#school assembly ideas Ohio

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk hasn’t been sighted at the picket lines in Missouri, Ohio, or Michigan, where autoworkers are striking against the Big Three US carmakers. Yet the influence of Musk and his non-unionized company Tesla have been everywhere since the United Auto Workers called the strike last week. In some ways, Tesla—the world’s most valuable automaker by market capitalization—set the whole thing in motion.

Tesla’s pioneering electric vehicles kicked off a new era that has turned the entire auto industry on its head. In a scramble to compete with Tesla and make that transition, the legacy automakers targeted by the current strike, General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, have each pledged billions in global investment and have begun dramatically restructuring their operations. For workers, the “green jobs” being created can be scarcer and worse paying. Electric vehicle powertrains have many fewer moving parts than conventional gas-powered ones, and so they require 30 percent fewer vehicle assembly hours, according to one estimate. Plants that make EV batteries are generally outside the core, unionized auto supply chain. The United Auto Workers has seen a dramatic drop in membership due to jobs moving outside the US—it lost 45 percent of its members between 2001 and 2022. A future with more electric vehicles could mean fewer union jobs overall. “This strike is about electrification,” says Mark Barrott, an automotive analyst at the Michigan-based consultancy Plante Moran.

The new assembly plants that the legacy automakers need to pull off the transition have been stood up mostly in US states hostile to union organizing, such as Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. And because many of these plants are joint ventures between automakers and foreign battery companies, they are not subject to previous union contracts.

The UAW did not respond to a request for comment, but UAW president Shawn Fain told CNBC last week that the electric transition can’t leave workers behind. “Workers deserve their share of equity in this economy,” he said.

Tesla’s rise over recent years has also put ever-ratcheting pressure on the legacy automakers to cut costs. Including benefits, Musk’s non-unionized EV company spends $45 per hour on labor, significantly less than the $63 per hour spent in the Big Three, according to industry analysts.

Musk’s willingness to upend auto manufacturing shibboleths has also forced his legacy competitors to seek new efficiencies. Tesla led the way in building large-scale car casts, stamping out very large metal components in one go rather than making a series of small casts that have to be joined together. And it pioneered an automotive chassis building process that can be easily adapted to produce different makes and models.

Tesla’s Silicon Valley roots also helped it become the first automaker to envision the car as a software-first, iPhone-like “platform” that can be modified via over-the-air updates. And the company aims to automate more of its factories, and extract more of the materials it needs to build its batteries itself.

Tesla’s novel production ideas could soon lead the company to put even more pressure on legacy automakers. Musk said earlier this year that Tesla plans to build a new, smaller vehicle that can be made for half the production cost of its most popular (and cheapest) vehicle, the Model 3.

Musk says a lot of things, and many don’t come to pass. (The world is still waiting for the 1 million Tesla robotaxis promised by the end of 2020.) But Tesla has been disruptive enough to leave legacy automakers, including Detroit’s Big Three, “in a quest for capital,” says Marick Masters, who studies labor and workplace issues at Wayne State University's School of Business. Detroit’s automakers have made good money in the past decade—some $250 billion in profits—but also paid a significant chunk of it out in dividends. Pressure from Tesla and the EV transition it catalyzed has left them feeling as if they need every penny they can corral to keep afloat as the industry changes.

“They have little money to concede for union demands,” says Masters. The UAW’s wants include significantly higher wages, especially for workers who have joined the companies since their Great Recession and bankruptcy-era reorganizations, which left some with less pay and reduced pension and health benefits.

So far, the UAW has shown little patience for the idea that the automakers it is pressuring are cash-strapped and under competitive pressure. “Competition is a code word for race to the bottom, and I'm not concerned about Elon Musk building more rocket ships so he can fly into outer space and stuff,” UAW president Fain told CNBC last week when asked about pressure from Tesla. He has argued that production workers should receive the same pay raise received by auto executives over recent years.

When automakers have taken the opposite tack, insisting that they’re well capitalized and making plans to put them ahead of the electric car maker—well, that set up conditions for this strike too. The three American automakers are forecasted to make $32 billion in profits this year, a slight dip from last year’s 10-year high. “The more they toot their own horns about profitability, the more the union looks at them and says, ‘We want our rightful share,’” says Masters.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, but Musk has, in typical fashion, chimed in. He posted on X last week to compare working conditions at his companies with the competition, apparently seeking to turn the dispute he helped foment into a recruiting pitch. “Tesla and SpaceX factories have a great vibe. We encourage playing music and having some fun,” he wrote. “We pay more than the UAW btw, but performance expectations are also higher.” A UAW attempt to organize Tesla workers in 2017 and 2018, as the company struggled to produce its Model 3, failed. The National Labor Board ruled that Tesla violated labor laws during the organizing drive; the carmaker has appealed the decision.

[xtruss]

Illustration By Antoine Maillard

AN EMPIRE DIVIDED! The Inside Story of How GE CEO Larry Culp Dismantled a 131-Year-Old American Giant.

— By Brooke Sutherland and Ryan Beene | March 20, 2024 | Businessweek | The Big Take

Big sheets of white paper line the perimeter of a meeting room at the General Electric Co. factory in Beavercreek, Ohio. Each sheet is scribbled on with markers and covered with neon Post-it notes outlining the steps needed to produce the tubes and ducts that will eventually be assembled into a jet engine.

The vibe is more elementary school science fair than American industrial icon. But the simplicity is the point. Determining the layout for the Beavercreek facility was tricky: The revamped plant opened last year, combining components of production that had previously been spread out across eight different sites. To figure out the best setup, plant leaders built a replica of furnaces, tube benders and welding booths out of cardboard boxes. That visual, along with the Post-it notes describing production steps such as “brazing,” “bending” and “trimming,” makes it easier to identify and root out manufacturing inefficiencies. The exercise also helps show visiting GE executives how the whole thing works.

Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, March 25, 2024. Photo illustration: Todd St. John for Bloomberg Businessweek

About 250 managers from around the world have gathered here in the Cincinnati area, which will be the headquarters of GE Aerospace once the conglomerate completes its slow-moving breakup in early April. One stated goal of the executive retreat is to set a culture for the soon-to-be-standalone company. “Culture can’t be declared,” says Farah Borges, who oversees GE Aerospace’s assembly, test and maintenance operations. “You have to build it.” Some declaring is still apparently necessary, because the team spent the previous day at an event space a few miles away doing just that.

But under Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp, no leadership confab is complete without a gemba walk. Gemba in Japanese means “actual place,” as in the actual place where a product is made. It’s essentially a tour of operations with a heavy emphasis on Q&A with the factory staff. The practice is central to lean manufacturing, an influential operations philosophy developed by Toyota Motor Corp. that Culp has championed at GE.

Culp at the Beavercreek factory in February. Courtesy: General Electric

Factory floor visits aren’t a radical idea for an industrial company, but GE didn’t always do them this way. The company used to place more emphasis on polishing a PowerPoint presentation than on drilling into the details of manufacturing workflows, says Russell Stokes, the head of commercial jet engines and services, who’s been at GE for more than 25 years. Somewhere between the wrong-way financial bets that blew up in the 2008 economic crisis and a huge, disastrous acquisition of energy assets from Alstom SA in 2015, GE, with its persistent mindset that anyone with an MBA could run any business, forgot that it’s a manufacturer at heart.

When Culp became CEO in 2018, GE was far too big and complicated for its own good, and the company’s businesses weren’t bringing in enough money to support its sky-high debts. “We were at risk of not making payroll, in a manner of speaking,” he says. He managed to pay down more than $100 billion of the debt through a series of well-timed divestitures. He dismantled GE Capital, its investment arm, largely untangling the company from a financial albatross. And then, in 2021, he announced that GE—the quintessential American conglomerate, which at one point or another sold washing machines, credit cards, plastic resins and TV advertising slots for NBC’s Super Bowl broadcasts—was breaking up. None of those efforts would’ve been as successful, and perhaps wouldn’t have even been possible, if Culp hadn’t tightened up GE’s operations and turned key businesses into stable, cash-generating entities that could stand on their own.

Today, GE’s stock is near a seven-year high. GE HealthCare Technologies Inc., which split off in 2023, is up about 50% from its debut. The final piece is the electric-grid, gas-power and wind-turbine business, which will become its own standalone company called GE Vernova on April 2.

In one sense, Culp is restoring GE to its original identity as a maker of stuff. But he’s also the guy dismantling a monument to American capitalism. From its inception as an outlet for Thomas Edison to commercialize the lightbulb through the era of rapid globalization embodied by Jack Welch, GE practically swallowed entire industries. It loaned planes to companies and money to real estate developers; for a time it even owned a large chunk of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream. Most of that is gone now. Culp divested the aircraft leasing arm, biopharmaceutical assets and the remnants of GE’s oil and gas operations and saw through sales of its locomotive and lightbulb units. Even the GE name is on loan. GE appliances are made and sold by China’s Haier Smart Home Co. The new GE will just be a manufacturer of jet engines, essentially, with a few random money pits left over from the old conglomerate, like insurance for elder care and a Polish mortgage business. “We constantly debated what the right structure was,” says Ed Garden, a GE board member since 2017. “But the first order of business was fixing the underlying businesses.”

On the gemba walk, Culp and his aerospace deputies stop to meet with the plant’s lean manufacturing leader, Cem Salahifar, who launches into an overview of the factory’s operations. He describes the facility’s transition from a single, giant furnace—known in manufacturing parlance as a monument—to a bunch of smaller ones spread out around the factory floor. This eliminates the need for employees to shuttle components back and forth and stand around waiting for the heating process to complete. Turnaround times for this part of the production process dropped to 30 minutes from four hours. Culp interjects: The team should appreciate how meaningful this change was, he says, for improving efficiency. He then asks them to find ways to rethink the monuments in their own factories. “We like to tear down monuments,” Culp says.

General Electric Through the Years

The historic American company amassed a sprawling portfolio that at one time or another included locomotives, washing machines, insurance, ­lightbulbs, MRI machines, credit cards, real estate and the television ­network NBC.

To be CEO of GE is to be compared with the late Jack Welch. For most of his two-decade reign, Welch made the company bigger, more valuable and more profitable. But the sun began to set on the age of the conglomerate by the time he retired in 2001, and soon other industrial giants were breaking up. Post-Welch CEOs at GE found themselves trying to explain why it made sense to be big for the sake of being big. Jeff Immelt, Welch’s handpicked successor, talked up the benefits of the “GE Store,” a shared repository of technological tools that the whole company could pull off the shelf. In reality, there was no good reason why one company needed to sell MRI machines, jet engines and wind turbines. Even worse, GE’s voluminous sprawl left too many places for problems to hide.

Left: A Leap engine at the Lafayette Engine Facility in Indiana. Photographer: Christopher Payne/Esto/Redux Right: A jet engine test operation. Photographer: Christopher Payne/Esto/Redux

One of the biggest problems was GE Capital, which helped fuel stock growth during the Welch years but proved to be a time bomb. GE had loaded up on debt to support its ventures in corporate lending, real estate, credit cards, mortgages and insurance. When the economic crisis arrived in 2008, GE Capital had more than $500 billion in assets and almost as much debt, which made it the largest financial company in the US that wasn’t technically a bank. As customers worldwide defaulted on loan payments and investors lost their appetite for risk, GE turned to Warren Buffett and the federal government for financial support. Immelt cut GE’s dividend for the first time since the Great Depression. He later sold off huge chunks of GE Capital, but it continued to haunt his successor, John Flannery, who in 2018 disclosed a $15 billion hole in a long-term-care insurance business Immelt had been unable to fully get rid of. The timing couldn’t have been worse: Flannery had cut the dividend two months earlier, to some shareholders’ dismay, and with the gas-power business in a slump and fewer GE Capital assets, there just wasn’t enough money from its operations to keep handing out such generous payments to investors.

GE’s stock was in free fall in 2018, and Flannery overhauled the board. One of the new directors was Culp. A graduate of and former senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, he’d previously been the CEO of Danaher Corp., a onetime industrial conglomerate in its own right that’s idolized by investors for its operational rigor. (Danaher eventually broke up, starting in 2016 with the spinoff of the industrial products company Fortive Corp., shortly after Culp left.)

Culp’s Message: “Everybody Around The Boardroom, Don’t Panic”

Flannery announced a plan to spin off GE’s health-care business in June 2018, but such a wholesale breakup quickly became untenable. The company couldn’t afford it: The remaining operations wouldn’t have generated enough cash to allow GE to pay off its mountain of debt. “We could not spin health care without putting everything fundamentally at risk,” Culp says.

GE’s directors asked Culp if he wanted to run the company. He turned them down—twice, he says—but an August 2018 visit to GE’s gas-power operations in Atlanta began to change his mind. The place was a mess, he tells Bloomberg Businessweek. “We were managing the business in a way that was probably 180 degrees from the way we ran things at Danaher,” he says. But Culp saw a path to fix GE’s operations. His message: “Everybody around the boardroom, don’t panic.”

GE directors offer a bingo card’s worth of MBA-speak to describe how rough the situation was. Tom Horton, former CEO of American Airlines, says he and Culp were both “eyes wide open” when they joined the board together in 2018: “Once we got under the hood, the challenges were more substantial than maybe we anticipated.”

Two months after his visit to Atlanta, Culp was named CEO. In short order, he slashed the dividend to $0.01 a share and killed the plan to spin off health care. Instead, Culp brokered a deal to sell GE’s biopharmaceutical unit to his former employer Danaher. GE received $21 billion in cash for the business, which makes equipment and materials used to manufacture drugs, and offloaded $400 million in pension obligations to Danaher. The transaction was completed in March 2020, about three weeks after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic brought air travel to a halt, creating an existential challenge for the company’s jet engine business. “I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t closed that deal,” Culp says.

GE directors thought the pandemic had made Culp’s job harder, and they wanted to give their CEO another reason to stick with it. In August 2020, the board altered the terms of Culp’s compensation package to give him more time to reach performance targets for a one-time stock bonus and make it meaningfully easier for him to have access to the top payout of about $230 million. Shareholders representing a majority of voting stock opposed the pay deal, but their vote was nonbinding, and the board had already approved the changes anyway. Culp accessed the top tier of the equity grant in July 2023, and the shares will vest next year unless he retires before then. (GE later curbed other aspects of Culp’s compensation.) “We were securing Larry’s leadership for a longer period of time, and that’s proven to be certainly in shareholders’ interest,” Horton says.

There are parallels between Culp and Welch, a company legend who was also legendarily well-compensated. The underlying principles of the lean manufacturing philosophy Culp preaches aren’t all that different from Welch’s cult of Six Sigma, another corporate dogma focused on measuring the rate of operational defects and eliminating inefficiencies. But the two are otherwise very different. Welch’s habit of ranking employees by performance and summarily firing the bottom 10% created a culture of mistrust. Employees who survived layoffs started to think they were the smartest people in the industry, a mentality that persisted after Welch retired and GE began to fade.

Culp has been programming a new mantra into his subordinates, adapted from his time at Danaher: We’re not perfect. “You’ll have some home runs, but you don’t need them every day,” says Jim Lico, who worked for Culp at Danaher and is now president and CEO of Fortive. “No one is perfect.” That kind of talk might’ve gotten a Welch-era executive fired, but it’s part of Culp’s belief in continuous improvement that his team routinely parrots.

This often manifests with seemingly small changes that can make a big impact on productivity over time. In one instance, GE reduced the distance a part must travel around its plant in Greenville, South Carolina, by about 3 miles, says Scott Strazik, the CEO of the soon-to-be-spun-out energy business GE Vernova. Even something as small as reorganizing the toolboxes used by turbine repair technicians can make a big difference. “There’s a long way to go,” Strazik says. GE Aerospace is trying to get its many factories to coordinate more with one another and with the teams that handle contract reviews and other back-office tasks. That process isn’t “perfect,” even if it has improved, says Kayla Ciotti, materials and planning leader at GE Aerospace. “Ten years ago, we had brick walls. Five years ago, we had screen doors,” she says. “The door is open now. There’s no door.”

In contrast with the cutthroat culture at Welch’s GE, Culp’s employees will get some leeway if they do walk into walls. “That doesn’t mean that if you screw something up and you do it repeatedly, there isn’t responsibility to bear,” Culp says. “But a problem-solving culture is far more effective operationally than a finger-pointing culture.”

Brian Carlson remembers his first gemba walk with Culp. Carlson, who runs the 1.2-million-square-foot GE factory in Schenectady, New York, that makes power plant generators, watched Culp stop at one production line in 2019 to inspect a reel of copper wire, which workers fashion into long, braided slabs bent like hockey sticks at both ends. Known as stator bars, these parts are installed inside the guts of enormous generators, which can weigh more than 400 tons. Culp was checking the manufacturing date on a reel of wire. Dozens of reels were stacked on shelves and pallets at the station, burning cash as long as they sat unused. “Others had visited Schenectady before, but it wasn’t into that level of detail,” Carlson says. “When Larry Culp shows up and wants to see how long your material’s been sitting on the factory floor, that simple gesture really sets a tone.”

The foam model at the Schenectady factory. Courtesy: General Electric

After that visit, workers cleared out a large room that once housed office space near the factory’s entrance and spent months building a scale model of the entire factory from hand-cut pieces of white and green foam, which they carefully laid out on rows of folding tables. Placards hang overhead marking each section of the factory, the largest of which declares the purpose of this enormous diorama: “Take it to the model before you take it to the floor.”

The foam factory is now a hub of Schenectady’s operations. Factory staff simulate projects first in the room before testing them on the factory floor. This is part of what’s known inside GE as a kaizen event. Culp loves a good kaizen. The Japanese term means continuous improvement and is another tenet of lean manufacturing. It’s a method for problem-solving that Culp has pushed throughout the company, in which executives and hourly workers dedicate a week to improve a production process, such as the stator bars that caught his attention during his visit in 2019. The goal is to come up with a solution by Friday and have the new process in motion on Monday.

The old way of making stator bars involved moving parts by crane through a 26-step process that took about three months to complete. Each bar now moves on rollers through an eight-step process in as little as three weeks. And now there’s only enough copper wire on hand to sustain a single shift.

On an unusually warm day in late February, Carlson motions to an area on the stator bar line where more improvement is needed. They still use a crane to hoist bars over an active walkway that crosses through the assembly line. A fix is in the works. “See,” he says, “we’re not perfect yet.”

“We Do Not Intend, Let Me Be Clear, To Be All Things To All People”

By early 2021, Culp’s turnaround of GE was starting to take hold, but the company was still sitting on too much debt. A solution arrived that March, when AerCap Holdings NV agreed to acquire GE’s aircraft leasing unit. The deal would allow GE to pay off $30 billion it had borrowed, reducing its debt to the point where the company could realistically think about establishing three separate businesses—in aerospace, health care and energy—that investors would actually want to own.

Culp started mapping out a breakup plan and gave it a code name: Project Revere, inspired by a monument to American patriot Paul Revere near Culp’s home in Boston. He liked the history motif. As GE’s board deliberated a split-up, a defining moment came in a PowerPoint presentation. A slide illustrated the degree to which investors were avoiding the stock simply because it was a conglomerate. “When you just looked at the companies that folks who really wanted to bet on the energy transition or on commercial aerospace were invested in, it was not with us,” Culp says.

In November, a week after the AerCap deal closed, GE announced the spinoff plan. “Everyone felt the weight of that decision,” Culp says at GE Aerospace’s Learning Center in Evendale, Ohio, where visitors can tour a museum of the company’s aerospace achievements, starting with the first American jet engine.

A breakup was never the only option, but it was the best one. Although modern conglomerates do exist (Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft), GE’s ye olde smokestack model wasn’t working anymore. Investors were getting burned by its bigness more often than they were getting rewarded. The conglomerate structure is especially limiting when it comes to spending money, says David Giroux, a portfolio manager and chief investment officer of T. Rowe Price Investment Management. Massive companies tend to make the wrong acquisitions and overpay for them.

One deal Culp didn’t do was to pay an acquirer to make GE’s insurance problem go away. “There were checks back in the dark days that we could have written that would have been akin to having people tear our eyeballs out,” Culp says. “But you never want to be on the other side of that sort of trade.” Although GE hasn’t done any new business in long-term-care insurance in almost two decades, it’s still paying off claims it agreed to back for other providers. It’s now closed the $15 billion insurance funding shortfall, and investors treat the appendage as more of a quirk than the crisis it was in 2018. Culp says he might get rid of the business someday. But he’s not in any rush.

After the breakup, GE Aerospace will have $25 billion of cash to spend on dividends, share buybacks and acquisitions—with the first two taking priority. Culp won’t say what kinds of deals GE Aerospace might do, only that he’ll look for complementary and easily digestible assets. “We do not intend, let me be clear, to be all things to all people,” he told investors in early March.

All of GE’s gemba walks and kaizens and the intense scrutiny of its manufacturing operations look especially prudent after a series of high-profile quality-control failures among its peers. RTX Corp. is recalling thousands of jet engines because of a manufacturing glitch; Siemens Energy AG sought help from the German government after defects in its wind turbines resulted in massive losses; and Boeing Co. can’t even deliver its 737 Max with all the bolts properly installed.

When there are three GEs, Culp hopes the old name still means something to investors. He says that’s one reason he took the job in the first place: “It’s GE.”

At the company’s off-site in Ohio, executives gathered at Carillon Historical Park in Dayton. It’s home to the Wright Brothers’ Wright Flyer III, the first practical airplane. This piece of aviation history sits next to Culp’s Cafe, which serves an All-American egg sandwich and coffee for $13. The cafe has nothing to do with GE’s CEO. It’s named after Charlotte Gilbert Culp, who founded a baked-goods business in 1902 as a young widow in Dayton. At that time, GE was still just an electrical company.

[omegamansuperhero]

Anti-Bullying Programs Enlighten You With Real Truth Of The Society

Let’s start by raising a question that how many of us know at some point in life you were been bullied by your seniors or teachers or parents? Hardly few of us realize that we are been bullied. This happens because we don’t feel like been bullied by our adults. Our parents scold us for doing wrong deeds, teachers also take the high tones to teach us good moral values and likewise seniors become rude to develop good skills within us.

In the middle school assemblies, the professional will help you understand the hard spoken verbal bullying and soft spoken verbal bullying. If your peer mates bully you or get physical with you for his/her selfish needs then such kind of bullying should be immediately brought in to the kind notice of your teachers or parents. This is because once the peer mate start s to overpower you then the person will understand that you can be bullied by the former and maybe the bullying reaches to the next level.

Our professionals play smartly and safely, keeping the safety of the learner in mind, they perform the hard stunt with precaution. They bring their own gears and equipment so that the student can easily learn the tricks. Their stunt is dangerous but leaves a strong message over the audience to fight back, if they are being trapped in some unwanted situation. This is true that physical strength is required to win the battle on the field, but to win the battle every soldier needs an effective training, we will provide you that. Now, with all the information about the benefits of an anti-bullying elementary assemblies program, you want to hire us. Well! Don’t delay, feel free to contact us and let your school set a benchmark for the elementary education program.

[gunterfan1992]

Andres Salaff Interview

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to e-interview Andres Salaff, and I’d like to share that interview with you today! Andres worked on Adventure Time as one of the supervising directors from seasons 6–8, and he has also worked on shows like Regular Show, Big Mouth, Uncle Grandpa, and Close Enough! Read on for fascinating info about how Andres got his start in the biz, what his duties as director were, and what inspired Flame P and Neptr’s rap in “The Music Hole”:

What is your ‘artistic origin story’? And how did you come to work on Adventure Time?

Andres Salaff: I was living in Ohio and drawing mini comics for fun. While visiting California, someone saw them and told me about Calarts Character Animation. I visited the school and looked at the student's work. I knew instantly that it was what I wanted to pursue. I love it because it encompasses a lot of my interests. Drawing, acting, writing and storytelling. After graduating from Calarts, I was hired as a storyboard artist on Regular Show and after three years of doing that, I was asked to direct on AT.

As a supervising director, what were your many duties? Was it largely coordination, or were you drawing/boarding alongside the board artists, too?

AS: [The job was mostly about] weigh[ing] in on storyboard pitches and voice records. But mainly, my job was at the storyboard animatic stage. To make sure that everything was working at that stage of the process and to make sure, along with the art director, timers and designers that all of the necessary information was there for the overseas animation studio. It was very collaborative in that I got to work with the different supervisors in seeing it through the pre production phase up until it got shipped overseas.

What was the energy of the crew like?

AS: [There were] a lot of thinkers on the crew. At times even reserved, but their wit would always come out and surprise me.

Did you do much coordinating with the South Korean studios with regard to the animation? Or was that someone else’s job?

AS: My work was to provide the information necessary to ship. Once it came back, I didn't have a hand in it. Once or twice I did, but that was when Adam Muto, the EP, was on a hiatus.

One thing I'm interested in is the production of the show's miniseries. How did production differ from the 'norm' when it came time to do Stakes?

AS: Stakes was so fun to work on. There wasn't much of a difference on my end from the regular season other than helping to keep an eye on the overarching story and making sure things were tracking. It was so cool seeing the different parts being pitched and coming together. All of the boarders had such a unique voice and style, yet when assembled they somehow blended seamlessly.

One of my favorite episodes has to be "The Music Hole.” How did you come to work on that episode?

AS: Adam Muto had seen a pilot that I had done at the studio called Ridin' With Burgess. There is a lot of rapping in it. He must've liked it because he asked me to board on The Music Hole. The episode centered around a music festival and Flame Princess and Neptr had a rap group.

In a separate interview, Polly Guo waxed poetic about the rap you wrote, so I was wondering if you could speak about where those ideas came from?

AS: As a kid growing up in Ohio, I used to attend a yearly festival called Scribble Jam. I tried to make FP and Neptr's song/ performance as close to that as I could remember. It was really fun to work on that episode and to collaborate with Polly Guo!

A huge thanks to Andres for answering my questions! As always, here are some useful links:

Andres’s personal website: https://andressalaff.com/

Andres’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr_dres/

The Greatest Song Ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIILKyCUbLA

[theladybarnes]

✰ - completed  / ⇆ - on going / ✖ - cancelled

MULTI CHAPTERED SERIES:

( THE SCOUT UNIVERSE )  ⇆

The series follows the secret sibling of Tony Stark. Her journey was to originally stay away from the lime light, work on her schooling, and eventually take a place to work in the family business. But that all changed the day Tony Stark was taken hostage. Years later, she has a new identity, new job, and the beginning of her greatest journey yet.  PAIRINGS: Steve x Reader / Bucky x Reader (Ending Couple) STORIES: Avengers, Assemble / Hail Hydra! / No Strings On Me / Ready to Comply / Inevitability  / 6 / 7

PLAIN AS ANYONE CAN SEE ✖

It’s the sudden meeting of America Chavez that Bucky and you are introduced into the idea of meeting variant versions of yourselves. The two of you have always had a pinning to each other and feel good as friends for now. But the interactions with other worlds might convince you to take the leap that you’ve both been waiting for. ( mini series ) PAIRINGS: Bucky x Reader, mix of other ships  CHAPTER MASTERLIST: ( ▸▸▸ )

CAPTAINS ✰

The suburban city of Westerburg, Ohio never did see the storm coming. It was the year before the millennium, 1999, when new comer “Blue” as most called her, transferred into the local high school. What was supposed to be a joyous Senior year, turned out to be the most daunting, death ridden year. There were two things the whole town couldn’t figure out. Why did Steve Rogers kill himself? And who would follow in his footsteps next? PAIRINGS: Bucky x Reader, Peter x Reader CHAPTER MASTERLIST: ( ▸▸▸ )

ONESHOTS:

BUCKY BARNES: • Is That a Yes? • Body and Soul

UPDATED: 07/21/23

[anightflower]

Come and Find Me Chapter 4: The Andrew Curtis Case

Guys I am so sorry this took so long. On top of school kicking my ass, I had to rewrite and reedit this chapter several times until I got to one that I deemed worthy. I am going to try and post Chapter Five early for you guys if I can. 

Spencer Reid x Reader

Warnings: Mentions of Violence, Rape, Abuse

Masterlist 

Spencer glanced around the room at all the police officers assembled. He cleared his throat. 

“The Unsub is a white male in his late 20s to mid-30s. He is a man with an average build and a friendly face, someone who women would not pose as a threat.”

“Since there were no signs of forced entry, we believe he’s posing as someone who women would let into their house. Classic cases of this include maintenance men there to check up on things, someone who needs help after their car broke down, or a similar case like that.” Emily explained. “This is a man who fakes confidence, but in reality views himself as inadequate in some way, he knows he can’t fight off another man, so he chooses women who live alone and are essentially defenseless.” 

“Yet, he hates that they are successful enough to support themselves or that they have any sort of power.” Morgan chimed in.

“He clearly was cheated on or had some sort of marital issue that caused him to spiral into this spree. He is a sexual sadist projecting his partner onto the women he attacks, that’s why he chokes them, watching the life drain from their eyes sparks something in him and gives him a sense of power. That is also why he rapes his victims, he loves the idea that he is all powerful and they are helpless.” Hotch explained. 

Spencer swallowed, “Comparing his last four victims it seems his type is 20-30 year old females with (Y/C/H) and (Y/C/E).” 

Which coincidentally looks like the love of my life. Spencer thought, repressing a shudder.

________________________________________________________________

Spencer starred in shock at the scene around him. He was just finishing up the geographical profile, when they had received a call about yet another body. 

Her empty bulking eyes stared up at the ceiling, her body was beaten, cut, and bruised. 

“Strangulation marks on her neck, multiple stab wounds and injuries, this looks like our unsub.” Emily resisted the urge to shudder. 

“Man, whoever cheated on this guy, must have really broken him.” Morgan mused, looking around at the bloody scribblings on the wall. 

Spencer knew that if they tested the blood on the wall, it would match the victims. He looked at the frames on the wall, trying to ignore the blood that seemed to coat everything. The victim had her diploma hung up and multiple pictures of her smiling with family or friends. Spencer stared hard at the name on the diploma; Adria Winston.

It scared Spencer how easily he could see you in this woman’s place. Injured, dying, pleading for him, for anyone to save you-

“Reid. Reid, are you alright?” Morgan clapped a hand on Spencer's shoulder, drawing him back to the present. 

Spencer shook himself out of his dazed state. “Yeah, uh I just need to step out for a second.” He said, pushing past Morgan and making his way outside Adria’s house. He pulled out his phone and dialed your number, it was late, so you would most likely be asleep, but-

You picked up on the third ring. “Hi baby, are you alright?” Spencer bit back a smile at the sleepiness in your voice.

“Not really, but I just really needed to hear your voice. How is Ohio?” Spencer asked, trying to distract himself from what he just saw. You could tell, but you played along with it. 

“Not too bad, whoever designed the Google lounge has nothing on me.” You joked. 

“Well, we already knew that.” Spencer smiled. 

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe some of the cool stuff I found, I’m telling you if the employees complain about these amazing comfy chairs I got for their break room, I am totally coming back and stealing all 22 of them for my apartment.” You said enthusiastically. “They're perfect for reading in Spence, I’m telling you, you would love them.” 

Spencer let out a little laugh, “I’m sure they are. We will have to see if we can find some, but I don’t think 22 will fit in either of our apartments.” 

“I suppose you’re right” You sighed dramatically, but then took a more serious tone of voice. “Are you alright baby?” 

Spencer’s chest tightened at your worried tone of voice. “There’s a sick selfish part of me that is so glad that you aren’t here (Y/N). All of these girls look so much like you-” Spencer paused, swallowing back tears. “I just am so glad you are safe, I don’t think I could focus as well on this case if I knew you could possibly be in danger.” 

“Aw Spencer, I am so sorry baby. You aren’t sick or selfish for wanting me to be safe, everyone focuses on the safety of those they love, it’s only human. I know you are going to catch this guy, you are the most brilliant man and agent I have ever met. Just don’t tell your team I said that, I don’t want a bad reputation before they even meet me.” You teased, trying to lighten his dark mood. 

Spencer let out a small laugh and sniffled. “Trust me the team is going to love you. We will have to figure out when you can meet them, but I definitely want to wait until things settle down a bit here.” 

There was silence on your end for a second. “Listen Spence, I can stay here a bit longer if it will help you focus, but when I come home I am taking self-defense classes and such. I want you to have a sane mind knowing that your girlfriend actually can handle herself. I honestly think it will help me keep sane too, after hearing everything about this case.” 

Spencer heart skipped a beat, as much as he wanted you safe and sound, he also needed to hold you in his arms to keep his sanity. But ultimately you were the one who should lead your life, not Spencer.  “I appreciate you considering me, but I want the ultimate decision to be made by you Princess, I trust your judgement and I don’t want you living your life based on my fear.” 

You breath caught in your throat at the sentiment. “I love you Spencer Reid.” 

Spencer could have sworn his heart stopped. The two of you hadn’t said I love you yet. Part of him wished it was in person, but just hearing you say it, meant the world to him. “I love you more (Y/N) (Y/L/N).”

So help him god, Spencer would catch whoever this unsub was and put him away, so you could come home to a safer city. 

________________________________________________________________

“You know what strikes me as funny?” Emily asked, looking at the crime scene photos. 

The room was silent, waiting to hear what she had to say. 

“Each of these unsubs reported strange gifts and letters being sent to their home. The police had thought it was nothing, but now I am thinking that maybe this could be a connection. I mean think about it, didn’t you guys notice that each victim received a gift box wrapped the exact same way?” 

Morgan nodded. “Yeah they had the white box with the red bow-”

Spencer chimed in, “Red typically symbolizes love and infatuation, but in this case it was the unsub’s warning, red meant war or violence was about to come upon this victim.” 

“Reid and JJ I want you to talk to the officers and get the reports these women filed for harassment, I think we are missing a connection.” Hotch ordered. 

An hour or so later they had that connection.  

“All of the victims received their gifts from a delivery service called ‘Special Delivery.’” JJ explained to everyone. 

“Well it seems we have to pay them a visit.” Hotch said. 

________________________________________________________________

Special Delivery was a small Ma and Pa store, located just a couple blocks from Ava’s coffee shop. Spencer debated on stopping in to check in with her and maybe grab the team coffee. 

Spencer had quickly taken a liking to Ava, not only because he had called him your “sexy superhero boyfriend,” but because she was a reliable friend to you, one who always managed to bring a smile to your face. She reminded Spencer of a more wild Emily, in the best way possible.

Emily stopped outside the storefront window, glancing at the display of chocolates, gift baskets, and jewelry. “Why is it always the cute small places that get ruined? Can’t it be one of those big corporate offices that fuck over their employees instead?” 

Spencer huffed a laugh. 

As they entered the store, the bell let out a delicate twinkle. Causing a silver-streaked brunette to pop out from the back of the store. Her round face held a warm smile as she approached them. 

“Hello dears! What can I do for you?” She asked as she excitedly clasped her hands together.

“Hello Mrs. Ellison, my name is SSA Prentiss and this is Dr. Reid, we had a few questions for you.” Emily said gently, flashing her badge to the woman. 

The woman's smile dimmed a bit, “Oh, uh of course, is everything alright?” 

“Mrs. Ellison I am sure you’ve heard of the recent tragedies-” Emily began, 

“Oh yes, I’ve been keeping up with the news, it’s just dreadful that something so horrible could happen so close to home. You see these things in movies or in other places, but you just never expect them to happen right near you.” Mrs. Ellison said sorrowfully, wrapping her arms around herself. 

“Mrs. Ellison, I am afraid everyone of these victims received several deliveries from your shop. Each was wrapped exactly the same, white box, red bow, does this ring any bells for you?” Spencer asked, cutting to the chase. 

“Well dear, it is Valentine season, red, pink, and white are the typical go to colors.” She shrugged. 

“Do you have any regulars? He would have each gift he bought wrapped the exact same way? He would seem friendly, but would be on the quieter side?” Emily asked, attempting to prod the older woman’s memory. 

“I’m afraid none of that is ringing any bells dear, I am so sorry.” Mrs. Ellison said apologetically. 

“Do you have any other employees? Or do you run this place all by yourself?” Spencer asked. 

Mrs. Ellison, let out a small laugh, “Oh goodness me, no. I get so many orders, I could never do it by myself. I previously had three employees, Jess, Remy, and Andrew, but I had to fire Andrew when I found him stealing from our stock. It was a shame too, he was a hardworking boy, but I’m afraid he just fell apart after his wife left him.”

Emily and Spencer exchanged a quick glance. “Do you happen to know why his wife left him?” Spencer asked, his heart picking up speed. 

“Oh it's not my business to share-” Mrs. Ellison hesitated. 

“Please Mrs. Ellison, this could be crucial information.” Emily urged her. 

Mrs. Ellison let out a sigh. “That horrible girl cheated on him. I just couldn’t understand it either, Drew was such a doting gentleman to her, it simply didn’t make sense.” 

“Do you still have his contact information? His address?” 

“Why of course, but you couldn’t possibly think he has anything to do with this-” Mrs. Ellison began, making her way to behind the counter to grab a binder. She looked up worried when Spencer and Emily didn’t answer right away. “Do you?” She urged. 

“It’s quite possible he had nothing to do with it, we just need to follow through with every angle.” Emily quickly explained. 

“Of course.” Mrs. Ellison said, but her hands slightly shook as she opened up her binder to get Andrew’s address. 

________________________________________________________________

“Andrew Curtis, this is the FBI, open up.” Hotch hollered from outside the door. There was no response. Hotch looked to his team to make sure they were ready, then kicked in the door. 

As the team checked different rooms, several calls of “Clear!” echoed throughout the house. Curtis was not there. 

Morgan made his way to the basement and swallowed back a gag. “Hotch! You better come see this.” 

Guns at the ready, Spencer, Hotch, Rossi, and Emily, made their way down to Morgan. 

“What the hell.” Emily huffed as they all beheld the horrific sight before them. 

It was a girl, for sure. She had the same mutilated marks as far as they could tell, but her body was decently decayed. 

“He’s displaying her like a trophy.” Spencer observed. “He props her up naked and makes sure her wounds are fully on display to remind him what he did.”

“There’s more trophies over here.” Rossi said in disgust, gesturing to a shelf full of different valuables. 

“He’s sick.” Morgan hissed. 

“We need a med team down here to remove a body. As soon as it’s IDed we need to know and alert any next of kin.” Hotch ordered into his earpiece. 

Rossi put on a glove and began to go through the other trophies for evidence. “I’ll talk to the victims families and see if any of them recognize these items.” 

Morgan dialed up Garcia. 

“Speak and be heard, the all-knowing goddess listens.” 

“Hey baby girl, I need you to look up any missing person’s reports from around this area. The victim has (y/c/h) and (y/c/e). She fits our victimology to a t, but we need to figure out who she is.”

“I’m on it.” Garcia said. 

“And Garcia,” Hotch said, stopping her before she hung up. “I need you to find a license plate for Andrew Curtis. Also check to see if he rents or owns any other property, he’s currently not at his home and it is too close to other buildings for his victims to not be heard.” 

“You got it. Talk soon.” She said, hanging up. 

About half an hour later Garcia got back to them. “Curtis drives a 2003 silver sedan with the license plate 637-IRT. I also found that he rents a small storage unit that’s a 20 minute drive in a more secluded part of town. I am sending the address to you guys now.” 

“Thanks Garcia.” Hotch said. He turned to JJ “I need you to get an APB on Curtis. I want you to warn the public to keep an eye out for him.” 

JJ nodded and rushed off with her phone. Hotch looked to the rest of the team. “Everyone else, vests on, we are heading to that storage unit.”

________________________________________________________________

“Fuck Drew, what are we going to do?” The boy asked as he looked at the screen projecting a news report on Andrew Curtis.

“Well, it might be the end for me, little brother, but I have you as my legacy. They don’t have a clue that you are even involved, so I need you to get out of here.”

“No, no, no. I am not going to leave you!” The Boy cried, tears streaming down his face. 

Drew huffed a laugh. “Now, now, little bro. It isn’t the time for tears. I’ve taught you everything you need to know. You need to get your girl from that Doctor remember?”

“How am I supposed to do this without you?” The Boy asked, fear filled his voice. 

“Your time will come. You have to be a man about this. You have the skills now and you have our little videos to watch. Your own little tutorial to pluck that girl right out of Dr. Reid’s hands. You need to hide those and hide them well. Promise me you won’t fuck up your chance.” Drew growled. 

The Boy whimpered and Drew smacked him. “Promise me!” He yelled. 

“I promise.” The Boy sobbed, grabbing at his pained cheek.

Drew’s face softened and he gave the boy a smile. “Good, now get out of here legacy and make me proud. I expect to see you on the news someday.” He winked. “You remember our code right?” 

The boy nodded. 

“Then this isn’t the last time we will speak to each other. Now get the fuck out of here, I already fucked with the security footage, so they won’t even know you were here.” Drew explained, pushing the boy out towards the parking lot. 

The Boy’s heart broke as he rushed from his mentor, not only because he knew he would never be able to see Drew in person after this, but because he knew that he would never be able to ruin the 6th victim. The sixth whore that was tied up in the trunk of Drew’s car. 

________________________________________________________________

The girl sobs were muffled by her gag. Drew pulled on her hair harder as he dragged her to the storage unit. He knew he didn’t have much time left, so he might as well let every moment count huh?

The girl’s sobs turned into terrified screams as she beheld the bloodied storage room and the various knives and devices within it. 

“Shut up you stupid bitch.” He growled in her ear.

The girl whimpered something and Drew ripped away her gag. 

“Please.” She begged and Drew simply laughed as he lugged her limp body towards the table in the center of the room.

“Please, just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I have a family who cares about me-” She pleaded. 

“Whores don’t have families. Whores have nothing. They just cheat and lie and move onto the next guy. Huh Madelyn?” He growled as he threw her up onto the table.

“My name isn’t Madelyn, please it’s Emily-” The girl sobbed.

“Enough of your lies Madelyn. You stupid slut. You couldn’t stay loyal could you?” Drew snarled, hitting the girl’s head hard against the table.

She sobbed harder. “My name is Emily, my name isn’t Madelyn, please it’s Emily.” She babbled.

“SHUT UP.” He said, hitting her again.

Suddenly a shout rose up from outside the storage unit door. “Andrew Curtis, this is the FBI, come out with your hands raised.” 

The smile that crept across Drew’s face was wicked. He grabbed a knife and pulled Emily against him. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?” He whispered in her ear. 

“Andrew Curtis, this is your last warning. We will come in armed and ready.” Hotch’s voice shouted again. 

Drew remained where he was, the sick smile on his face, as tears streamed down Emily’s face. 

When the door burst open and several agents poured in, he did not flinch or cower away. 

“Drop the weapon.” Hotch boomed, his voice echoing in the space.

“Now, now, now, where would the fun be in that?” Drew mocked. 

“Put down the weapon, Curtis and let the girl go.” Rossi ordered. 

Drew’s eyes looked past all of them and fell on Spencer, he bit back a smile.

“Come any closer and I’ll slice her throat.” Drew threatened, pressing the knife harder to Emily’s throat, a few drops of crimson blossomed and crept down her neck.

“If you don’t let Miss Bloise go, then we will be forced to take action Mr. Curtis.” Rossi explained.

Drew’s hand shook, god he wanted them to come at him, but then he thought of his mentee, how lost he would be without him. 

He lowered the knife and let the girl go. She ran towards one of the agents, tears mixing with the blood that ran down her neck. JJ wrapped an arm around the girl and guided her out. 

Morgan rushed to Curtis, pinning him down against the floor and putting cuffs around his wrists. 

Though they had caught him, Hotch felt uneasy. Curtis had given in too quickly. The greasy smile across Curtis’s face as Morgan led him away only heightened his suspicions. 

________________________________________________________________

The team sat outside the interrogation room, watching as Hotch tried to get a rise out of Andrew Curtis. He and JJ had gone in; Hotch to be the intimidator, JJ to be the trigger as she looked a bit similar to the victims. So far the man had just sat in the chair, his arms crossed, silent and smirking. It had been almost an hour and they had gotten nothing out of him.

Spencer felt as though Curtis could see him through the two-way mirror. 

“You know Agent,” Curtis began. “I know you’re trying to be the big bad wolf, but it’s not going to work, I’ve dealt with worse than you.”

Morgan looked about ready to kick in the door and beat the confession out of Andrew. 

“Send me in, I’ll get an answer out of him” Morgan growled, cracking his knuckles.

“Unfortunately, the confession won’t stand up in court if they found out you beat the shit out of Curtis to get it” Emily smirked, trying to lighten the mood.

“The Court doesn’t have to know” Morgan argued, making Emily scoff. 

“Focus kids.” Rossi ordered sternly, but Spencer could tell he was fighting back a small smile. 

Hotch and JJ came out of the room. Hotch looked to Spencer, his expression grim. “He wants to talk with you.”

Spencer looked at Hotch confused, “Why me?”

“He’s ‘fascinated by you’” Hotch explained. “I know it’s not ideal and you don’t have to go in their Reid, but-”

“But, we could get the confession out of him. We have the charges for Miss Bloise, but we want to pin him for the other girls he attacked. I understand and I will do it.” Spencer said. 

“I’ll stick with you Spence” JJ reassured, putting a hand on his arm. “You won’t be alone.”

Spencer nodded, sending a grateful look JJ’s way as they made their way into the interrogation room.

“Ah the elusive doctor. So glad you could join us.” Drew purred.

Spencer said nothing as he moved to sit down across from Curtis.

“-your wife left you Mr. Curtis, is that correct?” JJ asked.

“Please doll, a pretty thing like you can call me Drew” Drew said, looking JJ up and down. 

Spencer’s fists clenched in anger as he felt JJ tense next to him.

“The file says she left you after she cheated on you. Did you have medical issues Mr. Curtis?” Reid asked, drawing Curtis’s attention to him. “Did you struggle to please your own wife?”

Curtis growled. “That stupid whore has nothing to do with this.” 

“Ah so you couldn’t and when she left you for a man that could, you projected your anger for her onto these women. You were angry at them for being confident and independent, much like your wife who knew what she wanted.” Spencer said, sitting back in his chair with a faint smirk. 

“These women were nothing but whores, willing to let men in like me. They wanted someone so badly they let a stranger into their house.” Curtis hissed.

“Mr. Curtis, you were a delivery man. They didn’t let you in, you forced your way into their homes didn’t you?”

“If a man needs a glass of water, can’t he let himself in?” Curtis purred. “They turned their backs on a predator and got what was coming to them.” 

“Did you attack them in their homes?” JJ asked. 

“Only to make them quiet, couldn’t have the neighbors hear them scream.” Curtis laughed and Spencer resisted the urge to choke out the man across from him. 

They placed images of all of his supposed victim’s before him. “Do you recognize these women?” JJ asked, her voice harsh and cold. 

Curtis looked over all of them, silent for a couple minutes. Spencer’s patience thinned. “Well?” 

Curtis pointed to an image of Lila Jennings, the third victim of this case. “She screamed the loudest.” He pointed to another image. “She was a hot piece of ass, it was fun breaking her.” 

“Enough.” Spencer hissed. 

“In short Doctor, yes I do recognize these women. Every single one of them and no I do not regret a single one.”

Without saying another word, JJ and Spencer got up, taking the files with them. Curtis’s laughter rang out behind them as they shut the door.

________________________________________________________________

TAGLIST

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[wildesfancyfrock]

John Graves Simcoe

For those who don't know much about John Graves Simcoe, I am going to be posting some fun things, as a Canadian who has lived his entire life in towns/places impacted by Simcoe himself. These are from his time in Canada, since I assume those who have seen TURN have a very vague idea of what he did in the Revolutionary War (even though it's very inaccurate).

John Graves Simcoe (25 February 1752 – 26 October 1806) was a British Army general and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York (now Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, and freehold land tenure, and also in the abolition of slavery in Canada.

His long-term goal was the development of Upper Canada (Ontario) as a model community built on aristocratic and conservative principles, designed to demonstrate the superiority of those principles to the republicanism and democracy of the United States. His energetic efforts were only partially successful in establishing a local gentry, a thriving Church of England, and an anti-American coalition with select Indigenous nations. He is seen by many Canadians as a founding figure in Canadian history, especially by those in Southern Ontario.[3] He is commemorated in Toronto with Simcoe Day.

First Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (known today as; Ontario.)

The Constitutional Act 1791 divided Canada into the Provinces of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). The Act established separate governments and legislative assemblies for each province. Lower Canada was the French-speaking eastern portion, which retained the French civil law and protections for the Roman Catholic Church established when Britain took over the area after its defeat of the French in the Seven Years' War. Upper Canada was the western area, newly settled after the American Revolutionary War. The settlers were mostly English speakers, including Loyalists from the Thirteen Colonies, and also the Six Nations of the Iroquois, who had been British allies during the war. The Crown had purchased land from the Mississauga and other First Nations to give the Loyalists land grants in partial compensation for property lost in the United States, and to help them set up new communities and develop this territory.[18]

Simcoe was appointed Lieutenant-Governor on 12 September 1791, and left for Canada with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Sophia, leaving three daughters behind in England with their aunt. They left England in September and arrived in Canada on 11 November. Due to severe weather, the Simcoes spent the winter in Quebec City. Simcoe finally reached Kingston, Upper Canada on 24 June 1792.[17]

In a proclamation on 16 July 1792, he renamed several islands at the mouth of the archipelago at the head of the St. Lawrence river for the victorious Generals at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (Amherst Island, Gage Island, Wolfe Island, and Howe Island).[19]

Under the Constitutional Act, the provincial government consisted of the Lieutenant-Governor, an appointed Executive Council and Legislative Council, and an elected Legislative Assembly. The first meeting of the nine-member Legislative Council and sixteen-member Legislative Assembly took place at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) on 17 September 1792.

Following Simcoe's work precipitated by the Chloe Cooley incident, the Assembly passed the first Act Against Slavery in the British Empire in 1793, and the English colonists of Upper Canada took pride in this distinction with respect to the French-Canadian populace of Lower Canada. The Upper Canadians valued their common law legal system, as opposed to the civil law of Quebec, which had chafed them ever since 1763. This was one of the primary reasons for the partition of 1791. Simcoe collaborated extensively with his Attorney-General John White on the file.

The principles of the British Constitution do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns. The moment I assume the Government of Upper Canada under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates by dishonest policy between natives of Africa, America, or Europe.

— John Graves Simcoe, Address to the Legislative Assembly[20]

Slavery was thus ended in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the British Empire as a whole. By 1810, there were no slaves in Upper Canada, but the Crown did not abolish slavery throughout the Empire until 1834.

Simcoe's first priority was the Northwest Indian War between the United States and the "Western Confederacy" of Native Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of the Great Lakes (the Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, and other tribes). This conflict had begun in 1785, and was still raging when Simcoe arrived in 1792. Simcoe had hoped to form an Indian buffer state between the two countries, even though he distrusted Joseph Brant, the main Indian leader. Simcoe rejected the section of the Treaty of Paris (1783) which awarded that area to the US, on the grounds that American actions had nullified the treaty.[21] However, the French Revolutionary Wars broke out in 1793. The government in London decided to seek good terms with the United States. Simcoe was instructed to avoid giving the US reason to mistrust Britain but, at the same time, to keep the Natives on both sides of the border friendly to Britain. The Indians asked for British military support, which was initially refused, but in 1794 Britain supplied the Indians with rifles and ammunition.[22]

In February 1794, the governor general, Lord Dorchester, expecting the US to ally with France, said that war was likely to break out between the US and Britain before the year was out. This encouraged the Indians in their war. Dorchester ordered Simcoe to rally the Indians and arm British vessels on the Great Lakes. He also built Fort Miami (present-day Maumee, Ohio) to supply the Indians. Simcoe expelled Americans from a settlement on the southern shore of Lake Erie which had threatened British control of the lake. US President Washington denounced the "irregular and high-handed proceeding of Mr. Simcoe."[23] While Dorchester planned for a defensive war, Simcoe urged London to declare war: "Upper Canada is not to be defended by remaining within the boundary line."[24] Dorchester was officially reprimanded by the Crown for his strong speech against the Americans in 1794.

Simcoe realised that Newark made an unsuitable capital because it was on the Canada–US border and subject to attack. He proposed moving the capital to a more defensible position, in the middle of Upper Canada's southwestern peninsula between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. He named the new location London, and renamed the river there the Thames in anticipation of the change. Dorchester rejected this proposal, but accepted Simcoe's second choice, the present site of Toronto. Simcoe moved the capital there in 1793, and renamed the settlement York after Frederick, Duke of York, King George III's second son. The town was severely underdeveloped at the time of its founding so he brought with him politicians, builders, Nova Scotia timber men, and Englishmen skilled in whipsawing and cutting joists and rafters.[25]

Simcoe began construction of two roads through Upper Canada, for defence and to encourage settlement and trade. Yonge Street (named after British Minister of War Sir George Yonge) ran north–south from York to Lake Simcoe. Soldiers of the Queen's Rangers began cutting the road in August 1793, reaching Holland Landing in 1796. Dundas Street (named for Colonial Secretary Henry Dundas) ran east–west, between York and London.

The Northwest Indian War ended after the United States defeated the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. They made peace under the Treaty of Greenville. While still at war with France, Britain could not afford to antagonise the US in the Jay Treaty of 1794, and agreed to withdraw north of the Great Lakes, as agreed in the Treaty of Paris (1783). Simcoe evacuated the frontier forts.

Legacy

In the winter of 1779, the first known Valentine's Day letter in America was given by then Lieutenant Colonel John Simcoe to Sarah 'Sally' Townsend.[31]

Simcoe Street in Oyster Bay, New York is named after him for his destruction of a vast apple orchard and reconstruction of a hill fort on the site.[32]

Act Against Slavery passed in 1793, leading to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1810. It was superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that abolished slavery across the British Empire.

Simcoe named London, Ontario and the River Thames in Upper Canada.

He named Lake Simcoe and Simcoe County to the west and north of Lake Simcoe in honour of his father.

Simcoe named his summer home Castle Frank for his first son Francis Gwillim, who was preceded by eight daughters. (It is in what is now named Cabbagetown, a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto.)[33]

The Ontario Heritage Foundation placed a plaque in Exeter's cathedral precinct to commemorate his life.

Simcoe's regiment is still called the Queen's York Rangers, now an armoured reconnaissance regiment of the Canadian Forces reserves.

Many places in Canada were named in honour of Simcoe:

The town of Simcoe in southwestern Ontario

The Simcoe Fairgrounds in Simcoe.

Civic Holiday, a statutory holiday celebrated throughout Canada under a variety of names by region,[34] was established in honour of Simcoe by the Toronto City Council in 1869.[35] Other Ontario municipalities and then other provinces soon took up the holiday as well, leading to its Canada-wide status, but without any attribution to Simcoe. In 1965, the Toronto City Council declared the holiday would henceforth be known as Simcoe Day within Toronto.[35] Attempts have been made to have the official provincial name—still Civic Holiday[34]—amended, but none have succeeded.

Governor Simcoe Secondary School in St. Catharines, Ontario

Governor Simcoe Public School. Grades K – 8, in London, Ontario. The now closed and demolished school was located at the corner of Simcoe and Clarence Streets.

Three parallel streets in downtown Toronto, John Street, Graves Street, and Simcoe Street, are all located near the fort where Simcoe lived during his early years in York and were named for him. Graves Street was later renamed Duncan Street.

Simcoe Street, Simcoe Street United Church, and Simcoe Hall Settlement House in Oshawa.

Simcoe Street in New Westminster and Simcoe Park was named by Colonel Moody in reference to the surveying of the area after the city of Toronto.

Simcoe Street, Simcoe Street School and the Simcoe Street School Tigers Bantam Baseball Team of Niagara Falls

Simcoe Island, located near Kingston, Ontario

Simcoe Hall, located on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto

John Graves Simcoe Armoury, located on Industrial Parkway in Aurora, Ontario

There are two places named for Simcoe with the title Lord, but Simcoe was not made a Lord in his lifetime. They are the following:

Lord Simcoe Drive in Brampton, Ontario

Lord Simcoe Hotel, which operated from 1956 to 1981

Captain John Kennaway Simcoe, the last member of the Simcoe family, died without issue in 1891 and was survived by his widow beyond 1911

In Popular Culture

A fictionalised version of John Graves Simcoe is a primary antagonist in the 2014–2017 AMC drama Turn: Washington's Spies, portrayed by Samuel Roukin.[37] He is portrayed in the series as a cruel and ruthless sociopath.

Despite the strong fictionalisation of the namesake TV-show character, several biographical aspects of the latter's historical counterpart appear to have been adapted for and transferred onto the fictional character Edmund Hewlett. For instance, Hewlett's romantic ambitions regarding Anna Strong in the series resemble Simcoe's courtship of Sarah Townsend, sister of Culper Ring spy Robert Townsend, for whom he wrote a poem that is thought to be the first verifiable valentine on the North American continent.[38] It is presumed that Townsend, much like the fictionalised portrayal of Anna Strong on Turn, may have gathered and passed on intelligence gleaned from her unsuspecting suitor to the Culper Ring.

Similarly, Hewlett's close bond with his horse Bucephalus (presumably named after Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great) which overarches all four seasons, appears to have been inspired by history: in 1783, John Graves Simcoe sent a series of letters to New York in order to find the horse he had ridden on campaign, Salem. Salem was located and Simcoe subsequently paid the considerable sum of £40 to have him shipped to England and thus returned to him.[39] Shortly before his departure to Upper Canada almost a decade later, it is reported he was greatly concerned for Salem's welfare in his absence, therefore making arrangements for the latter's care and upkeep.[40]

source; Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graves_Simcoe)

Now for some images, taken by me in Chatham, as well as Queen's Park in Toronto.

Now, some fun facts about me, related to Simcoe:

I was born in Chatham/Chatham-Kent

I go to high school in Simcoe County

I'm debating going to college in Toronto (to become a history teacher)

I've been to the Simcoe County Museum, where they have a bust of Simcoe and a whole wall of information about him (from what I could see- I was there on a WWI field trip and didn't really get to explore)

Every where I've lived/been to school, has been impacted by John Graves Simcoe.

In reality, he was not that bad a dude. TURN just TURNed (ha, get it) into the psychopathic antagonist they wanted. Alright, this has been fun but I need to go study Canadian law, piece homies.

[anikalenaanika]

Tumblr Post #1

Both while reading this week and during Friday’s discussion, my thoughts kept circling back to Kaitlin Bennett, a.k.a. “Kent State Gun Girl”. My close friend attends Kent State currently, and we’ve had many a conversation about the conservative phenomenon who is Kaitlin Bennett. She earned her so-called ‘fame’ by taking graduation pictures at Kent State with an AR-10 strapped over her shoulder. Kent State was the site of a massacre in 1970, when the Ohio State National Guard shot and killed four unarmed students who were participating in a protest against the Vietnam War. Ironically enough, Kaitlin cites this event as reason for her to arm herself on campus (self-defense). The massacre’s legacy has influenced debates of Freedom of Speech for fifty years, and the implications of student deaths are incredibly relevant to our discussions in class. Unarmed students were literally killed for attending a prohibited rally. The specifics of the event, including violence and destruction that led up to the murders, is important but I won’t get into that now. The most important implication is that, in this case, freedom of speech and assembly were not offered to the protesters at Kent State. Kaitlin Bennett’s presence on campus has led to events of what I would categorize as “mass public shaming” referenced on page 28 of Freedom of Speech on Campus. The effects of this in relation to her spouting of conservative ideas and conspiracy theories, as well as interviewing students about offensive questions, are interesting to consider. My friend who goes to Kent State told me that Bennett is pretty much universally hated at the school. There are numerous videos available on Twitter of her being accosted, harassed, and mass publicly shamed while on campus. While many people are supportive of this behavior, given her history of making incredibly offensive comments and supporting harmful conspiracy theories, another camp of people believe it would be more beneficial to completely ignore her. Due to her outright aggression and desire to rile people up, what is the correct response? Possibly, the outcry is what she is after, and complete ignorance would be more effective in counteracting her harmful speech.

[n1ghtcrwler]

In response to this post from last night, @myriamsaviniart commented,

Wow, pretty hardcore! But wait, how many churches did you attend to?

Which I cannot answer off the top of my head without actually listing them because I have trouble with things like that, so what the heck, I’ll list here (with brief commentary) any that I attended with some regularity. I could explain in some more detail if anyone is curious about any of them.

New Life Covenant Church, South Pymatuning, PA: My childhood church, addressed in the linked post, left some time in my teens

First Assembly of God, Hermitage, PA: My family tried this one out briefly after leaving NLCC, but we never became members and stopped going to church entirely when my parents’ divorce process started. I later returned and joined the youth group for a brief stint during my senior year of high school, but still never stayed long enough to become a member

Grace in the Wilderness Church, West Middlesex, PA: Founded by people who had left NLCC and eventually regrouped. My dad started going around the time the divorce was finalized in the summer between my junior and senior years, and I joined when I moved in with him. He ended up leaving over a dispute with the pastor, but I was already gone to Pittsburgh for art school by then so it didn’t really involve me

New Life Baptist Church, New Wilmington, PA: My first Baptist church, I started attending with my dad after dropping out of art school and drifting around the PA/Ohio line for a couple years. I had a series of heated disputes with the pastor that led to me being removed from the tech crew, but ultimately left because I moved to Boston. My dad and brother were insistent that the problems I saw with the pastor weren’t real and I was the actual problem, but a couple years later they left over the same issues

Open Door Baptist Church, Belmont, MA: I moved to Boston to join a church planting team who was attending and hoping to be sent out by Open Door. When that never materialized, we went our separate ways, and I had to move out of the greater Boston area

Mercyhouse, Amherst, MA: When I moved to Amherst and my car died, I looked for a church I could walk to. I ended up pretty heavily involved at Mercyhouse and, even though some aspects of my relationship with the pastor soured near the end, I never left on bad terms. Did my pastoral internship here. This one will come up again.

[Something] in the Valley, Sharon, PA: I’m drawing a blank on this one’s actual name. My dad and brother were going there when I couldn’t afford Massachusetts anymore and moved home, so I (and Carol, when she was visiting PA) went with them. They ended up having some dispute with the pastor and leaving, but I was hesitant to follow without knowing what was going on, so I tried to meet with the pastor to discuss it. After it became clear he was avoiding me, we decided to look elsewhere. We never found another church before deciding I was moving back to Mass, and we went to Mercyhouse on my return.

Vita Nova Greenfield, Greenfield, MA: Mercyhouse had sent out a church plant some years earlier called Vita Nova, and now the planting pastor of Vita Nova was leading a new planting team in Greenfield. We signed on, but in my discussions with the pastor I became concerned there was something deeply wrong with him as a church leader, and when we moved to Springfield we used that move as an excuse to slip away. That pastor announced he was an atheist and began attacking Christianity and fractured both churches about a month later.

City Church, Springfield, MA: Another church plant connected to Mercyhouse, we greatly enjoyed our time there and saw the church grow in big ways before we moved back to Greenfield and decided to return to Mercyhouse, which was much closer.

Faith Baptist Church, Greenfield, MA: We were interested in trying again to plant in Greenfield, and decided to invest in a more local church. However, that church leadership was somewhat put off by the idea of church planting and ultimately we left over a significant disagreement about mission in the city.

Crossroads Baptist Church, Greenfield, MA: I was the planting pastor of this one, which did not last a year. When it was clear God wanted us to move on, we returned to Mercyhouse.

The Haven Church, Fitchburg, MA: The pastor of Mercyhouse invited a church planter to preach a sermon and seek volunteers to help out. After prayer and a long conversation with him later that week, Carol and he and I all agreed that this was the direction we were called to next, and we signed on

Highland Baptist Church, Fitchburg, MA: After a little over a year of operation, Haven merged with Highland and the planting pastor became Highland’s lead pastor. That pastor left after it became clear that the church was not willing to make the changes they had called us in to make, and Carol and I left after they turned down yet another opportunity to refocus their mission some months later.

Bethany Bible Chapel, Winchendon, MA: Our current church. We are slowly working on the membership process.

So I guess the answer is 14.

[becausenoothernameisavailable]

The 5 first dates but not dates of Jules and Logan as narrated by Derek Seigerson.

The First One.

“Look, he should be coming in the next ten minutes! Do something!” cried Logan as he straightened the cushions for the thousandth time. Why do we even have cushions in all boy’s common room, thought Derek as he watched his friend run amok.

“Logan, did you get cushions especially for Julian, you do know he lives here as well right...”

“I just want to do something for him.” said Logan wringing his hands as Derek stared at him. He had never seen his best friend in a state like this before. “- And no, the cushions are from the hall cupboard, didn’t even know we owned them, just thought it looked pretty, now be quick I can see him coming.”

Saying this he walked to the front door and opened it before Julian did. “Hi” Logan breathed out as Julian looked surprised at him. “We missed you, I mean how are you?”

“Logan” Julian greeted wearily as Logan took his bag from him. “We got this Carmen.” Derek said as he stood behind Logan, smiling at Julian’s agent.

“Come in, coffee is waiting.” Logan said shutting the door, cutting Carmen off before she even got a word in.

“Coffee.” Julian stuttered not used to Logan’s fussing, “what – what are. Since when do you greet me with coffee?”

“And it’s the best kind, your favorite brand, not the usual swill that is found here. Princess here ordered it especially for you, express delivery and everything.” Derek piped, smirking at Logan who was looking at Julian.

“Well, what’s the use of having a Senator for a father if I can’t get any of the perks?” asked Logan as he gave a Julian his cup of coffee and then proceeded to pick his own.

“Where’s mine?” asked Derek amused.  “You can make one for yourself.” quipped Logan as Julian smiled and took a sip.

The Second One.

“And a picnic on the school grounds is your idea of a relaxing weekend. Seriously, this coming from you? Where is the Logan I know and what have you done with him?” remarked Julian as he sat down on the grass in front of his friend.

“At least he did not break out the picnic mat and picnic basket.” laughed Derek as he sat down next to Logan.

“It’s not a picnic. It’s just lunch.” mumbled Logan as he handed Julian a sandwich, chips and a soda.

“That you made.” retorted Derek as he rifled through the assembled chips and drinks and picked up a sandwich, which was immediately snatched away by Logan.

“Hey!” exclaimed Derek.

“That’s mine” replied Logan as he took a bite of the sandwich.

“Then where’s mine” replied Derek moping at them as Julian laughed.

“You don’t get any” smirked Logan and Derek threw a chips packet on him.

The Third One

“Haven has a concert this weekend.” Logan said, pretending to be busy in homework while Julian finished an essay for Murdoch.

“Hmm. I know” replied Julian as he cross-checked a reference, before typing it out on his laptop.

“Wanna go then?” Logan asked nonchalantly as he pretended to read something, while Derek just silently laughed at his antics.

“It’s a Wednesday, the concert is on Saturday, Lo. Do you even have tickets?” Julian said pausing his typing to look at his friend,” Do you even like Haven?”

“It’s also in California.” smirked Derek, “How do you plan to get there?”

“I have my ways.” Logan smiled and passed two tickets to Jules, who laughed and took them.

“Where’s mine?” Derek asked playfully, all while knowing that he was never going to be invited.

“You have match.” Logan said grinning at him.

The Fourth One

“I wanted to eat Italian” Logan said again, as he parked the car outside Breadsticks.

“And you think Breadsticks is the answer.” Julian muttered from the passenger seat, “Also where’s D, you did tell him to meet us here right?”

“Absolutely!” Logan said graciously “He’s running late.” knowing fully well that Derek was told to stay back in the dorm.

“Come, our reservation is for Six.” Logan said getting out of the car.

The Fifth One.

In the pouring Ohio rain they sit together, quietly, side by side, as the heavens break loose on them. Derek watches over them from inside.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

December 10, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Today more than half of the Republicans in the House of Representatives signed onto Texas’s lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install Trump, rather than the legitimately elected Joe Biden, into the White House.

Democrat Biden won the election by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 electoral votes. Trump has lost 55 of the 56 court cases he has brought to change the election’s outcome, and all 50 states have certified their election results. This election is not close; attempts to overturn it reject the central concept of democracy: that voters choose their leaders.

The story is this: Texas’s Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the Supreme Court to hear an original case between the states—which it can do, but it’s rare—arguing that Texas was harmed by voting procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Essentially, Paxton is arguing that mail-in voting in those states, which Democrats used more extensively than Republicans did after Trump insisted it was insecure, stepped on Texans’ rights. This will be a hard sell.

If the Supreme Court does say Texas can sue, Paxton is hoping that 5 justices will then decide to toss out the electoral votes—but not the votes in the downballot races-- from those states. This would take away Biden’s victory in the Electoral College, handing the election to Trump.

After Texas filed the lawsuit, Trump filed a request to join it.

This is a crazy lawsuit. As Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said: “It’s just simply madness…. The idea of supplanting the vote of the people with partisan legislators is so completely out of our national character that it’s simply mad…. [T]his effort to subvert the vote of the people is dangerous and destructive of the cause of democracy.” University of Texas Law School Professor Steve Vladeck was more succinct: “In a nutshell the President is asking the Supreme Court to exercise its rarest form of jurisdiction to effectively overturn the entire presidential election.”

It is possible—likely, even—that Paxton is advancing this nonsense because he has been under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud, is now under investigation by the FBI for bribery and abuse of office, and is hoping to impress Trump enough to get a presidential pardon. Just today, the FBI issued at least one subpoena for records from Paxton’s office. Knowing that this lawsuit has virtually no chance of winning, he could file it and win points with Trump while also knowing it would go nowhere.

But this moment has grown far beyond Paxton’s lawsuit into a fight over the future of the Republican Party and, ultimately, over the future of democracy.

States have squared off on both sides of Paxton’s lawsuit. Last night, seventeen other states supported the suit to hand the election to Trump, including Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia. Later, Arizona joined them.

Today, the four states named in the suit made it clear they are standing up for democracy. Pennsylvania’s brief notes that Trump has “flooded” the courts “with frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising large swaths of voters and undermining the legitimacy of the election.” Adding to “the cacophony of bogus claims,” Texas is trying to throw out four state elections because it doesn’t like their results. Its demand “is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy.” The brief warns, “Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”

“[T]his case is not ordinary,” the Wisconsin brief says. “Texas is asking this Court to overturn the will of the people of Wisconsin—and the nation—based on meritless accusations of election fraud. If this Court agrees to do so, it will not only irreparably harm its own legitimacy, but will lend fuel to a disinformation campaign aimed at undermining the legitimacy of our democracy.”

Twenty-three Democratic-led states and territories, along with the Republican Attorney General of Ohio, Dave Yost, today signed a brief supporting the four states Texas is attacking. The District of Columbia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington all backed the states whose votes Texas is trying to throw out.

But six states—Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah—joined Texas’s lawsuit today. Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly filed a brief supporting Texas and Trump, signing on to the idea of taking the vote away from their own people.

Then the 106 Republican members of Congress jumped aboard the lawsuit, signing a brief in support of it. Trump worked the phones and enlisted Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) head of the Republican Study Committee, the party caucus of social conservatives in the House, to hold members’ feet to the fire. Johnson sent around an email saying that Trump had “specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join on to our brief.” Johnson noted that Trump “will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,” in order to see who was on his team and who was not. Only ninety House Republicans refused to sign.

What on earth is going on?

First: Trump is throwing at the wall anything he can in hopes of staying in office. The more chaos it creates, the happier he is. The lawsuit crisis has, for example, muted the story that at least 2,923 Americans died today of Covid-19, and 223,570 cases were reported, a 28% increase in the weekly average of cases since two weeks ago.

It has also diverted attention from the fact that there is no deal, and no real sign of a deal, on a coronavirus relief bill. A bipartisan group of senators has managed to hammer out a $908 billion deal but Republicans refuse to allow its $160 billion for aid to state and local governments and Democrats refuse to agree to shield businesses from liability for coronavirus injuries. The bipartisan group tried to put the two things together, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that’s a non-starter. Meanwhile, 26 million Americans say they don’t have enough to eat.

Second: There is a war underway for control of the Republican Party. While a losing incumbent president usually loses influence in the party, Trump intends to continue to call the shots. He wants to run again in 2024, or at least to anoint a successor, rather than letting the Republican National Committee pick a presidential candidate. There is a struggle going on to control the RNC and, as well, to figure out who gets control of the lists of supporters Trump has compiled. Trump also controls a lot of the party’s money, since he has been out front as its fundraiser without a break since he decided to run for office. He was the first president ever to file for reelection on the day of his inauguration, permitting him to hold “rallies” and to raise money throughout his presidency.

So Republican lawmakers are willing to swear loyalty to him, either because they want to attract his voters in future elections, or because they want access to the cash he can raise, or both. They no longer defend traditional policy positions; they defend Trump.

This loyalty requires contortions. In Georgia, the Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr called the Texas lawsuit “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.” But Georgia’s two senators, Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, have backed it. The senators are facing a runoff election in January against Democrat challengers Jon Ossoff and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, and they need Trump’s support. So they are taking a stand against their own voters. So are nearly half of Georgia’s Republican congressional delegation, despite the fact that this position logically would overturn their own elections.

Third: Texas’s lawsuit and the Republican Party’s embrace of it is an unprecedented attempt to destroy the very foundation of our democracy. Since the 1980s, Republican leaders have managed to hold onto power by suppressing votes, promoting disinformation, gerrymandering states, gaming the Electoral College, and stacking the courts.

Now, so unpopular that even gaming the mechanics of our system is not enough, they have abandoned democracy itself.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[timswezy]

Thoughts on Tales From the Loop

While I was already a big fan of Simon Stålenhag’s paintings, the prospect of an anthology like show gave me pause. All too often, especially when translating artworks from one medium/domain to another, there’s a tendency to make literal and concrete what was just a hint or metaphor in the original; questions are answered but unartfully so or are at best too rigidly defined.

TL;DR: if Ingmar Bergman had created the SyFy show Eureka, the result would be something almost but not quite entirely unlike Tales From the Loop.

. . .

I’m happy to say that this wasn’t the case with Tales from the Loop, Amazon’s new anthology cum 8 hour movie cum miniseries. The figurative hands of the emotional feel of the paintings grasped tightly with those of the uniquely detailed sci-fi worldbuilding creates an exquisite construction, assembled like fine clockwork but set behind a darkly clouded glass. We know there’s more going than a superficial observance would reveal, but we simultaneously aren’t allowed to see it while being given the very distinct impression that to really see the man behind the curtain would be to rob the work of its sense of wonder and mystery.

It’s another positive that while some questions are answered, many more are not, including those that the typical canonically oriented skiffy production would seem to require in order to be “good”. As someone who went to art school ultimately with the pretense of wanting to be an illustrator, I understand too well the desire to fully flesh out one’s creations, dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” so that nothing is left for ambiguity where the viewer can participate in the work by filling details in on their own, privately. It’s nice to watch a production of this scale and scope while not having every detail, both little and big ones, explicitly laid out for me on a slab in the analytical portions of my brain.

Then there’s the Swedish/Scandinavian-ness of it all: its slow, deliberate pace, the washed out palette of a land with a midnight sun (though taking place in Ohio by way of Canada), and the complex emotional interiors of the often melancholic main characters. These are all qualities found in the original paintings, but it’s an amazing example of craftsmanship that the people working on this series were able to pull it off.

While not a time travel story per de, issues around time, memories, and change are all present. The result is one of the clearest depictions I’ve seen of the shared space of concepts which orbit around nostalgia but that are not found in the English language:

- lacrimae rerun (Latin)

- mono no aware (Japanese)

- saudade (Portuguese/Spanish)

- sehnsucht (German)

- ubi sunt (Latin)

- weltsherz (German)

All are centered around ideas of memory and nostalgia but differ in their specific relationship to the human experience, its objects and subjects. That this crosshatched space is where the show establishes itself is what makes it so enjoyable to me, a cool breeze on a mild autumn day, where there’s just a hint of the winter to come.

This is also what makes the show difficult if not unwatchable for some folks, much like the works of Ingmar Bergman, himself a Swede. There’s very little physical action in the genre filmic sense, but a great amount of emotional conflicts, both internal and external to the characters. Nothing is really resolved at the end and there isn’t really a traditional story structure to speak of but for me that is an asset. At a time when most mass culture SF seeks to define things to a microscopic detail and sometimes seem more concerned with debating the vagaries of canonicity and casting choices, Tales From the Loop gives us the time to contemplate it, privately filling in the details for ourselves and leaving the door open for many further explorations of this world the creators have made.

[lyouna]

The story of Josh Dun

Joshua William “Josh” Dun is an American musician. Best known for being the drummer for the band Twenty One Pilots. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, on June 18, 1988. His star sign is Gemini. He has two sisters named Ashley and Abigail and a brother named Jordan.

Since his childhood, he was always terrified by talking in front of people even if it was a small group of it. However, when he is playing drums he does not feel that way, he is not as vulnerable as that when it comes to talking.

He self-taught when he was around 12 how to play drums, and worked at the Guitar Center for 3 years. He also worked with former Twenty One Pilots drummer Chris Salih, through whom he would eventually meet Tyler Joseph.

Dun's first foray into the music industry was with an alternative/Christian rock band House of Heroes. He joined the band through their drummer, Colin Rigsby, who was taking a break to spend time with his family. Dun played alongside the band on tour from March to October 2010 when Rigsby returned to his role. 

"I would lay in my bed every night with sticks and hit my knees trying to figure out what they were doing, like, 'Okay, now they're hitting the ride cymbal, and now it's the snare and now the crash.' I would dissect everything that I watched or listened to. Every day I would walk to the local music store and play their electronic drums until one of the workers would be like, 'Hey, we have people in here that actually want to buy stuff so you've gotta go.' I did that for about a year and that's essentially how I learned to play some basic beats."

Throughout both middle school and high school, he didn't have a lot of money and it helps him to be more creative. He even thought about finding pieces of wood and figure it out how to make them in a drum. Figure out how they would sound with different holes in it, with different types of wood... Nevertheless, at this end, he said that the best drum set he had was one of SJC Drums.

He likes nothing more to do than to play drums; in fact, he plays the exact same way when he is in a dark room by himself and when he is in front of thousands of people. He said that he wants to be creative and just to get outside of the box even if that sounds weird.

He said that although his inspiration comes from some drummers, his greatest inspiration is his parents. Indeed, he starts playing drums in a sort of rebellious state again them and that turns into them being more than supportive.

In 2011, upon the invite of co-worker and the band's drummer Chris Salih, Dun attended a Twenty One Pilots show after listening to their original demo CD.  Josh first saw Twenty One Pilots at a club on the Ohio State campus. “I loved everything about the show except for one thing: I wasn’t onstage playing also,” he says. After the show, he met lead singer and future bandmate Tyler Joseph, and a couple of days later began to build a friendship with him. It would be another year before Joseph’s original drummer quit and Dun got the job, but they had become best friends in the meantime.

By 2012, Joseph had grown into a ferocious performer, climbing the scaffolding and diving into audiences. The duo became the biggest band in central Ohio, putting every spare penny into the band and focusing intensely on their local fans. They filmed much of the “Stressed Out” video at Dun’s childhood home, so it has become a destination for Twenty One Pilots fans.

 The highest point of his sort of musical journey was (according to his words) when he played for a college show at Ohio University. It was full of drunken kids, one of them even tried to pee on his drums and then on their merch. They eventually played one song and after it, the police shut them down. However, he said that it was the first show that he played with Tyler Joseph. He realized during this one song that he was playing with his best friend and he will never forget that.

The duo then released the band’s second studio album, Regional at Best. It was self-released on July 8, 2011. Regional at Best is a discontinued album. It is the last album released by the band prior to signing a record deal with Fueled by Ramen, and it is the first album to feature the talents of Josh Dun.

Josh Dun was raised in conservative, religious households. Video games and most rocks or hip-hop albums were banned. "I’d hide albums like Green Day’s Dookie under my bed," Dun says. "Sometimes they’d find them and get real mad. They’d find a Christian alternative, like Relient K, and make me listen to that."

For a while, the only movies allowed in the house came from CleanFlicks, a Christian company that took Hollywood movies and edited out all the profanity, sexuality and violence. For a young Dun, it made watching movies like The Terminator quite confusing. "Some scenes they’d remove entirely," he says. "Watching those movies was an absolutely awful experience."

By the time he was a teenager, Josh was rebelling hard. "I just had this aggression," he says, noting that his parents nearly kicked him out when he was 14. "They almost sent me to a military school. They did not know what to do with me, and I was always in detention. I never got into drugs or alcohol, but I would yell at my parents and just treat them terribly. Everything was an argument. Looking back, they were trying their best."

When his parents fell asleep, he would break out his punk-pop CDs; eventually, they softened up on rock music, allowing him to assemble a drum kit in his basement piece by piece with his own money. After he said this to some interviewers, he called his parents to explain himself.

"I actually called my parents after some articles came out – I never wanted for them to be painted in a bad light.

‘I’m so thankful for the way that I was raised. Ultimately, the idea of parents being strict or having rules, looking back, I did have a really rebellious phase and did whatever I could to do the opposite of what they wanted.

‘That’s all on me. For them, I think they were trying to do their best to raise me as best they could. They were trying to make the best decisions for me, and looking back, I can see they were the right decisions.

‘As I look at the rules I had, I wasn’t allowed to play video games or watch TV, so I went outside and made up games with my neighbourhood friends or built dirt ramps and rode our bikes over them.

‘I would be out from morning to night. I look at that, and I can’t imagine it if my parents had let me sit in and watch TV all day – I’d be a different person to who I am today, it’s thanks to them saying ‘‘get out and go do something"

He did not go to college, moving in with a bunch of buddies instead and playing in local bands while scraping by working in the drum department of Guitar Center. "I was going nowhere," he says. "One day I said to my dad, ‘Are you disappointed that I’m working a minimum-wage job and I didn’t go to college?’ I’ll never forget his response. He said, ‘It’s not about how much money you make or what your job is, but it’s more about your character. For that, I’m proud of you.’ It gave me motivation."

During an interview, Josh said “We’re always questioning things,” he says, “but I guess it’s safe to say that we’re both Christians.”

Although Columbus is still very much the Pilots’ base, Josh actually moved out to L.A a couple of years ago in pursuit of more sunshine while Tyler remained there. However, he says it has not made them working together any more difficult. “I’m equally in Columbus as much as I am there. We discussed this a lot before I moved out there. I always feared talking about us being in different places because I think that can be confusing to people from an outside standpoint - like are you guys still friends? Are you still in the band? We had so many conversations about logistics, but first of all, we’re together more than we’re not together over the course of a year. We’re on the phone every day and with technology, it’s so easy to get things done.”

On January 8, 2013, Vessel was born, it was their first album after signing with Fueled By Ramen and it received mainstream exposure. On May 17, 2015, Blurryface was released and the band received international success.

In July 2017, Twenty One Pilots went on hiatus for a year whilst they worked on their next album. On October 5, 2018, Trench was released, it was also a commercial success, reaching number one in six countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and the Netherlands and number two in several countries, notably the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as selling more than a million copies worldwide.

Therefore, he needed to learn how to deals with notoriety, he had the help of Tyler Joseph (of course), his family, and Debby Ryan. Indeed, from May 2013 to September 2014, he had a relationship with her. They got back together a few years later and in December 2018, Josh posted on Instagram his engagement to Debby in New Zealand during the second leg of The Bandito Tour. He wrote, «I found a tree house in the woods in New Zealand and proposed to my girl. She my dude for life. I love you Debby".

She also posts about it «My dude asked me on a date. I said yeah because I always want to go on dates with him. Then he asked me to be his forever dude. He does things well, and right. His timing has pressed us and never failed us. He's sincere and fun and disciplined and strong as heck and a nerd and a rockstar and a good midwestern man and a silly shirtless boy, and his family is endlessly warm and delightful and are such champions. I have two parents and a brother; they're superheroes and they're my home. They've been the only thing that moves my needle with the fierceness of deep empathy. I have never that out in the world. I guess I figured it wasn't a connection you could stumble upon, only something you could only be born into. Falling in love with joshua was discovering it in the wild. Building it with him, building in certainty, infinite in wonder. Our own lil family. Feels like growing up and moving through life is just evolving through different types of complicated. He is where all the voices narrow into one sound. My only simplicity, where the important things are clear and the other things aren't that important. He's my heart outside my body. He's a cold water awakening a warm bed; he's the place I can rest. Dudes for life. It was a really good date."

Josh has many tattoos and every single one have a strong signification. Firstly, John Graefe tattooed his right arm and then tell the story of it. “I was tattooing in Hollywood and he came in with bandmate, Tyler. They weren’t half as big as they are today and I had no idea at first. I just asked him the whole meaning behind his tattoo and he asked me to come up with the vision.”

 The tattoo on his right arm had a blue geometric-like image or something that looks like a galaxy. Below is the image of nature. The musician mentioned that he would share this if it’s personally asked, but he did not want it spreading all over the Internet.

Both he and Tyler have an "X" tattoo on their body symbolizing their dedication to their hometown fans in Columbus, Ohio. They received it on stage during their hometown show at the Lifestyle Communities Pavilion on April 26, 2013. Dun's is located on his neck behind his right ear.

In October 2015, Tyler and Josh asked their fans to choose one of them among themselves via a vote on Twitter. The winner should have his name on the loser on stage. For 24 hours, the two boys shot several videos parodying the presidential debates on topics such as Christmas music or their favorite drink, the Red bull. The results of the vote were equal. Therefore, Dun sports the name "Tyler" above his left knee.

Josh has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm dedicated to his mom. A heart with "mom" written inside of it.  Which she answers on Instagram by “These past few months have been exciting seeing how far Josh and Tyler have gone. But it’s been a little hard for me as a mother to feel like I have to share my son with the world. Josh, you getting this tattoo means so much to me. I love you and now your stuck with Mom forever! <3”

He has a drum tattoo on his left arm.

Chantelle Thong made his last tattoo during the Bandito Tour, on December 2018. It represents an astronaut/spaceman flipping, while simultaneously being abducted or levitating into a spaceship. It might be a reference to March to the sea. Fans assumed that the spaceman is Josh Dun.

[buzzdixonwriter]

You Don’t Say

For me, one of the unforeseen benefits of Facebook and other social media is that it gives me a chance to do rough drafts of ideas, assembling my thoughts and getting feedback before committing to more permanent form.

And sometimes, like asteroids colliding in space, two separate ideas / posts slam into one another and either create something new and unexpected, or else shatter themselves and reveal interesting aspects of their nature heretofore hidden from view.

That happened recently with a pair of Facebook posts I made on Dennis Prager and Harlan Ellison.

Let’s get the turd out of our mouth first.

. . .

Dennis Prager is a purveyor of herpetology lubricants admired by many on the right-leaning-nazi side of the spectrum, primarily because he keeps his mouth closed when chewing.  Half of what he says is repackaged self-evident truths of the “Don’t eat the yellow snow” variety, a quarter is opinions that if not startling original are at least not genuinely harmful, and the remain quarter is egregious bullshit for which he deserves a public pants down spanking.

Hmm, what?  Oh, yes; purely metaphorically, of course.

I long since wrote off Prager as a. utterer of inanities, but recently his turdmongering was forced on my attention by someone who posted a link to Prager’s argument that the “left” (i.e., basically anybody who thinks Auschwitz was a Bad Idea) is inflicting harm on both the American body politic and the universe at large by denying people like Prager the right to drop the N-bomb whenever they feel like it.

As some of you no doubt already knew, Prager is a member of what polite bigots used to refer to as “those of the Hebrew persuasion”.

That a person from an ethnicity that historically suffered hatred so vicious and specifically targeted that a special word had to be created for it (“anti-Semitism” because the original word -- “Jew-hatred” -- was too damned ugly even for bigots to use) now has his knickers in a twist because he’s “not allowed” to use the only other word of equal or greater impact -- also coined specifically by oppressors for expressing unrestrained hate and contempt against those oppressed -- is so rich in irony that all I can do is swipe a phrase from Jim Wright over at Stonekettle Station and say Dennis Prager has “all the self-awareness of a dog licking its own asshole in the middle of the street”.

First off, he’s lying: Neither the “left” nor American law prevents him from dropping the N-bomb whenever he feels like it and I invite him to go down to the intersection of Normandie and Florence in South Central and drop it at the top of his lungs for as long as he is able and please make sure to take plenty of video recorders along because I really wanna see what happens next.

Second, why the fuck would you want to say that? Seriously, other than in an evidentiary context (a cop giving testimony in court, a journalist reporting what some bigoted politician says, etc.), who today gains anything from repeating the word other than inflicting unjustified distress on people who have done nothing to deserve it?

(This is the point where a bunch of alt-right trolls are gonna jump up and say “but whatabout all the times when black people say it?” and to those trolls I’m gonna say STFU & STFD; if you can’t grasp the difference in context then you’re too damned stupid to be allowed out in public except at the end of a leash and with a ball gag in your mouth.)

It’s a word specifically created and designed to be used to brutally oppress people who did nothing to deserve that brutal oppression.  Why would anybody outside that group use it except to participate in that brutal oppression?

. . .

Least there sit any in the cheap seats who presume the above rant was targeted at Dennis Prager simply because he was Jewish, guess again, ya yutzes.

Few writers enjoyed as brilliant and as incendiary a career as Harlan Ellison, and I count myself privileged to have been one of his friends.

Ellison, as many of you know, also was Jewish, a damned tough little bastard, singled out for hatred and abuse as the only Jewish child in his backwater Ohio school, growing up with nerves & balls of chromium, a bona fide Army Ranger, and a writer so honest and fearless that when he wrote about juvenile delinquency in the 1950s he did so by infiltrating and joining a street gang to get first hand experience and insight on the kids who ran in that crowd (and as icing on the cake, James Caan played him in the TV version!).

Top that, Dennis.

Harlan’s electric eclectic career features many highpoints, but the one I want to focus on is his brief 4-year run as TV critic for the legendary Los Angeles Free Press (a.k.a. The Freep) from 1968 to 1972.  

What’s interesting is that Harlan did this while at the same time at the height of his demand as a TV writer.

You got any idea how hard it is to make a living while you’re gnawing on the hand that feeds you?

Harlan may have been crazy, but damn it, he was honest.

Back to the issue at hand.

Recently I’ve been re-reading his TV criticism columns, collected in two volumes, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat.

The depressing thing is that all the evil we see today was in place back in those days, and the same smug pious frauds and their dimbulb marks kept congratulating themselves how wonderful they were as things continued to spiral out of control.

Oh, we've had good moments when we made changes that improved the lot of people who'd previously been marginalized, but the core cancer is still there. Harlan was no cock-eyed sentimentalist -- he was often filled with anger and could vent it spectacularly at deserving targets -- but he did have hope that somehow we could keep nudging the ball further towards the goal lines.

The columns make fascinating reading; they are nowhere near as dated as one might suspect. Sometimes they offer diamond-like brilliant dissections of a particular instant in the cultural gestalt, other times they examine the unseen (well, to most audiences, that is) tides of Hollywood that shape our media, sometimes he turns his attention to bear on seemingly insignificant and forgotten local programming only to show with McLuhan-esque clarity how that tiny piece of seemingly insignificant fluff is symptomatic of a much wider, much vaster, and far more serious problem.

One entry caught my eye in particular, the March 7, 1969 column on a failed ABC pilot called Those Were The Days.

Harlan sat in the studio audience watching the taping of that pilot, and his column praised the courage and insight of producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, the brilliant performances of Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton, and the raw honesty of the pilot’s sharp comedy and writing.

Those of you not in the cheap seats have already realized this was the second failed pilot for what would eventually become All In The Family over at CBS (there was an even earlier original pilot called Justice For All back when Archie and Edith’s last name was Justice, not Bunker.)

I remember the hoopla when All In The Family finally aired in January of 1971 as a mid-season replacement.

You might count Archie Bunker as the white Dolemite insofar as the comedy sprang from the shock of all the crude and vulgar things he said.

Lear and Yorkin were mocking that mindset, belittling bigotry, exposing the Babbittry of millions of “good” Americans who lacked either the self-awareness or the courage to take a long introspective look at themselves and realize how badly they were failing as citizens of this country.

Audiences weren’t supposed to like Archie Bunker.

And that’s where Lear and Yorkin made their fatal mistake.

No, audiences didn’t like Archie.

They loved him.

. . .

Asteroids collide, and sometimes they form new planets, and sometimes they shatter and expose what lies beneath.

Prager’s modern day Babbittry crashed into Harlan’s half-century old anti-Babbittry, and from the explosion a stark truth revealed itself.

It’s almost impossible to make an outlaw a villain in popular media.

No matter how many banks they rob, stages they hold up, sheriffs they shoot, the mere fact that somebody wrote a song / dime novel / movie about ‘em makes them into heroes.

Demi-gods.

People to be admired.

Emulated.

Professional wrestling knows this.

You can never be so big a heel that you won’t have a legion of followers.

And you can turn a heel into a baby face in the blink of an eye and none of the fans will remember the despicable acts the wrassler did just last week.

You put an Archie Bunker on TV, you do not get millions of people to recognize themselves in his hateful / hurtful behavior and change their ways.

Oh, hell no; you get millions of people to applaud him for saying and doing what they say and do in private.

And now that it’s all big and bold and brassy on TV, why it becomes even easier to say it in the privacy of your own home, then over the fence with the neighbors, then in the bar down the street, then on the street itself, and then against people who have done you no harm, who have committed no sin other than the heinous crime of not being exactly like you.

I remember watching and liking All In The Family when it first came on because I, like millions of other Americans, got the joke:  Archie was no hero.

But it wasn’t long before the voices cheering Archie began to drown out the voices laughing at him.

Lear and Yorkin tried undoing their damage with Maude and The Jeffersons and Good Times and other spinoff shows, but the bigot was out of the bottle.

Archie Bunker, even though written in a way to ridicule his use of bigotry and stereotypes, became a champion and defender of those who clung to said bigotry and stereotypes.

So tell me again why you want to drop that N-bomb, Dennis.

Explain to me -- even while you talk out of both sides of your mouth and claim even if everybody can use they word maybe they shouldn’t use the word -- how that does anything to help anybody…

…other than bigots and hate mongers.

Your argument is as circular as the thumb and forefinger gesture white supremacists use to signal one another, a gesture deliberately chosen because it lets them transgress openly by lying about the truth meaning of their gesture.

And Harlan, you were right about Those Were The Days as it began evolving into All In The Family.  Absolutely brilliant -- but absolutely deadly.

Not airing All In The Family wouldn’t have eliminated racial / ethnic / sexual prejudice in the United States…

…but it would have denied those ideas a voice.

The narcissist always proclaims, “I don’t care what they say about me so long as they spell my name right.”

Well, that’s what we got with Archie Bunker.

None of the bigots cared if we made fun of their ideas…

…just so long as they got their ideas out there.

Because ideas are made legitimate by their presence.

Now clearly, this is a bade that cuts both ways.

Ideas once unthinkable -- liberty and justice for all in the form of racial and gender equality, f’r instance -- need to be championed in public.

But we need to shout down and stamp out the bad ideas.

The United States took their foot off the neck of the defeated white racists after the end of the Civil War, and as a result jim crow came roaring back, and things did not change for millions of Americans for another entire century.

We allowed bigots and hate mongers and slavers to be whitewashed and glorified and forgiven for their crimes against humanity…

…and in the process we allowed them to continue victimizing African-Americans more and more.

Every song about the Ol’ South, every novel glorifying plantation life, every movie showing happy field hands, every statue commemorating murderous traitors as men of honor and principle, every single iteration of that idea made millions of people’s suffering not just possible but inevitable.

. . .

Now this is the point where the alt-right trolls are gonna jump up and ask “did you ever drop the N-word?”

Not in casual conversation, no.

I was born and raised in the South (Appalachia, mostly); my father’s side of the family were almost all Southerners.

Almost all.

My paternal grandmother was born and raised in New Jersey and met my grandfather when both served in the U.S. Army medical corps in WWI.  When my grandfather died in his 40s, my grandmother originally moved back to New Jersey, but her three children (dad and two aunts) felt heartbroken at having to leave their Southern cousins and friends behind so even though she carried no particular love for the South, my grandmother moved her family back and stayed there for the most of her life (she and one of my aunts moved out to California to be near us, but that’s another story for another post).

One thing my grandmother absolutely refused to tolerate was use of the N-bomb anywhere near her, especially under her roof or in the homes of her children.

This included both the -er and -ra variants, because Southern racists who didn’t want to appear as uncultured and as boorish and as bigoted as their backwoods cousins preferred the second pronunciation because they could claim they were actually speaking respectfully about “colored people”.

So I grew up in the rare white Southern home where the N-bomb merely wasn’t used, it was actually denounced as wrong.

Now, don’t go thinking my grandmother was some great paragon of virtue; she wasn’t (she was hell on wheels, in fact, but that’s another story for another post).

But she did recognize there was something wrong with the use of the N-bomb, and whether she demanded her children never use it in any form to keep them from appearing to be boorish, bigoted louts, or whether she just thought it was simple good manners of the golden rule variety not to use it, I dunno.

But I do know we never used it, and when my parents heard our neighbors or schoolmates use it, we were reminded in no uncertain terms that we were never to use it.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t used it.

A couple of decades ago I wrote a screenplay based on the life of Robert Smalls, in particular his incredible escape from Civil War Charleston by hijacking a Confederate gunboat and sailing it right past Ft. Sumter to join the Union fleet, bringing his wife and several other escaping African-Americans with him.

As a skilled harbor pilot, Smalls enjoyed certain privileges other enslaved African-Americans didn’t.

For example, he was allowed to go about the streets of Charleston unescorted…

…provided he wore a big diamond shaped brass tag around his neck.

Like a dog.

The tag indicated to slave catcher patrols that he was one of the “good” ones, that he could be trusted because he was helping his masters in their struggle against the Union by guiding blockade runners into the safety of Charleston harbor.

But knowing Southerners the way I do, and knowing the kind of low class good ol’ boy types they recruited for such jobs, I couldn’t imagine the slave catcher patrols being particularly courteous to him, even when they knew they had to let him pass because clearly he had the protection of some high positioned muckamuck.  

And I could easily imagine them flinging the N-bomb at him with great glee, taunting him, daring him to act “uppity” so they could beat the crap out of him and teach him some manners and remind him of his place.

So I used the word in their dialog in my script.

Would I use that word today?

Probably not.

It’s not that crucial to the story, and if the viewer doesn’t grasp the concept that these are bigoted bully scum from their actions and attitude, then I’ve failed my job as a writer.

Have I ever quoted people who dropped the N-bomb?

Yeah, I have, in the past.

I’ve quoted Richard Pryor and Blazing Saddles and Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

I would excuse it then as the aforementioned evidentiary context but ya know what?  I don’t quote those lines anymore.

I still think Pryor is hilarious and will recommend his routines to anyone I think might be interested, but he as a member of the African-American community at large (because like any other ethnic group, African-Americans have numerous sub-cultures and sub-communities among them), he could say things in a way neither I nor any other white person could say them.

(And, yeah, there’s a big debate going on to this very day among African-Americans about the appropriateness of that word and you know what?  Whatever decision African-Americans reach for themselves is their business and should not involve any input whatsoever from we white folk; we not only can’t use the word, we can’t even comment on how they choose to use it.  Period.  Full stop.)

Blazing Saddles when it came out used the N-bomb to be deliberately transgressive, to make a sympathetic point re how unfairly African-Americans were treated.

All well and good.

But nine years earlier there had been a movie called A Patch Of Blue and while it wasn’t a raucous comedy like Blazing Saddles it tried making a point about race relations in America and it was a really. Really good movie and it made some important points but today is virtually unwatchable not because of any flaws in it but because the times have changed.

Ditto Blazing Saddles.

We don’t need to approach the problem that way any more.

Quentin Tarantino?  I really like what he does as a director and a screenwriter but his use of the N-bomb to show us how transgressive his characters are is really shallow.  I have a strong feeling his movies are going to be considered embarrassingly passé’ in a generation or two, much the same way as benign-yet-stereotypical characters in 1940s movies render many of them passé’ today.  

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction lose nothing by changing the N-word to something else.  

Maybe an argument could be made for its use in Django Unchained or The Hateful 8 but even there I think substituting another word wouldn’t significantly change the tenor or tone of either movie.

So I stop quoting those lines from Tarantino’s films, at least not fully.

I can admire his skill / talent / craft without signing off on his problematic elements.

Let me offer an analogy: If a creator can get the same dramatic effect by pretending to shoot somebody but not actually blasting them with a gun, then they can get the same dramatic effect by using something evocative of the N-bomb without actually dropping it.

(By the way, for those who may be curious, my mother was from Naples and a bona fide card carrying member of Mussolini’s Fascist Youth Brigade, but that’s another story for another post.)

. . .

We are plunging into a new cultural conflict -- and while I think there will be violence, I don’t see it being violence on the scale or level of political organization as the Civil War -- and we can only win by refusing to let the bigots and the hate mongers spew their bullshit in the marketplace of ideas.

There is no compromise with an oppressor.

Stand up to it every time you encounter it.

Make it unthinkable, never acceptable. 

  © Buzz Dixon

[ledenews]

Sam Amico - Finally on Top, Writing What He Loves

Sam Amico is a self-professed basketball junkie whose lengthy career in sports journalism now finds the Akron, Ohio native covering the NBA for Sports Illustrated. Yes, that Sports Illustrated. The one most young men and woman growing up in the 1980s and 1990s waited patiently by the mailbox for, only to quickly tear threw the pages and digest the stories within. While magazines and subscriptions aren’t what they used to be, SI is still one of the biggest players in the sports media game, especially for those gifted with the ability to tell a tale via the written word and not relying solely on hot takes and video footage. It’s fitting, as Amico grew up near an NBA city during a time when the Showtime Lakers and the Boston Celtics dominated the scene. There was Larry and Magic, Kareem and Robert. The Bad Boys in Detroit came into their own and a man named Michael took the league, and the world, by storm. The young Amico didn’t have a chance.

Played the Game

He grew into a 5-foot-9 sweet-shooting guard at nearby Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy in nearby Cuyahoga Falls. He parlayed that success into a two-year stint playing for Northeastern Christian Academy across the street from Villanova in Pennsylvania. While there, he set the school record for most 3-pointers in a game, a mark he’s quick to point out lasted all of there seasons. The school later combined with Ohio Valley College in Parkersburg, W.Va. to become Ohio Valley University. Amico’s old coach, Bill McGee, stayed on board to coach. Amico, meanwhile, turned his attention to his own career. Originally wanting to get into coaching, he quickly realized that he could utilize his best assets, a great sense of humor and even better gift of written gab and combine that with his love of basketball. He quickly said hello to the world of journalism which initially took him out west to Wyoming and a one-man show at a paper in Rawlins, Utah.

The Report

He still feels his proudest moment came two years later, when he wrote a 14-part series on the history of the Wyoming state basketball tournament while working at a paper in Casper. Additional stops including the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Observer-Reporter in Washington, among others, eventually landed Amico at the Sports Editor at The Intelligencer in Wheeling. Amico experienced success with both the readers and staff. It’s here he began his well-circulated Amico Report, a free newsletter at the time dealing with all things NBA. It was that digital newsletter that eventually catapulted Amico to his current path. He's also a published author, with his first book, "A Basketball Summer" hitting the shelves in 2002, later followed by three more: "Dribbles of Champions," "The Ultimate Basketball Trivia Book," and 'Three-Ball: The History of Basketball's Three Point Shot." He later lost his job in Wheeling due to an incident he takes full responsibility for and worked his way back north to the Cleveland Area, eventually catching on with Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio. It was there Amico experienced a renewal not only in his professional life, but also his personal one. Lessons were learned, but Amico found happiness again with a second marriage, as and his new wife brought together their blended family and eventually added a third son to the mix soon after. The Amicos now live in Medina, Ohio. Naturally, basketball is still a big part of their lives.

What got you into sports journalism in the first place? You did seem to gravitate to basketball more so than other sports. Was that just an extension of your playing days and your love for basketball as a whole?

It was indeed my love of basketball that led to my career choice. I never set out to become a writer. At first, I wanted to be a coach. I envisioned myself coaching high school basketball while teaching health or typing or some other fairly mundane course. But I also loved to write. I did it in my free time, just as a hobby. My best friend is several years older and became a sports television anchor, and I'd sometimes tag along with him to work. I was fascinated that you could make a career out of this. I loved basketball and writing always came easiest for me in terms of schoolwork. My roommate in college would stay up all night sweating over his essay for English class and bring back a C-minus. I'd crank something out in an hour, maybe less, and always aced it. (As an aside, he got considerably better grades in every other subject.) So, about my junior year of college, it finally dawned on me—why not put together my passion for basketball with the one thing I seemed to do moderately well? When I figured it out, writing about basketball as a career became my mission.

A billboard advertising the Amico Report for Fox Sports, a report that started as a free newsletter Sam Amico sent out during his days at The Intelligencer in Wheeling.

You eventually became an editor at multiple places. But neither was in a basketball-heavy community in terms of the pro game. Did you have a sense deep down that you’d need to get closer to home, or to a major market, to get to where you wanted to be? Was leaving the Wheeling paper a blessing in disguise in that respect?

To be honest, when I took my first newspaper job in a tiny little Wyoming town, I had no clue what I was doing. I showed up for the first day of work and was immediately told to interview the high school swimming coach. I didn't know anything about swimming, had no idea what to ask. I could barely swim myself. That was the start of a long journey of covering things I had very little knowledge of. In Rawlins, I was a one-man staff. I shot my own photos, wrote 3-5 stories a day, designed my own pages, came up with all the headlines and at times, even helped deliver the paper. Little did I know, it would be great practice for running my own website close to 20 years later. But all the while, yes, I dreamed of getting to an NBA market to cover the NBA. I wasn't obsessed with it, but it was always in the back of my mind, pushing me to work harder and get better. I never had a sense that it would actually happen. My goal once I started writing a lot was to just to do the best job I could and let the chips fall where they may. Eventually, when I landed in Wheeling, I decided to start an NBA email newsletter as a hobby on the side. Writing an email cost nothing and receiving it cost nothing. So, I made nothing. But if I remember correctly, we eventually started running it in the sports section, too. That little newsletter is the very reason I am where I am today, in my 12th year covering the NBA on a full-time basis. I will always be grateful for my time in Wheeling and I look back fondly on it today. Ownership, management, the editors and my co-workers allowed me the freedom to write what I wanted and tackle some interesting topics. It was there that I developed a strong work ethic, and it is one I still try to carry into my assignments today. I learned in Wheeling that there was no place for excuses—just do the job. When I lost my job there, deservedly so, it reminded me about the value of integrity. It was an important reminder and lesson I have not forgotten.

You’d previously written “Basketball Summer” and also kept people up to date with League knowledge via the Amico Report. But once covering the NBA was your full-time job, what was it like being that involved, especially given the Cavaliers were your hometown team? As a journalist, you remain impartial, but growing up a fan, was it difficult to keep the two sides of you separate at first?

Actually, while I grew up outside of Akron, I liked the Cavaliers but never considered myself a huge fan by any stretch. Sadly, I lived and died with the Browns, a lost cause of a franchise that remains near and dear to my heart today. I just happened to like the NBA as a total product, growing up in what I still consider the golden era of Magic, Michael and Larry. By the time I finally became a full-time NBA writer covering my "hometown" team, I had learned how to be impartial. That's one of about 200 reasons why it was a good thing I didn't get the job straight out of college. I had so much to learn about journalism. I had to spend time in the minors before getting to the big leagues. But I also realize that I am sort of an extension of the fans. I didn't celebrate in print when the Cavs won the title in 2016, for instance, but I did write with more enthusiasm and the stories were just more positive by nature. It's always easier to write about a winner. Quite honestly, though, it makes no difference to me. I try to cover the Cavs and NBA with as much fairness and passion as I did when I first got the job. The success and failures of the local team honestly have no bearing on how I approach the job, or even my enjoyment of the job. Sometimes, it's even better when they're bad. When LeBron James is in town, so are about 100 other reporters. When he's not, I'm generally one of about five or six full-time people covering the team.

Sami Amico sits courtside in Cleveland, offering analysis during a Cavaliers game. While still doing some on-air work, his TV time has lessened some since makine the move from FSN to Sports Illustrated.

You wrote for both Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio, and on occasion got to do some on-air analysis and interviews. How did that differ from what you were used to and did your public profile blow up further from that? What was the experience like for your sons and wife to see dad on television, talking basketball? Could you foresee a career path that leads to commentary either courtside or in-studio on a full-time basis?

I've been doing television since 2010, less now than most years, but still some. It's quite a bit different because unlike writing, you don't have time to sit down and assemble a thought. The lights come on and you just ... GO. You also don't have a delete key, so whatever you say is out there for forever, especially now in the day of social media. The first time I did it, I was terrified. The second time, I was also terrified. The third time, I didn't even think about it. It just felt natural. My best buddy in TV gave me some good advice: "Look two places, either at the person you're talking to or at the camera. Sit up. Smile. And for the love of Pete, put your hands on the desk and not below it." That was a start. I have also done some stand-up reporting for TV, in which I look at nothing but the camera, hold the mic with one hand and still have no idea what to do with the other. As for my public profile, yes, it did go up a notch locally. The biggest differences I noticed were that total strangers occasionally began asking me for selfies at Cavs games (as opposed to just yelling that I'm a hack), and mostly, the players and coaches and front-office types began calling me by my first name before I had even introduced myself. Earned or not, there's a level respect that you're granted with simply being on TV. That said, it's always been my least favorite part of the job. You have to worry about your hair, about your tie, about how you dress and about not doing natural things like sneezing or yawning. But they ask me to do it and promise a check, so I shut up and make the best of it. It's never been what I set out to do, though. My family thought it was cool at first, but those days are long gone. Unless I take them to the studio, they don't watch. Sometimes even then I'll look over at them during a commercial break and they're staring at their phones. The good news is I have a toddler who is fairly animated when I come on the screen. I figure I have another three or four years before he too finds that part of my job to be old news.

The Amico family, prior to the birth of the third son, is an image of a blended family that can find success in coming together.

Finally, like most kids into sports, you probably grew up reading Sports Illustrated. It was the go-to for sports reporting and feature stories. Working for them now, does the image you might have had in your head match the reality and how has the Amico Report morphed into Amico News in terms of content and readership?

Well, let's put it this way -- when I call a potential source for a story and say I'm from Sports Illustrated, they almost always give me a lot of time, say more interesting things, and are overall just more polite. Between the time I worked for FOX and SI, I launched my own NBA website. Fortunately, my time at FOX provided an audience, and enough of those readers followed me to AmicoHoops to turn it into a full-time job. I actually started to earn more on the website than I did at FOX. Problem was, when you factor in TV work, I was putting in 12-14 hours a day on the website during the season, and that included weekends. It's always nice to run your own thing and be your own boss. I did it for four years with a surprising degree of success. But Sports Illustrated made the decision easy for me. They basically wanted me to move what I had been doing on my site and put their brand behind it. I can also say I have never had more readers. That's not because of anything I'm doing or because I've suddenly reinvented the wheel. It's because everyone knows the name "Sports Illustrated." Overall, I really like their modern direction. They have moved away from the longform pieces (though plenty still remain in the magazine), and have assigned or are in the process off assigning a writer to every team in the country -- NFL, NBA, MLB, the NCAA power conference programs, and even NHL I believe. Readership has increased significantly for SI across all platforms. Not long ago, I started to suspect the brand was dying, but it feels like it's become a player again. My role is actually to cover the entire NBA, while also focusing on the Cavs, much like I did for FOX before they pivoted to video-only in 2015. It's a great role and one I've been comfortable in for at least a decade now. Mostly, I feel very blessed to be where I am in my career and am extremely grateful for each step along the way -- from Wyoming to West Virginia to back where I grew up. Read the full article

[harryknowsme]

HARRY TAPES: A CONVERSATION WITH JEFF BHASKER

Interview by Simon Glickman

Harry Styles’ #1-charting Columbia solo bow has earned plenty of acclaim from listeners and critics of all stripes. The project was overseen by Grammy-winning producer/writer/musician Jeff Bhasker, whose prior work includes projects with The Rolling Stones, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, P!nk, fun., Nate Ruess and One Republic, not to mention the Mark Ronson mega-smash “Uptown Funk!” (the latter earning him a Record of the Year statuette and providing just a partial basis for his 2016 Producer of the Year trophy). Here, Bhasker discusses how he and his gifted team approached Styles’ concept, assembled his essential band and crafted the hit album, among other subjects. Though he probably wished he could bring our own Simon Glickman down in the mix.

How did things start out with you and Harry?

When I met Harry to work on the project, I didn't have many notions about what to do with him. When he told me what he wanted to do, I said, “OK, wow—you wanna have an actual rock band.” After meeting him, I experienced what a special vibe he has—he’s a rare breed, a truly cool, magnetic personality. But I didn’t really know anything about him musically. So it was really just us getting lucky on so many levels, one of which was that he was so talented and interesting and had all of this built-up creative need after being in One Direction, where it was more about being a performer.

Do you have a sense of what he was listening to that inspired him to put a rock band together? 

Well, I’ll tell you a funny story: I said, “Do you have anything you want to play me?” Because usually people have some demos. And he said, “Yeah. I’ve got some references.” At some point the lines of communication got crossed and I thought he was playing me his demos. I thought, “This is phenomenal; I don’t know if I can top this. These demos are incredible! But it sounds a little likeThe White Stripes. Maybe you wanna tone it down.” I don’t know the White Stripes inside and out, but I knew enough to be thinking, this is just like them. Well it was The White Stripes, and I realized, “Oh, he’s playing me references.”

The way it came out, everyone's saying, “Oh it’s David Bowie, it’s like ’70s classic rock.” But it was more about him wanting to have that cool band. I thought, he can sing his ass off; he’s a phenomenal performer. If this is what he wants to do, this’ll be really, really special.

What was involved in building that band? I had just had a baby. Harry’s 23, I’m 43. He needs to start a cool indie band, and I’m a new father. You need your buddies who go into the garage with you every day after school and jam and figure it out.

I have two producers who work under me, both of whom I signed over the last couple of years. One, Alex Salibian, produced the last Young the Giant album; another, Tyler Johnson, whom I signed, did Cam’s album. I discovered Cam through him and we signed her; he was the first producer I signed. They’re coming into their own as real producers. I played Harry some things they’d done and said, “Look, you need someone to go into the trenches with you, which I can’t do right now. I will oversee it and get in there, and I’ll get the project going with these guys.” He agreed to take us up on it.

I told my guys, “Look, we need to find him a guitar player and a drummer. I want you to get in there and make a band. We’re not gonna make tracks and produce this like we usually do.”

You had to make music in a room.

Yeah. So they talked to a couple of guitar players and one of them didn’t show up. The new engineer, Ryan Nasci, who engineered the whole album, said, “I could call up my roommate, Mitch—I don’t think he’s doing anything.” They have a band together. So Mitch comes down, and the second he plugged in his guitar and started playing, Harry’s eyes just lit up and he was, like, “This is the guy.”

Mind you, Mitch is an amazing guitar player, raised on jazz. He’s totally self-taught and he’s playing these riffs, just murdering it. He says, “Why not bring some drums on this?” Harry says, “Oh you play drums too?” And Mitch says, “Well, I’m a drummer”. His favorite drummer is [jazz great] Max Roach. He’s a savant. He had just moved to L.A. from Ohio; he’d never been in a recording studio before. He’d never heard of Harry Styles. He was a dishwasher in a pizza shop.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Mitch is a real music lover who just wants to listen to Harry Nilsson and Plastic Ono Band all day—he’s like a hipster who doesn’t know what a hipster is. He’s the sweetest, gentlest guy on earth. He and Harry just hit it off. I got so incredibly lucky—I miraculously threw in Tyler, who I found first as a producer, who then found Alex as a replacement. Because Tyler was my assistant and then I signed him as a producer. So then he had to find Alex, who then became my assistant, and then I signed himas a producer. Alex found Ryan, and Ryan’s roommate was Mitch. And Ryan and Mitch had spent countless hours sitting around their apartment recording for their band.

So we had not only an instant band for Harry, but an instant band that knew how to record. I read your article about the album and talking about that airy sound, and how it sounds like a rock & roll album. That’s all Ryan—and not just Ryan, but Ryan knowing how to record Mitch and the ease that they had.

For a minute I thought, hmmm, my production tends to sound different—I come from a whole other world. I come from jazz and then I work with Kanye West and I have a bit more modern sound. But after the first week, I said to myself, “I just love the way this sounds. It sounds like rock, but it’s modern-sounding and hi-fi and it doesn’t necessarily sound like anything else.” So from that point on I decided, I’m not gonna mess with this. Ryan’s got it.

"For a minute I thought, 'Hmmm, my production tends to sound different—I come from a whole other world...' But after the first week I said to myself, 'I just love the way this sounds.'"

Rather a departure for you, then? Yes, it was very much a different process for me. This was the first time I got to really utilize my team and take more of an overview/mentor position. A lot of it was just letting them go wild, and then I’d come in and offer suggestions: “This is good—let’s take the best things you got of every song and chop out all the rubbish things and go from there.” After our first week, they did 10 or so songs, and at first I listened to them and my response was, “This is not necessarily the pop hit #1 smash Harry song out of the gate,” where a lot of my pop brain kicked in. Then, after I listened to them for a while, I was just, like, “But I love this—I wanna listen to this.” I grew up in New Mexico listening to classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. It brought me back to cranking 95.5 in the car. I thought, this is so new, so important, to be able to make an album like this.

The other thing that happened with me not being there at first was that Harry got to lead the room. He didn’t have to sit there and constantly feel like he’s got to defer to me. Harry was the boss. And they all just bonded so hard and it just became the dream scenario, and everyone contributed in such a fantastic way. And Alex continued on and plays guitar and keyboard and is the music director in the band, and Mitch is of course playing in the band. So it was a perfect extension to just have this live thing of them being a band and that’s really how we went about it.

And that’s when they went to Jamaica?

Jamaica was where we wanted to continue doing the album. Where I was like, damn, this is really fun and cool—exactly what making music should feel like and be about. I wanted it to be something that Harry really felt was his baby, making his creative mark. With me, if it comes from the artist, that’s the best thing. If it’s real, people are going to know it’s real. The band is playing their fifth gig or something right now! In three months, they’re gonna be right up there with any of those indie-rock bands that Harry played me—they’ll be loose and dangerous and it’ll be a whole new ballgame.

I’m hopeful that we’re gonna do many more albums—this is just the beginning. But I thought it was really important to set the tone of, “We’re gonna do exactly what’s in your heart, Harry.”

He trusted you, but at the same time he wasn’t interested in the Jeff Bhasker "brand"—it was more about the space that you can create, as well as the team that you’ve cultivated, and you laid all this groundwork in advance. 

Absolutely. And it was the first time we got to do it like that, which was so cool and so much fun. And it got me to the place of, “I wanna be making music.” And what a luxury to have Mitch and Ryan, where they could come up with an idea and it could just be tracked and sound like a record instantly. And that’s how “Sign of the Times” happened. Harry was playing it on the piano and we fleshed it out a little bit. Then he jumped on the mic, I played piano and we cut that whole record in three hours.

That’s particularly impressive given what a sprawling song it is.

And it sounded exactly like that: an instant classic-sounding record from conception to completion.

What really sealed the deal is when I came that first week. I had come to check in with them and see what they had been working on. And they played me “Meet Me in the Hallway.” It had a Pink Floyd-ish psychedelic feel, and it was so beautiful, the detail on the acoustic guitars and the parts and his voice and that Omnichord and everything. That’s when I was sold that this was going to be something special. That’s my favorite track on the album. I always want to have a moment when you have something that sounds like nothing else. Especially today.

It's hard to imagine a major label today saying, “Let’s put this global pop superstar with some cool rock kids who have never even recorded before and let him make a classic-rock singer-songwriter album.”

It’s true. Rob Stringer is such an amazing record executive; he was so supportive of all the music and just amazing to work with. Not to mention [manager] Jeff Azoff, who supported us from day one and did an amazing job of believing in our vision without being intrusive.

I understand that Rob didn’t even ask you to do a radio edit of “Sign of the Times.” 

Exactly. I thought I was dreaming. His whole approach toward Harry has been so great. I really enjoyed working with him on this whole album.

It’s a beautiful record—it’ll be fascinating to see what he does next.

Thank you, and hopefully we’ll get to do many more. This first chapter is so under the microscope; it’s a bit of a mindfuck for everyone. And it might take a while. I think his fans have bought into it, and I think for the people who were not fans before there’s a lot of buzz. But it hasn’t 100% sunk in yet.

"This first chapter is so under the microscope; it’s a bit of a mindfuck for everyone."

He’s such a big star, and he took such a big risk. All credit to him for being so brave and never backing away from what he wanted to do, from essentially saying, "If it becomes huge, great—but even if it doesn’t, I really have to be true to myself." A producer could not ask for more from an artist, especially in this day and age.

What are you on to next?

I’m signing Angelique Kidjo to my label. She just did a performance of all the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light album with David Byrne and I’m producing her album and we’re covering Remain in Light. And we have a lot of special guests like Tony Allen, Abe Laboriel Jr. and Pino Palladino. It’s an amazing album. And were doing Cam’s new album, which is phenomenal. I have a really great rock artist named Rafferty and we had a massive sync with this song “Apple Pie.” I’m working on Lykke Li’s new album, which is really special. I have a lot of projects going on.