily understand their histories and identify other things that sound like it! All music is going to have variation, and in the case of rhythm and blues, a style of blues that very much informs early rock, you’re going to have cross roads like that. So instead of getting defensive, maybe take some time to think about how cool it is that music exists on an ever evolving spectrum.

So with that, that’s all for just a music podcast this week, I hope you’ve heard something new, and I hope you’ve heard something that you like. If you haven’t there’s always next time where we’re actually gonna do something a little different. Next time we’re gonna look at the Minstrel show which I’m subtitling right now, “why we don’t wear black face.” In the meantime, though if one of y’all would like to suggest a topic I would love nothing more than to answer your musical questions or talk about topics that interest you guys in music. Feel free to drop me a line at justamusicpodcast@gmail.com

List of Music: Jump Jim Crow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjIXWRG09Qk

Belton Sutherland's field holler (1978) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CPJwt14d5E&list=PLAyuUbD3Cdhxx__cTlFDrkxxKiYllrYwJ&index=2

Wash Dennis & Charlie Sims - Lead Me To The Rock - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmPqmLovNms&list=PLAyuUbD3Cdhxx__cTlFDrkxxKiYllrYwJ&index=4

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell - How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEw0ek2BhJE

Blind Lemon Jefferson – Black Snake Moan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3yd-c91ww8

Mississippi Fred McDowell - You gotta move - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlVSedpIRU&feature=emb_logo

Red River Valley -Traditional - Harmonica solo by Kyong H. Lee - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKM4bn4kS-0

Sonny Boy Williamson - Keep it to Yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtRxJDb3vlw

Paul Tutmarc performs - My Tane - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUOms5y6cmI

Buddy Guy - First Time I Met The Blues - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jruvTBleY

Roy Brown - Mighty Mighty Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhp8jMykAVg

Technical Clip I used: PianoPig (on youtube) - Minor Pentatonic vs Blues Scale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwz0b-At1ys

[melisa-may-taylor72]

Queen's hectic days in Argentina: secrets behind the shows, the meeting with Maradona and a love affair for Freddie Mercury

The band arrived in the country in 1981. Curiosities and "pearls" of a very special visit

By Matías Bauso- Infoshow

An exultant and provocative figure, who may appear in tight white pants provocatively exposing his ass to a heated audience or who sits at the piano with a very short and tight satin pants that would blush the most enthusiastic devotee of sadomasochism, a guitarist who plays in a t-shirt with an immense Union Jack, crazed masses, street chases in search of an improbable autograph, China Zorrilla, Miguel Romano, Diego Maradona, ItalPark, the military, the repressive climate, the Rambla marplatense and even an unknown love affair. This story has everything. Queen's visit to Argentina in 1981 was much more than a musical tour.

Queen's enthusiasm - both current and retro - is a faint reflection of what happened in the country at the end of February 1981. Like the Beatlemania in the sixties, the presence of the English quartet unleashed a collective madness never before seen in Argentina.

▪Queen at Velez Sarsfield Stadium

Queen monopolized the attention for more than a week. Television news, radio programs, magazine covers, conversations in bars, newspaper supplements (not so the covers of the main ones: at that time it was still not allowed to put show business news on the cover; only Chronicle excepted for that rule).

The band led by Freddie Mercury gave five concerts in Argentina. Three in the Vélez stadium, one in Mar del Plata and another in Rosario. The public success was colossal.

The first performance was on February 28 in Velez, repeated  the next day, then stop in Mar del Plata and Rosario. The last show was again in Buenos Aires. That day the capacity of the stadium overflowed. The contagious reaction had taken effect. Those who had not gone, wanted to go; those who had already witnessed some of the shows wanted to be there again.

▪Queen gave five shows in Argentina

The regulations of the spaces in the public spectacles, in those times, were at least, morose. Just look at the photos of any grandstand in a superclassic of the early 1980s. Producers sold more tickets and that fifth show was the busiest. It is estimated that between those who paid for their tickets and those who snuck in more than 60,000 people attended that night. At one point the capacity The crowd could barely move. Whoever reached into the pocket to take out the lighter for a cigarette could set in motion a human tide that would end up crashing into a paravalanche or the barbed wire. In the field, the situation was a little more relaxed. Being the first experience in which this section was offered for sale, the estimates were more cautious. Thus, the police decided that the best way to decompress the people was to drill holes in the Olympic fence and allow part of the public to pass into the field through these improvised holes.

The magnitude of the event and its immense repercussion can be explained. It was the first time that a rock band had reached the country at the peak of its career. These shows were part of the world tour to present the album "The Game". Queen was one of the most important bands in the world and arrived in Argentina at its peak.

Although the specialized critics did not treat them very well (it was a habit that had started in the United Kingdom and had spread to the United States) the album contained several hits: Another One Bites the Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Play the Game, Save Me. The British band was a pioneer in including Latin America in their itinerary. Until then the world tours were not such, they only included the United States, Europe and Japan.

The history of Queen's Latin American tour shows why this was so. In Mexico, six of the scheduled performances had to be cancelled, Pinochet did not authorize the performance in Chile, in Brazil the Rio and Porto Alegre shows were suspended, and in Venezuela two more due to the official declaration of mourning for the death of an ex-president. However, the band's bet, beyond these improvisations, unthinkable today, (in times of presales, early birds, insurance and armies of lawyers), was more than successful.

There was a precedent in the country of an international star appearing in a stadium. In 1973 the Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana played with his band in old wooden stadium of San Lorenzo. But despite his reputation and fame, Santana did not have the repercussion of the English band and at that moment in his career his musical search was turning towards fusion, towards jazz-rock. The lack of experience made the stage stand in the middle of the arena and there was no audience in the field. The closest spectator was, hopefully, 40 meters away from the artists. The sound - the lack of it - was another problem.

In 1981 Queen came to the country with only that antecedent. The show they brought was unlike anything seen in the country. A huge stage, consoles of moving lights, an impressive sound power, fireworks and tricks, a worked scenic staging, immortal hymns and a performer like Freddie Mercury.

Queen's vocalist's ability to perform - but especially on stage - exceeded expectations. There he was, in front of more than 50,000 people, imposing the rules. What he wanted was at stake. A game that had no public exposure in the country, that was silenced and repressed. He did not modify his proposal despite the repressive climate, the censorship. One of the particularities of his performances in the country was that at the five of them they played a song that was somewhat lost in their discography and that many Argentinians did not know: Get Down, Make Love. It was a carnal, erotic and explicit song, with direct references to oral sex.

▪Diego Maradona and Queen

Queen did not show any major itching in regards to those who ruled in the places where they performed. This South American tour was a good example; in its initial schedule it passed through three countries governed by dictatorships. Years later it was also presented in South Africa despite international sanctions due to Apartheid.

It is often claimed that Queen's musicians met with Argentina's president, Roberto Viola. The truth is that Viola had not yet assumed that role. He was a member of the military board, Chief of the Army, but the president was still Jorge Rafael Videla. His investiture would take place weeks after the visit of the British.

Viola had a more political profile and believed that a slight opening was convenient. In that plan, and instigated by his son -who had been a football player-, he met at home with Freddie Mercury, Brian May and John Deacon. Roger Taylor, the drummer, missed the appointment. Today, almost four decades later, many affirm that his absence was due to his political positions, even though he neither at that time nor now has issued any opinion on the matter.

▪ The band met with Roberto Viola, one of the members of the Military Board

The memories of several of those involved - members of the band, technical staff, manager and even the photographer - are impregnated with political valuations that seem to have been concocted with the passage of time and do not represent what they thought and felt at the time. If so, it can be said that they had a unique capacity for dissociation, almost constituting multiple personalities. The presence of military and police personnel was strong. That was because the arrival of the English band had unleashed an excitement rarely seen. Every movement, every displacement was followed by hundreds or thousands of fanatics. And no one wanted any disturbance to happen or the musicians to do any harm.

The repressive vocation of the Argentine military forces of those times does not need to be underlined or exaggerated. For example, the correspondent of the American Rolling Stone magazine described the ditch that separates the South stalls from the playing field at the Stadium as a key to the Argentine dictatorship.

This interpretative excess (most of the Argentine stadiums built in the forties and fifties have a ditch) is combined with certain data, with images of police and military forces repressing whoever approaches the musicians, violently liberating their path. Around the Sheraton Hotel,  teenagers stood guard to try to and get in touch with their idols.

▪ Another of the Argentine magazines that showed the presence of the group in the country

In Mar del Plata, the musicians stayed at the Provincial Hotel. Freddie Mercury's movements were limited. Enclosed in his room, the best in the hotel, he let time pass watching the movement of the Rambla from the window. So it was that one afternoon, that habit turned into a love split. His partner at the time, Peter Morgan, offered him to go shopping around the city. Freddie explained that it would be impossible for him to go ten meters without being buried under the youthful enthusiasm. A couple of hours later, the artist saw from the window of his room his partner talking to a young man on the Rambla. The jealousy was immediate and so was the breakup, despite the fact that Morgan denied that he was the one who was walking with another young man on that Mar del Plata sunset.

This concert was the worst of the five. The security was very bad, thousands of people entered the stadium without tickets, the mounted police attacked the public in the same field of play of the World Cup Stadium. To continue the tour, the musicians demanded that the security issue be adjusted. The condition was fulfilled.

 ▪ There were strong police operations to “protect” the band

The press and the local public were dazzled by the performance of the quartet. The visual proposal was unique, Freddie's vocal and histrionic abilities, May's musical skills, the solvency of the rhythmic base, the impact of the staging. However, international critics still treated the group with disdain. The Rolling Stone critic gives them no more merit than a pub band. He even mocks their incompetence. Only the dedication in each show and the enthusiasm of the Argentine public stand out. One of the events that most surprised the local public, beyond the almost perfect succession of invincible hits, was Mercury's display and magnetic attraction. The local rock leaders were static, even somewhat modest.

As their stay in the country continued, the musicians received more and more affection from the public. They were amazed by the reaction of their fans to each song, how they knew the lyrics, how they participated enthusiastically and actively in the show. The peak was unfailingly produced in Bohemian Rapsody and, almost on the other side of that opulent and operatic work: Love of My Life was played with Freddie on the piano and Brian on the guitar. The audience sang the entire lyrics, without pauses. In the video recordings of the song you can see the mixture of surprise and joy of May and Mercury.

For the last concert of the tour in the country, they returned to the Vélez stadium. In the encores came the surprise. Freddie re-entered with the Argentine National Team shirt and addressed the audience in English: "I want to introduce you to a friend of yours: Maradona". The pirate recordings allow you to hear the roar of the crowd, you even hear some "Maradooo, Maradooo". Diego with his tight, high curls came on stage with sweatpants and a blue t-shirt. The footballer spoke fluently: "I want to thank Freddie and Queen for making me so happy. And now “Another bites the dust”.

Deacon and Taylor start Another One Bites the Dust, the group's latest hit.  Then would come the famous photos in the locker room. Freddie with the light blue Argentine T-shirt from Diego (in the show he used another one), and Maradona with a T-shirt with a big British flag that covered all his torso, similar to the one worn by Brian May in some part of the concert. That photo, would have been unimaginable a year later (Fauklands's War). At the time of the concert, although today it seems unreal, Queen was better known worldwide than Maradona.

 ▪ Miguel Romano, one of the stylists of the moment, together with the musicians

Journalist Juan Manuel Cibeira says that in a barbecue at the Argentine producer's house, Mercury announced that he would go out with the Argentine t-shirt. The Argentines present tried to dissuade him. They had a hard time explaining the situation to him. Rock and football in those days were two worlds that in Argentina had no point of intersection. For the rock people, football was something without brightness, without any evaluation. Any reference to it or the adoption of any of its rites or symbols was frowned upon. Mercury, more accustomed to the crossing of these two popular passions by what he saw in England, did not listen to the advice. And, in this way, he produced one of the first contacts between football and rock in the country, a situation that became naturalised in the mid-nineties.

Maradona was not the only local celebrity who came into contact with Queen. In Youtube circulates a video of an interview that the actress China Zorrilla did to Freddie Mercury. The Uruguayan actress in perfect English speaks about the answers of the singer, monologue, almost does not ask questions and forgets the simultaneous translation, thus a bizarre truncated dialogue of more than three minutes in English takes place in central time.  

Local Journalist Juan Alberto Badía, on the other hand, was the one who interviewed the musicians for Channel 9, which broadcasted the first live concert for the whole country and for Brazil ( it made very high rating peaks). The presenter was also the one who introduced them in the stadium. In the magazines of the time you can also see how the stylist Miguel Romano cut Mercury's hair before the last show and how in his free time, Brian May took his family to Ital Park, playground where several generations of citizens spent their childhood.

Queen's five concerts in the country marked an era, pioneering the arrival of great rock figures to Argentine stadiums. Many years would pass, the monetary convertibility and a much more global structure of the record business so that international stars would take the country as a reasonable place for their presentations.

[mirkwoodshewolf]

We will rock you assistant; Queen x teen reader

*Author’s note*

Hey all, well here I am with yet ANOTHER UPDATE YAAAAAYYYY!!! Okay so in this fic that was requested on my Wattpad, I had made you the reader, Roger’s sister (they asked for either Bri or Rog and I went with our fabulous blondie hehehe). Anyways not really any big warnings except for the FLUFFINESS, but if I had to pick individual warnings I’d say swearing, mentions of P**l Pr***ter, scars (NOT SELF INFLICTED), animal attacks. So enjoy my lovely darlings :)

Taglist:

@psychosupernatural

@plethora-of-things

@ixchel-9275

@geek-and-proud

@queendeakyy

@coolcxt

@waddles03

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It was 1977, I had finally returned from my 4 year study abroad program that counted towards my shot at a biology major.  And there was an offer saying that if you wanted to complete a 4yr program rather than a full college career that was also an option, so I actually got spend the rest of my secondary school year (years 10-13) down in Queensland, Australia to study in the Zoology program.

I’ll admit it was hard the first year I was there because I had never been that far away from home ever in my life on my own, but I made some really good friends and the professors there were amazing that they became parental figures for us rather than just our teachers.  I got to learn a lot about Zoology and the study of the animals of South America. But it was so good to be home.

Especially now since I get to finally see my big brother after 4 years of not seeing him. And some of you may know him, blonde hair, blue eyes, incredible drummer. Yep I’m talking about the famed Roger Taylor, drummer of Queen.  

When I first told him about the program he at first being the overprotective big brother that he was, refused to let me go.  We fought about it constantly until that’s when our mother made the final decision and allowed me to go because she thought this would be a good experience for me. Especially now since she couldn’t afford another kid going to college at the time.

He was also outnumbered because the rest of the band thought it was also a good thing for me to experience.  Oh yeah, did I not mention that I’m real close with the band? Yeah I’ve known all of them since they formed Queen, but besides my brother, Brian is the one I’ve known the longest.

In fact he was the first to agree that going to Australia for this program would be wonderful to get a full experience background and it would help in future job applications in the future.  Brian’s like a second brother to me so I know that if Roger won’t give into my ways, I can always fall back on Brian to be ‘Brother of the year.’

And Freddie and Deacy were a blessing to have around as well.  Freddie was known to the world by now as the frontman of Queen, but to me he’ll always be known as Freddie, King of the cats and lord of fashion.  He’s always been there to help cheer me up whenever I felt a little blue or after a big fight with my brother, and Deacy was the band’s bass player and mediator if things got chaotic, but whenever it was just the two of us, we got to share an interest of our studies so if he had to do anything regarding to biology I was there to help him as best as I could and he taught me a little bit about electronics and how they worked.

So even though there were tears shed on the last day of spring of 1973, I told the boys I would keep in contact and write every single day and they promised the same thing.  Of course people in Australia knew who Queen were by 1975 when their 4th album ‘A Night at the Opera’ came out.

All my friends couldn’t stop talking about it and some couldn’t stop listening to it, and I was the same way.  But it also helped me out whenever I got homesick and missed them too much.  Just hearing their voices and instruments play brought me back to home and back to them.

And now here I am, standing before the studio where mum said they rehearsed and recorded their albums.  While I was beyond thrilled to finally see the guys again, I was also really nervous.

Cause I mean last time I saw them, sure they were popular but only just through England, Japan and America.  They were still rising stars, now ever since A night at the Opera, they’ve completely exploded to the levels of Elton John, David Bowie, ACDC, the Beatles, and a hell of a lot of other rockstars.  And sometimes egos get in the way or they just forget about who their families are and never talk to them anymore once they’ve hit it big.

I was worried that with as long as I’ve been gone, the four of them probably forgot all about me, or just didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. I stood before the door of the studio about to go in but I stopped and set my bags down.

“Okay, calm down (y/n), you can do this. You’ve known these guys since forever. You gotta make this reunion right.” I then did a practice mock turn and said with the most angelic voice, “Greetings my brothers.” I groaned out.  Pathetic.

I then tried another tactic, a simply grand gesture wave but making my voice all high and strange sounding but that didn’t work.  Then I thought, maybe a simple hide and suddenly appear as they come out.  I managed to find a shrub tree so I grabbed that, set it in front of the door and hid behind it before practicing peeking out and saying oh so casually.

“Oh hey guys, didn’t see you there.” I groaned and muttered to myself, “None of this is going to work.” I sighed heavily. “Maybe just a simple, sincere welcome back. Yeah, yeah that’ll do it. It’s only just the most important reunion of your life, what could go wrong?”

*3rd Person POV*

After waiting for over an hour and a half for Freddie, the remaining three members who had come with their wives all decided that they should return home since this rehearsal didn’t seem important enough for their lead singer.

“All that waiting for nothing.” Exclaimed Roger.

“Well we should’ve expected this, I mean after all since—well you know he and Mary broke up and Paul weaseled himself into his life, he’s been a bit….off.” Brian said.

“I only just wish he hadn’t made such a big deal about coming to rehearsal and then not show up himself.” Stated Deacy.

“He’ll come around love, meanwhile why don’t we all head out for some lunch. Our treat boys since you all have worked so hard.” Offered Veronica, his lovely wife.

“No love we can’t ask that—”

“She’s not asking. We’re offering.” Stated Chrissie, Brian’s wife.

“Thanks darling.” Brian said softly as he softly pecked her cheek.  That was until Dominque, Roger’s wife took a hold of the door and they were all shock to reveal a young teenage girl with bags and suitcases behind her.

“Sup party people I’m back in the hizz-hou—ohh no! God that was so American of me to say, why did I let Zack convince me to talk like that? I’m so sorry that was terrible, can I get a do-over?”

*My POV*

Well I totally fucked that greeting up. Hizz-house? Really? God next time I see that boy I’m gonna strangle him.  I saw my brother with a raven-haired girl standing beside him, in fact Deacy and Brian all had girls by their sides.  Deacy was arm to arm with a beautiful blonde woman while Brian had a brunette.  

All three of my boys looked at me, almost like they were ready to bawl, especially my brother.  I smiled softly and said.

“Hey Rog.” He just stood there.  All was silent then just before I could say anything else, Roger rammed himself into me, picking me up in his arms and spinning me around.

I let out a shriek at first but immediately hugged my brother back as he cheered happily, hugging me as tight as he could all the while kissing all over my face.  After what felt like eternity, he finally set me down but refused to let go of his embrace. Not that I minded anyway, I missed him just as much as he missed me.

“Oh (y/n) I can’t believe it’s you. You’re—you’re actually here. Home at last!”

“I know, 4 years seems like forever.”

“You have no idea lovie, god I’ve missed you like crazy.” He hugged me once again before getting a second look at me, “Ohh look at you. You’ve grown so much. Last I saw you, you were this big.” He gestured playfully as he placed his hand to his waist.  I playfully shoved him and exclaimed.

“I was never that short, you overgrown blonde giant!”

“Don’t you raise your voice at me little Ms. Thumbelina!” The two of us glared at each other for a brief moment before I let out a giggle and hugged my brother one last time saying.

“Oh I’ve missed you so much big bro.”

“And I you little sis.” It was then my attention turned toward Deacy and Brian. I got out of my brother’s arms and slowly walked towards them cautiously.  Okay so the reunion with Rog was an immediate check point, but I guess that’s to be expected because he’s my brother, but what about the two guitar players of Queen.

“Bri, Deacy. Been a long time. I hope you hadn’t forgotten little ol—” but then just like Roger, but instead of one of them coming up to embrace me, both of them did. Sandwiching me between them.  I smiled as I leaned my head against Deacy’s chest and tried to hug both of them with each arm as best as I could.

“Oh love look at you. You truly have grown into a beautiful young woman. Last we saw you, you were just a kid and now just look at you.” Said Deacy.

“Well how about you? Last I saw you your hair was down to here, now you’ve cut it to a true man’s hairstyle.”

“Do you hate it?”

“No this look suits you just fine. Though I can’t say I’ll miss braiding your hair in secret while you sleep.”

“So it was you who was doing that!” he exclaimed.

“Hey Rog goaded me on. He said I couldn’t do it without waking you up.”

“Don’t you drag me into this!” my brother exclaimed.  I playfully stuck my tongue at him when I was pulled away by Brian. He spoke not a word but just smiled lovingly down at me as he placed both of his hands at each side of my head before gently caressing downward around my face till he cupped each side of my jawline.  A common sign of affection he always did with me.

“They weren’t lying. God you’ve really become a woman now.”

“I know, but I also know that like Rog you can’t help but imagine me as that little girl you first met when my brother joined Smile.”

“That I do.” He smiled softly and gingerly kissed my forehead before hugging me close to him.  It wasn’t until a throat cleared and that’s when my attention turned towards the three women standing there.

“Hate to spoil the reunion, but just letting you guys know we’re still here. And we would like to know just who this famed young girl that has our husbands’ wrapped around her finger is.” The blonde spoke up.  There was no trace of malicious or jealousy in her words, but there was a hint of teasing towards the end.

“Sorry. Chrissie, Veronica, Dominque. This young woman is our biggest fan, future zoologist and Roger’s younger sister, (Y/n) Taylor. (Y/n), this is Brian’s wife Chrissie, Dominque, your sister in law and my lovely wife, Veronica.” Deacy said introducing us.

“Ohh so I’m finally meeting the three famed wives of Queen. Each of your husbands have told me a bit about you, I can’t believe I didn’t put two and two together when I first saw you.” I spoke as I walked up and stood before them.

“Believe us, the boys have told us all about you, especially Roger.” Said Dominque.

“Oh god I swear if he told you any embarrassing stories about me, forget them they didn’t happen the way he says they did. And he’s responsible for most of them happening.” I shook hands with my sister in law and she smiled down at me and she whispered.

“Don’t worry I had your back in defending your honor.” Before winking at me.  Oh I like her already.

“I can’t believe we’re finally meeting the famous (y/n). I especially have been looking forward to this moment for 4 years. The way my husband talked about you I expected to meet a little girl, but you my dear are so grown up.” The brunette Chrissie said.  I smiled and said.

“They all still see me as that little girl, guess it’ll take time for them to see me now.”

“Lovie no matter how big you get you’ll always be my baby sister.” Roger teased as he wrapped his arm around my neck and playfully pinched my cheek.  I whined and shoved him off and that’s when I began looking around.

“Where’s Fred?” at the mention of his name, the guys went either stoic or pissed off.

“C’mon in the studio love, there’s a lot you need to catch up on.” My brother lead me inside the studio while Deacy and Brian grabbed my bags and we all went back into the studio.

It was then I was filled in on everything that had happened.  Apparently now Mary and Freddie broke up with each other and his assistant Paul Prenter had slowly began to move into his life.  Now I vaguely remember meeting Paul a couple of times, but even then I knew there was something about him that I didn’t like.

“Geez, poor Freddie.”

“Paul’s poisoning his mind.” Stated Deacy.

“I wouldn’t doubt that. I mean, even with the couple times I’ve actually met him, I knew I didn’t like him. One look into his eyes and it’s like a Taipan is staring right back at you.”

“Taipan?” asked my brother.

“One of Australia’s most dangerous snakes. One of the boys in my group got bitten by one about a year ago. We never saw it coming; it was wrong place, wrong time.”

“Jesus was he okay?” asked Dominque.

“Yeah, luckily we managed to get him to the hospital where they gave him anti-venom.”

“What’s that?” asked Chrissie.

“They milk venom from the snakes and with the help of some brilliant chemists and scientists, they can create a potent to counteract the venom in the body. If they are given it in time, and it has to be from the same species of snake or spider or whatever venomous creature you’re getting it from. If you use black mamba anti-venom to counteract a rattlesnake venom, it does nothing.”

“Wow, the things science is doing for us nowadays.” Said Veronica.

“Okay so we’ve established the fact that Paul’s a snake, but what can we do to help Freddie?” my brother demanded.  No one spoke up until I said.

“I guess the only thing we can do is just be there for him as much as we can.”  The guys were hesitant but they agreed solemnly. “So what were you guys up to before I got here?”

“Well we were supposed to rehearse at Freddie’s request but of course he decided to not to show up.” Answered Deacy.

“So we were gonna head out and treat the boys to lunch, would you care to join us?” asked Veronica.

“Yes please, if you don’t mind. I’ve been on a plane for over 12hours with only snacks to keep me happy. And don’t get me wrong but plane food can only go so far.”

“Then have no fear sister dear, let’s get that tummy of yours filled with some real meat.” Roger as he poked my stomach making me curl up and push his hand away. It was then Brian spoke up.

“(Y/n), what’s that scarring on your leg?” I looked down and sighed.

“Well let’s just say Cody, the boy who got bit by a snake wasn’t the only one who experienced an animal attack. Mine however was a bit more vicious.”

“What happened? What hurt you and how come you never told me about this? How long ago was it?” Roger began frantically asking questions in a demanding tone.

“Rog relax I lived. Aaron got a bit cocky thinking that just because he was from Texas he could wrangle any pig. So he snuck out away from the school grounds and found a trial leading to a herd of wild feral pigs. Nearly got himself killed had I not been there to save his sorry ass. Thankfully before the pig could tear a main artery, the professor came and fired a gun into the air which scared the boars away. Had to be given over 20 stitches and 4 weeks of bedrest, but at least I didn’t end up with an amputation.”

“Did they call mum and inform her what had happened? How long ago did it happen?”

“It happened 6 months after joining the program, and yes they did. They always inform the parents of anything that happens to the students, and critical injuries or hospital visits are immediately told to the parents.”

“Well why didn’t she call me about it?”

“Weren’t you guys on the American tour around that time?” He shrugged before wrapping his arms around me bringing me close to him.  “Hey, I’m alright. Just hurt like a bitch but I’m okay.” I said softly as I rubbed his forearm.

“I just wish I could’ve been there. I could’ve saved you, helped made you comfortable as you were on bedrest. Kissed your boo-boos away.” I groaned out his name he softly chuckled and said, “still scars or not you’re still every bit the baby sister I know and love. I’ll take you no matter what.” He stroked down my hair and leaned his head on top of mine.  I smiled and nuzzled into his neck until Brian spoke up.

“We’ll try coming here again tomorrow, but for now I say let’s celebrate our best girl’s return with a well-earned English lunch.”  Everyone was in agree so we took my bags, placed them in the trunk of my brother’s car and we all headed out to lunch.

Throughout the entire day, we spent the day at my favorite restaurant and I told them more about the program and how my official diploma would be shipped to me in the next month or so.

The next day it was pretty much like the same thing as yesterday.  I was sitting between Chrissie and Veronica on the couch. Roger and Dominque were sitting together on a chair looking through a boating magazine.  Deacy who was sitting on the other side of Veronica were talking together while Brian sat on the drum risers.  I’ve noticed that for the past hour he’s been softly tapping his foot twice and softly clapping his hands.

“What about this one?” muttered Roger.

“This one is for me.” Dominque spoke.

“I don’t see how you can buy a boat Rog, and most importantly where would you keep it?” I questioned.

“First of all it’s a yacht, totally different. And second down by the docks of course. We’ve got a lake house that we bought about a year ago.”

“How come you always get the good stuff when I go away?”

“Aww don’t worry love, I’ll buy you one soon enough. Till then you can take the basement whenever you come and visit.”

“Roger, don’t you boot your sister down there, it’s not even finished.” Dominque said.

“Thank you Nicky, you’re the best sister I could ever ask for.” I reached out for her hand and she took mine.

“Everyone up on the drum risers.” Brian suddenly stated as he now stood up.  We were a bit confused a bit till Brian emphasized his point once more, “Up on the drum risers.”

“Finally some action!” I moaned out as I sat up and as I walked up Brian said.

“Thank you (y/n), showing some enthusiasm.” As I stood beside him, he wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head as I hugged him around his waist. It was then Deacy spoke up.

“Just (y/n), or all of us?”

“Yes, yes c’mon John. Everyone up, I’m not waiting any longer.” Soon everyone got off their butts and walked up onto the drum risers.  Chrissie stood to my left while Dominique stood to my right.

“Bass?” questioned Deacy as he made the gesture of holding his bass guitar in his hand but Brian told him and even gave him a mock kick to his bum.

“No don’t need it, get up. Well c’mon Rog take your time.”

“Alright. What’s this about?” Roger spoke as he was the last to get up on the stage and that’s when Brian said.

“You remember our last concert? The crowd were singing our songs back to us. I mean it was deafening but—it was wonderful. They’re becoming a part of our show. I want to encourage that so…..I’ve got an idea to involve them a little bit more.” He then began stomping the ground twice before breaking on the third beat. He did that a few times before John sneered with sarcasm.

“Genius.”

“Thank you John.” Brian spoke mockingly.  I just rolled my eyes at their interaction before Brian urged all of us again, “C’mon.” Soon everyone started to stomp along with Bri.  I felt a little out of place and I was just about to slowly back off when Brian spoke again, “That means you too (y/n).”

“R-really?”

“Yeah, now c’mon join the ranks.” My brother then pulled me between him and Deacy and I joined in on the rhythmic stomping.  “Good. Now I want you to clap on the third beat.”  Soon it formed into a STOMP, STOMP CLAP. STOMP, STOMP CLAP.

“Don’t speed up!” My brother claimed but he looked down at me and playfully bopped my nose.  I glared playfully up at him as Brian said.

“Rog keep that time.” We all continued the tempo following my brother’s lead when I heard Brian speak up again after he had turned toward the piano to play a single key, “No Prenter? It’s unusual to see you without your clone?”

“It’s unusual seeing you be so bitchy.” I looked up to see the last Queen member I didn’t see the other day, the front man himself Freddie Mercury.  He looked different as well, much like Deacy his hair was now shorter.

“That’s usually me.” Deacy spoke as he pointed to himself and I playfully bumped into his arm.  Brian turned back around toward us and playfully teased my brother.

“Ahh you’re keeping time Rog, good.” I heard my brother playfully scoff and that’s when Freddie stood beside Bri and asked.

“What’s going on?”

“You’d know if you were on time.” Said my brother as we all ceased our stomping and claps and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders.  Freddie turned to look at my brother as he said.

“I’m a performer darling not a Swiss train conductor.” He then turned to Brian and said, “Sorry I’m late.”

“Again.” Deacy spoke bluntly.  Fred turned back towards us and when he finally took notice of me he said.

“And just who is here with us today?”

“If you were here yesterday Freddie, you’d realize it’s me.” His eyes widened and he said.

“No way, (y/n)? Little (y/n) Taylor?” I nodded and grinned at him.  He grinned back at me and stated as he pointed at me, “Afterwards, you and me, outside. We’ve got some things to talk about.” He then turned back to Brian and continued, “Now back to the matter at hand, will you please tell me why you’re not playing any instruments?”

“I wanna give the audience a song that they can perform. Alright? Let them be a part of the band so what can they do?” Brian then resumed stomping and clapping two times before we all resumed and joined him.  Even Freddie joined in at one of the claps.  “Imagine….thousands of people. Doing this in unison, hmm?” Freddie had a processing look in his eyes before finally saying.

“What’s the lyric?” And it was then a new Queen hit was being born.

As the day went on, I walked over to Brian who was at the controls with pieces of paper scattered around him, pencil in head connecting it to his brain trying to get the right lyrics.  I slowly walked up towards him and asked.

“So this is how the great Brian May works his lyrics?” He turned to me and he smiled.

“It’s how we all work. Though you should’ve seen us when we went to Rockfield farm to record a Night at the Opera. Sheet music everywhere.” I chuckled and sat down next to him in the extra chair.  I grabbed one of the lyrics sheets and read the lyrics.

“This is good Brian.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, I mean just based off of the rhythm you had going down, made me think about all the sporting events that happened back down in Australia. You think London is fanatic when it comes to football, you clearly haven’t seen the Aussie’s do it, along with rugby. Those fans get insane.”

“I can imagine. But I’m unclear of which order to do some of the lyrics.” I stood up and placed the lyric sheet I had back down and leaned over his shoulder to read what he had so far.

“Why not do it like an evolution type thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean like you’ve got each new stanza starting with man. But why not go in age order. Start with a young boy who once started off in the schoolyard kicking mud around, then the young ambitious young man thinking he was gonna rule the world someday, kinda like what my brother envisioned.”

“Before finally ending it with an old man, after all is said and done all he wants is peace. Love you are brilliant!” he gasped before bringing me into his lap and hugged me tightly.

“What would you guys do without me?”

“Probably have another car song by your brother.”

“Oh don’t even get me started on that.”

“So you agree with me?”

“Yes, infinitely. I was embarrassed at just hearing the song being played by some of my fellow zoologists, mainly the boys who were also car nuts like my brother.”

“Oh I see how it is!” We looked up to see my brother standing there with his arms crossed over his chest.  He walked over to me continuing, “You also think my song’s stupid? Siding with this rotter here?”

“I’m sorry Rog but you’ve got to admit it makes you sound like you’d have sex with a car.”

“At least one Taylor sees the problem with your song.” Brian pipped in.

“You keep out of this!” Roger pointed to Brian.  He then directed his attention to me, he gestured with his finger a ‘come hither’ motion, “You come here.”

“No, no Rog I know that look! Back away from me!” I warned him as I got off of Brian’s lap immediately recognizing the sign of what he was going to do.

“You’ve got nowhere else to go (n/n). Only one way out of here and you gotta get by me to get to it.” I backed myself into a corner as he kept walking toward me.  I quickly looked around before running to the left but he followed and blocked my path.

However what he didn’t expect was for me to go to the right and race out but just before I managed to get out of the door, Roger grabbed me around the waist and threw me over his shoulder.

“Oi yah big goober! Put me down! Roger I’m not kidding I’m not seven years old anymore you can’t do this to me!!”

“Not till you apologize, ready for the helicopter?”

“No! Please Rog anything but tha—HEY!!” As we were now in the middle of the studio, he began to spin me around.  “Stop it! Rog I’m not kidding put me down!”

“Not till you change your mind about my song.”

“Never.”

“Okay then you’re not getting down.” He kept the act up for about 10 minutes till I finally relented and gave my brother what he wanted, even though my opinion didn’t change.  I just wanted to stop the room from spinning and the blood from going to my head.

After helping the boys record the song, I was allowed to go to my first Queen concert in over 4 years.  We were at Madison Square Garden and I was up in the front row in a special center-stage reserved seat that the boys managed to swindle for me.

And getting to see them on a bigger stage with a larger audience and more fans than they did when I last went to a Queen concert at the Rainbow back in ’74 before I left for my program.  They were now full-fledged Rock-gods and I was honored to be apart of their close circle, hell I’m lucky to be related to one of the band members themselves, and a surrogate sister to the other three.

[freebooter4ever]

i cant sleep and its too hot to fucking function in my basement so lovecraft country ramble time

ok so first off I TOTALLY CALLED BLONDE BITCH BEING THE NEXT BIG BAD fuck yeah! I knew she plotted to kill her father and this was her sole purpose for luring Tic in, not because she wanted his power or prestige but because she knew it would give her shit dad enough hope to convince him to commit suicide by attempting some crazy spell lol. But there is no way she has Tic or Leti's best interests in mind, i am one hundred percent convinced that this girl is after power in the way her father wants power - which is like an awesome way of highlighting white womens tendency to want to gain the privilege of white men rather than seeking to destroy the entire system of privilege. Thats why i think Tic and Leti are gonna have to take the white lady down. Also pretty sure the white lady and creepy stare dude are the same person and that she can switch genders which is kinda cool, but also if she is the big bad and her evilness is tied to her fathers hatred of women and then we throw in some magical sex change and bisexuality in there...yeahhhhh. oh well, im not too concerned cause the rest of the story is too ducking good.

I AM SO CONFUSED BY ALL THE HORROR STUFF like i totally get all the history references (except for emmit till that was very sad and wow what detail), but i am shooting in the dark trying to figure out how all these different pieces of lore fit together. i think that might be the one complaint i have about the show, the rules of the magic are unclear and not well explained....i am very picky about magic and rules, ive been spoiled by diana wynne jones expert handling of this. BUT its a cool magic and the history side of the story is spectacular so again not too concerned.

Papa Tic is gay isnt he :( and in love with that bar owner dude, and this must be why George is Tic's real father (still in denial that he is dead) and why that one random guy who seems to be an old classmate of Tic and Leti's keeps taunting Tic about it. Papa Tic being gay could also explain why his father beat the life out of him but not George, which was always a little wishywashy and uncertain. If this is the case, im gonna cry, cause like that suddenly humanizes this character in a way that i think could make it possible for this epic quest to mend Tic and Papa Tic's family.

Im in love with Leti, like the entire show could be her character and Id probably be happy. I wish we could see more of her motivations, and as much as I enjoyed the spontaneous kiss it felt...well...spontaneous. 

Leti's sister and white bitch boy was...disturbing? I think it was supposed to be like a steamy sex scene???? I dont honestly know? It was just weird and fell under the im not watching this category alongside like the monsters ripping peoples heads off so...okay.

I CANT BELIEVE PAPA TIC DID THE THING and then the quote in the previews about the magic turning people evil....ALL this makes sense but like...as a history buff....I CANT BELIEVE PAPA TIC DID THE THING. i was super looking forward to having an ancient human deal with the modern world captain america style too. she was already one of my favorite characters and i was invested in her story and how they were all going to heal her and learn so much and then they just....did....that. im biased though, i desperately love any south american history and i think thats where they hinted she was from?? Maybe central america? It said something about many waters which made me immediately think of Tenochtitlan. but again i dont think im enough of an expert here to catch all the references.

 ANYWAY if the way the show is headed is that this magic corrupts peoples minds this totally fits with the allegory of the systems of power (white supremacy/racism) needing to be taken down and obliterated rather than (as blonde bitch lady is doing) working to infiltrate them from the inside and take power for themselves. This is also fitting with the fact that Tic didn't do anything to 'earn' his power - it was just birthright and shows how superficial the secret society's connections are. So, hopefully because of this Tic will be able to see through the temptation (theres a lot of adam eve and temptation stuff to delve into too) and allure of absolute power and realize that by learning this stuff he is actually endangering his family even more rather than hope to wield the power and protect them. Kinda like poor Boromir and the ring of power actually.

I LOVE THIS SHOW sorry if this readmore doesnt work and i accidentally give someone spoilers

[hangonimevolving]

Week 12-ish at home

Hello all!  Here in Florida, many aspects of quarantine life are purportedly starting to change “out there,” in the world.  In-house restaurant dining, salons, and misc businesses opened up a few weeks ago.  And this week, on June 1st, even more businesses began normal operations - children’s day cares, for example.  The beaches have opened.  Public parks are open, although there are restrictions on playground equipment, etc.  Most businesses have certain rules and restrictions in place, e.g. social distancing and mask usage.  But yep, they’re open.

However, our family is NOT :)  We have decided to act like nothing’s changed, at least for now - we would like to observe and see how things go “out there,” if the virus stays at a plateau in terms of numbers infected, etc., or if there is an upsurge.  If there is an upsurge, we are concerned with seeing how severe or widespread it might get.  In short - its too early for us.  We have too many factors to consider in terms of immune issues, family members with multiple risk factors, etc.  So, we continue on, living and learning within our own family unit.  And thankfully for us - this is not a huge deal.  Sure, we have our moments where we wish we could do regular things, like go hang around at a mall or a movie theater, or go visit a public playground.  Oh, how we miss eating out.  We REALLY miss seeing friends and having playdates - that part is hard.  But - its okay.  It won’t be forever.

So what are we doing these days?

I made air plant terrarium globes, and hung them around our breakfast area:

Vev participated in the virtual science fair through school, with his experiment on liquids, viscosity, and cohesion.  We tested out water, soda water, and oil.  I think he learned a good amount in the process!

We were excited when the U.S. Navy Blue Angels did a flyover in the South Florida region - and we got a killer view of the fighter jets as they zoomed over our backyard!!!

(Okay, I realize this picture isn’t that impressive - the Blue Angels are those series of dots on the blue part of the sky, surrounded by clouds.  But trust me, watching them tear across the sky in that formation was awesome).

There’s been more pancake art...

We attended a really touching event a few weeks back - a five-year-old boy in our community is undergoing treatment for a terminal brain tumor.  The entire community banded together, and threw him a socially-distanced celebration: a birthday parade comprised of fully-restored vintage cars and fancy, souped up muscle cars and vehicles.  It was an awesome, meaningful, and poignant event.

On April 30th, I finally faced the reality that quarantine snacking was getting the better of me.  I knew I had to make a change.  So I went keto on May 1st, and kept it up for 30 days.  It was honestly super hard.  But I pulled through.  There was a lot of eating like this.....

ramen soup with shirataki noodles

and.... basically just a ton of omelets.

I need to write an entire post - more like, a continuing series of posts - about how IN LOVE I am with my new Cricut Maker.  I am OBSESSED with this marvelous contraption, and have thoroughly been enjoying my time with it while at home.  I have made a couple of things thus far, and I can’t wait to show them to you.  But by way of a teaser - here are some koala and panda-themed sleep masks I made for the kids....

And here is a little bandana bib I made for Pixel, who actually seemed to enjoy wearing it!

Pixel acquired a new perch in our home.  For some reason, out of all the myriad cat beds we have bought her (memory foam, regular foam, fuzzy plush material, microfiber, etc.), her preferred toys and beds are all the ones made of corrugated cardboard. I have never quite understood why she’s so crazy about it - it looks, to my meager human eye, like a hard, cheap, NOT warm and fuzzy place to hang out.  But, she’s crazy about it.  So, I recently bought her this.

Based on the fact that she’s hardly moved from this spot in a month, except to eat 11 billion times a day - I’d say I have gotten my $12 worth already.

On the topics of cats, and crafting - my good friend Y had been telling me about her kitty and how he’s become the “loyal coworker,” since she and her family are all telecommuting these days for their jobs.  Apparently, Shams the cat perches on her cardiologist father’s desk, and oversees his daily rounds using telemedicine apps to check on his patients.  I decided to make Shams an appropriate coworker type outfit.  And again, yet another cat has surprised us by happily wearing the ridiculous outfits we humans are making for them!

What a handsome gentleman :)

What else.... ah, so Mother’s Day came along, with its customary breakfast in bed for yours truly, delivered by some other handsome gentlemen I know.

Dr. Spouse elected to disregard my keto diet, and prepare me a tasty meal of refined carbs - which I hungrily guzzled in appreciation.

Last but not least, for this post anyway - I ran my first “virtual race,” which is this deal where you pay a registration fee and are sent a race bib, shirt, and medal, but its sort of an honor system where you run the race/distance and then post to social media if you wish.  I ran a race called the “Crush Corona 5K”.  The experience of virtual racing was great.  My actual run on that day was surprisingly rough!  I left my house way later than my ordinary running time, and it was an extraordinarily hot day... I totally overheated, and between being carb-starved on the keto diet and also seriously premenstrual (sorry, TMI) - I was really glad when the run was done.  Oh well!  The proceeds of my race benefitted a good cause - a fund for healthcare and essential workers who have been on the front lines of the Coronavirus pandemic.  And bigger picture, I dedicated my race to my “Run Buchandi Run” race series which has been raising funds for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.  I also ran in memory of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the missions of the #blacklivesmatter movement to end systemic racism generally, and police brutality against African Americans specifically.  

Multiple missions and causes, same heart.  They all overlap after all - we are all connected humans, and despite this, minorities in this country are not appreciated for being essential to our society, are also at higher risk of most health conditions, and have to live in fear of unjust targeting by law enforcement and other systems.  I believe it’s possible for us to make our personal efforts in the service of building awareness of this entire network of issues.  My heart - and my legs! - worked in service of this.

[sartle-blog]

Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective at BAMPFA

Untitled, 1986

Walking through the Rosie Lee Tompkins exhibit that just opened up at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, one phrase kept reverberating through my mind: “an ordinary mystic.” There is a spiritual element to this artist’s quilt work that goes beyond her frequent incorporation of bible verse references stitched onto fabric and weaves its way through every subtle connection made in each joined-together piece of colorful texture. You can sense it in just one of the quilts, but when you view the 65+ quilts hung together on the wall in one sitting, it permeates your awareness in a deeply profound way. The artist combines her own diverse cultural background with the influence of the upcycled/repurposed culture of Bay Area arts scene to create a set of brightly-colored, vivid, and vibrant quilts that emanate their own energy.

  Tompkins applies her Christian background in the irregularly embroidered numbers and letters cascading across the surface of many of her quilts. Rosie Lee Tompkins would sit down to a quilt, with both a theme and a specific human in mind, and she would meditatively and mindfully stitch together the varied pieces of fabric into something more than the sum of their parts; it was a spiritual practice. She would take the fabrics that others in the Bay Area were giving away or throwing out, find a theme within them, and bring new life to them through her creations. Her work was spiritual, meditative, and intentional. Tompkins’ work evokes a sense of everyday spirituality; it is also materially beautiful and certainly doesn’t require a religious interpretation if you yourself aren’t comfortable with or interested in one.

Tompkins' quilts caught the eye of Bay Area psychologist and art collector Eli Leon who had an ardent passion for African American quilts. When he passed away in 2018, he willed his entire collection, consisting of more than 3,000 quilts, to BAMPFA. It was a surprise to the museum but one that opened up a grand opportunity to delve deep into this niche of art. Of those 3,000 quilts, approximately 500 were created by Rosie Lee Tompkins. The museum curators knew that sharing the work with the public might best begin by introducing us all to her body of work. Although there are references to Leon in the collection, the curators intentionally made Rosie and her creations the star of this exhibit. A second exhibit is in the works for 2022, which will display a greater range of artists from the quilt collection along with additional information about Leon. 

  Exhibit co-curator Elaine Yau has been delving deep into a socio-cultural, historical perspective on the artist’s work. Until relatively recently, the art world looked at Tompkins solely from a formal perspective. This was due in large part to the fact that Tompkins wanted to keep her life private. In fact, Rosie Lee Tompkins is actually a chosen pseudonym for the artist born Effie Mae Howard. Notably, although she was called Rosie throughout her artistic life, she has embroidered her original name, Effie, on to the borders and faces of many of the quilts that you’ll see in the exhibit. Nevertheless, she refrained from engaging extensively with the art world. This is not to suggest that her work hasn’t been seen before. Co-curator Larry Rinder remembers first coming across her work in 1996 at a Richmond Art Center exhibit by Eli Leon, an experience which moved him so much that Rinder went on to help launch her first solo exhibit at BAMPFA. However, it is only since Tompkins’ death in 2006 that the art world has been looking, as Yau has, at the way the artist fits into the narrative landscape within which her work was created.

Yau emphasizes that we have to consider Tompkins’ work in light of The Great Migration as well as her experiences in the Bay Area as an adult. Effie Mae Howard was born in Arkansas in 1936, a child of The Great Depression and World War II. She learned quilting as a child, taught by her mother, passed down from a lineage of African-American women living in the South. She left the region  in hopes of better opportunities, ending up in the San Francisco Bay Area by way of Chicago then Milwaukee. Once she arrived here, she was influenced by the late 1970s urban arts scene. In particular, there was a culture of re-use (or what we would now term upcycling). She would head to Thrift Town and Value Village and the many flea markets throughout the Bay Area, collecting fabrics and notions as she went along. She stitched together her own identity as an artist, joining her mother’s visual and tactile quilting lessons with her new Bay Area experiences and inspirations, and the result is a body of work that shows both consistency and growth over time.

  Untitled, 1968, 1982-3, 1996

  There are a couple of quilts in the exhibit that date to the 1970s but most of them were created in the two decades starting in the early 1980s and leading nearly up to her death. The first two quilts that you’ll see as you enter the exhibit are early pieces that instantly tell you a lot about what you’re going to find as you venture along. Both pieces are large quilts that at first glance look chaotic. They each incorporate a range of different fabrics as well as utilization of a variety of techniques drawn not only from quilting but also including embroidery and other handcrafts. Tompkins’ pushed the boundaries of what a “quilt” could be. Once you realize that there is a theme, you can see that Tompkins set parameters for herself, but then allowed herself to go wild within those parameters, and it is this exact combination of restraint and fluid creation that makes her work so uniquely hers.

Untitled, 1970s, scriptures

The first room offers just a taste of what is to come. We see Tompkins’ creativity flourish as we enter the second room, which is themed around assemblage and applique work. In this room, we see Tompkins’ take on a classic “crazy quilt.” Seeing several pieces hung together, it becomes obvious that the artist has a broad vocabulary for quilting, and she continues to put her own spin on traditional techniques. Some pieces are dense and almost cluttered, but she never loses track of her sense for composition and shows exquisite skill in her variation of it from piece to piece.

"Jewelry Christmas tree" bottle, 1996

  Make sure that you take the time when you are in the applique room to turn your attention away from the quilts for a moment and towards the case in the center of the room where half a dozen “jewelry Christmas trees” are showcased. These were found in a closet of her home, perhaps originally intended for her eyes only, but they are jewels that glitter so bright that it would have been a shame to keep them stuck in a closet. Tompkins had a love for glitter, sparkle, ribbon, sequins, and all things a little bit extra. She combines them densely on these sculptural forms, creating a three-dimensional version of her quilt style.

Thirty-six Nine-patch, Three Sixes Combination, 1999, quilted by Irene Bankhead

  The next room of the exhibit can’t be missed - you couldn’t fail to notice it - because of the three bright yellow/orange/purple pieces that stand out in the corner. The curators have called this room "Personal Symbolism," and it is the best representation in the exhibit of how Tompkins combined her traditional Christian beliefs with her personal lived experience as well as other elements of transcendental, mystical spirituality. These pieces are called The Three Sixes. They loosely represent three people in her family who all had birthdays with the number six in them. The first is her own birthday: 9/6/36 which seems to have taken on a magical quality for her. She stitches it frequently into the surface of her quilts, sometimes written out directly and sometimes written backwards. The second color and number in the Three Sixes represents her grandfather, a family member she grew up with. The third represents a number of different people - a great uncle, a cousin, a brother. In any case, there is a magical quality to the numbers that Tompkins draws from. However, co-curator Yau points out that sometimes the artist took liberties with her math. For example, there’s a piece that’s a “Thirty-six Nine-patch quilt.” The nine-patch is a traditional quilting technique. Tompkins’ often puts her own twist on classic techniques and this is no exception. In this case, she’s worked the numbers of her birth date in to create a set of 36 9-patches, except that as Yau points out, there are strictly only 33, and you have to count certain yarn ties to get to the “correct” or intended 36. Nevertheless, the gist is there, the cohesion between all of the pieces in the series is undeniable, and there is something a bit mystical about the number play at work here.

Untitled, 1996 (circa)

  When we head to the next room, we see a visible shift in the artist’s work. The pieces collected here represent her cultural concerns. Mostly created in the late 1990s, Tompkins has composed quilts with specific themes in mind, although it’s not always easy to guess exactly what she was trying to say. For example, there is a piece with a big image of OJ Simpson right at the top. The piece includes other prominent Pan-African leaders and celebrities. There is clear thematic cohesion and yet it raises questions as to what precisely she was trying to say. Although this is a political piece, it is also highly personal. Her name, Effie, is stitched not only on the border but also on a cross that says “Michael + Effie + Love” (likely referring to the nearby image of Michael Jordan). And this is where all of her life’s work seems to coalesce, as she combines a deep mindful meditation with both personal and socio-political issues.

Untitled, 1996, quilted by Irene Bankhead

  Another quilt in this section prominently features an image of the Kennedy brothers with Martin Luther King Jr.. It is surrounded by several different versions of the American flag, positioned both vertically and horizontally. Within this, though, the thematic stripes of the flag are repeated in other fabrics including an Indian-inspired batik and a Mexican stripe drawn pulled from serape fabric. There are pastoral scenes here that seem almost colonial with a Latin American reference in a piece of fabric showing flamenco dancers. The statements here are bold and striking.

 Untitled, 2002 (circa)

In her latest years, Tompkins’ work became more overtly religious. The final room consists of many pieces incorporating crosses and other religious symbolism. Then there are two striking pieces at the very end that bring a sense of closure to the entire show. The penultimate piece is a non-quilted single-piece embroidered green-on-green that combines her personal details (including her name and address) with Christian scripture verses as well as a quote that “love is like an ice cream cone; it gets better with every lick.” The last is a black-on-black embroidered quilt that is slightly reminiscent of a funeral gown. Compared to the bright colors, textures, and pictorial narratives of the other rooms, this is understated and yet astoundingly powerful. We see the artist come full circle as we circle through the rooms of this exhibit.

Untitled, 2005

  Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective is on display at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) at 2155 Center Street in Berkeley, CA. The exhibit runs from 2/19/20 - 7/19/20. It is the largest-ever retrospective of the artist’s work.

BAMPFA galleries are open 11-7 Wednesday - Sunday. General admission is $14 with discounts / free admission available to varied populations including students, UC Berkeley staff, seniors and children. Galleries are free to all on the first Thursday of every month.

Special events for this exhibit include:

Colloquium: Re-visioning the Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins, 2/29/20, 2 pm

Fabric Postcard Collage Workshop, 3/7/20, 11 am

Improvisational Quilt-Print Making Workshop, 4/5/20, 2 pm

And more. Details on BAMPFA website.

By: Kathryn Vercillo

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/sue-bird-megan-rapinoe-uswnt

"What’s it like to have the literal President of the literal United States (of literal America) go Full Adolescent Boy on your girlfriend? Hmm. Well… it’s WEIRD.”

Sue Bird calls out Trump in hilarious and touching tribute to girlfriend Meghan Rapinoe. 👏👏👏👏

"Hi!! @S10Bird here. This is my WC Semis preview. Title was supposed to be “So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend (& 10 Other Things I Want You to Know Before the World Cup Semifinals)” but we ran out of space. My bad. Thanks for reading. GO @USWNT."

Hi!! Sue here. This is my World Cup Semifinals preview. The title was supposed to be “So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend (and 10 Other Things I Want You to Know Before the World Cup Semifinals)” but we ran out of space. My bad. Thanks for reading. GO USWNT.

(1) I’m back!! I was done, I swear!! No, really, I SWEAR. Last year I broke my nose, and then I wrote about it, and then I seriously did think that was going to be it for me in the writing game. I remember telling my editor here something like, “It would take the President of the United States going on a hate-filled Twitter spree trolling my girlfriend while she was putting American soccer, women’s sports, equal pay, gay pride and TRUE LOVE on her back, all at once, scoring two majestic goals to lead Team USA to a thrilling victory over France and a place in the World Cup SEMIFINALS, for me to ever even thinkabout writing again.” But I’m a woman of my word. So here I am.

(2) First of all, I’ve gotta get this on the record, if it’s not already clear: I’m SO proud of Megan!!

And the entire damn USWNT. That’s why I’m writing this article, mainly. So if you could do me a favor, let’s just take a second, for real, and appreciate this RUN my girl’s been on?? Like, take away all of the “extra” stuff — and just focus for a second on the soccer alone. Two goals against Spain. Two goals against France, WHILE A GUEST IN THEIR MAISON. I want to hit on a lot of other topics while I’m here, and trust me I will — but I just think it’s also really important not to forget what this is actually, first and foremost, about, you know? It’s about a world-class athlete, operating at the absolute peak of her powers, on the absolute biggest stage that there is. It’s about an athlete f*cking killing it. 

It’s about Megan coming through.

(3) O.K. so now that that’s out of the way, I’ll answer The Question.

The one that’s probably most on your mind. And by that I mean: What’s it like to have the literal President of the literal United States (of literal America) go Full Adolescent Boy on your girlfriend?  Hmm. Well… it’s WEIRD. And I’d say I actually had a pretty standard reaction to it: which was to freak out a little.

That’s one thing that you kind of have to know about me and Megan: our politics are similar — after we won the WNBA title in Seattle last season, no way were we going to the (f*cking) White House! — but our dispositions are not. And as we’ve been talking through a lot of this “stuff,” as it’s been happening to her, you know, I’ll be honest here….. some of it scares the sh*t out of me!!

I mean, some of it is kind of funny….. but like in a REALLY? REALLY? THIS GUY??? kind of way. Like, dude — there’s nothing better demanding your attention?? It would be ridiculous to the point of laughter, if it wasn’t so gross. (And if his legislations and policies weren’t ruining the lives of so many innocent people.) And then what’s legitimately scary, I guess, is like….. how it’s not just his tweets. Because now suddenly you’ve got all these MAGA peeps getting hostile in your mentions. And you’ve got all these crazy blogs writing terrible things about this person you care so much about. And now they’re doing takedowns of Meganon Fox News, and who knows whatever else. It’s like an out-of-body experience, really — that’s how I’d describe it. That’s how it was for me.

But then Megan, man….. I’ll tell you what. You just cannot shake that girl. She’s going to do her thing, at her own damn speed, to her own damn rhythm, and she’s going to apologize to exactly NO ONE for it. So when all the Trump business started to go down last week, I mean — the fact that Megan just seemed completely unfazed? It’s strange to say, but that was probably the only normal thing about it. It’s not an act with her. It’s not a deflection. To me it’s more just like: Megan is at the boss level in the video game of knowing herself. She’s always been confident….. but that doesn’t mean she’s always been immune. She’s as sensitive as anyone — maybe more!! She’s just figured out how to harness that sensitivity.

And I think Megan’s sensitivity is what drives her to fight for others. I think it’s what drove her to take a knee. The Megan you’re seeing now? It’s the stronger version of the one who knelt in the first place. All the threats, all the criticism, all the fallout — coming out on the other side of that is what makes her seem so unfazed by the assholes of the world now.

I think in trying to help others, Megan has cemented who she is.

(4) A few 100% random and 100% unrelated facts, presented without commentary.

Donald Trump has never invited a WNBA champion to the White House.

In 2017, when South Carolina Women’s Basketball — coached by a black woman (the legend Dawn Staley) — won the national championship, they were not initially invited to the White House.

In 2019, when Baylor Women’s Basketball — coached by a white woman (also a legend, Kim Mulkey) — won the national championship, they were invited to the White House with no issues.

Stumbled across this cool website the other day. Check it out 🙂

(5) Alright….. yeah. It’s time. It’s definitely time.

We Need To Talk About Megan’s Pink Hair.

I’m actually just going to say this out loud, and put it all the way out there, since the Players’ Tribune is a space for honesty (plus there’s this whole Atlantic Ocean between us): The hair?? I was….. AGAINST it. Phew!! That felt really good to say. I was against it. I thought it was too impulsive and I voted no. (LOL not that I actually got a vote — our relationship when it comes to Megan’s fashion is based on what you might call a “modified democracy,” where we both give our opinion and then Megan does what she wants.)

But yeah, my feeling was — you’re going to the World Cup!! To do great things!! And hopefully, if all goes well, you’re going to be memorialized in all of these pictures that will be around for….. EVER! Plus, blonde hair is like — Your Signature Thing!! You look amazing blonde. We know that looks good on you. Pink? Megan, are you sure?Don’t you think you might regret this??

And Megan was just, like, Nope. World Cup. Pink hair. I’m in. Let’s get it. She got it colored the DAY before she left, without a care in the freaking world. I mean….. if you were ever wondering what the Rapinoe Lifestyle was about….. that’s it, truly.

(Also, I love it now? Now that’s it’s settled in and looks a little more purple. Don’t tell Megan.)

(6) Back to the France game for a second. A few thoughts here.

One, I’m not sure if you saw — but, my girlfriend?? She shrugged off the Rude Man on Twitter, and managed to play….. I’d say pretty well 🙂

Two, France!! They were incredible. I really hope some of them are reading this, because I just want them to know that. They stayed so damn tough, I thought, through the whole tournament — and that’s with the pressure of hosting the event, too. The way they persevered to make it a match, late, after getting down two goals early?? I mean, don’t get me wrong — I was 100% on MANIAC mode, cheering for our squad. Obviously. But I still hated that anyone had to lose.

Three, on the advice of counsel I’d like to issue a formal apology to everyone who was on the plane with me last week, and had to watch me fistpump like a bozo after each of Megan’s goals, and smash the REFRESH button on my phone like a….. well, also a bozo, after my bars started cutting out in the second half.

It won’t happen again except let me be clear it might.

(7) YOU GUYS: WHAT ARE PENALTY KICKS.

No, seriously — I could not imagine taking one??????

I think the more I watch soccer, and the more I find these ways to apply it to what I know about basketball, the better feel I get for the game. Like, for example, as a point guard, I have a pretty strong sense of floor-spacing….. and I think that ends up being extremely relevant for soccer. I’m definitely starting to “see the field,” you know? And I’m noticing the way that plays develop, and stuff. (They just kind of develop.)

O.K. so that’s my plus column.

My minus column? PENALTY KICKS. Like, I guess they’re kind of like free throws? Only if there was someone trying to BLOCK your free throw, and you had to use your foot (??), and oh yeah if you missed it you’d never forgive yourself and have it haunt you for the rest of your LIFE?? So what I’m saying is it’s not like a free throw at all.

I don’t want Megan to turn out to be an alien from another planet, but I’m just going to say the truth of how I feel right now: If you’re good at penalty kicks, you’re a f*cking alien from another planet.

(8) I had a long thing prepared here about the equal pay debate.

I was planning on “making some points” and “going in.”

But then I thought about it some more, and to tell you the truth….. I’m kind of done with that.

If you’re not on the right side of this fight, and advocating fiercely for equal pay — whether it’s in soccer, or basketball, or in any other industry, and across every intersectional boundary — then I just straight-up feel bad for you.

Because you’re sad, and wrong, and going down.

I feel that in my bones, increasingly, over these last several months — having seen my colleagues in the W show we mean business on a new CBA. 

I feel that in my bones, increasingly, over these last couple of years — having seen our NBA counterparts start (START!) to stick their necks out for us, more and more, in solidarity and out of respect.

And I feel that in my bones, increasingly, right f*cking now — having seen these indestructible USWNT women stand up for themselves and (this seriously can’t be stressed enough) crack a LAWSUIT over the heads of U.S. Soccer while they go out and grind for a freaking World Cup.

Oh right and they literally are MORE PROFITABLE THAN THE MEN.

COOL!!!!!!!!!

TLDR: Pay us.

(9) They told me I should make some predictions!! LOL.

In the first semi, I’ve got those frisky lil AMERICANS taking down England, by a score of 2-0. I feel like we’re vibing right now, and the offense is really humming, so yeah — this one’s USA all the way. (QUICK NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: I may have just made the prediction that results in me getting a summer trip to Paris.)

In the second semi….. O.K., so, I won’t reveal my sources, but I heard this major scoop that the Netherlands might be a team people are sleeping on?? But then I guess on the other hand, you also have Sweden, who thumped us in the Olympics….. so that’s a “cool final” maybe….. I don’t know, I feel like these teams probably know each other really well. Like a classic neighborhood beef. How am I doing? Should I keep faking it here? Let’s go with the Netherlands, 2-1.

(10) Wait let’s do a story time.

I’ve been lucky enough to hear a few awesome stories about the USWNT in my day, so I feel like — since you’ve put up with my decidedly non-expert World Cup semifinal preview, and been so cool about it — I owe you one of them here. 

I’ll actually tell you my favorite.

Alright so it’s halftime of the 2015 World Cup Final….. and of course, if you’re reading this, you know the score: 4-1 U.S. Carli has her hat trick, Lauren has one, and Japan has their one. And I think we’re all among friends at this point, so let’s just be real: It wasn’t even THAT close. It was over, dudes. World Cup? Over. Amazing!! Party!!

Except: these world-class athletes being these world-class athletes….. there is noooooo off switch in SIGHT. These women are in the locker room at half time, and they are taking it as seriously as if they were tied at one. People are talking strategy, going over plays, breaking down miscues — doing the whole bit, straight up, just biz as usual.

And then…..

And then there’s Megan.

She’s sitting there….. and she’s seeing everyone gameplan, and keep their game-faces on, and Do The Normal Halftime Thing..… and she gets it. Of course she gets it. But, like — still, you know?? Still. There is something inside of her that just….. CANNOT deal. Cannot deal with the ceremony of it all. Cannot deal with the bullshit. And she tries hard to fight it, tries not to say anything….. tries to stay somewhat relaxed. 

But then at some point the girl just….. I mean….. come on.

She can’t help herself:

 “WE’RE GONNA WIN THE WORLD CUP,” she blurted out. 

“WE’RE. GONNA. WIN. THE. WORLD CUP!!! 

WE’REGONNAWINTHEF*CKINGWORLDCUP!!!”

(11) So there’s this thing that I invented called Megan Goggles.

They’re hard to explain, but I think I’ve almost got it. I think it’s like….. O.K., so: Megan, she just does things sometimes. Do it….. then love it….. then — later, at the very end, if there’s time — worry about it. That’s her M.O. Me, on the other hand….. I’m nothing like that. I’m more of the worry about it first….. and then later, if there’s time, do it type. So the idea of Megan Goggles, I guess, it’s this idea of like — they’re this thing that I put on, and it helps me loosen up a bit?? And just open my eyes, and see the world from Megan’s Extremely Megan perspective.

And anyway, in the beginning of our relationship, I think I would use “Megan Goggles” as a sort of running joke — when we’d be doing that thing couples do where we play these almost cartoon versions of ourselves. In our case: free-spirit Megan and practical Sue.

Except now….. I wouldn’t be so practical!! So it would be like: 

[Megan walks into the closet with some scissors, then confidently walks out…..] 

[Sue puts on Megan Goggles…..] 

Sure, Megan! Absolutely let’s call that t-shirt you just cut a hole in “a look.” 

Or: 

[Megan suddenly decides that she needs to dye her eyebrows platinum blonde…..] 

[Sue puts on Megan Goggles…..] 

Wait, Megan, nevermind — I take it back that it’ll look like you have no eyebrows! And I can totally see what you mean when you say, “Trust me, they’ll pop.”

And so on and so on — and it just sort of became this, like, shorthand experience. I’d put on my Goggles, and I’d be on this amazing vacation….. to a place where I was someone a little left of my own center. Where I was someone who thinks like Megan thinks.

And then eventually I came to realize the obvious: that Megan Goggles are a lot more than some cute running joke between us, about fashion choices or whatever — and that they’re actually this kind of skeleton key to Megan herself. Or, put another way: When I put on my Megan Goggles?? What I’m really doing, I think, is learning to understand her better — and, if this even makes any sense: I think at the same time, I’m learning how to understand myselfbetter as well.

But wait I’ll get to my point. I’m bringing all this up, and trying to explain this crazy (or I hope not that crazy!!) concept, because last Friday — in the lead-up to that USWNT game vs. France, and then during the game itself, and then after??

I swear, it was like the most amazing thing happened: It was like the entire country, all at once, for this one fleeting and improbable but also somehow very very very very possible moment….. PUT ON MEGAN GOGGLES.

It was like the entire country, all at once, said — Soccer? YES. Women’s soccer? YES. An openly gay superstar swagging out with two goals and batsh*t celebrations and leading us to a huge-ass win in women’s soccer? YES. That same openly gay superstar not just taking some preapproved, basic level of pride in her sexuality, but actually being the world’s biggest most kissable goofball queen and literally crediting her sexuality for those two goals and her batsh*t celebrations and our huge-ass win in women’s soccer? YES. 

This is the American flag now, someone tweeted — and it’s a photo of my girlfriend, BEAMING ear to ear, smiling her BOOBS off on a football field, mugging for the camera, weird-ass dye job and all — just totally and completely over-goddamn-flowing with excellence? YES.

So anyway, look — I guess here’s my point:

I’m closer to 40 than 30. I’ve only been legally permitted to get married in the last handful of years. I’m a worrier, an overthinker, and — if it’s your type of thing — a 3x WNBA champion.

But on Friday? It was like for this one, perfect, fleeting, uncomplicated day….. I was everyone.

I was happy. 

I was crazy.

I was PROUD.

I was pretending to know about soccer.

I was a little overwhelmed. 

I was pretty damn American.

And I was in love with Megan Rapinoe.

Sue Bird, Seattle Storm

https://t.co/A2dJrBIzRh

[frangipanidownunder]

Returning the Past: Part 5

Mulder and Scully are honeymooning in Far North Queensland. Much to Scully’s chagrin, Mulder has delved headlong into a mysterious case of strange lights, Tasmanian tiger sightings and abductions. It’s not long, before they run into trouble…

Read part 1, part 2 part 3 and part 4.

The facility ‘Eddie Romero House’ was ensconced behind a security fence. She frowned at the recurrence of the name. Years of being an investigator made it impossible to think of coincidences and serendipitous happenstance. Years of being an investigator on The X-Files showed her that even the smallest of coincidences was likely to be anything bug.

Sunlight filtered through menacing clouds and pinged off the metal pickets. Mulder buzzed the intercom and itched at the skin on his arms. A security guard walked from the main building to stand outside the gate.

              “We’re looking to talk to somebody in charge,” Mulder said.

              “Do you have an appointment?”

              “It’s urgent we speak to somebody. It could be a matter of life and death.”

              Scully looked at the ground, impacted red dirt crumbling at her footfalls. Mulder’s flair for the dramatic, coupled with this dogged insistence often got them entry into secure facilities but the guard didn’t seem impressed. They had no badges to flash, they had American accents, they had no jurisdiction.

              “Professor Callow is in meetings. He won’t be available until tomorrow.”

              “Callow?” Scully said, looking at Mulder. He did the customary slow blink that told her he was on the same page as her. “We’re friends of his daughter’s. Please tell him it’s urgent that he speak with us.”

              The guard lifted the radio to his mouth and static crackled. She rubbed the back of her neck and Mulder paced. A pair of green and red parrots screeched past. A vehicle reversed from a steel shed to the left of the main facility, stirring up a plume of dust.

              “He says he’ll see you. Follow me.”

 Professor Callow was seated behind a wooden desk bearing all the hallmarks of an office that hadn’t seen a change in twenty years. A Rolodex next to a rotary dial phone, a blotter pad, a stationery holder filled with Biros, pencils, a plastic ruler, Tippex. There was a framed photo of two men, one a younger Callow, rifle propped against his shoulder, standing over the corpse of a large animal that Scully couldn’t make out. She peered at its familiarity, then recalled the crumpled version of the photo on Steph Callow’s living room floor. There were glass cabinets along each wall, containing skeletal remains and stuffed animals with blank eyes and dull fur. Faded posters on the wall depicted a variety of Australian marsupials, and directly behind the Professor’s chair was a map of Queensland.

              “You know my daughter somehow?” he said, his accent clear-cut English.

              “She took us on a walk through the Daintree.” Scully looked at a poster of endangered and extinct animals. Toolache wallaby – bearing similar markings to the kangaroos they’d seen that first morning, broad faced bandicoot, lesser bilby. She checked out the small signs propped up against the stuffed creatures, Eastern hare wallaby, brush-tailed bettong.

              “She was a promising zoologist, she had a knack for research. Stephanie studied hard. It’s a shame.”

There was something tight about the older man, Scully thought. Something closed off. She’d seen the same thing when Mulder was returned. An outward show of vagueness that really just covered up an inability to articulate the heart of the issue. He was scared.

“What’s a shame?” Mulder asked, picking up a jar from a shelf. He held the jar out as he continued to challenge the professor, rattling the brown seed pod inside it so that it drummed with each word he spoke. “That Steph became a tour guide and not a Professor, like you?”

“No, no. It’s…her mother…the family. It was difficult. For all of us, but for Stephanie, a teenager at the time, it was. Well, she struggled.” Callow took the jar from him and set it back on the desk. His hands trembled.

“Your wife, Steph’s mother, what happened to her?” Scully watched the way he sucked in a deep, long breath, chest puffing out. The seed inside the jar, labelled Idiospermum australiense was pale yellow on the outside and a ridged red inside, reminded her of a golden apricot and she kept her eyes on it while Callow sunk back into his chair.

“She disappeared. Just vanished.”  Callow’s voice was shallow, like he’d told the story so many times it was just a rote response.

She looked back at Mulder, pressing her teeth into her lower lip. She wondered if they would ever relate any of their own history like that, without the passion, without the fire needed to continually reach for justice.

“Miriam went out to buy milk and never came back. We…just carried on. You do, don’t you? But Stephanie was never the same. Went to university in Tasmania, as far away from here as she could get. She worked hard but the spark, the passion for it had gone. After she graduated she went on a gap year to South America and when she came back she couldn’t settle. She told me once that being a tour guide was a way of always looking for her mother. As though she might just find her out there in the bush somewhere all these years later,” he smiled sadly. “She likes being outdoors. Just like her mother.”

“Have you heard from her recently, Stephanie?” Scully stepped towards him. “She’s missing, Professor Callow.”

Callow shook his head, an absent expression clouding his eyes. “I’m afraid that Stephanie has often gone ‘walkabout’ as they say in these parts.”

“We were with her when a group of men dragged her into a four-wheel-drive and we haven’t seen her since. The police don’t seem interested. Her house…there was a disturbance there.”

The old man pushed himself up from his desk, knuckles turning white. “She kept some strange company too. Abductees, she called them. She was adamant she’d been abducted too. Told me fantastic tales of being on board UFOs and lights in the forest. Crazy stuff. Nobody believes that kind of thing, do they?” Callow looked at Mulder and Scully lowered her gaze, breathing through the awkward silence.

“What did you make of her company? TasTiger Tours,” Mulder said, not rising to the bait.

“Taking tourists to see thylacines in the Daintree? When she told me what she was doing I told her that people would either see her as a lunatic or a scam artist. But it seems I was wrong. There are plenty of fools…” He stopped and Mulder offered him a accepting grin. “Sorry. You are entitled to spend your dollars any way you see fit, but Tasmanian tigers have been extinct for decades and most certainly did not inhabit tropical rainforest.”

“And yet both Dr Scully and I have seen thylacines in recent days. One was inside your daughter’s home.”

Professor Callow blanched and held on to the edge of the desk. “In Stephanie’s house? That’s impossible.”

“It wasn’t so long ago that this facility was being funded to research thylacine DNA with a view to potentially reviving the species. It’s not much of a stretch to consider that the animals might have escaped and thrived in the wild.”

Callow sighed and shook his head. “You sound like Stephanie. She had a penchant for the arcane. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d faked her own abduction by this group of men, simply to get my attention. I’ve suggested she see someone, you know, a psychiatrist to help her with her troubles, but she wouldn’t be told. She seems to be a lost cause.”

Mulder continued to talk, despite the old man walking past him to the door. “There are precedents where animals have created their own enclaves in non-native regions. The fabled big cat stories around the world can be explained in this way.”

Callow opened the office door. “What you say is true, Mr Mulder. And I may agree, except for the fact that my project never created a single live specimen. The trials all failed.”

Mulder swigged from the water bottle as she drove. The light outside was weak and grey. “What do you think, Scully. Is he involved?”

              “He was frightened, Mulder.  I saw a man cowed not just by the weight of his wife and daughter being missing, but by fear.”

              “He certainly knows more than he was letting on, Scully.”

              She watched him lean his head against the window. “You need to rest, Mulder. You still look like you’re running a fever.”

              “I’m fine. I just need to clear my head to think. Callow’s experiments didn’t yield a live thylacine, according to him. Yet we know they exist. What would be the purpose of recreating extinct animal lines, Scully? Where does that fit in with the abductions, the lights? And why would the police dismiss the case? Even if Steph was well known in these parts as someone with a psychiatric history, why deny she even existed?”

              “I’ve been thinking about that too, Mulder. And did you notice the name of the guard at the front gate?”

              He turned to her, cheeks flaming. “No, what was it?”

              “Galea. Same as the police officer.”

 They drove to the police station. The car park was deserted. Grey clouds pushed low over their heads and Scully scratched at the back of her neck. Mulder was slow to get out of the car. A sheen of sweat sparkled across his brow. She walked up the steps and rapped at the door. No answer.

              “Do you get a weird feeling, Mulder?”

              He didn’t answer but mopped at his forehead with the back of his hand. His chest rose and fell laboriously. She twisted the handle and pushed at the door. It didn’t budge. “If this is a joke, I don’t like the Australian sense of humour. Mulder,” she said, stepping back down to where he was leaning against the car door. “Get back in the car, out of the heat. Drink the water. I’m going around the back.”

              She knew he was sick when he complied without complaint. There were garden beds either side of the building, leaf litter piled high. Tall palms swayed on the increasing breeze and a pair of bird of paradise plants pecked at the empty air with their resplendent bronze beaks. The windows of the house were covered in cobwebs and the side door was locked. How had they not noticed the state of the place when they spoke with Officer Galea? Who were the other people in the building? Were there other people? She peered through the dirty glass of the back door but saw nothing but the marks of a building that hadn’t been inhabited for a while.

A car engine caught her attention and she hurried back round. A small blue SUV swung into the gravelled space next to their hire car and a middle-aged couple got out.

“If you’re looking for the police station, you need to head back that way, to Port Douglas. This one hasn’t been used for a few years now.”

“We were looking for Officer Galea,” Scully said, keeping an eye on Mulder, who was leaning his face against the window.

The woman shrugged. “The last copper here was Sergeant Blythman and she left to have a baby. That baby’s at primary school now. We just tidy up the yard. Len, give me that fertiliser. Those plants need a good feed.”

Scully opened the driver’s side door, but turned back to the couple. “Have you ever seen strange lights in this area? Blue lights?”

“You’re Americans.” Len joined his wife.

“We’re here on our honeymoon,” Scully said, as much to remind herself as to inform the couple. “We came here to report a crime here just the other day. Now it’s empty.”

The couple continued to remove gardening equipment from the back of the car.

“Who is Eddie Romero?” Scully asked. “It’s the name of a local research facility. It’s the name of one of the forest tracks. Our accommodation is Romero Sands.”

“He’s no-one special,” the woman said. “Enjoy your honeymoon. Go swimming. Do some bushwalking, but don’t stray off the tourist tracks. Have a nice time. Go home to your families.”

“Do you know Steph Callow?”

The woman exchanged looks with her husband. “Who are you?”

Mulder got out of the car, his body sagging. “What’s going on in this town? What are you afraid of?”

“We’re not scared,” the woman said, straightening up. “We’re just invisible. Nobody listens to us. They just want people to come here, spend their money. The tourist dollars rule. It’s like that film with the sharks, isn’t it, Len? You know the one, where the mayor of the island won’t shut the beaches down for the long weekend.”

“Jaws,” Scully said, looking over at Mulder. “Have people been hurt here? Killed?”

The woman looked at Len. “They’ve disappeared. But the government people say that they just lost their way, the forest is dangerous if you’re not careful.” She walked up to Scully and took her hand. “You two look like lovely young people. You don’t need anything like that happening to you. It’s the worst thing. People go missing and you never know what’s happened. You live every day like they might just come home and fling their coat across the hall and sit on their favourite chair and ask for a cup of tea, you know? It’s cruel, is what it is. Hope and dreams. It’s just cruel.” She rolled her lips together and took a long, slow breath. “You take care now. Come on, Len. It’s going to rain soon. Let’s spread this stuff and get home.”

 Mulder groaned in his sleep, deep guttural sounds that held fear. She often wondered how he processed all that happened to him. Besides the abject terror of the abduction, he had faced the death penalty. They had spent months on the run, looking over their shoulders, living out of cheap motels and even cheaper cars. He held it in, he held it together, mostly. She knew he thought he had to be strong for her, as she did for him. They both drove for days wearing their stoicism like armour. Back then, she knew the day would come where one of them would crack. She lay odds that it would be her first. That she would flip tables and throw away the hair dye and the Walmart underwear. That she would call her mother and write her brother. That she would tell Mulder she didn’t really love him and that she was leaving. That she would lie to save him. To save them both.

But in a long-forgotten town, in a long forgotten state, she returned with two bags of groceries and found him balled up in the corner of the darkened room, furniture broken around him, sobbing. The bags dropped to the floor and split open spilling the tins and packets in front of her. She let him cry against her chest until his tears soaked her vest. He didn’t talk, didn’t need to. She was grateful for that desolate place, grateful for the onerous skies and the stares of the townsfolk, grateful for the one store and flickering neon motel sign, grateful for the gritty coffee and the faulty ice machine. It drew out his sorrow and suffering and pushed hers down. She would never leave him. She would never lie to him.

 Now, she dabbed his brow with a cool washcloth, then pressed it around the back of her neck, easing the itch there. Wherever Steph Callow had gone, the dark forces in the forest were responsible. But with Mulder tossing fitfully by her side, there was no way they could go forward with any kind of investigation. She’d have to find a doctor’s surgery in the morning. He needed treatment.

“The light was so bright, Scully. It was so bright it felt like my eyes had been sliced open and silver was poured inside.” He pushed himself up and bunched the sheet across his lap. His voice was groggy, his skin tacky to touch. She gave him water. “I dreamt that Steph Callow was there with me, on that ship, Scully. She was trapped too, helpless and that bright light burned her and she burst into flames.”

While Scully made tea, he played with the remote, and a news anchor read out details of a mysterious death locally.

A member of the public called in the discovery of the body. At this stage, the police have not issued any details of the circumstances or the victim but there is a presence at Eddie Romero House.

“It’s Professor Callow,” Mulder said, calling her back to the bedroom. “He’s been killed.”

[davidbuddbg]

Chapter 8: What if it’s worth it?

Quick note: You can find all of the chapters under the following link: https://www.wattpad.com/story/174400042-what-if-it%27s-worth-it

I asked, or rather demanded, the guards to remain in the car. They begrudgingly complied to my orders although it was evident they felt nervous going against my father’s wishes.

From the outside, the bar didn’t appear special in any way. Opening the door, I was asked to show my ID before I could enter and the moment I complied, I realized giving out my true identity could backfire. Truth be told, I was surprised they even let me in. I was wearing yoga pants with a black t-shirt, and for the first time in ages, my brown hair was tied in a ponytail. This was my out-of-my-mind worried look, not the going-to-a-bar-to-have-fun look.  

Inside, the bar was much more luxurious than I’d expected. The walls were of a rich, dark purple colour with golden frames. But most of all, the music wasn’t too loud and I was thankful for that.

I walked around the main floor, as if looking for a friend before sitting down by the bar. David wasn’t here. Now on the high bar stool, I saw stairs that led downwards to the VIP area but I’d have to find an excuse to go there.

“Miss, what would you like to drink?” The blonde barmaid asked me with an American accent, interrupting my thoughts.

I gave the bottles on the shelf behind the bar a quick look. “A glass of that old whisky, please,” I ordered, pointing at a brownish bottle. At this point, I didn’t know what to do so getting fucked up didn’t seem the worst of ideas.

Within little more than an hour, one glass turned into five glasses and I was almost forgetting the VIP area downstairs. I tried to think of a way to get in there without anyone noticing but my mind was blank. “Chanel?” A female voice called out, abruptly bringing me back from my thoughts.

I spun around on the bar stool to face her. It was another barmaid, in her early twenties which short red hair. “I’m sorry, miss,” the barmaid quickly blathered, her cheeks blushing. “I mistook you for someone else.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I grinned. This actually afforded me an opportunity. “Was it Chanel Dyson you mistook me for?” I asked as the girl made her way behind the bar and started mixing up some drinks.

“Why, yes.” She seemed somewhat surprised but her answer made my blood boil. “Do you know her?”

“Curiously enough, I was supposed to meet with her tonight but she’s over thirty minutes late.” I lied smoothly enough, sounding disappointed. Did Dave meet up with Chanel? And why didn’t he tell me about it? I hated Chanel, but I wasn’t the overly jealous kind, I wouldn’t have stopped him from seeing her or anything.

“Oh, I’m sorry you missed her.” She said softly while adding different alcohols into the cocktail shaker. “She left early tonight, didn’t seem to be feeling well,” the barmaid revealed, oblivious to the fact that this was exactly what I needed to know.

I quickly paid for my drinks before exiting the bar in a hurry. I was now feeling the effects of the alcohol on my balance and I regretted having been so careless. I took my phone from my bag and realized it was almost five in the morning and I was supposed to be at my internship at eight. I slid through my address book until I found a contact I had never paid much attention to and without surprise, she lived exactly where I expected someone like her to.

“To the South Bank Tower, please.” Being a weeknight in autumn, the streets, while not entirely deserted, were relatively empty. Although the drive only lasted a few minutes, I had bitten through all my nails by the time we arrived. “Just wait in the car, please. I’m meeting with a friend.” I quickly exited the vehicle before they could protest.

Now inside the luxurious apartment building, I took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and the soft elevator music was irritating me further, if that was even possible. Stepping out of the lift, I made sure there were no cameras before opening my handbag and taking out the gun with the silencer and finally ringing the doorbell.

Chanel didn’t open the door right away and for a moment I worried I had the wrong address or that she wasn’t home. But at the same time, where would she be at five in the morning on a Thursday night?! Finally, she opened the door, appearing quite annoyed at someone showing up at this hour but her stance immediately changed when the cold tip of my gun touched her forehead.

“Hello, Chanel,” I chirruped, a large smile plastered on my lips. “Aren’t you inviting me in?”

Scared by my sight, she let me in silence and I locked the door behind ourselves, then putting the housekey in my bag. None of was leaving until I had what I wanted. I made sure to spot her cell phone on a small table by the entrance.

Now inside, I realized her flat was actually furnished to my taste. Lots of modern and dark furniture with glass details anywhere, but I wasn’t here to congratulate her on the interior of her home. “Sit!” I ordered, tilting my head at a black chair in the living room side of the loft. Chanel, still silent, stared at me with confusion for a few seconds before complying.

I remained standing in the middle of the room. First, I was drunk and worried that if I sat down, I wouldn’t be able to get up without help. Second, I had no idea what the fuck people did after threatening someone with a gun. “Where’s David?” I queried aggressively, my gun still pointed at her but she was grinning now and I finally noticed the empty glass bottles on the floor next to the couch. So, we had both been drinking.

“I knew you guys were fucking!” Chanel blurted out proudly in her nasal voice, as if she was the first one to figure that out.

“At this point, everyone knows Chanel. That’s not impressive.” I said acidly, impatient. “So, where is he?” I insisted, tightening my jaw.

“Well, Alma,” she slurred drunkenly, making my name sound like an insult. “He and I met for a few drinks,” she continued, still with that sassy tone of hers. “If you know what I mean,” she added with a wink before looking straight into my eyes, wanting to see me hurt.

“Thank you for your candour, Chanel.” I tried keeping my voice calm, but it was taking all of my strength not to strangle her right now. “But I want to know where he is, nothing else.” I roared, my blood boiling but Chanel just leaned back against the chair, seemingly unafraid. Either, I wasn’t scary enough, even with a loaded gun in my hand or she was too drunk to realize what was going on.

“Why don’t you check in my bed, Alma?”

I shut my eyes tightly for a couple of seconds, biting my tongue until I could feel the taste of blood invade my mouth. I tried to remain poised, but I was mad now. Without a further thought, my arm drifted towards the kitchen and I removed the security before shooting at a picture hanging on the fridge, leaving it with a hole right where Chanel’s face had been. Hate and adrenalin made a good team, indeed.

I turned back to her, and noticed she was now scared. Good, she’d finally gotten the message, I thought drily. But somehow, she still didn’t seem ready to comply. Most likely, there was someone else involved she was even more scared off.

“No worries, honey,” I finally spoke, stealing her sassy tone. “I’ve got all the time in the world.” I was lying, I didn’t and time was running out. But I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. Shoot her, and then what?

I hesitated about her tying her to the chair, but looking at her I doubted she would dare do anything crazy. Hell, Chanel was sobbing now and it was the first time she expressed her feelings without throwing a tantrum. The noise of her sniffing was driving me mad and I could feel the effects of the drugs dissipating but I hadn’t thought to bring any with me.

I started pacing around the living room, my eyes on Chanel at all times. I tried calling Dave again but it went straight to voicemail. “Shit!” I thought about calling Vicky but decided against it. David would surely have told me if he was with her, besides it was too early to call her, I’d just wake up the kids.

Trying to direct my thoughts elsewhere, I started rummaging through Chanel’s stuff, the gun still pointed at her head. Opening a drawer next to the TV, I was surprised to find sex toys. I mean, what freak keeps those in the living room? But then I noticed a pair of sturdy looking handcuffs with leopard plush and decided to keep them. After all, they might come in handy.

A couple of hours passed and Chanel had stopped sobbing, but still wasn’t talking. Instead, her eyes were firmly set on the locked front door. Was she expecting someone?

“You know, if someone comes looking for you, I’ll have to shoot them.” I sounded standoffishly, but I was just exhausted. I kept worrying about Dave’s whereabouts and to make things worse, it seemed all this stupid act I had put would lead me anywhere.

The clock was ticking and I was gradually getting more and more impatient. Should I kick her? Threaten her family? Shoot her on the knee? It was morning already and I still had no news about David. Was he dead? This was the first time I was considering that option and I swallowed my bile to keep me from crying.

“I’ll take you to him,” Chanel announced out of nowhere. Her face was strained and the tears had dried on her cheeks. She looked awful but I was sure I didn’t look any better.

Within minutes, Chanel and I were headed to the elevator, the tip of the gun touching the back of her skull. I couldn’t allow her to escape, not now. Not when I hadn’t heard from David in over twelve hours.

We descended to the lowest floor, the car park. I made sure we were still alone before we walked over to her red BMW. Chanel took the driver’s seat and I sat down behind her, so I would be hidden by the tinted windows.

In silence, except for Chanel’s sobbing, she drove us downtown, not far from the bar I’d been in earlier. “I’m sorry, Alma,” she whimpered before sniffing. Through the back mirror, I could see her puffy red eyes and actually believed her, but it didn’t matter.

She parked the car in front of a building on Saltmarch Street. It was undergoing remodelling works but they seemed to have been abandoned long ago. Curiously, there was almost no one outside although it was Friday morning and the streets should have been full with fast-walking people.

“I won’t hesitate to shoot, if you run.” I warned her, still in the car. She nodded with fear. There was no way I’d shoot her outside in daylight, but she didn’t need to know that.

She led me to the building’s basement. The construction works had obviously stopped months ago. It was empty expect for some random wooden pallets and spider webs. I followed her inside but there was no sight of David. Chanel started crying harder as we were almost finished with our tour. “I’m sorry Alma,” she sniffed again before gulping. “They told me they’d leave him here after beating him up.”

So, there was no fuckery involved. This was much worse. “Who’s they?” I demanded with authority, paying attention to my surroundings and looking for anything that’d prove Dave had been here.

“Luke Aikens,” Chanel admitted in a small voice. I didn’t know who the fuck that was, but she seemed to be quite afraid of him. Just as I thought we had been around the entire basement, Chanel stopped in her tracks and I almost collided with her.

Confused, I pushed her out the way to see what was going on. There was blood. Blood on the wall and on the wooden pallets. I bit my lower lip to keep myself from yelling.

“I’m sorry,” Chanel bemoaned again but I didn’t care. I shook my head with agitation, trying to clear my thoughts but it didn’t work. I looked through my bag until I found the handcuffs I’d stolen from her flat.

She was looking at me, too scared and too tired to say anything. I pulled on some metal pipes, to make sure they were sturdy. Luckily for me, they didn’t budge. “Come here.” I ordered coldly and Chanel complied, crying again. With shaky hands, I tied her wrists around the pipes.

“Don’t leave me here,” Chanel pleaded and I genuinely felt distressed for her, but I couldn’t let her go. She was the only person who knew anything about Dave’s whereabouts last night and I couldn’t risk not finding her again. When she noticed I was really going to leave her in there, her expression turned into a cruel grimace. “It’s funny how it’s always women who harm other women,” Chanel spat out, her fears having shifted into anger.

Without a word, I left her in there and walked through the maze this basement was until I reached the front door and found myself outside again, under the daylight. The streets remained extraordinarily empty and quiet which really made me believe something was wrong.

I breathed out a few times, hoping it would calm me down before I typed Rayburn’s phone number on my iPhone and let it ring.

“Look,” DS Rayburn groaned into my ear, agitated. “I don’t have time right now.”

“The bomb-maker, it’s Nadia.” I announced out of the blue. “She’s the one who made the bomb for the Euston train and St Matthews.” I jabbered into the phone while turning on the engine.

The line was quiet for a few seconds, but I could hear hushed voices in the background. “I don’t have time for your lies right now, Alma.” Louise growled. I was about to start yelling at her but then I heard someone shout my name through the phone. Was that Vicky? Why was Vicky with Rayburn? Immediately, I hung up on DS Rayburn and called Vicky instead. She picked up after the very first ring, panting.

“What’s going on?!”

“It’s David,” Vicky cried out before saying something else but I couldn’t make out the words.

“What’s with David? Where is he?” I asked urgently as I could hear the background noise getting louder.

“Pope’s Square!” Vicky shouted before someone took her phone and hung up on me.

With trembling hands, I looked for Pope’s Square on Chanel’s Nav and realized it was just a couple of blocks away. Nervously, I started driving in that direction, thankful for the fact that Chanel’s car was an automatic.

Just as I turned into the first street to my right, I realized there was Police barriers installed everywhere. “Fuck!” I hit the steering wheel with all my strength in anger, hurting my wrist in the process. “Fuck!”

Some people were asking to be let through but the Police wasn’t letting anyone inside. I backed away slowly before noticing an underground parking entrance about twenty meters away. Bingo!

The fatigue now completely forgotten, I drove straight into the garage, taking a ticket before parking the car in the first spot I found, not bothering straightening it. My steps resonated on the concrete floor as I ran around, trying to find the pedestrian exit, hoping it would be within the closed off area. I walked up the stairs, too impatient to wait for the elevator and breathed out with relief when I left the garage and found myself close to Pope’s square, inside the security perimeter.

I started running around, using the noise as my only means of direction. Within a couple of minutes, I saw all the Police vehicles parked around Pope’s Square.

“Back off!” One of the armed Police officers ordered me. Just then, alerted by the noise, Vicky turned around and spotted me. “Alma!”

Relying on the thought that the Police wouldn’t shoot at me, I ran up to Vicky. She was weeping as she pointed to the centre of the small park. I followed her finger and saw him. His face was bloodied, most likely from a nose bleed, and he was wearing an explosive belt, but it was closer to a vest. I wanted to scream, to shout or even cry, but I stood there looking at him with big eyes and no sound coming out my open mouth.

Dave finally raised his eyes from the ground, and he saw me looking at him in fear. His face broke and I could see him bite his lip as not to cry. I wanted to let him know that I was not afraid of him, but afraid for him, but then DS Rayburn grabbed me the collar of my coat and pulled me back.

“What on earth are you doing here, Alma?” DS Rayburn hissed.

“David is innocent, he’s not the bomb maker. It’s Nadia!” I jabbered nervously as I caught another glimpse of David from afar. He was alone, bloodied and crying, and nobody seemed to care.

“He’s wearing an explosive vest, Alma,” DS Rayburn said softly, almost condescendingly as she rubbed my arm. “He’s played us all, not just you,” she murmured, as if that would reassure me.

As I was about to yell at there, DCI Sharma arrived and started talking to Dave on the radio. I quickly walked over to him. There was point in arguing with Rayburn.

Dave was explaining how he’d woken up with the vest on after meeting with Chanel and being beaten up by Luke Aikens’ men.

“He’s lying!” DS Rayburn spat out, looking at David with hate. “He’s been lying to us all along!”

“He isn’t fucking lying!” I interjected, tired of Louise’s behaviour. “Just ask Chanel Dyson, I could bring you to her!” DCI Sharma listened but didn’t seem to care all too much. I guess my credibility was very low right now. I was about to tell I had Chanel locked up, when David spoke again on the radio.

“His men, they broke into my flat. They tampered with my gun, the Makarov.” Dave insisted, his voice never faltering. “Just ask Vicky or Alma, they know.”

DS Rayburn was about to protest, but DCI Sharma decided to comply with David’s demand. “What is he talking about?” He asked us.

“The other day, they went to have dinner at my house and he had that wound on the right side of his brain.” Vicky explained, not bothering to pause and breathe. We didn’t have that luxury right now.

“That afternoon, I had gone to his flat and found him lying on the ground. He’d tried to shoot himself, but the bullets, they had been replaced by blanks,” I detailed Vicky’s story further. “Why would he have used a blank?” I asked rhetorically. “The only answer is that he didn’t know,” I added quickly. DCI Sharma nodded at us before talking on the radio again.

“We’ve just been told you’re suicidal, and now here you are in a suicide vest,” DCI Sharma calmly spoke over the radio, distorting our words.

“Aikens has the pistol,” David adds, pleadingly. “But I still have the bullets. That’s all the proof you need.” I dared looking at him again although I shouldn’t have. His arm, the one whose thumb was scotched to the switch, was trembling. Hell, his whole body was trembling because he was verge of crying. It simultaneously broke my heart and drove me mad.

“We know you broke into Julia Montague’s flat!” DS Rayburn announced accusingly over the radio, having taken it from DCI Sharma without me noticing.

Dave was slowly shaking his head, looking panicked before tears started flowing from his eyes. He explained through the sobs that he couldn’t trust Security Services so that’s why he had retrieved the kompromat. “It’s in my flat, in the downstairs bathroom above the spotlight.” Dave told DCI Sharma, who immediately asked for permission to search.

I turned around, away from the Police so they wouldn’t see my expression. What was he doing? He didn’t have the kompromat. I knew it because I had it! I turned towards David again and saw him make a weird gesture I didn’t understand, but Sharma changed channels on the radio.

“Tell the Police to hold back and not tamper with the apartment,” Dave asked Sharma, almost begging. I didn’t immediately understand what was happening until a couple of minutes later when the Police announced they had caught a man fitting Longcross’ description and that he was now in custody.

Next to me, Vicky instinctively grabbed my hand and squeezed it, celebrating this small victory but I saw DS Rayburn order the XPO team to hold off and I knew this was far from being won.

The radio emitted a small buzz and I heard Dave’s desperate voice again. “I don’t want anyone here getting hurt. My hand’s aching on the DMS,” David cried. “I want to talk to my wife, it’s maybe the last chance I get. Please.”

DCI Sharma seemed to hesitate for a couple of seconds before handing Vicky the radio and teaching her how to use it. I removed my hand from Vicky’s and walked back a little, wanting to give them some privacy but it was of little use because the radio was turned on too loud.

Dave was apologizing for having let her down. “I’m sorry I stopped being the man you loved because of what the war did to me,” David babbled rapidly, aware he didn’t have much time. Though his words weren’t directed at me, it broke my heart that even in such a situation, David still felt the need to apologize. “I failed as a husband and as a father, and that is the worst thing.” After those words, I forced my brain to lock out the rest of the conversation. I couldn’t take it, I wasn’t strong enough. But then Vicky handed me the radio and I stood there frozen.

“Alma, love,” Dave said softly, as if trying to calm me down. Behind me, I could hear Vicky urging Sharma and Rayburn to help him. “I know you know I lied to you, but it was real for me. My feelings for you, they’re real.” Dave’s voice faltered and I swallowed the saliva in my mouth to keep me from crying as well.

“It was real for me too, David,” I replied, hoping he could see me grin from the distance. “It still is.” DS Rayburn ripped the radio from my hand before I could hear David’s response. I wanted to throw a fit, but then I noticed one of the men from XPO walking towards David, protected by ballistic shields. Vicky had managed to convince them and for the first time, I found myself believing this might end well. This time, it was me who took Vicky’s hand and squeezed it.

The examination was taking a long time and from the distance, I wasn’t able to hear anything which just added to my aggravation. How sophisticated was the bomb? Could it be diffused? Would David be okay?

The man from XPO finally started walking back to us after around ten minutes but hearing David beg him to come back was too much for me and I couldn’t help the tears that escaped my eyes.

Daniel Chung, that was the man’s name, went to talk with DCI Sharma and DS Rayburn. I wanted to listen in on them, but Vicky pulled me back abruptly. “I’m going there, Alma,” she announced with a determined voice and it took me a few seconds to understand what ‘there’ meant.

“You cannot do that,” I blurted out when I finally understood. “If it goes off, Charlie and Ella loose both their parents. You cannot do that, Vicky!” I spoke quickly, reasoning with her and her face fell, realizing I was right.

I was only able to hear Daniel say there was an extremely high risk of detonation, before Sampson took over the radio talk. She coldly asked Dave if there were other bombers at large, if other attacks were planned and who’d made the bomb, but Dave just kept shaking his head, saying he didn’t know.

“I already told them, Sampson,” I interrupted rudely but we didn’t have time for niceties. “Nadia is the bomb maker, Chanel told me as much.” But just like the other Police officers, Sampson entirely ignored my words and asked for everyone to pull off.

Understanding what those words meant, I almost fainted. I knew the critical shot was authorized but I didn’t believe they’d actually resolve to that until now. “No, this can’t be it.” I started weeping quietly. Sampson put her arm around me to bring me behind the fence but I knew what would happen if I did. Without thinking it through, I pulled away from her and started running to David.

[novacabtaxi]

Everyone Loves Anna Shay, ‘Bling Empire’s Uber-Rich, Unbothered Queen

If you’ve binged Bling Empire already, then you’ll agree that Anna Shay is easily the most iconic person on the show.

For those who might not be up to speed with who Anna Shay is or even the phenomenon that is , let me get you up to speed: Bling Empire is an eight-part reality series that follows the lifestyles of the wealthy Asian elites residing in Los Angeles. To make sense of it, your best off thinking of the series as the reality TV version of Crazy Rich Asians, Selling Sunset on steroids, and absolutely everything Real Housewives wishes it was.

Amongst the cast is an array of Asian and Asian-American socialites who have each come into wealth in their own ways. For example, new money Christine Chiu is married to a popular plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, who just so happens to be a direct descendant of the Song dynasty, too. Meanwhile, Kane Lim is the son of Singaporean billionaires, who beyond being in the real estate, shipping and oil sectors, also “own the shopping malls you go into in South East Asia”.

For some balance, model Kevin Taejin Kreider is thrown into the mix to act as the everyman, who lives in a share house while his millionaire and billionaire friends casually drop $19,000 on hotel rooms. But then there is Anna Shay — the oldest, wisest, and, most importantly, the richest member of the cast, who is wildly entertaining without even trying.

Whether it’s her whizzing off to Paris because she feels like dining at her favourite restaurant, or having penis pumps laying around her house be the only cause for her drama-fuelled storylines, Anna Shay is everything I want to be when I grow up.

But what exactly makes Anna Shay so iconic? Let’s dissect.

2020 brought us Joe Exotic. 2021 has gifted us with Anna Shay.

It is now clear to me 2021 is going to be amazing. #blingempire pic.twitter.com/rlRakjxvXM

— Kim Ber (@indiekimmy) January 18, 2021

Who Is Anna Shay And How Is She SO Rich?

Anna Shay is one of the main cast members on Bling Empire, and, by a significant amount, the most wealthy of the group.

The 60-year-old is American, Japanese and Russian, and the child of billionaires, Edward Shay and Ai-San Shay. Her parents found their wealth in arms trade, with their company being later sold in 2006 for $1.2 billion in cold, hard cash.

Kane, a cast member on the show who is also the child of billionaires, described Anna as “super, super-wealthy” as “her money comes from weapons [with] her father selling bombs, guns, and defence technology [that’s] worth, like, a few billion”.

after watching episode 1 of bling empire i’ve decided Anna Shay is who i want to be when i grow up

— sexually active shut-in (@emoveganslut) January 15, 2021

Watching #blingempire I now realise that my ideal career is “daughter of an arms dealer”.

— Camilla Blackett (@camillard) January 18, 2021

Specifically, Edward Shay founded, and created his billion dollar fortune through, Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE) in 1955, which is described as an “architectural and engineering firm [that assisted] the US government effort to rebuild Asia in the wake of WWII”.

After his death in 1995, Anna and her sibling inherited their father’s shares and sold them off to Lockheed Martin in 2006 in an all-cash deal. This means Anna Shay’s personal net worth sits around the $600 million mark, which is about $400 million more than the second-richest star on the show, denim empire heiress and the woman with the placenta Anna wanted, Cherie Chan.

While Anna is not currently married, she’s been divorced four times (iconic) and has one son in Kenny Kemp, a 27-year-old with a $500,000 collection of glass bongs (also, very iconic). Icons breed icons, clearly.

Why Is Anna Shay So Damn Iconic?

I just wanna say: I C O N I C#blingempire #blingempirenetflix #annashay pic.twitter.com/jRPeEQz3I7

— Lady Trashington (@BigFabi_) January 18, 2021

When we first meet Anna Shay on Bling Empire, she is literally dressed in a ballgown and throwing a sledgehammer at her walk-in closet wall. But actions like this aren’t even a one-off — this chaotic introduction is basically the exact energy Anna Shay exudes throughout the rest of the series, too.

If Anna Shay is one thing beyond being crazy rich, it’s being impressively unbothered about quite literally everything. Not once throughout Bling Empire does Anna ever seem troubled by the events happening around her — even when Kim Lee and Guy Tang snoop through her home and throw her penis pump out the window.

The simple fact is Anna is so rich, so well-off, and so comfortable with her life that she doesn’t care what people think or do around her. For example, a huge storyline in Bling Empire is Anna’s “feud” with Christine, who seems adamant on proving she’s better than Anna for the entire season.

Christine wears certain jewellery in an attempt to get a rise out of Anna, which fails. Christine tries to flex that she stays in a certain presidential suite when she’s in Paris, but Anna doesn’t care. Instead of giving Christine any of the reaction she wants, Anna simply calmly says in her confessional that “she cannot compete with what I was born into”.

I mean, think about when, at her own dinner party when Christine is being annoying as hell, Anna simply moves her to the end of the table because she just can’t be fucked speaking to her or dealing with her drama. Iconic.

“She can never compete with what I was born into”….This is what you call classy wealthy shade

. Love her… Anna Shay is fast becoming a fav of mine and I’m only on episode 2

#BlingEmpireNetflix #blingempire pic.twitter.com/Vj8mRwqkd8

— Ms_LVW (@Vonn69) January 18, 2021

But beyond being an unbothered queen, Anna Shay is also extremely generous, a great friend to everyone on the show, and always delivers the best one-liners.

Take, when it’s her friend Kelly Mi Li’s birthday, and Anna flies Kelly and her shitty boyfriend, Andrew, to Paris (first class, of course) just to eat at her favourite restaurant, for example.

While in Paris, as Andrew sleeps off his jet lag, Anna takes Kelly out to buy her a friendship ring for her birthday, which causes drama. Andrew, who is basically just verbally abusing Kelly via speaker phone, ends up calling Kelly and berates her for leaving him as he slept.

In response, Anna constantly tells Kelly she deserves better, and just puts it bluntly for everyone at home who may be in a similar situation: “There ain’t no dick that good”.

Forget Emily in Paris, I want Anna in Paris. #BlingEmpire pic.twitter.com/yTYeO85s0E

— Sophie Vershbow (@svershbow) January 18, 2021

And just like that: Anna Shay became reality TV gold.

#BlingEmpire pic.twitter.com/0rpehfQ0JR

— Angel Huracha (@AngelHuracha) January 15, 2021

Anna also buys Kevin a new wardrobe without a second thought, dishes out helpful advice only a 60-year-old daughter of an arms dealer can, and doesn’t even raise her voice when Kim and Guy disrespect her after she opens her home to them for a spa day.

Instead, Anna simply expresses her disappointment in them and continues on her merry, unbothered, rich way. As she should.

Is Anna Shay Really That Iconic In Real-Life?

Simply put, yes. Anna Shay seems to be exactly who she is on camera in real-life.

After Bling Empire started booming, Oprah Mag interviewed the star and Anna’s responses only worked to solidify her icon status. For example, when asked about what she did with her Netflix cheques from Bling Empire, Anna shared she was “confused” by the whole thing so she never even cashed them. Goals.

“It was so confusing when I got the checks. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t cash them, then I got in trouble for not cashing them,” Anna shared in her interview. “I have them in a savings account. I’d like to have a party some time. I don’t think the money belongs to me. I think it belongs to the crew that had to put up with me.”

As Anna said herself on Bling Empire, her father never wanted her to have to work, which explains why she was so confused about the concept of working and getting paid for that work. Again, goals.

Anna from #BlingEmpire is my new fav reality star pic.twitter.com/UmEOFtAM4o

— Melissa Stetten (@MelissaStetten) January 17, 2021

In the same interview, Anna was asked about Crazy Rich Asians and the ways in which her upbringing was similar, but she shared that while she hasn’t seen the film, she acknowledges her privilege.

“I didn’t watch it. I was going to say, ‘I live it’ but I thought that would be too snobbish,” she continued. “In the world I was raised in, ‘crazy’ is not a good word to put next to the lifestyle I was born into. I didn’t do anything except be born. My mother said, ‘You were born in a crystal ball with a silver spoon.’”

But it’s the answers like this that makes Anna Shay so likeable despite her ridiculous amounts of money. She knows she’s wealthy, and owns it, yet it’s not her entire personality. I mean, that and her clear, but classy, distaste for Christine, of course.

All in favour of skipping Anna Shay’s house when we eventually eat the rich, say I.

You can stream ‘Bling Empire’ on Netflix now.

Michelle Rennex is a senior writer at Junkee. She tweets at @michellerennex.

from TAXI NEAR ME https://taxi.nearme.host/everyone-loves-anna-shay-bling-empires-uber-rich-unbothered-queen/

[efurujr]

Tourmates Jhené Aiko & Willow Smith Discuss Mushrooms, Magic & Industry Misogyny With Billboard

On a hot late-October evening at a rustic-chic Sunset Strip restaurant, Jhené Aiko lifts and considers a truffle fry before nimbly popping it into her mouth. Next to her, Willow Smith grabs four and crams them all in at once, so engaged in a discussion with Aiko about fantastical art that she exclaims, mid-bite, “Magic is all around us!” Aiko nods: “I learned that on mushrooms.” Smith fervently nods back: “Mother Nature did it for a reason: ‘Here’s something to woke ya!’”

Starting Nov. 14, Smith will support Aiko on her North American Trip Tour, named after Aiko’s latest album (and its accompanying short film), a sprawling ­psychedelic R&B concept piece about overcoming grief that reached No. 1 on the Top R&B Albumschart. Willow’s surprise second LP, The 1st -- released on Halloween, which is also her birthday -- swirls proggy compositions with left-field folk and soul.

Together, Aiko and Smith seem to embody a new breed of modern hippie: Aiko, 29, a self-proclaimed “NPR girl” in a loose sky-blue frock, steeping her ­chamomile tea bag with guru-like calm, and Smith, 17, vibrating with energy, in bell-bottom jeans and a black tee that reads in white text, “Got consent?”

But despite their age gap -- and the fact that one woman has been a single mother for nine years and the other is, well, the teenage daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith -- Aiko and Smith have much more in common than an interest in the supernatural. Both were born, raised and home-schooled in Los Angeles. Both were signed as children and marketed to the mainstream -- Aiko as an adjunct member of R&B boy band B2K, and Smith as an actress (2007’s I Am Legend), then as a kiddie-pop ­star with 2010’s “Whip My Hair,” which peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Then, with money and fame hanging in the ­balance, they each walked away. Aiko took about six years off before starting an alt-R&B solo career flexible enough to allow for esoteric side projects like Twenty88 -- her duo with boyfriend Big Sean, whose self-titled album Aiko has described as ­“combining stuff like robots and sex” -- and a forthcoming poetry book titled Trip. Willow returned in 2015 with avant-garde soul album ARDIPITHECUS, and often posts genre-flouting ­collaborations on SoundCloud and a now-defunct YouTube channel (“Frequencies by Willow”) with everyone from The Internet’s Syd to her brother Jaden.

As plates of pasta arrive, Aiko and Smith dive into a wide-ranging ­conversation, often completing each ­other’s sentences as they discuss their respective decisions to, as Smith puts it, “take control of not just my music, but my life -- if shit goes south, it’s my fault, but if it goes good, that’s mine too,” and ­affirming their vows as artists to, in Aiko’s words, “usher in new ways of thinking.”

You last toured together in 2014. Willow, you were 14. What was that like for you?

Willow Smith: Coming out of the “Whip My Hair” days, that was the first time I’d ever toured with artists I listen to [in addition to Aiko, Syd and SZA]. I’d started playing guitar, and that tour really solidified: “OK, I want to be a live musician, to have a music career, for real.” Being around people who were so confident and so set in their artistry was a huge step in the direction of understanding who I really am.

Jhené Aiko: We did that for each other. I’d never ­considered myself a ­performer, but now I’m super into how I present these songs. This time, I want to take the audience on a  journey, have them feel what I went through -- I want them to think they’re tripping balls. People like Willow and me, we’re super connected to this music and our message. We really want to change the world.

Jhené, what made her right for that tour three years ago?

Aiko: It’s crazy because just following her career and social media, I felt connected to her, especially seeing her talk about being an indigo and a star seed. I saw so much of myself in her.

Smith: Yeah. I’ve ­followed your music from the ­beginning and always loved how angelic and sultry your voice is. So when I heard that you wanted me on, I was like, “Whoaaa!”

Wait, let’s rewind a ­second. What’s this ­“indigo” thing?

Aiko: So if you look up in the night sky and see this light that’s flashing colors, that’s Sirius. It’s a star system, and it looks like there’s a party going on. What I like to believe in my dreams and imagination is, there’s some of us on Earth that come from there, indigos and star seeds, who are hyper ­sensitive to feelings and ­seasons, and in tune with each other without even trying --

Smith: Or even knowing. I’ve read and experienced that many indigos struggle with addiction and heartbreaking circumstances because this reality is not familiar to them. The density of the third dimension is so heavy on their soul, and they yearn to be light, to be in the stars. So you can --

Aiko: Free yourself from the physical and just be pure energy. I started singing when I was really young too, and touring when I was 12, so those were things I would think about and wanted to talk about, but I was home-schooled, so I didn't have many friends on the same level.

Willow, you were home-schooled too, right?

Smith: All my life, except from age 12 to 13 when a ­family friend was like, “Come to school with me. I’ll help you out.” But I live in the mountains, away from the city, far from people. It was literally me and Jaden in nature hitting cactuses with sticks, so school was really overwhelming. I was that girl: backpack half open, running through the halls, stressed. So I got to see firsthand how it shapes your psyche -- like how you’re always looking for approval. That’s the hugest thing.

Aiko: I started home school in the middle of seventh grade. I loved schoolwork, but the social part was too much for me. I’m a hermit, still. My family goes out, and I’m like, “I’ll be home staring at the wall ’cause I like it.” The past couple years ­working on Trip, I’d go on road trips or to ­festivals by myself, meet other ­wanderers. That’s why we’re doing this tour -- we’re on that wavelength.

I get the sense that there’s something deeper than a big sis, little sis thing going on here...

Aiko: Willow’s a being that has been here before, ­obviously. I don’t get age. I mean, I have a 9-year-old daughter who has this pure knowledge, and I learn so much from her. I feel like this is my 20th life because from the first moment I can remember, I’ve been over the kid things.

Smith: Yeah, I understand. I don’t know what it is. I felt that way too.

Have you given any thought to how you might spend downtime together on this tour?

Aiko: I want to make music. I’ll have a studio on my bus, and she can come through with her guitar. I’ve also been doing a group meditation the day of a show. I’m reading The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, and he talks about setting your intention. Mine is to calm people, but I get really nervous onstage.

Smith: What I think is really going to happen on this tour is, like, a feminine energy super bomb. This tour is going to be so potently ­feminine it’s going to warm your heart.

You’re both into poetry and philosophy. What about a book exchange?

Aiko: A book club!

Smith: I have always wanted to be in a book club. My entry would be The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. It’s about these sisters who lived a long time ago and this tradition of when the women ­menstruated, they’d all go into the red tent together. They’d have these crazy conversations and spiritual ceremonies and shamanic experiences. It’s about female camaraderie in ­terrible times.

Aiko: Mine is Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s a poet and monk from Vietnam. He tells ­beautiful stories to get across very simple messages. Like how people get agitated in ­traffic -- he teaches you to take each red light as a chance to breathe deeply.

I can see you two ­sharing music, too. Who’s an artist more people should know about?

Aiko: Michael Franks, a jazz artist from the ’70s. His voice is like butter, and his writing? So clever. I love jazz because of the range of emotion it can take you through in one track. I’m a fan of John Mayer for the same reason. For Trip, he came in with, like, 50 guitars, and for hours he was coming up with song ideas and melodies one after the other, nonstop.

Smith: Cameron Graves. He plays with Kamasi Washington, and his Planetary Princealbum is the epitome of each musician showing their uniqueness. Not a lot of my peers are open to music that doesn't have vocals.

Aiko: That’s my favorite. I think we should do a jazz album.

Smith: Let’s! Honestly, we can get a bunch of musicians in a room and just vibe out.

You were both signed young and could have followed very ­traditional career paths, but you took time off and came back to the business on your own terms. What was the moment you decided: “This is my own trip?”

Smith: When I said no to Annie [in 2013]. The script was written, we had paid people, the production was going to happen. A lot of people were putting pressure on me, and I was like, “I have to take the control.” That was scary, standing up to ­executives who were like, “What? We spent this amount of money. Mmm, you’re doing it.” And I was like, “No, I’m not going to. Sorry.”

Aiko: I was turning 16, and my label contract was up. Everyone assumed I was going to re-sign, but I knew that wasn't who I was going to be as an artist -- I wasn't satisfied singing songs other people wrote. Then when I was 20, I got pregnant. I became a waitress at a vegan cafe but was going through all these new things as a mom and wanted to make music about it. So I quit, and from then on, it was like, “No, this is my vision. You have absolutely nothing to do with this art.”

As young women of color in an industry that is hard on women and on ­people of color, where do you think that surge of ­confidence came from?

Smith: You have to see other black women doing them. That’s the only way. I went on tour with my mom when I was Jhené’s daughter’s age, and it was so empowering and beautiful.

Aiko: I never saw a ­distinction between a man and a woman. My ­grandparents and my mother were great examples of men and women, and they taught me ­equality. So I would fight with boys and wear my cousin’s clothes. I would do whatever I wanted, and that’s where I still stand today.

Smith: If you truly believe in equality, you know it up here. [Taps forehead.] It’s how you think. There’s a lot of women doing their thing, ­expressing themselves in ways I feel weren't possible before. At the same time, a lot of men still spit ­misogyny like it’s nothing. It’s a forever journey.

Women have been ­banding together lately to expose predators in the entertainment ­industry…

Smith: Yeah, and our president. Ahhhhhh! The creepiest dude of all!

Aiko: I’m pleased people are brave enough to come ­forward, because it ­encourages others. I’ve always been protected. My mom was my manager. Now my older sister is. Even when I’ve been in sketchy ­environments, ­someone always had my back. That’s important. In these stories these women are telling, there’s no real friends around. I have definitely experienced male ego...

Smith: And I’ve ran into situations with white men specifically who are like, “Black girls don’t usually look like you,” or, “Whoa, your hair is lying down. That’s crazy, you actually look pretty!”

What do you want the future of young women in art to look like?

Smith: I don’t want there to always be this stigma of the “female” artist. “Oh, what does it feel like to be a female doing something?” That hurts me.

Aiko: Because of that, a lot of young girls ­compare ­themselves to others. Growing up, people wanted me to do choreography. If it wasn't for a supportive mother, I would have been put in the same boot camp. You were born into your own lane -- don’t let anyone push you into theirs. I’m not going to stop evolving until I’m 80. Like, I want to go back to school for astrophysics.

Smith: The arts and the ­sciences! That’s my whole life. In the future, I think there’ll be a new kind of person who does both. Like... an imagineer!

Aiko: See? I mean, clearly, she’s in her own lane.

© Billboard

 Written By Chris Martins / Photography By Nate Hoffman

[jjaywmac]

This week, I have had a lot of friends reach out to me.  Great.  Because it is rather bleak in this small apartment in Paris.  I have my favorite songs playing on Spotify; Missy is close by; and a lot of projects in the works, so I stay busy.  AND, I have WiFi (FINALLY) and favorite programs on the television (BBC and CNN).  So, I am NOT bored.  Quite the contrary.  But, no matter how you look at it, this is not my idea of the way to see Paris during my birthday 2020.  Haha.  But this surreal event will begin to move on at some point, so I have to “gut up” while I am going through the days.  As do all of us. 

I have spent a lot of time upgrading my WordPress “Jayspeak” site, so that I now have a link to a “Voluntary Contributions” and “Donations” for readers to help me fund this project.  It is hard to be creative when you’re worried about money.  And, I am worried about money (along with my health).  So, I am considering this creative project “Jayspeak” a business and plan to develop it for my readers and followers.  Let’s face it, it is not every day that a woman, 83 and alone, ups and moves to Paris, France, to live and learn.  Haha.  It even sounds crazy to me!!  Well, actually, there have been a lot of problems, and EVERYTHING is expensive.  Duh.  …which takes me to my birthday, happening on Monday.  March 30, 1937.  Ugh.  I am going to spend some time with Lillie.  Who?  Lillie Westmoreland, my grandmother.  Hang in there!  I will try to make it interesting.  Jay (also known as “Janet Tallulah Jewell”) is speaking. 

One of my friends this week told me this, and I have thought about it a lot.  

“… we all carry the blood of our ancestors, and they survived through much more.”

Thus, I thought about “Lillie”.  And, I have been thinking about her ever since.  WHO?  What?  Lillie Westmoreland.  WHY?  What did she survive?  I don’t know.  This is what I know, sorta. This is her picture.  I don’t know how old she was when this was taken.  My niece, Deb Prince Kroll, colorized it.  She looks to be around 60 to me.  

She was born into a family with 11 (COUNT THEM) – eleven!!!!!! children.  I don’t know where she was in the line-up.  Not oldest; not youngest.  I don’t know. I cannot imagine 10 brothers and sisters in the house.  Help!!!!!   They were not rich.  They were not poor.  I don’t know.  They lived in Royston, Georgia.  VERY SMALL TOWN.  Ugh.  She was born on September 12, 1840.  OK, let’s pause for a money to find out what was happening in the world in 1880. This is her father’s obituary that was in the Royston papers at the time of his death.  He was a Baptist preacher.  (no comment)

Seaborn Westmoreland Obit

Hello, Wikipedia!!! Help.

It was a Sunday.  Lillie was born (probably at home) on a Sunday, in Royston, Georgia.  The United States had five Presidents during the decade, the most since the 1840s. They were Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison.  On that day, James A. Garfield was president.  This is what I found interesting about him.

“At the 1880 Republican Convention, Garfield failed to win the Presidential nomination for his friend John Sherman. Finally, on the 36th ballot, Garfield himself became the “dark horse” nominee.  By a margin of only 10,000 popular votes, Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.

Major power political disputes back then – same as now.  As President, Garfield strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and dispenser of patronage in New York. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a list of appointments including many of Conkling’s friends, he named Conkling’s arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal.  But Garfield would not submit: “This…will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States…. shall the principal port of entry … be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator.”  Conkling maneuvered to have the Senate confirm Garfield’s uncontested nominations and adjourn without acting on Robertson. Garfield countered by withdrawing all nominations except Robertson’s; the Senators would have to confirm him or sacrifice all the appointments of Conkling’s friends.  In a final desperate move, Conkling and his fellow-Senator from New York resigned, confident that their legislature would vindicate their stand and re-elect them. Instead, the legislature elected two other men; the Senate confirmed Robertson. Garfield’s victory was complete.

In foreign affairs, Garfield’s Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President.  Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage.

That said, I doubt the Lillie’s family was interested in politics or in the world at large, during those day.  No radios or television.  This was a large family, living in a small town in the Deep South.  Just trying to survive during the depression with a large family (Today, with DNA testing, I have confirmed by Ancestry.com that I have LOTS of cousins and cousins of cousins – especially with 11 kids growing up and having kids – black and white.  Hey, that was the South during those years.  How?  I don’t know how. Get over it!  

“The 1890s was the ten-year period from the years 1890 to 1899.   In the United States, the 1890s were marked by a severe economic depression sparked by the Panic of 1893, as well as several strikes in the industrial workforce. The decade saw much of the development of the automobile.  The period was sometimes referred to as the “Mauve Decade” – because William Henry Perkin’s aniline dye allowed the widespread use of that colour in fashion – and also as the “Gay Nineties”, referring to the fact that it was full of merriment and optimism. The phrase, “The Gay Nineties,” was not coined until the 1920s. This decade was also part of the Gilded Age, a phrase coined by Mark Twain, alluding to the seemingly profitable era that was riddled with crime and poverty.” – Wikipedia

Here is another picture.  I think she is 16.

She would have been 16 in 1896, and there were football teams at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech.  I know she played baseball with Ty Cobb in Royston.  He was a friend of hers.   She married a lawyer, Glen Dorough, who was also living in Royston.  I know she dreamed of being an actress and had “shows” in the family back yard and would present “pretend stories” to the neighbors in the afternoon presentation.  She would string a sheet on a clothesline for a curtain.  Her father has been described as a “character” with a good personality.  I don’t know much about her mother. 

I don’t know how old Lillie was when she got married.  Young, I think.  Very young.   I do know that she and Glenn had five little girls.  Mother was #2, I think.  Her name was Anna Louise Dorough when she was in college.  Quite a flirt with a good personality.

Ruth was the oldest.  Then, Mother (Anna Louise).  Then, Lillian.  Then, Edna (she died when she was 21, from peritonitis).  Then Rose (the baby).   They were all in their 90’s when they died.  Papa Dorough (Glenn) died of cancer on November 19, 1940.  He was 65.  Lillie was 60.  I still remember the funeral.  Mother sent all of us to the movies so we would not be at the funeral.  But, before I went to the movies, I visited that living room and studied the casket.  I can still remember that day in my mind’s eye.  I can still see the flowers surrounding the coffin in the living room of the Mama Dorough’s boarding house on Green Street in Gainesville, Georgia (my home town).   I don’t know much about Glen. 

Lillie was 45 when her father died, November 7, 1935.  I was born in 1937, so Lillie was still rather young when I was born.  Mother was 35 when I was born.  So she was 33 when her grandfather died.  I think I have all of these ages wrong.  I keep trying to figure out how young Lillie was when she married Glenn, but I am confused.  My brain needs more exercise.  But, if Lillie was born in 1880 and her father died in 1935 and I was born in 1937……  That is where I get confused.  I think ALL of everyone is too young for ALL of this.  And, they all Died VERY OLD.  Amazing.  I want that blood of my ancestors in my veins, especially now that I want time to LIVE and explore Paris.  Haha.

At some point, Lillie started running a “boarding house” and helped with income, taking in “boarders”.  I think they were more into survival mode than what was going in the world.  Newspapers?  College?  Marriages?  I don’t know.  The flu?  Plagues?  Doctors? Medicine?  I don’t know. SEE. That is what will happen to me.  My children and grandchildren will know that I existed, but they won’t know much else.  I have a lot of trouble with that part – the disinterest.    But, enough about me, back to Lillie…

She at some point moved to Atlanta, still making money by taking in “boarders”, cleaning rooms and preparing all meals.  Quite industrious and entrepreneurial, especially when the South was going through a terrible depression. 

I loved Mama Dorough.  She was witty and loved jokes.  She would “chuckle”.  Remember “chuckles”.  Do people still chuckle?   She loved all of my kids, especially Craig and Blake.  She loved me.  She loved ALL of us.  Full of lots of love.  She loved her boarders.  They loved her.  How blessed I was to have her as my role model. At some point, I got concerned because the family did not know a lot about Lillie’s life, so I got some tapes and recorded my conversations with her.  I asked her about her life growing up.  She was reticent to talk about it.  But I got a lot from her.  I need to have help transcribing those tapes.  It is on my long list of projects for “someday”.  I seemed to be the only one who cared.  Debby (my niece) knows a lot more than I do.  She is interested in all of it. 

Lillie died March 6, 1992 at the age of 111.  She would have been 112 on September 12, 1992.  All of her daughters (except for Edna) lived to be in their 90’s. 

So, my hope is that I have Lillie’s blood in my veins and God knows what all she survived!  No one seemed to ask during those days.  “It was not discussed”.  Same as today.  No one is asking about me.  What I have survived. Or that my kids have survived.  Or that my grandkids have survived at their young ages.  They all have survived a LOT. 

Like each one of you.  But we are ALIVE.  Let’s stay that way.  So, on Monday, I shall celebrate Lillie Westmoreland, her life and her times.  And, all she survived.  And her wonderful spirit!  May it continue to live in me, in my blood, in my veins. 

Best, Jay 

(without hair and make-up.  Sorry, but it is recent and in lockdown.  So, you get the picture of a current selfie!!  Take note of the “support Jayspeak” button. To all I offend with my “support” button, I apologize in advance.  But, you move to Paris by yourself when you turn 83 and survive a pandemic!!!  This is not a requirement.  It is a voluntary simple  support button.  You can also do any multiple of 50, like 25 (I think), or 100 or 150 or …..  i hope it works.  Let me know if anyone has problems with it.  It should link with my PayPal account.  But, you also have to have a PayPal account, (I think).   So, this is a work in process.  Haha.   Sorry.

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ALIVE IN MY HEART! LILLIE! This week, I have had a lot of friends reach out to me.  Great.  Because it is rather bleak in this small apartment in Paris.