#he owned some records but elvis ate them

[doesnotloveyou]

he literally didn't own any of those things they were on loan from the dept 😂 he was canonically broke/underpaid and he desperately needed trauma therapy starting with Vietnam, breezing through his estranged wife and son, his myriad disaster girlfriends, witnessed suicides/murders, manslaughter, survivor's guilt, and culminating in his dissociative identity disorder

if you offered me twice his salary I still wouldn't be him dear god it isn't worth it, caroline was right. sometimes i think he married caitlin just so he could live in a house again lol

Sonny Crockett from 80s Miami Vice lived my ideal lifestyle. It’s the only fictional character I’m jealous of like Don Johnson played him so iconically.

Sonny had great hair, lived on a luxurious yacht, had a pet alligator named Elvis, wore Versace and Armani suits everyday, drove Lamborghinis and Ferraris, had stylish friends, ate at the best restaurants in Miami, dated hot girls and lived in a place where the temperature is perfect all year round.

And all on a cop’s salary. Idk how he did it but it was the 80s I guess. When ppl say their life goal is to be a doctor or a lawyer I’m just like um I would rather be Crockett and feel my hair blow in the salty ocean breeze everyday. Miami Vice was The Influencer-esque show before all that was even a thing. It was like a high-end fashion catalogue and a rich lifestyle guide rolled into one.

[mooodyblue]

Here's a request idea: E has been going through a stressful time (especially with the Colonel breathing down his neck) and hasn't regressed in a while, so when he does regress, he goes really deep into babyspace for at least a few days. So you ask Jerry to come over and help care for him since you can't take care of him all by yourself when he's this small? Thanks!

ty for the request!! hope you enjoy :) ty for help @kiankiwi <3

warnings: mentions of a lil bathroom accident (nothing too crazy)

wc: 1.1k

masterlist

monday, he had a show, three shows to be exact. tuesday, he flew back into memphis, the rest of the week he had multiple recording sessions with deadlines to be met. it’s safe to say by the coming weekend, he was exhausted. not to mention, the colonel was coming up with ways to help continuously promote elvis to keep money coming in. the way he was being overworked was worrying you. he hadn’t even regressed in weeks. he’d been close to it on monday on the ride back to the airport, curling up to you in the car and mumbling “‘m tired, momma.”. 

it was saturday when the exhaustion finally hit, waking up with his arms curled around your waist and crying gently into your neck, thumb between his lips. you stirred slightly, feeling the wetness on your neck. looking behind your shoulder, you were greeted by elvis with a look of defeat in his eyes.

“oh honey,” you turned around and sat up to help sit him up, resting against the headboard and pulling him to your chest. “what’s goin’ on in that pretty head of yours?” 

he shook his head, unable to speak his own feelings. “you’re just a little one, aren’t you?” you said while gently rubbing his back. he let out a soft noise and buried himself more into your neck. “is there something momma can do for you? are you able to communicate that with me?” elvis hummed, glancing at the door and then crawling out of your lap. “let’s get you changed for the day.” 

you jumped out of bed and elvis immediately gave you grabby hands, begging to be picked up. as much as you wanted to pick him up and carry him down the steps, you weren’t the strongest person in the world. you’d picked him up numerous times before, but it was a bit of a struggle every time. but you powered through and picked him up, letting out a soft grunt. 

you got him washed up, brushed his teeth, and dressed him for the day. it was a tad bit of a struggle but you managed to do it. you just have to hope he doesn’t have an accident today. after getting him ready for the day, you brought him down to the kitchen for breakfast. you set down eggs for him, letting him do as he wished with them. although he was picky in his headspace, his eating habits were quite opposite from when he was big. you could give him scrambled eggs and he’d actually eat them in comparison to the solid, hard eggs he normally ate. 

his hands dove right into the bowl of eggs, giggling as he shoved some in his mouth then mushing them with his hand. while elvis was eating, you kept his eye on him as you called jerry for help. despite being with elvis for a long time now, there were some things that jerry was could at while he was regressed that you weren’t. you were an expert at the baby talk when he was little, but for some reason, jerry was just better at communicating with him while he was in his smaller headspace. not to mention, he was usually one to take care of him while on tour. 

“he’s just so little…” you said quietly over the phone. you twirled the chord as you watched elvis, sighing. “you gotta help me, jerry. i-i can’t talk to him when he’s this small like you do.”

“what’s he doin’ right now?”

you let out a small laugh, “he’s got his hands in some eggs right now, having the time of his life.”

“that outta keep him preoccupied for a bit, i’ll be over shortly.” 

when you saw the headlights through the window, you let out a gasp. “who’s that, baby?” you asked elvis, pointing at the window. he clapped happily as jerry walked in, smiling at elvis. “look whos here!” 

“jer’!” he squealed, opening his arms out wide.

jerry gave him a hug as if he hadn’t seen him in ages when it’d only been just twenty-four hours. “what’s goin’ on, kiddo? enjoyin’ those eggs?” he asked. elvis took a handful of his eggs and shoved them in jerrys face, eyes begging for him to take a bite. jerry chuckled and let elvis feed him, “thank you!” you were grateful for jerry’s presence and he made your day much easier. he left once elvis was asleep for the night, expecting him to be alright tomorrow.

unfortunately, elvis ended up being stuck in that headspace for a couple days. day three was rough, he was cranky and tired of being small but no matter how hard he tried, his brain just wouldn’t allow him to come out of it. 

he’d been sat on the floor, looking at you with tear filled eyes, begging for something that you just couldn’t figure out. “buntyn, i don’t know what you want.” you said, trying not to have panic in your voice. elvis just let out another whine, kicking his feet in frustration. the sight alone made you want to cry, you just felt so awful. you had no choice but to call jerry again, begging him to come help you as elvis cried in the background. 

once again, jerry came to save the day. elvis brought his hands up jerry, hoping to be picked up. he happily obliged, patting his back as he tried to get him to calm down. “i’m sorry.” you muttered. “he’s just so tired, i don’t think he’s ever gone this long in his headspace before.” 

“no worries, glad i can be a help.” jerry returned a warm smile. “he hasn’t been having any accidents or anything has he?” 

your eyes widened, the thought not even crossing your mind. he’d been fine the last couple of days, alerting you whenever he needed to go. he couldn’t be that deep. “i-”

jerry glanced at elvis, “potty?” he asked.

elvis grew shy, his face going red as he buried his head in jerrys neck. 

“think we just got our answer.” jerry said, “let’s go get you changed.” you followed jerry up the steps, getting everything you needed to change elvis. he was for sure embarrassed, crying as he was cleaned up. jerry did his best to distract him, trying to put a smile on his face while you changed him, “none of that, el. you’re just a yittle one, ya can’t help it. ain’t that right?” he cooed as he pinched his cheek. 

“all done!” you tickled his side, earning a giggle from elvis in return. “that’s my good boy!” you helped sit him up, giving him a forehead kiss and brushing his hair back. “all good?” 

elvis looked into your eyes, giving you a soft smile and nodding. 

you felt your heart melt and looked to jerry, “thank you.” you mouthed. jerry nodded and said his goodbyes once again, leaving you to spend the rest of the day with a tiny elvis, praying that he’d feel better the following day.

[mywifeleftme]

179: Elvis Presley // The Sun Collection

The Sun Collection Elvis Presley 1975, RCA Victor

Is there anything left worth writing about Elvis? Well, people still find smart things to say about Jesus. Getting through all the muck around him took some doing for me, and it was probably the mythic intensity of Nick Tosches and Greil Marcus’s writing on his career (and particularly the Sun Sessions) that gave me a framework for understanding what made him so electric, something more than the pancake-foundationed Engelbert Humperdinck- or Wayne Newton-type Vegas tchotchke he seemed to be. I don’t have a ton to add to the conversation around Presley, but I was curious about how people think about him these days, whether they still have any strong opinions at all. I asked a bunch of friends (and my grandma) to give me their impressions of the King, and their thoughts follow.

18 Takes on the King

“I guess he's like a sexy (not as in attractive, but more like assuming the affectation of sex) Gumby who was the perfect conduit for music producers looking to extract culture from Black communities, can it, and sell it to white America like tinned fish. It's like if Hank Hill had a verbal aphasia and could only stutter vowel sounds, but it somehow still slaps despite the odds.”

“The quintessential model for a pop star who is overtly sexualized but also somehow innocent or naïve. This presentation can range from cool to creepy. Elvis didn’t do it first, but he did it the best to that point and his version came off on the cooler end of that spectrum.”

“Elvis isn’t my thing, but without him I don’t know what ‘90s independent cinema would even be.”

“I have conflicted feelings about Elvis—while I think there's something truly timeless and unique about the timbre of his voice and the way he sings (my family plays his Christmas record on Christmas Day without fail every year), I also recognize that he is overrated in that his material is neither original nor is it particularly revolutionary in any way, and if anything is just a glossed, whitewashed version of music that already existed previously that white audiences couldn’t handle. But ultimately, I do legitimately like listening to his music.”

“I’m not a major Elvis person, but early rock dude who combined gospel/blues with the developing genre of rock. Don’t think he ever claimed to be THE GUY who created the genre and from the little I know, he acknowledged the importance of Black artists in inspiring what he did. Particularly known for his cover of ‘Hound Dog.’ There we go.”

“Elvis Presley, the hip-shaking maestro of rock 'n' roll, could make even a hound dog blush with envy. His voice was smoother than peanut butter on a hot skillet, and his hair was so iconic, it had its own fan club. If music be the food of love, then Elvis was the chef who cooked up a whole lotta heart-throbbing tunes! (ChatGPT lol, sorry, busy day at work!)”

“A bejewelled sex wizard.”

“Elvis Presley allegedly came in his all-leather flight suit during his iconic ‘comeback’ special. He is one of a select few celebrities with a fervently believed rumour of being not-dead. People dress as him and marry other people together. Also, he invented a sandwich. — King Status”

“Mediocre singer who abused women and whose signature sandwich is overrated.”

“His career ate him up, then he ate everything else.”

“The King of Ripping Off Other Artists. My earliest memories of Elvis are my family listening to the Christmas album ad nauseum, but they’re good memories nonetheless. Regardless of how you feel about Elvis, you must admit ‘Jailhouse Rock’ fucking RIPS.”

“White as winter snow pills jam and peanut butter A king on his throne”

“A lot of people dismiss Elvis because of an opinion they've been told to have and have never really critically assessed, and I imagine a lot of people you ask about this will give you the standard take; I'm not going to fault them that, I think a lot of us have opinions like that, it's not really efficient to assess the validity of every single one of our received assumptions.

There's an absolutely dogshit short story by Alice Walker about an Elvis stand-in character and a Mama Lou Thornton stand-in character, which seems to imply that Thornton wrote ‘Hound Dog’ herself and was effectively exploited and that Elvis isn't a real artist because he can't write his own songs, which is a crock of shit because: two Jewish white guys wrote the song for Thornton; she made it a #1 record; and performance IS real artistry and Thornton, like Elvis, was a real artist and interpreted the song in a very powerful way.

The fact is, you listen to that Ed Sullivan ‘Hound Dog’ performance, and it doesn't take much to see how different it is from the original—not ‘better’ or ‘worse’ but very obviously distinct, and if you tell me otherwise you are absolutely approaching it in bad faith and there's no reason for me to even waste my time explaining that to you.

Elvis absolutely kicks the doors down in the opening bar of his version of ‘Hound Dog,’ it sounds extremely dangerous and you can immediately see why he scared parents—he was wild and in-your-face, an extremely prescient innovator who sounded totally unlike anything that came before him no matter what the haters mindlessly repeat, and he WAS a true contender for the title of King of Rock & Roll.”

“My ability to produce an opinion here was contaminated by the Baz Luhrmann movie.”

“apparently influential in bringing some sort of music (maybe it’s dance hall music) to white America but I dunno really

also he died on the toilet

or maybe aliens got him

not sure”

“A man with a good heart, in a physique of timeless beauty that comes along once in a civilization. True to his roots, and the foundation of his time, he kept his focus on God. However, his body and mind went wayward to a decadence not uncharacteristic of the chapter unto which he was born. His Spirit shone through regardless, right to the end.”

“Elvis is America in the sense that his impact was so seismic and society changed so rapidly while he was active that he basically had to become a nostalgia peddler for like, his own vibe in his own time. He went from Little Richard to Michael Bublé in like a year and a half.

He’s a perfect representation of suspended youth in that I think a lot of what makes him so iconic is that all his excesses (Graceland, the Outfits, the Karate, the Sandwiches) are basically a broke 12-year-old boy’s version of what being rich and famous looks like, which objectively rocks.

His best record is a Christmas album which I think is an appropriate celebration and condemnation of his legacy.”

“He was my youth. 😊 He was my exam study music! I loved him and his music and his movies. I still love him!”

179/365

[futurebicon]

Pls can we have something written on when Remus hears Sirius singing for the first time? Maybe when he’s in the shower or something?

There was a tie between Sweet Creature by Harry Styles and Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis so I did both. Also I just really like Sign of the Times by Harry Style and Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson (Also I went off the Glee version of the song because I’ve been binge watching)

This kind of spiraled into something more then I thought it would be but I still kind of like how it turned out.

Very very very brief mention of child abuse and depression.

“Baby” Remus called out as he walked into the house, closing the door softly as he pulled off his shoes. He heard no response from his boyfriend but could hear soft music playing from one of the spare rooms.

“And oh we started, two hearts in one home” someone sang as a guitar played along.

“It’s hard when we argue, we’re both stubborn, I know, oh” the voice continues, the notes flowing perfectly together.

“Sweet Creature, sweet creature, wherever I go, you bring me home” Remus stood in shock listening to his boyfriends voice. Hitting high notes like it was the easiest thing in the world. He walked down the hallway, his footsteps quiet.

He leaned against the door frame of the spare room, the walls holding guitars and records Remus had just thought were decoration or stuff that Sirius had haphazardly bought for fun. He didn’t know that he actually played them.

Sirius was turned away from the entryway, unable to see his boyfriend staring at him in awe.

“Sweet Creature, sweet creature, when I run out of road, you bring me home. You’ll bring me home.” He strummed out the last few notes.

“Didn’t know you could sing” Remus revealed himself. Sirius jumped and spun around.

When he saw his boyfriend he blushed. “Not really”

“Not really? Sirius that was amazing.” Remus exclaimed.

Sirius shrugged his shoulders and blushed harder.

“Baby. That really was amazing.”

Sirius smiled slightly. “Thanks”

“When’d you learn how to play?” He asked walking over and sitting on the leather couch.

“When I was younger. One of the only things were we’re allowed to do other then school and hockey.” Sirius confessed.

“Is that why you don’t sing much?”

Sirius shook his head. “No, it was one of the only things I enjoyed in that house. I don’t really know why I don’t sing a lot.”

“Well can you please play more often for me? You’re voice is beautiful” Remus stood up and kissed his boyfriend. Sirius smiled and nodded.

“Play another” Remus told him “Please?”

“Fine” Sirius groaned sarcastically. Picking up his tan guitar, adjusting himself on the stoll he was sitting on as he placed his guitar in the correct position.

He pulled the guitar pick out from between his teeth, where he had put it when he pulled it out of the strings. He strummed his guitar to make sure all the notes sounded right.

“Wise men say, only fools rush in” he sang as he strummed the tune. Remus smiled as he recognized the age old love song.

“But I can't help falling in love with you”

Remus stayed silent as he listened to the love of his life singing. His eyes closed as he let the sound of his voice surround him.

“Take my whole life too. For I can't help falling in love with you. For I can't help falling in love with you”

Remus opened his eyes and stood up. “I don’t think you understand how much I love you” he said against Sirius’s lips.

***

“James? Are you actually being serious right now?” Finn asked. The guys were all over at the Cubs apartment as the girls had a ‘girls night’. The older kids for some reason trusted with the younger ones.

“No, I’m not kidding. I didn’t know that you had to take the wrapper off the cupcake or muffin until I was 14.”

“Wait how often did you have cupcakes and muffins?”

“I ate a muffin every morning for 8 years”

“How are you even alive?” Dumo exclaimed.

“It’s just paper!”

Sirius rolled his eyes at his best friends stupidity. Stretching to reach behind himself to pick up the guitar that the Cubs had for decoration and to make them look cool.

Remus looked at him and smiled, Sirius sat up and moved to lean against Remus’s side, bending his knees with his feet on the couch.

Sirius tuned the awfully out of tune instrument with quickly. Rolling his eyes at the mistreatment and the fact that they didn’t have any picks.

The guys didn’t hear as he started strumming the guitar, too busy still trying to figure out how James mind worked the way it did.

He hummed until the chorus, too caught up in the familiar peace of the vibration the strings sent through his fingers. Forgetting everyone else in the room.

“Just stop your crying it’s a sign of the times.”

Everyone stopped talking as they heard the voice.

“We gotta get away from here We gotta get away from here. Just stop your crying it’ll be alright They told me that the end is near. We gotta get away from here” He sang out, his fingers gliding across the strings.

Everyone’s had looks of shock while Remus smiled and enjoyed the singing he had grown to love even more.

“We never learn we’ve been here before. Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets? The bullets” he rose his voice high.

“We gotta get away. We got to get away. We got to get away. We got to get away. We got to get away . We got to, we got to, away. We got to, we got to, away. We got to, we got to, away.”

Everyone’s jaws continued to drop lower and lower and he hit higher and higher notes. Holding the last note out for a lot more than a few seconds.

He continued to just strum random but beautiful notes out of the guitar before everyone was snapped out of their shock. James slow clapping.

Sirius turned red as he realized what had happened. He put the guitar on the grounded and moved back so he was on Remus’s lap, hiding his face in his neck.

“Wh- how. Damn you can sing” Kasey stuttered.

“At least that’s guitar was put to good use eventually” Logan elbowed both his boyfriends, who he was constantly making fun of for having the never used instrument.

“Play something else.” Leo said.

“No”

***

“I’m bored” James shouted 20 minutes into the 4 hour bus ride.

“Me too” people shouted their agreement.

“Sirius sing” Leo called out.

“Absolutely not” Sirius scuffed from his place on Remus’s lap, his legs sprawled on the empty seat beside him.

“Can he even sing?” Talker asked.

“Yes” everyone who had heard him responded.

“No, I can’t”

“And play guitar” James added.

“Stop it” Sirius kicked James’s seat.

“Oh if only we had one here” Kasey sighed dramatically. He stood on his seat and opened the overhead compartment. “Oh wait” he pulled out a whole ass guitar.

“What the actual hell Blizzard?” Sirius exclaimed.

“Sing” he forced him to take the guitar.

“I’m not singing.”

“Then play” Dumo told him, everyone had gathered in the back of the bus, sitting in seats around him.

“No”

“Please, baby” Remus asked him, kissing his lips.

Everyone smirked, knowing Sirius can’t say no to Remus.

Sirius huffed out a breath, bring the guitar up into his arms. “At least tell me you brought a pick.”

Dumo pulled one out of his pocket and handed him one.

“This is mine from home!” He looked at Remus. “And my guitar!” He inspected the instrument closer.

“I like hearing you play” he shrugged, kissing his lips again. Sirius rolled his eyes.

Sirius turned back around and began playing a simple melody.

He, again, got lost in the feeling that took him away. Away from his worries of hockey, of the future. Away from his parents screeches and painful punishments. Away from his own mind that told him he would never be good enough, didn’t deserve anyone’s love.

The simple strum turned into the sound of a song and lyrics where leaving his mouth as everything finished dissolving away.

He started playing the song Remus had been listening to occasionally for the past week, Sirius able to know the cords when he hears them. His fingers danced with the quick cords.

“As he came into the window was a sound of a crescendo. He came into her apartment. He left the bloodstains on the carpet”

Everyone who had heard him sing before smirked at the wide eyes of everyone who hadn’t.

“Annie, are you okay? So, Annie are you okay? Are you okay, Annie? Annie, are you okay?”

Everyone sat there, listening to his voice rising and falling, his fingers crossing the strings so fast they could barley see them. Dancing across them as easily as he skates, like it was second nature.

“You've been hit by, you been hit by, a smooth criminal. So they came into the outway. It was Sunday, what a black day. Mouth to mouth resuscitation. Sounding heartbeats, intimidation” he sang the familiar lyrics.

Everyone got lost in the sound of the song echoing throughout the bus.

“I don’t know” his voice grew high quickly, holding the note out.

His fingers flying faster and faster along with his voice, taking quick breaths between the verses.

“There's a sign at the window. That he struck you, a crescendo Annie. He came into your apartment. Left the bloodstains on the carpet. Then you ran into the bedroom. You were struck down. It was your doom, Annie. Annie are you okay? Will you tell us that you're okay? There's a sign at the window . That he struck you, a crescendo Annie. He came into your apartment. Left the bloodstains on the carpet. Then you ran into the bedroom. You were struck down. It was your doom, Annie. You’ve been hit by, you’ve been struck by. A smooth criminal.”

Everyone exploded in applause.

“Man, if I could sing like that I would never stop singing” Talker said.

“Okay I thought they were lying but that was way better then I could ever think it would be” Kris shook his head with a smile.

“Why haven’t you played that before?” Remus asked him.

Sirius shrugged. “You’ve been listening to it this week so I played it”

“Wait you learned how to play that in a week.” James asked.

“No, I listened to the song”

“Hold on, hold on. You listened to the song and then you knew how to play it?” Dumo asked, pointing at Sirius as he kneeled against the back of the chair.

“Yeah”

“WHAT” Leo shouted.

“How is that even possible?” People shouted out different questions.

“Play another one” Olli called out.

Sirius shook his head but picked up his guitar again.

By the end of the 4 hour bus ride Sirius was sure he wouldn’t have a voice until next week.

They all tested the ability they were convinced was impossible. Making him listen to a song a few times an then play it.

He played it perfectly everytime, smirking at the looks on their faces.

A few day’s after Sirius got his voice back Dumo just so happened to have a get together that night.

He was shoved into a chair as soon as he got in the house.

“What’s this surprise we all just had to see?” Lily rolled her eyes.

“Go” Dumo said. Giving him a guitar they had bought because his other one needed new strings from over use.

Sirius shook his head.

“What’s going on?” Nat asked.

Sirius quickly launched into Smooth Criminal again as soon as the guitar was in his hands. Skipping the beginning cords and starting on the lyrics. This tome singing all the high notes.

By the end of the song the girls and kids had the same exact looks their husbands, fathers, and boyfriends had a week before.

I know nothing about actually playing music but I can’t do anything if I don’t have music playing.

@lumosinlove

[chilling-seavey]

Heartbreak Hotel (d.s.) - Chapter Twenty-One

A/N Hmm

It was fair to say that every time the slightest exciting thing happened to Daniel; he turned completely antsy to tell his two best friends. The night of the concert was no exception.

Daniel returned home that night in a complete daze; barely even remembering giving his sister the autograph, her piercing shriek, and her tight embrace that she pulled him into and barely even remembering his brother’s inquiry about the show. He simply let himself into his bedroom and closed the door behind him and laid, motionless, for hours, just staring at his ceiling. Processing.

He definitely slept in the next morning, pulling himself out of bed by lunchtime and his legs felt heavy and his head was spinning with so many thoughts he almost literally felt dizzy. Daniel sat on the side of his bed for a while, his concerned frowned soon moulding into a slight smile at the memories of the night before and he flopped back onto his bed with a cheesy grin, hiding his blushing face in his hands.

Loretta’s soft, “Yours” was replying in his head like she was still sitting right beside him and it made butterflies erupt in his stomach until he was nearly doubling over with giddy laughter. He felt it was so easy now.

Daniel nearly glided down the stairs to greet his family in the living room like he was on cloud nine. He was quite literally glowing.

“Someone is happy.” his mother teased lightly as she vacuumed the living room carpet.

“Yeah.” Daniel beamed. “I’m just going to grab breakfast leftovers and then I’m gonna see Jack and Zach at the diner, is that okay?”

“Of course, love.”

“Thanks.” Daniel smiled to his mother and left her with a kiss to her cheek before he was bounding back up the stairs.

The door at the top opened and Anna’s head popped out, “Daniel! Come look.”

She pulled him into her room – usually her brothers were never allowed in there so it took Daniel by surprise – but she pointed beside her bed to a small white frame that housed her signed notebook paper.

Anna. All my love, Elvis Presley

Daniel only smiled wider at the memory of it; speaking to the man himself with Loretta at his side. He couldn’t even hear his sister’s gushing compliments at his side as Daniel faded into his own happy memories like he was completely love drunk. He didn’t even remember getting dressed or eating his late breakfast until the sputtering of his car engine coming to life brought him back down from the clouds. As usual, the radio was turned up and the roof was pushed down, letting the sunny LA weather spill through the car as Daniel sang soundly along to the radio. His eye caught on the form in the backseat and he glanced over his shoulder at a red light to see his jacket from the night before still tossed over the leather seats from where Loretta had tossed it. If it was possible for a smile to literally take up your entire face; Daniel would have been a prime example.

Daniel pulled into the parking lot and hopped out of the car, locking it behind him, and sauntered into Sherry’s while whistling yet another Elvis tune. He helped himself to the jukebox, sliding in a few quarters and selected Elvis’ Golden Records and it began to play through the diner. The change in music had a few people glancing over – Zach and Jack included from their spots around the restaurant – and they both nearly dropped what they were doing at the sight of their obviously ecstatic friend.

They all met back at the counter and Daniel slid onto his usual stool, chin resting in his hands behind rose coloured glasses, “She’s my soulmate.”

“You’ve said that seven thousand times.” Zach said.

“She admitted it.” Daniel giggled like an excited child, hiding his face behind his hands.

Jack and Zach looked to each other with gaping mouths before rushing to bombard Daniel with questions upon questions, shaking him and pulling at his shirt until he would answer them. Daniel filled them in on the whole story and they both hung onto his every word, leaning over the counter and literally making the one other server take care of the entire restaurant herself. When Daniel reached the end of the story of his night and it came down to the moment where they almost kissed; all three boys nearly shouted with unbelieving glee, the two friends shoving his shoulder and patting his head with congratulations.

“But we didn’t…so…” Daniel’s smile faltered for only a moment and he shrugged. “Corbyn pulled her out of my car.”

“What was he doing there?” Jack frowned.

“I have no clue.”

Zach gasped, “He didn’t see you, did he? Golly, if he did-”

“I don’t think so. It was pretty dark. But he certainly didn’t look pleased.” Daniel said. He ran his hand through his hair and picked up the closest metal napkin holder to check his teeth before glancing over his shoulder towards the door.

“You expecting someone?” Jack asked.

“Expecting Corbyn’s fist in your face.” Zach answered for him.

Daniel scoffed at him, setting the napkin holder back down, “No. Loretta always comes in at 3:00, remember?”

“Right.” Jack smirked, elbowing Zach who smiled between his two friends.

“No making out in the diner.” Zach piped up.

“I swear, if you embarrass me when she gets here, I will never tell you anything again.” Daniel warned, pointing a finger at both of them.

“What?” Jack tisked. “You’re already soulmates. We could pull your pants down around your ankles and she would still have to love you.”

“She doesn’t have to do anything.” Daniel said, looking back at the door again before sitting straight forward again, “And love is far too soon.”

“She does still have a boyfriend.” they all said at the same time.

“Can we get you anything while you wait?” Jack offered.

“I ate at home but…I’ll grab a strawberry milkshake.” Daniel bit back a smile and his friends only smirked at him knowingly before starting to make his order.

Daniel watched the clock on the wall as the minutes approached 3:00. He nursed his milkshake casually, sipping it through the pink and white striped straw, and waited for Loretta’s daily arrival. Zach and Jack busied themselves around the diner as 3:00 came and went but Daniel didn’t move from his spot. He sipped his milkshake slowly as if it would lure her into the diner somehow but soon the glass was empty and he was still alone.

“Do you want another?” Zach asked gently as he took Daniel’s empty glass to the dish pit. The clock read 3:32.

Daniel glanced over his shoulder towards the door before turning back to Zach, “No thanks. I’ll just wait.”

And so he waited, his mouth missing any flavour at all, relishing in no hints from Loretta at all to her whereabouts or why she wasn’t where she usually would be at 3pm. The Elvis record ended, and the jukebox switched automatically to some other artist and Daniel was slouched over the counter and tracing the sparkling pattern with his finger as the clock hit 4:00. Loretta never showed up.

[lothirielswanmarvel]

—XANDAR—

“Yo, Groot! Keep up! If you run into another wall because of that damn game, I'm recording it and showing it to Drax.”

“I am Groot.” The tree spat without looking up from the small screen.

We strode across the open pavilions of the Nova capitol. The city was magnificent; bright squares, water fountains, massive spirals of buildings. It had a futuristic tinge to it—like Star Trek, but I couldn't remember what that was.

“Have you ever tried replacing that thing with a book?” I asked.

Rocket gave me a weird look. “What's a book?”

My eyes widened and I looked away without a word. Rocket had a certain feel to him...a passive aggressiveness. But he cared. All of the snide comments, the special attention he took to Groot, it was because Rocket cared. I could work with that.

“Isn't there anything else you're interested in, sweetie?” I looked over at Groot.

He barely glanced up from his machine. “I am Groot.”

“Woah! Have some respect, young man! When we get back to the ship, I'm rinsing your mouth out with a bar of soap,” Rocket’s lip curled up in disgust. “No more spending time on Uncle Quill’s screens.”

“I am Groot!”

Rocket translated, “Oh, that's true. He likes cheesecake. But cheesecake ain’t gonna redeem you for what you said.”

I shrugged as we started to ascend the ramp. We had a marvelous view of the square, and the pools of water shimmering like a blanket of diamonds under the heat of two suns. Two shadows instead of one followed me up the slope instead of one.

I pressed a finger to my lip. “Cheesecake is good. There’s got to be other things that you like...have you ever thought of starting an environmental awareness club or something?”

“I am Groot.”

“Wait, you did? Drax ate the berries you invited? That's rude.” Rocket said.

We stopped at the front of a building.

I shielded my face from the sweltering orbs in the sky. “So what are we doing here?”

“Negotiations, kinda. We meet with the Ravagers every now and then, show off the cool junk we got, exchange information.” Rocket replied.

I walked in beside him, followed by the sounds of Groot’s video game. The inside was dark and full of neon lights. We ended up at a booth in the corner; Rocket insisted that Groot was too young for the bar.

I crossed my legs beneath the table and felt my shoulders straighten—I must’ve done it a lot, before. It felt natural, even though it seemed too professional. Groot’s game continued to make imitations of explosions.

“Mute that thing, would ya?” Rocket snapped. “Jeez, should’ve given you Quill’s headphones.”

I glanced over at the screen. Groot’s console shone bright against the windowless room. “What are you playing?”

“I am Groot.”

Rocket made a face. “Some stupid game called ‘Galaga.’ Quill and his stupid human crap…”

I leaned over. “If you use your branches to hold it up, maybe it’ll be easier to use the controls with your fingers.”

“Don't encourage him!” Rocket complained.

A waiter came over with crystals for teeth and neon-colored hair. Rocket ordered a few drinks and a slice of cheesecake for Groot. Groot took my advice and angled the screen so I could watch.

“You’re really good,” I said, impressed. “He is awesome at this, did you teach him, Rocket?”

“I am Groot.”

“You learned it from me…? You watch me when I'm flying the ship,” There was a crack of emotion in Rocket’s voice.

“I am Groot.” He offered me the controller.

My eyes widened. He barely looked up from the game since I’d arrived. Now his tawny eyes stared into mine, warm and tender against the exotic streaks of color across the room.

“Thank you, I don't think I’ll get anywhere near your high score though. What do I press again?” Groot pointed out the right buttons and the screen came to life. Little dots started flying around the screen.

—AVENGERS COMPOUND, 2018—

“Get that one—yes yes yes!” Thor’s arms tightened around me from behind as I pressed the buttons on the controller.

“You get so excited when we play this, it's adorable,” I smiled as Dragon Age: Inquisition came to a cutscene.

“I love spending time with you,” Thor replied, pressing a kiss on my neck, “and killing demons together—” another kiss, “and fighting dragons together.” his beard tickled my collarbone.

“ Honey ! We have company.” I hissed, resisting a smile as he nuzzled into my neck.

“It’s cool, Ms. Angie. You guys are like my OTP,” Ned was a friend of Peter Parker’s, who sat on the loveseat next to him with the other controller. “Besides Wanda and Vision—but I'm still upset that Clintasha never happened.”

Parker’s face scrunched up. Shuri was sitting down by the coffee table, eyes trained on the screen. She could probably solo everything, but for now, we were kept around as a few disposable lackeys. “Templar Ned of the Silver! Get your head in the game! Chaplain Korg of the Seven Kingdoms, diverge on that lava demon!”

Thor’s new friend from space made of rocks overpowered the other half of the couch, while the caterpillar-like creature Meep curled up in the armchair.

“Hey Thor, can we vote in Admiral Shuri of Dragonstone as our new Asgardian general? I think she’d be good for the job,” Korg replied. A loose pebble fell from his shoulder when he talked.

“Keep up the pace, ladies! You’re making the picture of Agent Carter in my room cry!”

“Hmm. We’ll consider it,” Thor’s lips brushed against my ear. “What do you think, Khaleesi?”

“I think Shuri would overthrow you and take the throne.” I admitted. As I muttered the words, Shuri let out a battle cry as the screen exploded with light.

Thor nodded. “Fair enough.”

Shuri shot up from the ground, waving her controller in the air. “Victory, peasants! Yes!”

I was suddenly buried in a tidal wave of muscle as Thor peppered me with kisses. I couldn't help laughing. “Thor, stop it—”

—*—

I looked up from Groot’s game. “This is so cool—you should show it to Rocket, I'm sure he’d love to know how to play.”

I returned the game back to Groot. Rocket shot me something close to a thankful look as Groot scooted closer to him and started pointing at the screen.

What's an OTP? And who the hell is Templar Ned of the Silver?

I thought about the faces that had flashed through my mind, grasping at the memory before it could be locked away with the rest. I mulled over them for some time until the table shook.

I looked up. A thin man dressed in red leather sneered with crooked teeth from the other side of the booth.

“Kraglin,” Rocket greeted him as he leaned back on the seat.

“ ‘Ey Fuzzy. Where’s Quill?” Kraglin glanced at me. “And who’s the fairy?”

“Quill is busy.” Rocket rolled his eyes as if it were an obvious question.

“Doin’ what?”

“Grocery shopping. He pulled the shortest stick,” Rocket snapped.

“And the fairy?” Kraglin’s hair was piled up on the top of his head, topped with some kind of red attachment. It was like he added the extra inches on purpose, to appear more intimidating.

“Fairy?” I asked.

“Yeah. You got the face of one—like those elvy dudes on Alfheim,” Kraglin’s eyes narrowed with skepticism.

“This is our new recruit. Found her floating around in the middle of nowhere.” Rocket answered.

Kraglin nodded. He glanced down at the table when he asked another question, “Did...did Nebula get that hat I sent ‘er?”

“I am Groot.”

“We know, you have a low opinion of hats.” Rocket sighed at Groot.

“It's not a hat. It's a beanie,” Kraglin said defiantly.

“What the hell’s a beanie?”

“Something soft you put on your head!” Kraglin’s hands crumpled into fists on the table. “Did she like it?”

“How the hell should I know! Nebula hates everything. Enough with the interrogation, already.” Rocket stood on the cushions so he was eye level with Kraglin. “What do ya got?”

Kraglin started to admire the tips of his gloves. “The Ravagers got some shiny things...some secrets too.”

“Shiny things?” Rocket leaned forward, greed glinting in his eyes.

“What secrets?” I asked politely.

“Forget the intel! Show us the goods!” Rocket complained.

From the look on Kraglin’s face, the “goods” weren't as good as he claimed. I tried to think—I didn't have much to work with. I still barely knew the Guardians, and even if I did have my old memories, there was nothing valuable about them.

Except for what Peter told me…  

“You’re speaking to someone who keeps a bomb in a box.” I said, straightening in my seat as I felt all eyes on me. “The Guardians already have a fine collection of shiny things.”

“Collections can always grow,” Rocket pointed out.

“Secrets can be more valuable, and lead to other shiny things.” I said. My voice stayed light and calm and neutral—it was activated on instinct. “From what I’ve gathered in the time I’ve spent with the Guardians, the Ravagers are one of our closest contacts.”

“Contacts?” Kraglin shot Rocket a shocked expression.

“It's a big galaxy. We have friends in high places. But we will not deny our close relations with the Ravagers,” I finally leaned forward, capturing Kraglin with my eyes. “If you tell us what we need to know, the Ravagers may benefit greatly. Our victories are our traders’ victories.”

I had managed to capture Groot’s attention away from his game again. Rocket and Groot gaped at me. Part of me was shocked: someone taught me how to bargain. Not even that: I could slay with words. Was I a politician?

Kraglin struggled for words across the table, “Yeah, but…”

He already gave me the leverage to seal the deal. “I’m sure our other companions, including Nebula, would be grateful for your contribution.”

Kraglin sat there for a minute, his foot tapping underneath the table. Then he caved. “Alright. We got some shiny things, but we found somebody… a shiny man.”

Rocket and I exchanged a look. “There’s some rumors about him. He’s been sniffin’ around the galaxy. Don't know what he's up to...but he may be guardin’ a heap of units somewhere. Or he’s lookin’ for one. Either way, we get the feelin’ that there’s some money in that lead.”

Rocket whistled. “We hit the jackpot! This is better than any casino I've ever been to.”

Kraglin unfolded a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and slid it over the table to me. When I reached for it, he caught my gaze.

“Be careful with that lead. There’s a reason us Ravagers haven't pursued it ourselves. And tell Nebula…” He swallowed and glanced at the counter. “Tell ‘er that ‘er nails look pretty.”

I nodded, finding myself smiling sweetly as I handed the slip to Rocket. He kissed the paper and stuffed it into his suit.

Kraglin stood from the booth and nodded to us. “Looks like you lucked out there, Fuzzy.”

“Damn right I did.”

Kraglin looked at me. “I wasn't talkin’ about the lead.”

[those70scomics]

“Jackie, I checked. No one can see us doing it from the parking lot.” -- Kelso in “Till the Next Goodbye” (7x25).

Can not will.

Can not could.

The line is purposely ambiguous. It might mean Kelso and Jackie have already had sex and she wanted him to makes sure no saw them. Or that she planned on having sex with Kelso and wanted him to make sure no one would see them.

Either way, it’s the line that led to Jackie and Hyde’s end on-screen.

I sometimes think about what I would’ve done had I been hired as the showrunner for season 8. How I would salvage write Jackie and Hyde’s relationship out of the situation season 7 left them from. I’ve come up with different scenarios in fanfic, but I recently thought how I would handle the material if I were a TV show writer, not an author of prose.

Here’s what I came up with.

Season 8, Episode 1

We’re at the Formans’ house. Not only has Hyde been gone for two weeks but Jackie, too. Kelso has remained mum on what happened.

Whenever Kitty, Red, Donna, and Fez try to get Kelso to tell them where Hyde and Jackie are. Kelso just mumbles, “I don’t know,” and changes the subject or leaves.

But with Kitty missing Eric terribly, Red is done letting the kettlehead hide info about the one person who might be able to cheer Kitty up: Hyde. In a callback to “Cat Fight Club” (2x25), Red traps Kelso in the garage, makes him sit on a stool, and interrogates/threatens him in his humorous, veiled fashion.

Kelso, scared for his life, says, “Hyde caught me!”

Red: Caught you doing what?

Kelso: Caught me naked in the motel parking lot! He punched me until I told him me and Jackie weren’t doing it--

Red [growing more annoyed by the breath]: Doing what?

Kelso [panicking]: It! You know, sex.

Red: For Pete’s sake, Kelso! Why the hell would Steven think you and his girlfriend were ... doing that?

Kelso: It. And they were broken up!

Red [threateningly]: Kelso ...

Kelso: Okay, okay! I might’ve been wrapped in only a towel when I went into Jackie’s motel room and said no one could see us doing it from the parking lot, and Hyde might’ve been there when I said it. And he might’ve grabbed my towel and chased me across that parking lot while I was nude. And he kicked my ass really hard, Red! My butt still has bruises.

Red: If you don’t get to the point, I’m gonna shove my foot so hard up your ass until those bruises cry blood.

Kelso: I told Hyde Jackie kept shooting me down. But she was single, and I was naked, and we had a room, so I figured, “Why not keep trying?” I also figured making sure no one could see us doing it from the parking lot would sweeten the deal, but Hyde was there, and--

Red: Where is he now?

Kelso: I keep telling you, I don’t know! He went back to Jackie’s room and locked me out. I had to drive back to Point Place in the nude! I was pulled over and arrested, but the officer took pity on a fellow cop, gave me some pants and a shirt, and I was able to come home.

Red: You ... jeez. What am I gonna tell Kitty?

Kelso: That I’m a hero? I drove across state lines in the nude!

Red: Go home, Kelso.

In the Formans’ living room, Kitty and Donna sit on the couch. They’re making a tape-recording for Eric, who’s in Africa. Donna says into the mic that Hyde’s still missing, and Kitty stops the tape.

Kitty: You can’t tell him that. You’ll only worry him.

Donna: But he already knows Hyde’s missing. I told him in the tape we sent last week.

Kitty: Oh, sweetie, I recorded over that part.

Donna [annoyed]: You listened to my private tape to Eric? You censored it?!

Kitty: A mother does what she must to protect her children. Eric has enough to deal with, adjusting to a new country and food he probably can’t digest. You know how sensitive his stomach is. God knows what they use for toilet paper over there.

Donna: Mrs. Forman, Hyde is Eric’s best friend. He needs to know.

Kitty: And I am Eric’s mother, and I say we tell him nothing about Steven until--

They hear the faint sound of a door slamming. It’s the basement door. Kitty and Donna stare at each other.

Kitty: Do you think?

Familiar laughter reaches them from the basement.

Donna: That’s Jackie’s cackle!

Kitty and Donna rush downstairs. Hyde and Jackie are in the basement, holding hands and being generally lovey-dovey.

Kitty: Oh, my God -- Steven’s come home!

Kitty shoves Jackie aside and thrusts herself into Hyde’s arms. Jackie stumbles but catches herself on the couch. Kitty holds onto Hyde for dear life, like she did Eric in the season 7 finale, but Donna focuses on Jackie.

Donna: Where the hell have you been? I called your number in Chicago two weeks ago, and the motel clerk told me you’d checked out! I even looked up the TV studio where you got that job and called that up, and they said you declined the job.

Jackie: I’m sorry, Donna. I’m sorry. Steven and I--

Hyde [who’s being choked by Kitty’s love]: Jackie -- little help here?

Jackie tries to prise Mrs. Forman’s arm off Hyde but fails. Donna doesn’t act right away, thinking Hyde deserves a little mangling for making them all worry so long. But she eventually helps free him.

Kitty: Where have you two been?

Hyde: Vegas.

Kitty and Donna: Vegas?

Jackie: Steven, give them their gifts.

From his backpack, Hyde hands both Kitty and Donna a mini slot machine. Kitty is momentarily enamored by the gift, but Donna is pissed.

Donna: They don’t have phones in Vegas?

Jackie: We were a little busy, okay?

Donna: Doing what?

Hyde and Jackie look at each other and burst out laughing. Kitty laughs, too, but ...

Kitty: Wait, what’s so funny? What am I missing?

Jackie and Hyde: Nothing.

Hyde: Say, uh ... me and Jackie are kind of tired from the drive. Do you think we could take a nap before we continue the interrogation?

Donna: No! You and Jackie owe us an explanation!

Jackie: We’re fine! See? [She waves her hand over herself and Hyde.] There’s nothing to worry about.

Kitty: They’re fine, Donna. And Steven’s never leaving this house again.

Jackie and Hyde both appear uncomfortable at this statement. Donna catches it. Kitty doesn’t.

Donna: All right, but once you’re up from snooze-land, expect one hell of a questioning.

Kitty: And delicious food. What would you two like for your welcome-home feast?

Hyde: Anything you cook is fine with me, Mrs. Forman. Always has been.

Kitty [touched]: Oh, you are such a sweetheart! And a good eater. [To Donna]: You know, when Mr. Forman was out of a job, the cheapest meat I could find was cow tongue, and Steven ate that as happily as he would filet mignon.

Jackie [to Hyde]: You ate tongue?

Hyde: Yeah. And so have you--

Jackie: I have not!

Hyde quirks up an eyebrow, and Jackie gets his double-meaning; She swats his chest.

Jackie: Okay, whatever. I’m really tired, and I’m taking a nap.

She heads for Hyde’s room, and Hyde hands Mrs. Forman a Vegas-themed beer stein.

Hyde: That’s for Red. Could you tell him I’m back? Not exactly ready for my beating.

Kitty [laughing uncomfortably]: He won’t won’t beat you up. He’s already scared one son off to Africa. I won’t let him scare our other to a different continent.

Hyde: Thanks.

He follows Jackie into his room.

Inside Hyde’s room.

Jackie: Steven, I was so close to telling!

Hyde: But you didn’t. I’m proud of you, grasshopper. [Note: Yes, we’d finally learn Hyde’s pet name for Jackie here.]

Jackie removes a necklace from around her neck. Attached to the chain is an engagement ring and wedding ring. She frees both rings from the chain and puts them on her finger.

Hyde: You sure wearin’ those now is such a good idea?

Jackie: Every second I can’t wear them feels like a year.

Hyde pulls his own wedding ring from under the collar of his shirt. It’s also attached to a chain.

Hyde: I get that. [He grasps Jackie’s left hand.] But at least we’re hitched, right? 

He sits on his cot, and Jackie plunks down on his lap.

Jackie: And we had an amazing honeymoon.

They kiss.

Jackie: How long are we gonna keep our marriage a secret?

Hyde: As long as it takes to save up for the wedding you want. Gettin’ married by an Elvis impersonator in the Hunk of Burning Love Chapel wasn’t exactly your dream.

Jackie: No, but marrying you is.

She caresses his hair, and he gazes at her the way he does during their first scene in “Magic Bus” (6x03). This is a happy man in love.

Hyde: I got an idea. Red’s gonna wanna kill me, right? So how’s about when everyone’s upstairs -- him, Mrs. Forman, Donna, probably Fez; maybe even freakin’ Kelso -- I propose to you like it’s the first time. I’ll make it all story-book and sickening, and that’ll diffuse most of the tension. Red’ll still be pissed, but Mrs. Forman’ll be so damn ecstatic he won’t get a chance to shove his foot up my ass.

Jackie: I love it! [She kisses him again.] And I love you! Oh, Steven, I didn’t think I’d ever be happy.

Hyde: Don’t you mean this happy?

Jackie: No. Happy. Losing you ... it was awful.

Hyde: It was no picnic for me, either.

Jackie: Are you happy?

Hyde [smiling]: Yeah. I am.

They make out. Then, in a slight panic, Jackie pulls away.

Jackie: How are we gonna tell Mrs. Forman we’re gonna move into our own apartment?

Hyde: One problem at a time, baby. One problem at a time.

They continue to make out. The scene fades to black.

The first half of the season follows Jackie and Hyde’s attempts to keep their marriage a secret. To save money, they end up becoming Fez’s roommate. Fez thinks this is great, at first, until he grows more and more suspicious of Jackie and Hyde’s engagement.

As I’ve written about previously, Eric should’ve been kept part of the show, despite Topher Grace’s absence. Episode storylines could involve Kitty, Donna, and others narrating letters Eric sent while we see Eric from the neck down acting out his adventures in Africa. Another story could involve Red, Kitty, Donna, Hyde, Jackie, and Fez figuring out how to celebrate Eric’s birthday in his absence and what gifts to send him.

Donna and Jackie commute to a university in Kenosha. Doesn’t matter that it doesn’t exist in real life. Neither does Point Place.

Fez enters culinary school to become a dessert and candy maker. His and Donna’s friendship develops in ways it never got to in the previous seasons. Fez evolves back to pre-”Everybody Loves Casey” (4x26) Fez, in large part due to his friendship with Donna. He might even become a feminist, having realized the error of his ways. This allows him to find a fulfilling romantic relationship of his own -- with a new character introduced early on at the culinary school.

Hyde continues to work at Grooves and on his relationship with W.B.

Kelso moved to Chicago, as he does in the season 8 we got, since Ashton Kutcher left the show.

The first half of the season concludes with Fez discovering Jackie and Hyde’s wedding rings. He steals borrows them and brings them to Donna, who freaks out with him.

Fez: We have to tell Miss Kitty!

Donna: No, Fez. If Hyde and Jackie got secretly married while they were in Vegas, then we better damn well make sure they did. Mr. and Mrs. Forman were maniacs when they found out about Eric’s and my secret engagement. Hyde being married? And Mrs. Forman not being part of the wedding -- oh, it’s gonna kill her.

Fez: Ai. You’re right. We’ll confront Hyde and Jackie. And if they won’t talk, I’ll threaten to stop making that chocolate souffle they’ve both fallen in love with.

Donna: That souffle really is good.

Fez: Thank you. I add a little coffee powder to give it a mocha kick.

Donna: Wow, you’re really learning a lot in culinary school.

Fez: Yes. Oh! I have an even better idea.

Fez holds up Jackie and Hyde’s wedding rings, nods at them, and laughs.

At Jackie, Hyde, and Fez’s apartment, meanwhile, Jackie is panicking. She can’t find her wedding ring. Hyde tells her to relax. That she probably just left it under a shirt. But he can’t find his either, and he starts to panic.

Jackie: Do you think we’ve been robbed?

Hyde: Nothin’ else seems to have been swiped.

Jackie: Who would take our wedding rings?

Hyde: Who do you think, man? Remember when Forman couldn’t find that man-ring Donna gave him? Fez had it.

Jackie: That little thief! Do you think he’s doing something perverted with them?

Hyde: Considering he’s been dragging Donna to feminist rallies, I doubt it. But whatever he’s doing with ‘em, it can’t be good.

The front door opens then, and Fez and Donna walk in, each carrying a metal cloche.

Fez: Hello.

Jackie rushes him and grasps his shirt collar.

Jackie: Where are they?

Fez: Where are what?

Jackie: You know what!

Donna: Jackie, back off. Fez and I are carrying something very delicate for his culinary school.

Hyde: For? Not from?

Jackie backs off. Fez and Donna pull off the covers of their cloches, revealing two chocolate souffles.

Fez and Donna: Tah-dah!

Hyde: Are those...?

Fez: Yes, your new favorite dessert. And inside is a surprise you and Jackie might not want to eat.

Jackie [catching on]: You didn’t...

Donna [goading]: Like you and Hyde didn’t?

Hyde [trying to be aloof]: Didn’t what?

Donna: You know what you did.

Fez: And I know what I did.

Jackie: Screw this!

She grabs Fez’s cloche, puts it on the coffee table, and she digs through the souffle with her hands, a callback to “The Promise Ring” (3x25). She pulls out her wedding ring.

Jackie: You baked my wedding ring in a souffle?

Donna: Ah-hah! So you and Hyde did get married!

Hyde: All that proves is she bought herself a wedding ring.

Jackie [who’s started licking souffle off her fingers]: Damn , that’s good.

Donna: Nice try, Hyde.

She moves her souffle under his nose. He can’t help himself and grabs it. He tears into it like Jackie did hers, licks his fingers in the process, and finds his wedding ring. Knowing the jig is up, he and Jackie put their chocolate-coated rings on their fingers.

Jackie: Fine. So you know. What do you want?

Donna: To know why!

Fez: Yes! I was supposed to be a best man or maid of honor -- your pick!

Hyde [continuing to eat the souffle]: Look, me and Jackie had a hell of a rough time before Forman left. We just needed to pull the trigger and get hitched so we could quit worrying about that crap.

Jackie: Yes. Now Steven and I can live our lives without all the drama.

Fez: Without drama? [To Donna, hurt, and gesturing to the souffles] Was this not dramatic?

Donna: It was, Fez. Very dramatic [To Hyde and Jackie.] But you’re in for a Shakespearean tragedy when Mrs. Forman finds out you got married without her.

Jackie: No, we’re not because she’s not going to find out. As far as she and Mr. Forman and the rest of the world are concerned, Steven and I are engaged and saving money for our wedding. Which isn’t completely untrue.

Hyde: Yup. We’re savin’ up for wedding number two, where everyone’s invited and Jackie gets her doves.

Donna: Where did you two get married anyway?

Hyde: The--

Jackie: Steven, don’t.

Donna and Fez: “Steven,” do. 

Hyde: How’s about I just show ‘em the picture?

Jackie: Oh, God. It’s a Polaroid!

Donna: This I have to see.

Jackie [to Hyde]: Wash your hands first!

Hyde heads to the kitchen sink as the scene fades to black.

Next scene essentially continues where the last one left off. Fez and Donna are studying the framed Polaroid of Jackie and Hyde kissing after being pronounced husband and wife.

Donna [laughing]: The Hunk of Burning Love Chapel?

Fez [angry]: Elvis married you, and I wasn’t’ invited?

Jackie: Fez, I didn’t even get to wear a wedding dress.

Hyde: I wanted Zeppelin, but "Elvis” sang freakin’ “Love Me Tender”.

Jackie: It was either that or “Jailhouse Rock,” and that wasn’t gonna happen.

Donna: Okay, so you had a cheesy wedding. ... Man, I wish someone had video taped it. [Refocusing.] Anyway, so you’re gonna have a big second wedding, right?

Jackie: My dream wedding. Steven promised.

Hyde: And our first dance is gonna be to one of the mushier Zeppelin songs. That’s our compromise.

Fez: And I will be your best man ... [looks at Jackie] or your maid of honor.

Jackie: Actually, I wanted Donna to be my maid of honor.

Donna [touched]: Me?

Jackie: Who else? You’re my best friend. Plus, I’ll look even more stunning standing next to a giant lumberjack wearing a bright purple taffeta gown.

Donna: I won’t wear that.

Jackie: Then you’ll be naked.

Hyde: As naked as Kelso was driving home from Chicago.

Donna and Fez: What?!

Hyde: That’s a story for another time. Fez, it’d be cool if you’d be one of my groomsmen, man. Forman’s the best man ‘cause he’s my best bud.

Donna: So you’re going to wait until Eric comes home from Africa?

Hyde: He’s only got eight months left to go. We can wait.

Fez: Well, I can’t. Every time Miss Kitty looks at me, your secret will knock on my teeth, and I’m afraid I’ll answer.

Jackie: Then avoid Mrs. Forman the next eight months.

Fez: But Miss Kitty and I have become very close.

Jackie: Okay, how about this. If you keep your big mouth shut, I’ll let you be a bride’s man. That means you can help me with wedding stuff and help Donna plan the wedding shower.

Fez: I can? Okay, maybe I can keep this secret.

Jackie: Good. Now ... if you ever bake Steven’s and my wedding rings into a dessert again,  [smiles threateningly] I’ll bake your ‘nads into a pie. Understand?

Fez [voice squeaky]: Understood, understood.

The second half of season 8 finds Jackie, Hyde, Donna, Fez, and Kitty planning Jackie and Hyde’s second wedding -- which Kitty thinks is the first wedding. Both Fez and Donna make slip-ups they have to cover, but Kitty doesn’t catch on.

All this wedding planning, though, makes Donna miss Eric even more. Kitty shares all of this with Eric via the cassette tapes she records for him.

Fez’s relationship with his culinary school sweetheart develops.

Kitty, inspired by Jackie and Hyde’s wedding plans, suggests to Red they renew their vows. He vetoes this, reminding him how “well” that worked out for Bob and Midge. But he’s been saving up money for a second honeymoon, which he will reveal later in the season.

Eric writes Hyde a letter, telling him that he’s coming home for a New Year’s Eve visit. He can’t stand being away from Donna any longer. He asks Hyde to keep this a secret, but Hyde tells Jackie their wedding date has just moved up by a few months.

The hour-long season finale consists of Jackie and Hyde’s second wedding. Eric comes home in time to be Hyde’s best man, and the wedding is as romantic and funny as it should be. W.B. and Angie are there, of course, too.

But as Jackie and Hyde kiss as in, “You may now kiss the bride,” Eric says beside Red, “Wow, I bet this wedding was a whole lot nicer than than their first.”

Red: Their first?

Eric: Yeah, when they got married at the Hunk of Burning Love Chapel in Vegas.

Red [shouting as Steven and Jackie pass him by, stopping Hyde by the arm]: You got married in Las Vegas?

Kitty: What? [She grabs Jackie’s arm.] You two were married already? For almost a year?

Jackie: Kind of?

Hyde [pissed]: Nice job, Forman! The one time I ask you to keep a secret.

Jackie [to Hyde]: You told Eric? How could you?

Hyde: I wrote him a letter. Hey, it was hard keepin’ this to myself. I figured he was in Africa. Who the hell was he gonna tell?

Jackie: Apparently everyone!

Red: Well, it doesn’t matter now. Either way, you’re both married, and you had a nice wedding. Let’s go have a nice reception.

Kitty: Wait just one minute. What I’m about to say goes not just to Steven and Jackie but to you, Eric, and you, Donna, and you, Fez. When any of you get pregnant, you’re not to keep the baby a secret until she’s already graduating from college. You will tell me the second you know. Do you hear me?

Hyde, Jackie, Donna, and Fez: Yes, ma’am.

Eric: Technically, men can’t get pregnant, so this doesn’t apply--

Kitty: The second you’re with child, Eric!

Eric: Yes, ma’am.

Jackie and Hyde laugh and kiss. Donna kisses Eric. Red and Kitty also kiss. Fez and his girlfriend are kissing, too. It’s a kiss-party before everyone heads to the reception.

The series ends, but the characters’ adventures in life continue.

[hereliesbitches--me]

❝ What is so wrong with wanting to take care of you? ❞

      @quantahope

     Dreams were, by nature, such fickle things. They exist as a representation of elements in which the mind processes information in the real world, but cannot express in said reality. Thus, it produces an augmented reflection of the processed information  every single night. The average person never seems to really remember their dreams, while others do. However, sometimes remembering dreams are not always a good thing. That was the case for someone like Rosie.As long as she could remember, her dreams had retained their consistent theme since she was a teenager and had become competent enough to remember them. They were dark. Always dark and expansive in a colorless world. There were shapeless dogs, mangy strays that traveled in packs roaming an endless smoky forest just waiting for the moment she descended into sleep.  The bodies of the dead, victims, roamed mindlessly through the haze with the same intention as all beasts in her head. With pointed intentions to hurt her.  Some paved the grounds with their bodies…And above it all, leading the disfigured symbolic creatures, was none other than the cadaver of Rosie herself, noname, wearing her delighted crooked smile on her pallid face. Once upon a time, a little Rosie had lived in terror of sleep for the implications involved in it. She lived restlessly, an insomniac addicted to alcohol and sex in desperate search for a solution to violent dreams.To dream of nothing at all. Every night it played in the same sequence , from beginning to end. Waking on the ground, the world a hazy dreamscape where voices echo incoherently without the body sources to be found. She would always have to run – be it from the hounds, the dead, or noname herself. Run til her every muscle burned, run in the endless world. All she did was run and run, but there was only ever one option in order to actually wake : To die. It was always scary at the start ; To be torn apart by the dogs, buried by the dead, or strangled by her own cadaver. Back then she’d wake in a cold sweat, sit up for hours avoiding falling back to sleep.. and when she did it started again. Over time, she’d lost her fear of it all. And instead it became a game of just how long she could make it. Or just how quickly she could make it end.Time just has a way of dulling the fear of death..

 Tonight was no different.     The timeless scenario opens up against an ominous scene of a hollowed forest. Today, though, she did not choose to run right away, despite knowing well what was coming. Instead, she walked through her dream. The grey world carried the musk of a graveyard, who’s dead were half exposed from the muck. Their broken limbs and faces she vaguely knew from a time long forgotten. Some limbs twitched, some heads moaned incoherently as their hands claw at the earth towards her feet.  just dont think.But the hounds were coming in a thunderous roar of beating feet. It was only then that she started to run. The air turned cold and biting as it whipped against her skin, her breath frosting and the scent in the air worsening with the funk of rotting dead sticking grossly to her tongue with every deep breath she took. how long will you run tonight? just how will you die tonight? and so the Queen Bee arrives. The story will unfold as it does every night. Racing between the hounds and her impostor, Rosie can only stare ahead in her endless dream, well aware of just where the crumbling road leads. Its always the same every night, because her dreams are always in a dark place. The smell, the sights, the sounds– they never change. Not as long as she could remember; It seemed that wasn’t the case for tonight. There was something different.. something wafting through the air, warm and pleasant that cut through the smell of death. That doesn't belong… suddenly her eyes are not focused on the path in front of her, but on the sky above. Black as night without a single star in sight. Rosie suddenly becomes painfully aware of a distant melody echoing in her tightened world. Above her heavy breathing, above the snarls of wolves and the shriek of her impostor, the tune of an old song rises and seems to dance with the scent of.. breakfast? Eggs, toast? Where was it coming from? The world once again has begun to lose consistency… the fear she should feel from their moans and howls fade off into the dark spaces. Her eyes widened, her head snapping back to catch a glance over her shoulder as the reaching hands are but a blur on the horizon. Just follow the sound. Follow it home would tonight actually be different? Would she live the length of the dream and wake without the company of bitter death? For a pregnant moment, a sense of relief had washed over her senses enough that Rosie dared to smile.

Her foot came down hard, only to find no ground to catch her on. The smile faltered and vanished as quickly as it came as the wind whizzed by her, her head whips forward to find it was too late to turn back as she stared down into the abyss below her. Rosie helplessly flapped her arms and clawed at the air, her weight thrown forward by the momentum. With a final terrified look back at the approaching figures once in chase slowing down to the edge she leapt from. In her cadaver lingered a shadowy figure she could only make out for a second, her mouth opening to let out an inaudible shriek 

She fell into the black.

GASP!

Rosie jolted in bed, wide eyed and shaking with her claws digging into the poor pillow that bled feathers beneath her head.She awoke not to the colorless world, but nonetheless a dark and cold bedroom. Here the air didn’t smell of the rotting dead, nor was she plagued by the corpses sticking out of the ground. Rosie moved slow and hesitant, still quietly disoriented as she took a cautious look around her. The curtains still pulled over the windows left her in the perfect cave to sleep, only an ounce of light filtering in around the edges of the window curtains provide her with enough light to faintly make out to content of her bedroom. Her breathing remained irregular for a passing moment, her heart racing, until slowly descending with her practiced breaths. home.. she was back at home. Alone in her bed as always. Mindlessly her hand reached out to feel besides her where a body should have been, palming at the cold sheets where the quilt was tossed over on her and all heat had been lost to the chill of the room. She made a face and sat up with an early morning pout. Where was he? It didnt take long for the familiar smell and sound to cut through the air and reach her senses. Music played with a vintage echo to it, resounding through the house from just downstairs – her vinyll records were being played. And the smell… breakfast. Eggs. Rosie sat up fully and yawned, stretching with a catlike countenance before rolling back and searching for the clock. The digital numbers were almost blinding at first, a hand rubbing at her eyes until the numbers clearly displayed  10:00am in a bright red glow. It surprised her as she rolled out of bed and got to her feet quickly ; She slept late, and that was almost unheard of for her. When had she become so tired? Almost always, right…She washed up in the bathroom quickly, splashing away the sleep from her eyes and masking the bags under her eyes with a quick dab of foundation on her finger. She left her hair in its disheveled mass of curls, patting down only the top to get the hairs down, brushed her teeth, and then slowly went down the stairs in nothing but her tanktop and sleeping shorts. 

    There’s still a sense of unbalance in her as Rosie came down the stairs. Her mind still hazy from her dreams, a paranoid sense still lingering in her that perhaps she was stuck in yet another dream. The house was warmer downstairs, the light scent now imposing and prominent as it steamed up the kitchen where it seemed her family had congregated. Midway down the stairs, she hesitated. Though she cannot see them just yet, she hears Mia laughing and singing along to the record of a song far beyond her time. She’s giggling and calling for instructions on what ingredients to bring from the fridge, while in the corner Malakaid sat at the table intently staring at the people inside. The scene was familiar.. to familiar. was she still dreaming? what if she was? A cold feeling sank in the pit of her stomach as dread built in her muscles. Her hold on the railing tightened, her ears flattening back against her skull, as she took a step back. If this was a dream.. she didn’t want to see him. she didn’t want to walk downstairs and see him smiling there like nothing had ever gone wrong. Like life was normal and good, like he never died.Rosie was paralyzed in that spot, her mind stagnant by her own fears welling up tightly in her chest.. but the voice that spoke from the kitchen, the young man’s deep and sweet voice, was not Rocky’s. The tension uncoiled slowly inside of her body, a low exhale of relief slipping past her lips as her shoulders dipped. down and loosened. you’re thinking too much. Just go down already.  That was what she did.The mother approached discreetly from the corner of the room without being noticed, walking behind the wall before subtly poking her head out to peer into the room with a curious smile on her face.

There, in the center of a messy kitchen, were the joys in her life all mingling together. Mia was practically hanging onto Wendell’s leg  and laughing to Elvis Presley’s suspicious minds as she sang out her proclaimed love to the chorus of the song, while poor Wendell seemed to be struggling to hull around the little girl clinging to his leg and flip the omelet in the skillet he held in hand at the same time. Malakaid sat at the table, watching them with wide interested eyes as he ate his mountain of scrambled eggs with a fork, bobbing his head to the tune he knew well but could not form the words to sing. Though his face was neutral, the spark of amusement in his orange irises told her all that his expression and body could not. Even Orpheus bobbed on his perch in the living room, his inky feathers ruffled and his crested feathers standing tall at attention to it all. It was Orpheus to spot Rosie first, as her familiar, however he knew better than to give away her position with a cry for attention.And then there was Wendell.. Glowing in the morning light streaming through the kitchen window, smiling with a brilliance unique only to a cosmic.. Clumsy and goofy, and yet so smooth in his motion as he managed her energetic daughter holding on to him, and serving yet another plate of eggs, bacon, and toast without even a fumble. It had been a long.. since anyone else made breakfast. Since someone actually woke up before her, since he was gone.. Rosie folded her arms over her chest and stepped out further into the light with a warm smile to greet them.. praying it would mask the sorrow ache that built in her eyes as she cleared her throat. It was a domino effect of head turning to meet her, from Mal to Mia, to Wendell all in unison. Mia gave a delightful squeal before detaching herself from Wendell to tackle her Mother’s legs with Joy.“ Mama Mama! You’re awake finally! Wendell made us breakfast! ”“ I see that. Good morning to you, my sweetheart.” Rosie chuckled and returned her daughter’s affection with a hug. She ruffled her fingers through the mass of platinum curls on her daughter’s head and leaned down to plant a kiss onto her forehead, then glanced up at the smiling Wendell. It sends a pulse through her then.. her heart skipping a beat, thump thump thumping in her chest. That look made her weak… 

“ And good morning to you too, Sunshine. You woke up before me.” 

Wendell’s smile broadened. enough that the dimples of his cheeks showed their charm. With a plate in hand, he walked it to the table to set it down, and gave Rosie a shrug of his shoulders. “ You looked like you were comfortable, I didn’t wanna wake you up. Had to get down here before Mia did.” Wendell pulled the chair out for Mia, to which whom Rosie gently ushered off to the table as she made her way over. She forgot what it was like.. to have someone do this. She was so accustomed to doing it on her own now, she seemed rather sheepish to have slacked off. “ You know, breakfast is normally a mom sort of job. You’re the one visiting, you should be the one relaxing.” Rosie kissed Mal on his cheek and ruffled his hair next. She shook her head at Wendell, but the man watched her with those piercing eyes of his. He seemed to study her as often as she did him, and she felt the heat rise to her cheeks. Wendell flashed a perfectly shining smile and held open an arm for her to fold into,        ❝ What is so wrong with wanting to take care of you? ❞Another weak pulse shoots through her muscles, a gesture so simple and yet it weighed heavy in context in her mind. Rosie faulters like a machine, blinking and staring at Wendell holding his arm out to her, sound suddenly fading as the image before her flashes in her mind’s eye. She sees the man who isn’t there, and hasn’t been there for a year. She sees him smiling, without blood staining his teeth, or the bloodless tone of his skin. He’s there smiling and holding his arm out expectantly for a troublesome cat to come crawling into his hold as she always did. In search for comfort and security she never found in herself. And yet in that very spot, there is Wendell in his place. Radiating the same kindness, the same love as the man who was no longer there.. a blurred image fusing, making her mind throb painfully as it fights to bring her back to realtity. Her silence drew on too long, Wendell’s face shifting to one of slight concern as Mia patted her mother’s side curiously. “ Mama? Hello? You okay? ” 

“ I…”  she hesitates. Another jostle from a ghost, she blinks, her legs suddenly moving until she crashed herself into his side. Rosie buried her face into his chest then, bowing her face away from sight, quick to wrap her arms around his lanky torso and cling onto him with subtle desperation like a child seeking comfort. Her breath trembles, a shiver in her spine.. she apologizes quietly against him, “Im.. Im fine, sorry. I guess im just.. not used to it.   its been a while..��There was very little explanation needed beyond that between the two of them. Wendell said nothing to it, letting the music of the vintage melodies fill the air as oil crackled on the stove top and silverware scraped against ceramic plates as the kids continued eating. It lingered between them for a passing minute.. Rosie nestled against him, seemingly fixated in thoughts, but then she looked up and smiled again– that eye crinkling smile of hers, fangs poking out from her lips as her hold on his chest tightened,“ I appreciate your help, Wen… did you make yourself a plate yet? ” Wendell looked down at her, his small smile returning, and shook his head,“ I was just about to get to yours..”“ Don’t. You sit down.” Rosie tiptoed and hopped up to plant a sweet kiss against his jaw, then unfolded herself from his hold and twisted him back against the table. Even a good foot shorter, the little woman knew well how to get her way as she suddenly grinned. Wendell quirked a brow as she stepped away to head to the stove, reaching out to take her grab her hand to stop her. He pouted, “ No no, i’m suppose to be taking care of you.” Rosie chuckled and gently pulled her hand away, then reached up to boop against his nose.

“ You’ve done enough by feeding my kids. Now let me take my job back, and you can take care of me later, alright? ”A wink hints with subtly a secret only adults would know, in which words fly right over the head of the children enjoying their breakfast and already imagining what the day holds with their super dad in town. Rosie puckers her lips and blows him a kiss , then turned back to get back into the motions of morning breakfast. She couldn’t help the way he made her smile.. the warmth that fills her chest, knowing  his eyes watched her from behind, and worried for her. Pulling out the plates and setting them out on the countertop for later, Rosie resumed where Wendell left off in the messy kitchen. For now she let her mind wander on pleasant things.. letting the thoughts of nightmares and the dead become hollow and distant under the plans for this day. She hummed along to the next track playing aloud on the record player , her tail twitching with enthusiasm as she listened to the chatter at the table between the 3 of them.

Things looked to be getting better for her.. perhaps life wasn’t always so cruel. Perhaps she could make it another day, if only Wendell could keep her company in this life.

[toogoodmusic]

TOO GOOD TUESDAY INTERVIEW: Kyan Palmer

Dark pop-R&B singer and songwriter Kyan Palmer didn’t start his career in music as an artist. He actually started his career in music was working as a marketing assistant at Republic Records. It wasn’t until he ended up uploading a song called “Burn Mona Lisa” as part of a college music class that he actually realized he could be an artist. The song released in February 2017 and hit several country’s Spotify Viral Charts and the song has amassed over 3.3 million streams. Since that release Palmer has gone on to release a variety of singles that have cumulated into the 10-song debut EP that goes by the same name as the viral hit song, Burn Mona Lisa. Luckily Palmer took some time to tell Too Good Music about the album, his first song going viral, what he misses most about home state of Arizona and more. Full interview below:

TOO GOOD MUSIC: First off, congrats on the release of your debut album! What’s the story behind the album name, Burn Mona Lisa?

KYAN PALMER: Burn Mona Lisa was the song that started my career and it really encompasses this chapter of my career, so it just felt right for me to name the project Burn Mona Lisa. I will always look back at this era and think of that song.

TGM: Oh yeah - let’s talk about that…how’d it feel to have your debut single go viral and to have a song with over 3 million streams?

KP: It’s crazy. I think everyone puts their first song out and hopes it’s going to start their career and I am lucky enough to say that that was the case for me. I feel very fortunate that people enjoyed the song and it gave me the confidence to actually pursue music as a career.

TGM: How would you describe your style of music?

KP: I feel like it’s constantly changing. I love so many types of music and I strive to incorporate multiple styles/genres into my version of pop.

TGM: What’s the story or inspiration behind “Make It Up?” 

KP: I love a good toxic relationship. It’s all I ever seem to find myself in. But, instead of focusing on the negative aspects, “Make It Up” sheds light on the good parts. In a heated relationship there is always passion and a genuine care for one another among all the craziness. That’s what this song is all about

TGM: How did working at a record label better prepare you to be an artist in the music industry?

KP: Well, I now know the ins and outs of the music industry. I consider working at a record label my masters program in music business. You truly cannot be over-educated and I think it is important for artists to understand the business as well as the creative. The world’s biggest superstars are all very business savvy.

TGM: If you didn’t up becoming an artist and stayed at Republic Records, where do you think you’d be right now?

KP: Hopefully signing artists like me and being the best that I can be at making hardworking people’s dreams come true.

TGM: Speaking of, what was the biggest thing you learned from opening for Marc E. Bassy?

KP: Marc is a very fun guy. He’s just so used to performing and is so confident. I learned from him that you just go out, put on a show, enjoy yourself, and grab a drink to celebrate after. That guy loves his job.

TGM: What have you seen as the biggest difference in living in AZ to living in LA? What’s one thing you miss from AZ that you can’t get in LA?

KP: First off, the rent. LA is expensive as hell and you live in a box compared to the cheap luxury living of Arizona. Other than that, I miss my family and friends. In AZ, I had a lot of genuine people around me that truly supported me and that is something that is really hard to find in LA.

TGM: Ha-ha true. In addition to being your own songwriter you also write songs for other people. What do you like about writing for other people vs writing for yourself?

KP: I love doing both! Writing for other people allows me to really get to know the other artist and learn from them. I feel like I also get to explore more sounds and be more open with experimentation. Writing for myself is always different. I like eclectic sounds and moods for my songs. In the past, I’ve written mostly sad songs, and more recently, I’ve explored a more positive side of myself. Both of these styles come about so differently.

TGM: If you could create your ideal headlining tour what three openers would you bring along with you?

KP: First off, holla at me if you need an opener. I’m definitely at that stage. If I were doing a dream headlining tour I would want Drake, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift to come along because that means I’m doing really well haha!

TGM: That would be true success! What is your live show like?

KP: It’s authentic. It’s usually just me and a drummer and we have fun up there. I’m still just trying to continue getting better and better at performing. Right now, I’m really relying on my voice, but soon you’ll catch me with some new dance moves.

TGM: What do you hope people take away from your music?

KP: I want them to feel something and associate my music to moments in their lives. Hopefully it makes them happy.

TGM: If you could only listen to (5) artists for the rest of your life who would they be?

KP: 50 Cent. Celine Dion. Elvis. Fergie (pre-national anthem fiasco). Lil Wayne

TGM: If you were on death row what would be your last meal you ate and last song you’d listen to?

KP: I would eat Anka Grill in New York City. Mediterranean combo #3 with hummus. There is something special in that food I swear. I’d listen to “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe, because clearly I have been a bad person and I need Jesus.·      

TGM: And lastly, what else is coming up for you?

KP: Pushing this EP. Getting ready for my next release. Writing for other people. Meeting new people. Eating a lot. Pretending to work out. Taking more meetings. Finding my sound.

A HUGE shout-out to Kyan Palmer for taking the time to answer some questions from Too Good Music. To keep up with his journey follow along with the links below:

                                       Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

[forzalando]

Wedding Plans ~ Fred Weasley

OH GOD OH GOD I CRIED THE WHOLE TIME I WROTE THIS. thank you to @potter-harryjames for proofreading and telling me what she thought because I was nervous to post this. I hope you all love this as much as I do, it was so cathartic writing this like y’all don’t even know.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

Requested: no, I just like to torture myself

Y/N: Your Name

Warnings: sUPER MEGA FRED FLUFF, mentions of d*ath, mild language (i think just h*ll, sh*t, and d*mn)

Word Count: 2.5k

P.S. there are time skips and they are indicated by a break! also please let me know what you think! i love feedback, whether you say something in a reblog, message me, or comment! i love you all :) 

As sweat dripped from your forehead while you worked in the yard, you cursed the season of summer. It was the end of July, and the blistering heat was definitely getting to you.

“Fred, can we please take a break?”

“Bloody hell, yes, I thought you’d never ask.”

“Me? I was waiting for you to ask! I thought you wanted to have everything finished before your Mum came home so she wouldn’t be too upset that you and George ate all of her baking!”

“Well I did, but it’s so damn hot out I don’t even care anymore. I’m so glad we live above the shop and don’t have a yard to deal with.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t believe your brother wanted a summer wedding and now we are stuck making sure the yard looks perfect for his bloody ceremony.”

Fred threw an arm around your shoulders as you walked into the Burrow to grab drinks and relax. He poured you a glass of lemonade, sat down, and then pulled you onto his lap.

“We definitely won’t have a summer wedding. I think May is a nice month, don’t you?”

“I always thought a May wedding would be nice…” you said confusedly as you turned to look at your smiling boyfriend.

“Brilliant, me too, darling. May 2nd sounds perfect to me.”

You had to admit, it was an absolutely perfect day for a wedding, even if you preferred late spring weddings. You had almost torn your hair out due to stress, but everything was worth it when the tent was up and when you saw the looks of pure bliss on Bill and Fleur’s faces when they were finally pronounced husband and wife.

You sat in a chair as the reception began with a dreamy look on your face, when suddenly you were pulled from your seated position and tugged towards the dancefloor.

“I didn’t know you wanted to dance with me, Fred,” you giggled as he swayed back and forth.

“You look absolutely breathtaking, my love, of course I want to dance with you; but first I had to escape the clutches of my relatives.”

“How’s Aunt Muriel? I see she left you a little lipstick stain on your cheek.”

You quickly wiped the bright red stain off of his skin and replaced it with a light pink mark that matched your own lipstick.

“There, that’s better. Now all of Fleur’s Veela cousins will know that you’re taken by me.”

Fred chuckled at your statement and leaned in to leave a quick but passionate kiss upon your lips.

“That was just in case there were any blokes out there who might have thought about asking you to dance.”

A comfortable silence settled over the two of you as you rested your head against his chest and wrapped your arms around his middle.

“Y/N, when we get married, promise me it won’t be this big of a fuss. I just want my brothers, Ginny, your sister, and my Mum and Dad. Is that alright?”

You sighed contentedly and answered him.

“Of course, Fred, whatever you want.”

“Wicked.”

“Y/N? Does your sister still hate George?”

You let out a bark of laughter at his incredulous question.

“No, she doesn’t hate your brother! She used to have a massive crush on him, that’s why she was always so mean to him during school!”

“Oh…how did I not notice that? Does she still like him?”

“Fred, she’s been dating Seamus Finnegan for a year now! I swear I’ve told you that before.”

“Right, sorry, I just thought it would be weird if the best man and maid of honor couldn’t stand each other so I had to check.”

You rolled your eyes at him and mumbled “alright, Fred” before going back to folding laundry.

“Hey love? Peonies are your favorite flower right?” Fred shouted from the kitchen.

You walked in to find him writing a letter home to his parents and you chuckled as he stood with a puzzled look on his face; worried that after almost six years together he couldn’t remember your favorite flower.

“Yes, Freddie, peonies are my favorite, but it’s October, love, they’re not exactly in season. They’re a late spring, very early summer flower.”

“I know but I want Mum to plant a bunch and apparently you’re supposed to plant them in early October.”

“What do you want peonies for, love?”

“I don’t want them, but we’re going to need them sooner or later so I figure Mum might want to make sure she has lots and lots of good ones for our wed…”

“Frederick Weasley, what sort of game do you think you’re playing? Your mother is worried sick about her two youngest children and you want her to plant flowers for me as some romantic gesture?”

“No game, sweetheart, Mum has been gardening and knitting a lot to pass the time since she’s so worried about Ron and Ginny. I was just politely asking her to plant your favorite flower.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, and he gulped.

“Besides, if I was planning a big romantic gesture for you, it would involve fireworks and chocolate and your favorite cake and – “

“Why don’t you just show me a big romantic gesture in the bedroom? Right now?”

“I think I can do that!”

And with that, all talk of peonies and romantic gestures ceased to exist for the time being.

It was Christmastime at the Burrow, but it definitely didn’t feel that way. The atmosphere was far from joyful; Molly spent most of her time in her room so that no one would see her cry, and the fake smile that adorned her face when she came out broke your heart into pieces. You and Fred had spent the past few weeks at his childhood home to help Molly and Arthur during this despondent time while George took care things of the shop.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were off hunting Horcruxes, and Ginny was at Hogwarts being taught by deatheaters and attempting to rally what was left of the DA for when the inevitable culmination of this war came about.

You all feared for their lives, and with no direct communication with your missing loved ones, a heavy blanket of sorrow surrounded each of you at all times.

You sat in front of the fireplace with Fred’s arms wrapped around you tightly.

“Fred,” you mumbled, “what’s going to happen? What if not all of us survive this war?”

“Y/N, your sister is safe, she’s staying with your Mom’s muggle cousin in America. My family…we’re tough, strong, and stubborn. There’s no way any of our family won’t survive.”

Even though Fred’s words calmed you down a bit, you still felt the weight of worry upon your heart. He softly stroked your hair and you felt yourself slowly drifting into slumber, but before you could fall completely asleep, Fred’s voice whispered into the silence.

“Besides, there’s another Weasley wedding on the horizon and no one is going to miss it.”

“I didn’t know Charlie found a girl…” you mumbled as you finally slipped into unconsciousness.

It had been discovered just a few weeks ago that you and the Weasley family were aiding Harry, and you were all forced into hiding, taking refuge at Aunt Muriel’s.

Fred and George spent most of their time focusing on selling their products via mail order, which left you to your own devices.

For whatever reason, Aunt Muriel had a record player, and your prized muggle record collection had been packed into your things when you moved into her house.

The sound of Elvis Presley’s voice singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love” filled the small room you were sitting in, and your eyes closed as you swayed to the music.

Fred had left George to find you, knowing that you were the source of the music that was echoing throughout the home. He took you into his arms and danced with you the same way he had at Bill and Fleur’s wedding.

A tear trickled down your cheek and Fred, observant as ever, noticed you were crying before you had a chance to quickly wipe the tear away.

“What’s wrong, love?”

“I just…I always pictured myself dancing to this song at my wedding, but now I’m not so sure I’ll even live long enough to get married.”

“Don’t talk like that, Y/N, you’ll live through this war. We both will. And we’ll dance to this song at our wedding, and any other song you want to dance to.”

“You talk an awful lot about our wedding, Freddie.”

“It’s not talking, it’s planning.”

The two of you spent the next hour dancing around the room; long after the song had ended and silence filled the air.

You saw the blast knock his body tens of feet away from where he had been standing. The ringing in your ears causing you to lose focus of the situation at hand for a few moments.

Once you could see straight, you started to search among the rubble, searching for a familiar flash of red.

Suddenly, a hand reached out and grabbed your ankle. You whipped around to see Fred Weasley laying on the ground with his infamous smile plastered on his dirt covered face.

“Fred!” You cried as you helped him off the ground.

“Fred Weasley, you absolute moron, I thought I lost you. Don’t you ever scare me like that again or I swear to Merlin I’ll never let you leave the house for the rest of your life!”

You let him pull you into his chest and your tears soaked his jacket, but neither of you cared.

“It’s May 2nd, Y/N, I can’t die on May 2nd! That’s going to be the date of our wedding!”

“Shut up and kiss me Fred,” you mumbled into his shirt, paying no attention to what he was saying due to the fact that you were still in shock from seeing his body flung through the air.

“Oi,” George called from nearby, “there’s a bloody war going on, there will be time for snogging later!”

With one last kiss to your mouth, you and Fred took off running, throwing curses and hexes at anyone that dared to threaten your friends or family.

The entire Weasley family was at the Burrow; it was a bittersweet reunion. Although you were all overjoyed that everyone in the family had survived, you also mourned the loss of all the friends you had lost in the brutal war.

You especially were grieving the loss of Remus Lupin, who had become a father figure in your life ever since your parents passed away during your fifth year at Hogwarts. You excused yourself from the living room and trudged up to Fred’s old room. His belongings had been brought there from Aunt Muriel’s, and the two of you had yet to return to the apartment above the shop.

Your eyes landed on a particularly curious looking booklet sitting atop his trunk. In Fred’s unmistakable scribble, you read the words “wedding plans” on the cover, and your curiosity got the better of you when you decided to look inside.

The first page was dated July 29th, 1997, and on it he had written, “Date of Ceremony: May 2nd. Y/N and I agree that a late spring wedding would be absolutely beautiful.”

You flipped to the next page, dated August 1st, 1997, and saw that he had written down the conversation you had about wanting a small wedding while you danced at Bill and Fleur’s reception. Each page had something new written on it; the fact that you wanted peonies for your bouquet, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as your first dance song, and so many other small pieces of information Fred had coaxed out of you since last summer.

Suddenly, you heard Fred’s voice call out from the doorway.

“What are you reading, love?”

You turned around, booklet in hand, with tears streaming down your face.

“Fred…I…I didn’t know that you’ve been serious this whole time.”

“Well I told you that it wasn’t talk, I was planning everything out. It’s been what’s kept me going this past year, you know, the thought of everything in that booklet becoming real.”

“Oh Fred,” you cried as you ran towards him and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“You never said anything along the lines of ‘I don’t want to marry you’ so I figured we were on the same page. Besides, you always said you didn’t want a fancy proposal.”

“I did say that, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want one at all! You never asked me, how was I supposed to know you were serious?”

“Because I’ve always been serious about you, Y/N. You are the one thing in my life that I’ve ever been serious about and sure of. You’ve always been a bit oblivious though, so I suppose I should do this properly.”

He stepped past you and rummaged through his trunk before pulling out a small, black box. He kneeled in front of you and took your hand before smirking devilishly at you.

“I was only joking, you know, I had always planned to properly propose. But I knew if I did while there was a war going on you might have hexed my nose off, so I’ve been saving this for almost a year now.”

Tears were swimming in both of your eyes, and before Fred could ask, you gave him an answer.

“Yes. I want to marry you, I will marry you, on May 2nd of next year. It’ll be just us and our families. We’ll have loads of peonies and dance to Elvis Presley. I want to be Mrs. Fred Weasley.”

“Are you serious, love, I had a whole speech planned and everything, can’t I just say some of it?”

“Nothing will top me finding that notebook sitting on top of your trunk, but if you want to try…”

“You know what, you’re right, this turned out way better than I planned. It was romantic, you’re crying, the ring looks – oh bloody hell, I haven’t even put the ring on you yet.”

He fumbled with the box and slid the ring onto your finger. It was simple, elegant, and absolutely perfect.

Fred stood up in front of you and brought a hand to your cheek, swiping the pad of his thumb to catch the falling tears.

“We’re getting married,” he whispered as a tear of his own slid down his face.

“Yes, Freddie, we’re getting married.”

[justniggatrynahelp]

The Gang As Girls (Headcanons)

Ponyboy:

-she’s so adorable omg

-has freckles

-her hair goes to the level of her shoulders

-Soda always makes the most adorable braids of her hair

-likes to craft all sort of stuff

-has flowercrowns she made herself

-she just loves adding stuff to anything

-got plain jeans? give it to her and she’ll make a miracle out of it!

-doesn’t like to show off

-wants to grow longer hair like her sister’s

-small bit jealous of Soda’s hair

-pretty tall for her age

-doesn’t like loud music

-kinda insecure about her freckles

-but everyone loves them and finds them so ultra super couper extra cute

-gets nervous while talking about her crushes

-johnny’s bff

-just the cutest girl you’ll ever meet

-won’t admit but loves The Beatles

-would marry all 4 of them

-no question

-they’re the reason she has bangs

-Two-Bit has all their albums and she’s so jealous

-she has a diary

-her favourite actor is Marlon Brando

-favourite actress is Audrey Hemburn

-there isn’t a movie on this planet that moves her world as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

Sodapop:

-has long soft & shiny hair

-big baby eyes

-how does she do it???

-wears a lot of different hair clips

-uses hair spray

-takes good care of her nails

-everyone just loves her

-has a very weird fashion sense

-she can go from pink girly dress to guerrilla pants, denim jackets and big boots

-has a tini tiny crush on Steve

-no one knows it

-besides Ponyboy

-and he’s teasing her about it when they’re alone

-likes taking ponyboy’s stuff

-she still didn’t return that flowercrown she took last month

-Pony’s reminding her 24/7 that she has to give it back

-she acts like she’s keep forgetting to give it back

-she actually gave it to Steve

-so, Pony better say goodbye to your beloved flowercrown

-tried cooking

-failed

-Darry’s been on edge of nerves to learn her to cook

-nope

-still failure

-has a huge poster of Elvis in her room

-would sell her soul for it

-acts like she can wear heels

-no she cannot

Darrel:

-100% wonderwoman.

-she has hair which goes to the middle of her back but most of the time she keeps it in a tall ponytail

-usually wears baggy jeans and wide shirts

-COOKING LEVEL OVER 99999999

-makes the bEST brownies in whole Tulsa

-it’s like a social gathering whenever she makes brownies

-very protective of her sisters

-secretely knows about Pony’s “beatlemania” but won’t tell

-always there to save her sisters from any kind of trouble

-wishes they could do more stuff on their own

-cracks puns on a good day

-cracks pans against somebody’s head on a bad day (jk jk jk 😂)

-loves to get dressed real nice when going somewhere important

-her mother left her pearls and she wears them only on special occasions

-loves wearing bracelets

-for her last birthday Soda & Pony bought her a small box full of different bracelets

-each one for each day

-she was extremely happy with the present

-she wears them everyday, making sure they know how happy they made her with it

-Two-Bit is her bestie

-they didn’t hang out that much in since Darry started working

-she misses those days

-but they still get to hang out sometimes

-also listen to records

-she loves listening to The Who

-has 2 albums under her bed

-would wear bell bottoms 24/7

-makes her legs look longer

-plus comfortable & fashionable

Dallas:

-has boy-short hair

-has a blade in her backpocket

-cheekbones as high as her ego

-porcelain pretty clean face

-if you don’t count few bruises from last week’s fight

-not into girly style of dressing

-rocks leather jacket

-owns a collection of chokers

-has wild hair

-Johnny tried putting hair clips to make it look decent

-nope

-the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

-sometimes she goes out in a skirt

-rarely but it happens

-the girl got all the whisles

-and she punched every guy who even dared to say something about her look

-her favourite actor is James Dean

-she rewatched “Rebel Without A Cause” too many times

-feels kinda insecure about her teeth

-she tried not to smile too often

-Johnny noticed this and told her she has the prettiest & brightest teeth she ever saw

-since then Dally’s been laughing like crazy

-a huge fan of The Doors

-would kill if it meant she can go to one of their concerts

-has posters of Jim Morrison in her room

-and if you look a bit closer you can also see a few photos of Marilyn Monroe

-she absolutely adores her

-she and Johnny sometimes recreate scenes from “Some Like it Hot”

-of course, Dallas is going as Marilyn Monroe

- “I swear to god, if you tell anyone what we just did, not only I will beat you up, I’ll beat you up for good!”

- “You’ve got my word!“

-professional at doing makeup

-not many people know this since she only wears makeup during night’s out

-Soda is jealous of her skills

-has a small plant which is placed on her room’s window

-loves the plant

-she even caught herself singing to the plant so it’ll grow faster

Steve:

-a bit shorter than Soda

-has curly hair that goes a little above her shoulders

-loVES sweets

-specially anything with chocolate

-she looks tough & masculine

-but still adorable and effortless

-when she was younger she didn’t like her nose

-no one would even think about it but she she stood in front of a mirror, stared at her face and cried

-one time Soda came in and saw her crying in front of a mirror

-Soda walked closer to her and pulled her into a hug

-they sat in Steve’s room for few hours

-Soda didn’t wish to leave until Steve was completely satisfied with her look

-“Why would you even think your nose is ugly? It’s beautiful the way it is, just look at it! Look how beautiful is your whole pretty face!”

-since then, Steve hasn’t let even a tear

-her favourite movie is “Gilda”

-she’s a pro at fixing cars

-and she looks super cute in her working suit

-specially when she wraps a ribbon around her hair

-you wouldn’t even believe what kind of beauties work at DX

-there are times she walks out in a dress

-her favourite dress is dark blue with white dots all over it

-her favourite thing to wear on her head beside her ribbon is a flowercrown soda gave her a month ago

-simply loves wearing everything

-from all makeup, she only uses lipstick

-her car is the coolest car in whole Tulsa

-has her name written on back of it

-she dreams about being Rita Hayworth

Two-Bit:

-goofiest of all the gang

-has straight hair which comes to level of her shoulders

-her hair is most of the time tied in piggytails

-her dream is to go to Disneyland

-she’d take all her friends with her

-has a big jewerlly box she made herself

-she filled it with all kinds of badges

-she has her own collection of badges

-gang only knows about it

-she has all albums by The Beatles

-has no idea Pony is head over heels crazy about them

-she likes to wear denim jackets

-some of them has a mickey mouse drawn on them

-she likes to draw

-she made her own little comic series just like mickey mouse

-she called the comic: “Two & The Bit”

-she had nothing else on her mind so it was more than okay

-used to be very close with Darry

-hopes those days will be back again

-a big fan of color blue

-Paul McCartney is her idol

-John Lennon is her saviour

-the movie she enjoys watching is “Sabrina” with Audrey Hemburn

-she and Pony watched it together

-both fell in love with it

-Steve gave her a lolipop with Mickey Mouse’s face on it

-she stared at it so long

-she didn’t want to eat such a masterpiece

-but still ate it since Dally said he’ll eat it if she won’t

Johnny:

-her hair is little longer than Dally’s

-she has beautiful dark skin

-such a cutie beautie

-big dark eyes

-small nose with few smaller moles on her face

-she wears whatever she finds in her closet

-she and Pony are like the cutest duo in history

-she reads a lot

-her favourite book is “Sherlock Holmes”

-she watched every movie based on the book

-Pony lets her take some of her jewelly

-and Johnny lets Pony some of hers

-SLEEPOVERS

-she’s amazed by Pony’s designs, like the flowercrows she made

-Johnny even tried writing poetry

-she really likes Jimi Hendrix

-she knows the lyrics to all his songs

-she even got Dallas to listen to them with her

-she really admires Dally

-but thinks she should try to not get in so much trouble

-really quiet

-doesn’t like attention

-wishes she could get to go to London

-she loves doing impressions of Sherlock Holmes

[beautyisyours]

GNAWING AT THE BONES 2

At the beginning, not everyone appreciated my goal to find a shared humanity. When I first started this job, few artists wanted to come on my show because my interview style was so different. A lot of big stars were upset with me because I took them out of their comfort zone. I didn’t say,

 “Hey, let’s talk about your record and what inspired this song.” Instead I wanted to know what they ate for dinner last night. (That isn’t a real question, but rather the kind that always leads to something else. So I ask it, and then I just listen. Often interviewers don’t listen to the answers—they are just preparing for their next question. I listen to what the artist is saying, because that’s what takes me to my next question.)

Jason Aldean, one of the biggest guys in country music, acted like he hated me when he came on the show. He didn’t think my questions were amusing and rarely smiled. Because of that I didn’t really like him, either. That’s not childish, is it? But now, we totally get each other. And I genuinely like that dude, so much so that if I needed a favor, I’d call him. And I think he’d call me, too. Turns out, much like me, Jason is just a quiet guy. He was dragged through the mud a couple of times and I felt bad for him, because he’s a quality person under the persona. First impressions aren’t always right. Not about Jason, not about me, not really about anyone.

Jason aside, some artists lack any sense of humor about themselves whatsoever. I can live with that. It’s very important to me to keep some sense of equilibrium between my guests and me while we are on air. I’m not bigger than they are, and they’re not bigger than I am. Nor are they bigger than the listeners and fans. We are all people. Except for Garth Brooks, who’s the greatest of all time. He’s bigger than us all. Yeah, Garth Brooks stands alone. I’ve interviewed Garth Brooks (I can’t call the guy who’s sold 134 million albums “Garth,” but Mr. Brooks seems a little formal, so I’m just going to keep going with Garth Brooks) a few times now. I couldn’t believe that the first time he came in the studio he brought a guitar and played whatever songs we wanted. By pretty much any metric you can come up with, from album sales to monster arena tours, the man is bigger than any musician living or dead, including Madonna, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, and even the King himself, Elvis. He was just the nicest guy, though, which is what 95 percent of country music stars are. Then, at the end of his visit, he gave me his guitar, which he signed. Oh my god. It was such an amazing experience that although I often listen back to segments of my show in order to figure what I could have done better, I didn’t listen to this interview. I wanted to preserve the memory of how great it was in my mind. I didn’t want to ruin it by focusing on a question I should have asked or a word I stumped on. (I’ve only ever done that on two other interviews: Clerks director Kevin Smith and my first interview years ago, with John Mayer. But Garth Brooks is definitely

the most sacred.)

In my apartment I have a wall of guitars that are hung the way I guess other people hang art. That’s where I keep the guitar Garth Brooks gave me. There are also guitars from John Mayer, Ben Harper, and Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish, who came in as a guest my first week in Nashville. (I no longer take guitars from guests, but I buy one or two a week for artists

to sign and then I give them to charity.) There’s one over in the corner on the wall from Dierks Bentley, whose song “I Hold On” we really championed on our show. After it went to No. 1, he wrote all the lyrics on a guitar and gave it to me. Eric Paslay, who was a big songwriter in Nashville before he went solo, did the same thing with his first single, “Friday Night.” I was the first to play the single, which also hit No. 1. So I have a guitar with every lyric to that song written on it. It’s quite special to me. In the land of constant competition that is show business, things like that are still pretty awesome.

Dierks and Eric are just a couple of the artists The Bobby Bones Show has helped hit the charts. When I say this, I’m not bragging about myself (well, maybe just a little: I do have a keen ear for awesomeness) but rather about our listeners, because they’re the ones who buy the music and make the hits. It took about a year for our radio show to influence the charts, but since then it’s crazy how loyal and how trustworthy the listeners of my radio show have become.

One of the most gratifying chart-toppers who have come through our doors is Chris Janson. Although he’d written songs for the likes of Tim McGraw, Chris got dropped from his own recording contract. He was playing bars and struggling, like so many musicians in Nashville. Talent is everywhere, all the time in this city. Everybody is a musician, singer, and/or songwriter. And I’m not talking about second-rate guitar players or people who need Auto-Tune to sound good. If you aren’t the best of the best, you will be chewed up and spit out here. You can go to any bar on any street and watch somebody who’s amazing and only working for tips. So Nashville is crowded with people struggling to make it in country music—and yet talented people from all over the country still move here year after year.

With Chris, I kept inviting him into the studio, even though I got some heat for it. A show of our scope is only supposed to have guests with as much mass appeal as possible, and that means at minimum a record deal. But anytime we did some sort of feature with artists, we would always invite Chris in, because he was our first-ever guest and just a guy. Most important, though, he is a great musician. That’s an important element to our listeners’ loyalty; we don’t push bad music on our show for any agenda, so they know they can trust us.

Anyway, one night Chris e-mailed me a song with the message “Hey, tell me what you think. I just put it up on iTunes myself.” I liked it and wanted to play it the next morning, so I e-mailed it to my producer, Ray, asking him to

put it up on my screen in case I had time to play it.

We ended up with about forty-five seconds to kill before a commercial break that morning in early 2015, so I said to our listeners, “I got an e-mail from our buddy Chris Janson . . .” Then I played just a snippet of the song “Buy Me a Boat.”

I thought the song was good, but my tastes don’t always mix perfectly with everyone else’s. Well, this time they did, because “Buy Me a Boat” exploded. Within thirty minutes of me playing forty-five seconds of the song, it went from nonexistent to one of the top downloads on iTunes. So then I played the full song (again risking pissing off the higher-ups at iHeartRadio, because you’re taught not to play untested music on a national level), and by the end of the day, it was the No. 1 song in iTunes country and in the Top 10 on the pop chart, too!

Of course, every record label was after Chris immediately then. Chris wound up signing with Warner Bros., which put out his debut album, named after “Buy Me a Boat,” its lead single, which went to No. 1 on the Billboard country charts. The album debuted at No. 4 on the Top Country Albums chart and No. 18 on the Billboard 200. The song, which sold more than 805,000 units, went gold, and Chris landed an opening spot on Toby Keith’s summer tour. The day his song climbed to No. 1, Chris sent me a note: “None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you opening that e-mail, listening to my song, and playing it on the air. You got me a deal.”

If “Buy Me a Boat” didn’t convince me of the power of our listeners and the show, then “Girl Crush” really nailed it for me. Little Big Town—the band featuring Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook, and Phillip Sweet, all on vocals—had released their sixth studio album, Pain Killer. The single they were pushing was a party song called “Day Drinking.” But as soon as I heard “Girl Crush,” which was a deep track, I knew that was the real single.

It’s slow, and right now ballads are out of favor in country music, but I thought the song, with Karen on lead vocals, was different, in a good way, from anything else out there. So the next morning, I took to the airwaves to introduce the song to my listeners. I don’t want to sound like a broken record or a jerk, but “Girl Crush” instantly skyrocketed up the iTunes charts to the Top 5 that morning. Because of that segment, they put it out as the album’s second single after “Day Drinking.” And the rest is history. “Girl Crush,” with sales of nearly 1.5 million in the U.S., literally made Billboard history

when it spent eleven weeks at No. 1.

I should have gotten a shout-out by country music programmers everywhere, right? Nope. I created blowback. Apparently the song’s topic, one woman’s obsession with another, was too risqué for country radio. Playing lyrics like “I want to taste her lips / Yeah, ’cause they taste like you” were “promoting the gay agenda,” according to some angry listeners and station managers. Frightened program directors refused to play the song. Although so many country music fans downloaded the song that it was No. 4 on iTunes, it was only No. 33 in radio airplay rankings because DJs were afraid to play a song about lesbians. (Meanwhile the band says unequivocally that the song isn’t about lesbians. Who cares? I like lesbians.)

When I had Little Big Town in the studio, I went on a rant. “Is it frustrating to you that here is your song—that is one of the top ten sellers for weeks and weeks and weeks—and people on the radio are still afraid to play it because they think it’s a ‘lesbian song’?” I asked. “It would drive me insane!”

My bosses weren’t happy about me screaming on air at the country radio industry, which paid me my salary, for being small-minded hypocrites. But I wasn’t worried. I knew the listeners had my back.

They always do, which is why I can say what I believe—or maybe it’s the other way around. Because I say what I think, the listeners always have my back. Either way, I have enough strong support to take up the issues important to me.

[peterguralnick]

Memphis Blues Again

L to R: Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt

I had never been South before.

My brother and I set out for Memphis in a Volkswagen that lost its clutch in Knoxville, and as we got closer, it seemed like I knew a blues lyric (“I’m going to Brownsville, take that right-hand road”) for nearly every town we passed. Our destination was the 1969 Memphis Country Blues Festival, which took place at the Overton Park Shell, where Elvis’ career had been launched fifteen years earlier. It was early June, hot, humid, sitting on the old wooden benches at the Overton Park amphitheater, there was no escape from the sun. But the music was magical: rediscovered (or recently discovered) blues legends like Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins,

Fred McDowell, Joe Callicott, and Sleepy John Estes, all in their sixties and seventies, were the stars of the show, along with an assortment of young white disciples like John Fahey, Sid Selvidge, and Johnny Winter.

I had seen many of them before, certainly, in coffee houses and college concerts, but it was a different experience to see them for the first time in a steamier climate, and there was no question that the music benefited from the change. A new ten-album series on Fat Possum, developed in collaboration with Amazon Originals under the umbrella title of Worried Blues (most of the albums were originally issued in a limited edition by the Genes/Adelphi label in the ’90s), presents the first three on that 1969 Memphis bill, plus such other luminaries as Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Houston Stackhouse, R.L. Burnside, and Honeyboy Edwards, all recorded in what appear to be relaxed, easy-going settings at the outset of their new careers. And yet in few cases did those careers live up to the expectation of either artist or audience. The gulf between anticipation and achievement was simply too great.

Bukka White, one of the towering figures of pre-war country blues, whose 1940 recordings rivaled the taut poetry and tightly controlled performances of Robert Johnson (his indisputable masterpiece, “Fixin’ to Die,” was featured on Bob Dylan’s first album), is a case in point. To his young cousin, Riley B. King (soon to become B.B.), his visits home, to Kilmichael, Mississippi, in the early ’40s were like the visits of a Hollywood star. “Razor sharp. Big hat, clean shirt, pressed pants, shiny shoes. He smelled of the big city and glamorous times; he looked confident and talked about things outside our little life in the hills.” But it was Bukka’s music that impressed his younger cousin most, the ability “to connect [his] guitar to human emotions,” a standard that B.B. would strive to uphold all his life. Bukka (more properly “Booker” as in “Booker T. Washington White”) was rediscovered in 1963, when guitarist John Fahey, a brilliant blues abstractionist who preferred to describe his music as “American Primitive,” sent a letter to “Bukka White (Old Blues Singer), c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, Mississippi,” on no other basis than that White had proclaimed in one of his early recordings, “Aberdeen is my home/But the men don’t want me around.” As it turned out, the letter was forwarded to the Memphis boarding house where Bukka lived while working part-time in a tank factory, and his musical career, on hold for the last fifteen years, almost immediately resumed.

Certainly the recordings on the Fat Possum album, originally titled 1963 Ain’t 1962, and made within weeks of his rediscovery, retain some of the power of his early work, and there are evocations, as there would be on subsequent recordings, too, of influences like Charlie Patton and contemporaries like Howlin’ Wolf. But it was clear at the same time that the knife-edge quality of his voice had coarsened, and the astonishing focus and fluidity of his songwriting and performance had ineradicably declined. And it was clear as well to anyone who had contact with the man that at fifty-four he was not looking for rediscovery, he was ready for the stardom that his cousin B.B. King had long since achieved. I think for me the most poignant manifestation of this dilemma came when I first saw Bukka, in the spring of 1964, as part of a folk series at the Boston YMCA, where the featured performer showed up for his Boston concert debut in a tuxedo, with little more than a dozen people in the audience (and not well-dressed ones at that) to applaud his performance.

With Skip James, the situation was somewhat different. Rediscovered in the Tunica County Hospital in June of 1964 by a trio of fans (once more including John Fahey), he was playing again, for the first time in years, at the Newport Folk Festival in July, his singular musical skills and imagination largely undiminished. He continued to develop his music, and even write new songs reflecting on his current situation, until his death five years later, but in a dark and characteristically introspective style that set him apart from almost every blues singer of his, or any other, generation. Playing in an open D-minor tuning that can best be described as “eerie” (it was a style that was confined almost entirely to his hometown of Bentonia, Mississippi, population then and now: less than 500), he sang fully thought-out and composed songs far removed from a blues mainstream that for the most part defines itself by fervor, not form. As a result, Skip never achieved anything like the popularity of many of his fellow rediscoveries, and it clearly ate at him to see the adulation that his good friend Mississippi John Hurt got from a young audience that was won over by the charm of both his personality and performance.

And just in case you should have any doubts on that score, listen to the music on almost any of Hurt’s recordings, early or late – I defy you to resist the nimble finger-picking and winsome charm of such performances as “Richland Woman,” “Louis Collins,” and “Avalon Blues,” or his self-deprecating star turn at the end of the PBS series American Epic. To Skip, though, this was little more than “play-party music,” perfectly good for dances and country suppers, as Skip’s manager Dick Waterman put it, but “not to be taken seriously as ‘great blues.’” And just for the record, Mississippi John Hurt agreed; he considered Skip a “genius,” beyond any doubt. But on the other hand, you wonder just how much of John’s irresistible charm was that very agreeableness.

There were few moments of rest for Skip, it seemed – he was ill, and he was troubled –  but I remember seeing him once with John at a Boston coffee house, where in addition to presenting their own songs in separate sets, they performed together as well. The two songs that I recall were utterly…all right, charming “Silent Night” (though you haven’t heard “Silent Night” until you hear Solomon Burke’s soaring, soulful version, recorded live in a Georgia church at the blazing height of summer) and Jimmie Rodgers’ epochal country (as in country music) blues “Waiting for a Train.” But let’s pause here for a moment, if only to recall all the different strands that go into all the different kinds of music. Jimmie Rodgers, as I’m sure everyone knows, was almost universally hailed as “The Father of Country Music,” and to all intents and purposes he was. And yet his music drew upon the most diverse sources, not the least of which was the ululating blues of Tommy Johnson, who (just to illustrate some of the complications endemic to every form of cultural transliteration) greatly influenced that purest of all blues singers, Howlin’ Wolf, who in turn cited as one of his greatest inspirations none other than…Jimmie Rodgers.

This was all, for me, in 1969, a vast unexplored land, and like every realm of the imagination it remains so to this day. There are always going to be new, or overlooked, or simply misconstrued, treasures to discover, there are always new and unexpected connections to be made. And I hope this is not beginning to sound like, ‘There were giants that walked the earth in those days,’ and that with the passing of those giants this kind of music is no more – that isn’t what I mean at all. If you need a mantra, just remember the lesson of the Internet, nothing ever really disappears, and listen to the music of new champions of the old and new, like the North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther and Cody Dickinson, who learned at the feet of such legendary champions of the hill country style as R.L Burnside and Junior Kimbrough and Otha Turner, listen to no less dedicated disciples like Dan Auerbach or Paul Burch or Colin Linden, or poetic practitioners like Kevin Gordon – and who knows how many more?

Because by now it should be clear there’s no end in sight – how could there be, unless we’re talking the twilight of the gods or the inescapable impermanence of the flesh? When I first came to Memphis in 1969, I did my best to imagine the world as it must once have been. A world in which Elvis’ performance of the Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup blues “That’s All Right” at the Overton Park Shell in 1954 stood out as a revolutionary act. And yet as I was later to learn, Elvis listened to the Metropolitan Opera, too, as a child, he went to Overton Park on many Sunday afternoons (“The same place that I did my first concert”) to hear the Memphis Symphony Orchestra play. While at the same time he was tuning in religiously to WDIA, the first all-black station in the country. And listening every night to DJ Dewey Phillips’ aptly named Red, Hot, and Blue show, which mixed r&b and pop, the sacred and the profane, the trivial and the profound for a black-and-white audience that competed in its fervor for both the music and its egalitarian champion. It took a long time for me to disimagine categories, but as Howlin’ Wolf said the first time we met, in response to one of those foolish questions we all tend to ask, like, What did he think of all these white kids, like the Rolling Stones, who had so recently adopted his music? Well, he said, he liked Paul Butterfield, “he grown up in it just like that other boy out in California, [who did] that ‘Hound Dog’ number.” You mean Elvis Presley? I finally managed to blurt out – I mean, I was caught. “Yeah,” said Wolf impatiently, as if the reference should have been obvious to anyone. “Elvis Presley,” he said, “he made it his way.”

Which only goes to show that nothing ever really changes. Marketing strategies (which, after all, is all that categories are) may rise and fall, but to the democratic listener they are beside the point. The music calls attention to itself, and then takes you somewhere else. It isn’t really any different than going to Memphis was for me in the first place. One thing inevitably leads to another, and before you know it, you are caught up in the ecstatic dance, the ecstatic trance of the music. But just remember: If you’re going to Brownsville, take that right-hand road.

This piece appeared in a slightly different form on The Oxford American website.

[dasebasstian]

Years ago I was asked to interview one of the most unique and talented musicians around- The Reverend Horton Heat. Unfortunately the interview got lost in the editorial shuffle and never saw the light of day. Below is that lost interview.

Setting The Record Straight With The Reverend Horton Heat

Interviewed by D.A. Sebasstian

Jim “Reverend Horton Heat “ Heath has been tearin’ it up for over two decades now, with eleven albums, dozens of compilation appearances, songs in major motion pictures and even video games and cartoons! You might expect a man with that kind of success to slow down...just a little. Well sir- not on your life! The latest incarnation of Jim Heath’s band including The Reverend on guitar and vocals, Jimbo Wallace on upright bass and Paul Simmons on drums, is arguably one of the tightest and hardest working bands on the road today. I got the chance to talk with the Reverend by phone while they were in the midst of their 2009 tour...somewhere in the beautiful state of Colorado.

From what I’ve read on the internet you had it pretty rough as a teen growing up hustling the pool halls for cash- 

You read the wrong bio (laughs). Lemme tell you what happened. We had just signed to Sub Pop Records back in the ‘90’s and I get this call waking me up early in the morning. It was some girl from Sub Pop wanting to ask me all these questions. She had this monotone voice with questions like (speaking like a robot )  “Where did you grown up?” “What do you like to do?”  “What cigarettes do you smoke?” etc. So I told her that I was adopted, like to play pool and I smoke Merit Cigarettes. Later on Sub Pop gets this information and turns it into, “Reverend Horton Heat was an orphan who became a pool shark and smokes Lucky Strike Cigarettes.” (laughs). Complete B.S. I have hung out in pool halls, but growing up,I had a wonderful middle class family, a great extended family with cousins, aunts and uncles. You know Sub Pop had a history of that kind of thing. 

Does personal experience fuel your song writing? 

Yeah- personal experience definitely fuels my song writing...but then again sometimes you gotta stretch out beyond personal experience and use your imagination. You know, get a little phantasmagorical. 

Besides Jerry Lee Lewis, who are your biggest musical influences? 

I really love the Sun Records stuff like early Elvis and Carl Perkins. Non-Sun bands like Johnny Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio, Gene Vincent and the Blue Cats, but ya know man...I really like music from the mid-twentieth century era. I really love Henry Mancini as well as the Blues, a lot of the Chess records stuff like Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. Its had a big influence on me. Then of course the Country Music of that era was just great too. 

As a band you guys are extremely tight live do you guys rehearse or just set and play out?

The only time we rehearse is during sound check. The way we really keep it going is that we play so much...we play so many gigs. We’ve cut it back from what we used to do- but we’re still one of the hardest working bands out there as far as our  tour schedule. I wish we could rehearse more but our new Drummer Paul lives in Nashville, so to schedule a rehearsal involves airline flights and motel rooms (laughs). It’s kinda crazy now. We got the new songs for the new album and we’re going to be getting together to actually rehearse it in Dallas in March. That’s really the only reason we need to rehearse, if we’re working up some new songs or going to rehash some older ones that fell by the wayside. 

I love your song Galaxie 500. Are you a Ford guy?

Well I like the design of Fords, I mean I think Fords design, you know alot of people get mad at me for this, but a I just think the way their cars look have always had something just a little bit better. I think Chevy came back into the picture with the ‘55 Chevy- and honestly I have a great appreciation for all American cars. A long time ago people were like “Ford Sucks” and “Chevy Sucks” but what's funny now is like- “What abut Toyota?”  “What about Hyundai?” All the sudden all that snobbery between Ford and Chevy people is out the window. It has to be or else we’re all gonna be driving Toyotas. We need to all stick together on this 

You are considered by many to be the King of Psychobilly is that a crown you would wanna wear?

No no man...the Kings of Psychobilly are European bands man. The Meteors, Guana Batz, Demented Are Go, Necromantix...those types of bands  We have a song called Psychobilly Freakout and when it came out alot of writers in the States didn’t really know what rockabilly was all about. So they heard the song title and were all “What is Psychobilly?” So that label got put on me. But in all honesty we do things that “Psychobilly Bands” don’t do. We’ll do a slow country song, we’ll do a slow blues song...ya know? Some of our stuff definitely fits in the Psychobilly mold but alot of it  really doesn’t.

How long have you been playing Gretch and what is your guitar rig live and in the studio?

Well I really haven’t played Gretch my whole career. I had an old Guild back in the mid-80’s with a Bigsby Tremolo that eventually led me to a Gibson  ES-175 with the 1954 P90 pickups. But with all the modern lights, dimmer packs and crazy electrical stuff they put in buildings for these light shows, those P90 pick ups would buzz so loud, almost as loud as the tone coming out of my amplifier. I dealt with it, I made it work, but once when I was on tour the 1/4 inch jake just broke into the guitar and at that time we were really at it- doing 275 shows a year. It was around the same time Gretch started doing their reissues.  I went into a Guitar Center, saw the Gretch and noticed it was about the same thickness as  the Gibson and had the Bigsby Tremolo. To me it had less of the older Gretch “nasal “ sound and more of a  Telecaster vibe. That was something that i really liked and that the Gibson definitely couldn’t get. Gibson's are great for Jazz and some Rockabilly, but they just don’t have that Tele Twang . The Gretch had all that plus the Telecaster  vibe, so I said, “That ‘s cool man.”  Not to mention it was functional (laughs), so I ran with it. Since then I’ve acquired a lot of nice old Gretch guitars, but I don’t take ‘em on the road with me. I do sometimes play  them in the studio along with my old Gibson 175 . Gretch started making the “Reverb Horton Heat”  model so I play that as well. 

What about Amplifiers?

I like the Silver Face Fender Super Reverb, I’ve got several mid seventies Silver Faces, but I have this one in particular that is unreal...it’s just the perfect amplifier. And so I’ve used that on every album I’ve ever done and in fact I’m gonna use it tonight. I spent more money keeping that amp in good repair...I mean it’s the most expensive amp in the world (laughs). We put one mic on that Silver Face and we’re good to go. It’s kinda funny I’m into my amps almost more than my guitars. 

Your last album was the brilliant Christmas record Three Kings? Why a Christmas album?

Well for one thing our record label wanted it and for the other alot of my heroes did Christmas albums. They all did them. It was almost like part of their contract. Three Kings was a fun project.  What was really interesting is I’ve got alot of record collector friends and as soon s they found out  I was doing a Christmas album they all started mailing me their favorite CDs of the weirdest, craziest, most obscure and obscene  Christmas Songs... like who put the Dick On Snowman. All this nasty, over the top, blue Christmas music. So at that point I was thinking, I am going to do a Christmas album and all the kids in my family...ya know I started thinking Christmas is for kids. Maybe I’ll do a Christmas album like that someday but in the mean time I’m just gonna do a straight up Frosty and Rudolph traditional album. 

I’m a big rivet head so I gotta ask- what was it like working with Al Jourgenson of Ministry on the Liquor in the Front album?

Well..that was a crazy trip into an area  I’d never really gone before. It was scary as hell. I mean I would leave the studio after being in there for eleven hours,  working on one song,  just bleary eyed and tired of working and I’d look over there and Al was about to die, the guy almost killed himself...several times. Not purposefully but  you know what I mean? Al's a trip man...Al's a real trip. I mean Al and I got a little cross ways on that album but he brought a lot of good stuff to the table and alot of interesting ideas. You know that album sold more than any of our other albums so I really can’t knock him too much...but man he’s pretty out there. It’s funny though one thing about him is he knows alot about country music and obscure rockabilly stuff . He’s not just an industrial guy.

How about working with Gibby Haynes of The Butthole Surfers?

Now doin’ the sessions with Gibby, we ate so much Barbecue it was crazy...I mean every night it was BBQ. In fact  we were going to this really famous place called Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Que. We were buying so much every day...they had  this shopping cart that they used when they would cater events and they just let us have the shopping cart full of Barbecue to use. We’d just take it to the studio, lift it out of the back of the van and roll it inside. Everyday we were buying a gallon of Barbecue Sauce...it was crazy! Gibby made his own drinks and was mixing Vodka and BBQ Sauce ...it was really nasty (laughs).

What bands do you like touring with?

Well we like touring with Nashville Pussy they’re alot of fun, then there's the Legendary Sack Shakers and Throw Rag...we’ve done alot of great tours with them. Some of my favorite tours were goin’ out with great guitar players that were so over the top good it’s kinda scary you know.  Like Jr. Brown.  I didn’t get to talk to him much on tour, he keeps to himself,  but man what a great guitar player. I got to see him play every night. Deke Dickerson who's a monster player and Big Sandy and the Flyright Boys were always super inspiring because they are such great players and have such a great style.

Any new albums in the works?

Yeah it’s gonna be with Yep Roc, were gonna try to bang it out here as quickly as possible. Kinda on the cheap. We’re not gonna make too big a deal about it. Probably get Tim Alexander  to help us do a little production and musical arrangement as well as some piano and accordion on a coupla things. The plan is were gonna go in a   really old little studio in Dallas where Willie Nelson recorded “Red Headed Stranger” and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.”  I’ll give you a scoop- though I haven’t talked about too much, our new album is gonna be country...

Really?

And its not like “Well we’re goin’ country now,” because I actually have a lotta great rockin songs in the works too, but this upcoming album is just leaning heavily on country stuff. A lot of our fans that like us and are not Country fans seem to really enjoy our country type songs. We’re one of the only bands that they listen to that do anything like country music. So the guys who might normally hate country might still might like our country stuff. Many of my country songs and most of this new album have a humorous thing goin’ on with it.  

I’ve always thought of your music reaching across genre borders- I have friends with record collections full of punk or metal or lounge music but they also have some Reverend Horton Heat CD’s in there too.

That was kinda the intention from the very beginning. At the time it was almost like shooting apples in a barrel. Back when we first started  there really we not that many Rockabilly bands in existence. You had the Stray Cats, Rockats and Paladins playin’ upright bass and then The Blasters. Without getting into listing all the bands that were around at the time, it was pretty weird. There just wasn’t that big of a Rockabilly scene. So here we come in, doin’ original music that was Rockabilly, but a little more amped up. It really was like shooting apples in a barrel. People were like- “Whoa this band is really different!”  “We never heard anything like this before!” (laughs) 

Yeah but you have to be good too- I mean you could be different but if your not good your not gonna get the fans. There's a real power with what you guys do.

Well thank you. Anything you do at some point it’s gotta be entertaining 

So you guys are writing the new album on the road? Yeah I’m writing as I go- yeah I’m gonna go in there and work on a new song today. So we're trying to get songs ready as we play on this tour,  because we aren’t together. You know? When we’re off tour Paul goes back to Nashville. This is our time together so we get to annoy all the opening bands and crew people by turning our sound check into a rehearsal (laughs) 

Do you believe in UFOs?

That's a cool question...and the answer is...no (laughter).  I love to watch the shows about UFOs on TV. Its very entertaining to think about but I don't believe in UFOs. I’m one of these very skeptical persons- so until I see it myself I won’t believe it. I’ve got this thing about  Government- I mean people get all bent out of shape that our Government keeps secrets from us. The simple fact of the matter is that they have too keep secrets from us or we would all die. I don’t think their keeping UFOs a secret.  I think what they keep secret is the military stuff that if it came out that we had it then eventually  our enemies would use it against us. 

 If you could rewrite the soundtrack to any older movie (say pre 1977) what film would it be?

Probably Thunder Road with Robert Mitchim. I’d keep the title song, “Thunder Road,” but that’d be a fun movie to do. When I was a kid, my Dad would take me to the car shows and the drag races and  then he’d set me down and say, “You got to watch this movie Thunder Road.”  After I saw it I was like, “Hey Dad what does that mean- all hopped up?” (laughs).

[theswiftarmy]

#21 - A Hip Hop, Record Skip, And A Jump Away To Ye’s House We Go

WRITER: A quick personal note just in case Taylor Swift does ever Taylurk this story one day.  I would never interrupt you or steal your mic from you, EXCEPT under one sole singular condition and that is if I were telling you “The Interrupting Cow” knock-knock joke.  In which case, I would need to interrupt you with a moo after you said the line “The interrupting cow who?” as I would then be required to moo in an interrupting manner in order to complete the joke.  But other than that, I would not interrupt you.  If you have not heard the interrupting cow knock-knock joke, it goes as follows:

Me: Knock-knock.

Taylor: Who’s there?

Me: The Interrupting Cow.

Taylor: The Interrupting Cow who?

Me: MOOOOOOOOOOO

The helicopter landed in Kim and Kanye’s backyard after a quick stop at LAX to drop off Ariana Grande and Scooter Braun so that they could jet off in Ariana’s private jet in time to make her show in Tampa, Florida—and of course, if they didn’t make the show in time, there’s always fashionably late.  All of Ariana’s Arianators were to travel with her and attend her show, but, after one of her Arianators asked over and over during the entire helicopter ride from Oak Felder’s studio to LAX it was decided the vocal one of her Arianators would stay behind to “help take care of Justin”.  But let’s be honest, she really just used it as an excuse to take selfies with Kim Kardashian West, or as this particular Arianator put it, ‘that was just an added bonus’.

           “Are you hungry?  Did you eat lunch?”  Kim asked greeting them at the backyard helipad.

           “Yes Kim, we already ate at Oak’s place.”  The Arianator influencer didn’t hesitate to take the reins of the conversation.  “Kim, can I call you Kim?  Or should I call you Mrs. Kardianshian West?  Or how about Karshi?”

           “Don’t call me Karshi.  You may call me Kim.”

           “Kim!  Pal—buddy, friend, can I call you friend?  We’re friends now right?  How do you feel about a selfie with me?”

           Justin pushed her aside, “I’m sorry, she’s just a little excited from the helicopter ride.  She’s never ridden in a helicopter before.”

           “Uh, yeah I have!”  The influencer argued.  “I’ve been in a helicopter, like, three times.  Obvs you don’t follow my Insta—”

           Kim kindly intervened, “It’s okay.  Sure, I’ll take a selfie with you.”

           “YAAAASSSSSS!”  The teenage Arianator squeed,  “We’ll have to take a tour of your house first so I can decide which part of the house is the best to take the photo.  The lighting will have to be just right—“

           “First, let’s talk business before all that.”  Scott insisted.

           The Arianator waved his comment away, “I have a better idea, how about you boys go with Kanye to talk fun and games, and Kim and I will go on a tour and talk about the best place to take some photos and do a quick video interview—“

           “Well, I don’t know about a video interview—“ Kim said hesitantly.

           “Oh, you’ll be fine!  Don’t worry; I’ve written a whole script out on my phone in the notes app, I typed it all up in the helicopter while we were on the way here.  Mrs. K, can I ask where your computer room or office is?  I need a printer to use, don’t worry, I’ll even print it out for you, or I could just email the script to you, what’s your email?  By the way, do you have a shoe closet?  I’m making a YouTube video series about ‘out of this world’ shoe closets—well, we can talk more about that as we walk, let’s walk and talk.  Actually, Kim my friend, change of plans, I need to borrow some of your makeup first, I’ve got to touch up before the photo shoot and video interview—”

           The Arianator took Kim’s hand and led her off without giving Kim a chance to say otherwise.  Kim looked over her shoulder with a look that said ‘don’t leave me with this teenager’.  The others waved and smiled back at her as the Arianator pulled her away from the group.

           The remaining members of the group moved to a brightly lit sitting area where they discussed the reason for the visit with Kanye West.  They sipped various fancily made beverages kindly provided by the West’s personal bartender.

“You want me to do what?”  Kanye said after listening to the plan.  “I don’t know, I’m just not in that business anymore.  That’s the old me—no matter how bad the Scoots needs me, by the way, where is he?”

“Scooter?  He’s on his way to Ariana’s show.”  The Biebs replied.  Kanye nodded back.  Justin took a sip of his drink.  “This drink is pretty yummy… mmmm… hey that’s a good idea for a song!  Yummy.  I think my next single that I drop, I’m gonna call it ‘Yummy’.  What do ya think?”

“I like it.  I think you should do it JB.” Kanye said lifting his own drink to clink with Justin’s glass.

“Yummy, yeah I like it Ye.”

Scott sat across from Ye and JB in the comfortable living room sitting area also sipping a beverage from a glass.  “Well, there’s a little more to the situation than just interrupting Taylor’s Artist of the Decade acceptance speech.”

“Yeah, you said that— her backing track is bad, and you need a distraction to change it out.  Trust me, I made that girl famous, I know exactly what she needs in her live act, she needs a little of The King himself…”

“Elvis?”  Scott asked wondering how much Kanye already knew.

“NO.  She needs a little bit of Jesus—”

“Well, urm… we’re talking about the other King, Elvis.”  Oak replied.

“There’s only one King.”  Kanye said back, dead serious.

“Okay, well, we’re talking about Elvis then, or specifically a sound brought into this world, or captured, by the engineer involved with his recording process.”  Scott said trying to be more specific.

           Kanye sighed.  “Like I said, I work for the Lord now.  The only recording process I do is for Jesus.”  Kanye replied, becoming disinterested in the favor asked of him.  He looked out the window at his kids playing and smiled.

         “Which is exactly why we need you!”  Oak pleaded.  “See, the sound that Taylor is going to add behind her track isn’t just any old sound…”

           They went on to explain the egg track and how the sound seems to be the devil from rock and roll that the squares from the 1950s feared, it was replicating itself in audio form and is being used to place fans under mind control, or something along those lines.

           “…and anyway,” Oak said finishing up the explanation, “so Scott here—just like anyone who ever started singing ‘The Song That Never Ends’—not knowing what it was, unleashed the devil sound into the world.  A sound that the engineer for Elvis, this guy named Bill Porter, attempted to capture and contain… That is, until Scott here put it in Taylor Swift’s music.”

           “Honest mistake.”  Scott said, shrugging his shoulders.

           Kanye sat up in his chair now curious about the devil sound, “Well why didn’t you say so!  That’s my jam!  I’m all about an audio exorcism.”

           “We don’t quite need you to do that,” Oak answered back, “We just need you to help interrupt her long enough that we can stop her from playing it on live television and spreading it.”

           “Alright.  I’m in.  But only because you seem to need the one and only Ye.”  Kanye replied in a preacher-esk voice.  “Let me assemble my Sunday Service—“

           “No, no, we only need you.” Oak said squarely.

           “Are you sure?”  Kanye asked, his hand pulling back from a large SS button he had pulled out of a hidden compartment, “I really think my Sunday Service—“

           “The Sunday Service will draw too much attention.”  The lawyer added.

           Kanye pushed the SS button back into its compartment and placed his hands in front of him in a prayer like way but touching only the fingertips together with his fingers spread out, in order to think about it.  He went deep into thought, sitting there, not moving.  They waited quietly for his answer.  “Well, alright, but I’ll keep them on standby should we need their help.”

           “I’m okay with that.“  Everyone else nodded in agreement with Scott.  “So, the plan is for you to interrupt her right before she gives her speech.”  Scott said while pulling out an old-fashioned spiral bound notebook to make a few notes.  He then turned to look over at Carl also holding his own notebook and making notes with his trademark red pen.

           “She’s scheduled to give her acceptance speech before she performs the medley.”  The lawyer added.  “There’s speculation that if she finds out what we’re up to she may move the performance so that it happens before the speech, but we’re confident that won’t happen.”

           “I can do this.”  Kanye said in a slightly excited tone.

           “We know you can.  You’ve done it before, Ye.”  Justin Bieber said half joking but half cheering him on.  “You got this!”

           “I made that girl famous!”  Kanye shouted jumping up.  Now ready and pumped to take on the devil sound that rock and roll failed to contain—the sound about to be unleashed once again across national television by Taylor Swift and her Swiftie attorney, Sara.

           “Yes, you already said that.  We know...  You made her famous.”  Scott said back suddenly irritated, he looked at his watch.  Now that Kanye was on board they really needed to get going.  Scott Borchetta thought about countering Kanye with the fact that HE was the one who first found and signed Taylor Swift, making it him, and not Kanye West the one to make Taylor Swift famous, but that would be a debate for another time.

           “I won’t let her finish!”  Kanye shouted as he jumped into the air energetically.

           “No no, let her finish, just, interrupt her.”  Oak corrected. “Like that interrupting cow joke.  I love that joke.”

           “Sorry, it’s been a while, I’m a little rusty, let me try this again.  Okay, I got it.  I’m gonna be like—”  Kanye made like he was holding an invisible mic as he stood in the center of the room, “Taylor, Imma let you finish… but first… Knock knock… Who’s there… The interrupting cow… Interupting cow who… Interupting cow MOOOOO!”

           Justin interrupted Kanye, “I mean, I don’t know if I would use the interrupting cow joke to interrupt Taylor, but you do you Kanye, you do you.  Also, I would argue that if anything maybe she made YOU more famous.  Or perhaps you both made each other famous?”

           Kanye made a face at Bieber like ‘bruh, what’s your deal?  We’re supposed to have each other’s backs, “Is he serious right now?  What’s his deal?  And why is he wearing those headphones.”  Kanye asked Oak.

           “He’s infected with an earworm.”  Oak replied.

           “A what?”  Ye inquired confused.

           Oak explained how The Amen Break samples when layered in and mastered within a song would interact with the Elvis noise to produce infectious results such as the Earworm songs that could be used to take down any opponent standing in the way of Taylor and her Swiftie music war against Scooter.

           “I’m sorry man, Gomez really got you good.  Damn, you guys really do need my help.  Okay I’m in.  Time to save the world.  If there’s one thing Kanye does best it’s saving people, it’s time for Ye to be what he was meant to be!”

           “Sounds good.”  Scott said finishing the last sip of his drink.  “Game plan time.  We’ll FaceTime Billie Eilish from the helicopter to update her on the timing of things—”

           Oak ejected a small USB flash drive from his MacBook Pro that he had been working on the whole time while they were talking.  “We’ll need to meet Billie to hand her this drive so she can upload the sound into the American Music Awards sound system and overwrite the change.  It has a placebo sound.  I’ve also layered in some frequencies that I think may temporarily un-Swiftify any Swifties that have only recently been exposed to the sound in case Taylor has been using it to directly blast attack anyone who might find out what she’s up to.  It’s all theoretical of course based on some of my old thesis papers.  It could just have no effect at all.  But, right now, we need anything we can get.”

           Justin pulled out one of his twelve phones, “Wait, Billie just texted me back and said that she’ll help BUT ONLY if it can be kept secret and if we can assure her that nothing will happen to her brother.”  Justin read the message out loud.  “Okay, I’m texting her back not to say anymore and that I’ll give her a secret number to one of my other 11 phones.  But I have to give her the number in person.  I don’t trust Taylor isn’t monitoring our messages on this phone.  That number will be a safe number to call us on right before the show starts or should something unexpected go down.  It will be a secure phone just for Billie to call me.”

           “If she’s texting with you and Taylor is monitoring the phone, then how is it a secret?” Scott asked.

           “She’s using Belieberspeak.”

           “What?”  Scott replied.

           “It’s a code I use to chat with my Beliebers that Taylor shouldn’t be able to figure out, although now that she’s turned a few of them into Swifties—like the one who stole my cat on the rooftop of Big Machine Records—she may have broken the code with their help.  I hold out hope that any Belieber turned Swiftie would keep Belieberspeak a secret.”

           “So, Billie’s a Belieber?”  Pop asked after not saying a word the whole time, sitting quietly and listening to the entire conversation.

           “It’s complicated.  She was before she created The Avocados.  I’ll explain it some other time.  She’s still a Belieber in a way, but she’s also of her own way now because she has her own followers.”

           “This is fascinating stuff.  A little hard to keep track of, but fascinating nonetheless.”  Carl sipped an ice water. “Anyway, everything is set then, I’ve called in a favor from a friend of mine named Banksy—it’s not the same Banksy as the artist, this is a different one, he’s a money guy who does banking stuff so he calls himself Banksy as well he was born long before the artist Banksy was born and was already calling himself Banksy before the other Banksy started making art—”

“Fascinating stuff, Carl, a little hard to keep track of, but fascinating nonetheless.”  Justin poked fun and then laughed, he leaned over and fist pumped Kanye.

“—Anyway, as I was saying, before Justin here mockingly interrupted me… we’re cleared to land on the roof of one of the nearby banks—We could land at the Ritz Carlton right beside the Microsoft Theater as they do have a helipad on the roof, but Taylor was given a complimentary suite there, most luxurious one in the place I might add.  It’s best for us to keep a little distance and approach in secret.  My contact at the bank will meet us and take us to the American Music Awards.  Is everyone on the same page here?”

Everyone nodded, ready to head out.

           “Okay.”  The lawyer put away his notebook and red pen.

           The Arianator Influencer returned from her grand tour of the house just as the group had finished finalizing plans.

           “Keep an eye on this one, she’s going places.”  Kim said smiling.

           “Well thank you Kim!  I keep TRYING to tell everyone that!  I know I’m going places, it’s just a matter of convincing everyone else of that.”

           Kim Laughed.  “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you.  What did you say your name was again?”

           “Why Kim Kardashian West, I thought you would never ask!  My name is Kim too!  Well, almost, it’s Kymmie with a “y”. The ‘y’ is after the ‘k‘, okay?  With an ‘ie’ at the end.  You look confused, here let me write it down for you, that way you’ll have it.  And also here’s all my social media accounts so you can friend and follow and like share and subscribe.”  She pulled out a pen and wrote quickly in her notebook then tore a part of the page away handing a piece of torn off pink notebook paper to Kim Kardashian West.  “Okay, call me!  We’ll setup another get together.  I have so many ideas for collabs between us.  Oh my God, I can’t wait to meet up again!”

           The group boarded the helicopter with Kanye West now part of their quest.  Once seated Oak handed him one of the headphone cases that Ariana and Scooter declined to accept earlier, he explained how it worked.  Kim Kardashian West stood beside her kids as the helicopter lifted into the air.  They waved back at the helicopter as it turned and headed for downtown LA to meet Carl Lyle Lawyer’s friend Banksy, not THE Banksy, just a dude that works for a bank called ‘A Private Bank’ who just happened to also coincidentally be named Banksy.  The plan was to rendezvous with Billie and her brother in order to hand off the flash drive just after the red carpet and then to sneak Kanye into the event.  What could possibly go wrong?

[yasbxxgie]

Like 98 percent of black people, I am not a Donald Trump fan and wish he had never been elected. I think we should make that clear. I despise everything from his Vienna-sausage-sized fingers to his ethnic cleansing political agenda. But since white people a majority of Caucasian voters selected him to be the commander in chief, I think of his presidency in the same way I think of the time my daughter begged me for a pet gerbil and tired of it after a few weeks.

And I think that, instead of doing what I did (I told her I’d return it to the pet store, but I just opened the cage in the backyard, where it was likely eaten by my dog, after which he came inside and threw up on the carpet, costing me $246.19 for a visit to the veterinarian, who told me, “He probably just ate something that upset his stomach”), America should have to keep our pet Trump for four years.

Here’s why we shouldn’t get rid of him:

1. White people will be furious.

Can you imagine how mad wypipo will be if we take down Nazi Elvis? Do you know how many “Make America Great Again” hats they’d have to throw away? Do you want to go to work with Kathy and hear how unfair it is that we allowed a Muslim to serve eight years, but a true Christian white man of God was taken down by the “deep state” liberal agenda?

And who’s gonna clean up all those brain remnants mixed with Pabst Blue Ribbon when Sean Hannity’s head explodes? How is America supposed to be great again without Trump? What are we supposed to tell our kids? (I don’t actually know what that means, but I know a staple of every white argument rests on what they are supposed to tell their kids.)

2. Mike Pence will be president.

The problem with impeaching White Supremacist George Washington is that he will be replaced by Mike Pence. Remember how we thought that killing Osama bin Laden would somehow weaken the terrorists, but instead we got a souped-up version of al-Qaida instead? Well, Pence is like Trump without a Twitter account.

If you look at Pence’s record, the only difference between the two is that Pence actually knows how to play the political game. The agenda at the White House wouldn’t change, but Pence has the political experience to actually carry it out.

In fact, many of Trump’s controversial pledges that pundits doubt will become law because of their unconstitutionality are derivatives of laws that Pence actually managed to get passed as governor of Indiana. Pence banned Syrian refugees long before Trump created his travel ban. Trump’s toothless “religious freedom” executive order actually became law in Indiana. Before Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinstated mandatory minimum sentences, Pence did it in Indiana as governor. Pence authored a bill to defund Planned Parenthood seven years ago. Trump thinks it’s OK to grab women “by the pussy,” but Pence actually tried to redefine rape as “forcible rape.”

Imagine all the crazy ideas running around in Trump’s pea brain.

Now imagine if there were someone who could make them all come true.

3. I’m still waiting on the Moscow pee video.

Look, if we impeach Trump before I get to see the video of him surrounded by Russian prostitutes emptying their bladders all over his bloated orange body, I’m fighting somebody.

I don’t even want to necessarily see the video; I just want it to be seen. I want the world to see it. The anticipation of it is the only thing getting me through this dumpster fire of a presidency. All I’m living for is that when Trump has passed on into the great beyond, every story, documentary and mention of the 45th president of the United States will have to say something about how he paid a few hundred rubles to be covered in Soviet urine.

4. The Republican Party.

Republicans stood behind Trump as their nominee, but now that they realize he is a sociopathic dictator who may be losing his marbles one by one, they want to stand up to him. The crazier he gets, the more the GOP calls him out.

Nah, bruh. Y’all created this mess. Own it.

Impeaching Trump would basically be giving a do-over to the party that was willing to do anything for power—including letting Great Value Hitler lead it. They are now trying to distance themselves from someone who embraces Russia’s election tampering and white supremacy.

I don’t want Trump impeached before he destroys the entire party. He’s doing an excellent job exposing conservative ideas as bullshit. We had to sit and listen to them hate on Obamacare for seven years, but when Trump took office, the entire country saw that the Republicans didn’t even have a plan. They talked about Mexicans and Muslims but have yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

During the Obama years, they hated so hard, but now, even with the House, the Senate and the presidency, they can’t get shit done. The Trump presidency is proving that they are just obstructionists devoid of ideas except how to keep themselves in power. I want him to stay until their national convention is nothing but South Carolina, NRA members and Ben Carson.

5. We might have to take some people back.

I’m not sure how it works, but if Trump is kicked out of office, does that mean we have to take Omarosa back? Will we have to allow Carson to crash the cookout? I’ve read the Constitution thoroughly, but there isn’t a clause about whether we are required to invite the people who sold us out for Orange-Sherbet Stalin to the cookout.

I’m not saying these people aren’t black, but I clearly remember trading Paris Dennard in the third round of the 2016 racial draft. I even recall the conversation:

The blacks: We’d like to offer you Paris Dennard, Stacey Dash and Jason Whitlock.

Wypipo: And who would you like in return? We are prepared to offer you Justin Bieber, Iggy Azalea and a Kardashian to be named later.

The blacks: [Long pause.] You know what? We good ...

... unless y’all want this gerbil.