#Guitar Lessons in Indianapolis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

odderevents · 2 years ago

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I have had a thought. Steve secretly knowing how to play the piano bc he learned as a kid and had to stop bc his dad's an asshole is lovely. I've seen this floating around a few times and I love it. Eddie catching him playing the piano and being so fucking in love with him will never not be perfect.

But.

Consider

Steve playing the Harp.

It's definitely a rich kid instrument. Big ass fucking impractical instrument. Absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to. Hands playing piano is great. But have you ever seen an accomplished harpist? It makes you think impure thoughts about what those fingers can do.

So. Steve secretly knowing how to play the harp

Maybe his mom used to play it, so there's a big harp (the ones with the columns and super intricate base board, not celtic) that's just gathering dust in the basement. Steve started piano lessons, loved learning how to pull music out of an inert object. But his dad decides it's to effeminate, makes him stop. And sure, a harp is a different beast to a piano. But you've still got cords, and Steve's got a pretty decent ear, and he can barely remember seeing his mom play. So one day when he has the house to himself, which isn't an unusual occurrence at this point, he tries it out. And he's admittedly pretty shit at it, but so was he at piano when he started. Only difference is he has no teacher.

So maybe Steve discreetly finds a way to acquire a beginner's practice instructional book for harp. And works on it when he needs to get his brain away from things.

He's even more careful with it than he is with any dirty mags he might later acquire. He knows that worse, much worse than piano, harp is not a masculine instrument and under no circumstances should his father find out about his affinity for it.

It's still his go to when he can't sleep even years later, pulling out the now old and battered booklet of sheet music and exercises. Especially once the upside down bullshit starts. It's soothing and mindless at this point.

The harp that was much too big when he first started with it is now just the right size, it's weight against his shoulder comforting. He can close his eyes and his fingers naturally find where to land and pluck.

Even when he becomes friends with Robbin and then Eddie, both musicians who he knows wouldn't give a damn about him playing a woman's instrument, he can't bring himself to mention it. If he did, they would want to hear him play and he's self-conscious about being self-taught. Both of them play well, they play with other people and people come to listen. He doesn't consider himself a "real" musician. It's just something he does to keep his hands and brain busy on nights where the sheets feel like they're strangling him and the dark reminds him too much of when he can't see not because it's night but because something's hit him in the head again and he can't tell apart the sound of his heartbeat from something pounding through his walls.

So he goes to the basement. Finds his stool. Removes the dust cover. Goes through the meditative motions of tuning it by ear, because that's how he's always done it. And then he plays until the tips of his fingers feel numb. Somehow, he always comes out of it peaceful enough to pass out on the couch in the basement for a couple more hours.

Steve is so used to keeping it a secret he doesn't even think about it when he starts dating Eddie. It's just a thing that's always only been his, and most importantly, it's been vital to keep it that way for so long it's the natural state of things for Steve at this point. It doesn't ever come up. When Steve gets nightmares when he's sleeping with Eddie all he has to do is curl into his boyfriend's chest and feel the warm heartbeat that's not his own to settle back into himself.

The problem arises on a night when Eddie was supposed to stay with Steve but he got held up in Indianapolis when getting a new amp for his guitar. He would come back to Steve but it would be late in the night. Steve has been keeping himself busy all day so he passes out in the early evening on the couch in front of a shitty sitcom he put on to try to distract himself from the empty house.

Nightmares find him, which isn't terribly unusual, but he doesn't have his usual method of coping so he resorts back to his previous habit.

Eddie walks in bone tired after many hours of driving to and from Indianapolis, waiting while the clerk figured out they didn't have the amp he'd been assured over the phone would be available for pickup today, waiting some more while they had the amp driven from a sister shop an hour away because no way was he driving back and forth again to Indianapolis on another day. So yeah. Eddie is beat. All he wants is to dive head first into his boyfriend's impeccable pecs.

He doesn't find Steve waiting with a welcome kiss like he usually would when he walks in. Instead he's greeted with a hauntingly beautiful rendition of the melody of Master of Puppets in a way he's never heard before.

He drops his stuff in the entry hall and goes down to the basement where the music is coming from, curious to see where Steve might have found the recording. Eddie doesn't quite know what to do with himself when he finally lays eyes on Steve, with dried tear stains on his cheeks and his eyes closed as his fingers pluck and strum without hesitation. He's rooted to the spot as he watches Steve work his favorite song in a new and completely heartrending way. He hasn't been able to listen to it since he played it in the upside down. It always brings up the bitter blood tang of the air and the hair raising shrieks of the bats. But this is somehow different, it's soft and melodious but it's still got the same bones.

Eddie feels tears on his own cheeks. He's missed this song goddammit. And he couldn't be happier that it's Steve that's given it back to him

Queue tears and fear and confessions and comfort. Somehow much later in the future there's inexplicably a harp in some of the corroded coffin tracks. And it shouldn't work but it does

#steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #steve harrington plays an instrument #steve harrington plays the harp #this ran away from me #it was supposed to be a random idea #sorry if it's disjointed #it's midnight and the idea was not going to let me rest #I'll probably come try to clean it up at some point #i dont even want to imagine the typos #i hate writing on mobile #but once again brain latched on the the idea like a chewtoy and didn't want to give it back #so you unwitting internet denizen are now graced with the aforementioned mess

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hauntedhowlett-writes · 2 years ago

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Title: your name like a prayer

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 4,899

Chapters: 1/1

Read on AO3 | Join my tag list

Summary:

The list of mistakes Eddie Munson has made in his life is not short, but he’s pretty sure “calling out your best friends name while fucking your girlfriend” has jumped straight to the top of the list.

Additional tags/warnings: explicit sexual content, emotional infidelity (but not between Eddie/reader), alcohol use, dirty talk, pet names, best friends to lovers, drunk confessions, p in v, oral (f receiving), dominant eddie. Let me know if any are missing!

“Are you fucking kidding me, Eddie?!” Cheryl, understandably, shrieks as she throws articles of his clothing at him, rage burning in her eyes. “How long?!”

Eddie ducks, dodging a balled up t-shirt. “Cheryl, babe, it’s nothing! Come on, can’t we talk about this?”

“Talk about what, Edward? That you’re fucking that stupid bitch behind my back?!”

“Don’t call her a stupid bitch, and I’m not fucking her. I’ve never even kissed her!” He shouts back. Another shirt flies towards his face and he snatches it out of the air.

“Get out! Get out! I’m not fucking doing this again, I’m so sick of coming second to her,” Cheryl screams, dumping the rest of the drawer’s, his drawer, contents on the floor in a heap. “Grab a trash bag from the kitchen and get all your shit out of here with you.”

Eddie’s mouth drops open. “Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

“That’s not my fucking problem, now is it, Eddie?” Her eyes narrow. “You have five minutes to get your shit and get out of my life. I’m so fucking done with you.”

Wisely keeping his mouth shut for once, he rummages around the wreckage on the floor of Cheryl’s apartment for something to wear, pulling off the condom that is clearly not finishing its intended use, tugging on boxers, shirt, and jeans before following her instruction of grabbing a trash bag and stuffing the rest of his earthly belongings inside. He tosses the bag out the door as he walks back into the room he shared with Cheryl, avoiding her angry gaze and crossed arms as he grabs his guitar and amp.

When he’s got the rest of his things outside, piled up at his feet, Cheryl slams the door behind him, the flip of the lock echoing in the empty hallway. With a sigh, Eddie begins lugging everything down to his van.

Loaded up and with nowhere to go, he rests his head on the steering wheel and squeezes his eyes shut, a groan of frustration leaving him.

How could he be so stupid ? Five years of pushing his feelings for you down, down, down while he tried to move on with Cheryl, a woman he’d met out at a bar outside of Hawkins that he played at sometimes for a change of scenery, and he ruined it in less than two seconds. One slip of the tongue while he buried his cock in a woman that wasn’t you, could never be you, but he was doing just fine with, and now he’s homeless, girlfriendless, and worst of all, still you-less.

He blames the phone call he’d had with you earlier that day. You’d been choking back tears as you explained that your boyfriend, whom you’d been dating since high school and had decided to stay with as you went away to college, had broken up with you, even going so far as to let you know that he’d been cheating on you for at least a year. And while he shamefully celebrated the fact that you were finally free of that asshole, he calmed you down and told you that everything would be alright, and did you want him to come out to Indianapolis and teach that limp dick asshole a lesson?

The offer had gotten a laugh out of you, his favorite sound since freshman year of high school when he was paired with you on a biology project and he’s been a goner ever since. You’d hung up the phone, telling him you would be okay, that he didn’t have to bust any heads on your behalf, but that you’d call him later.

He turns the van on, Iron Maiden blasting through the speakers as he peels out of the parking lot of the complex, heading towards the Hideout. It’s only just past 9 p.m., which gives him plenty of time to drink his stupidity away.

____

You’re still awake, having driven back to Hawkins in an emotional frenzy after your boyfriend (ex-boyfriend, you think bitterly), and you’re sitting on your childhood bed, trying to focus on the book you’re reading instead of letting your thoughts run back to Chase telling you he didn’t want to be together anymore. Both of your parents are working night shifts, your dad at the factory and your mom at the hospital, so you won’t be seeing them until the morning. You’re certain they’ll have a thousand questions about why you’re in Hawkins in the middle of a school week, so you’re grateful for the opportunity to sit in silence and try to wrap your mind around everything that’s happened.

More importantly, you’re trying not to let your mind wander to how your first instinct was to call Eddie. It always was. Ever since freshman year, when you’d been paired together in biology and you got to know the boy behind the metal music and chain accessories, and how that same boy that people seemed so spooked by would just spend an entire class period trying to make you laugh by doing impressions of your teacher when she wasn’t paying attention.

And how, deep down, you’d always wished Eddie had been the one to ask you to the homecoming dance. That it had been Eddie that took you out to dates at the movie theater, or to the roller rink. That it had been Eddie you had lost your virginity with, fumbling in the dark together until you’d figured it out. Or that it had been Eddie that came with you to college in Indianapolis, sitting with you as you studied for exams while he played his guitar.

But Eddie had never given you any sort of indication that he had seen you as more than a friend, so all those things had happened with Chase instead.

Just after 12 a.m., you hear a loud thump, followed by a deep groan outside your bedroom window. You inch towards your window to peek out through the curtains, squinting into the darkness. At first, you don’t notice anything out of the ordinary, until a lump moves in the grass below.

“God damnit, sonovabitch,” An all too familiar voice curses. Eddie flops over onto his back, arms circling one of his knees as he hisses in pain.

You throw the lock on the window, pulling it open in a hurry and leaning out to whisper yell, “Eddie?! What are you doing here?!”

Eddie scrambles to his feet, grass stuck in his hair, as he stares at you in disbelief. He’s pretty certain he’s dreaming - you’re not supposed to be in Hawkins. You’re eighty miles away, at college, with your pretty boyfr-

Oh shit, Eddie thinks. No, no there is no pretty boyfriend anymore. That’s right! You’d called him and told him about Chase breaking up with you! His lips spread into a grin as he remembers.

“Hey, princess,” he slurs with the confidence only a drunk man can possess. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“It’s my parent’s house, Eddie,” you reply. He saunters up to the windowsill, pressing his hands into the aged wood and hoisting himself through the window, landing in a graceless heap at your feet. “And you’re so lucky they’re not home right now, with all this noise you’re making!”

He giggles from his spot on the floor, staring up at you in the dim light of your room. God, you’re so pretty. He’s thought so since the first moment he saw you. But he was too chicken to say anything to you.

“Did you say something?” You ask, staring down at his dopey expression. You could have sworn he whispered something like soooo pretty. When he doesn’t respond, you try again. “What are you even doing here, why aren’t you at home with Cheryl?” It pains you to mention Eddie’s girlfriend. She was a nice enough girl, but you always got the feeling she didn’t like you very much. Any time she’d show up when Eddie was on the phone with you, he was quick to hang up with little explanation and hardly a goodbye.

“I…I uh…I fucked that up,” he says, slowly standing, unsteady on his feet.

“Are you…drunk, right now?” You ask. He nods, holding his hand up in a gesture meant to me just a little , thumb and index finger held closely together. “What do you mean you fucked that up? I thought things were going good between you guys.”

“Things were okaaaaay,” he says, drawing out the last word. He sits on the edge of your bed, head hanging low as he leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “She kicked me out.”

“Oh, Eddie…,” you say, uncertain how to continue. It must have been really bad for her to throw him out in the middle of the night. “Let me go get you a glass of water, okay?”

You leave without waiting for his reply, walking quickly to the kitchen and filling a glass at the sink. You take the moment alone to wrap your head around what little he’s told you so far, but the only thing that has your attention is that damned crush sparking back to life.

When you walk back into your room, Eddie’s laying back on your bed, arms over his eyes. You nudge his shoulder, and he sits up slowly before taking the glass from you, fingers brushing yours and making your heart race.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” You ask quietly. He chugs the water down in a few large gulps, swiping the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth when he’s done before leaning over to place the empty glass on your nightstand.

Eddie thinks about his options here, but as his eyes scan your face, taking in the concerned furrow between your brow, and your lip pinched between your teeth, he can only think of one thing to say.

“Your name,” he murmurs. You tilt your head, confused by his response. “I said your name.”

“Well, I mean, I guess I always knew Cheryl didn’t like me very much, though I never really understood why,” you reply. Guilt presses heavy on your shoulders as you think that maybe, somehow, you’ve caused this breakup between them.

“No,” Eddie whispers. His squeezes his eyes shut tight, blowing out a deep breath. “I said your name…while we were fucking.”

“Wh-what?”

Eyes still shut, Eddie continues. “I had her on her knees, hands up on the headboard, pounding into her, but the whole time I just kept thinking about you. Except, if it had been you, I damn sure wouldn’t have you facing away from me.” He lets out a rueful little laugh. “But I guess I just got carried away, couldn’t keep it in me any longer, and your name just…slipped out.”

You’re frozen in shock. Your brain is trying to comprehend the words coming from your best friend.

“I don’t understand, Eddie,” you whisper.

He groans. “Forget I said anything, let’s just go to sleep.”

You want to press the issue. You want to demand he tell you what he means by imagining you. In the years that you’ve been friends, he’s never given any sort of sign that he saw you as anything but. And you’d looked for them, hoping that maybe the goofy metal head you’d fallen for felt the same way.

As you stand there, battling with your thoughts and navigating the aftermath of the bomb he’d dropped onto your friendship, Eddie’s breathing goes deep and even with sleep. With a sigh, you tug off his boots, dropping them to the floor. You consider taking his pants off so that he doesn’t have to sleep in jeans, but decide not to. His mild discomfort is petty revenge for upending your world with one sentence.

You’re already in your own pajamas, a pair of cotton sleep shorts and a faded Hawkins High School gym t-shirt that’s more snug than it used to be but no less comfortable. You take a trip back to the kitchen to refill his water glass and grab some pain reliever, setting both on the beside table when you're back in your room. You flick the light off before grabbing the blanket from the end of your bed and draping it over the both of you as you settle into bed beside him, keeping as much distance between your bodies as you can.

You shut your eyes, but despite your exhaustion from an emotional day, your brain is wide awake and your body is hyper aware of Eddie beside you. With another sigh, you roll to your side, facing away from Eddie as you will yourself into a fitful sleep.

___

Eddie wakes to a fuzzy head and a mouth as dry as a desert. He works one eye open, gaze landing on a glass of water sitting enticingly on a nightstand he doesn’t recognize but also doesn’t question as he reaches out for the blessing that’s been left for him.

Propped on his elbow, he chugs the entire glass down, a bit of the water seeping out the corner of his mouth in his haste. His eyes are adjusting to the darkness and he sees two pills on the nightstand as well, taking the risk of popping them with his last sip of water.

Satisfied that he’s taken care of his throat and his head, he lays back down. He goes to turn over on his side, to throw his arm over Cheryl–

Wait. No. Not Cheryl. Because Cheyl kicked him out…and then he went to The Hideout…before stumbling his way to–

His eyes go wide as he turns just his head to take in the body occupying the bed with him. His mouth goes dry for an entirely different reason as he takes in your hair splayed over your pillow, your lips parted and relaxed, your eyelashes fanned across your cheeks.

He starts to panic. What has he done? He tries desperately to think back to what he may have said to you and he begs the universe to give him a sign that he hasn’t destroyed the one friendship he couldn’t survive losing.

Like an answer to a prayer, your eyes flutter open. For a brief moment, you look confused, and Eddie is about to tell you to go back to sleep and that this is all a dream before making a daring escape out the window. But your eyes go soft, and a little smile tilts the corners of your mouth as you look at him, and Eddie feels trapped in that look.

“Eddie,” you whisper. Your hand shuffles out from under the covers, warm from sleep as you place your palm against his cheek. He hardly breathes, not daring to break whatever spell you’ve got him under. You shimmy forward, and Eddie feels your cold feet collide with his denim covered shins. Another shimmy of your shoulders, and you’re close enough that he can make out every shade he can see in your pretty eyes as you stare at him.

Those eyes shift down to his lips, and then flutter closed as you lean in to press a gentle kiss to them. Eddie holds himself as still as possible, eyes wide open. This has to be a dream. Or he’s dead outside The Hideout like Uncle Wayne always warned him he’d be ‘hanging out with that crowd’.

When you pull away, eyebrows pinched together with worry, an apology that he knows is about to fall out of those pretty pink lips, he finally moves. He wraps a hand around the back of your neck and slams his lips back to right where they belong.

____

When Eddie didn’t kiss you back, you were worried that you’d made a horrible mistake. Even with his confession the night before, maybe he didn’t remember telling you all of that. Maybe you’ve just blindsided him, essentially assaulted your best friend–

Calloused fingers wrap around the back of your neck and pull you forward, his slightly chapped lips pressing tightly against yours and establishing dominance as they slide against yours. You let out a surprised sound, your mouth opening just slightly beneath his but giving him all the room to snake his tongue against yours. That surprised noise quickly melts into a moan that he swallows up greedily.

“Christ. Christ . I’m pretty sure I’m dead,” Eddie mutters when he pulls back for breath. You don’t get a chance to reply before he’s back, pressing kisses to your neck and nipping at the sensitive skin with his teeth. “You taste even better than I thought you would,” he groans against your shoulder.

“B-Been thinking about that a lot, Munson?” You ask, voice breathy, unrecognizable to your ears. He lifts himself off of you, propped up on an elbow to look into your face as he replies, “Only every day since the first time I laid eyes on you, princess.”

The words sound so sincere and heartfelt, but you swallow nervously. “Why didn’t you say anything? All these years?”

“Wasn’t my time,” he says, voice sad. His fingers trace along your jaw, almost reverently. “Wasn’t good enough for you then, damn sure not good enough for you now.”

Those words of self-doubt wrap around your heart and squeeze. You’re angry for the boy who thought this so many years ago, angrier for the man hovering above you uncertainly. You push at his shoulder, guiding him down to his back as you throw a leg over his waist to straddle him. Seated on his hips, metal chains digging into the inside of your thighs, you level him with a glare.

“Now you listen here, Edward Munson, and you listen well.” His eyes widen in surprise. “You are the best man that I have ever met. You are sweet and funny and kind, and maybe a little bit of a weirdo, but you’ve always been my weirdo.”

“And you know what? Maybe we both just needed time to get our heads out of our asses. And that’s okay. But we’re here now and I’m not going to let you talk something between us into a grave before it even gets a chance to live. You hear me?” Your chest is heaving as you stare down at him. Your skin feels flushed and you’re suddenly all too aware of your position, your center pressed to his belt buckle and his hands wrapped tightly around your thighs, fingers dipping past the hem of your sleep shorts.

“Crystal clear,” he replies. All at once, like a switch has been flipped, his features turn sultry. Brown eyes staring at you through half-lowered lids, his tongue slipping out to wet his lips as those fingers inch just a little bit higher. “Was that all?”

You’re about to protest when he shifts his hips, throwing you off balance and onto your back. He slips his body between your open legs, kneeling between them so that his thighs press against the back of yours. His hands reach for yours, pressing them above your head and he holds you there, his face so close that his lips brush against yours when he speaks.

“Now, that was a real nice speech, princess, and I sure do appreciate it, but I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for here. This is what we’re going to do - I’m going to pull these sorry excuse for shorts off and get my face buried so deep in that pretty pussy I know you’re hiding from me that you’re going to have to send a rescue mission after me. Then, once I’ve got you floating in the clouds from an orgasm or two, I’ll slide my cock riiiight where it belongs.” Your mouth drops open in shock. Gone is your sweet best friend and apparently his sex god body double has joined the party. “And you’re going to keep your hands right here the whole time, or I stop. Now, do you hear me?”

“Jesus Christ,” you whisper in awe. He chuckles.

“Nope, wrong answer. I said, did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Your brow furrows. “Uh…yes, sir?”

His face lights up, and he hums his approval. His hands leave yours and wrap into the waistband of your shorts and panties, tugging them both down and off your legs and leaving you suddenly naked from the waist down. You try to press your legs together out of instinct, but his hands force your knees apart as he makes a disapproving noise.

“Now, now. I need room to work here,” he jokes. You roll your eyes. Eddie’s eyebrows rise in response and his hand moves, suddenly delivering a sharp swat to your clit. It’s shocking, your back bows up from the bed in surprise and a moan drops from your mouth before you can even think twice.

“Oh my god,” you hiss. Before you even recover, Eddie’s flattened himself against the bed, his mouth hovering over your core. You can feel the heat of him there, and you squeeze your eyes shut. “You don’t have to–”

“I’m gonna stop you right there. There’s no way you’re about to tell me I don’t have to devour this pussy like its my last meal.” He wraps his arms around your thighs, shoulders holding your legs spread as his hands pin you down right by your hips. “Now, eyes on me.”

You force your eyes open, meeting his lust blown brown eyes as his tongue drags through your hot center. You’re lost to the sensation of his tongue swirling and swiping through your folds, dipping into your entrance, the feel of his lips wrapping around your swollen clit as he sucks gently. You squirm beneath him, unable to get away from the onslaught of attention, your hands gripping painfully into the pillow beneath your head so that you don’t disobey his earlier command to keep them up.

It doesn’t take much for him to drive you crazy with the need for release. You’re gasping for air, moving your hips only as much as he will allow, and you feel like a wire that’s ready to snap from too much pressure. As if sensing this, Eddie pulls back slightly, the pressure of his mouth easing slightly. You whine in dismay as your orgasm floats away from you.

“Don’t worry, I know what you need,” Eddie murmurs, voice rough. He swipes the fingers of one hand through the slickness he’s created. “Christ, you’re so wet.”

One finger dips inside of your heat, deep enough that you can feel the cold bite of a metal ring against your hot flesh. He curls it as he drags it back out, and your back arches at the delicious pressure. When he repeats the action, he’s slipped another finger in. He continues his torture, the slow slide of his fingers in and out of you as you moan and whine.

Eddie leans up, never faulting in his movement, and presses a messy kiss to your mouth. His tongue slides against yours and he bites down on your lip in time with a hard thrust of his hand, making you gasp. He pulls back just slightly, only enough to look into your lust blown eyes and give you a shit eating grin.

“That feel good? Can you come for me just like this, or do you need a little more?” He asks. His thumb rubs circles against your clit and you moan.

“Eddie, wanna touch you, please,” you beg breathlessly. All he gives you is one short nod, but its enough to get you to wrap your arms around him, nails digging into shirt as he picks up the pace of his fingers. “Just like that.”

He groans, head dropping down to pepper your neck with kisses and bites. He’s winding you so tight you want to scream. With a hard press of his thumb and a quick drag of his fingers, you finally crash with a shout of his name. You can feel the smile he presses to your skin as he works you through your release.

“I gotta say, that’s been one of my fantasies for a long, long time,” Eddie says as he pulls his hand up between your bodies, pressing the tips of his fingers against your mouth. Your tongue darts out to lick his fingers, the salty taste of you blooming against your taste buds. “Fuck,” he bites, teeth gritted as he watches.

He pulls back, kneeling between your legs again. He tugs your shirt up and off, tossing it with your discarded shorts. He pulls his wallet out of his pocket, plucking out a familiar foil packet that he places on the blanket. His hands deftly undo his belt, and he flops gracelessly to his back in order to shove his jeans off.

As he returns to his position between your legs, you giggle nervously. You’re not a virgin, haven’t been for a few years, but your only experience is with Chase, whereas Eddie clearly has more notches in his belt. And you’re not judging him for that, far from it, but you’re feeling a bit…inadequate as you watch him rip his shirt over his head and toss it to the floor.

“What’s with the sour face? You wanna stop? Is this too much?” Eddie asks, his palms pressing comfortingly to your shins. You shake your head. “Then what’s wrong, baby? Talk to me.”

You struggle to find the words. “I feel like…you’ve got all this experience? And you’re just going to find me…boring.”

“Just having you under me blows every other experience out of the water. I swear to you, the only thing I’m thinking about right now is what a lucky son of a bitch I am,” he says, voice serious. “Besides, I’ll give you all the experience you need, don’t you worry.”

That makes you laugh, the tension seeping from your muscles. Eddie flashes you a grin before opening the condom and sliding the latex over his length. Your eyes drink him in greedily, sliding over the tightly packed muscle, the tattoos that stand out against his pale skin, the dusting of hair over his chest. You bite your lip as you focus on his hands as they pump against his impressive cock.

“See something you like?” He asks, voice cocky.

“See something I’d like in me,” you quip back. His mouth drops open in surprise and then he’s pressing against you, his chest to yours. You can feel the heat of him right against your core, but he doesn’t move to enter you just yet. Instead, he places his hand gently against your throat, his thumb tilting your chin up so that he can press a kiss against your lips.

You chase his mouth as he pulls away, but that hand at your throat presses you down against the mattress. His takes himself in his other hand, rubbing the head of his cock through your wetness before beginning a slow press inside. Your hands grip his forearm as he moves so slowly, giving you time to adjust to the pressure. It feels amazing, even with the slight pinch of pain.

When his hips are pressed flush to yours, he lets out a deep breath. He loosens his grip at your throat, bringing that hand to your hip instead and holding you steady.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he groans, pulling back just slightly before pressing in. “This is gonna be over embarrassingly quickly.”

You reach up, your hand gripping the back of his neck to pull him closer to you. The angle of his shallow thrusts changes, making you gasp. “I’m not going to break, Eddie.”

He swallows thickly, nodding once before he pulls out until just the tip of him remains pressed inside of you, before surging forward with a rough thrust that steals your breath. He sets a punishing pace, hips slapping against yours in the quiet room. His guitar pick necklace dangles in your face and you wrap your fingers around it, using it to tug his mouth to yours. It’s not so much a kiss as an exchanging of air as you pant against each other.

He presses your leg to your chest with a hand under your knee, the angle changing yet again to something even deeper that makes your pulse race. You’re so focused on the man on top of you, on his eyes that are locked to yours, that you almost miss the tightness forming in your tummy.

Your orgasm crashes over you in a wave, leaving you breathless as you clench around Eddie. With a shout of your name, he reaches his own release, his cock pulsing inside of you.

He collapses on top of you before sliding to his side, pulling you back to him and molding his body around yours. You’re both panting, sweat cooling on your skin, and he rubs his fingers over your hip bone. Sweetly. Possessively.

“I’m gonna say your name like a prayer every night,” he murmurs into your ear.

You grin. “That doesn’t sound half bad, Munson.”

#eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x reader smut #eddie munson x you #no use of y/n #eddie munson fic #eddie stranger things #eddie munson x fem!reader smut #stranger things fic #friends to lovers

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echoweaver · 2 years ago

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15 Questions from Mutuals

@oasislandingresident, @hazely-sims, @danjaley, @anamoon63, and @olomayasims tagged me in this meme. This is the first time I’ve been able to actually do it! Thanks. I feel loved. It feels good to be included.

Are you named after anyone? My great-grandmother, father’s father’s mother. She and my great-grandfather were immigrants from Hungary. I have have a picture of her holding me as an infant. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her.

When was the last time you cried? I cry all the dang time. I find it more notable when I haven’t cried recently -- when putting our cats down, despite me being the one person in the family who was tracking their health in detail and really worrying about their quality of life. I’m also the one who made the call and coordinated the final vet visit. There’s stuff in there about my personality that I’m pondering.

I guess the last time I really cried it out was over gender politics, if you would believe it. My wife is trans. The horrible state of conservative oppression toward trans people right now is terrifying. OTOH, I think that enemy has led trans advocacy to be less nuanced rather than more. The complex landscape of gender, sex, and safety is often trivialized, and people get hurt. When I can’t jump on the bandwagon, I feel like a traitor to my wife. I wish there could be more thoughtfulness and compassion and nuance, but with the wave of vicious anti-trans laws and rhetoric, I appreciate why it doesn’t feel like there’s space for it.

Do you have kids? One bio-daughter, age 12. We wanted to have another and couldn’t. Then we tried to adopt from foster care, which ended up being a miserable 5-year rabbithole that led nowhere. OTOH, we have a found-daughter who entered our life through the side door as our girl’s babysitter when she was young. It’s an odd family, and we’re still figuring it out, but it’s ours.

Do you use sarcasm a lot? I think of myself as fairly snarky, but actually sarcasm not that much.

What sports do you play/have you played? I got into really physical stuff late-ish, close to 30. I got into weight-lifting and cardio rhythm games. No team stuff. Later, I took up figure skating when my kid was 4 and taking lessons. I love it. I think I could have been really good if I’d found it when I was younger, but I’m very YOLO about this stuff. If I’m going to be a figure skater in middle age, so be it. Convenient classes for adults were canceled during the pandemic, though, and I haven’t built up the momentum to return. I’m settling for a lower-hanging fruit at the moment and taking up Tai Chi.

What’s the first thing you notice about other people? I don’t know exactly what it is, but I get a sense of how easy it is to relax around someone.

Scary movies or happy endings? Those aren’t mutually exclusive. I like being scared, but not so much the jump-scare, blood-and-gore way. Definitely happy endings though. I’m only much into dark endings when my life is stress-free, and I don’t remember when that last happened.

Any special talents? I’m good at looking at a problem from all angles. I think this is objectively a good thing, but it’s also a pain in the butt because I can’t turn it off.

Where were you born? New Jersey, USA. Grew up in Indiana, just north of Indianapolis.

What are your hobbies? Dur. I knit, edit movies, mod video games, write fiction (sims and other), scuba dive, play board games, downhill ski, do amateur carpentry. I did some glassblowing in my 20s, and I’m finally getting a chance to take lessons! I do not specialize well. I also played the viola as a serious amateur. I bought a guitar and am going to try to learn to play so that I can sing and accompany myself.

Do you have any pets? One cat, down from 3 cats. Also one corn snake.

How tall are you? 5′4″ or 162 cm.

Fave subject in school? History, I think?

Dream job? I’m not sure all the stuff I’d want to do in a career can be digested down to 1 job. I’m pretty close to it at the moment, though. I write educational software on a small very family-like team at a university. Sometimes I fantasize about quitting and doing something with game modding that could somehow be profitable, but I’m sure if that were actually possible, I’d end up hating it because my hobby would then be my job.

Eye color? I have the exact eye color @zosa95 described in her reply to this meme.

It feels good to be tagged, but I still have this weirdo anxiety about tagging people. Plus this has mostly made the rounds. I’ll try @withlovefromayre, @declaration-of-dramas

#echoweaver #non-sims #memes

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i-am-the-gremlin · 2 years ago

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Steddie Game Plan AU?

Ok, but like...this film (The Game Plan) but Steddie!

I'm thinking Hockey Player Steve Harrington because I am weak for Hockey players. He got popular pretty quick during his first season and the Party show up to as many games as they can despite still being in their Junior? Sophomore? year of High School.

He's on his second NHL season when either a kid (7/8-yrs) shows up on his doorstep in Indianapolis or some girl he dated drops off a baby and leaves. Cue Steve realising that he has no idea what to do with something this young (he had the Party as 12-15 year olds but at least he could give them back).

Eddie already knows the Party, still lives with his Uncle Wayne and works as a mechanic at a local garage in Hawkins. He also gives Guitar lessons on the side.

I don't know. This has been consuming me for a few days and i'm still fucking around with plot ideas.

#steddie au #steddie #steddie brainrot #steve harrington #steve x eddie #hockey player steve harrington #eddie x steve #jock steve harrington #eddie munson #should i do this?

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taleofharrison · 3 years ago

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The Munson Family

A/N: Mr. Wayne Munson deserved to be happy with his nephew so here is me doing some headcanons about him.

Warnings: Fluff but you might cry, I cried writing this.

Masterlist

They had a good uncle-nephew relationship and you can't tell me otherwise

So Eddie's dad is Wayne's younger brother

Eddie's mom left since her husband just couldn't stay out of trouble

When Eddie's dad finally went to prison Wayne took him in immediately

He worked extra hard to pay Eddie's guitar lessons and buy him his first guitar

Wayne is one of the reasons Eddie he won't drop out of high school

Aside from wanting to be different from his old man, he finds inspiration in how hard his uncle works for the both of them

He wants to make his uncle proud after everything he's done for him

Wayne is already proud of Eddie though

Back to Eddie's childhood, his uncle bought him his first D&D set

This was before his father went to jail so Eddie found comfort in the D&D rather quickly

For the talent show in middle school, Wayne was on the front row

His nephew looked so happy up on that stage he will never forget that

The mug collection began when Eddie gave him one for Father's day, then for Christmas, then for every celebration that required a gift

Wayne also buys Eddie a walkman

"I love you son, but you play music so loud I can't listen myself think"

Fast forward to graduation day, and once again Wayne Munson is front row and has the biggest smile when they call his nephew's name

Wayne's graduation gift was a ticket for a Metallica concert in Indianapolis

"I know you were saving for this"

Eddie is just the happiest man in that moment and now he can use his savings for a cool souvenir from the merch stand

"I'm so proud of you son"

Eddie had finally made it

#eddie munson imagine #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things imagine #stranger things 4 #stranger things spoilers #stranger things vol 1 #stranger things 4 spoilers #stranger things vol 2 #st4 spoilers #st4 volume 2

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southernrays · 4 years ago

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location: Fairvale + Jesup/Atlanta in flashbacks date: The second week of July 2020 + Ray’s entire life availability: closed solo tldr: Ray ponders his love life before-during-after the apocalypse cw for: transphobia, disclosure talks, transitioning, divorce, drugs (mentioned not used) and all of the general heart break affiliated with young love.

000.

Ray fell in love too easily.

It had always been a problem, really, but there was no real fix. Ray loved deeply, easily, and with his whole entire heart. He had done so since he was a kid, and he would probably always do so, apocalypse or not.

001.

His first crush had been on Brittany Walker when he was six years old. That was before he was Ray, before he was even Nate, but a crush was a crush.

Brittany was the most popular girl in their elementary school. Jesup was a small town that only grew smaller the older they got, and Ray was one of ten in his class. Brittany was classically pretty - blonde hair, blue eyes, a big smile, and kind eyes - but Ray knew it was more that that. He didn’t want to be Brittany’s friend, he wanted to be her best friend, and got jealous of everyone else. When the town got a new set of siblings, brother and sister, and Brittany started hanging out with them instead of him, Ray’s father noticed the frowns and sad looks at the dinner table.

“What’s wrong, champ?” David had asked, the nickname sticking from a t-ball championship streak of two years. Ray had pouted over the okra on his plate, and not just because it was slimy.

“Brittany has new friends and likes them better. But I like her more than anyone else on the playground.”

“Is that right now?” David had amusement in his eyes when he tried to keep a straight face, and Ray was old enough to see it. He was deceptively perceptive for his age and already a good people watcher at the bar. David knew that.

“I’m serious Dad. I’d marry her, like you and mom.”

Ray was still just six, though. He didn’t notice the tense of his father’s shoulder, the way he glanced over to make sure that his wife wasn’t in the room. He didn’t notice the frown lines on his face or how unhappy he had been for the last six years. He didn’t know that the divorce papers will be signed before their next Christmas, and it will be spent without Regina Turner. That all of his birthdays and holidays and life events would be without her, forever, very soon.

“That’s a whole lot of like, kiddo.”

“I mean it, Pa.”

“That’s alright champ. You can marry whoever you want to when you get older, alright? I’ll love you no matter what.”

“Alright dad,” little Ray had said with a wrinkle of his nose. “Don’t make it weird.”

David’s laugh had filled the kitchen, and Ray felt better about it all.

002.

Ray didn’t have a type growing up. The people he liked, he liked individually, not because they fit into a mold that checked off imaginary boxes. In high school his eyes turned towards a new girl in town that’s aesthetic screams southern gothic in an unironic way. Hailee wore her eye liner too thick, kept her music too loud, wore too much black and metal, and glared at everyone at Jesup’s only high school like their mere presence bothered her. Ray had no idea, in retrospect, why he was drawn to her, but he was. Ray was finally Nate by then, finally himself in his own skin and his own clothing and no one could take that from him. Not the busybodies of Jesup, not his mother’s stinging palm on his cheek, and not any pastor of a Church he wasn’t apart of, praying to a man he didn’t believe in.

Ray was unapologetically himself, and maybe he was drawn to someone else like that, too.

Hailee avoided him like the plague, too, at first. She scoffed at his worn levis and dirty cowboy boots. She ignored Ray when the popular crowd stopped by his locker. Ray was popular, too, in spite of his transition and small town gossip. His father owned one of the only bars in town that made him cool, and a source of liquor for unage drinking and parties. Ray didn’t care much for that, but he did appreciate the socialization of it all.

“Hey, Hailee, wait up now,” Ray had called out, almost not recognizing his own voice after his second puberty.

“What do you want, Nate?” Her eyes had narrowed, pretty and green despite the kohl surrounding them.

“You to come to Nick’s party this weekend. What do ya say?” Ray rocked back on his heels, nervous of her answer. People in the hallway stopped to look at them, and Ray wondered what they saw. Was it the stubble on his chin, his recent growth spike, and the new squareness of his hips? Or was it the same kid that had been there since pre-school, unable to leave that old, uncomfortable skin behind.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Yeah? You do that, then. I can pick ya up on the bike if you want?”

Her eyes flashed with something dangerous, then, and Ray knew he had hooked her. What kind of edgy girl could resist showing up to the party on the back of a sick motorcycle?

They find themselves in a closet, of all places, in the middle of the night. Ray tasted tequila on her lips when she slotted their hips together. He pushed back, pinning her against a wall as he slipped his tongue into her mouth. The groan she let out was sweet music to his ears and she melted like putty against his strong frame.

“Worth comin’ out for the party?” Ray asked against her lips. She bit his lip in retaliation before deepening the kiss. Ray’s hands wandered, fingers trailing the skin exposed by the black crop top she had decided to wear tonight. They separate when Ray needed to come up for air, harsh pants filling the small spaces of the closet.

“I didn’t expect it to be so good,” Hailee mumbled against his lips, and Ray can’t help but freeze.

“What? Kissin’ a redneck?” He tried to joke off, desperate for her to make some small town hick joke. Because Hailee was from Indianapolis. She was supposed to be edgy and alternative and beyond all of the small town gossip. She was different from the other people Ray had been taking hayrides with since the days of diapers.

He expected more out of Hailee - maybe more than he should have, maybe more than what was fair - which is why the disappointment felt so much worse with her.

“No, you know...” A brief pause of hesitation and Ray prayed, dear God for her to say anything but what he thought she was going to say. “Kissing someone like you.”

Ray flinched back like someone had dropped a bucket of ice on him. His eyes sting for a brief second of embarrassment before the rage took over. He takes one deep breath, and then another. Man, testosterone was a potent thing, wasn’t it?

“I... I’ll see ya ‘round Hailey.”

“Wait - Nate - I didn’t ... I wasn’t trying to-”

Ray doesn’t hear the rest. He doesn’t need to.

003.

Dating Xavier was a mistake, plain and simple.

Ray was new to the area. He was finally free of his town, free of the stigma and the knowing looks, and the everything else that came with a town so small it felt like a fishbowl. Here, in Atlanta, he got to start over. He could be Nate from the beginning, without any need to pretend otherwise.

And Nate was a useless bisexual. Always had been.

Xavier was kind of a douchebag. He met Ray at a bar, of course, his band playing on the makeshift stage. Xavier was a drummer. He was so dang pretty, easy on the eyes, and kissed in a dirty, grungy sort of way that had it’s charms. He was nothing like Jesup kids; Xavier was spoiled, wild, a city boy through and through, and Ray craved the simplicity of it all.

Xavier (who went by X) was not a good guy and did drugs (most X) and got crossfaded out of his mind after shows. He stayed up crazy hours, usually high, and wrote all sorts of lyrics for his band. Their relationship, if you could call it that, was very brief and mostly physical.

“You should play guitar, babe, like for real, you know?” Xavier said, waking Ray up at five in the morning to tell him that.

“Why’s that, handsome?” Ray had answered, sleep still clogging his voice as he rolled over. It looked like X hadn’t been to sleep yet, which made sense considering the binge he had been on.

“It’d make you more edgy, right, like, you’d be hotter. Everyone’s hotter if they play guitar.”

“S’that why you’re a drummer?” Ray teased, but the fun nature of it went over Xavier’s head. He leveled a big scowl at Ray, and Ray sighed.

“No need to be mean, Nate.”

“Was just a joke, baby.” Ray opened up the covers of the bed, glancing at the clock again. Xavier’s pupils were so dilated that he couldn’t see his pretty brown eyes. “Come to bed soon?”

“You know I have to finish this song. We hit the road in three weeks for our tour.”

In that three weeks, Ray picked up a guitar and had his first lessons, broke up with Xavier, and never saw the guy again.

He was not more edgy, not in the slightest, but he did have a new guitar and a whole city to explore.

004.

Meeting Luci had been accidental in every way. He had picked up an extra shift at the bar that his manager forgot to write into the schedule, so when he showed up for it there was double staffing and no need for Ray to be there. Instead of spending a Friday night alone, at his apartment, he decided to stay. Ray nursed a couple of beers as the bar filled up and texted his friends to show up early.

The Drunken Crown was a sort of themed bar-slash-pub in Atlanta. It was smaller, which Ray appreciated, and had theme nights on the daily. A lot of the college kids from nearby spent their time there, and the average patron was generally on the younger side. On Fridays and Saturdays their theme rotated, and tonight’s was Historic Night.

His friends arrived a bit later, dressed in Spartan battle gear. They did a couple rounds of shots before most of them took to the dance floor, leaving Ray laughing as he refused at the bar.

Ray had come dressed in an honest to goodness toga, including a gold spray-painted leaf crown and golden accessories. His time in the gym had definitely paid off as he was finally bulking up and gaining more definition in his shoulders. One or two girls had been orbiting around him, but Ray didn’t make any passes at anyone. He sipped on his beer, watching his coworkers make their rounds, and decided to people watch for the evening.

A group of flappers were tearing up the dance floor. Ray could see his buddy, Blake, drunkenly approaching them and attempting some dance moves that made him look ridiculous. Some guys in three piece suits were making out by the entrance. A group of hippies were eagerly chatting and mingling at the bar. Ray saw at least three girls who looked like some extras in a Nirvana video begging for some kind of song change from whatever was on the speakers.

Luci had been dressed up as an old writer, someone Ray knew the name of but couldn’t remember, not truly and definitely not any more, and kept all to herself in the very corner of the bar. She was sipping on some mixed drink and Ray’s eyes stopped on her. What was her story? The quiet girl, alone at the bar, barely hanging onto the fringes of all of the activity.

He was intrigued, and he wanted to know.

A simple introduction was given. Ray prodded, trying to get a feel for the quiet girl, who opened up immediately when asked about her costume. Ray was no academic, but he appreciated the passion in her eyes when she spoke about something, voice louder than either one of them expected.

“I’m Nate, by the way. It’s nice to meet you.”

And it was. Luci was his opposite in so many ways. He hadn’t expected to see her again after that night, too shy to ask for her number and unsure if she was interested in giving it. His coworkers had given him hell for chickening out, and Ray just gave them a good-natured smile.

A week and a half later, Luci came in, dressed normally, while Ray was working. He spent the entire night neglecting his duties, trying to get a conversation out of her and working his own natural charm. And she came back the next week, and the week after, too. Soon Ray was brave enough to ask for her number. And she gave it to him.

Being with Luci was different. Their first date, Ray had taken her out of the city to a local dirt track. They went mudding in ATVs and Ray nearly fell off of his trying to impressive her halfway through. Luci’s eyes had been wide the entire time, soaking up the whole thing with a curiosity that Ray came to associate with her. One date turned into two, which turned into a whole series of exploring together.

They took turns taking each other outside of their comfort zones. Ray taught Luci how to have fun the country way, with mudding and camping, and picnics in the bed of his truck as they watched the sun rise together. Luci surprised Ray with her deep thoughts, her sharp mind, and the push to better himself with her. She didn’t let him keep up his self-deprecation. They would have late night conversations, under the stars, all alone, wrapped up in each other.

She met his friends, his family, incorporated herself in his entire life.

Ray fell head over heels. And he told her so, earnest and eager and open to love. Open to a lifetime of learning and exploring with her.

And she left him, at the edge of the cliff he was ready to jump off with no parachute, without so much as an explanation. And she took a part of him with her, whether she realized it or not, that never really came back.

005.

There were more. Some before Luci, some after. Each person was different - different backgrounds, ages, race, gender, personalities - but one thing always remained the same. Ray loved too hard, too much, too easily. Ray was open to the idea of commitment, and committed, too easily.

It didn’t matter who he was dating, he was the constant, he was the issue, and it hurt to admit.

Ray tried, and he loved, before-during-after the outbreak. And it went like this:

There was Rob, a brewmaster he met while at school. They dated for over a year, before graduation hit; Ray wanted to go to Atlanta and Rob wanted to go to family back in Miami.

“It’s like - you know - I really like you Nate. I like you a lot. But long distance? It never works. It’s better to end it now.”

There was Sage, a wild child trust fund girl that wanted to save the rainforest with Daddy’s money. She laughed when he asked her to be his girlfriend.

“That’s cute, you thought we were dating? It’s not that serious babe.”

There was Fi, a survivor in a camp Ray had stumbled across after leaving the Fort. She was the reason Ray stuck around for three weeks. They had had an awful fight before the camp was overrun, and she hadn’t made it out alive.

“You’re too soft, Ray. I’d chew up your sunshine and spit it out. I don’t want to see you again.”

There was Ronnie, the permanent student with four different bachelor degrees. He cheated on Ray with one of his roommates after six months of dating.

“I was bored, Nate. I’m not ready to just settle down, dude. You’re smothering me.”

There was Destiny, a small town, kindred girl he found in Atlanta not too long after Xavier. She had looked at him in the worst way when Ray had come out to her.

“I’m - I’m not - That’s not what God would want for you, you know?”

There was Jenny, a financial advisor that Ray had met through the bar and mutual friends. She had always been so carefree, maybe too carefree, maybe just too free in general.

“Oh Darlin’, I don’t think so. We’re not exactly endgame, are we?”

It didn’t matter who, when, where they were. Ray wasn’t worth keeping around - that was the universally proven fact. It was one he had to stomach his entire life, and well, it sucked, but Ray was not one to stay down. He washed off the mud, dusted off his boots, and got back up again.

000. +

Ray tried not to play the self pity card. It just wasn’t his style. But with the outbreak, losing his family, and trying to re-invent himself yet again? A relationship was the last thing he wanted or needed. Fairvale was a clean break, it was (mostly) mess free. He could be whoever he wanted or needed. He could start over, again. He could protect himself and his heart.

Love mucked all of that up. It always had.

So when he caught himself - again, Ray, really? - people watching with his eyes settling on one person, he ignored it. When he felt that small flip-flop in his belly at their smile, he pushed it down. When his day would brighten at the familiar face of a kind-of-regular-that-showed up, Ray decided he would not have a crush again, thank you very much, and make things uneven.

He could not afford to give up his heart any more than he already had. He couldn’t afford to be let down, disregarded, by someone again.

#solo para #027 #para #YEEHAW BUCKLE UP #about

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notesonnotes · 6 years ago

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Notes On: Dustin Phillips

We’re taking a bit of a different approach today! We’re talking with Dustin Phillips, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the current drummer for The Ataris (https://www.facebook.com/theataris/). He is also the Owner, producer and music instructor at Dustin Phillips Music (http://www.dustinphillipsmusic.com) He has done other projects not only playing drums, but guitar, and singing as well. He is multi-talented, and likes to engage his followers. If you haven’t taken the time to check him out, do it!

Dustin took the time to answer some questions we had for him. Take a few minutes and get to know a little about him.

------------------------------------------------------------------

NON: What got you started on your musical journey?

DP: My music career began with a pair of un-sharpened No 2 pencils and a counter-top. And while I can attest to the incredible support of my family since the beginning, the constant tapping drove everyone around me crazy. In December of 1990, my stepfather (Pete) was coming off the road from touring with Phil Collins. He had told the crew that he was looking forward to a nice, quiet holiday. Phil’s crew, knowing he had a son that made beats and noises with everything within arms reach, decided to play a bit of a prank. On our doorstep, arrived a box with a note “Pete, enjoy your quiet Christmas.” Inside was a set of shiny, red Reno Junior Pro drums — from Phil and his crew, to me. My family, as amazing as they are, enrolled me in drum lessons at the age of 5 and have supported me every day since. NON: Who are some of your influences? DP: Over the years, I’ve realized that inspiration and influence tend to come and go unexpectedly. While I admire and believe that there is incredible talent that rightfully gets attention, there are millions of people who possess passion and talent that are immensely underrated. That being said, there are absolutely people whose talent and style I find myself incorporating into my own art. Drummers like George Daniel (The 1975), LP (Yellowcard), Carter Beauford (Dave Matthews); Songwriters like Josh Ramsay (Marianas Trench), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana), Jim Adkins (Jimmy Eat World). Additionally, I am constantly inspired and influenced by my incredibly talented friends Kris Roe (The Ataris), Jay Ness (filmmaker), Claudio Rivera (drummer), Rob Freeman (producer/songwriter), Kat Perkins (musician). NON: You've had projects outside of The Ataris. Thru The Static; You Jump, i Jump; a solo, and more. What has been your favorite project so far? DP: Generally speaking, if you ask any artist/musician what their favorite or best project is, it’s almost always going to be their current or most recent. Each project I’ve been a part of in the past holds a special place for its own set of reasons. The most creatively rewarding was the You Jump, i Jump “Reckless” album.(I’m making a plug for this, I have the album, if you wanna check it out, which I think you should, message Dustin on Twitter!) My buddy Braden, who had also been in All the Right moves, and I wanted to put out an album with the sole purpose of satisfying a creative itch. We had no intention to sell a million copies, or an unreasonable dream to take over the world. We simply wanted to release a collection of music that we get didn’t fit our current projects. It was completely self-produced, a little bit all over the place, but exactly what we wanted. NON: You also produce and photograph. What other projects have you done or taken on? DP: While I wish I could get myself to just focus on one thing at a time, I’m constantly looking for different creative outlets to explore. Whether that be producing an artist of a different genre, shooting video, creating social content, I just enjoy the process. NON: How long have you been doing this? DP: I’ve been with The Ataris for 3 years, but playing drums for nearly 30. Oh dear lord, I’m getting old. NON: What advice do you have for anyone trying to break out in the industry? DP: So much of this industry has always been about who you know, but now we have this thing called the internet. My biggest piece of advice would be to document and share content, grow your own following, while also trying to reach out and network with other creatives in your field. It can be a slow, daunting process, but if you bring value and entertainment to your platform, people will follow you on your journey. And that attention can manifest into incredible possibilities. NON: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? DP: I’d like to say drumming for Taylor Swift... but ultimately, continuing to live life in a way that brings happiness not only to me, but to those around me. I don’t need “fancy.” I don’t need to keep up with “the Jones.” Every fiber in my being just longs to live a life where I can create and be happy. And whether that’s on stage, in the studio, or starting a new business — who knows? I’m always ready to allow new experiences or circumstances into my life. Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t accept something better.

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You Jump, i Jump: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeYkCQAeoKa3daK-fpzITHA

Dustin Phillips: https://twitter.com/dustinphillips

Tumblr: http://dustinphillips.tumblr.com/

Thru The Static: https://www.facebook.com/Thru-the-Static-211152845567919/

The Ataris: https://www.facebook.com/theataris/

The Ataris are on tour now! A few dates have already been done, but here are some upcoming ones! (* w/ Smoking Popes)

6/11-Phoenix, AZ-Pub Rock

6/12- Las Vegas, NV- 172 Music Club at The Rio

6/13- Salt Lake City, UT- Urban Lounge

6/14-Denver, CO- Streets of London

6/15-Kansas City, MO- Riot Room

6/17- Des Moines, IA- Gas Lamp

6/18- Chicago, IL- Bottom Lounge

6/19- Indianapolis, IN- The H-Fi

6/20- Cincinnati, OH- Northside Yacht Club

6/21- Pisstburgh, PA- Smiling Moose*

6/22- Asbury Park, NJ- Asbusry Park Brewery*

6/24-Somerville, MA- Once Ballroom*

6/25-Brooklyn, NY- Knitting Factory*

6/26-Philadelphia, PA- Milkboy*

6/27-Baltimore, MD-Metro Gallery*

6/28-Cleveland, OH- Grog Shop*

#Dustin Phillips #The Ataris #You Jump i Jump #Minnesota #music #drummer #punk rock

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still-we-go-pumpkins · 7 years ago

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An amazing fan tribute to Weiki. Unique facts compilation 👌🎃

I've just found the post on DeviantArt. As great Weiki fan also, I can confirm that he's really that marvelous just as the author describes him. This will make you feel warm and will set smile on your face as well as you will check Helloween vids/lives while exploring this facts. So, here we go.

Further credits : SamWeiki

100 Reasons I love Michael Weikath

Possible – scratch that, definite – Fangirling ahead (I tried to keep it to a minimum and I probably failed)

1. He has the most gorgeous blue eyes. [right off, I told you – Fangirling]

2. The songs he writes are so unique and AMAZING. Most of them mean quite a lot to me, as well. I’ve always been drawn to them. They just have a certain special quality to them that I love.

3. He wrote “Keeper of the Seven Keys” for cryin’ out loud!

4. His “thanks” section in the Unarmed booklet.

5. He’d pick Judas Priest over Iron Maiden in an instant.

6. The way he sometimes answers questions. For instance, he was asked about what fans could expect from The Dark Ride and his response was: “Well....hmmmm you can expect that it will be standing in stores and it’s very likely you can buy it when you find it there! hahahahahaha apart from that I don’t know if it’s going to say anything but you can go there and buy it, listen to it, and use it, because it’s a CD and it usually makes a lot of sound if you put it into a CD player......but probably doesn't work if you put it into a toaster.....hahahahahaha.”

7. If he wasn’t a musician, he says his life would be dedicated to cartoons.

8. He dedicated the Hammond version of “Burning Sun” to the great Jon Lord.

9. He’s an artist. His little skull and pumpkin drawing is beautiful.

10. He makes the best faces in concerts.

11. I love watching him in the High Live video, especially during “Steel Tormentor”. [I did not just say that]

12. He made the frog noises at the end of “Nothing to Say”.

13. So many people have blamed him for things over the years, when he did nothing wrong, just because they feel it's easier to blame him. I experience that quite a lot and have for several years, so I understand what it's like but he seems a lot stronger than me about it, as it's very hard for me to get over a lot of that stuff. He's sort of my hero about that because it seems like he hasn't let that really stop him.

14. How he totally told off that Phantom guy. His responses were awesome.

15. A part of “Do You Know What You Are Fighting For” is Deep Purple’s “Stormbringer” backwards. There’s actually a lot of Deep Purple in that song. Makes me love it even more – both songs.

16. He played on Uli Kusch’s cover of “Eyes of the World” from the Rainbow tribute album and he played all the guitar on that song. “Yeah I played on Eyes Of The World. So I did all of the guitar work on it. Uli told me that he did not expect me to have the guitar work as close to the original song as I had it.”

17. The seven pronged star on the cover of 7 Sinners was his idea. And what a damn fine idea it was because it makes a freaking sweet album cover! It was a lot of fun for me to draw, as well.

18. When writing “LAVDATE DOMINVM”, he called upon his old Latin lessons from school and actually got to work with his old Latin teacher on the lyrics. Weiki hadn’t worked with Latin for a bit, so he had to relearn a few things and he even managed to correct something his teacher had written.

19. His response to what animal he would be: “A lion, 'cause I could be lyin' round lazy and have my food brought to me by other people.”

20. Helloween would not be Helloween without him, plus Markus and Andi wouldn’t let him quit in 2000/2001.

21. He drew the logo and original pumpkin.

22. How beautiful the lyrics to “Windmill” are. Example:

"Don't feel alone and depressed

Someone will come, at last

To soothe your storming mind

To keep it away from the evil storms."

23. You can clearly hear the man singing in “White Christmas” and he’s the most fun to listen to.

24. “Introduction” never fails to make me laugh very loudly, especially the lyrics to “Rock n’ Roll All Day”.

25. He likes Spinal Tap.

26. The way he sang “Gorgar will eat you” in the Keeper Legacy interviews.

27. He was asked what his motto in life was and his response was: Be as friendly as it comes; have fun, make money and spend it on charity to help people. ~Sei so freundlich wie es geht; Spaß haben, viel Geld verdienen und es für wohltätige Zwecke ausgeben, um Leuten zu helfen~ (it was originally in German)

28. His black and white outfits in the ‘80s and ‘90s, especially those awesome star-printed pants.

29. The entire story of the Keeper of the Seven Keys and Master of the Rings.

30. The Jacuzzi scene in the Keeper Legacy Road movie.

31. He likes Aphrodite’s Child, Nektar, and Camel. He’s cool.

32. I really don’t think I’ve heard him say anything bad about anyone.

33. The moment when he switched his guitar off and “played” a solo after he was introduced in The Legacy concert.

34. “All right… That’s enough! Now, I want to hear Dani’s drum solo!” *rapid fire – BLAMBLAMBLAM!* The first time I watched the “Smoke On the Water” bit from Hellish Rock, I nearly fell to the floor laughing.

35. About the time Pink Bubbles Go Ape came out, in an interview, Michael Kiske said something about they weren’t Metal, they didn’t do that “Heavy Metal” thing and Weiki says, “I thought we were Heavy Metal”. And Michi completely just stopped talking for a second.

36. The way Weiki messed around with Michi and Roland during the interview mentioned above.

37. How much fun he looked like he was having in the “Kids of the Century” video.

38. Every time he dances around on stage.

39. His love for Gibson Les Pauls.

40. He was reading “A Hat Full of Sky” and even recommended it.

41. He says that his writing “Keeper of the Seven Keys” kept him alive and he considers it a major turning point in his life to have come up with the idea for it.

42. The hairspray scene in the Hellish Rock road movie.

43. He actually got involved with the DJ game when they were in Japan (Keeper Legacy road movie) – the whole arcade scene was great.

44. The way he just looks at a camera sometimes and doesn’t say a word – he just starts making faces and looking off in different directions. He can be funny without saying a single word.

45. His guitar solo in “Back On the Ground”.

46. He played most of the guitar on the Better Than Raw album.

47. Weikath Syndrome is the coolest thing to catch.

48. During the German Top 6 video (1993), he was drinking a Capri Sun. I think it may have even been Wild Cherry.

49. A Gibson Les Paul looks absolutely perfect on him. I also love the way he holds the guitar.

50. How his hair has always been shoulder length (at least) since the late ‘80s (and beautiful).

51. He thinks of the younger viewers/fans.

52. All the love for him in the Hellbook.

53. I don’t how much of the lyrics to “Dreambound” he wrote, but he has a credit on that song and OH MY GOD, is it flipping incredible! I must make special mention to how amazing “the Saints” is, too.

54. He wanted to talk to Michael Kiske when they met at a festival in 2012/2013, so they could try and work things out a little.

55. He wanted “Livin’ Ain’t No Crime” to be a single.

56. His song “Number One” and how uplifting and positive the lyrics are, especially the chorus.

57. When they were on the Ferris wheel, they didn’t start REALLY laughing until Weiki did.

58. How he introduces himself as “de Michael Weikath of Helloween” and he even got Dani to do it with him.

59. He contributed a guitar solo to the German Rock Project’s “Let Love Conquer the World” (the long Metal version) but went all incognito with it and is credited as “a member of the Seventh Key”.

60. The fact that he wanted a flute in “Raise the Noise” and it sounds totally awesome!

61. The sexy witch on the cover of Better Than Raw was Weiki’s idea.

62. His makeshift rocking chair.

63. His spoken part of the Dezperadoz song “First Blood” (and “Echoes of Eternity”, too).

64. How funny was in the two Nuremberg interviews from the ‘80s that are on YouTube.

1987 – He lights a cigarette, he passes it Ingo, Ingo passes it back, and Weiki passes it back to him. Ingo then proceeds to throw it on the ground and Weiki attempts to lightly hit him but only manages to hit his hair. xD

1988 – The FUNNY one! He was so frickin’ funny in that one. I won’t give away the end of it if you’ve never seen it, but it involves a balloon and a cigarette. (by the way, Michael Weikath takes his sunglasses off and puts them back on 13 times, 10 of which are in the first three minutes).

65. After an interviewer thanks him for being there, “Ja, that’s not so much I can do about it, because somebody put me on this Earth and I went out of my mother and suddenly I was there and now I have to deal with this crap.”

66. During the Indianapolis Hell On Wheels concert, during “Halloween”, Michi passes the mic over to Weiki and Weiki does the “I’ll show you power and glory” part. Michi then makes a disgruntled face at him and rubs the mic with his shirt, causing Weiki to make a face back at him!

67. Also from the same Hell On Wheels concert, during “A Tale That Wasn’t Right”, he was stepping on the skeleton and making Ingo laugh.

68. Speaking of “A Tale That Wasn’t Right”, that song is incredible and very powerful.

69. He let the other members of the band help out on “Mission Motherland”. That song is very quickly becoming my favorite song of theirs.

70. His backing vocals in the “Sea of Fears” demo.

71. All of his little pins that he wears: the pumpkin, the W, the stars…

72. This comment he made about the Hellbook: “With the hardcover you can better smash your naughty brother... and you can with the regular as well, just maybe not as effective.” I have actually made that joke to my brother before. xD

73. Someone at a meet-n-greet in 2008 showed the band an old picture of the guys, which they all signed. It was an old picture. Kai was stunned, Markus laughed his ass off, and Michael actually said he remembered where it was taken and when. The picture was taken in 1986, so that is kind of impressive.

74. He helped me become a big fan of Deep Purple. Yes, I will admit to only becoming a major Deep Purple fan after becoming a Helloween fan - and it was all because of Weiki. And now I'm really happy because I never realized how awesome Deep Purple is. Same thing with Wishbone Ash.

75. He’s given me several phrases to use whenever applicable.

- “Impressive, isn’t it?”

- “You have to listen with your ears.”

- “It’s nice, cold, windy, sunny weather.” (which pretty much describes Florida in the winter sometimes)

76. He can still sing with a cigarette in his mouth and not drop the cigarette.

77. The intro to “Halloween”. I’m not sure if he played it on the original recording, but when he plays it live… OH MY GOD.

78. His guitar solo in “First Time”.

79. He’s fun to watch in the “When the Sinner” video when he’s shown, especially when he’s playing those power chords in the beginning (even though he played no guitar on the song) and the part in the saloon.

80. How amazing “Les Hambourgeois Walkways” is.

81. He’s written a couple songs that he has dedicated to groups of fans ~ “LAVDATE DOMINVM” for the Latin speaking fans, and “Born on Judgment Day” for the people of Brazil.

82. How he’s so easily able to make Sascha laugh behind the camera.

More here 💜

#helloween #michael weikath #power metal #oldschool #classic metal #heavy metal #metal #oldschool metal #pumpkins interact #weiki

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dritavi · 3 years ago

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Ischool port washington

Ischool port washington how to#

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“We have a space in the basement of iSchool, but we also take them to places like Landmark Theater in Port Washington, The Nutty Irishman in Farmingdale, The Bitter End in Manhattan and more,” he said. Qian noted that there are numerous venues throughout New York where they regularly put on shows in order to allow the kids under his tutelage to show off their new-found and hard-earned musical skills in front of friends and family. Giving students a boost of confidence via live performances is another big part of the training at iSchool. They can encourage and support each other and it works really well.” “When you have a group of kids together and they play music together, they feel like they’re doing something together. “Being taught and then practicing by yourself is a very solitary thing. This approach may sound like a terrifying “sink or swim” method to the uninitiated, but Qian said that it’s actually far more effective in many respects than traditional music school techniques. They have to function right away in a group, before they can hardly play a single note.” “For example, instead of teaching the classical way-with private, one-on-one lessons and then sending the kid home to practice by themselves-we teach them some basic skills and then immediately put them in with a band with a drummer, guitarist, singer and everything. We want to teach the music that they’re really interested in,” he said. “We really want to be able to connect to the students.

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However, while the instruments may seem familiar, Qian said the teaching techniques used to get students to learn how to play them are a little more off the beaten path. ISchool teaches all musical instruments except for brass, with the main focus being on piano, guitar, drums and some string instruments such as the violin and cello, all taught by certified professionals in the field. In addition to teaching music, iSchool also holds art classes, where they instruct students in cartooning, painting and photography. In 2005, the two started their first iSchool-the “i” standing for “inspiration,”-in Port Washington, followed by a second location in Syosset in 2008, and finally a third in Rockville Centre. “We had gone to college together-we were both drummers-and we wanted to open a music school, but something interesting…something for the kids, but not a regular school.” “At that time, Ken was living in Texas,” he said. When he moved back to Long Island, Qian reached out to him about developing a business venture that would encompass their mutual love of performing and teaching music. Throughout the years, Qian had kept in touch with a college friend named Ken Benshish. Then in 2005 I moved back to Long Island.” “I eventually earned a Master’s Degree and then went to Indianapolis where I taught for four years. “I was a percussionist and soloist, and participated in a lot of competitions and recitals,” he said. Yi Qian, owner and director of Syosset’s iSchool of Music and Art, born in China but currently residing in Roslyn Heights, said the study and love of music has been a constant aspect of his life for as long as he can remember. Through this course, students learn music theory and techniques of composition in order to produce and direct the performance of complex pieces.Yi Qian of Syosset’s iSchool (Photos by Chris Boyle)

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O Inside the Music: In this module, students become classical music composers whose pieces are performed by professional musicians at a final concert. At the end of the quarter, the iSchool students bring their finished books back to the elementary school to read their stories. After consulting with professional children's book authors and gaining a thorough understanding of the various types of children's books that exist, iSchool students spend the quarter writing, illustrating, and binding a children's book for the child who they met. O Children's Bookmaking: In this module, iSchool students travel to an elementary school and meet with first graders to survey their interests and likes. All students are eligible to participate in these courses, which include: At the iSchool, experiences in the arts are offered as both Modules and Core Experiences.

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fishersmaa · 5 months ago

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Guitar Lessons in Indianapolis—Fishers Music & Arts Academy

Discover top-tier guitar lessons in Indianapolis at Fishers Music & Arts Academy. Serving students aged 4 to 80, our experienced instructors offer personalized lessons in guitar, bass, and ukulele. Conveniently located in Fishers, Indiana, we also cater to the communities of Carmel, Noblesville, Westfield, Lawrence, and Geist. Join us to achieve your musical goals in a supportive and professional environment.

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jennygoeseastbay · 7 years ago

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2018 in Review

So I used to do one of these every year on my Livejournal, and I completely blew it off in 2017 because I kind of abandoned that medium, and because the last month of that year was complete consumed with packing and moving. I’m not entirely certain I want to get more active on here, but for now this is a good place for me to post this, simply to have the written record of my existence that I need in order to process all that has happened and reflect on how it has helped me to grow and improve as a person. If I’m feeling really ambitious, I might even backtrack and do one for 2017 next week, because I like to be complete in my self-documentation. ;)

01. What did you do in 2018 that you'd never done before? Visited Washington DC for the first time.

Visited the Los Cabos region of Mexico for the first time.

Closed a major gift from someone who had not already had decades of cultivation from their University.

Visited even more areas of California that were new to me, including Anaheim, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Pismo Beach, Paso Robles, and Lake Tahoe (I guess that also includes Nevada since we stayed in Carson City)

Visited Ashland Oregon for the first time.

Sold a piece of real estate. Phew!

Practiced Yin Yoga. (And walking meditation!)

Engaged in a yoga hike!

Also tried yoga with goats!

Attended WonderCon

Attended a county fair.

Road a bicycle somewhere other than a residential street

Tried kayaking

Ran a trail run race

02. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I never really make concrete resolutions, just some general proclamations about eating better, and putting more time into fitness and writing. Of these three things, the one I was most successful at this year, surprisingly enough, was eating better. In September I realized that it was time for a physical tune-up, and so I rejoined WW after a long time away, and though I still have a few pounds to go, I’ve been happy to have gotten a bit sleeker after dialing back the bread and cheese. I also attended a writing group called Shut Up and Write a couple times, and I’d like to become more of a regular at their cafe sessions in 2019, because I’ve found that their method (literally a concentrated hour of shutting up and writing) has been helpful the two times I’ve gone.

03. Did anyone close to you give birth? My dear friends Drew and Kelly had their first child in September. And my friend Lynn had her second child, a little girl, just a couple weeks ago. 04. Did anyone close to you die? Not super close, but a professor at UC Davis who I had worked with closely, passed very unexpectedly right before Halloween. 05. What countries did you visit? Mexico! Finally broke in my current passport with a new stamp! 06. What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018? Good novel progress. Or more discipline on some other fiction and an essay that I just started tinkering with. A legit boyfriend. 07. What date(s) from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

January 2 was my first day on the job at UC Davis.

January 7 was a super fun evening at the Museum of Ice Cream in SF

January 13-15 was a wonderful weekend in Seattle where I got to meet my nephew Apollo for the first time and photograph his first swimming lesson for his parents.

January 20 was my second Women’s March outing in Sac with my friend Jade and her little ones.

January 27 was a day when I got to play tour guide for my friend Gricel and her husband when they were in SF visiting for the first time.

Feb. 10 and 11 was a fun weekend in Berkeley and SF, being silly and singing loudly with my former Cal colleagues who had become dear friends.

March 23-25 Was my whirlwind Anaheim weekend at Wondercon, and I got to catch up with my friend Mike, whom I’d not seen in a couple years.

March 30-April 1 was an epic road trip weekend, the first of what my friend Maya and I now call our Girls Gone Sensibly Wild excursions. We drove to Santa Barbara and visited the deserted UC campus there (it was closed for spring break) and also enjoyed an amazing live show featuring Dave Hause, Dan Andriano, and Cory Branan, among others at the Cold Spring Tavern. And then got a joint membership at Peachy Canyon Winery on our way back, because it was one of the few establishments open on Easter Sunday.

April 22 was Earth Day, and prompted me to venture out to Marin for an impromptu yoga hike at Rodeo Beach.

May 14 was my first appointment with a new hair stylist who would also unexpectedly become a trusted friend.

May 24 was my first time seeing Depeche Mode live, and it was incredible.

June 8-10 was my second of two hit it and quit it Chicago trips (although really, the first one wasn’t so much Chicago as it was Joliet) this year, and allowed me to reconnect with my dear friends Drew and Kelly (Drew finished his PhD at UChicago and I attended his commencement and hooding), have a day at the zoo with my friend Dawn, and also road trip to WI with my friend Mary for a beautiful and moving Lights Festival experience together.

June 30 was the day I attended my first ever CalShakes performance with Maya and our mutual friend Paola (Girls Gone Sensibly Wild continued!), and Maya also got me on a bike for the first time in ages, thanks to LimeBikes being available at the Pleasant Hill BART station. We took a short, wobbly, but fun ride down the Iron Horse Trail.

July 1 was the day I learned to kayak and surprisingly got myself through 5 miles of the Russian River without tipping over or running out of steam.

July 26 saw me reuniting with my dear pals Shannon and Glenn, when they were visiting the Sac area for a wedding.

July 27-29 was the weekend I drove up to Ashland to enjoy some time with my friend Debbie and to experience the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the first time.

August 3-6 was when I somewhat unexpectedly had the delight of hosting my friend Clarise for a weekend visit. We drove down to Pacifica for the International Dog Surfing competition and I schooled her in the ways of California wine as much as I could with my limited knowledge.

The following weekend, August 9-13, I had a lovely time hosting and touring around with my 16 year old niece, and got to introduce her to the joy that is Santa Cruz. And yoga with goats!

August 30-Sept. 4 was when I hosted (this is a recurring theme in August, isn’t it?) my Aunt Sherrie for local sightseeing and a road trip up to Lake Tahoe.

Sept. 22-24 saw me heading down to L.A. for my cousin Katie’s wedding and some work meetings. It was the first time in ages that I got to connect with that specific branch of my family, and get to know them a bit better.

Sept. 29 was my first AFSP walk in Sac. And i was joined by Jade, her visiting mom, and her three little ones.

Sept. 30 was the really long hair session with Mason that helped solidify that we were legit friends (and included a shared sunset from the window of his hair studio!) and a quick follow up appointment on Oct. 3 allowed us to enjoy a rainbow and storm together.

Oct. 19-21 saw Maya and I doing another Girls Gone Sensibly Wild road trip. Back to Peachy Canyon to pick up some wine, and also Pismo Beach and Santa Maria for our first visit to a really lovely winery called Foxen.

Oct. 26 was quite possibly my all-time favorite Brian Fallon performance. It was just him alternating between his acoustic guitar and an electric piano, and he was joined by Craig Finn from The Hold Steady, who also did his own acoustic set.

Oct. 27 I got to introduce my new friend Torrey to the Old Sugar Mill in Clarksburg, and we did a fun wine and Halloween candy pairing and some epic day drinking.

Nov. 3 saw me reuniting with my Cal crew and a sprinkling of East Bay friends at Fillmore Karaoke, for an epic night of loud singing as an early celebration of my 40th bday. So much wine. Actually too much, but for a birthday, that’s acceptable!

Nov. 4-6 I was in Indianapolis for work, and though the work part wasn’t particularly memorable, I was super honored and thrilled that my BFF Dawn drove all the way down from Joliet IL with her two boys to have dinner with me on my first night there.

Nov. 9 was an epic Local H show in Sac. Also a welcome break in the midst of a period of forced solitude, after the Camp Fire residual smoke prompted my whole office to work from home for about a week to protect us from the terrible air quality.

Nov. 18 was the day we had the beautiful service honoring the life of a beloved professor who passed.

Nov. 24-29 was my trip to Cabo with my Aunt Sherrie, and was also my official bday celebration.

Dec. 9-12 was my DC trip, which also allowed me to catch up with my friend Max, who lives in Baltimore, and my friend Stacey, who also happened to be there for her own work purposes.

Dec. 15 was my full day of yoga retreating at Green Gulch Ranch in Marin, and then I drove to the East Bay to catch up with Maya at Calicraft, which is one of our favorite craft distilleries in the area.

Dec. 16 was a white elephant celebration in Pleasant Hill that allowed me to unexpectedly meet a new, interesting friend.

08. What was your biggest achievement of the year? So far, meeting all expectations at my new job and closing a major gift earlier than is required. Also not losing my shit during the condo selling process, even though there were a lot of reasons to do so.

09. What was your biggest failure? I wrote VERY little fiction. But I did dip my toe back into writing in general, so I guess there’s that. 10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I took a tumble at home that left my tailbone a bit tender about a month ago. But otherwise, no, pretty healthy, even after getting rear-ended in my car! 11. What was the best thing you bought? Various travel tickets, both air and rail. A beautiful new necklace that I found at the holiday market in D.C. All the concert tickets that provided soul-fueling live music.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Mine! I adjusted to a new job and an unfamiliar setting and managed to acquire a few new friends while also maintaining the East Bay friendships that meant the most to me. 13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Who else but certain immediate family members? 14. Where did most of your money go? Rent. Travel. Wine, and to a lesser extent, craft beer, now that I’ve picked up a taste for stouts and sours. 15. What song will always remind you of 2018?

Anything off of Sleepwalkers by Brian Fallon

Anything off of Be More Kind by Frank Turner

Chariot by Gavin DeGraw

Tall Green Grass by Cory Branan

16. Compared to this time last year, you are: Thinner and sleeker, weight-wise

More willing to make room for others and open my life and space to them (friend and lover both) Still as sleep-deprived as ever 17. What do you wish you'd done more of? Novel writing, as always. Flirting. And kissing. 18. What do you wish you'd done less of? Angsting over adulting-related things that were either beyond my control or that ended up working out just as they should.

19. How will you be spending/did you spend Christmas?

I’m driving to Santa Cruz on Xmas Eve and treating myself to an overnight stay so that I can indulge in my happy place and a sunset hike. Also get to celebrate Boxing Day for the first time with my friend Jade and her brood back in Sac.

20. How will you be spending/did you spend New Year’s Eve? Original plan was to hang at my friend Jade’s place with her kids, movies and snacks. But just learned the wee ones are ill, so now I’m not sure what I’m doing. That was how I spent last year (the original plan, that is), with the main difference being that last year I also went to a two-hour yin workshop beforehand, which was how I discovered my current yoga studio, and discovered how much I enjoy yin practice in general. 21. Did you fall in love in 2018?

No. But I made more effort to pursue it, and had more options than I think I’ve ever had in a single year. Which was kind of encouraging even if each one was relatively short-lived.

22. How many one-night stands? I always laugh when I read this question. How about I just wink knowingly and say a lady never tells? 23. What was your favorite TV program? Supernatural. iZombie. To a lesser extent, Riverdale, even though I’m still pretty behind on that one. Sons of Anarchy (which I know is old but I’m playing catchup via Netflix and Hulu) And as a guilty pleasure, Total Divas. And of course, I'm still casually following WWE on the WWE network, though the only thing I’m finding compelling aside from the women’s matches are the Brits featured on the UK specific programming. 24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? No, I don't think so. 25. What was the best book you read? I finally got into the Harry Potter series and I’m really enjoying it. I just finished the Order of the Phoenix, and have the next installment requested from the library. 26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Not entirely new, but my appreciation for Cory Branan was reinforced and amplified after seeing him in Santa Barbara. And I’m also on a rediscovery tear with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Cold War Kids.

27. What did you want and get? Reassurance that this move to Sac was the right next step, after I settled in to my new role relatively easily. 28. What did you want and not get? Romantic love for an extended period. More down time. 29. What was your favorite film(s) of this year? Bohemian Rhapsody, even though I know it had some historical inaccuracies.

A Quiet Place was hard because of the ending, but decent as well.

And the latest Halloween was hella satisfying, especially since I caught it after needing an escape after learning about the passing of the professor I mentioned earlier.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I prepped for my Cabo departure, went exploring at the Cosumnes River Trail, which is also a bird sanctuary, and caught the movie Widows with my work friend Christine. Then she took me to Panera for dinner. Couldnt’ do much more than that since I had a 5 am flight the following morning. I turned 40.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Love, as always. 32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018? Activewear as much as possible. But never enough. 33. What kept you sane? My friends. The various trips I took and rock shows I attended. Junk food. Wandering in nature.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Jensen Ackles. Tom Hiddleston. Charlie Hunnan. Idris Elba. My taste doesn't change much. 35. Who did you miss? Dawn. Becca. Kelly and Drew. Stephanie and Scott. Rob. Elspeth. Mike K. Jason. 36. Who was the best new person you met?

Ellen

Mason

Torrey

Anthony

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018 Never underestimate my own ability to adapt to new situations, and to handle my own shit like a boss. I had a few challenging things thrown at me, namely the condo selling process, and the logistical gymnastics that followed after having to bring my car in for a bumper repair following a recent rear-ending, and though I felt tested by both of those situations, I ultimately succeeded at navigating both of them to a positive end.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I’m always starting over....

I don’t wanna waste the nights in my life

But I never fit in, or felt home in my skin.

I’m waiting on a big love, baby.

--Brian Fallon, “Her Majesty’s Service”

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davidarthurpersley · 5 years ago

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All our lives have been deeply affected by current events. Many businesses & industries are struggling during these trying times. As a performer, concerts & many venues have closed & entire concert seasons ended short or postponed until mid-2021 including: Broadway Shows, Opera Productions, Theatre Productions to Commercial Music Venues. Livelihoods of many in the Entertainment Industry have come to a screeching halt; so one learns to diversify. Frankly, my debut album hasn’t been released yet; hence like many musicians we do rely on other skills to survive. I teach music lessons from time to time. Please feel free to find me online via Wyzant, if you are interested in learning: voice, piano, guitar, songwriting, composing, music theory & sight singing, & music production. Prayers for all my Performing Friends & industry colleagues out there during these challenging times. Stay safe & healthy. DA. https://is.gd/E99XlY #music #lessons #musicinstruction #voice #musictheatre #songwriting #performing #interpretation #nyc #la #chicago #indianapolis #minneapolis #fortwayne https://www.instagram.com/p/CGTB4w4hqSM/?igshid=1k6ikpnesobmv

#music #lessons #musicinstruction #voice #musictheatre #songwriting #performing #interpretation #nyc #la #chicago #indianapolis #minneapolis #fortwayne

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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The Girl in the Huddle

How Elinor Kaine Penna became a pioneering pro football writer in an industry where women weren’t welcome

“I didn’t know you were a big sports fanatic,” says a server named Ellen, wandering over to Elinor Penna’s table after overhearing her story about visiting Baltimore Colts training camp. “I know the Indianapolis Colts, but … the Baltimore Colts!”

“Well, I was,” Penna replies. “That was one of the most interesting things that ever happened, how they got the Colts out of Baltimore.”

We’re sitting in the dining room at the Garden City Country Club on Long Island, where she eats often enough to greet the staff by name — and to know what she’ll order. So instead of looking at the menu, Penna, 83, has started laying out a slew of old photos and magazines featuring a common subject: her.

“Ellen, look at this — this is 60 years ago,” she says, holding up a photo of her and Johnny Unitas. “The reason we’re having this lunch is because I was writing about football for 40 newspapers and I wasn’t allowed in the press box, being a female.”

“Really, back then?” Ellen replies. “Oh, my God.”

“Now look at all the women on the sidelines,” says Penna, a bemused smile crossing her neatly painted red lips. “It’s so easy for them — I’m so jealous.”

To say Penna was a pioneering woman sportswriter is an understatement. Working under her maiden name, Elinor Kaine, through the 1960s and early ‘70s, she was a bona fide sports media phenomenon with the syndicated columns, TV deals, book deals and trash talk from disgruntled peers to prove it. Though she’s intermittently remembered today for her widely publicized fight to get inside an NFL press box, Penna’s work meant so much more than that.

She was written up in Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Day, Newsweek and Vogue (which called her football writing “funny, gossipy, frank and technical”) while getting bylines in Esquire, after that magazine called her “the best fortune-teller in pro football.” Her challenges to the sportswriting establishment were twofold: first, she was a woman, and, second, she refused both reverence and jargon, favoring a gossipy, bright tone that had more in common with contemporary blogs than it did the work of her stodgy peers. Fans treasured Penna’s fearlessness and wit, her willingness to comment on both what other writers wouldn’t think to (players’ marital status and pregame rituals) and what they wouldn’t dare to (juicy rumors about front office discord and trades). As one admirer put it, “She must have blood-stained shoes from stepping on so many toes.”

Skeptics — and sexists — dubbed her “pro football’s Tokyo Rose,” a nickname that unfortunately stuck: “the only woman in what was designed as a man’s game, and like Rose, an irritant.” In short, as one fellow columnist surmised, “Women like these hurt the men’s ego.”

But 50 years after what her friend Larry Merchant dubbed “The Kaine Mutiny,” Penna lives between Long Island and Miami in relative obscurity. Her very active Twitter account (@NFL_Elinor) has 329 followers; she plays in survivor pools (she won $3,000 a few seasons ago) and watches all the games — just on a substantially bigger and more colorful TV than in her early days covering the game.

“Imagine looking at a game on a 10-inch black-and white screen, you’re not going to see any of it again, the announcers are boring and that’s that,” Penna says. “It’s so much more fun now! You have a lot of replays. You can even tape a game and save it for later.”

It’s true that sports have changed dramatically over the course of Penna’s life. She was born Elinor Graham Kaine in Miami Beach in 1935, when there were just nine teams in the NFL. She grew up between Chicago and Miami — or between Wrigley Field and Hialeah Racetrack, as she tells it. Her well-off family owned horses, and racing was Penna’s entrée into the ever-entwined worlds of sports, gambling and high society.

After barely graduating from Smith College in 1957 with a degree in mathematics — where she had spent most of her time convincing boys to drive her to nearby racetracks, and playing pranks on her classmates — Penna spent a year working in an aeronautical engineering lab at Princeton while taking flamenco guitar lessons on the side (a clause that doesn’t sound real but somehow is).

Meanwhile, she began to see the appeal of the NFL: friends would come to visit her in New Jersey on Sundays since from there she could get Giants and Eagles games. Once she moved to New York a year later to become the librarian at an advertising agency in the then-brand-new Seagram Building (essentially living the plot of a minor character on Mad Men), Penna immediately fell in with the classy and sports-crazy crowds at places like P.J. Clarke’s, the now-defunct Toots Shor’s, Gallaghers Steakhouse — Midtown institutions that were, at that point, still hip.

Clarke’s, a famed destination for movers and shakers from Sinatra to Steinbrenner, was a particular favorite: she briefly dated the restaurant’s late owner Daniel Lavezzo Jr. (“It wasn’t really a huge romance, but he would be my best friend to this day if he was still alive”).

Among the monied, cosmopolitan crowd at Clarke’s, Penna’s sports fandom flourished. The Giants would come after home games: Charlie Conerly, Frank Gifford, Dick Lynch, Emlen Tunnell. The panelists of What’s My Line?, like Dorothy Kilgallen and Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf, made up another table. “Sunday night at P.J. Clarke’s was really something special,” Penna says, “and with all those people, at least half of them were interested in football.” The restaurant even fielded its own touch football team for a very casual league in Central Park, and Penna played: one column explained she “can throw a football 35 yards, has great hands, and describes her running style as ‘very Mel Triplett.’”

Going to Giants games at Yankee Stadium was an event: “I remember that we would wait and plan our hats, and suits, and high heels!” she says with a laugh. “People dressed to the teeth — they weren’t just in sweatshirts. It’s so awful now.” Her roommate briefly dated Tim Mara, so they could get season tickets on the 50-yard line (which they paid for, Penna notes: at one point the price went up from $20 to $25, and “we used to crab about it”). There was the game, and then the game after the game: “Everybody waited in the Stadium Club [a VIP lounge, basically] for Frank Gifford to come and pick up his wife Maxine,” says Penna. It was also where she started meeting the people who would become her sources.

Penna, who had grown up around gambling because of her family’s racing bona fides, recognized a market inefficiency and saw an opportunity. Plus, she was tired of her day job at the agency. “There were bookmakers in all the sports restaurants in New York at that time, and they were all taking football bets,” she explains. “Nothing was legal, and so at that point they didn’t put the line in the newspaper — I don’t think it was allowed.”

So in 1961, she decided to go it alone and start a weekly newsletter called Lineback. First, Penna befriended a bookie in Vegas, who she would call every week to get the following Sunday’s lines. Then she would type them up and add the most interesting news from around the league, which she gleaned by subscribing to the local papers in every single city that had an NFL team — so many papers the post office wouldn’t deliver them, and Penna had to walk to Times Square and haul them all back to her apartment at 69th Street and 2nd Avenue. Then she would make 500 copies or so, and by Thursday, five or six select restaurants (which would each pay $10 a week) had a stack of copies of Lineback on the bar.

In other words, she was aggregating. “In the New York papers, they covered the Giants; In Chicago, they covered the Bears,” she explains. “They would write one article about the visiting team — like on a Friday — and that was it. But just think about it: 12 teams and no national news about them at all. No TV, no radio.” The paper had two droll slogans: “America’s oldest and only pro football newsletter,” and “You don’t have to like football to like Lineback.”

Penna began to meet more and more people in sports after she started the newsletter, and got better and better intel from fans, avid gamblers, team staff and players. She may not have been allowed inside the press box or in the locker room, but as one anonymous editor put it, “She can gather more inside information, without venturing inside a single locker room, than J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons combined.”

She started selling subscriptions — $3 each — and counted Yankees manager Casey Stengel and Ethel Kennedy among her readers. (Penna was particularly proud of her incarcerated subscribers: “Send a subscription of Lineback to your favorite convict,” she told one paper.) Even NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle eventually got onboard, despite the fact she continually ribbed “The Big Bopper,” as she called him, in Lineback’s pages. Her readership started in the hundreds, and would eventually grow to thousands — all served by her and a group of friends stuffing envelopes in her living room.

By the mid-60s, it was a cult favorite: “Religiously read by the George Plimpton set,” as one paper described, though Penna says she never met the Paris Review co-founder. “The foremost, chicest professional football newsletter in the land … that is becoming the rage of the game’s emerging social set,” said another. Esquire called it “the most accurate and interesting inside information about professional football.” It was even called “sexy.”

“But it wasn’t!” Penna protests with a laugh. “Just to be the only girl made them think it was something.” She pauses. “When a football newsletter’s sexy, that’s going to be the day.”

It’s true, though, that Penna delivered football news with a rare humor and irreverence. Before pundits, Twitter and blogs made them sports’ most valued currency, she understood the power of a quick, bold take — especially when accompanied by a good one-liner. She described Vince Lombardi, for example, as “the Sophia Loren of football: top attraction, big on top, very volatile but warm of temper.”

“My aim is to go against the public relations garbage, which makes every team sound like it has 40 All-Americans in perfect health waiting and ready to go,” she told one reporter.

Some of her peers reviled her unorthodox approach. Others, like Larry Merchant, who was a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News when Penna came on the scene, relished the way she turned things upside-down. “She had a take on what was going on in pro football that lined up with the direction sportswriting was starting to go into in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” says Merchant. “Dealing with professional athletes like they were 6-feet tall, not 10-feet tall; talking about their backgrounds and personalities, not just how many yards they gained that day. It was also a time when pro football was starting to emerge as a very powerful force.”

“The human interest stuff is what I was interested in, and that goes across genders,” Penna says. “When television came, instead of reporting the game the way it had been done for centuries, they had to look for another dimension — so people became writers. Old sportswriters weren’t writers.”

Uncovering trivia about player’s personal lives was one thing, but it was Penna’s accuracy and scoops that wound up getting her widespread attention. A big break came when she was one of the only sportswriters to pick the Browns over the Colts, who were 7-point favorites, in the 1964 championship game. What made her do it? She leans over confidentially: “Nobody else did.” After that, she was regularly called Nostradamus.

She was the first to posit that Lombardi would leave the Packers in 1968 (though she had guessed he would come home to New York), and she scooped the location of the 1969 Super Bowl by calling hotels in New Orleans and innocently asking for Super Bowl-weekend reservations. At the same time, she was reporting on how Donny Anderson was the only man on the Packers who wore black silk underwear and compiling lists of football players “with first and last names which could pass for first names.” She loved Steve Stonebreaker: “the ultimate in names.” Nothing was off-limits, and everything was at least a little bit funny.

Soon, she started getting punnily titled spots in papers around the country: “Female on the Fifty.” “Girl in the Huddle.” “Powder Puff Picker.” “From the Weak Side.” “Beauty and the Beef.” The one that eventually stuck was “Football and the Single Girl.” Despite their gendered titles, the columns had the same peppy mix of football miscellany found in Lineback — and were certainly too insidery for the novice.

Penna was also commissioned by teams and papers around the country to write guides to football specifically for women, including one that was syndicated nationally before the very first Super Bowl, and a chapter in the 1968 Encyclopedia of Football. Somehow, though, rather than patronize her audience, Penna proffered entirely lucid, often hilarious and highly educational introductions to the gridiron.

“Men pro football fans have certainly made it hard for a girl to enjoy the game,” one began. “They pretend football is too complicated for a female to understand, hoping to keep the gridiron a no-woman’s land. Beat them at their own game!” It proceeds to instruct women to do exactly what men do to this day: note extremely obvious facts about the game as though they are revelatory, and use well-worn football cliches to sound in the know:

“Before the play you might volunteer the fact that third down situations (and use the word — it’s very ‘in’) make you terribly nervous. If the team makes a first down, say, ‘I was worried they might not make it. Football is such a game of inches, isn’t it?’ and smile.”

Another evergreen tidbit: “Any girl who wants a sophisticated football fan to fall in love with her should talk about the offensive line. That is one line that is guaranteed.”

She started doing additional widely syndicated columns just to pick the following week’s games, touted with full-page advertisements insisting “Elinor Kaine can outpick ANY MAN!” while challenging readers to not “let her get away with it.” There was another column for Football News, and racing coverage in the offseason. Regular local TV appearances followed, and by 1966 she was making picks weekly on NBC’s Today.

“Most of the time when I was on television, I was not on television because they wanted me personally as a football writer to be on,” Penna insists now. “They wanted a girl, and they didn’t care what I said. I made the picks because nobody else wanted to.” She appeared on What’s My Line? and To Tell The Truth, always stumping the panelists who could never fathom that a woman would write about football.

Penna generally downplays the sexism she faced, or deflects with jokes — but there’s no question it was inescapable. There’s how she was constantly introduced: “Pert,” “pretty,” “reasonably pretty,” “nicely developed intellectually and otherwise,” etc. In the early days, when she was trying to get on the mailing list for NFL’s weekly press releases, the head of PR told her he couldn’t send them to her because “you don’t work for a newspaper and you’re a girl.” So each week, he left a copy at the reception of the NFL headquarters, and she went to pick it up. Eventually he decided it would be alright to send them — as long as he addressed them to “Mr. E. Kaine.”

At one point, she applied for a press credential for a Giants game. “Listen, girl: the turf at Yankee Stadium is sacred,” the team PR rep told her. “No female is ever going to put her foot on it — at least as long as I’m here.” Penna recalls the incident with typical good humor: “Through the years, the Giants have been the most old-fashioned, backwards organization possible — and here they are in New York City, which is a shame.”

She sent application after application to the Pro Football Writers of America, which were ignored until Rozelle invited her to dinner with the head of the organization and insisted they allow her in. She never met most of her newspaper editors, never went to the offices; at that time, there were almost always two papers in every city, and the more prestigious ones would never pick up her column.

Penna got a slew of hate mail — “and they aren’t all love letters either,” she joked at the time. It may have been less profane than the responses women sports reporters get now (though Al Davis was known to refer to her as “that bitch”), but it was certainly no less mercurial. “I get a royal ribbing on how a woman can be expected to know, comprehend or delve into the man’s world of professional football,” she told one interviewer. “They say I ought to get married and go to the kitchen because they don’t agree with what I write. They’re people who are stupid or don’t have a sense of humor, or both.”

Then there was the fact she was single for most of her professional life. When I ask if she ever felt pressured to quit and get married, she interrupts me: “No, no, no. I never wanted to do that. I don’t know what I wanted to do ...”

Penna was asked about it at the time, too — specifically about what her parents thought. “They think I should be married,” she said. “You know, we are a square family, and they think I should be married to an executive and having children. They don’t say anything, but they seem to be puzzled by my entire life.”

Most of the time, her personal life was just one more source of jokes. One anecdote that appeared over and over quoted a nameless escort as saying, “I thought I was out with [storied journalist and racing fan] A.J. Liebling.” Penna dryly insisted she had “army of beaus,” all of whom she told to buy a subscription to Lineback. “Nobody ever said no,” she added.

Looking back on it, she sighs. Penna doesn’t have much patience for self-indulgence or over-seriousness, but the realities of what she went through are still daunting. “Some of these things are just so incredible,” she concludes.

The incident that Penna is, unfairly, best known for is her battle to get in the press box at the Yale Bowl, where the Giants and Jets were slated to face off for the first time in a 1969 preseason game. She had been admitted as working press for the first time at Super Bowl III earlier that year, though relegated to an auxiliary press area in the stands. Otherwise, she had been paying to get in alongside the fans.

Penna met a lawyer who offered to file a show cause order in New Haven Superior Court against the Jets, the Giants, Yale, and the New Haven writer who was managing the press box, demanding an explanation for why a registered member of the Pro Football Writers of America was not being admitted to an NFL press box.

What followed was a media firestorm: Penna’s challenge was covered from coast to coast. “I don’t want to take over the press box, I just want to sit in it,” she said at the time. “It isn’t fair to base the availability of press box credentials on the gender of the applicant. I mean, we were all born by the luck of the draw, weren’t we?” Eventually, the teams and school acquiesced and gave her the credential — but not before smearing Penna and claiming the case was a publicity stunt backed by the publisher of her upcoming book. “But wait until she sees where she’s sitting,” the press box coordinator sneeringly told one paper.

“So LeRoy [Neiman, the artist and Penna’s close friend] and I hop into my car — I had a Cadillac convertible that was just incredible — top down, drove up to the Yale Bowl, parked, and when I got to the bottom of the stairs to the press box, they said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, we don’t have any seats — we’re totally full.’ This was about 11 in the morning,” Penna remembers. “They showed me to … I think it was probably a newsreel photographer press box under the regular press box, which had like four folding chairs and no place to type. They said, ‘We’ve saved this for you.’ That was the story.”

There were empty seats in the press box, as Penna’s writer friends relayed to her, but she still wasn’t allowed in. The game was a big deal because the Jets were the reigning Super Bowl champions and it was the first time the New York teams had ever played each other, so she had a tighter deadline than usual — but Penna couldn’t file on time because she couldn’t type.

“It was the writers who were against me, the teams didn’t give a shit,” she says now. “They didn’t want me in there. No girl. They wanted it just for themselves.”

So, for the first time, she wrote about what it was like to be a woman sportswriter. “The Establishment, the New Haven sportswriters, the Jets and the Giants conspired yesterday, and yours truly watched the Jet-Giant clash practically by my lonesome in a separate and very unequal situation,” she wrote as the lede for that week’s column. “I’m not crying,” she told another writer who interviewed her about the incident. “I’m just tired of getting treated like garbage. I hate to get kicked around by such little people. I really don’t know what I’m going to do — I don’t want to be made a fool of any more.”

Fighting to get inside the press box unintentionally brought Penna an entirely new degree of visibility. It also inspired more ire from both women and men, including other women sports journalists of the era who saw it as attention-seeking. The attention, though, finally got her inside a press box at the Orange Bowl by the invitation of the Dolphins — generally, she just stuck to watching in the stands, where one peer described her as having a transistor radio in one ear, a portable television in a shopping bag at her feet and a thermos of martinis. “If you got right down to it, I never particularly wanted to go into the press box especially since I wasn’t writing about the game itself — I was just annoyed that I couldn’t,” she says now. “Wouldn’t you rather sit in the stands at Yankee Stadium?”

“I’ve yet to find a writer with a sense of humor who wanted to keep me out of their press box. And I’ve never met a good writer who didn’t have a good sense of humor,” she wrote about her press box battle later in 1969 for Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists — the same month that organization admitted women for the first time. “I’m lucky I’m not a baseball writer. If it sounds like football is conservative, provincial and full of old fogeys, baseball has a mind that’s strictly centuries B.C.”

At the time, going into the locker room as a woman was a complete nonstarter, as one might imagine. “Some of the guys said they would come out [of the locker room], the ones I knew — all I had to do was come down and ask,” she says now. “The whole thing about going into a locker room is so overrated. What those players say in the locker room is so boring, when you think about it — unless it was that Rams[/Saints] game last year with the foul, and you interview the guy who says he didn’t do it but he did, or something like that. But otherwise there’s nothing that comes from the locker room that’s interesting, and never has been.” At the time, of course, she had a quip: “They give you the same answers whether they have their pants on or off.”

Her book, Pro Football Broadside, came out that same year and was widely serialized in early 1970. Ostensibly framed around the idea of presenting football from a woman’s perspective, in reality it was just a smartly written survey of the state of the league, filled with both the basics of the game and anecdotes from some of its most memorable characters (the image of Joe Namath shaving his legs in the middle of the locker room stays with you).

“There is something basically discomforting about a gal sportswriter,” one review began. “Too many times it’s just a gimmick; in Elinor Kaine’s case, though, it’s downright embarrassing. She’s good.”

Pro Football Broadside begins not with an explanation of the game or a list of the teams, but in the locker room, where Penna vividly describes various players’ pregame routines and superstitions based solely on secondhand observations because, of course, she wasn’t allowed in. She talks about the pharmacy used to get players through the season, from vitamins to morphine and amphetamines, as breezily as she does the preferred cologne of the New England Patriots (Estée Lauder Aramis).

She describes the game in thoughtful, fresh terms: “If it is taken two at a time, football can be broken down for spectating purposes into 11 individual duels. Watching one duel at a time is absorbing. Superb athletes, football players use finesse, quickness and cunning as much as size and strength. The mini-wars are violently sophisticated and highly unpredictable.”

And within the book, there’s no concession to the amateur: Penna covers the pros and cons of “establishing the run,” the futility of prevent defense and punting (“super conservative” but “[Don] Shula would rather eat worms than run on fourth and inches”), while explaining Norman Mailer’s theory of the hypersexualized relationship between the center and the quarterback and allowing one center to describe the way different quarterbacks’ hands feel against his inner thigh. Penna describes spirals thusly: “The ball is never served with an olive. It’s always served with a twist.”

Penna covers racism and segregation in college football and the pros in frank terms, even explaining it wasn’t easy for Black players in Green Bay to get a haircut. She cites renowned sociologist Harry Edwards’ assertion that “[B]lack athletes have long been used as symbols of nonexistent democracy and brotherhood.” The book concludes with a call to get women in football: “According to doctors, who claim that nature made women the hardy sex as an ally for childbearing, women are physically as well as emotionally suited for football.”

“I don’t think it sold 10,000, but I may be wrong,” she says now. “When they’re on eBay for $2, I always buy them. I have two or three in my kitchen.”

By 1971, Penna had been invited to be on the CBS pregame show, NFL Today with Pat Summerall and Jack Whitaker. She’d known them for years prior to getting the gig, where she would just make the weekly picks — despite that, she says they barely greeted her when she came on set.

She’d already found warmer reception, though: Penna married an Argentinian horse trainer named Angel Penna in 1971 in a surprise ceremony at a dinner party she threw in New York. Angel had just gotten a job managing the stable of a French countess, so at the end of the 1971 season, Elinor decamped alongside him to live in a castle. “Perhaps it’s our male chauvinism, but we are glad to hear that Elinor Kaine has departed to become one of the newer Americans in Paris,” the Daily News wrote upon her departure. “Her track record as a cutie-pie, self-styled football expert was a low-class, put-on performance.”

At 35, her career as a sportswriter was over.

Penna looks at me skeptically over my salad. “You’re going to have too much stuff.” She’s right.

Epilogue

These days, Penna watches football more or less like the rest of us. From a big, comfortable office chair, she has access to both a TV set to RedZone and a desktop computer with Twitter open.

“You’ve gotta be careful,” she says, opening a tab up to check on the state of her survivor pool. “I’m trying not to tweet, but I can’t help it — I could do it all day. It’s exactly what I was doing 60 years ago: a gossip column.”

Penna’s a prolific quote-tweeter, particularly when it comes to her longtime home team, the Giants. She speaks — and tweets — with the easy assurance of a born pundit. Her commentary ranges from “terrible snap” to various critiques of players’ and coaches’ hair: Kliff Kingsbury’s hair is too short, Ryan Fitzpatrick’s beard is too long. She likes Andy Reid because he doesn’t have those “Adam Gase eyes.” “Isn’t it amazing that Belichick doesn’t open his mouth when he talks?” she’ll ask out of the blue, flashing a grin, ever observing the details that other sportswriters ignore.

“I think that reporters are missing that now — the gossip angle,” she says. “Now they would over-do it — take the fun out of it. And there’d be [law]suits.” When Penna was working, the league was still sort of the Wild West: in the middle of rapid expansion via the NFL-AFL merger, and only very recently a mainstream phenomenon. Monday Night Football, for example, was born in 1970. Now, the amount of money and power at stake makes playfully prodding players, coaches and owners seem impossible, especially if you want to maintain your sourcing.

“It’s so big. Think how big it is!” Penna says, reminiscing about the era when all the games were on one day. “And the London stuff — completely ridiculous. It’s not good for the players or for the home fans, who can’t go unless they’re really rich.”

After spending almost a decade in France (where she couldn’t watch football), she moved with her husband to the same house she lives in now on Long Island, spitting distance from Belmont Park. They started antique shops in Connecticut that have since closed, but she still sells 19th century English pottery online; Angel died in 1992.

I ask the woman Merchant had described as the “female Grantland Rice” if she had ever thought about returning to writing. “Never,” she replies. “Sometimes I say, ‘That would be a great idea for a column, but not for me to write about.’ Think about Jerry Jones. You wouldn’t want to interview him, because he wouldn’t tell you anything. But you could write columns about him, by reading what other people say.”

“Elinor laughed at the pretensions of men who patronized women with their pseudo-expertise,” Merchant wrote on the occasion of Penna’s retirement from sportswriting. “She poked fun at the juvenile antics of grown men who played, coached and owned. She fleshed out the people hidden under all that armor and money.”

“She would come up with these anecdotes that ordinary sportswriters at the time wouldn’t care about, would never find out about,” he says now. “It tickled me that this woman had created a space for herself. One of the reasons I love New York is because I met so many people who had sort of made up their lives in different ways that nobody could have anticipated.”

Penna had made something entirely new with her newsletter and her columns, not only because men wouldn’t let her in the room but because she didn’t like the rote, dull writing they were doing in that room anyway. She exposed the fallacy of football’s mystique with frankness and humor, while encouraging women to participate with the confidence of a man: knowing next to nothing about a topic (especially one as ultimately inconsequential as football) and loudly sharing opinions on it anyway.

“I don’t know what my goals were then,” says Penna. “I wasn’t trying to lay any new roads. I didn’t give a shit about that. Trailblazing...that had nothing to do with it at all. I was having fun.”

It’s perhaps because she’s so resistant to the idea of being labeled a pioneer that Penna’s accomplishments have been mostly forgotten; quitting the industry and changing her name also likely had an impact. She remembers being asked to sit on one panel about being a woman in sports media with a shudder. “Natalie, they were the most boring people,” she says. “You wouldn’t want to sit with them for five minutes. They had no sense of humor and took themselves so seriously.”

That’s what Elinor reminded me: This is supposed to be fun. Yes, 50 years later, women have only made it to the men’s professional sideline, not onto their gridiron as she called for all those years ago. But as I try to guess how she might end this piece, I have to laugh — that’s probably a lot closer than they’d like us to be.

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deanmiles13 · 6 years ago

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My Very First KISS Concert.

KISS- August 10th, Indianapolis, IN. 1979

I can’t actually remember where/when I first heard them, but I do remember the two brothers we hung out with who gave my first KISS record. The NUGENT!!! Brad and Brian. We always wondered and asked about the TED connection... They said it was true.

Anyway, one day, they said I could have this album called Rock and Roll Over. I was immediately drawn to the cover. We lived in the same apartment complex and I ran home and never took that album off. In fact, it was like a drug. I had to have more. Luckily, KISS was everywhere. Magazines, Records, Toys etc. Baseball cards were the big thing at the time and I would steal packs of these. Easy to steal and satisfied my craving for these new monsters that filled my imagination. Also fueled my desire to collect anything and everything KISS. My walls were covered in posters and pages from Circus, Sixteen and Hit Parader. The inside of my closets were top to bottom covered with stuff as well.

The Kabuki make up of my new idols was transfixing. I would notice if a lazy photo editor had published picture of my heroes with their guitar backwards or even lettering on the cases. I would pour over each detail of these pictures until I had exhausted all possibilities as to what was going in the photos. Like where WERE they?!?! Had they beaten up Shawn Cassidy for real? Was IT. goats blood? Did Peter stab someone with a drumstick?

This was pre internet and it was awesome!! But the MUSIC?!?!

It was the real hook. It had me. I had to have it all. We lived near a Woolworth’s and man did we turn that place inside out. We would spend hours there just running all over. I remember people lined up out the door to play Atari -Space Invaders- the day it came out. I took my turn and then got back in line to play it again. Anyway, somehow my brother and I came up with a brilliant scam to get records. In them days, when you would buy a record, they would fold the receipt and staple it to the outside of the bag. SO... We went and bought just one album, and then we just used a “dummy” bag to procure our new drug, a couple of albums at a time. My mom got to asking about my new phono collection and I just told her that a friend “gave them to me”. Well this led to endless hours playing these records.

They never would play KISS on the radio back then, and I would just have an ALL KISS - ALL DAY sorta thing and play these albums back to back. I still own these very same KISS records and there is nary a scratch on them. I covet them!

I would even call radio stations and request KISS. They would straight up laugh and tell me that they would NEVER play that crap on the air. I must’ve been just one of many Flaming Youth trying to set the world on fire.

But when KISS came to town?!?! Man, was Q95 happy to have them down to promote the show. It must have been weird for KISS. Their music wouldn’t /couldn’t be played on radio, yet they still needed radio jocks to promote the show?!?!

Which leads to August 10, 1979.

Market Square Arena (Built in 1974, brought down in 2001) Capacity 16,000 KISS Opening act: Michael Stanley Group.

It was the last Peter Criss tour with them. I don’t remember the build up to the show much. I’m sure we had to go to J.C. Pennys or something to get the tickets. It used to be at Customer Service where you would put payments on layaway stuff. The day of the show however we were off the wall in anticipation.

I wondered where they would be sleeping? When they got here to Indy (Apparently Paul was stopped by a frisky female officer while on i-465. He had a love gun on him). The whole day we were on my Mom, “We gotta go!!! Now!!!” See, this was “Festival Seating” and that was first come- first served. Hell, I would have waited all week if I knew it meant Iwould be sitting up on the front.This was just a glimpse of my dedication and love for Rock and Roll.

But my Mom, she just kept saying “The show don’t start til’ 8:00!” Man, it was the longest day of my life. The show?!?!? I can remember the smoking guitar. Beth... N.Y. Groove and I was made for loving you baby. And sitting so far away, you couldn’t even see the make up they had on. I recall the blood, the smashing of Paul’s guitar.... I still have the program.

But the show, the crowd, the smells. Fuck yes!!! My Mom RULES. Setting a 9 year and 6 year old kid in the middle of this, was baptism by fire.

Back to MOM.....

She knew I was stealing those records. She saw my devotion to this band a saw how it made me feel.... GREAT!!! So, it was slightly weird when I was asked to take down all the posters etc. She said the apartments we lived in wanted to paint each unit and we had to prep. This meant removing everything from the walls.

So, I neatly rolled all the posters and put them in grocery bags. And waited.... And waited... It NEVER crossed my mind why my Mom wasn’t “prepping” and taking stuff off the walls of the apt.

No paint crew EVER arrived. It was front and center on my mind, but slowly slipped from it and so did my posters from my life. I turned around one day to put them back up and couldn’t find them. Our apartment was small and I knew every inch of it. I couldn’t find them anywhere.When I asked my Mom about them, she would just shrug and say “If it was on the floor, I probably threw it away!”

I’ll never forget those words. My temple to the Gods of Thunder was gone. Just like that!!!

This was a life lesson I was being taught by a very caring and loving mom. I know she had no intentions of creating a collecting monster that she did. Years later as I look back on all the boxes of fliers and posters, it all makes sense. Actually, I learned this in therapy years later.

If not for KISS I would never have picked up a broom (works best for Gene/Bass) or a tennis racquet (best for Ace/guitar). But more important, it made me wanna be cool like the cat man. The best voice KISS had. The one with the big hit that made em’ mainstream. The DRUMMER!!! I would play along to the records, air drumming, all the time, The one to set the bar to was Alive. I would grind that one out on Friday nights with my pillows and headphones.

Eventually, my musical taste changed and I kinda moved on from KISS. I would see them a few more times and then with no make up. The WTF moment for all fans. It was uncomfortable to watch them roll with the changes and get more frilly.... UGHH!!!

The next band I got into hardcore, was The Ramones.

Seems to be about right. 4 NY guys, straight up rock, a uniform image, intensity, passion!!!

HEY HO LET’S GO!!!!

#kiss ramones music

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