#when Mick played aristocrat

[omg-hellgirl]

Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger by Slim Aarons at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare, Ireland, 1968.

[theatrepup]

American singer P.P. Arnold talks in her autobiography about staying with Brian Jones in 1966:

"When I rang the bell, Brian came to the door. He was soft-spoken and polite as always, greeting me warmly. I’d heard gossip from Mick about his drug habits but we’d never talked directly. Besides, all the Stones had shown us respect and love throughout the tour. Brian was annoyed about Mick’s behavior towards me, which was very sweet. I explained that Mick and I had not made personal commitments. Yes, I was hurt, but I was in no position to judge. I hadn’t stayed in England to be Mick’s girlfriend. I knew Mick and Marianne had a thing going. Afterwards, I wondered if Brian’s compassion for me reflected his own estrangement within the Stones camp.

He was very cute and sexy and looked aristocratic, eccentric and yet elegant in his flamboyant attire, his dandy scarves and beautiful smoking jacket. I thought he had a mystical charisma about him. I was never physically attracted to Brian and didn’t want to send out the wrong signals, but he was a perfect gentleman and host. He played some blues and R&B and I felt at home right away. I was in awe of his musicality. He was deep and very talented, but there also seemed to be a sadness about him. We talked about my roots and family and he talked about music and art. I felt comfortable and safe, not intimidated at all. With so little experience dating, I still believed that if you were drinking and smoking alone with a guy, they wanted sex with you, but he made no advances and I appreciated this respect.

I suggested it was time for me to go. He urged me to stay over and said someone could drive me back to Epsom the following morning. I was apprehensive, but he assured me I had nothing to worry about. I decided to trust him and not get paranoid. I knew I had to learn to trust that I could handle myself in new surroundings. As a black woman in a strange land, my reputation was very important to me, but I felt I had to let go of a lifetime's fear about how I'd be treated in the company of white men.

It was a lovely evening in very interesting company. Tara [Browne] left in the early hours and I joined Brian in his one bed, feeling secure enough to enjoy a cuddle and warm, gentle kisses with him. He made no advances and was in no condition to have sex even if he wanted to, which was a relief, as I certainly didn't want to have to wrestle with him.

Brian was kind and had displayed genuine friendship. I felt true sensitivity towards him. It had been a magical day at a delicate time of transition and had helped me put my decision to stay in England in perspective. He said I was welcome to visit whenever I got bored and I did so a couple more times, though I wish that I had been more open with him. I’ll never forget his kindness. I was a long way from America's racism here and I had a lot to think about."

Source: Soul Survivor: The Autobiography: The extraordinary memoir of a music icon, by P.P. Arnold.

[rawiswhore]

Various WWF Wrestlers x Fem Reader- "Battle Royale"

In August of 1997, there was a "Shotgun Saturday Night" episode that involved a battle royale involving several male wrestlers.

Some of the wrestlers in this match included Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Shawn Michaels, RockaBilly (who would later become Billy Gunn), Brian Pillman, Davey Boy Smith, Bret Hart, Thurman Plugg and several others.

Granted, in real life, there was a battle royale on "Shotgun Saturday Night" that involved Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Davey Boy Smith, Mick Foley/Mankind, RockaBilly, etc. but some of these other listed wrestlers like Shawn Michaels weren't in this match.

But this is just a fanfiction I've made up.

You were Hunter's valet and helped escort him to the ring.

In this battle royale, Shawn Michaels, RockaBilly, Bret Hart, Thurman Plugg and Brian Pillman all had their long hair hanging down.

Because Hunter was still somewhat playing his aristocratic blueblood gimmick, you were dressed in an evening gown when you led him to the ring for this battle royale.

During wrestling battle royales, if a wrestler falls out of the ring, then that wrestler is eliminated out of the match.

Before many of these wrestlers---in particular RockaBilly, Shawn, Davey, Brian, Bret, as well as Hunter---fell out of the ring, you walked up the stairs leading to the ring and walked above the ring's apron.

You walked to an area where these aforementioned wrestlers were.

As you walked up the stairs and above the apron, the male fans in the audience perked up and got excited, eager to see what you would do to distract these men.

When you stopped walking and stood nearby the sexiest wrestlers in this match, with a smirk on your face, you hooked your thumbs under the straps of your dress, raised the straps of your dress up until you removed your thumbs out of the straps of your dress, which caused your dress to shed off of you, where your dress fell down to your ankles.

Your dress basically shed and popped off of you, no need for you to bend down and pull your dress down to your ankles.

Under your dress was a white silky spaghetti strapped teddy (no, not a bear) that was a mixture of a chemise and short shorts.

That teddy you wore was the same teddy Mr. Roper's niece wore on a "Three's Company" episode, this one:

Placing your hands on your hips, many male fans in the audience got out of their seats and cheered when they saw you in that teddy, some of them were clapping their hands and many of the adult male fans whistled at you.

Some of the male fans were disappointed, they were hoping you'd wear a bra & thong under your dress.

While you stood there in that teddy, some of these male wrestlers such as RockaBilly, Shawn Michaels, Davey Boy Smith, Brian Pillman and others turned their heads and looked at you, where you stared back at them.

Shawn, RockaBilly and Brian couldn't help but smile and grin while they looked at you, they even wanted to walk closer to you to get a good look.

A few other wrestlers in this battle royale also looked at you with smiles on their faces, they even wanted to approach closer to you.

You interrupted this battle royale so Hunter could beat the mess out of his opponents, as well as for you to recreate a moment from "Three's Company".

Plus, it's awesome to distract several wrestlers in a match.

Not to mention, this moment of you distracting many wrestlers was like a recreation of when Miss Elizabeth pulled her skirt off at Summerslam 1988 to distract Andre the Giant and Ted Dibiase.

As many of these wrestlers were distracted looking at you, Hunter went all out and began trying to attack them, throwing punches to their faces, where the match continued on.

When the match continued again, you bent down and grabbed your dress, where you pulled it back up your body until it covered it again.

Before you shed your dress off of you, your teddy was hiding under your dress for good reason, and luckily the straps of your teddy didn't peek out before you shed out of your dress.

After you put your dress back on, you carefully walked out of the ring and down the stairs, continuing to watch this match and making sure some wrestler won't fall on top of you if he falls out of the ring.

You wish this battle royale could've had Jeff Hardy, Christian Cage, Chris Jericho, Scott Hall, Rob Van Dam, Tommy Rogers from the Fantastics, Leif Cassidy if he didn't have that tacky handlebar moustache (and his hair didn't look too awful), Nova from ECW, Sean Morley/Val Venis, Raven from ECW and WCW, Shane Douglas in 1997, Jim Powers from WCW, Jerry Lynn from ECW and even Chris Benoit.

There's other wrestlers who could've been in this match too.

But alas, those wrestlers were in other wrestling companies.

You want some of those wrestlers to be in this battle royale because they're sexy and you want to show yourself off in front of them while dressed in a teddy, although they've seen you in a teddy already, they've even seen you naked.

Actually, I wasn't sure if I should set this fanfic in August 1997, in June of 1997, at Royal Rumble 1997 in January or in the summer of 1996.

[thewestern]

Chapter 12.5\A

If Hank’s design inspo for the Newfy had been a quaint, old-world alehouse for fellow weary travelers, whatever Dandy Jim was going for with #x_brüing hq, well it was the diametric fucking opposite of that, from an interior design standpoint. A vampiric discotheque for the aristocratic undead, maybe. Tear out the carpet and remove the hardwood. Pour more cement and install sheet metal. Trash Hank’s tacky souvenirs and nostalgic memorabilia. Exhibit these provocative art installations on loan from a local collector of dubious repute. Flip off forever the golden incandescents glowing under green glass lampshades. Flash blood red LEDs and white hot strobes, taking the calculated risk of triggering seizures for those folks suffering from photosensitive epilepsy. 

At #x_brüing, light was a motif, as Jaime was known to say completely seriously. And abundantly it was awash, with a veritable bukkake of brightness, Grace observed. Even the tap list was projected high onto the back wall, like luminescent cave drawings. A light tech the likes of Kuroda would have been impressed by the kinetic utility. Kitty again flashed back to the planetarium at Space Camp; it was where she had her first kiss, if you must know why the memory was so present. One of the shameful few she ever shared without Mick. Additionally, some of the low-hanging ventilation ducts and very angular furniture reminded her of the classrooms and common areas at SciTech. 

Speaking of The Space, in continued contrast to the friendly confines of the Newfy, #x_brüing was abrasive and cavernous, is about all you could say. This was the part of town soon-to-be-formerly known as the Warehouse Manufacturing District, after all. What middle class-job-creating industry hath forsaken this place, the Mick was trying his best to figure. (The middle class doesn’t exist, or so Kitty had once heard at a friend of a friend’s thirty-first birthday party.) Smart money would say a textile factory, or maybe a stockyard of some sort, but the convex roof trusses made him think it could have been an airplane hangar. A sight big though, even for a jumbo jet. As if reading his wandering mind, the small woman leading their impromptu tour commenced the guided portion. 

The space was originally conceived as a train depot. If you look down you can actually still see the tracks in the floor. 

Transportation … he was in the ballpark then. And hey look — damned if there weren’t the real-life railroad, recessed into the concrete right at his feet. Jaime was a steel-drivin' man, apparently. 

As they are wont to do, the train tracks served to divide the intersected area into two sides. On one was the brewery itself, enclosed within a chain link fence rimmed by a foreboding, rosette spiral of barbed wire, but otherwise completely exposed to the drinking public. For them to look upon his beerworks. The chicken wire was affixed via zip tie with a large placard — graphically designed in the style of warning signs that say scary things such as Danger: High Voltage or Beware of Dog — that instead said DO THE WORK. 

The Mick wasn’t a gearhead by any stretch. (At least when it came to his day job. His dirtbike … now that was a separate matter entirely.) But any beer doofus could tell by the brand-spanking new specs that this play was financially backed to the fucking tits. Which is to say Dandy Jim definitely hadn’t cobbled this thing together out of spare parts like Hank and Russ had way back when. There were five massive fermenters, with an elevated brew deck running all alongside them up top. The Mick couldn’t get a good look at the brewhouse itself, behind all that chrome-plated, stainless steel, but he would bet the mortgage it cost more than his house. Some kind of custom job, no doubt. German, in all likelihood. Fucking antisemites. 

Then on the other side of the tracks was the tasting area, or as #x_brüers insisted on calling it: the eXpanded brüniverse. Against the wall, that half of the room was subdivided into several so-called eXperience ünits, which in point of fact were shipping containers, furnished into human terrariums. Stacked three high and four wide, connected via a network of spiral staircases for ascending levels, and slides and fire poles for descending on back down. All of the zones showcased different eXperiences from which to consider. About a quarter of them were bars. This was still a brewery, after all. Then another third were set aside for seating. Think more bottle service than corner booth — crush velvet lounges, tables that light up the underside, exclusively female servers who appearance-wise skewed closer to cocktail waitresses than beer wenches. The remaining half ünits were very much choose your own adventure. That the Mick could see, there was a yoga studio in one, a miniature halfpipe in another. A DJ booth and a pressure-activated LED dance floor. Zeke’s personal favorite activity zone had this whole creepy carnival, spooky state fair vibe, going. Fortune teller, old-timey photo booth, contortionist, kind of thing. 

Patrons were free to eXplore the ünits at their leisure, except for a handful that were fully encased in plexiglass. Judging by the hydroponic lights and lush rows of leafy green plants, one had been converted into a fully-functional grow house. Two ünits right and one down, Grace was staring at a woman in a white lab coat she thought maybe she recognized. Did I have sex with that scientist? What’s she doing in there anyway? Probably running standard QA/QC tests, Grace figured. Gravity and pH, yeast counts and pitch viability, IBU and SRM. Not exactly curing cancer. Definitely didn’t require a PhD, no less the full fucking getup. Grace and the Mick did all shit themselves in street clothes. Pair of safety goggles and some rubber gloves maybe. If he saw her show up to work looking like Dexter’s mother fucking Laboratory, he’d sure shit a brick laughing.

For the life of her, Grace could not recall from where she knew this woman. Agogly she observed her, going about the scientific methods, studiously peering into a microscope, jotting down some schematics in her marble notebook, reaching into a bin and pulling out a … 

… Holy fucking shit, is that a fucking rattlesnake?  

Why, yes, it is. Sasha is working with us as part of a research fellowship, on loan from the Humanitarian Practice of Veterinarians. 

Ahh … yeahh … Sasshha. What is up, girl? Snakes … duh. That was where Grace knew her from. They met outside the Reptile Rodeo exhibit. Grace was just through mopping the bathrooms. And, yes, they did have sex, but back at Sasha’s place. Not In the Bathrooms. Don’t be gross. No amount of mopping, figure eight or fucking otherwise, could sterilize a zoo bathroom for purposes of human mating. (Despite the shocking convenience with which it facilitated casual sex encounters, Grace lamented somewhat the surging pervasiveness of Scissr, a new Dating App for the lesbian market. Call her a hopeless romantic, but she longed for the days when enterprising gays used to have to put themselves out there, look up from their phone screens, find a public restroom and proposition one another face-to-face. The old fashioned way.) Sasha, though. Damn. How could Grace be so forgetful? Now she remembered thinking, riding the elevator up to her very well-appointed one-bedroom apartment that she lived in alone with no roommates: damn, being a professional snake wrangler must pay pretty fucking good. Right before thinking, also damn, I can’t believe I’m about to Fuck a voodoo snake doctor. (Grace was unfamiliar with the term, herpetologist.) Can’t believe this is my life! This chick is probably a certified freak, seven days a week. And fucking-a-right, she was. Sasha had a pet six-foot albino python named Stretch. She took him out of his habitat and hung him on a fake plastic tree by the bedside because, quote, he likes to watch. Ho-ly guacamole … right? And you better believe they put on a show. Her fucking life flashed before her eyes, dude. At one point, looking up to the heavens above whilst Sasha was going down unto her, Grace made direct eye contact with that snake right in its snakey fucking devil eyes. Suddenly, she was transported to her childhood home. I Know. Eleven-year-old Grace and her family are in the TV room. What are they watching? An award show for music videos. Britney Spears is performing her hit single I’m a Slave 4 U. Draped over her shoulder is an albino Burmese python. (The performance garnered a negative reception from the animal rights activist group, PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals].)

Here is the precise moment she realizes she is gay. (Come to find that many gays of certain ages — women and men, alike — share that very same moment of erotic self-discovery.) Four days later — after careful deliberation — she comes out to her parents, who though not surprised in the slightest are nonetheless very supportive, even going so far as to mark the occasion with an impromptu, celebratory dinner at her once-and-future favorite restaurant, Chili’s. Incidentally, the following morning militant Islamic terrorists will carry out a devastating coordinated attack on the United States, hijacking commercial airliners and crashing them into high-value civilian targets, killing thousands. 

She remembers all this. Then she comes.

We didn’t start the fire. It’s been always burning since the world’s been motha fuckin turning. 

We’re doing some trials, applying trace amounts of venom in the fermentation process, obviously. Many cultures prescribe it for its myriad therapeutic properties. Beer is wellness, is one of Jaime’s core beliefs. As #x_brüers, we’re more than just brewers, he says. We’re practitioners … of holistic brewing. 

Whatever the fuck that means, the Mick thinks. At least they’re not fucking artists.

HI-may. He’d heard the Mayor say it, but the Mick still could not believe his ears. That little fucking serpiente had gone and iglesia’d up his own damn name. Kitty — who was born Catalina de la Luna Parker-Salazar — was also somewhat taken aback by the abrupt change in pronunciation, but was still willing to give Jamie, as she knew him to be called, the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had an abuelita or a tio by marriage out there somewhere. Far be it from me to be a gatekeeper for one’s Latinness, was her opening position. 

Jaime is a ünit evangelist. They — ünits — are going to change the world, he says. Each ünit has the capacity to be its own self-contained ecosystem for sustaining human life on earth. The applications are limitless — vertical farming, alternative energy, education reform, ghost kitchens, biohacking, machine learning, three-d printing, intermittent fasting, mixed martial arts, synthetic meats. He’s especially bullish about high-density cohabitation. Yes … someday people will themselves live in ünits. So that no matter where you go, your house can go with you. You could move from San Francisco to Shanghai on Monday, and have your ünit meet you there the following Wednesday. Jaime is a visionary. 

Yeah, sure. Some vision. Transcontinental Trailor Park with your Tetris-ass. 

Say that four times fast. The Mick only said it once under his breath and he took his time with all the syllables. Suffice to say he wasn’t in any rush to make a low-APR down payment. 

Seriously, try to imagine a family of four shacking up in one of those fucking thiñgs. It’s a tin can! Goddamn human diorama.    

Douche-o’rama, more like. Grace thought of that one, but not until an hour or so later on the ride home. She would have definitely still said it aloud, but alas she had once again fallen asleep. 

Back in the present, it slowly dawned on Zeke how this woman was probably his counterpart in Event Coordination and possibly also Social Media Management. So far the comparison wasn’t altogether flattering. He didn’t know a solitary thing about urban planning or global logistics networks, not to mention herpetology, toxinology, mixology nor the insurreciton thereof. Really he didn’t know all that much about the place where he actually worked. He also hadn’t had time for his Newfy work shirt to finish drying on the clothesline, so he felt awfully underdressed in a plain white tee. 

Meanwhile, here she looked to be the picture of young professionalism, however, laced with an air of danger that was thrilling to him. Matching her black jeans, she wore a grayscaled tie-day tank top with a large red X running widthwise between her exposed shoulder blades. Around her neck, she had a lazily-tied red bandana, and her matching amber hair was pulled back in a tight power bun, like a ball of fire he wanted so badly to reach out and touch, without a care for being burned. That was all it took for Zeke. Half a minute of walking behind this person as she talked and he was eternally enchanted. What about his undying love for Grace, you ask? Sorry, who is that?

They came to a Whoa Buddy in the exact center of the terminal. The shipping containers formed a slightly convex shape looking down upon them, like they had entered some sort of Thunderdome. Then, as if to commence the bread and circuses, the humming din of the assembled mass was swept away by a flash flood of sound, blaring from the concert-quality PA system in the form of an uptempo remix for a tune the Mick would have easily named as it had been originally recorded. A spotlight shown up above them onto the brew deck, where Dandy Jim had emerged, arms outstretched in a pose not dissimilar to the Mayor’s victory salute at the Newfy and Jesus’s Crucifixion on the Cross. 

Dearest friends! Welcome to #x_brüing. Welcome to the future! 

Jesus Fucking Christ. In vain the Mick cursed himself for unwittingly having subjected himself to some sort of speech for the second straight day. For a third of his life he had worked in a brewery, and until yesterday he had never seen anyone stand up and talk at everybody like this before unless they were four sheets to the wind, shit your pants-drunk. Then you might actually be curious to hear what they had to say. Although probably it was just some tedious bullshit about aliens or their dad. 

God Bless America, Russ would rejoinder. The land of everybody’s got issues with their fathers, be it they absent, founding or fucking otherwise. 

In colorless coordination with their tour guide and the balance of the #x_brüing staff, Dandy Jim was clad in shades of gray, wearing a deeply v-necked version of their commemorative shirt, with his own shoulder-length hair suspended in a marginally more masculine bun. He was ginger too, although his locks hewed on the side of strawberry blonde. The bandana was the same red paisley pattern, but his was fastened around the left wrist. Last but not leastwise, his earpiece connected to a wireless microphone, like Britney and her boy band counterparts used to have, so as they could more seamlessly incorporate elaborate gesticulations and other hand movements into their choreography.

Jaime continued to hold his own arms aloft, showcasing an intricate lattice-work of tattoos running down the full length of his right forearm. The Mick couldn’t recall Jimmy having any Tats back when he worked for him at the Newfy. Wasn’t all that long ago so he must have gotten busy getting inked in the interim. Or it was just more convenient when you worked fifty feet away from a pop-up tattoo parlor — another of the eXperience ünits. Beer and permanent body art made for strange bedfellows. (They also performed piercings, specializing in face and body.) Like those combination fast food joints Grace fancied. Pizza … And Tacos, as well. 

For his part, the Mick wasn’t really a Tattoo Guy, and he surely wasn’t a Jaime Guy. But even he had to admit, it looked kind of bad-ass when they made a sleeve like that from the wrist all the way up to the shoulder, even to the point of peaking out from beneath the plunging neck-line. Bonus points if the tattooee had the requisite forethought and restraint to only do the one arm. Sort of a Duality of Man situation you got there. Look from one side, oh here’s just your Average Joe, doing something with his arm. Probably writing a check or taking care of business (tcob) in some other way. Then he bangs a one-eighty and all the sudden it’s like: oh, shit. Now what do we have here? Oh this? This is my arm for ripping guitar solos or smoking cigs or fingerblasting hot chicks.  

Queridos amigos. Bienvenidos a #x_brüing … ¡Beinvenidos a la futura!

No fucking way. Was he going to self-translate this whole thing? His Gringo-fied accent reminded Kitty of Emily, the Spanish Teacher at SciTech, and her by-default best work friend. Seeing that there was a new Mexican teacher (not Mexican class, mind you), she took the liberty of introducing herself, En Español. ¡Hola (hardest possible H), chica! Me llamo Señora Emily. Mercifully, for Kitty’s sake, Jaime would not deliver his entire address bilingually. Only just that opening salvo. He did however have an American Sign Language interpreter stationed just off stage left for all the hearing-impaired beer dorks, of which there was undoubtedly many in attendance this evening.  

Folks … my name is Jaime Delano, and I’m the Founder, Creative Director and CxO here at #x_brü. I know the reason we’re all here, and I am thrilled to introduce our revolutionary collaborative release in just a few moments. But before we kick things off, I’d be remiss to not mention something else that I’m immensely proud of. Many of you folks may be aware that this past Feist Week, my fellow #x_brüers and I were honoured to take home our second straight medal in the Specialty Beers category … our first-ever gold for Tumbleweed On Rye. You all know that I love every one of my beers equally, but that one holds a special place in my heart. And the reason why, is because I am of the steadfast belief that we are more than brewers, and brewing is more than just making beer … brewing is Storytelling. And the tale of ToR — brewed with actual, locally-foraged tumbleweed — well … it’s a … a kind of a Western, in a way. By that I mean it’s a Love Letter to this city and the wild country it is built upon. An ode to the urge in all of us to be free. To ramble, and to roam.   

Now of course we’re not in this for the accolades. However we are truly blessed to have this platform for telling meaningful stories through liquid. Creating drinkable content that resonates so strongly with so many of you is a great privilege. One that I feel overwhelming gratitude for, and one for which I will never take for granted. Thank you so much. I love you all. 

It looked to Kitty like Jamie might have shed actual liquid tears as he solemnly bowed, clasping one hand to his chest, raising the other aloft in salute to himself. Meanwhiles Mick was scratching an itch on the underside of his ass. 

Brewing is storytelling. Let that sink in. Not only because they are words with which to live by … immortal words that I have tattooed as a reminder, right here on my inner right bicep. But also because it’s an ideal segue for which to introduce our newest brand partnership. Our story … the story of us, as #x_brüing … is about blazing a trail. It’s a story not about beer, necessarily, but rather about What Beer Could Be. By taking the road less traveled by, by bucking convention, and by breaking down the socio-cultural barriers that divide us all like levies, only to be breached by beer. 

I was fortunate to embark on my brewing journey with the mentorship of the late Hank O'Sullivan of the New Frontier, a brewery some of you may be familiar with. Like myself, Hank was a student of history, and it was he who taught me about a part of our past that would go on to set the course for my future. My destiny. The Reinheitsgebot. Written five thousand some odd years ago, it was the Germanic beer purity law, and what it did was legally mandate that beer only be made with these four ingredients — Water, Hops, Barley and Yeast. There … that was the lightbulb moment for me. Dios mio, Jaime, I said. That’s American mass-produced lager. Go down to the grocery store or the gas station to grab a sixer pack. When you strip away all the fancy packaging and the funny mascots and the sexy marketing — what do you get? Water, Hops, Barley and Yeast. I couldn’t believe it … half a millennia later, a whole hemisphere away, and we’re still drinking the same boring old beer based on some dead white guys’ conception of purity? Not on my watch. 

That’s what we’re up against here at #x_brüing. Centuries of brewing tradition. A five-hundred-year reign of lager. Working for the clampdown. Can we resist Reinheitsgebot? How may we remove the boot of the beer purity police from our necks? The answer, my friends, is Love. By brewing what’s in our hearts. With ingredients that reflect our cultures and eXperiences. Adjuncts that come from our own backyards, like sage brush, hot tamales, wildflowers and, yes, tumbleweeds. Telling our stories.

Everyone in this room is a part of our story. The story of the craft brewing revolution. Whether you’re a brewer or a bartender or just a beer drinker. Together we are rewriting history in real-time, so that we become the history.

But make no mistake — it won’t be easy. Nothing worth doing is. For the odds are still stacked against us. Now maybe you’re looking around this great room at all these tens of dozens of people and saying to yourself, Jaime, what are you talking about? The revolution is here. The war is over. Let the wave of creative momentum crash over you. Maybe so. But let me ask you something … what's the percentage market share for craft beer? I mean within the broader fermented beverage category. Go on, hazard a guess. Don’t be shy, shout it out. Nope, not thirty. Not twenty either. It’s not even ten. The answer is six. Six percent. The other ninety-four? Mass-produced, light lager. The Reinheitsgebot … it rages on. 

I don’t know about you, folks, but I won’t settle for six percent. I won’t accept six percent. I won’t fucking take six percent. You better believe I’m coming for the whole fucking thing!

This was exactly the sort of Ra-Ra horseshit that would have worked perfectly on a sap like Zeke, were his attention not otherwise preoccupied, day-dreaming about his future with the red-headed woman. She had ascended up the stairs to the gangway, seemingly by means of levitation, and was now taking action shots of her boss with a telephoto lens. Zeke pictured them together on their Parisian honeymoon. Out on a stroll along the Champs-Élysées. Her playfully snapping a photo of him in the foreground of the Arc de Triomphe, framed just so by the double-rowed elm trees on either side of the promenade. It was a memory he would treasure forever and it hadn’t even happened.   

So starting tonight, we’re forging a strategic alliance. Because we as brewers can’t beat back the status quo on our own. This fight is fought on many fronts. Not just beer … but food, education, business, science, film … and especially, music. Iconoclasts of the world, from far afields,  must join together in common causes. Which finally brings me to our reason for gathering here tonight. The reason you all waited out in the cold rain and snow, for which we are so thankful … or should I say Grateful? To introduce our latest collaboration …  

Regrettably Grace had forgotten about Sasha all over again, and had redirected her fleeting attention to admiring the pretty lights. Various designs had been projected onto the fermenters below Jaime. The largest was an seemingly illegible chain of characters — letters, numbers and erroneous punctuation … #x_brüing://JG_2P. Then there was a parade of five cartoon bears, goose stepping in a big circle around the conical circumference. Recall that Grace deplored the Grateful Dead, but of course she recognized the ubiquitous iconography of the Dancing Bears. She hated those little fuckers too, they and their frilly fucking collars. However, these bears had noticeably forgone that trademark accessory in favor of knotting red bandanas around the front of their foreheads, like ursine Rosie the Riveters. 

… with our newest brand partners … Jerry Garcia and Tupac Shakur!

Fucking buff, dude, Mick said to Kitty. He had a saying about when it came to blending beer: two wrongs don’t make a right, but two rights can definitely make a wrong.

As if on a pendulum, the spotlight swung athwart the brewery from Dandy Jim’s perch, down over top of Mick and Kitty, and up again to the middle center ünit, where the DJ was now wearing a sports mascot-sized headpiece of the blue Grateful Dead bear with what could now be ascermised to be Tupac’s signature red bandana tied backwards (frontways, technically) beneath his little bear ears. Bursts of steam shot out from the floor and ceiling as he resumed playing the remix that the Mick now recognized to be the guitar riff China Cat Sunflower over a hip hop drum machine. Now the spotlight panned back up the brew deck to Jim, who was now holding a large brown bottle in a paper bag. 

Ladies and gentleman, brothers and sisters, pimps and hoes, allow me to introduce I Know You Ridah, the first-ever steam-brewed, craft malt liquor. 

This was a labor of love for Me, a beer guy with a music problem. First I’d like to thank the brand managers representing the estates of both Pac and Jerry, who worked with us side-by-side, every step of the way, to create a product that honours the rich legacy of these two properties. 

Paying homage to Garcia and the Dead’s roots in the Haight-Ashbury, the beer is made in the local tradition of steam brewing, as so named for the steam rising off the rooftops from the open-top fermenters, diffusing with the immense fog which blankets downtown San Francisco. That also means this marks the very first time we’ve ever pitched a lager yeast. I know what you’re thinking … but Jaime, a lager? What about the Reinheitsgebot? Well, I assure you, this is no ordinary domestic lager. In tribute to Tupac — who called malt liquor: Thug Passion … a special brew, made for a chosen few — we’ve created a high-gravity beer with craft-quality ingredients, mashing in with locally-harvested maize adjuncts to achieve an ABV of eleven percent. That’s right … this one goes to eleven. The liquid is then packaged in a forty-ounce recycled glass container with cork-and-cage caps, and wrapped in a hand-stamped, compostable paper bag.

Zeke had lost sight of her in the mashup of darkness and light. A full head taller than the median craft beer drinker, he scanned the crowd, looking for that shock of red among the tops of their heads. He did not know exactly what the man on the platform was talking about, but he could readily tell that whatever he was selling, these people were buying. Their necks were all tilted at congruent angles up at him; eyes glossed over in glorious rapture. He could tell this had to do with the Grateful Dead, something he had never heard of before starting work at the Newfy, but had become tangentially acquainted with since. Suffice to say it wasn’t his thing, but he had given some thought to giving them a try, if only as a means to get closer to Grace. That was back when he had it bad for her, up until about twenty minutes ago. Of course Zeke had heard tell of Tupac, although he didn’t necessarily know any of his songs. Already he’d been dead by the time Zeke was born. (... Or had he? …) You know, music in general wasn’t really his thing. Come to think of it, Zeke didn’t really have A Thing. At least nothing that he was passionate about on the level these people felt about artisanal beer or the Grateful Dead or hiking or whatever else. He wondered how come. Was something the matter with him? He guessed he liked video games, but no more than the next guy. Food? Maybe that could be his thing. Really though he was a quantity-over-quality guy, in the culinary arena. 

Oh, and one more thing …

We’re especially proud to partner with these two American vanguards because they approach music the way we approach beer. Jerry took American rock and roll on an acid trip, elevating the countercultural consciousness in the process. Tupac took hip hop and infused it with street poetry, shedding light on issues of race relations and urban decay. That instinct — to create content that shifts the very conversation … that opens hearts and changes minds — is our inspiration at #x_brüing. Our North Star. If we can change the way we think about beer, then maybe … just maybe … that beer can change the world.

Grace was starting to get hungry, and was thinking longingly about the diagonal half-turkey sandwich she left back in the fridge in Hank’s office. 

So, it is in that spirit of innovation, with which we’ve done something truly extraordinary for this collaboration. Folks, the beer you have come here to drink is to our knowledge the first ever in the category to be brewed by a process that we call, Fermented Audio Processing. During the barrel conditioning process, for thirteen days we alternated on repeat the Grateful Dead and Tupac’s seminal records, American Beauty and All Eyez On Me, respectively. With the guidance of our on-staff team of acoustic engineers and forensic musicologists, we found a frequency that would reverberate through the wood, altering its porous nature. When that happens, a chemistry occurs that puts its own spin on the character of the beer, if ever so slightly. And you better believe, we didn’t go through all that trouble just to sync up any old bluetooth speaker. Thanks to the generous cooperation of the preeminent broker of Grateful Dead memorabilia, who just so happens to be an #x_brüist like all of you, we were able to retrofit a stack of Jerry Garcia’s guitar amplifiers, taken straight from the famous Wall of Sound system. 

The famous Wall of Sound system was built by Owsley Bear Stanley with the money he made as the preeminent manufacturer of LSD in the USA. He was so prolific a druggist, that if you dropped acid anywhere West of the Mississippi River, in the years before the Bear got busted, odds are you were riding a hit of his world-famous White Lightning. The Mick knew all this only because Hank claimed to have met the man. Fucking sure he had. Anyhow, the way Hank tells it, he was out by way of Queensland, Australia, doing some skin diving off the Gold Coast on the Great Barrier Reef. The Bear had emigrated Down Under to sought some refuge from the brunt of what he forecasted to be an imminent thermal cataclysm and a resulting New Ice Age. (New Ice Age, who dis?) He and Hank bonded over their common interests at the intersection of psychedelics and metalworks. The latter craft Stanley learned in federal prison serving time for the former. They even spent an afternoon together in his shop, touching up some bezel work on a turquoise piece — a Navafaux bracelet for Kris Kristofferson, if you can believe that shit. Next time he saw him stateside, Hank said he was going to barter some of his infamous, acid-laced homebrew for a piece from the Bear’s collection. Something he could hang up in the bar. Okay.  

The I Know You Ridah collaboration was created to commemorate the upcoming tour ALIVE: A Jerry Garcia x Tupac Multimedia Experience. We’re very pleased to announce that one percent of all revenues, for the IKYR beer and the ALIVE tour, will be donated to worthy causes supporting equitable access to the performing arts through our participation in the One Percent for the Planet Initiative. Because, what I want to know, is are you kind? It was Jerry Garcia who asked that question. And it just so happens that one of our core values: <give back; pay forward>, because what goes around comes around. I got love for my brother, as Pac once said. But we can never go anywhere unless we share with one other. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d like to think that if Jerry and Tupac were here tonight, they’d be able to break bread over one of our beers, talk some jive about making the world a better place, and I don’t know, maybe have a jam. 

Although they were artistic contemporaries, albiet very briefly, Jerome John Garcia and Tupac Amaru Shakur’s paths never intersected, at least not on this our earthly plane. However, as always, there are degrees of separation. Jerry’s daughter — with ex-wife Carolyn Adams Garcia AKA Mountain Girl (previously a Merry Prankster and the one-time lover and muse of their defacto leader, the author Ken Kesey) — Trixie Garcia gave an interview on a comedy program about her personal friendship with Tupac, whom she once invited to her dad’s sprawling beach house in Marin County. Alas Jerry was in absentia, out on the road as he almost always was. Trixie recalled Tupac as being the only one of her friends from that period (she speculated around nineteen ninety … their acquaintance predated his breakthrough onto the mainstream hip-hop scene, back when he was still performing under the name MC New York) who had any reverence, she said, for her dad and his work. We don’t know what Jerry would have thought about Tupac and his music specifically, but going off his comments on the rap genre in general, it’s safe to assume the respect may not have been so mutual: 

Well rap is not music, for one thing. I mean it isn’t Music, you know, it’s talking. That’s what it says: Rap. Rap means talking. It’s not music. It’s talking in meter. It’s got rhyme, and it’s got … meter. It has rhythm. It’s not music. Uh, it’s, uh … you know, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with it. I have no problem with it. It just isn’t Music. And people who get to be great at rap are not great musicians, they’re just great at rap. There’s no road from rapping into music, you know. (There is, however, a road between dawn and the dark of night.)  And, and … music is something you can get better and better and better at. I don’t know if you can do that with rap. I don’t know if it has that kind of space in it — it leads off into infinite numbers of possibilities. Music does.

(Emphasis is the author’s.)

These remarks, given in the course of an interview for a documentary on the History of Rock N’ Roll, were reposted to an Internet forum for fans of the Grateful Dead. Not a very nuanced take on a preeminent form of black art, from an otherwise very enlightened cat, was basically the consensus. A rare L for J, summed up one clever internetsman. Consider this though: could Garcia’s apparent hostility toward Rap-as-Music have had something to do with his own insecurities about not being a lyricist perhaps? A question for another thread.

Tupac Shakur died one year, one month, one week and one day to the day after Jerry Garcia. Thereafter, his biggest commercial hit was released posthumously. His song Changes samples the lyrics and piano arrangement of the song The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby, who of course served a stint as the Dead’s latter-day keyboardist. (His three predecessors — Brent Mydland, Kieth Godchaux, and Ron Pigpen McKernan — were deceased. Not unlike the drummers of the fictional heavy metal band, Spinal Tap, untimely death seemed to be an occupational hazard specific to Dead piano players. Although the circumstances of their passings — accidental drug overdose, massive head trauma sustained in a horrific car crash and the slowly[-but-surely] drinking of one’s self to death, respectively — were more tragically predictable than say, a case of spontaneous combustion. If any of them had choked on vomit, it was almost certainly his own. Which is to say that they reaped what they sowed, sad though it is and was. Hornsby, however, who never got into drugs and by his own account didn’t much care for alcohol, has continued to thrive as a husband, father, touring musician and Grammy award-winning recording artist well into his golden years.) It was Hornsby that presented the Grateful Dead at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Infamously, Garcia snubbed the ceremony in playful protest of the concept such an institution of aggrandizement would be established for something so expressedly iconclastic and creatively destructive as Rock ‘n Roll music. In his stead, his black tie-clad bandmates hauled a cardboard cutout of his life-size likeness up to the lectern. 

Without further ado, we’d like to share a sneak peak of ALIVE. So, put our hands up and make some mother fucking noise, y’all! This is for those wankstas that wrote the Reinheitsgebot … the Six Percenters got something to say, and I want them to hear it all the way back in the Sixteenth Century. Repeat after me:

Fuck the beer purity police!

Fuck the beer purity police! 

Fuck the beer purity police! 

Fuck the beer purity police!

Give it up one time for Jerry Garcia and Tupac Shakur! 

On Jaime’s cue, directly to Kitty’s stage left, in a velvet roped-off area astraddle the train tracks, their tour guide reappeared beside a large mass that was itself concealed beneath a paisley, tie-dye tapestry; presumably it was another contemporary art instillation, perhaps one even more provocative than the previous. With appropriate gusto, she yanked the curtain off, unveiling them to be an animatronic musical duo. Of course they were Jerry Garcia and Tupac Shakur, considerably larger than life-sized, playing electric guitar and rapping, respectively. Their presence was nothing short of haunting. It appeared like their souls had been cursed by some Saharan mystic or pill mill doctor of the Everglades to be trapped from time immemorial in these, their plastic injection molded sarcophaguses. Not dissimilar to Frankenstein’s monster were the way their mannerisms rendered involuntary spasms. As well they blinked, deliberately, as if to signal distressed proof of sentient life, but in thine eyes Kitty saw only death — death with no possibility of salvation, reincarnation or even decomposition. It was oblivion eternal.   

[Animatronic Tupac] 

I won't deny it, I'm a straight ridah

You don't wanna fuck with me

Got the police bustin' at me

But they can't do nothin' to a G

[Animatronic Jerry] 

I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone

I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone

Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms

[sbrown82]

I love your old school tea posts as I'm a big Stones fan. Can you say anything more about the P.P. Arnold and Brian Jones relationship?

So, here's more ☕️☕️☕️ from P.P. Arnold herself:

"One Saturday morning in 1966 while I was still in Epsom, I’d received a phone call from Brian Jones inviting me to London. He sent his Rolls-Royce for me and I was driven to his  beautiful flat in Courtfield Road, South Kensington.

When I rang the bell, Brian came to the door. He was soft-spoken and polite as always, greeting me warmly. I’d heard gossip from Mick [Jagger] about his drug habits but we’d never talked directly. Besides, all the Stones had shown us respect and love throughout the tour.

If Mick was an extrovert, Brian seemed just the opposite, but that was fine, as I too felt sensitive, vulnerable and wary. He rolled a hash joint and made me feel welcome as we talked about Epsom.

 …Brian’s flat was really just one huge room, a small kitchen and a bathroom. It too was decorated with rich fabrics, rugs and embroideries from Morocco, but was fairly disorderly next to Mick’s flat. A wooden staircase led up to a minstrel gallery and I loved its high-beamed ceilings, big windows and skylight. Magazines, papers and clothing were strewn everywhere. The antique chairs needed reupholstering and the bed was just a big mattress on the floor. There was a real hippy vibe, an intoxicating mix of past centuries with psychedelic ‘60s, including Indian and Moroccan influences. The hash joint was also pretty powerful, but it helped me to relax.

Brian was annoyed about Mick’s behavior towards me, which was very sweet. I explained that Mick and I had not made personal commitments. Yes, I was hurt, but I was in no position to judge. I hadn’t stayed in England to be Mick’s girlfriend. I knew Mick and Marianne had a thing going. Afterwards, I wondered if Brian’s compassion for me reflected his own estrangement within the Stones camp.

He was very cute and sexy and looked aristocratic, eccentric and yet elegant in his flamboyant attire, his dandy scarves and beautiful smoking jacket. I thought he had a mystical charisma about him. I was never physically attracted to Brian and didn’t want to send out the wrong signals, but he was a perfect gentleman and host. He played some blues and R&B and I felt at home right away. While we smoked, he introduced me to some mystical Indian sounds. I’d smoked marijuana with Gabriel and hashish with Mick, but this was my first time in an environment that let me experience its effects fully. There was a piano and a beautiful collection of guitars, mandolins and other exotic string instruments. I was in awe of his musicality. He was deep and very talented, but there also seemed to be a sadness about him. 

We talked about my roots and family and he talked about music and art. I felt comfortable and safe, not intimidated at all. With so little experience dating, I still believed that if you were drinking and smoking alone with a guy, they wanted sex with you, but he made no advances and I appreciated this respect.

He had to go out for a while and after showing me how the rolling machine worked he left me on my own…After a while he returned with his close friend Tara Browne, the heir to the Guinness fortune. 

…Brian’s vibe had drastically changed and the hash wasn’t helping me join them. I suggested it was time for me to go. He urged me to stay over and said someone could drive me back to Epsom the following morning. I was apprehensive, but he assured me I had nothing to worry about. I decided to trust him and not get paranoid…

It was a lovely evening in very interesting company, especially after the delicious Indian food they had brought back with them. Tara left in the early hours and I joined Brian in his one bed, feeling secure enough to enjoy a cuddle and warm, gentle kisses with him. 

…Brian was kind and had displayed genuine friendship. I felt true sensitivity towards him. It had been a magical day at a delicate time of transition and had helped me put my decision to stay in England in perspective. He said I was welcome to visit whenever I got bored and I did so a couple more times, though I wish that I had been more open with him. I’ll never forget his kindness.”

So, sis messed around with BOTH of them! 💅🏿

[dex-xe]

Have you ever thought that when the ghosts were alive The world map would look different? Some of the ghosts might think that Australia or Canada is still part of the British Empire or captain and pat thinks that Russia is The Soviet Union.

Oh lawd,, I’m obsessed with this as an idea. I’m a history and politics student who has spent significant time looking at historical geopolitics so I’m gonna do a bit of a deep dive now into what each of them would’ve known about the world. Apologies Anon but you’ve started a rave in my brain on this subject :P

It’s very long so I’ll put a little keep reading button so I don’t annoy people in the main tag!!

---

im talking: Ghosts related questions, theories or headcanons yall have, your favourite characters/scenes/episodes/friendships + why, general comments on anything Ghosts you wanna say

Link to inbox: Max’s Ghost Post

Robin - Robin’s knowledge of the world would’ve been practically non-existent. He lived during the Stone Age but we don’t really know when, but he wouldn’t have known where he was in the world or what was happening elsewhere at all. Living in (what I assume is now) Surrey, he probably wouldn’t have even known about the sea or that he was on an island.

Plague Ghosts - The Plague ghosts are interesting because their world view would’ve been so limited. They wouldn’t have known about the Americas, Asia, Africa or Australia etc. Mick going to London would mean he would probably have known slightly more, if simply knowing vaguely about France or the Holy Roman Empire. They would’ve lived in a feudal system under the control of a Lord, so not much life outside the farming life style.

Humphrey - Humphrey’s worldview would’ve been dominated by the conflict of the Church and conflict between the monarch and the Pope. He would’ve known about discoveries of food and stuff in the Americas. It’s unlikely he would’ve lived to see the Europeans arrive in Australia. So he would’ve never knew about it which is mad.

Mary - Mary would’ve been the last ghost where the HRE was at its power. King James VI was committed to peace in Europe but the 30 Years War would’ve been in her life time too. She would’ve known about the Americas probably and the existence of British production in the new world.

Kitty - Kitty probably would’ve lived at the end of the 1700s, she might’ve just about seen the French Revolution in 1789 which she (being aristocratic) would’ve known about (and her family probably would’ve feared a similar thing would happen in Britain) but obvs Kitty being Kitty probably wouldn’t have fully known about it or been taught about what was happening. Also, she would’ve seen US independence in 1776 so that would’ve been important at the time too.

Thomas - Thomas lived in the early 1800s and would’ve experienced a similar world to Kitty. French Revolution and US independence would’ve been when he was very young if not just before his birth. The big situation in his life would’ve been Napoleon’s chaos in Europe. But with Thomas’ being an aristocratic, uppity poet he would’ve known but probably not had much interest or care for the world.

Fanny - Fanny would’ve seen the scramble for Africa in full force and the Empire’s expansion. She would’ve seen the Empire at its highest with the whole “sun never sets on the British Empire” situation. This would’ve completely defined the way Fanny viewed the world.

Captain - The Captain’s worldview was wayyyyy different to ours even though he didn’t live that long ago. He was born probably around 1900 so would’ve seen the rapid changes in WW1 and everything afterwards. Colonialism and the aftermath of the scramble for Africa were HUGE in this time as have been seen with the Captain’s view of the Empire. Then obviously the Great Depression and everything happening in Germany and Europe and then WW2.

Pat - Like you said Anon, Pat would’ve lived at the time of the Soviet Union. He was born in around 1945 so saw the world from an entirely post-WW2/Cold War perspective in which East-West relations would’ve dominated his worldview. I imagine being an educator of sorts and from what we see of him in the show he was probably rather knowledgable of the world and current affairs and the like. He would’ve seen the decolonisation of Africa in the 1950s/60s but yeh,, the Cold War/Soviet Union would’ve been his big worldview.

Julian - Julian’s worldview would’ve been quite close to ours. He would’ve seen the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. But, the East-West divide would still have played a huge role in his perspective cause it obviously didn’t just go away straight after the end of the Cold War. The main thing that would’ve been different was Yugoslavia, in which countries began declaring their independence starting in 1991. It’s entirely possible Julian would’ve actually been in discussions regarding the future of the Balkans in Parliament or on committee etc.

So yeh,, sorry for the ranting anon but this is so fascinating to me!! You’re such a genius anon for thinking of stuff like this!!

[thecleverdame]

Control and Release - 33

Series Masterlist

TEDTalk!Sam x Reader

Summary: After the rest of the staff is caught in a snowstorm, you find yourself acting as a personal assistant to the notorious Sam Winchester. As the arrangement becomes more defined, you and Sam begin a sexual adventure with dangerous consequences.  

Warnings: Dom/Sub, humiliation, embarrassment, sexual objectification, mutual masturbation, spanking, cum play, fingering, anal play, orgasm control, nipple clamps, dub-con, breath play.

Beta: @ilikaicalie

Parts 1-42 are currently available on Patreon for a monthly pledge of $2.50. This includes early access to all my stories, including Patreon exclusive content.  >> CLICK HERE <<

-

You enjoy being out, it’s great to see your colleagues outside the office. People’s personalities come out here in the real world. But somewhere between your third and fourth drink, the bar doesn't seem like where you’re supposed to be.

Going back to Boston feels like both a beginning and an end. Everything will change once you get home and your relationship with Sam becomes public. And there’s a piece of your relationship you find yourself mourning. These quiet, private moments here in London. You’ve practically been living together. Going home means spending more time at your own place. Before it felt like independence and self-care. Now it just sounds lonely.

Smiling at Millie, you check your phone for the tenth time. It’s almost midnight. Sam must be done with dinner by now. If you leave now you could make it back in time to order dessert from room service.

“You’re always checking your phone.” Millie rolls her eyes. She points to Cole who’s across the room engaged in some rather animated storytelling with Mick. “Your boss is right there. What are you worried about?”

“I just wanted to see how late it was.” You tip back your glass, downing the last of the vodka.

“You’re not leaving already, are you?” She grabs your arm. “Leaving me here all alone?”

“You’ll be fine, I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

“Yeah, well no wonder. You’ve been working too hard. I feel like I’ve hardly seen you since we got here.” Millie helps you pull on your coat. “See you on the plane.”

-

As you walk down the hall heading towards Sam’s room you let two fingers trail along the wall. You’re a little drunk, enough to let your inhibitions go. Luckily Sam is always more than willing to fool around.

You fish the room card out of your handbag and slide it into the door.

What you find is the otherworldly sight of Sam sitting on the couch, and a naked Toni on her knees beside him. Doing a double take, you stare at Sam who looks like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His hair is askew. You don’t want to imagine how it got that way.

“Good evening, Y/N.” Tony flashes a smarmy grin. “We didn’t think you’d be home so soon.”

You blink twice and step back out into the hallway.

Sam is fucking Toni Bevell.

No, it can’t be true.

But you just saw it. Witnessed the proof with your own eyes. You can’t think, all you can do is feel and there’s an avalanche of emotion headed your way. Your hands are shaking when you hear Sam call your name.

Maybe if you just close your eyes this will all go away.

“What?!” You turn to him, getting a good look. His shirt is rumpled, hair wild, sticking out in all directions. You’re going to be sick. “Jesus Christ Sam! I can’t stand to look at you right now.”

“Don’t overreact,” he instructs, taking a step toward you. You want to slap him, to beat on his chest and scream in his face. If anyone has a reason to react, it’s you.

“Don’t overreact?!” you erupt. How dare he tell you what to do. You’ve never hated anyone more than you hate him at this moment. Toni’s smug, shit-eating grin comes back to you. They must think you’re so naive to trust him. “Fuck you! I trusted you. I must be so stupid. It never even crossed my mind that you would do something like this.”

“Nothing happened,” Sam says, holding up his hands.

Is that even possible? The sight of him tells you everything you need to know. He must think he’s got you wrapped around his little finger.

“Don’t lie to me. Something sure as fuck happened.” Your heart breaks at the sight of him. “For a guy who’s all about the details you’re not covering your tracks very well. You’ve got her lipstick on your mouth and your fly is still down.”

All the anger quickly sours into sadness and embarrassment. All his talk of love and commitment and then he’s fucking this aristocratic bitch the minute you’re out of the room.

“What?” Sam feels at his crotch, looking genuinely surprised to find his fly down. “Look, she tried and I-”

Does he honestly think he can talk his way out of this? As if you didn’t just see what you saw.

“And you what? Let her take her clothes off? Did you fuck her?”

You don’t want the answer. The thought of Sam and Toni is wretched.

“No, of course not,” he snips, as if you’re the one being ridiculous.

The heartbreak bubbles over and there’s no stopping the tears.

“I don’t get it.” Your voice breaks as tears slide down both cheeks. Why would he do this? You rack your brain trying to remember if there were any warning signs. He’s been all in, fully present. You didn’t see this coming. “I thought we were in a good place. I try everything you want. I gave you a blowjob just this morning. What could you possibly want from her that I’m not giving you?”

“Nothing.” He reaches out, moving toward you and you have to step back. It takes everything within you not to throw yourself at him. You want to pretend this never happened and go back to the happiness that existed only minutes ago. “Nothing happened. I know this looks bad. I get that. But nothing happened. You came back at the worst possible time, but nothing was going to happen. That’s the truth.”

Fuck him. You had bad timing?

“Oh, this is my fault?” you yell. “I need to get out of here. I have to think.”

You just need to have a second to collect yourself without him right there. You can’t think straight.

“Don’t leave.” He grabs your arm, forcing you to look at him. “If you leave it automatically makes things worse than they are. You can stay here and be pissed at me. We can talk. I’ll sleep on the couch. Just don’t leave, please don’t leave.”

He’s right, but the idea of going back into the room where he’s just done God knows what with Toni is stomach-turning.

Crossing your arms over your chest you look toward the door. “She’s still in there.”

“She’s leaving.” He puts his hands on your shoulders and you almost pull away from him. What if this is it? What if this is the last time he puts his hands on you? “Just let me get her out of there. Don’t go anywhere.”

Sam disappears back into the room and you immediately panic. You’re about to really lose it, so you head for the elevator and press every button until the doors close.

There’s a bathroom in the lobby and you lock yourself in the first stall, sinking to the ground and promptly sobbing into your hands. How is this how your life turned out? Cheated on by Sam fucking Winchester of all people. It wouldn’t be the first time. In fact, this makes a perfect streak, five out of five. Every guy you’ve ever been with has been disloyal at some point. You should have expected it.

Scrolling through your phone you look for someone to call. Your mom...no. She’d overreact. You could tell Millie, confess the whole thing. She loves you and she’s a good friend. She’d order a pizza and stay up all night talking about what a pig he is. But that’s not what you need, either.

Cole. He’s always said he’s there to listen. Telling him the truth about your relationship with Sam would make everything easier. And Cole cares about you. You know that much is true. But running to Cole seems wrong. It feels like retaliation because you know how much Sam would hate it.

The phone vibrates and Sam’s name pops up. You almost answer, but the image of he and Toni is too vivid. Her breasts in his face, the surprise when he saw you at the door. You press the power button on the phone and watch as the screen goes black.

This hurts so bad.

You find yourself suddenly sober and in desperate need of something to take the edge off. Cleaning yourself up as best you can, you cross the lobby and enter the hotel bar. There are a dozen or so people scattered around.

Finding an empty seat you order a shot of tequila and a beer.

You trusted Sam with everything. Up until twenty minutes ago, your biggest fear was that he would walk away, but never did you imagine he would cheat. Your sex life is active to say the least, and he’s definitely not looking for an emotional connection.

Maybe he was just bored. Maybe it’s his own personal brand of self-sabotage.

Wiping a single tear away, you sip your beer, watching an older couple happily chatting at the end of the bar.

The longer you sit, the more the details come back to you. The way she was perched over him, the red lipstick at the corner of his mouth. You’re irrational and semi-drunk but aware of both. You really want to call Cole and disappear for a night, really make him hurt the way he’s hurt you.

If you leave now, everything is worse. He was right about that.

He said nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen. And Sam doesn’t lie. Maybe about his feelings, but he’s never lied to you about anything else. He’s brutally honest to a fault.

-

You stand outside the door to his room for several minutes trying to decide if this is what you really want to do. But in the end, you knock on the door.

Sam answers immediately. His eyes flutter closed when he sees you, Adam’s apple bobbing as he shakes his head and steps to the side as a silent invitation to come in.

“I thought you left,” he admits. His voice is tight. He looks mad and you wonder if this is directed at you, Toni or the fact that he got caught.

“I went to the bar downstairs. Not far.” You stand just inside the door. For the first time, this feels like his space instead of the home away from home you’ve shared for the past two months.

“You weren’t answering your phone.” He runs a hand up the back of his neck. “I was going to come and find you.”

“I shut it off. I needed to think. I’m here now.”

His wool coat is thrown over the back of the couch and he’s got one sneaker on. He’s in sweatpants and his face is clean of any trace of Toni, but his hair is mussed and his eyes are red. You’ve never seen him quite like this before. He looks like a mess.

“I need you to tell me what happened. And if I feel you’re not being one hundred percent truthful, I am going to leave.” You look him in the eye for a fleeting second before taking a seat in the closest chair.

“Okay.” Sam nods adamantly, perching on the edge of the sofa. His knee is bouncing up and down at an exponential rate, he’s agitated. “We came back here after dinner to go over projections.”

“Go on.” It takes everything within you to remain cool collected.

“She came out of the bathroom like that. I told her to stop but she kept it up. She always fucking pushes to get her way.” His hands curl into fists. “Nothing was going to happen. I told her to stop, to get dressed.”

“Why was there lipstick on your mouth?” you ask, voice shaking. “And your fly was down…”

“She kissed me. I pushed her away. I don’t know about the rest of it, honestly. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I would never do that to you. I don’t want her.”

“You know Sam…” You stop to look at him. God, you want to believe him so badly. “I get that you can’t control her actions. And I understand that you had no idea she intended to make an advance...but fuck. You thought coming back to the room was okay? Our room. You came back here with a woman you used to fuck, alone. That seemed like a good idea to you?”

“I didn’t think of it like that.” He presses his lips together, hands on his knees, eyes locked on your eyes. “I don’t think of her as a woman I used to fuck. I think of her as a colleague.”

“Oh, well.” You resist the urge to roll your eyes. “That’s funny, but I exclusively think of her as a woman you used to fuck.”

You stare at each in silence, the seconds feel like hours. This is a complete role reversal, you’re in complete control here. You get sole determination about what happens next.

“You didn’t think that it would bother me?” You ask a genuine question. “For the two of you to be alone together in a hotel room?”

“I know you don’t like her. But I thought she’d be gone before you got back and that it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Do you see how that’s problematic for me? I almost called Cole tonight. Not for anything weird, just to listen because I needed a friend. But I thought about how you’d feel if I did that. I could have called him, met him and not told you. But the difference between us is that I wouldn’t do that. You mean enough to me that I would never want you to feel the way you’ve just made me feel.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, looking down at his hands. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

“Did you do anything with Toni tonight?”

“No.” He looks up at you.

“Was there any part of you that wanted to?”

“No.” He confirms succinctly.

“Have you been with anyone else since we’ve been together?”

“No.” This question bothers him, his brow furrows. “Do you think that’s something I would do?”

“I didn’t think I’d come home to find you with Toni, but it happened. I just want to be sure there’s nothing else I’m missing.”

“No. I haven’t been with anyone else. You’re the only person I want.”

“I see.”

“Are you going to stay here tonight?” he asks. And for the first time, you get a glimpse of a Sam that you didn’t know existed. He’s crying. It’s just one tear, but it’s there. “I’m trying. I’ve been trying to do things the right way. To make a life for us. I shouldn’t have brought her back here. I know that now. I thought you left tonight and I didn’t think you were going to come back...I don’t know what I’d do.”

“I almost didn’t come back,” you admit.

“Why did you then?”

“Because I love you,” you explain matter of factly. “And I trust you. I couldn’t throw those things away, I needed to hear it from you, hear what happened.”

“Is there anything else you want to know?”

“No.” You shake your head. You want to go to him, hold him tight, but it’s too soon. There’s more you need to talk about and it might as well be now. “I was thinking about when we go home. I should move in with you. We should live together. How do you feel about that?”

“I would like that very much.” He smiles an exhausted little smile, relief overtaking his body and he slouches forward. He looks down at his hands again, sucking in a breath. “I bought a ring. I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

All the air evaporates out of the room. Did he just say what you think he said?

“Are you serious right now?” you whisper, eyes the size of saucers.

“Yes. All I could think when I came back to find you and you weren’t in the hallway is I have this diamond waiting back in Boston and you’re never going to know. So, I’m telling you. I love you. I’m committed. I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

“Well…” you don’t have words. An hour ago it seemed as if the world was falling apart and now this. “When are you going to ask me?”

“I can’t tell you that.” He presses a thumb into the opposite palm. “What are you thinking right now?”

“That I’m going to say yes.” You let out a laugh, overcome with emotion. “But I’m still mad at you right now. You can’t just magically make everything better by talking about a proposal. We’re going to have to talk about Toni. Assuming she’s going to continue working for you, I need there to be clear rules.”

“Anything you want.” He nods adamantly. “You can have anything you want.”

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

For your prompts - not a ship one, just hoping for an expansion on your Lena with the legends series? OOH or the Lena as a sensate one! Please I need more of those! Anyone will do!! Preferably where Lena showcases her badassery (romance not necessary) & people appreciating her & her being happy!! That's my request - Lena being awesome, kicking ass, being appreciated for it (unlike in canon) & people realising how lucky they are to have her!! A little jealousy/regret from kara as a treat? Or not?

Oh no. Sara knows that look.

“Nope. Nuh uh.”

“But it’s Catherine the Great!”

“Which means haughty aristocrats with a thing for clear skin and good teeth. You know how it plays out if we let you run amok with the nobility: prison or bedrooms. And this is one mission where we don’t need either.”

Greens eyes narrow dangerously on Sara, and she schools her features into a matching scowl. “You’re one to talk.”

Sara cocks a grin. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Luthor.”

Lena huffs in frustration, throwing a rude gesture that only deepens Sara’s smirk. It’s moments like this that make her marvel that their newest crew member has only been with them a few months-- she doubts anyone in National City ever saw this kind of fervent petulance.

“It’s bullshit! No one else on this ship knows Russian history like I do, let alone the Catherinian Era.”

“I can hear you,” a phantom voice spoke. 

Lena gave a reluctant fidget. “Besides Gideon,” she amended.

“Thank you,” the computer graciously acknowledged. 

“But come on, Sara! It’s Catherine the Great! The woman who started a lowly German princess and then orchestrated a complete coup against her deranged and immature husband by winning the love of the people and proving herself entirely competent! She, she…”

“She’s you.”

Sara’s summation freezes Lena in her tracks. She watches Lena stare at her, blinking as a flush spills up her cheeks. As much as she’d love to see her try to talk it back, as captain Sara takes pity on her. 

“Look, I get it. I do. But we need to maintain a low profile, and that means you, oh lady of ivory skin and raven locks, stay here and run back up. Last thing we need is someone deciding you’re prettier, or freaking Rasputin thinking he’s got a contender for court magician.”

“See, I know Rasputin’s not going to be an issue for another five generations, but would Mick?”

Sara shakes her head.

“I’ve met two of her descendants, for god’s sake!”

“Sorry, Lena. Decision’s made. You stay here.”

One thing Sara likes most about Lena is that however much she argues, she relents when Sara pulls out the voice of authority. Lena sighs, throwing her hands up. 

“Fine. But you know it’s gonna go screwy and I’m going to have to come in and save you anyway, right?”

Sara waggles her eyebrows before sauntering towards the hatch. “Just make sure you don’t come in on horseback.”

She’s rewarded with a growl of indignation.

“That never happened!”

[parfumery-wiki]

Cowboy Grass (eau de parfum) D.S. & Durga Nose: David Seth Moltz

Playlist

Woods

American sagebrush, flowering white thyme, and prairie switchgrass from the wild western territories. Perfect for robbing banks on horseback.

This is the fragrance that put us on the map in ‘08. A strange combination that used to be made with a homemade tincture of herbs, citrus peels, and flowers. As I was learning how to make perfume, I experimented with many older methods. This helped me to understand the aromatic relationships between plants themselves. There is no better way to learn a skill than to just start doing it. That is the ethos of Cowboy Grass. Though it is strange, it was immediately a hit.

Cowboy Grass is a play of contrasts. The freshness of bergamot with the dustiness of thyme. The medicinal notes of clary sage and basil against the softness of rose otto. And ultimately the dry peanut wood crackle of vetiver against the warm amber of benzoin.

Cowboy Grass evokes the American West.

The landscape is filled with grasses, herbs, and shrubs that were used as medicine, food, and ritual for thousands of years. It is impossible to describe just how big the Wild West is.

When I first drove across the country on tour with a band in college, I remember one plant kept getting all over the front of our van. It was blowing everywhere that year. I found out later it was clary sage. I was shocked to see real tumbleweeds, the Rockies, the deserts, etc.

Clary Sage is at the heart of Cowboy Grass. An herb once used for “fissures of the eye” or some ancient horrific malady, clary sage is pungent, whitish green, fresh and powerful. It can be pulled in many directions. In CBG the green grass notes are expanded upwards towards the top of the fragrance intersecting the rosewood-bergamot’s red woody freshness. The grass effect is modified at the bottom where a rich mapley accord of vetiver and amber reside. The expanse of grasslands almost sacred to an American.

Cowboy Grass is dirty-leathery. Not the warm aristocratic leather of drawing room sofas, but rather the saddles worn and ragged from years of use by riders who transversed the West. Perhaps there’s even a nod to the ashy-oily scent of an antique Colt 45 revolver strapped within the seat. This may be what Mick smells like when he whines out the chorus in "Torn & Frayed" (part of the Stones epic "Exile on Main Street"–a masterpiece of American musical idioms).

Side note. One time an Italian man who is influential in the beauty industry told me that Cowboy Grass smelled nothing of Cowboys.

Top notes: Rosewood, Thyme, Bergamot Heart notes: Sagebrush, Basil, Rose otto Base notes: Vetiver, Grass, Ambergris

[jedivoodoochile]

IT WAS 59 YEARS AGO TODAY!

April 7, 1962: Mick and Keith met Brian for the first time after a show by Blues Incorporated at the Ealing Jazz Club, in Ealing, West London. At the time they met Brian was still calling himself Elmo Lewis (inspired by one of his musical heroes, Elmore James) and playing guitar with singer Paul Jones, who performed under his real name of P. P. Pond.

Keith, on meeting Brian and his blues: "And suddenly in' 62, just when Mick and I were getting together, we read this little thing about a rhythm and blues club starting in Ealing... Alexis Korner really got this scene together. He'd been playing in jazz clubs for ages and he knew all the connections for gigs. So we went up there. The first or the second time Mick and I were sitting there Alexis Korner gets up and says, We got a guest to play some guitar. He comes from Cheltenham. All the way up from Cheltenham just to play for ya. Suddenly it's Elmore James, this cat, man. And it's Brian, man, he's sittin' on his little... he's bent over... da-da-da, da-da-da... I said, what? What the fuck? Playing bar slide guitar. We get into Brian after he finishes Dust My Broom. He's really fantastic and a gas... We speak to Brian. He'd been doing the same as we'd been doing.. .thinking he was the only cat in the world who was doing it. We started to turn Brian on to some Jimmy Reed things, Chicago blues that he hadn't heard. He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz blues stuff. We'd turn him on to Chuck Berry and say, Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it. Brian was into one kind of blues. Although he'd heard Chuck Berry, he had never heard the kind of stuff we were into... We laid Slim Harpo on him, and Fred McDowell. Because Brian was from Cheltenham, a very genteel town full of old ladies, where it used to be fashionable to go and take the baths once a year at Cheltenham Spa. The water is very good because it comes out of the hills, it's spring water. It's a Regency thing, you know, Beau Brummell, around that time. Turn of the 19th century. Now it's a seedy sort of place full of aspirations to be an aristocratic town. It rubs off on anyone who comes from there... Brian would never even listen to Jimmy Reed (when we met him), and hardly any of Muddy Waters' electric stuff. We turned him on to Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley. He was into guys like Sunnyland Slim and Tampa Red. Elmore james was about as far down the road as he'd gone with electric blues.Brian was the first guy I knew that had a Robert Johnson record. Very rare. That's when I captured him: I'll take you and the record!"

[aion-rsa]

How Roger Corman Finally Restored His Uncensored Vision for The Masque of the Red Death

https://ift.tt/3cl3Pwr

The Masque of the Red Death, Roger Corman’s masterful 1964 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, has been fully restored and can now be seen in all its diabolical splendor. The seventh of eight “Poe Cycle” films Corman made in the 1960s, Masque is arguably the best. Before its release, Poe had already delivered Corman from the low budget black and white films he shot in 10 days in the 1950s to the relative luxury of three-week shoots and psychedelic underworlds. 

The new DVD/Blu-Ray is the first fully uncut, extended version of the film to be available. Besides restoring cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s sumptuous camerawork, we get extra scenes which were cut by censors. The package also includes a 20-page booklet with a new essay from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ film preservationist Tessa Idlewine.

The original “The Masque of the Red Death” short story was published in 1842, and it is only 15 paragraphs long, shorter than a Cracked article. To fill out the horror feature, screenwriters Charles Beaumont, who wrote episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, and science fiction author R. Wright Campbell incorporated Poe’s short story “Hop Frog” as a subplot, and added elements of the short story “Torture by Hope” by Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

While Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death has discovered new life as a comforting modern parable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was released in 1964, many took the film to be a comment on the nuclear nightmares of the Cold War era. It did open the same year as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. And atomic bomb fallout resulted in its own “Red Death,” leading to an entire generation to be assured the living would envy the dead. The film was filmed during the Profumo Scandal of 1963, and British tabloids were filled with stories of “Man In The Mask Parties” in Hyde Park Gate.

“I have Tasted the Beauties of Terror”

As an Anglo-American horror movie, The Masque of the Red Death continues European genre progressions set by the Italian Gothic film, Beatrice Cenci, directed by Riccardo Freda in 1956, and Mario Bava’s 1963 film La frusta e il corpo (The Whip and the Body). Corman’s influences went beyond genre, however, incorporating the post-apocalyptic imagery of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. In Masque, Death’s messengers report survival rates to their Master, who calculates only “a dwarf jester and five other people remain alive in the world.”

In an interview about the film’s restoration with Den of Geek, Corman admits he “should watch more genre films to keep up with it. But I’m more inclined towards somewhat more serious films, and particularly foreign films.”

The Masque of the Red Death also appears to owe a great debt to American experimental independent filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome (1954), and recalls Michael Curtiz’s 1933 horror film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, which was shot in the pink-and-green two-color Technicolor process.

After years of black and white exploitation pictures for American International Pictures (AIP), Corman’s Poe cycle began his move to color, and the exciting new challenges of shooting beyond monochrome. The adaptation of The Masque of the Red Death set a new level of excellence in Corman’s use of set dressing, lighting, and costume design. They are given a fuller palette.

Says Corman, “I always thought that Poe represented the unconscious mind, and I shot according to that. It was one of my themes.”

In Poe’s story, the pride of Prince Prospero’s palace is seven rooms. Each is decorated and illuminated in a specific color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The last room is black and bathed in light which shines a deep color of blood. All of the furniture is black, including a clock, which chimes each hour. At the chime of the clock, the revelers at the masquerade freeze. The musicians stop playing. The dancers strike a pose, and all conversations stop. Revelry resumes when the chiming stops. The rooms represent the human mind, the blood and time infuses corporeality. Corman’s direction manages to let that seep into every frame. The tone is both mischievous and chilling.  

The Masque of the Red Death is atmospheric. The dialogue is more important than the action, but the settings and framing are paramount. “I felt the unconscious mind doesn’t really see the world,” Corman explains. “The conscious mind sees the world with eyes, ears, and so forth, and simply transmits information. So, I made a point on all of the Poe films of never going outside unless I absolutely had to. I wanted to have full control, to shoot within the studio. Whether it came through to the audience, I don’t know. But at least in my own mind, I was able to deal with special effects with a number of things, with the concept of the unconscious mind.”

The cinematography was done by Nicholas Roeg. While Corman hadn’t yet become acquainted with Mario Bava, Roeg’s camera allows the Italian horror director’s psychedelic influence to surge through the camera. The Masque of the Red Death “was the first I had done in England,” Corman tells us. “And they showed me a work of a number of English cameramen, and I thought Nic was the best of the group. And the collaboration went very well. I thought he did really, a brilliant job [with the] camera work.”

Roeg would go on to direct classic independent cinema with films like Don’t Look Now, Performance starring Mick Jagger, and the David Bowie cinematic encapsulation, The Man Who Fell to Earth. “I never knew, did I inspire him to be a director, or did he feel ‘if Roger can do it, anybody can do it?’” Corman wonders.

While Corman had a bigger budget and more time to make the film, cost- and labor-cutting alternatives occasionally provided fortunate outcomes. “Danny Heller, my art director, and I, always went to what was called a scene dock in studios where we’re going to work,” Corman says. “The scene dock contained flats from previous pictures, just individual flats. When we did Masque of the Red Death, we found these magnificent flats from Becket.”

The Price of Evil

Vincent Price has the most delicious delivery in this film. His devil worshipping Prince Prospero is the cruel sovereign of a village plagued with an all-consuming Red Death, and Price’s inflections are infectious. His voice is seductive, and his cruelty brims with good humor.

“He had the character pretty much set in mind when he came into it,” Corman remembers. “Vincent always did a great deal of preparation. We would discuss the characters, just Vincent and me, before the rehearsals. He and I were in agreement on the character, and then he would bring that character to the rehearsals. We did not do a great deal of rehearsing because of the Screen Actors Guild rules. They charge you as if you are shooting when you rehearse.”

Price played Roderick Usher in Corman’s first Poe adaptation, The Fall of the House of Usher. For The Masque of The Red Death, the director only gave one note. “As I remember, I said, ‘The really key to Prospero’s character is that he believes God is dead,’” Corman says. “And everything stems from that belief. That with the absence of God, he was free to do anything he wanted.” 

Ultimate power breeds ultimate corruption. The film is set in a country decimated by an epidemic. While the prince of this unnamed land offers refuge for his courtiers, he derives perverse satisfaction in condemning his subjects to death by their exclusion. While Prospero is making his annual deign-to-see-the-peasants day, one of the townspeople dies of Red Death. 

The prince intended to offer peasants some crumbs in appreciation of their labor, but young Gino (David Weston) mocks him. To make matters worse, the ungrateful worker’s lover Francesca (Jane Asher) defends the man, prompting Prospero to label both of them insurrectionists. He burns the village to the ground, throws Gino and Francesca’s father into one of the most foreboding castle dungeons in horror history, and puts Francesca up at his palace. Tempted by the idealism and faith of the village’s “resistance,” Prospero corrupts and sacrifices for sheer joy.  

Read more

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Meanwhile the prince promises his aristocratic guests that they will be immune to the scourge, unless they displease him. He throws a masked ball and forbids anyone to wear red, as it would be in bad taste. He is actually preparing a mass sacrifice in exchange for Satan’s favor. Asher’s Francesca is an incorruptible innocent who seems to have perfect faith. The Satanic prince will not tolerate any Christian worship on his estate, so he delights in tempting the faithful into the “velvet darkness” of evil. Prospero hopes to turn her into a Satanist or drive her mad.

For the Uninvited, There is Much to Fear

The film was hit with heavy censorship. In the U.S, the Catholic Legion of Decency sent a list of changes, and in the UK, the British Board of Film Censors required a separate set of cuts. The Legion of Decency bemoaned the “Satanism and erotic costuming” on the screen, according to the booklet which comes with the DVD/Blu-Ray package. Father Sal Miraliotta, a separate reviewer from the Legion of Decency, first approved the film and then changed his grade to a B, which meant morally objectionable. He ultimately downgraded it to a full Condemned rating, blasting the Satanic worship and its malignancy of the soul, and mocking the screenwriters’ “strung-together gibberish” and “mumbo-jumbo Latin.”

Hazel Court’s Juliana is captivating and as conniving as Prince Prospero. She’s also more subtly insidious. Juliana dedicates herself to the service of Satan and receives the ultimate payoff. While most of Juliana’s satanic invocation was left in, censors wanted the word “Alleluia” removed. The U.S. version also censored the film’s climax. When the Man in Red is talking with Prince Prospero, the dialogue was changed from “Each man creates his own God for himself. His own Heaven – his own Hell” to “Each man creates his own Heaven – his own Hell.” This takes out the idea that God could be created by man, something Ian Anderson would explore on Jethro Tull’s classic 1971 album, Aqualung.  

When asked whether all this divine intervention made Corman think he just might be going to hell, he says, “No, that never occurred to me. I’m sort of a lapsed Catholic, and I don’t believe there is a hell.”

Some of the cuts had nothing to do with blasphemous ideology. The tiny dancer Esmeralda is played on camera by young actor Verina Greenlaw, but her dialogue was dubbed over by an adult woman. Skip Martin’s clever Hop Toad character plots vengeance over her royal mistreatment at the hands of Alfredo, campily played by veteran actor Patrick Magee. One unsettling scene was removed from the U.S. version because it seemed Esmerelda’s relationship with Hop Toad was more than friendship.

Corman also cut nine frames from the scene where Francesca is stripped down and thrown into a bathtub because it gave the illusion of nudity. The removed frames ensured Asher’s breasts would not appear on screen.

“I’ve Already Had That Doubtful Pleasure“

The irony, upon seeing the restored scenes, is how they actually feed into the surprisingly righteous conclusion of the film. The Masque of the Red Death is rife with blasted, unholy incantations, but the prince’s callous sacrifices and lifelong debauchery mean nothing to a master who answers to no one. Talk about moral relativity! The hero of The Masque of Red Death is Death, and Death worships no gods and no devils. The depths of Prospero’s belief turn out to be mere demonic delusions.

Corman shot the low-budget Poe pictures through bulky Mitchell cameras on 35mm film and the restoration breathes a new life to each underfunded frame. Composer David Lee’s soundtrack of tambourines, fifes, and brass evokes the medieval period, as do the elegant costumes by Laura Nightingale. The restoration highlights the lushness of both, as they mix to underscore the “velvet darkness” with subliminal subtext of renewal and hope. At the same time, the restored cut actually makes the darkness darker.

The Masque of Red Death ends with the words “Sic transit gloria mundi,” Latin for “thus goes the glory of the world.” Corman’s take on Poe’s apocalyptic parable is a truly inglorious achievement. The film is proof that no budgetary restrictions hold back artistic vision when lunatics get the run of the asylum. They can create and destroy a whole crazy world.

The Masque of the Red Death is available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital now.

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The post How Roger Corman Finally Restored His Uncensored Vision for The Masque of the Red Death appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3t5uvHA

[tabloidtoc]

People, November 2

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Widowed by COVID-19 -- three months after actor Nick Cordero’s death at 41 his grieving wife Amanda Kloots opens up about staying strong for their son Elvis

Page 1: Chatter -- Kate Hudson on smooching frequent costar Matthew McConaughey onscreen, Eva Mendes on raising two daughters with Ryan Gosling, Sam Smith on trying to find love online, Jennifer Hudson on the late Aretha Franklin whom she portrays in Respect, Blake Shelton on his early performances, Jennifer Lopez on bringing her daughter Emme out during her Super Bowl halftime performance 

Page 2: 5 Things We’re Talking About This Week -- A PAW Patrol movie enlists A-list actors, Dexter plots its return, Dunkin’ debuts the Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut, Yes Cameron Diaz and Nicole Richie are related, Jacob Tremblay plays a young Justin Bieber 

Page 4: Contents 

Page 7: Editor’s Letter 

Page 8: StarTracks -- stars rock the remote Billboard Music Awards -- Lizzo used her speech to speak out against suppression 

Page 9: Alicia Keys, Garth Brooks, Post Malone with host Kelly Clarkson, En Vogue’s Rhona Bennett and Terry Ellis and Cindy Herron celebrated their 30 anniversary as a band 

Page 10: Tom Cruise shared a laugh with his Mission: Impossible 7 costar Hayley Atwell in Rome, Chris Rock sparked romance buzz when he stepped out for lunch with actress Carmen Ejogo in Malibu, Bella Hadid was all smiles during a Michael Kors photo shoot in New York City, Nick Cannon wore a Protect Black Women shirt to the Feed Your City Challenge COVID-19 relief event in Chicago 

Page 11: Royals at Work -- Princess Kate stopped by Imperial College in London to learn about new research on pregnancy loss and premature births, Prince William joined Queen Elizabeth on her visit to the Science and Technology Laboratory in Porton Down for their first public outing in two years

Page 12: First Look at  the upcoming comedy Superintelligence with Melissa McCarthy and Bobby Cannavale, Katie Holmes and boyfriend Emilio Vitolo Jr. went for a spin around Manhattan, Sarah Jessica Parker posed in front of one of her SJP Collection stores for a photo shoot in New York City

Page 13: Jason Derulo attended the drive-in premiere of the musical drama Clouds with his girlfriend Jena Frumes in L.A., Macaulay Culkin and girlfriend Brenda Song went for a walk with their dog on a leash and their cat in a stroller in L.A., just four months after Courtney Robertson and Humberto Preciado welcomed their son Joaquin the couple wed in an intimate outdoor ceremony at the Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village in Sedona, Arizona 

Page 17: Scoop -- John Cena tied the knot with Shay Shariatzadeh in Tampa 

Page 18: Armie Hammer fights Elizabeth Chambers over child custody 

Page 20: Heart Monitor -- Keanu Reeves and Alexandra Grant going strong, J.P. Rosenbaum and Ashley Hebert surprise split, Taraji P. Henson and Kelvin Hayden engagement called off, Zac Efron and Vanessa Valladares getting serious 

Page 21: John Legend and Chrissy Teigen healing after the loss of their third child, Anthony Hopkins has found a creative to help children affected by COVID-19 -- he’s launching a namesake fragrance brand which benefits the nonprofit No Kid Hungry 

Page 22: Maren Morris’ new life as a mom, Then & Now -- Thomas Brodie-Sangster -- the Love Actually kid turns 30 

Page 25: Marlon Wayans from funny man to leading man, how Gretchen Carlson is moving on 

Page 29: Passages, Why I Care -- Lily Collins works to raise funds for vulnerable children as a GO Campaign ambassador 

Page 31: Stories to Make You Smile -- an artist spreads joy with her natural art, this dog is a connoisseur with chopsticks 

Page 35: People Picks -- The Undoing 

Page 36: Roald Dahl’s The Witches, Bad Hair, Bruce Springsteen -- Letter to You, Q&A -- Emily is Paris’s Lucas Bravo 

Page 37: The Queen’s Gambit, Hubie Halloween, Time, One to Watch -- Fargo’s Kelsey Asbille 

Page 39: Books 

Page 40: Cover Story -- Nick Cordero’s widow Amanda Kloots -- I definitely feel Nick’s presence -- her actor husband died of COVID-19 in July and now she’s staying strong for their son and finding solace in support from around the world 

Page 46: Brooke Shields -- what I know now -- the actress opens up about embracing her wage and wearing a bikini at age 55 and how she finally found true confidence 

Page 50: Missing -- help us find these kids -- whether the search has gone on for months or decades loved ones and law enforcement refuse to give up hopes of bringing each one of these children home 

Page 54: Jill Duggar Dillard -- small changes, controversial choices -- for years she followed her family’s rules without question but now after distancing herself from them the reality star opens up about why she’s changed some of her ways 

Page 58: Reasons for Hope in America -- in these uncertain times a celebration of creative people and inspiring acts and natural beauty and much-needed good news 

Page 62: Sarah Cooper -- from Google staffer to comedy star -- a daughter of Jamaican immigrants she went to work at the tech giant then her videos satirizing President Trump went viral and now she’s living her dream 

Page 64: Photographer Camilla McGrath -- candid camera -- photos by an Italian aristocrat wed to a party-hearty American offer a rare peak into the private celebrity life of a bygone era -- Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski 

Page 65: Barbra Streisand and Sydney Pollack, Audrey Hepburn and Anita Loos, Keith Richards and son Marlon 

Page 66: Jacqueline Kennedy and sister Lee Canfield, Michael Douglas and son Cameron

Page 67: Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill and Griffin Dunne, Angelica Huston and Robert Graham 

Page 69: Cameron Dallas -- social media was a drug for me -- he was one of the first influencers to catapult to megafame but the fun soon turned debilitating and now the former teen idol reveals how he got sober and created a more meaningful life 

Page 72: Volunteer Pilots Make a Special Delivery -- puppies with a purpose -- after COVID-19 travel restrictions grounded dozens of young service dogs in training local pilots stepped up to help 

Page 75: Hollywood at Home -- Jane the Virgin star Justin Baldoni’s California oasis -- the actor-director and his wife Emily created a Feng Shui-ed farmhouse in the middle of the city 

Page 87: Second Look -- Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky release tasmanian devils into a sanctuary north of Sydney, Australia 

Page 88: One Last Thing -- Kristin Chenoweth -- the actress stars in Netflix’s rom-com Holidate 

[warholiana]

‘Warhol’ Review: Nothing Like the Real Thing

‘I want to be as famous as the Queen of England,’ Andy Warhol once said.

By Dominic Green April 17, 2020 11:16 am

WARHOL By Blake Gopnik Ecco, 961 pages, $45

‘As genuine as a fingerprint,” said the caption to Andy Warhol’s photo in his high school yearbook. The style of a Warhol screen print is as unique as a fingerprint, but a genuine Warhol was so easily faked that Warhol had assistants do the work for him. Mass production and media smarts made Warhol the most famous of all American artists—not bad going for an artist who, as Blake Gopnik admits in his detailed, enthusiastic and absorbing biography, “never had the innate talent for realistic drawing that even many minor artists have.”

Fame is the right measure of his achievement, but fame was not his only spur. There was money, too, and plenty of drugs, not forgetting elaborate choreographies of gay sex that Warhol, with factory-like efficiency, combined with his photographic hobbies. Today Warhol stands proud in the public’s estimation. The art world revels in its elitism, but a Warhol, as the English put it, does exactly what it says on the tin. Campbell’s Soup, Elizabeth Taylor, Chairman Mao and Marilyn Monroe all look genuinely like themselves, and the fingerprint of Andy Warhol seems, somehow, to be on them all.

“I like to watch,” says Chance the Gardener in the film “Being There,” Hal Ashby’s meditation on the credulity of the rich and powerful. Warhol played the fool as only an intelligent observer can. His early 1960s transformation from intellectual graphic designer to gum-chewing Pop star was the most successful case of dumbing up since Marcel Duchamp’s realization of the secondary value of bathroom fittings.

Warhol’s triumph was a belated commercial victory for the pre-1939 European avant-garde: Critics called early American Pop Art “neo-Dada.” We live in Andy Warhol’s world of endless lurid images, each framed in irony. This is Jeff Koons’s good fortune, if not always ours.

He was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in what Mr. Gopnik calls a “grim little flat” in Pittsburgh’s Soho neighborhood. His parents Andrej, a laborer, and Julia, a cleaner, had immigrated from what was then called Ruthenia and is now eastern Slovakia; Uniates, Slavic Catholics following the Greek rite, they were a minority within Pittsburgh’s “Slav” minority. Andrej was absent for long periods and died from complications of tuberculosis when Warhol was 13. Julia cooked Ruthenian food—in the 1930s, tinned soup was still a luxury—and encouraged Andy and his two older brothers to draw by copying from magazine illustrations.

How did the artist whose “notable achievements,” according to Mr. Gopnik, include rejecting a “signature touch” acquire his monumental blankness? Mr. Gopnik, an art critic (formerly for the Washington Post), wonders if Warhol’s Ruthenian background made his family “hyphenated Americans” with “nothing to put before their hyphen.” Did the Warholian recipe of low emotional affect and highcamp impact emerge as his shield and sword against a homophobic society? Or was it a childhood bout of Sydenham’s chorea, the disease then known as St. Vitus’s Dance? The illness’ immediate effect was that the 11-year-old Warhol watched Disney shorts over and over on a projector in a sickroom whose walls were adorned with shots of movie stars. Longer-term effects included blotchy skin, shaky hands and, Mr. Gopnik suggests, the repetitions of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Mr. Gopnik expertly traces Warhol’s technical and intellectual roots to his studies in painting and illustration at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology: the paintings of Stuart Davis, whose deceptively bland depiction of consumer products made him Warhol’s “one true avatar” in American art; the “hot new art of silk-screen printing”; and the Bauhaus notion that the studio should be a factory and art an “indictment of materialistic forces.”

The beatnik “André” made a virtue of his “comically awkward” sketching technique by turning his lack of traditional “hand” into an impersonal “efficiency,” as adaptable to commercial design as to the avant-garde gallery. In 1949 he took an overnight Greyhound to New York City and launched his “secret weapon,” the “blotted line” lifted from his hero Ben Shahn. A hardworking “bashful elf” with a “cold, calculating heart,” Warhol quickly built a reputation as “a cheaper Ben Shahn,” without Shahn’s “taint of far-left politics.” He drew for Condé Nast’s Glamour magazine and the Girl Scouts’ American Girl, and produced covers for highbrow LPs and books published by the literary imprint New Directions.

By 1960 Warhol had gotten ahead in advertising. He owned a house on the Upper East Side, and his mother was living in the garden apartment. He had repaired his appearance with skin creams, a nose job and a wig. He had worked and networked, and befriended Truman Capote. He had exhibited in small galleries too, but, Mr. Gopnik writes, his work remained known only to “the tiniest circle of uptown gays” and his income as a designer was declining as magazines turned to color photographs. His projects at the time included designing a bookplate for Audrey Hepburn and drawing the feet of minor celebrities.

The Abstract Expressionists had shown there was money in avant-garde art. Contemporaries like Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg were already reworking American icons. Warhol had an adman’s eye for the empty vessels of commercial imagery. “I want to be as famous as the Queen of England,” he told the uptown photographer and socialite Frederick Eberstadt. For the second act of his life, Warhol exchanged Brooks Brothers suits and season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera for jeans and pop radio. He experimented with urinating on his canvases, but inspiration lay closer at hand, in the designer’s world of mass-produced images.

“You’ve got to find something that’s recognizable to almost everybody,” the dealer and decorator Muriel Latow advised. “Something like a can of Campbell’s Soup.” Warhol described the soup-can sequence of 1961 as a “synthesis of nothingness,” but the power of his early images derives from their synthesis of depths and shallows. Isolated and enlarged, their colors inflamed, the commonplaces of commerce assume the scale and resonance of cult icons.

Warhol’s tins, Brillo Boxes and famous faces were, Mr. Gopnik suggests, not just a camp “Dada reply” to the machismo and existential angst of the Abstract Expressionists. Warhol fed the directness of commercial photography through the techniques of tradition, “meticulously hand-painting” his cans. He pretended to “cut all ties to craft and tradition,” but was the latest in the “craft obsessed” line of trompe l’oeil painters, curators of uncanny American reality like John Haberle.

By 1965 his Soup Cans, Marilyns, dollar bills and Jackie Kennedys had won Warhol an entry in Who’s Who—he claimed to descend from the von Warhols of Cleveland—and the keys to the Silver Factory on 47th Street, where he produced art, films and the early shows of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. Warhol, who fantasized that he was the “keeper of a male brothel,” ran a dark kingdom of “heavy drug use, sexual madness and violence.” Applying the theory of the “found object” to the “found person,” he collected “oddballs and freaks,” dubbed them “superstars,” exploited them in tediously obscene films, then ditched them into addiction and early death. In 1968 a thwarted hanger-on, Valerie Solanas, shot him. His life was saved by a doctor who opened his chest and manually massaged his heart.

The reborn Warhol dumped his old accomplices and devoted himself to “Business Art.” In the 1970s, instead of observing and reflecting the surfaces of consumption and celebrity as an outsider, he came to resemble his earlier image of Elizabeth Taylor, the famous person as “perfectly fungible commodity.” His last two decades are a catalog of vacuous screen-printing and joyless corruption, with Warhol proliferating inferior copies of his now-haggard trademarks: Interview magazine, which he founded and which foundered amid celebrity back-rubs; portraits of Chairman Mao and Mick Jagger; groveling to Imelda Marcos and the Shah of Iran; changing his style for “people portraits” of the merely rich; and daubing bodily fluids onto the canvas in a succession of ever-sillier wigs.

“You’re a killer of art, you’re a killer of beauty, and you’re even a killer of laughter,” Willem de Kooning raged at Warhol at a party in the 1960s. Warhol did make several killings. Mr. Gopnik calls them “true, important achievements,” but they now look more important than true. In the early ’60s, Warhol briefly balanced commerce and the avant-garde, photography and paint. Fame turned him into the real thing, a genuine fake. Business Art “reduced all of Warhol’s works to their lowest common denominator as merchandise,” Mr. Gopnik admits. Warhol descended with them, as the court pornographer of celebrity culture. In 1987 he died rich and lonely, at 58, from a heart attack after gall bladder surgery.

Mr. Gopnik compares Warhol’s hunt for lucrative “pet portraits in Kuwait” to Goya’s pursuit of commissions from Bourbon aristocrats, and likens Warhol to Gainsborough, who complained of “the People with their damn’d Faces” and wished he could paint landscapes. But Warhol’s idea of a “landscape,” as Mr. Gopnik indicates with laudable if not impressive detail, was “crotch shots of a porn star.” Placing Warhol with Picasso on “the top peak of Parnassus, beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses” perhaps overrates an artist who couldn’t draw. Warhol’s real peers were the movie stars he loved: larger than life in image, but better at expressing other people’s ideas than contriving their own.

—Mr. Green is the Life & Arts editor of The Spectator (U.S.).

See this review online (behind a paywall) at https://www.wsj.com/articles/warhol-review-nothing-like-the-real-thing-11587136581

[everything-offspring]

Offspring's Kat Stewart: How child's play led to a fabulous career

By Michael Lallo June 21 2017

Kat Stewart is one of our most versatile actors. Her early years explain why.

As a young girl, Kat Stewart would return from school and mimic her British classmates. Sometimes she was a Cockney lass, dropping her H's like Eliza Doolittle. Then she'd switch to an upper class accent, with its bias against vowels. (Notice how a posh Englishwoman blows her nose on a "hndkrchff".)

Stewart spent her first seven years in Bairnsdale, 300 kilometres east of Melbourne. Then her parents took the family on an adventure. Basing themselves in Britain, they explored Europe in a campervan. For a few months, she attended school in London. "Coming from a small country town, it opened my eyes up," says Stewart, who plays Billie Proudman in Ten's hit drama Offspring.

One year later, the family came home. But Stewart's fascination with language persisted. It all seemed like a bit of fun: observing the way others spoke, then imitating them in private. In fact, she was unwittingly training to be an actor. Since her days in the ensemble of Red Stitch, an independent St Kilda theatre, critics have praised her faultless accents. American newsreader, aristocratic Londoner, Aussie battler – she's perfected them all.

In 2008, her star rose with her portrayal of Roberta Williams in Nine's Underbelly. But Offspring made Stewart famous.

On a cold Tuesday in Melbourne, she rehearses her final scenes of the new season. We're in the Union Club Hotel, a 160-year-old pub with a main bar untouched since the early 1970s. To Offspring fans, it's simply "The Union", the location of several pivotal events. Kim (Alicia Gardiner) gave birth on the pool table. In the dining room, Billie married Mick (Eddie Perfect). Today, Nina (Asher Keddie) enjoys a sweet moment with daughter Zoe (Isabella Monaghan).

Stewart stands to side, clutching a flute of soda water with a splash of Coke. (It looks just like champagne on screen.) After a freighted conversation with another character, Billie has a moment of clarity. Her eyes mist over, but no tears are shed.

Describing this in detail would ruin the finale. It's safer to discuss the first episode, with Billie in Melbourne and Mick in London.

"It's tricky, because he's the love of Billie's life," Stewart says. "She's walked over broken glass to be with him. They're leading separate lives. That's a big thing for Billie to deal with."

The week prior, Stewart and I have lunch with two castmates: Keddie and Alexander England, who plays Nina's boyfriend Harry. I fish out Stewart's first Green Guide cover, published nine years ago. "You're just a baby in that photo!" Keddie says.

Afterwards, Stewart reflects on that time, when she co-starred with Shaun Micallef in the SBS satire, Newstopia.

Then Underbelly became a cultural phenomenon. In Victoria, the show was slapped with a suppression order, so as not to prejudice a related murder trial. "It was different for the actors living in Sydney," she recalls. "Up there, they felt the full force of [its success]. It took a while to happen here. In retrospect, it was a real turning point. But it didn't feel that way at the time."

Not least because Stewart isn't one to be swept up in hype. Compared to most of her characters, she is soft-spoken and low-key.

In 2013 she declined to reprise her role as Williams in Fat Tony & Co, which focused on the hunt for Tony Mokbel. Instead, Hollie Andrew took the part. "There wasn't much footage of Roberta at the time; maybe a couple of interviews. Six years later, we knew so much more – how she walked and talked; more of her story.

"I did an interpretation. To play her again, I'd need to include that new information. I felt it should be someone new."

Besides, Stewart had plenty on her plate. In addition to Offspring, she had starred in the Foxtel drama Tangle, then Ten's crime-comedy Mr & Mrs Murder. Guest appearances include Peter Helliar's film It's a Date, and an upcoming episode of True Story with Hamish and Andy. Somehow, she still finds the time for live theatre.

In grade two, her teacher ran a drama session for her class. A spark went off inside the seven-year-old. "It felt right in my bones. I was very shy, but not when I was acting. I never thought it was a career option, though."

Stewart studied arts and marketing at Monash University, then got a sensible job as a publicist for Penguin Books. (Perhaps it's no surprise her publicists say she's a pleasure to work with.) Yet her desire to act remained, and she enrolled in a night course at The National Theatre.

"I was hoping I'd grow out of it," she laughs. "I knew it wasn't a great bet in terms of financial security."

Her hunch proved correct – at least early on. After some decent gigs, she endured "tumbleweeds" for 18 months. "There weren't as many guest roles in those days. You'd do Blue Heelers and Stingers and Neighbours. That was it."

Joining Red Stitch changed everything. As an ensemble actor, she stretched herself in a variety of meaty productions. "I probably care more about what [the other performers] think than anyone else," she says, "because they know my work so well."

Early on she played an abused woman who haemorrhages to death. "That's when I learned that classic thing of not judging your character."

This served her well in Offspring. The series rarely offers up its characters as role models. Nor does it slot them into a "good" or "bad" column. Instead, it makes them interesting. Consider Billie, always throwing herself into a new self-improvement project. Often she makes a hash of things. "And I love that!" Stewart says. "But I also love that she just keeps pressing on. She's got a heart and she'll do anything for the people she loves."

In season two, Billie tried IVF and suffered a miscarriage. Stewart was 38 at the time, married to actor David Whiteley since 2008. "We'd always said, 'One day, we'll have kids'. But that storyline made me think, 'We can't just assume it will happen'." By the end of that season she was pregnant with their son, Archie. Last year she gave birth to Georgia. Not bad for a relationship that wasn't meant to happen.

Stewart had a "no actors" dating policy when the pair met in 2002; both part of Red Stitch's ensemble. It wasn't long before their characters became romantic. "Our first kiss was a pretend one, on stage," she says. "Then I was just a bit strange around him for a couple of years. We didn't get together until 2004."

Last year, Billie began looking after Brody (Shannon Berry), the teen daughter of an estranged friend. Now, Brody has a newborn son. "I love that Billie can explore having children and babies in her life, without actually having her own baby. You don't see that very often.

"Our characters screw up, they hurt each other ... but no one is reactionary or bigoted. Offspring is a really generous show. It celebrates family – not just in the traditional sense, but the family we choose."

WHAT: Offspring WHEN: Ten, Wednesday 8.30pm

Twitter: @Michael_Lallo

SOURCE: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/offsprings-kat-stewart-how-childs-play-led-to-a-fabulous-career-20170616-gwskov.html

[musiccosmosru]

We’ll start with the most obvious thing: there is no Kokomo. Not off the Florida Keys, anyway. Sure, a couple places staked claims, but only after the occurence of the least obvious thing: a has-been pop act, minus their lead singer and creative engine, scoring a #1 hit off the soundtrack to a forgettable film about bartending. “Kokomo” — released 30 years ago this month — was the Beach Boys’ first original Top 20 single in 20 years, and their first chart-topper in 22.

With or without their erstwhile captain Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys never came close to replicating their early success, but no matter: Every time a quizmaster asks what the seven locations are in the song’s chorus, every Gen-X hand in the bar lunges for the pen. “Kokomo” was a peculiar last cultural gasp for everyone involved: not just the performers, but also their collaborators. Together, they formed a coastal coterie, an assemblage of connections both fortuitous and tragic.

The state of the Beach Boys in 1988 was, in a word, shitty. Their last record, 1985’s digitally crispy The Beach Boys, performed middlingly despite contributions from Culture Club, Ringo Starr, and Stevie Wonder. A couple clues to their malaise appear within the record. On the back, there’s a dedication “to the memory of our beloved brother, cousin and friend”; Dennis Wilson, the band’s drummer and only true surfer, had drowned in the water off Marina Del Rey in December of 1983. And on the label, there are three songwriting credits for E. E. Landy.

That would be Dr. Eugene Landy, Brian’s personal therapist, business manager, and professional ghoul. At one point, Wilson’s family had to sell some of his publishing rights in order to afford Landy’s $430,000-a-year fee. Landy’s role as confidant, coupled with Brian’s reluctance to tour, kept him largely away from his bandmates, though they had the right to perform and record as the Beach Boys. And so, when director Roger Donaldson sought the band to pad out the soundtrack to his film Cocktail, they turned the assignment over to their producer, Terry Melcher.

CREDIT: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images

Though Melcher had only been been producing the group for a few years, his relationship with the band was a couple decades old at that point. In the mid-’60s, he and future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston made surf-pop as Bruce & Terry, and then as the Rip Chords. Melcher moved behind the boards, becoming a major architect of the West Coast folk-rock sound. At one of his house parties, he re-introduced Brian Wilson to Van Dyke Parks, who tried to help Wilson through the aborted Smile sessions. Parks continued to provide lyrical and instrumental daubs to Beach Boys tracks in the years afterward. In a twisted return of favor, Dennis introduced Melcher to a guy he first met trashing his house: Charlie Manson.

The aspiring megalomaniac also aspired to be a songwriter, and both Dennis and Melcher were impressed with his embryonic sketches. But Manson’s psychotic behavior scotched his chance at a record deal; incensed, he dispatched some of his followers to Melcher’s old house, where they murdered five people, including the actress Sharon Tate. The Manson Family’s spree killings blew a hole in the psyche of America’s counterculture, and sent Melcher into something of a tailspin. He took on fewer projects, eventually signing on to produce a couple television shows for his mother, the actress and singer Doris Day. By the mid-’80s, he was back in the Beach Boys’ orbit. When he was tabbed to find a song for Cocktail, he reached out to an old friend: John Phillips of the Mamas And The Papas, whose hit “California Dreamin’” the Beach Boys had recently covered.

Phillips had spent the decade juggling different Mamas And Papas lineups. He and Denny Doherty were the only returning members; Cass Elliot died in 1974, and Michelle Phillips divorced John in 1970. Their roles were filled by former Spanky & Our Gang leader Elaine McFarlane and Phillips’ daughter Mackenzie, respectively. The group toured and did the requisite casino residencies, but legit success was hard to come by. (The entire time, according to Mackenzie Phillips, she and her father were involved in what was termed an “incestuous relationship.” She made the accusation in her 2009 memoir, as well as on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Immediately afterward, various relatives and family friends issued statements attesting to their belief or disbelief in her account.) By 1986, John was demoing tracks with Scott McKenzie, best known for his Phillips-written 1967 smash “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair).” One of those tracks was “Kokomo.”

You can hear Phillips’ version on the 2010 collection Many Mamas, Many Papas. (The set also contains the racist ditty “Chinaman,” as well as a song called, simply, “Yachts.”) His “Kokomo” is stately and wistful. Other than Florida, Kokomo is the only place mentioned, making the composition a sort of paean to a lost paradise of the mind. It’s been suggested that he was thinking of Mustique, an island in the Grenadines purchased in the ‘50s by Phillips’ friend, the British aristocrat Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner. Tennant nearly went broke maintaining the damn thing, eventually transferring ownership to the islands’ wealthy homeowners (a group which has, at one time or another, included Bryan Adams, David Bowie, and Mick Jagger). Regardless of origin, the “Kokomo” demo was missing a chorus. And that’s where Mike Love enters.

If Brian Wilson was like Paul McCartney, pushing his bandmates to precisely render his sonic fancies, Mike Love was like … well, Paul McCartney, desperately trying to keep all the stakeholders happy and productive. He’s rarely given his due as a songwriter: He sued Brian in 1992 more or less for this reason, eventually winning co-writing credit for 35 Beach Boys tunes. The occasional “Good Vibrations” aside (a lyric written with McKenzie’s “San Francisco” in mind), his gift is punch-ups: tweaking phrases and adding earworms. He scrapped Phillips’ past tense. It sounded like regret, which is not Love’s bag. All he’s ever wanted to do is provide escape. So when it came time to write the chorus, Love sang Melcher a map.

The result was ruthlessly catchy: a combination of dreaminess and insistence, like a tank disguised as a cloud. The “Aruba, Jamaica” bit was bumped to the beginning for maximum effect; Love managed to work in a reference to cocktails, and possibly (in the line “that Montserrat mystique”) a reference to Baron Tennant’s island folly. Van Dyke Parks parachuted in to arrange the steel pans and play accordion, despite (allegedly) being stiffed by Love on plane fare. Studio saxophonist Joel Peskin (whose professional relationship with the Boys stretched back to 1979’s L.A.) contributed the oddly poignant solo. One name was notably absent: Brian was unable to attend the sessions, possibly due to his doctor’s interference. When he first heard the song on the radio, he didn’t even recognize it as a Beach Boys tune. His solo record had just dropped — deliciously, the opening lines are “I was sittin’ in a crummy movie/With my hands on my chin.”

Released 7/18/88 in advance of Cocktail — with Little Richard’s soundtrack closer “Tutti Frutti” as the B-side — “Kokomo” didn’t get any traction. It was only after moviegoers heard the tune scoring Tom Cruise’s move from New York to Jamaica that it caught on. Despite critical indifference (the movie is Cruise’s worst film Rotten Tomatoes) both Cocktail and “Kokomo” became #1 hits: the former for two weeks, the latter for one. In November, “Kokomo” supplanted Phil Collins’ “Groovy Kind Of Love” at the summit. (Collins, however, got the last laugh when “Two Hearts” beat “Kokomo” for Best Original Song at the 46th annual Golden Globes.)

A couple weeks after “Kokomo” hit #1, the Beach Boys (with Brian) guest-starred in an episode of the sitcom Full House. The climax of “Beach Boys Bingo” features the Tanner clan rockin’ out to a stadium performance of “Kokomo,” then climbing onstage to do “Barbara Ann.” The whole thing was old hat for Full House star John Stamos, who had been the Beach Boys’ ancillary percussionist for a few years by then. (He played steel drums in the “Kokomo” video, but not on the record.) If you watch the scene carefully, you’ll see Brian sporting a “Californians For Dukakis” shirt; Mike, infamously, is a Trump supporter and a contributor to Tipper Gore’s pro-censorship Parent’s Music Resource Center.

Having scored an improbable hit, the Beach Boys pivoted to movie soundtracks for a time. They landed “Still Cruisin’” in Lethal Weapon 2 and the Melcher-written title track for Problem Child; neither went anywhere, and the band returned to the state-fair circuit. “Kokomo” was, it turns out, irreplicable. Its lightweight arrangement and hermetic vibe have proven resistant to imitators: You won’t find many notable covers beyond, say, the Muppets. Its real legacy was in lending its name to a host of bars and resorts across the Caribbean Sea. The Orlando Sentinel found a few in a December ’88 investigation, with Key Largo’s Chamber of Commerce noting that “[w]e are flooded with calls, absolutely flooded. We had six calls on the answering machine this morning and several calls during the day.” Sandals renamed their Montego Bay resort “Kokomo Island” for a while, which must have been a nice two-for-one for the song’s fans.

In time, though, “Kokomo” fever faded, and the men responsible for it are starting to pass on. Carl Wilson died in 1998, John Phillips in 2001, Terry Melcher in 2004, Scott McKenzie in 2012. Mike Love, who has long enjoyed the exclusive rights to tour under the Beach Boys name, is the sole living writer. Last fall, he released a double album, with the second half devoted to re-recordings of Beach Boys classics. “Kokomo” is nowhere to be found. Presumably, he decided not to mess with perfection.

CREDIT: Ron Galella/WireImage

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The post “Kokomo” Is 30: The Strange Backstory To The Beach Boys’ Last Cultural Gasp appeared first on MusicCosmoS.

[kalimuses]

     Mickey wasn’t a good father. Being softer than Terrance Milkovich didn’t make him even halfway to decent, it just made him marginally better and still miles away from good. He’d scarcely held his son since his birth, barely brought himself to truly look at him. Every time he did, he remembered the feeling of a pistol-butt, belting the skin of his face wide open until he was his consciousness came in and out like an indecisive pet, the memory would play out torturously until the shot rung out in his head and Ian Gallagher was dead all over again. He looked at the women on either side of him with varying levels of resentment. Svetlana, his wife and warden turned tentative comrade and Brandi, who’d shamelessly used the baby in her arms for a chance at survival. He wanted to hate her for it, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. Svetlana had negotiated his position onto this boat, who she had bribed, fucked or maimed he didn’t know but he supposed he should be grateful. He knew she did it out of necessity rather than any love she bore for him; after all, she knew her husband's inclinations and his uselessness as a father. His survival meant was a cash sum figure to her, knowing that as long as Mickey was living, he would feel compelled to provide.

Before this ship, before any of this fucking mess, he’d been resigned to live a strangers life. To force himself to love a woman as god and his father intended. He hadn’t meant to stray. But Apollo reawakened something that Mikhalio had been missing for the past twenty-six months; his desire. Not just for flesh or love, but life and everything that had come with it. The Ship of Dreams made good on it’s promise before it had succumed to the nightmare he should’ve been wary enough to anticipate. He’d begged him to go, to care for his son and take the chance he’d been offered. To look in on Bambi if he could. Though he hadn’t said anything outright, his apprehension of his wife’s maternal instinct was clear as day. Mickey could still feel the roaming of his hands, the fog on the glass of some aristocrats car that would surely be horrified if they knew the buggery that had taken part inside its doors. Should Mickey live, it would be a lifetime of lies with a son he couldn’t stomach and a wife who could scarcely tolerate him.

He looked at the women once more, daring only a half glance at the blonde boy who shielded his face from the cold in the fur coat his mother wore- when had she stolen that? He almost smiled. The life boat jolted aggressively and the men yelled to steady it and he found himself scanning the faces of the resigned passengers until he landed on the one he searched for. Apollo’s eyes were lit up in the low lights the boat provided and he offered Mickey a watery smile. A soft goodbye that set a fire under him as he stood abruptly, ignoring Svetlana’s clawing hand. Mickey was a criminal, an outlaw, a wanted man. She would have an easier life on shore without him, free to marry a man of merit that she would surely swindle. He caught her agitated fingers and met her enraged eyes with a softer expression than any his time with her had produced. “Write to my fathers lawyer. He’ll help you with a life insurance forgery.” He didn’t love her, he never would. But it would help, though not nearly as much as the jewellery stuffed pockets he noted. He could hear Apollo’s voice, loud and agitated. She grabbed for him again but he shifted, gaging the jump for only a second, ignoring fear in his throat at the height before pushing his weight off over the side.

He barely managed to pull himself onboard, but the moment he did his feet took of running. His breaths were ragged, thick with exhaustion and emotion as he bolted for the upper level. Apollo was already on the steps, fleeing down towards him. They collided, half enraged and devastatingly in love. Mickey couldn’t tell if the man meant to strike him or kiss him. “You’re so stupid! why’d you do that, huh?!” Apollo declared loudly, one of his hands shoving Mick back a pace before dragging him back against him as the Milkovich’s hands grabbed his shirt with desperate fists. “You’re so stupid Mickey!” His voice was thick and trembling.

All Mickey could think was how glad he was to see him again. No matter what happened, no matter what consequences came with it, this was the best choice he’d ever made. “Why’d you do that? Why?” He demanded again, tears in his eyes as Mickey ignored the way his shoulders were being shaken and took his face between his hands. A boy who loves boys was a dead boy unless he kept his mouth shut. But they were on a sinking ship, in the middle of a freezing ocean. He was surrounded by future dead boys and Terrance Milkovich couldn’t touch him now. Mickey leaned forwards, fear clawing at his throat as he did something he would have previously been to afraid to even fantasize about doing. He kissed the man, long and hard with a reckless abandon. Who cares who saw, who cares who said a damn thing. If these were their final hours, what difference did it make?

“You jump, I jump, bitch.” He mumbled against the others lips, his own eyes wet without permission. “Or don’t you remember, huh?” Apollo pulled back, staring at him dubiously while Mickey’s shaking hands remained on his face, holding on to him like his life depended on it. “Right?” He asked, as the other pulled him closer still.

“Right.” He responded in disbelief, before pressing another angry kiss against his stupid love’s lips.