#Patrick Frick

[fluffyy-flare]

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

uh oh <- thought too hard about Hum Hallelujah again

[robotnikholmescomicblog]

Man, we're only on Issue #2 and Rock's already getting messed up after being a lab assistant-turned super fighting robot. The repetition of avoiding battles and having to destroy his robot "brothers" must really be getting to him. Its a good thing Roll and Dr. Light are there to talk him out of his funk!

Good grief, Cut Man is almost as obnoxious with the puns as his Ruby Spears cartoon counterpart, but it's played rather tongue-in-cheek here. Not only does Cut Man get ignored the whole time because Rock's listening to Roll instead, but he interrupts Cut Man's pun after one-shotting him with Guts Man's move and gives a pun of his own. xD

The sense of family between Rock, Roll and Dr. Light is much appreciated as a fan of these characters!

[hum--hallelujah]

every day a live full performance of Hand of God seems more attainable

[reactionimagesdaily]

[mythvoiced]

Aeri can’t decide what she hates more - the way the bejeweled pin in the victor from District 8’s hair is lopsided, or the girl herself. Oh, what Aeri wouldn’t give to wear such an accessory again, or even wear the finery the victor has been gifted to wear to the viewing. That was her once, wasn’t it?

But now? She’s stuck here, watching this spectacle. The brat, who has no idea what privilege she’s been presented with, keeps on creasing the delicate threads of her gown and her stylists also clearly have no idea on how to do the brat’s makeup. And then there’s that damn pin- Aeri’s pin once upon a time- only in place because it’s tangled in there-

And Aeri can’t hold back. When the brat’s stylists are gone, she reaches into the girl’s hair and extracts the pin. Her fingers, callused from years of hard labor that still feels foreign to Aeri, are quick to untangle most of the obvious knots in the brat’s hair before shetwists the locks into a ponytail and then a bun. The pin goes back in.

Aeri glares at the girl through the mirror. Don’t you dare mess up my work.

( congrats lenlen!! you get....aeri, being really resentful, i hope marìa doesn't mind too much ^^' )

@stillresolved | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET HER BE RESENTFUL

---

There's a harshness to being dolled up when you are in no way receptive to it.

María isn't foreign to the roughness of life - she's a fucking Victor, after all, isn't she - she's started working in factories just about around the age even the most moral of District 8 people might turn their back in fear on seeing her walk in, pretending not seeing her would free them of the responsibility of working with a child.

Her hands and nose and palate and lungs had long gotten used and keep getting used to the aftermath of working with chemicals, of being so very intimate with garments and colours, with fumes and heat, with the hard work of surviving, with the hard work of fighting to be allowed a minimal chance at said survival, at figuring that there's little more for people from District 8 to fight for.

Still... it's not the same.

Being pushed around, dressed in things she would have never chosen for herself to serve a people, a man, because she's not stupid enough to not be able to tell what is Capitol and what is Snow and how Capitol is Snow, it's a kind of biting and harsh and rough that doesn't leave behind the usual kind of scars and memories and bruises.

Even surviving the Games had come with a desperately accepted sense of relief, one covered in blood and the humiliation of all she'd done and all she'd thought she'd get to accomplish, only for reality to crash in on her in a victory she hadn't wanted to partake in, hadn't wanted to make possible, when she'd wanted her Games to be victor-less in lieu of ending the Games themselves.

This... this is humiliation in the long run. This has hardly any hope attached to it, waiting for her on the other end of the line. Sometimes, on the worst days, it feels like the true brunt of the battle, walking with blood-stained soles and palms and sparkling as she does, wearing all that might make even the softest source of light appear like flames reflecting off her frame, covering her in fire that had not eaten her alive - much to a few people's disdain.

Picking at things, not holding still, grimacing, shifting her muscles, arms, face to make her stylists' life as difficult as possible, it was all she had to fight back.

The Arena came with death and violence, and living back at home had been physical labour upon physical labour, straining her young body until she could no longer tell if she was broken beyond repair or fitter than children her age should be - had they grown up privileged within the Capitol's safety.

Here she has only threads to tear apart and reflections to glare at.

And a new challenge behind every door.

She feels yanked back, an intensity of motion caused less by the avox suddenly in her hair and more her own stiffness that hadn't prepared her for submission to someone suddenly rearranging her.

After her stylists had left, she'd succumbed to the tension of not wanting to be there, without the added hard work of making sure everybody else does. Lost in her thought, somebody's hands suddenly returning on her had fortified, molten it into a newly forged blade, stiff and ready to strike, tensing everything within her and making a few fingers in her hair turn into a grappling hook tied to a moving mountain.

María is startled enough she can't remember how to glare.

A frown does accompany her widened eyes anyway, making her look... appalled, almost, an addition to her expression so unsuited to typically frightened features, youth tainted by the face of someone used to having to fight to stay alive.

It almost happens in a flash then. The reflection moves and adjusts and fixes and what had started as something that had María's lips split into something acid and trembling, turns into something unpleasant and acrid, but silent, as María sits and lets herself be mandhandled one more time.

That's when she glares. After the avox finishes up, after their eyes meet in the mirror and María sees none of the downturned gazes they're trying to make her accustomed to.

Seeing avoxes pisses her off.

Why take it out on them.

She understands what they are, what they're supposed to represent.

To her, an avox is a statement. No longer a person but rather someone rid of their innate right to be considered one. Even with the determination and life in this avox' eyes, María has come to understand them as tools Snow uses to assert his dominance, people from all circles of life, punished with the robbing of their words... and their detached tongue metaphorically forced to lick away at the tip of the shoes of people like María.

All a scheme.

Infighting.

Use the prey on the prey, make them take each other out.

It'd be easier to feel pity if María could sleep, if the avox hadn't adjusted her appearance, and if the avox wasn't staring her down as if she had any right to do so.

She's oddly beautiful.

She's oddly familiar.

"Why are you helping them?" she hisses, low, whispered, because she might never admit it, but she's... she's a little scared, isn't she? Lately? Devora's face swims before her inner eye, so stern, so wrong.

"I'm on your side more than they are," she adds, pulling a strand of her hair out of the freshly adjusted bun.

[mrsmaudieholmesteapot]

Staffelstart: Ab diese Woche jeden Montag sowie heute Abend um 18:50 Uhr im Ersten und danach in der ARD Mediathek (wie immer, denke ich)

[youvebeenlivingfictional]

pleaseee kisses prompts 14, 15, and 33 with patrick zweig 🙏🫠

Sure :D

Prompts: An unexpected kiss that shocks the one receiving it; a kiss so desperate that the two wind around each other, refusing to let go until they are finished; a fierce kiss that ends with a bite on the lip, soothing it with a lick.

Warnings: Fluff; flirty Patrick; fake dating; smooches

Summary: Finding your plus one to a wedding at the last minute on Tinder had been dicey, sure, but you couldn't have anticipated this.

"Would you cut it out?"

"No." Patrick's refusal was muffled as he chowed down on another two mini crab cakes. You glanced around nervously, concerned that anyone you knew might see your plus one shoving every hors d'oeuvre that he could get his hands on into his mouth.

Finding your plus one to a wedding at the last minute on Tinder had been dicey, sure, but you couldn't have anticipated this.

The trade was straightforward: Patrick was your plus one to your friend's wedding, and you let Patrick shower at your place and crash at yours (or cover the cost of a motel for the night—he was cool with either).

But now, you were considering cutting ties early. If Patrick kept this up, then it defeated the whole fricking purpose of having him go with you in the first place. You didn't think that anything could be more embarrassing than showing up to a wedding alone while your ex was attending with his new girlfriend, but the way Patrick was stuffing his face was quickly proving you wrong.

"Seriously," You hissed, leaning in and elbowing him in the side, "You're either gonna choke, or I'm going to choke you."

Patrick grinned as he chewed, dusting off his fingers.

"Okay," He agreed before chasing the swallow with a swig of his beer. "Okay, you're right. I'll slow it down."

"Thank you."

"Need to save room for dinner, anyway. And cake. Are people still doing cake at weddings?"

"Sometimes."

"You think they will?"

"Honestly, they seem more like a dessert bar couple. They'll probably have a little cake for themselves."

"Explains why I haven't seen one." He folded his arms on the high table, glancing around the others mingling at cocktail hour. "Seen the ex yet?"

"No."

"You should've shown me a picture, I could keep an eye out for him, too."

"Better if you don't know what he looks like. Then you can be genuinely surprised if I introduce you."

"You don't trust my acting abilities?"

"With all due respect, you could be Ted Bundy 2.0 for all I know."

"Fake cast and missing puppy story not included."

You smiled in spite of yourself, and Patrick grinned.

"Tell me about yourself," He urged.

"What for?"

"Gotta pass the time somehow—especially if you're going to poo-poo me from the pu pu platter."

"There isn't a pu pu platter in sight."

"Can you just appreciate the joke?"

"It was a fine joke."

"C'mon. I mean, you're funny, you're gorgeous," He raised his hand, waving toward you, "Why does someone like you need to surf Tinder to find a plus one?"

You smiled, looking down at your drink.

"First of all, thank you."

"Anytime."

"Second of all...I don't know, since my ex left me I've been focusing on myself."

"No hoe phase?"

"Hoe—ly shit, you seriously talk to people you don't know like that?" You scoffed.

"I just mean, you know. Sometimes after a breakup, you wanna fuck around a little. Nothing wrong with that. It would explain why you're on Tinder."

"Oh? Is that you're on Tinder?"

"Honestly? No."

"Why, then?"

Patrick shrugged. "I like sex and sometimes I have trouble finding somewhere to sleep."

"How's that working?"

"Better than you'd think."

"Does the sex thing always happen?"

"Not always. I'm happy to crash on a couch."

"Mm."

"Not that I mind it when it happens. Thanks for answering my question, by the way."

"What do you mean?"

"About the hoe phase. You just said 'the sex thing' like it's a creature from the black lagoon."

"I did not—" You began to wind up for the next round of argument, but were cut off by the sound of your name being called. You winced, steeling yourself and urging, "Don't look."

"That the ex?"

"Yes."

"Perfect," Patrick stood up straighter, straightening his jacket. "Showtime."

"You sound way too excited—"

"Hey!" Your ex spoke up behind you, and you slapped a smile on, wheeling around and greeting, "Jeremy, hi!"

"How's it going?" Jeremy began to lean in for a hug, but went still when Patrick curled his arm around your waist. Your stomach flipped at the gesture, keeping your eyes carefully trained on Jeremy's face.

"It's going great, how are you?"

"It's good, it's good."

"Where's Francesca?"

"Oh, she's grabbing a drink."

"Awesome."

"You want another one, baby?"

Patrick's question threw you for a loop for a second, but you shook your head, smiling.

"I'm good, hon, but thanks."

"I don't think we've—met?" Jeremy's voice tipped up, and you had to fight off a laugh.

"I don't think you have. Jeremy, this is Patrick."

"Hi."

You watched Jeremy hold his hand out to shake, but Patrick just tightened his grip on your hip, drawing you a little closer as he offered, "Nice to meet you."

Jeremy's smile faltered as he drew his hand back, tucking it into his pocket.

"You two been together long?"

"Oh, gosh, a few months," You flubbed.

"How'd you, uh—How'd you meet?"

"At a match. I'm a tennis player."

"Oh! You any good?" Jeremy asked.

"He's the best," You answered without missing a beat.

Patrick chuckled softly, nose nudging against your cheek. "You're gonna make me blush, sweetie."

"Good," You smiled at him. A thrill shot through you as Patrick's eyes dipped to your mouth, and before you knew it, he was leaning in for a gentle kiss. You let your eyes slip closed, your lips working tenderly against his. Patrick's hand slid from your hip, sliding lower and palming your ass. You drew back, giving Patrick a warning look before turning to look at Jeremy again as he cleared his throat.

"I should go find Francesca."

"Sure! It was great seeing you."

"You, too—and nice meeting you, Patrick."

"Charmed," Patrick cooed. The two of you watched him turn, disappearing into the crowd.

"...That was good, right?"

"Yeah, it was good...Patrick?"

"Yeah?"

"Get your hand off of my ass."

"Sure." He gave it a pat before turning back to the table, eyeing a passing server's tray. "Is that shrimp cocktail?"

--

"That wasn't so bad."

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Little bit of both." Patrick leaned against your front hall wall. You took him in for a moment, taking in his loose tie, and his jacket where he was holding it over his shoulder.

"I think we were very convincing, so," You tipped your head from side to side. "You're right. It wasn't so bad. Thank you."

"Hey, sure. You can just venmo me."

"What?"

"For the motel."

"Oh! Oh, of course." You fished into your purse for your phone, biting your lip. To be honest, you'd been rethinking that particular part of the plan all evening. You hated to admit it, but Patrick was gorgeous, and had been so goddamn charming. He'd been funny, had made conversation with the other guests at your table, and he'd been perfectly affectionate—kisses on the cheek, the lips; a hand on your back, your waist. A time or two, he'd gazed into your eyes in a way that had felt so sincere and...Real.

Sure, he'd driven you nuts at the beginning of the evening, but he had grown on you.

"Um," You spoke up. "I was, uh...I was thinking."

"What about?"

"About the sex...Thing." You glanced nervously toward Patrick just in time to see his expression melt into flirty intrigue.

"Oh yeah?" He goaded. "What about it?"

You couldn't just come out and say it, right? You set your phone down on the counter and strode toward Patrick before you could talk yourself out of it. You grasped his rough cheeks, drawing him in for a kiss. He went without hesitation, dropping his jacket and curling his arms around you. You groaned softly, sliding a hand up into his hair and letting him steer you back against the wall. You parted your lips as Patrick's tongue probed them gently, his leg slotting between yours and rocking it back and forth.

You rolled your hips down against it, whining softly against his lips as his hands skimmed over your body. Patrick began to draw away, but you leaned up, catching hold of his lower lip with your teeth and giving it a rough bite. His hips jolted against yours, groaning low in his throat as you soothingly slipped your tongue along the skin.

"Do you still want me to Venmo you?" You asked.

"Not really. You still want me to crash on the couch?"

You hummed, pretending to contemplate before you let your hand slide from his curls to his neck.

"How about we start on the couch."

[germanpostwarmodern]

From its foundation in 1919 onwards the Bauhaus was a preferred and frequent target for nationalist and National Socialists due to its international orientation, alleged communist activities and overall avant-garde position. At the same time its students were regarded as immune to totalitarianism and National Socialism in particular. Five years after the Bauhaus centenary the Klassik Stiftung Weimar reviews the relationship between Bauhaus and the Nazi regime and does away with a number of long-held beliefs. Until 15 September the tripartite exhibition at Museum Neues Weimar, Bauhaus Museum and Schiller-Museum for the first time sheds light on an uncomfortable part of the school’s history.

Alongside the exhibition Hirmer published the present and very insightful catalogue, edited by Anke Blümm, Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler, that discusses the manifold hostilities brought forward by conservatives and nationalists but also examines the dealings of former Bauhaus students and teachers with the Nazi regime. The first third of the catalogue is thus devoted to a chronological history of the Bauhaus’ and its opposition and how the school’s situation gradually worsened. A harbinger of what was looming was the Weimar iconoclasm of 1930: the newly elected government of the federal state of Thuringia included the NSDAP and Wilhelm Fricke became minister of the interior and public education. In this capacity he released a decree against progressive art and culture with which he e.g. forced the Weimar art collections to remove their strategically built collection of Bauhaus artworks.

In the following and larger part the catalogue collects a total of 58 biographies of former students and teachers and how they fared under the totalitarian regime: included are of course the well-known stories of figureheads like Gropius, Albers and Mies van der Rohe but also those of e.g. Fritz Ertl who drew the plans for the Auschwitz extermination camp and Friedl Dicker who was killed in the very same camp. At the same time others like photographer Otto Umbehr (Umbo) fared well as regime-linked contractors.

The collected biographies again demonstrate that history isn’t a black or white business but spiked with shades of grey as proves the fact that a Bauhaus education can’t immunize individuals from adapting to an inhuman regime. A pivotal book and exhibition!

[gardigansandkarma]

Travis Kelce Opens Up About Taylor Swift and What Comes Next

Wall Street Journal - Travis Kelce full article under the cut

A few months ago, he was merely football famous. Now Travis Kelce is ready to tell his story. ‘I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them.’

By J.R. Moehringer

WHEN TRAVIS KELCE was a young man, his college football coach pulled him aside one day and told him the secret of life: Everybody you meet in this world is either a fountain or a drain.

“I need fountains,” the coach growled at Kelce. “I don’t need f—ing drains. Travis, you’re f—ing draaaining me!”

The advice left a deep impression. (“Changed his life,” says one of Kelce’s closest friends.) Yes, Kelce thought—you’re either a giver of the basic wellsprings of life or a thirsty taker. He vowed to be the former. In a world of gutters, be a geyser. 

You think about that story as Kelce drives you around his beloved Kansas City, home of his world-champion Chiefs, for whom he’s the star tight end and arguably the second-most popular player, after his best friend, quarterback Patrick Mahomes. You think about that story on a gorgeous autumn afternoon as Kelce gives you a personal tour of his decadelong history in this city, his singular journey from clueless rook to legend. (“I used to take this scenic route [to the stadium]—there’s just something about seeing the city you’re about to go represent….”)

A different sort of celebrity might be more guarded, might even chirp those big Rolls tires and speed away before someone throws their body across the luminous silver bonnet, but Kelce’s default emotion is this—exuberant extroversion. He likes people. Loves people. Never mind deciding not to be a drain. If people gush at him, he can’t help it, he gushes back. 

Noting all this, you think how fame itself might be a kind of fountain. Some people moan about getting wet, others frolic like kids around a hydrant. You even wonder if this fountain-drain paradigm might be the skeleton key to Kelce, the Rosetta Stone for which half of America seems to be hunting right now. 

Kelce was famous for several years, thanks to his Hall of Fame résumé, his symbiotic relationship with Mahomes, but that was just football famous. This year, after winning the Super Bowl, after hosting Saturday Night Live, after starring in all the commercials, Kelce became inescapable. And that was before—you know. 

People have begun to ask in all earnestness why they can’t turn on their TV anymore without seeing Kelce’s sculpted mug. They wonder, not with snark, but in all sincerity: Who the frick is this guy? And where did he come from? 

You have a TV. You wonder too. So you decide to join the search for answers. One weekend, in the thick of football season, you get on a plane to Kansas City.

BUT FIRST. Back up. Like that knucklehead who threw it into reverse, go back. Before you can take the Travis Michael Kelce Guided Tour, you need to watch him cry. 

Kelce tries to play it off. He launches a sentence, stops. He launches another, again aborts. He paws his eyes with his giant hands and looks to be on the verge of losing it, because if Kelce loves people, what he really loves is his people. 

This whole display takes place on a Monday afternoon at a Kansas City steakhouse, where you and Kelce are having an early dinner. Like, retirement-community early. He’s in recovery mode, healing from dozens of violent collisions sustained during the previous day’s win over division rival Los Angeles, and food is medicine. He can intuit when he’s hit the caloric sweet spot necessary to mend or maintain his 6-foot-5, 260-pound frame (roughly 4,000), and he’s not there yet. So he orders the dry-aged filet rubbed with coffee, Caesar salad (hold the anchovies), a side of “triple-cooked” fries and a glass of water. 

After a long pause, and several Lamaze breaths, Kelce collects himself, apologizes. Can’t help it, he says; those folks who always have his back, who call him by the ancient secret nicknames (Big Yeti, El Travedor, Killatrav, Michael, etc.)—they’re everything. He doesn’t think of them as his entourage; he thinks of them as family, an extension of “Mama Kelce” and “Poppa Kelce” and older brother Jason, the starting center for the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Patrick Bacon, a friend since first grade, says Kelce’s go-to method of winding down after a hard game or long day is to sit with this “core group” around his kitchen island and chop it up. Talk, that’s what nourishes Kelce, not videogames, not bottle service at some club. 

“He loves to talk about the old days,” Bacon says. But it has to be with people from the old days. People who know that Kelce will sometimes dismiss a bad or subpar thing as “buns.” People who know that one of Kelce’s favorite desserts is French toast dripping with whipped cream and syrup. People who know that, growing up, he played every sport in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and also know the difference between Cleveland Heights and Cleveland proper. You want to break into the Kelce core group? You better have a phone number that starts with 216. 

And yet, you wonder how well his friends really know him, how well he lets anyone know him, because to a person they all say Trav lives in the moment, Trav never thinks about tomorrow, Trav never worries about retirement, despite recently turning 34, making him a Gollum in the NFL, whereas Kelce confesses that he thinks about it nonstop, “more than anyone could ever imagine.” In the same spirit, perhaps, he keeps his own counsel about his round-the-clock physical anguish. “That’s the only thing I’ve never really been open about,” he says, “the discomfort. The pain. The lingering injuries—the 10 surgeries I’ve had that I still feel every single surgery to this day.” 

Kansas City’s longtime tight ends coach, Tom Melvin, says Kelce undersells the pain because the alternative is not playing, and the man will not miss games. “He has phenomenal pain tolerance. He’s played through things that other athletes I’ve coached through the years have not been able to push through. Mentally tough—way off the charts.” 

Kelce’s trainer and physical therapist, Alex Skacel, says there’s not a single day, in season, when Kelce stretches out on the training table and doesn’t have some gruesome bruise. What few realize, however, is the insane number of scratches. Guys claw each other out there, Skacel says; it can leave Kelce’s epidermis striated with crimson. To bounce back after such abuse requires more than basic therapy. Kelce and Skacel use a battery of esoteric treatments, from cupping to dry needling to occlusion therapy: essentially tying off a limb with a tourniquet while Kelce works out. Kelce also adheres to a pregame regimen of anti-inflammatories, which he doesn’t like to discuss because they “have a history of affecting people’s insides.” 

“There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said], ‘Yo! Did you know he was coming?'” Kelce says about how he initially found his way into Taylor Swift’s orbit. “I had someone playing Cupid.” Loewe coat, $4,990, Loewe​.com.

IF KELCE BROODS on life without football, one reason is that he had an excruciating sneak preview. A redshirt sophomore at Cincinnati, he got booted off the team for smoking pot. In a blink, he lost everything—his purpose, his meaning. “It was like my life was over.” 

He also lost his scholarship. He had to get a job. The best one he could find was at a telemarketing firm, doing healthcare surveys. “Eye-opening,” he says, bowing his head.

Cold-calling people in southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, eastern Indiana, asking what they thought of Obamacare, taught him a lot. (“Uh, sir, I ran out of the comment box, I can’t write anymore, we gotta kind of keep this moving.”) Above all it taught him that he didn’t want to ever do that again. 

He probably won’t have to. He’s got options. Sometimes he sees himself in a broadcasting booth. Sometimes his manager talks about action flicks. (Maybe a Marvel movie? Kelce’s already built like Wolverine.) You also get the sense that Kelce toys with notions of doing some form of comedy. He haunts clubs, lives for open-mic nights, and he’s gotten to be friendly with several rising stand-ups.

At the moment, of course, the only thing millions of people want to know about Kelce’s future is whether or not it will include Taylor Swift. And the second thing they’re dying to know is how he and she got together in the first place. 

Did he sit in a dark room and say Jumanji three times? He laughs. “I don’t know if I want to get into all of it,” he says, and then he gets into it, because fountain. 

It all started when he tried to meet Swift at her Arrowhead concert in July and got blocked, presumably by security. He then recounted the experience in a charming way on the podcast he does with Jason. Soon after, he says, he received an unbidden assist from inside Team Swift. 

“There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: Yo! Did you know he was coming? I had somebody playing Cupid.” He wasn’t aware at the time, however; the revelation only came later, after he looked down at his phone and got the shock of a lifetime. “She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”

He lets slip that some of his early helpers were part of the Swift family tree. “She’ll probably hate me for saying this, but…when she came to Arrowhead, they gave her the big locker room as a dressing room, and her little cousins were taking pictures…in front of my locker.” 

Understandably, he’s not handing out details about the first date, though he will say that he managed to not be nervous. “When I met her in New York, we had already kind of been talking, so I knew we could have a nice dinner and, like, a conversation, and what goes from there will go from there.” 

If anyone was nervous, he adds, it was his core group. “Everybody around me telling me: Don’t f— this up! And me sitting here saying: Yeah—got it.”

Likewise, his mother. Donna Kelce still berates herself for how she handled a question about Taylor on the Today show. Trying not to sound too enthusiastic, she came off underwhelmed. Kelce, not wanting his mom to feel bad, immediately phoned her and assured her that she did a super job—adding that her green eyeglasses looked great. 

These days, however, with the relationship progressing, Donna feels more at liberty. “I can tell you this,” she says, beaming. “He’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time…. God bless him, he shot for the stars!”

Kelce seems freer, too. He doesn’t need to be asked about Taylor; he mentions her unreservedly, lavishes praise on her, calls her “hilarious,” “a genius,” notes that they share compatible worldviews, especially when it comes to family and work. “Everybody knows I’m a family guy,” he says. “Her team is her family. Her family does a lot of stuff in terms of the tour, the marketing, being around, so I think she has a lot of those values as well, which is right up my alley.”

One of Kelce’s friends describes a sweet, magical moment, a late-night gathering around Kelce’s firepit. Kelce and Swift looked like two “peas in a pod,” the friend says, and at one point they even burst into a memorable duet of—“Teenage Dirtbag”?

This must be fake 

My lips start to shake 

How does she know who I am? 

Kelce squints into the distance: He’s not sure they were singing…Wheatus. But he allows that his memory might be compromised. 

LONG BEFORE MEETING SWIFT, Kelce was just another Swiftie. In some ways he still is. He explains the concept of her concert—“She does it in eras”—as if you live in a yurt in Outer Mongolia. Then he eagerly informs you that the night he attended, he was counting the minutes until she got to 1989. (Both he and Swift were born in 1989.) “ ‘Blank Space’ was one I wanted to hear live for sure. I could make a bad guy good for the weekend. That’s a helluva line!”

More often than not, he says, it was a Swiftian beat, a melody that captivated him. (“She writes catchy jingles.”) But lately he’s all about those lyrics; he’s scrutinized the breakup stuff. What a miracle, he says, the way Swift can turn life into poetry. “I’ve never been a man of words. Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor is, has been f—ing mind-blowing. I’m learning every day.”

Something he might need to learn from Swift: how to handle the attention. Kelce lives in a quiet neighborhood north of downtown—leafy trees, trim lawns, no gates. There’s now a clutch of desperate-looking dudes with cameras stationed on his sidewalk 24/7. He’s followed everywhere, drones buzzing overhead—it’s stressful, more than he lets on, according to one confidante.

“Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them…. I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce says. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”

Asked if he has anything to teach Swift, he looks shy. He can’t think of anything offhand. 

Football? 

Sure, he says, sounding unsure. 

Of course, the thing she probably wants to learn about most is him. While talking to Kelce you realize all at once that the most avid participant in the national scavenger hunt for clues about his character is likely Swift herself. To that end, Donna says that anyone wishing to understand her younger son would do well to start with her older. Travis “could never quite catch up” to Jason, she says. “He was always just second, just searching to be the best, and never quite getting there.” (The only way in which the two brothers were full equals was appetite. As boys, Donna says, “they would sit down and eat whole chickens.”) 

Others say the key to Travis is simpler than that. He’s basically still the kid who filled his Dad’s shampoo bottle with hand cream. “He just lives his life with so much joy,” Jason says. “He’s always kind of surrounding himself with people who are funny, who have a zest for life; it’s one of the things that defines him.”

Jason recalls many nights in the Kelce family room, the two brothers and mom eating in front of some comedy. “We had one of those coffee tables that the top would lift up and meet you at your face if you were eating,” he says, guffawing. 

Indeed, Kelce has warned Swift that she’s going to have to reckon with this part of his personality. Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell—they will all be a part of the relationship. “I told Taylor that I have that world, I’ve got to introduce it to her. I let her know: This is my jam right here.” (Kelce does an uncanny imitation of Farley’s dorky baritone, and the ringtone on his phone is Farley primal screaming: For the love of GOD!) 

If the past is any prelude, this will register like an 8.0 earthquake among Swifties. Their queen—screening Tommy Boy? Every new factoid, every new piece of the puzzle, gets eagerly cataloged, investigated, celebrated, especially on “SwiftTok,” a fervent virtual community, according to Brian Donovan, a professor at the University of Kansas who teaches a seminar called The Sociology of Taylor Swift. 

Donovan says several of his class discussions this semester have been given over to No. 87. Swifties make no apology for delving into her relationships, just as Shakespeare scholars like to contemplate the subject of the sonnets. But the deep “vetting” of Kelce, Donovan adds, goes well beyond fans. “I think there’s a public fascination, because it seems like a pure unalloyed moment of joy in the wider context of global wars, deepening political polarization, dysfunction in Congress, an ongoing health crisis. There’s a lot of bad news out there, and this is a common story that everybody knows about and can talk about. I don’t think we’ve had that in American culture for a long time.” 

NOW GET IN THE CAR. Now you’re ready for the Rolls. Or are you? Gawking at the ceiling, you ask, Are those stars? 

Yes, Kelce says. 

You stare in disbelief. Embedded in a leather firmament are scores, no, hundreds—many hundreds—of twinkling lights, a fiber-optic galaxy meant to resemble the larger galaxy in which we’re all floating. For the sake of verisimilitude, the Rolls even produces a shooting star now and then. There was one, just a second ago, Kelce says. “Make a wish. Dreams come true.” 

He guns the engine and steers toward downtown. The Rolls doesn’t drive so much as waft you around Kansas City. The ride is so cush, it almost makes sense, for a moment or two, that the car is worth more than many of the buildings you pass. (A Rolls Ghost, before customizing, goes for nearly half a million dollars.) All of which makes it that much more startling, as you come to the heart of downtown, when Kelce points out his first-ever apartment and shows you the alley door where he’d sneak in and out when he was late on the rent. 

What? 

He’s not ducking landlords these days. Still, he’s grossly underpaid. His $14 million salary, though near the top among tight ends, is half what the league’s star receivers make, and Kelce often functions as a receiver. 

Nothing to be done, he says flatly. The Chiefs know, he says, that he would play for free. They know he loves his city, his quarterback. “Unfortunately, in this business, things gotta get ugly, they gotta get unpleasant [if you want more money], and I’m a pleasant son of a buck.”

Thank goodness for endorsements. At this point, says his co-manager Aaron Eanes, “the NFL is just his side hustle.” 

Eanes and his brother, Andre, handle much of Kelce’s business life, from investments to marketing, and it was they who widened his investment portfolio, putting him into a tequila company, an energy drink and a chain of car washes. They also steered him into lucrative endorsements, like Bud Light and the Covid vaccine, for which he caught much grief from Aaron Rodgers. The Jets quarterback, out since game one of the season with a torn Achilles, belittled Kelce as a Pfizer shill during one of his Tuesday appearances on The Pat McAfee Show. 

Kelce took the high road then. He’s staying on it now. “Aaron’s always been cool to me,” he says. “I knew he was trying to have some fun. He’s in a situation where Tuesdays are his game days…. So I get it, man, I’ve been injured too…. Who knows what the guy is going through?”

Mary Esselman, Operation Breakthrough’s CEO, says that whenever Kelce visits, he doesn’t bring media and he doesn’t leave until the last kid has felt seen and appreciated. Not long ago, she adds, Kelce sponsored a football camp. Afterward, Esselman asked the children to name the highlight of the experience. 

One told her: “He remembered my name.” 

Kelce drives you past a jazz club he likes, a coffee place he used to frequent. Just recently, he concedes, he could go to a Starbucks in Manhattan without anyone looking twice. Those days seem over. Minutes later, he’s steering past a small airport, where Swift’s plane is often prominently parked these days. 

Is it there now, gleaming in the moonlight? The Kelce eras tour is coming to a close. Left unsaid, but palpable: She’s at the house, waiting. 

The Rolls pulls off the highway, up the hill to your hotel. You thank him for taking so much time, for answering all your questions. As you step out of the Rolls, you turn, ask him one more. 

You ask him if you’re going crazy, or did he really say that thing when you first got in the car? Did he really point to a shooting star in the ceiling of his Rolls-Royce and say, “Make a wish. Dreams come true”? 

He cracks up. 

He did. He said it. 

He’s not running from it. 

What’s more, it might just be true. 

“How do you think I manifest it all?”

[maounteighn]

it will never stop being funny how out of aaalll musicals out there available in the 80s the one Patrick Bateman chose to put on his wall was fricking LES MISERABLES.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

I'm taking Patrick Dempsey out back and shooting him what the frick

[chosetherose]

FULL ARTICLE:

WHEN TRAVIS KELCE was a young man, his college football coach pulled him aside one day and told him the secret of life: Everybody you meet in this world is either a fountain or a drain.

“I need fountains,” the coach growled at Kelce. “I don’t need f—ing drains. Travis, you’re f—ing draaaining me!”

The advice left a deep impression. (“Changed his life,” says one of Kelce’s closest friends.) Yes, Kelce thought—you’re either a giver of the basic wellsprings of life or a thirsty taker. He vowed to be the former. In a world of gutters, be a geyser. 

You think about that story as Kelce drives you around his beloved Kansas City, home of his world-champion Chiefs, for whom he’s the star tight end and arguably the second-most popular player, after his best friend, quarterback Patrick Mahomes. You think about that story on a gorgeous autumn afternoon as Kelce gives you a personal tour of his decadelong history in this city, his singular journey from clueless rook to legend. (“I used to take this scenic route [to the stadium]—there’s just something about seeing the city you’re about to go represent….”)

You can’t help thinking about that fountain story, not only because Kelce’s custom-made Rolls-Royce looks like a font of glowing light, not only because its silver goddess hood ornament is a burbling spigot of mercury. You think about that story because, as Kelce stops at a red light, as shirtless guys begin shambling toward the Rolls, apparently intent on opening the doors, getting an autograph, maybe even catching a ride, Kelce doesn’t seem the least bit alarmed. He’s smiling, waving, honking, even chuckling at a fan who leaps off the curb and “hits the stanky leg,” a dance Kelce has been known to bust out after a touchdown. At one point Kelce rolls down the window and exchanges hellos with some guy heedlessly reversing his rig into oncoming traffic, just so he can pull alongside Kelce and give a thumbs-up.

A different sort of celebrity might be more guarded, might even chirp those big Rolls tires and speed away before someone throws their body across the luminous silver bonnet, but Kelce’s default emotion is this—exuberant extroversion. He likes people. Loves people. Never mind deciding not to be a drain. If people gush at him, he can’t help it, he gushes back. 

Noting all this, you think how fame itself might be a kind of fountain. Some people moan about getting wet, others frolic like kids around a hydrant. You even wonder if this fountain-drain paradigm might be the skeleton key to Kelce, the Rosetta Stone for which half of America seems to be hunting right now. 

Kelce was famous for several years, thanks to his Hall of Fame résumé, his symbiotic relationship with Mahomes, but that was just football famous. This year, after winning the Super Bowl, after hosting Saturday Night Live, after starring in all the commercials, Kelce became inescapable. And that was before—you know. 

People have begun to ask in all earnestness why they can’t turn on their TV anymore without seeing Kelce’s sculpted mug. They wonder, not with snark, but in all sincerity: Who the frick is this guy? And where did he come from? 

You have a TV. You wonder too. So you decide to join the search for answers. One weekend, in the thick of football season, you get on a plane to Kansas City.

BUT FIRST. Back up. Like that knucklehead who threw it into reverse, go back. Before you can take the Travis Michael Kelce Guided Tour, you need to watch him cry. 

Kelce is a hard man to tackle, but he’s shockingly easy to trigger. You just have to mention his best friends, the tight-knit crew who hang at his house and tag along on his golf outings, who manage his money and curate his diet and fill his private suite at Arrowhead Stadium. Suddenly, his cornflower-blue eyes, which normally twinkle, start to glisten. Now come the tears. Big sloppy ones. Talk about your fountains. 

Kelce tries to play it off. He launches a sentence, stops. He launches another, again aborts. He paws his eyes with his giant hands and looks to be on the verge of losing it, because if Kelce loves people, what he really loves is his people. 

This whole display takes place on a Monday afternoon at a Kansas City steakhouse, where you and Kelce are having an early dinner. Like, retirement-community early. He’s in recovery mode, healing from dozens of violent collisions sustained during the previous day’s win over division rival Los Angeles, and food is medicine. He can intuit when he’s hit the caloric sweet spot necessary to mend or maintain his 6-foot-5, 260-pound frame (roughly 4,000), and he’s not there yet. So he orders the dry-aged filet rubbed with coffee, Caesar salad (hold the anchovies), a side of “triple-cooked” fries and a glass of water. 

After a long pause, and several Lamaze breaths, Kelce collects himself, apologizes. Can’t help it, he says; those folks who always have his back, who call him by the ancient secret nicknames (Big Yeti, El Travedor, Killatrav, Michael, etc.)—they’re everything. He doesn’t think of them as his entourage; he thinks of them as family, an extension of “Mama Kelce” and “Poppa Kelce” and older brother Jason, the starting center for the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Patrick Bacon, a friend since first grade, says Kelce’s go-to method of winding down after a hard game or long day is to sit with this “core group” around his kitchen island and chop it up. Talk, that’s what nourishes Kelce, not videogames, not bottle service at some club. 

“He loves to talk about the old days,” Bacon says. But it has to be with people from the old days. People who know that Kelce will sometimes dismiss a bad or subpar thing as “buns.” People who know that one of Kelce’s favorite desserts is French toast dripping with whipped cream and syrup. People who know that, growing up, he played every sport in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and also know the difference between Cleveland Heights and Cleveland proper. You want to break into the Kelce core group? You better have a phone number that starts with 216. 

And yet, you wonder how well his friends really know him, how well he lets anyone know him, because to a person they all say Trav lives in the moment, Trav never thinks about tomorrow, Trav never worries about retirement, despite recently turning 34, making him a Gollum in the NFL, whereas Kelce confesses that he thinks about it nonstop, “more than anyone could ever imagine.” In the same spirit, perhaps, he keeps his own counsel about his round-the-clock physical anguish. “That’s the only thing I’ve never really been open about,” he says, “the discomfort. The pain. The lingering injuries—the 10 surgeries I’ve had that I still feel every single surgery to this day.” 

Kansas City’s longtime tight ends coach, Tom Melvin, says Kelce undersells the pain because the alternative is not playing, and the man will not miss games. “He has phenomenal pain tolerance. He’s played through things that other athletes I’ve coached through the years have not been able to push through. Mentally tough—way off the charts.” 

Kelce’s trainer and physical therapist, Alex Skacel, says there’s not a single day, in season, when Kelce stretches out on the training table and doesn’t have some gruesome bruise. What few realize, however, is the insane number of scratches. Guys claw each other out there, Skacel says; it can leave Kelce’s epidermis striated with crimson. To bounce back after such abuse requires more than basic therapy. Kelce and Skacel use a battery of esoteric treatments, from cupping to dry needling to occlusion therapy: essentially tying off a limb with a tourniquet while Kelce works out. Kelce also adheres to a pregame regimen of anti-inflammatories, which he doesn’t like to discuss because they “have a history of affecting people’s insides.” 

Despite it all, Kelce sounds like a man who’s never loved football more. Skacel recalls being with Kelce in Paris for Fashion Week. Around midnight, after 12 hours of bouncing from one designer show to another, Kelce was feeling guilty that he hadn’t done enough that day for his body. He suggested a run. Soon, a quick jog along the Seine turned into a mini-marathon, then wind sprints across empty bridges. While Paris slept, Kelce and Skacel grinded. It was cinematic, both men say, a double pump of adrenaline, like something out of Rocky. More, it was a reaffirmation of what matters most. 

IF KELCE BROODS on life without football, one reason is that he had an excruciating sneak preview. A redshirt sophomore at Cincinnati, he got booted off the team for smoking pot. In a blink, he lost everything—his purpose, his meaning. “It was like my life was over.” 

He also lost his scholarship. He had to get a job. The best one he could find was at a telemarketing firm, doing healthcare surveys. “Eye-opening,” he says, bowing his head.

Cold-calling people in southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, eastern Indiana, asking what they thought of Obamacare, taught him a lot. (“Uh, sir, I ran out of the comment box, I can’t write anymore, we gotta kind of keep this moving.”) Above all it taught him that he didn’t want to ever do that again. 

He probably won’t have to. He’s got options. Sometimes he sees himself in a broadcasting booth. Sometimes his manager talks about action flicks. (Maybe a Marvel movie? Kelce’s already built like Wolverine.) You also get the sense that Kelce toys with notions of doing some form of comedy. He haunts clubs, lives for open-mic nights, and he’s gotten to be friendly with several rising stand-ups.

At the moment, of course, the only thing millions of people want to know about Kelce’s future is whether or not it will include Taylor Swift. And the second thing they’re dying to know is how he and she got together in the first place. 

More study has been dedicated to the opening salvos of their relationship than to the first seconds of the Big Bang, and thus far both origins remain a mystery. People have even speculated that Kelce somehow spoke his desire into the universe and just—manifested Swift? 

Did he sit in a dark room and say Jumanji three times? He laughs. “I don’t know if I want to get into all of it,” he says, and then he gets into it, because fountain. 

It all started when he tried to meet Swift at her Arrowhead concert in July and got blocked, presumably by security. He then recounted the experience in a charming way on the podcast he does with Jason. Soon after, he says, he received an unbidden assist from inside Team Swift. 

“There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: Yo! Did you know he was coming? I had somebody playing Cupid.” He wasn’t aware at the time, however; the revelation only came later, after he looked down at his phone and got the shock of a lifetime. “She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”

He lets slip that some of his early helpers were part of the Swift family tree. “She’ll probably hate me for saying this, but…when she came to Arrowhead, they gave her the big locker room as a dressing room, and her little cousins were taking pictures…in front of my locker.” 

Understandably, he’s not handing out details about the first date, though he will say that he managed to not be nervous. “When I met her in New York, we had already kind of been talking, so I knew we could have a nice dinner and, like, a conversation, and what goes from there will go from there.” 

If anyone was nervous, he adds, it was his core group. “Everybody around me telling me: Don’t f— this up! And me sitting here saying: Yeah—got it.”

As those first heady days unfolded, as news bulletins and cutaways showed Swift cheering Kelce on from his suite, Kelce was uncharacteristically guarded with the media. “That was the biggest thing to me: make sure I don’t say anything that would push Taylor away.” 

Likewise, his mother. Donna Kelce still berates herself for how she handled a question about Taylor on the Today show. Trying not to sound too enthusiastic, she came off underwhelmed. Kelce, not wanting his mom to feel bad, immediately phoned her and assured her that she did a super job—adding that her green eyeglasses looked great.

These days, however, with the relationship progressing, Donna feels more at liberty. “I can tell you this,” she says, beaming. “He’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time…. God bless him, he shot for the stars!”

Kelce seems freer, too. He doesn’t need to be asked about Taylor; he mentions her unreservedly, lavishes praise on her, calls her “hilarious,” “a genius,” notes that they share compatible worldviews, especially when it comes to family and work. “Everybody knows I’m a family guy,” he says. “Her team is her family. Her family does a lot of stuff in terms of the tour, the marketing, being around, so I think she has a lot of those values as well, which is right up my alley.”

One of Kelce’s friends describes a sweet, magical moment, a late-night gathering around Kelce’s firepit. Kelce and Swift looked like two “peas in a pod,” the friend says, and at one point they even burst into a memorable duet of—“Teenage Dirtbag”?

This must be fake 

My lips start to shake 

How does she know who I am?

LONG BEFORE MEETING SWIFT, Kelce was just another Swiftie. In some ways he still is. He explains the concept of her concert—“She does it in eras”—as if you live in a yurt in Outer Mongolia. Then he eagerly informs you that the night he attended, he was counting the minutes until she got to 1989. (Both he and Swift were born in 1989.) “ ‘Blank Space’ was one I wanted to hear live for sure. I could make a bad guy good for the weekend. That’s a helluva line!”

More often than not, he says, it was a Swiftian beat, a melody that captivated him. (“She writes catchy jingles.”) But lately he’s all about those lyrics; he’s scrutinized the breakup stuff. What a miracle, he says, the way Swift can turn life into poetry. “I’ve never been a man of words. Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor is, has been f—ing mind-blowing. I’m learning every day.”

Something he might need to learn from Swift: how to handle the attention. Kelce lives in a quiet neighborhood north of downtown—leafy trees, trim lawns, no gates. There’s now a clutch of desperate-looking dudes with cameras stationed on his sidewalk 24/7. He’s followed everywhere, drones buzzing overhead—it’s stressful, more than he lets on, according to one confidante.

“Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them…. I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce says. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”

Asked if he has anything to teach Swift, he looks shy. He can’t think of anything offhand. 

Football? 

Sure, he says, sounding unsure. 

Of course, the thing she probably wants to learn about most is him. While talking to Kelce you realize all at once that the most avid participant in the national scavenger hunt for clues about his character is likely Swift herself. To that end, Donna says that anyone wishing to understand her younger son would do well to start with her older. Travis “could never quite catch up” to Jason, she says. “He was always just second, just searching to be the best, and never quite getting there.” (The only way in which the two brothers were full equals was appetite. As boys, Donna says, “they would sit down and eat whole chickens.”) 

Others say the key to Travis is simpler than that. He’s basically still the kid who filled his Dad’s shampoo bottle with hand cream. “He just lives his life with so much joy,” Jason says. “He’s always kind of surrounding himself with people who are funny, who have a zest for life; it’s one of the things that defines him.”

Jason recalls many nights in the Kelce family room, the two brothers and mom eating in front of some comedy. “We had one of those coffee tables that the top would lift up and meet you at your face if you were eating,” he says, guffawing.

Maybe that’s why Kelce still watches and rewatches those same movies and shows? All his sacred entities got fused into one dollop of sensory memory—food, family, laughter.

Indeed, Kelce has warned Swift that she’s going to have to reckon with this part of his personality. Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell—they will all be a part of the relationship. “I told Taylor that I have that world, I’ve got to introduce it to her. I let her know: This is my jam right here.” (Kelce does an uncanny imitation of Farley’s dorky baritone, and the ringtone on his phone is Farley primal screaming: For the love of GOD!) 

If the past is any prelude, this will register like an 8.0 earthquake among Swifties. Their queen—screening Tommy Boy? Every new factoid, every new piece of the puzzle, gets eagerly cataloged, investigated, celebrated, especially on “SwiftTok,” a fervent virtual community, according to Brian Donovan, a professor at the University of Kansas who teaches a seminar called The Sociology of Taylor Swift. 

Donovan says several of his class discussions this semester have been given over to No. 87. Swifties make no apology for delving into her relationships, just as Shakespeare scholars like to contemplate the subject of the sonnets. But the deep “vetting” of Kelce, Donovan adds, goes well beyond fans. “I think there’s a public fascination, because it seems like a pure unalloyed moment of joy in the wider context of global wars, deepening political polarization, dysfunction in Congress, an ongoing health crisis. There’s a lot of bad news out there, and this is a common story that everybody knows about and can talk about. I don’t think we’ve had that in American culture for a long time.”

NOW GET IN THE CAR. Now you’re ready for the Rolls. Or are you? Gawking at the ceiling, you ask, Are those stars? 

Yes, Kelce says. 

You stare in disbelief. Embedded in a leather firmament are scores, no, hundreds—many hundreds—of twinkling lights, a fiber-optic galaxy meant to resemble the larger galaxy in which we’re all floating. For the sake of verisimilitude, the Rolls even produces a shooting star now and then. There was one, just a second ago, Kelce says. “Make a wish. Dreams come true.” 

He guns the engine and steers toward downtown. The Rolls doesn’t drive so much as waft you around Kansas City. The ride is so cush, it almost makes sense, for a moment or two, that the car is worth more than many of the buildings you pass. (A Rolls Ghost, before customizing, goes for nearly half a million dollars.) All of which makes it that much more startling, as you come to the heart of downtown, when Kelce points out his first-ever apartment and shows you the alley door where he’d sneak in and out when he was late on the rent. 

What? 

It was his rookie season, he says, and the paychecks rolled in every week. But he didn’t understand that paychecks stop when the season does. So he didn’t budget. “I don’t want to say I was broke….” But he was. “There might have been one or two days I avoided the landlord.”

He’s not ducking landlords these days. Still, he’s grossly underpaid. His $14 million salary, though near the top among tight ends, is half what the league’s star receivers make, and Kelce often functions as a receiver. 

Nothing to be done, he says flatly. The Chiefs know, he says, that he would play for free. They know he loves his city, his quarterback. “Unfortunately, in this business, things gotta get ugly, they gotta get unpleasant [if you want more money], and I’m a pleasant son of a buck.”

Thank goodness for endorsements. At this point, says his co-manager Aaron Eanes, “the NFL is just his side hustle.” 

Eanes and his brother, Andre, handle much of Kelce’s business life, from investments to marketing, and it was they who widened his investment portfolio, putting him into a tequila company, an energy drink and a chain of car washes. They also steered him into lucrative endorsements, like Bud Light and the Covid vaccine, for which he caught much grief from Aaron Rodgers. The Jets quarterback, out since game one of the season with a torn Achilles, belittled Kelce as a Pfizer shill during one of his Tuesday appearances on The Pat McAfee Show. 

Kelce took the high road then. He’s staying on it now. “Aaron’s always been cool to me,” he says. “I knew he was trying to have some fun. He’s in a situation where Tuesdays are his game days…. So I get it, man, I’ve been injured too…. Who knows what the guy is going through?”

Kelce double-parks the Rolls outside a building that’s brightly lit, unusual in this neighborhood. That’s Operation Breakthrough, he says, voice swelling with emotion. Founded in 1971, the charitable organization provides safe spaces and cutting-edge educational resources for the city’s poorest children. Kelce enjoys coming here to visit, and sometimes invites the children to his suite on Sundays. And three years ago, when Operation Breakthrough wanted to expand, he bought them the muffler shop next door. 

Mary Esselman, Operation Breakthrough’s CEO, says that whenever Kelce visits, he doesn’t bring media and he doesn’t leave until the last kid has felt seen and appreciated. Not long ago, she adds, Kelce sponsored a football camp. Afterward, Esselman asked the children to name the highlight of the experience. 

One told her: “He remembered my name.” 

Kelce drives you past a jazz club he likes, a coffee place he used to frequent. Just recently, he concedes, he could go to a Starbucks in Manhattan without anyone looking twice. Those days seem over. Minutes later, he’s steering past a small airport, where Swift’s plane is often prominently parked these days.

Is it there now, gleaming in the moonlight? The Kelce eras tour is coming to a close. Left unsaid, but palpable: She’s at the house, waiting. 

The Rolls pulls off the highway, up the hill to your hotel. You thank him for taking so much time, for answering all your questions. As you step out of the Rolls, you turn, ask him one more. 

You ask him if you’re going crazy, or did he really say that thing when you first got in the car? Did he really point to a shooting star in the ceiling of his Rolls-Royce and say, “Make a wish. Dreams come true”? 

He cracks up. 

He did. He said it. 

He’s not running from it. 

What’s more, it might just be true. 

“How do you think I manifest it all?”

[tua-five]

Season 3 Episode 4

⚠️⚠️ You know the drill ⚠️⚠️

Let's talk about Harlan killing all of the moms. He killed them on accident. He heard the noise. It hurt too much, along with Sissy dying, and he screamed, and it killed them. I am wondering... how he didn't kill the 16 moms that survived. Was it a proximity thing...? I mean, Klaus's mom was at least in the US, but Viktor was born in Russia. So...

Now let's talk about how Ben WAS number 1, but got demoted. He was number 1 because, I mean, let's be honest, he probably is the best out of the Sparrows. And we're all pretty sure that he got demoted because of the Jennifer incident, right? Because no matter how much time has changed, the world/universe/fate/whatever you want to think of it, will always repeat the same events. It's like it's already set in stone. Like with Allsion. Patrick still existed and had a child in the same house, even if he never met Allsion. "It's meant to be." Or as The Handler likes to say, "Que sera, sera."

And omg, Ben sounds like a little kid what he says, "which is totally cheating." Like, bruh. You're a grown man. Stop complaining.

Like I said, I love Lila and Five. And their little "Jinx. A-B-C-1-2-3, personal padlock." "Can you not—" "You can't speak!"

Flashback to season 1 episode 1. Klaus is in Reginald's office, and he's taking things and stuffing them in his pants. He goes to leave, and Luther tells him to drop it. And then he keeps one thing. Now forward to now, Season 3 episode 4, and you've got Stanley stealing things from a room. And the Klaus tells him to drop it, but he's allowed to keep 1 thing. A full circle moment. And Klaus is definitely the fun uncle. Within reason, but also very much so not.

Yeah, great, Luther. Family meeting. Family only. Minus Klaus. Minus Five. You remember what happened the last time you had a family meeting without Five? (Or.. at least in s1). You ended up creating a whole day that "wasn't." For the love of everything not already kugelblitzed, wait till Five gets back.

Omg the Diego-Allison bonding momemt!! Seriously, though. Do not disrespect the slushee. Those can really hit the spot. Dr. Fuego does not fit Diego because you know what does more? Bargain Batman.

Okay, but GOD, do I really fricken hope Five gets his 1970s corvette stingray. This entire scene does something to me. Gets my blood boiling and energy high. Like, just give this old man a break.

Frick man. Klaus is dead. Five's "actual self" is dead. Harlan killed their mother's. I mean... dang..

Your gifs, my lovelies

[thekidsarentalright]

every time I think about Pete & Patrick matching their instruments (the scribble guitars... the light up ones... et cetera) it makes me so happy I want to fricking cry

youre sooooo real for this yeah 🥺 i love seeing them matching ever in general but matching instruments just feels so. Them. extension of their soulmate-ism methinks it’s everything <333

[sweetheartmotives]

But what the frick was that next to you in the third pic... WAS THAT PATRICK STAR!?

Yes, and someone kept coming to me calling me fat (•□•)!

What the freak! You're just big-boned! 🤬🤬🤬