#i remembered that i used to draw various characters as sheep a few years ago and doodle sheep in the margins of all my exams.

[daily-mees]

i'm running out of interesting captions to put here. anyway mees

[ID: simple pen doodles on paper of many little mice in varying positions and with a small variety of expressions, from neutral to smiley. the mice have triangle legs, pointy noses and little whiskers. notable individuals include a long mouse spiralled around itself, a round mouse looking down and a mouse on a skateboard. there are also a couple of rats in the mix, and also a sheep. end ID.]

[wild-west-wind]

Hey so below the cut is the beginning of my Western/Fantasy/Mystery story Coyote Draw. It’s a very rough draft, I’m not really trying to edit as I go so it should be readable by grammar/spelling alone (readable content-wise now that’s dubious). Tell me what you think, or tell me that it’s trash. Well, I guess if it’s trash tell me something constructive with it like “Do this better.” That’d be cool. Anon message me if that’s easier.

Synopsis: In this section Gertrude Bell and Elizabeth Cagney are introduced as members of the Hesselius National Detective Agency, a semi-international private detective firm specializing in supernatural cases. Gertrude and Elizabeth have been sent out to Sun Springs, NM to prove a potentially wrongly convicted man innocent of the brutal murder of a surveyor.

Notes: It’s probably pretty bad. The style is very brief and to-the-point and I don’t know if I’m going to stick with that. I’m not sure if it’s to brief or too long for the content that it covers. I think I should describe characters more. It starts with an animal dying. If that bothers you skip to the third sentence.

Anyway, here it is:

A few hours outside of Santa Fe the 8:45 to Springer hit a bison. The impact shook Elizabeth Cagney awake. Her companion on the trip, as in all matters, was still awake. It was too loud to sleep. Gertrude Bell thought it was funny how quick her Elizabeth nodded off. City folk sleep through anything.

Elizabeth grimaced as she stirred. Bags under her eyes betrayed a late night wasted in Santa Fe. She wished she could say it was spent drinking and gambling. It was spent reading. Drinking was a strictly a secondary venture. That is not to say that she had not drink a great deal. Elizabeth scrambled for her coffee. She held the canteen of muddy coffee so tight her knuckles went white. She whispered a bit, her eyes closed tight. The canteen popped and fizzled as it got hot. She offered it to Gertrude first.

Gertrude almost smiled. “I’m fine, I ‘spect you need that more than I do.”

Gertrude was right. Elizabeth threw back the canteen. Her face was red with pain, but she brightened up instantly. Gertrude appreciated the routine. Elizabeth always offered, she always refused. Elizabeth was always flushed. Always smiled.

“So how far out are we?” Elizabeth asked. She shook the residual heat out of her hands.

“About 3 hours,” Gertrude guessed. Her watch stopped working after a sand storm in Barstow. “We get off in Springer, then we ride the rest of the way.”

The Hesselius National Detective Agency gave them an advance to pay the thirty-one dollar train fare. They did not offer to pay 25 for a pack horse. They didn’t offer a ticket to ship Gertrude’s horse either. Gertrude never thought to ask for it.

Out in the desert flowers were blooming. Word was there was a big storm a few months back flooded most of the southern Rockies. As the train shot by there were explosions and gold and pink cactus flowers. The effervescent yellow of agave and ragleaf. A spatter of lilac Elizabeth said could have been columbine. Without much prompting she could rattle off every possible name and use for every one of those flowers. Every spell they were good for. It came with the territory. Gertrude mostly knew which ones you could eat, which ones could make a person sick, and which ones could kill a horse.

On a rainy January morning Elizabeth and Gertrude got a letter from the Hesselius National Detective Agency. The two of them had been Hessians in variously official capacities since the war. Usually they would take jobs off the board in their home office. Gertrude didn’t want to hear the message. She took the paper and sent the messenger away. She held it tight in her hand, crushing the paper and cracking the small wax seal on the back. Elizabeth had to read the letter for her. They had been called in. The Director wanted to see them personally.

“Aw hell,” Gertrude spat, “We walked headlong into this one Lizzie.” Her lip trembled, but her hands were dead still.

Elizabeth rested a hand on Gertrude’s shoulder. She brushed a lock of hair from her brow. “We’re not on the outs Gert,” Elizabeth spoke to Gertrude like a child. “It might be a job. May be a promotion.” Gertrude threw herself into her old rocking chair. The floor creaked loud.

“Listen Gertie,” Gertrude looked away. Elizabeth stepped in front of her and forced her head up. “Listen, if we get fired, we can just banish him. That old boggle won’t know what hit him. Hell, we’ll be on the outs but we might get a medal for the trouble.”

  Gertrude coughed up a dry laugh. “Okay, but it better be a big medal.”

  “Of course.”

“Gold.”

“I should expect nothing less.”

Elizabeth helped Gertrude dawn a white bodice and her hound’s-tooth riding jacket. Gertrude tossed Elizabeth her waxed canvas cape from the coat rack. They set out into the rain.

Cole Boggs was a squat, broad man. As a boy some poor soul must have asked him to speak up. He chose to head that advice literally, and has not spoken in less than a bellow since. For 15 years he had been the director of the American branch of the Hesselius National Detective Agency. He despised those under his employ that called themselves “Hessians,” and so almost all did.

Boggs’ office was littered with what might charitably be called mementos. On the wall behind him, between two bay windows, was a rack containing four medieval swords. Every wall was lined with mismatched glass-doored curios. Each was full of old books, tarnished jewelry, carved cubes and spheres with various arcane writings. A suit of rusted Viennese armor stood sentry over two seven foot tall safes in the opposite corner of the room. Save for three chairs and a path from the door, every horizontal surface of the office was covered with superficially valuable trash.

“Ladies?” He roared over a newspaper written in indecipherable script, “Do come in, I need just a moment to finish up here.”

Elizabeth and Gertrude stepped inside, and sat down in adjacent leather chairs. Their arms were worn through by hundreds of elbows. The leather was dry and cracking. They may have been the second oldest thing in the room.

After a moment’s pause, and without looking up, Boggs began to speak; “I presume you know why I’ve asked you to come in here.”

Gertrude’s face flushed. Elizabeth reached over and grabbed her hand.

“Now, you’re aware that our last client was less than pleased with your performance—“

“Sir allow me t’explain I—“ Gertrude tried to interject.

“Ms. Bell, please allow me to finish as I think you will be pleased by what I have to say,” Boggs filled his mammoth lungs, “but you were right. Entirely correct. Mr. Lux was indeed stealing from the town’s till, and he was indeed conspiring to use that money for nefarious purposes, though the authorities are not yet sure what those were.”

Gertrude slouched as much a whalebone corset would allow. Boggs continued; “While we were certainly not hired to have our client imprisoned, you’ve brought a spattering of good press for the agency.”

Cole Boggs finally lowered his newspaper. “We have a client in New Mexico. He has asked for you two specifically. He believes a man was wrongly accused of murder in Sun Springs. Charming little town. He’d like you to go out and prove him right.”

“Who—“ before Elizabeth could inhale Boggs barked, “Who is none of your business.”

“—Is the suspect?” Elizabeth finished. Her crystal blue eyes found Boggs’. A ripple coursed down his body, and for a brief moment something closer to his true form was visible.

“Of course. Yes. The suspect. The accused is a Mr. Balthazar Farkas. A lycanthrope. The evidence is quite damning. A surveyor by the name of Oramel Hawkins was working near Farkas’ home. He was slaughtered and dismembered early in the morning. A local magician, Grant Heston, saw the dismemberment. A local deputy found blood-soaked rags in Mr. Farkas’ cabin. Farkas has been in trouble with the law before: in ’67 he killed a Shiner who had a bounty for his hide, in broad daylight. The folks in Sun Springs remember that well. It’s a quiet town.”

“So he did it?” Elizabeth asked, sensing that Boggs was done.

“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it.”

Elizabeth winced. “So, are we to try and get a guilty man freed from facing justice then?”

Boggs hummed, “No, I wouldn’t say that. He may not be guilty. It may be a case of mistaken identity. The murder wasn’t observed, focus on that.”

Gertrude, taking care to avoid eye contact with anyone in the room, mused, “Out in the country like that you see what you expect to see. If you’re scared of the werewolf down the way, you’ll see him when you may’ve seen a coyote or a damned cactus,” She glanced at Elizabeth. “Plenty of ways you could choose to see something when you’re looking right at another.”

Elizabeth laughed. Boggs didn’t get it.

To call Springer a town would be an overstatement verging on an outright lie. Most of the 320 acres called Springer on a map were farms. Right around the banks of the Cimarron River were a few buildings. Most of them were liable to get washed away if the river got any nearer to its banks. There were two general stores, a livery, a spattering of houses, a warehouse, and a tavern. The tavern must have been built old because no one lived here 7 years ago. Every month the trail was passable a wagon train full of copper would come in from Sun Springs. All spring and summer folks would drive their cattle and sheep out of the hills for sale.

[la-leto]

The road up to Jared Leto’s house in Los Angeles is steep and winding. Let’s be clear: this isn’t some faux-Spanish mansion bolted onto the Hollywood Hills like a monstrous totem of temporary fame and wealth. Neither is it like those LA shag pads, all nonreflective glass, lap pools and hammered zinc, the sort you see on Scott Disick’s social-media feed, the ones with the three supercars parked out front in various shades of matt black.

No, this is anything but ostentatious. Whoever lives here wants to work undisturbed. For one, it’s an old Air Force base. An enclave. A sprawling, expansive, many layered building. A cross between Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house and a candle factory, which was once used by the US military to develop a means to photograph the detonation of government-built nuclear weapons. A place of espionage and secrets and cameras to capture and measure badass mushroom clouds. This is a hub. This is a bunker. A hideout. A lair.

I buzz in and I’m met by Leto’s assistant. She is very polite. I’m offered refreshments. My water arrives in a jam jar. I sit for ten minutes in a whitewashed room. It’s empty save for a little mid-century furniture. I’m summoned and the very polite assistant takes me through more rooms to a door which leads to a courtyard where I am told Leto will meet me shortly.

I’m left alone. It’s absurdly tranquil and much cooler than the Sunset Strip, with its hustlers and hustled, wannabes and gonnabes. There’s a pool that looks like a pond. A large tree throws shade over a royal blue set of metal garden furniture. The floor is covered in small stones. Ants dash silently like an army of workers beneath my feet.

“I came to Los Angeles in 1991, which sounds like ancient times.”

Jared Leto, GQ’s Actor Of The Year, is here with me now and is conducting this interview standing up wearing what looks like pyjama bottoms and a flannel shirt. He doesn’t want to sit down as he has a bad back, something that happened on a film set, and it hurts less if he’s upright. I am, however, sitting, which feels slightly odd, but he’s cool with it so this is how we’re going to roll.

“This was pre-mobiles and pre-internet, if you can imagine such a thing. I was a film student and an art student and I thought acting would get me on the path to directing. I remember I was supposed to come out with a friend and he cancelled on me two weeks beforehand. I remember thinking, ‘Fuck it, I’m going alone.’”

That first trip, Leto found himself at the beach staring at a homeless man urinating in the sand. “There he was with his pecker out. It was not what I was expecting, the LA of all the movies and posters. But it was actually great. It was honest. It made this imagined place more real. It made it attainable. I realised that California brings a lot of people together looking for a lot of different things.”

Did Leto get work straight away? “Hardly. I actually had to go back to New York. But on my second trip I ended up renting a room from a woman in an apartment. Like, a tiny apartment, one-and-a-half rooms. It was her, me and her roommate. The roommate was a man dying of Aids. My mum was a hippie, so I knew how to make all these nutritious green smoothies with fresh vegetables and so on. We were just trying to keep him alive. Strange how things like that happen to you only to then inform your life at a later point.”

Leto is, of course, talking about the impact that early harrowing experience had on his role as Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, a part which saw him win an Oscar three years ago.

“When that role came along I had been retired for almost six years from acting. I had my band, Thirty Seconds To Mars, which was and still is my main creative outlet. I didn’t think I wanted to go back. But then I read that script and…” Well, you know the rest. Since then, the parts Leto has taken on have been, from where we’re sitting at least, fully immersive experiences for the actor: The Joker, in last year's Suicide Squad, was as unhinged and cartoonishly menacing as fans all hoped. Leto also plays Neander Wallace, the seemingly God-like replicant creator in Blade Runner 2049, alongside Harrison Fordand Ryan Gosling.

“What can I tell you? Neander Wallace is powerful. He’s also blind.”

I’d heard his character is based on his tech-titan friend Elon Musk. “Yeah. I used a little of Elon and actually quite a few of my friends who are very successful founders of companies. I was interested in how billions of dollars can change a man and how he is perceived. Money is freedom. You can take more risks. But it can also enslave, you know? Like Howard Hughes.”

What else can he tell us? “Well, I can tell you Harrison Ford is a stud - even in a cream suit. Man, he’s 75 and he’s a solid dude. And Ryan Gosling? I didn’t have any scenes with him, but he’s exactly what I want my movie stars to be like. Exactly.”

So can Leto finally draw a line under the 35-year-long dispute between Ford and Ridley Scott, the original film’s director, about whether or not Ford’s character is in fact a replicant? “I can.” Really? “Yes.” As I hear this I can almost hear the late Philip K Dick, along with every other nerd worth his Grays Sports Almanac (1950-2000) stop counting electric sheep, sit up and cock an ear.

“You see, my character in this film is the only person in the entire Blade Runneruniverse who puts a machine inside…” Caution suddenly gets the better of his natural candour. “Put it this way, my character gets a bit of information that no one else sees. So I know who is and who isn’t a machine. I can decide.” And the answer? “Nope.” What? “No, no, no. It’ll be on my gravestone - 'I know the answer’ - and I do.”

A mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a Gucci flannel shirt. Oh, and a real prick-tease. And we say that with humour. And a lot of love. There hasn’t been, nor ever will there be anyone quite like Jared Leto in this town. Hollywood’s leading man who fell to earth.

Blade Runner 2049 is out now

//

via GQ // 10/6/17