#The Manhattan Transcripts

[noosphe-re]

The Manhattan Transcripts differ from most architectural drawings insofar as they are neither real projects nor mere fantasies. They propose to transcribe an architectural interpretation of reality. To this aim, they use a particular structure indicated by photographs that either direct or 'witness' events (some would say 'functions', others would call them 'programs'). At the same time, plans, sections, and diagrams outline spaces and indicate the movements of the different protagonists – those people intruding into the architectural 'stage set'. The effect is not unlike an Eisenstein film script or some Moholy-Nagy stage directions. Even if the Transcripts become a self-contained set of drawings, with its own internal coherence, they are first a device. Their explicit purpose is to transcribe things normally removed from conventional architectural representation, namely the complex relationship between spaces and their use; between the set and the script; between 'type' and 'program'; between objects and events. Their implicit purpose has to do with the twentieth-century city.

Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

the bonus scenes in the featurettes of series 6 are so precious to me and the way 11 can be kind to his companions i think is very often what i subconsciously model my scenes of the doctor being kind on

hes is so intuitive. he has so much tact. and he always has exactly the right reassuring thing to say that you'd want to hear from someone who has lived for centuries and seen most of the universe

it's also why i dont buy the socially awkward thing at all. yes their inclinations and tendencies vary between regenerations, and theres slow change over the course of the decades, but i think mainly what varies is how they present themselves. same software, different casing. 12 is meaner but not fundamentally different than the one that came before him. neither is 13. what changes is the choices they make. 13 cant or wont engage with her companions the way 11 does with his because losing them hurt so much (and not just 11&his obvs like im not saying 13 is the result of 11, 13 is the result of 12, but 12 is the result of 11 and theyre a russian doll you get it)

also with 11 i think it goes nicely with those scenes where he gets mad at his companions, where they disappoint him or he feels betrayed. his emotions go deep. he loves deeply. and hes not afraid to

[quietwingsinthesky]

Hiiiii! So, a few days ago you were talking about the whole thing with Amy, Rory, and River. And when I saw those posts a thought arose in my head and I wish to share it with you.

Since River grew up with Amy and Rory as Mels. And Mels was Amy's best friend do you think that they ever talked about children? Since I know that it can come up when talking with friends, and like... do you think that Amy might've ever expressed whether or not she wanted children?

And if she didn't, that Mels would've had to listen to her mother say that she doesn't want children? The idea is so heartbreaking and sooo interesting.

What do you think about it?

no, no, see, you're so right and this drives me wild.

because, the way i see it, i don't think amy wanted children. she's somewhere on the 'hasn't thought about it' to 'vaguely negative feelings about it happening' range to me, which falls sharply into 'Not Happening Ever Again' post-s6. (specifically, in terms of having a kid herself, even if she could, i really don't think she would. i do love that she and rory end up adopting a kid later, because that does make sense, for amy pond who grew up alone in one universe with her family swallowed by cracks in time before the doctor helped her set it right again, for her to want to make sure another child won't be alone in the world like she was. getting off-track here.)

and that's so. because the first real memory river/mels has of amy is of amy shooting at her. and depending on how well the silence fucked up the rest of her memory, it might be one of the very first memories she has at all. that's how she met her mother, crying for help and getting a bullet instead. her mother tried to kill her, so of course, you have to think. she must have needed to hear that she was wanted, right? even if she was taken away, even if amy shot her, at some point, melody must have been wanted?

river is good at getting people to do what she wants, but she is very, very bad at subtlety. and mels is younger, has less practice, so when she wants to know this, she's just going to ask. blunt and quick, easy enough because amy's used to the way mels will open her mouth and you just have to be ready to roll with what comes out if you want to keep up. it's why they're such good friends (like mother, like daughter.)

they're nine, and mels asks if amy wants kids, and amy wrinkles up her nose and says she won't have time for children, obviously, once her raggedy doctor finally comes back. they're fifteen, and amy and rory dance will they-won't they in a way that makes mels twitchy to watch, and taunting amy about wanting to have rory's babies is a good way to get on her nerves. but amy calls her gross, tells her she's got more life planned than children would leave room for, and besides, imagine her, a mom? it'd be a disaster.

mels does. a lot. she looks at her mother and just sees her best friend instead. she's not even sure what she wishes was there, but. maybe amy's right. and besides. imagine her, a daughter, instead of the ticking time bomb she really is? it'd be a disaster.

they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and on. mels stands on the outside of a love story that births a universe. and her. how do you compete with that? not that she would know, not yet, she hasn't been there. but it doesn't make her feel any less alienated when amy and rory talk in whispers about a half-remembered world that's bled through to this life, about roman soldiers and boxes and the big bang of belief.

all these memories, they never mention children. on amy's wedding day, she's different, not like someone remembering a dream but someone who lived it. rory stands straighter, won't leave her side, and they're both so much older than they were yesterday. maybe now, right? a wedding's as good a time as any to decide you want kids.

mels not being at amy & rory's wedding is such an obvious lazy way of them trying to explain why they totally didn't just throw this plot twist together at the last minute that i'm not even going to acknowledge it. of course she was at their wedding. she's their best friend. there's too many people around the doctor, and she wasn't ready today of all days, so despite this horrible burning need under her skin to strike, she stays her hand. doesn't let him dance with her because she might just tear his throat out if he gets too close. stays with amy and rory as the maid of honor should. she must have been there for the awkward questions that always gets asked, 'so, any plans for a baby?' 'when am i getting grandkids?' 'oh, you two are going to have gorgeous children together.' standing a few feet from amy in her wedding dress and watching her mother tense and grit her teeth and brush off the questions. watching her look nervously at rory but never ask if he means it when his mom asks him if he'd prefer a son or a daughter, and rory answers 'either one, some day, not anytime soon.'

god i'm just going on and on, aren't i. but really, what's it like to know that amy never changed her mind. the next time she sees them, she's already been born and stolen. i don't like let's kill hitler for. so many reasons. but there is something compelling about how recklessly river lashes out at the world, at the doctor. even her sacrifice at the end is almost suicidal, throwing all her regenerations into this man without knowing if that will even work or if it might kill her to do it. but it makes more sense in the context of someone who has reached the end of a long, long wait for some kind of indication, any kind, that her mother wanted to have her. and finally been told, no. she didn't choose melody.

[typewriter-worries]

Manhattan is a Lenape Word, Natalie Diaz

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Writing Advice #?: Don’t write out accents.

The Surface-Level Problem: It’s distracting at best, illegible at worst. 

The following passage from Sons and Lovers has never made a whit of sense to me:

“I ham, Walter, my lad,’ ’e says; ‘ta’e which on ’em ter’s a mind.’ An’ so I took one, an’ thanked ’im. I didn’t like ter shake it afore ’is eyes, but ’e says, ‘Tha’d better ma’e sure it’s a good un. An’ so, yer see, I knowed it was.’”

There’s almost certainly a point to that dialogue — plot, character, theme — but I could not figure out what the words were meant to be, and gave up on the book.  At a lesser extreme, most of Quincey’s lines from Dracula (“I know I ain’t good enough to regulate the fixin’s of your little shoes”) cause American readers to sputter into laughter, which isn’t ideal for a character who is supposed to be sweet and tragic.  Accents-written-out draw attention to mechanical qualities of the text.

Solution #1: Use indicators outside of the quote marks to describe how a character talks.  An Atlanta accent can be “drawling” and a London one “clipped”; a Princeton one can sound “stiff” and a Newark one “relaxed.”  Do they exaggerate their vowels more (North America) or their consonants more (U.K., north Africa)?  Do they sound happy, melodious, frustrated?

The Deeper Problem: It’s ignorant at best, and classist/racist/xenophobic at worst.

You pretty much never see authors writing out their own accents — to the person who has the accent, the words just sound like words.  It’s only when the accent is somehow “other” to the author that it gets written out.

And the accents that we consider “other” and “wrong” (even if no one ever uses those words, the decision to deliberately misspell words still conveys it) are pretty much never the ones from wealthy and educated parts of the country.  Instead, the accents with misspelled words and awkward inflection are those from other countries, from other social classes, from other ethnicities.  If your Maine characters speak normally and your Florida characters have grammatical errors, then you have conveyed what you consider to be correct and normal speech.  We know what J.K. Rowling thinks of French-accented English, because it’s dripping off of Fleur Delacour’s every line.

At the bizarre extreme, we see inappropriate application of North U.K. and South U.S.-isms to every uneducated and/or poor character ever to appear in fan fic.  When wanting to get across that Steve Rogers is a simple Brooklyn boy, MCU fans have him slip into “mustn’t” and “we is.”  When conveying that Robin 2.0 is raised poor in Newark, he uses “ain’t” and “y’all” and “din.”  Never mind that Iron Man is from Manhattan, or that Robin 3.0 is raised wealthy in Newark; neither of them ever gets a written-out accent.

Solution #2: A little word choice can go a long way, and a little research can go even further.  Listen carefully to the way people talk — on the bus, in a café, on unscripted YouTube — and write down their exact word choice.  “We good” literally means the same thing as “no thank you,” but one’s a lot more formal than the other.  “Ain’t” is a perfectly good synonym for “am not,” but not everyone will use it.

The Obscure Problem: It’s not even how people talk.

Look at how auto-transcription software messes up speaking styles, and it’s obvious that no one pronounces every spoken sound in every word that comes out of their mouth.  Consider how Americans say “you all right?”; 99% of us actually say something like “yait?”, using tone and head tilt to convey meaning.  Politicians speak very formally; friends at bars speak very informally.

An example: I’m from Baltimore, Maryland.  Unless I’m speaking to an American from Texas, in which case I’m from “Baltmore, Marlind.”  Unless I’m speaking to an American from Pennsylvania, in which case I’m from “Balmore, Marlin.”  If I’m speaking to a fellow Marylander, I’m of course from “Bamor.”  (If I’m speaking to a non-American, I’m of course from “Washington D.C.”)  Trying to capture every phoneme of change from moment to moment and setting to setting would be ridiculous; better just to say I inflect more when talking to people from outside my region.

When you write out an accent, you insert yourself, the writer, as an implied listener.  You inflict your value judgments and your linguistic ear on the reader, and you take away from the story.

Solution #3: When in doubt, just write the dialogue how you would talk.

[bancaishi]

a miscellaneous collection of art deco architecture from manhattan, drawn for class. text transcription below the cut

1. Empire State Building (20 West 34th Street)

2. Fuller Building (595 Madison Avenue)

3. Midtown Theater (2626 Broadway)

4. Graybar Building (420 Lexington Avenue)

5. New York Telephone Company Building (140 West Street)

6. Horn & Hardart Automat Cafeteria Building (2702-2704 Broadway)

7. 30 Rockefeller Plaza (30 Rockefeller Plaza)

8. 275 Madison Avenue Building (275 Madison Avenue)

9. AT&T Long Lines Building (33 Thomas Street)

10. Radio City Music Hall (1260 6th Avenue)

11. 369th Regiment Armory (2366 Fifth Avenue)

[muzaktomyears]

In 1980 Peter Brown, a former assistant to Brian Epstein who later ran Apple Corps, managed the Beatles and was best man at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s wedding, started work on the definitive account of the Beatles. With the American author Steven Gaines, he spoke to the three surviving band members alongside wives, girlfriends, managers, friends, hangers-on and everyone else in the Fabs’ universe. The book promised to be the last word in Beatles history. Then in 1983 The Love You Make was published, and all hell broke loose.

“They were furious,” recalls Gaines, 78, still sounding pained at the memory. “Paul and Linda tore the book apart and burned it in the fireplace, page by page. There was an omerta, a code of silence around the Beatles, and they didn’t think anyone would come forward to tell the truth. But Queenie, Brian Epstein’s mother, told us above all else to be honest.”

“Even she didn’t think we would be quite so honest,” adds Brown, 87, his upper-crust English tones still in place after five decades in New York.

Why did The Love You Make, retitled by Beatles fans as The Muck You Rake, incite such strong feelings? The suggestion of an affair between Lennon and Epstein on a holiday to Barcelona in April 1963, only three weeks after the birth of Lennon’s son Julian, had something to do with it, but more significantly it was taken as a betrayal by a trusted insider. Brown and Gaines locked the recordings in a bank vault and never looked at them again — until now.

“Very good question,” Brown says, when I ask why he and Gaines have decided to publish All You Need Is Love, an oral history made up of the interview transcripts from which The Love You Make was drawn. He is speaking from the Manhattan apartment on Central Park West where he has lived since 1971. “When [Peter Jackson’s documentary] Get Back came out, a journalist from The New York Times wanted me to talk. I told him I hadn’t talked about the Beatles since the book was published and suggested he go to someone else. He said, ‘There isn’t anyone else. Paul, Ringo and you are the only ones left.’ And I thought, do I have a responsibility to clear it all up, once and for all?”

After the death of Epstein in 1967, Brown assumed the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the Beatles and Apple Corps. He had on his desk a red telephone whose number was known only to the four Beatles. Unsurprisingly, given his insider status, the interviews make for fascinating reading. Paul McCartney, yet to be asked the same questions about the Beatles thousands of times over, is remarkably unguarded. Asked by Gaines if the other Beatles were anti-Linda, he replies: “I should think so. Like we were anti-Yoko.” On the image the Fabs had for being good boys on tour, he says, “You are kidding,” before going on to reference a notorious incident involving members of Led Zeppelin, a groupie and a mud shark, concluding: “No, not in the least bit celibate. We just didn’t do it with fish.”

Ono, speaking in the spring of 1981, not long after Lennon was killed in December 1980, reveals that she didn’t sleep with Lennon for the first two years of their relationship — “John didn’t know how to make a move” — and claims that she was blamed by the Beatles camp, George Harrison in particular, for getting Lennon onto heroin in 1969. “Everything we did in those days, anything that was wrong, was my responsibility,” she tells Gaines. But everyone, from the Beatles’ notorious late-period manager Allen Klein to the Greek electronics wizard/hustler “Magic” Alex Mardas — “the Mordred of the Beatles’ Camelot” according to Brown — has their own version of events.

Going through the transcripts reminded Gaines of the long shadow cast by Lennon. “I didn’t realise how sensitive the other Beatles were to John’s opinion,” he says, speaking from his home in the Hamptons, Long Island. “Paul worried about what John would say [in the event Lennon died before being interviewed] and was still longing for his friendship. George said that John didn’t read his autobiography because it was called I, Me, Mine. Those interviews were done before John’s death and Paul’s heart was broken, even then. It wasn’t just the break-up of the Beatles. It was more personal than that.”

From around 1968, the transcripts reveal how the key Beatles duo started to come apart. McCartney’s enthusiasm was only getting stronger. But Lennon grew increasingly bored and disillusioned. “You have to remember that John wasn’t in love with his wife Cynthia,” Gaines says by way of explanation. “He wanted to get away from the life he was leading and that’s why he started to experiment with drugs, all the way up to heroin.”

Brown says Ono was, and probably still is, a distant, mysterious character, exactly the kind of person Lennon was looking for, having done the right thing and married the sensible, quiet Cynthia after she discovered she was pregnant with Julian in 1963. “John told me about meeting this woman, and how frustrated he was that he couldn’t get to know her better; he couldn’t take her to lunch because it would cause gossip. I gave him the key to my apartment so he and Yoko could be together in private and thought, naturally, they were going there to f***. When I went home that evening, the apartment was untouched. They did nothing more than sit on the sofa and talk. That’s what they wanted: to know each other.”

Regarding the long-held, unfair suggestion that Ono broke up the Beatles, Gaines says: “Yoko came along at the right moment to light the fuse, but the dynamite was already packed. They resented her, she was difficult to understand and had a deep effect on John, but they were getting more and more unhappy with each other and needed to have their own lives. As people in the interviews say again and again, [the split] was bound to happen.”

It was Brown who in May 1968 introduced McCartney to Linda Eastman, an ambitious young American photographer whom he knew from his business trips to New York, when she came to London on an assignment to shoot the Rolling Stones. “I was having dinner with Paul at the Bag O’ Nails [a club in Soho] when she turned up, so I introduced them and he was obviously taken with her,” Brown recalls. “The following Friday, May 19, we were holding a party for 12 top photographers at Brian Epstein’s house in London when she walked in. Paul says I didn’t introduce him to his wife … but I did.”

If the book has a villain it is Klein, the New York accountant who took over management of the Beatles and sacked everyone around them, much to McCartney’s horror. As Brown puts it: “He was a hideous person. He even looked like a crook: sloppy and fat, always wearing sneakers and sweatshirts. Everything he didn’t like was ‘for shit’.”

You wonder why Lennon fell for him. “The interviews suggest it is because Allen Klein offered Yoko a million dollars for her movie project,” Gaines says. “She was enticed and John would do anything Yoko said.”

“I asked Mick Jagger to come over and explain to the four Beatles who this Allen Klein was,” Brown remembers. “And John, in his wonderful way, had Klein turn up to the same meeting, which was deeply embarrassing. It made Mick very uncomfortable too.”

Epstein, the man who saw the Beatles’ potential in the first place, is a central figure in All You Need Is Love. It includes a transcript of a recording of him from 1966, not used for the original book. It was in the possession of Epstein’s attorney Nat Weiss, and seemingly made by Epstein to mark the end of the Beatles’ final tour. He claims not only that Lennon felt remorse for the infamous comment on the Beatles being bigger than Jesus — “What upset John more than anything else was that hundreds of people were hurt by that” — but that the Beatles would tour once more. “There’s no reason why they shouldn’t appear in public again,” Epstein claims. They never did, unless you count that rooftop performance on January 30, 1969.

“Brian was driving them around the north of England in his car for a year,” Brown remembers of the early days. “This Jewish guy from Liverpool, who was gay, was with these guys who had been hanging around in Hamburg, so both had interesting backgrounds. They understood each other.”

For Gaines, a self-described “gay Jewish boy from Brooklyn”, Epstein is at the heart of the story. “Brian never felt the love of a real relationship. Then he found the Beatles. Everyone thought it would be just another of his phases, but he had tremendous feelings for John, both sexual and intellectual, and that’s what really pushed him. If there was one thing that started the whole thing off, it was Brian’s love for John Lennon.”

That love affair was the contentious issue of the original book. In his interview, McCartney says of Lennon going to Spain with Epstein: “What was John doing, manipulating this manager of ours? Sucking up to him, going on holiday, becoming his special friend.” It wasn’t the suggestion of a homosexual relationship that was troubling McCartney, but the balance of power tilting in Lennon’s direction.

“Paul wanted to be in charge, and he deserved to be because he was the motor, the driving force,” Gaines says. “Paul felt that John would steal away the power. He felt threatened by John’s relationship with Brian.”

“Paul always wanted to be active,” Brown adds. “After Brian’s death the world had to be carried on. Who was going to do that? It wasn’t going to be John, George or Ringo. Brian was my best friend and I was very upset [at his death]. I had to go to the court to convince the magistrate that it wasn’t a suicide, and the following day Paul set up a meeting so we could discuss what we would do next. I said we’d do it next week, and he said, ‘No, it has to be now.’ He was right.”

How did Brown and Gaines feel about the horrified reaction to the book, not just from fans but the Beatles themselves? “The world has changed,” Gaines says, by way of answer. “Now, after all these years, hopefully people can see it as a truthful, loving and gentle book.” It has been decades since Brown spoke to the surviving Beatles and he has not contacted them about this new publication.

What the interviews really capture in eye-opening detail is the story of four young men who became a phenomenon, then had to deal with the fallout as the dream ended. On December 31, 1970, the day McCartney sued the other three to dissolve the partnership, Brown handed in his resignation as the Beatles’ day-to-day manager and officer of Apple Corps. Ringo Starr said to him: “You didn’t want to be a nursemaid any more, and half the time the babies wouldn’t listen to you anyway.” Brown moved to New York and became chief executive officer of the Robert Stigwood Organisation. But the Beatles never fully left him, and in the wake of Get Back — and the news that Sam Mendes is to direct four biopics, one on each Beatle — he decided he had one last job.

“We have finished our responsibilities,” Brown says with quiet authority. “It is the end of the story.”

EXTRACTS

‘It’s like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back!’

Paul McCartney on the Beatles signing Allen Klein as manager against his wishes

[John Lennon] said, “I’m going with [Allen] Klein, what do you want to do about it?” and I kind of said, “I don’t think I will, that’s my roll.” Then George and Ringo said, “Yeah, we’ll go with John.” Which was their roll. But that was pretty much how it always ended up, the three of them wanted to do stuff, and I was always the fly in the ointment, I was always the one dragging his heels. John used to accuse me of stalling. In fact, there was one classic little meeting when we were recording Abbey Road. It was a Friday evening session, and I was sitting there, and I’d heard a rumour from Neil [Aspinall, road manager] or someone that there was something funny going around. So we got to the session, and Klein came in. To me, he was like a sort of demon that would always haunt my dreams. He got to me. Really, it was like I’d been dreaming of him as a dentist. Anyway, so at this meeting, everyone said, “You’re going to stall for ever now, we know you, you don’t even want to do it on Monday.” And I said, “Well, so what? It’s not a big deal, it’s our prerogative and it could wait a few more days.” They said, “Oh no, typical of you, all that stalling and what. Got to do it now.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to. I demand at least the weekend. I’ll look at it, and on Monday. This is supposed to be a recording session, after all.” I dug me heels in, and they said, “Right, well, we’re going to vote it.” I said, “No, you’ll never get Ringo to.” I looked at Ringo, and he kind of gave me this sick look like, yeah, I’m going with them. Then I said, “Well, this is like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back!”

‘You don’t like to see a chick in the middle of the team’

Paul McCartney on Yoko Ono

Give Yoko a lot . . . that was basically what John and Yoko wanted, recognition for Yoko. We found her sitting on our amps, and like a football team, an all-male thing, you really don’t like to see a chick in the middle of the team. It’s a disturbing thing, they think it throws them off the game or whatever it was, and these were the reasons that I thought, well, this is crazy, we’re gonna have Yoko in the group next. Looking at it now, I feel a bit sorry for her because, if only I had been able to understand what the situation was and think, wait a minute, here’s a girl who’s not had enough attention. I can now not make this into a major crisis and just sort of say, “Sure, what harm is she doing on the amps?” I know they would have really loved me. You know, we didn’t like Yoko at first, and people did call her ugly and stuff, and that must be hard for someone who loves someone and is so passionately in love with them, but I still can’t — I’m still trying to see his point of view. What was the point of all that? They’re very suspicious people [Lennon and Ono], and one of the things that hurt me out of the whole affair, was that we’d come all that way together, and out of either a fault in my character, or out of lack of understanding in their character, I’d still never managed to impress upon them that I wasn’t trying to screw them. I don’t think that I have to this day.

How Cynthia Lennon was driven to drink — at an ashram

Alexis ‘Magic Alex’ Mardas on Ono’s love letters to Lennon

Alexis Mardas was also known as Magic Alex, a name John bestowed on him because he was so taken with Alex’s inventions. Alex was handsome, charming, and a charlatan. (He sued The [New York] Times in Britain for calling him a charlatan and settled out of court. He’s dead now.)

[The Maharishi] was fooling around with several American girls. The Maharishi was making all of us eat vegetarian food, very poorly cooked, but he was eating chicken. No alcohol was allowed in the camp. I had to smuggle alcohol in because Cynthia wanted to drink. Cynthia was very depressed. John was receiving letters from Yoko Ono. Yoko was planning to win John. She was writing very poetic and very romantic letters. I remember those letters because John was coming to me with the letters, and Yoko was saying to John that “I’m a cloud in the sky, and, when you read this letter, turn your head and look in the sky, and if you see a small cloud, this is Yoko. Away from you but watching you.” Poor Cynthia was prepared to do absolutely everything to win John. She was not even allowed to visit the house where John was staying. She was longing for a drink. Now, drinks, they were strictly prohibited in the ashram, but when it was discovered that Maharishi had a drink, I said, “Just a second, at least equal.”

‘He’s become so nasty’

George Harrison on reaching out to John Lennon

What’s wrong with John, he’s become so nasty. It sounds like he hasn’t moved an inch from where he was five or six years ago. I sent Ringo, John, and Paul all a copy of my book. I got a call from Paul. He called me up just to say how much he liked it. I shouldn’t have called it I Me Mine, because that title was a bit much. I sent a copy to John. I’m wondering if he’s actually received it, if he’s received it, he probably doesn’t like it or something offends him about it.

‘I told John that ... it was just a nice feeling’

Yoko Ono advising John Lennon how to take heroin

George said I put John on H, and it wasn’t true at all. I mean, John wouldn’t take anything unless he wanted to do it. When I went to Paris [before I met John], I just had a sniff of it and it was a beautiful feeling. Because the amount was small, I didn’t even get sick. It was just a nice feeling. So I told John that. When you take it properly — properly is not the right word — but when you really snort it, then you get sick right away if you’re not used to it. So I think maybe because I said it wasn’t a bad experience, maybe that had something to do with it, I don’t know. But I mean so, he kept saying, “Tell me how it was?” Why was he asking? That was sort of a preliminary because he wanted to take it, that’s why he was asking. And that’s how we did it. We never injected. Never.

‘It was time’

Ringo Starr on the end of the Beatles

Ringo Starr: Well, I’m pleased it happened because in so many ways, I’m glad it’s not going now. It was time. Things last only so long. Steven Gaines: The Rolling Stones are [still] going. Ringo Starr: Yeah, but they’re old men.

(source)

[mirkobloom77]

🇵🇸🍉 “For me, the most optimistic thing is the young people. (…) The people in the civil rights movement were fighting for their own rights. These were young people fighting for Gaza.”

- Interview with N. Finkelstein, renowned scholar , political scientist and activist.

🔸 Source: ajeupfront

🔹 Full transcript:

(N. Finkelstein speaking)

“For me the most optimistic thing is the young people” (Interviewer hums) “If you had told me that people were gonna keep coming out week, after week, after week, after week, for six months, I would never have believed it.

The tenacity, the conviction. You know, it’s really an extraordinary sight to behold. You know, somebody said- I was at a demonstration there weeks ago. It was at Washington Square Park, in Manhattan. It was pouring rain. And it was a Saturday. And there were about 50,00 people. And umm, they were all around 25. I was an age cohort of one” (Interviewer chuckles) “and then there was a gap, literally, there was a gap of 40 years, you know.

And then, after it was over, a lot of people went down to the subway, to go home. And so, in the subway platform, everyone’s still chanting, everyones still chanting. If you know the scenes from the civil rights movements in the United States, how when they were in jail, they kept singing and they kept chanting, and they kept singing, and they kept chanting.

And it was like these young people, except there’s one difference. The people in the civil rights movements were fighting for their own rights. These were young people fighting for Gaza.”

[hugheses]

Jack Hughes on The Chirp (recorded on 9/12/23).

Transcript under read more ↴

Daren Millard: You always show up at this looking good. Give me an idea of what you're wearing here.

Jack Hughes: I try to look good. Yeah, I got the maroon suit on. The white shoes and the white shirt. That’s it.

Daren Millard: Are you full sneakers with suits now?

Jack Hughes: Yeah, I am. It helps when you're playing better. You know, when you're doing well on the ice, you can- Pete doesn't love it, though. [laughs] But, yeah, I like to wear sneakers with my shoes. I'm pretty much 75 out of the 82 games. Sneakers.

Daren Millard: ‘Kay, Pete, come over here for a second. Just. Just. Why don't you like the sneakers?

Pete Albietz [NJD Comms Manager]: It's not that I don't like it. There's just a time and a place, and sometimes I get a little versatility with the suit game. A little tight shoes, maybe a wingtip. Class it up a bit. He can. He can do it. You could pull it off.

Daren Millard: A little bit of a suggestion. I'm with you, Jack. Let's- let's embrace this. I've gone deep into this now. Are you only swoosh or do you mix that up?

Jack Hughes: No, I- I mix it up. My game on the ice would show that I would wear sneakers off the ice too. So that's why I do it.

Daren Millard: That's well done. Little consistency right across the board. Embrace that flair, right?

Jack Hughes: Trying.

Daren Millard: Yeah.

Darren Millard: What's the summer been like for you? I've been watching you on social media, so walk me through this.

Jack Hughes: [laughs] It's been a good couple of trips with the boys good to be home, trained hard -

Darren Millard: Where’d you go?

Jack Hughes: Went to. I went to the Jersey Shore, went to Montreal for F1, went out to uh, Manhattan Beach, obviously Nashville for the awards, that was fun. And then a few weddings too. So, I was on the move. But I also got to spend more than enough time back in Mich. So it was a really good summer.

Darren Millard: Saw you guys at a football game.

Jack Hughes: Went to. Yep. Summer wouldn't be complete if I didn't go to one U of M football game, so. And I'm like, I didn't even go to U of M. 

Darren Millard: I know!

Jack Hughes: I was saying it like a true- a true fan.

Darren Millard: You- you wore that jersey with a real pride.

Jack Hughes: Well, my brother, both of my brothers and a lot of friends went. So it's like, I feel a part of it as well.

Darren Millard: Did I see the U.S. Open in there, too?

Jack Hughes: Yeah, I did go to U.S. Open.

Darren Millard: [gibberish]  You- what were your seats like?

Jack Hughes: They were pretty good. It was Coco Gauff.

Darren Millard: Yeah.

Jack Hughes: You know, she's the real deal, so it was a lot of fun watching that.

Darren Millard: F1, U.S. Open, Michigan Football. What was the coolest event?

Jack Hughes: I got to be honest. Like I went with Cole obviously and Z and Cole like had us up to the nines-

Darren Millard: To Formula One?

Jack Hughes: Yeah, to Formula One. So we were like completely set up and I had no clue about Formula One. But then you show up and it's like there's diehard fans, you know, And I was just blown away with that event and, you know, Cole set us up perfectly, and a friend of his, Mark Smith, I'm teeing him up right now, but he did an amazing job helping us out. So we had a great weekend there. And then U of M games, always a blast and I'll put U.S. Open in the three hole.

Darren Millard: Do you play tennis?

Jack Hughes: I love playing tennis. Yeah.

Darren Millard: You any good?

Jack Hughes: I'm okay.

Darren Millard: One handed or two handed or backhand?

Jack Hughes: Two handed. Yeah. It's pretty fun, though. Like, well, at my country club, you have to put on all whites. So I'll dress up with our all whites and we're just whacking the ball around, not playing that well, but it's fun.

Darren Millard: To keep it inside the fence.

Jack Hughes: Yeah, Like we - we - we're athletes, you know, we're cool.

Darren Millard: Oh yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend-

Jack Hughes: Give us whatever we'll make it happen. But I’m not saying we're professional tennis players, but we're good. We're pretty good.

Darren Millard: What was last year like for you, that first playoff game?

Jack Hughes: It was so great until the game started, because once the game started, we didn't have- we had a bad game one and a bad game two, and obviously Devils Rangers big rivalry. Really close to each other. So when the Devils were playing well, it was the Devils arena and when the Rangers were playing well, it was the Rangers arena and I was at MSG and the- at the Pru. So games one and two were like road games. Game three was like, Dougie scored that one goal and was like the biggest goal of the year. Game four was like a Rangers game, or a Devils game and then game. It was just like, For that to be your first series is pretty incredible with it being like Devils Rangers and that's kind of how I expected it to be when I got drafted to the Devils and the Devils had the first pick and the Rangers had the second you almost knew at some point we were going to hit each other like on a collision course. So, that was a wild first series.

Darren Millard: Is the rivalry back?

Jack Hughes: You guys tell me. I mean, when you're in it, it feels pretty, pretty back, you know. So I thought that was a pretty crazy series and that was - a bit of the tough part was that that was such an emotionally draining series because you got to remember, Carolina was so far ahead of us for like two, two months leading up to the end of the season. So pretty much for two, three months we knew that we were going to play the Rangers and they knew they were going to play with us. And then like the last week of the season, I think Carolina like, came back down to earth a little bit. And then like, the last game, we could have grabbed the one seed if they lost. But then, I don't know, we- we might have just like, ran out of gas emotionally, heading into the Carolina series.

Darren Millard: We've got the Islanders who are in the mix, Rangers and Devils rivalry. Have you ever been part of anything like that?

Jack Hughes: I mean, no, it's, it's pretty crazy. Especially there's so many other sports teams going on there. But, you know, the Islanders were in the playoffs, Devils playoffs, Rangers playoffs. So just a lot happening in like, the New York/New Jersey sports world. You know.

Darren Millard: Do you ever invade the New York territory, go into the city and hang out a little bit? 

Jack Hughes: Of course, it's New York City, all the time. [laughs] Yeah, but thank God it's the biggest city in the world, you know? Never see any of these guys.

Darren Millard: You're looking at me like I'm a complete idiot for asking that.

Jack Hughes: Well, I mean, you're. It's not fair that you would know, like, I don't think people know how great New Jersey is. And yeah, it takes us 10 minutes to get to New York. Like, I might be closer to New York than most of the Rangers guys because they might live in Connecticut or whatever they do. I don't I don't play for the Rangers, so I don't know. But we have it great ‘cause we go golf in the suburbs in New Jersey or even the Jersey Shore. For me, like, like last weekend I went fishing down in Point Pleasant. So it's like, just a lot of good stuff there.

Darren Millard: For what, what'd ya catch? 

Jack Hughes: A fluke. It was fun. Yeah. So you pull up a stingray, but you don't know what's on the line. You just yank it up.

Darren Millard: But you pulled up a stingray?

Jack Hughes: All of us did. But you don't. You don't touch them. You just cut the- you just cut the line.

Darren Millard: You know who has a better life than you?

Jack Hughes: Probably a lot of people. But I like my life for me. You know, I- I'm living my- my dream. So it's pretty good for me.

Darren Millard: 99 points.

Jack Hughes: Yeah.

Darren Millard: You know, 100. That a goal?

Jack Hughes: I mean, eventually down the road, I would like to get 100 points, whether it's this year or not. Of course I'm pushing, pushing to do that. So yeah, of course I want a hundred points. But how- however it shakes out, you know, I think this is the first year where there's like really a lot of excitement for me going into the season because, you know, like even last year, no one knew or expected us to be where we got to. It was kind of like, oh are the Devils going to be a little better and whatnot. And, you know, this year now there's a lot of expectations, so it's a lot of fun.

Darren Millard: Outdoor game. Tell me about it.

Jack Hughes: Yeah, Should be a- a great event.

Darren Millard: How many times you played outdoors?

Jack Hughes: Zero. I mean a game, game? Zero.

Darren Millard: How many times have you like, skated outdoors?

Jack Hughes: My whole life. That's what I grew up doing. I'd start on ponds-

Darren Millard: ‘Cause you’re of the age where a lot of guys don't do that. They play outdoors-

Jack Hughes: Which is crazy.

Darren Millard: Yeah.

Jack Hughes: Like growing up, I remember my mom would drop us off at the rink, it was a frozen tennis court and we’d just be out there for like 5, 6 hours and then she'd pick us up and that was our day. You know, I go to school and maybe not a practice and just go to the rink. So it was amazing. And I think, you know, that we get to do it when we're like an exciting team to watch. You know, it just makes it even better. So we're really fortunate that, you know, the NHL involved us in the game.

Darren Millard: Who's the first family of hockey? The Tkachuks or the Hugheses?

Jack Hughes: Definitely the Tkachuks. You know, I think we've followed them like, Keith obviously taught Brady and Matthew what they know. Quinn. It's funny that Quinn lived with Keith and Brady, so we're all at Brady's wedding this summer. And it's just funny, I don't think it's a, it's definitely not a competition. It's more of like, us giving the Tkachuks their flowers because, I mean, a lot of what we know is partly based on what they've done as a family as well.

Darren Millard: You guys are looking towards the future. New Jersey Devils are trying to take a step back with Lindy Ruff getting an extension. What's your relationship like with him?

Jack Hughes: Yeah, Lindy's been great for me because when he came in, I don't think- I was- I was a good player, but I'm not what I am today. And, you know, I think he saw the vision with me and he trusted me and he empowered me. And, you know, he's a lot of the reason why I am what I am today. And, you know, I think a coach/player, you're always going to have your like moments where you're like, augh, this guy, and he's going to be like wanting to bench me because I turn a puck over or whatnot. But, you know, I think Lindy’s a great person and Lindy's been a great coach for me and the rest of our team. And, you know, he's the- he's the right guy leading the ship for us.

Darren Millard: You guys, a lot of attention being paid to your shooting room. Is that your idea?

Jack Hughes: I think both of ours, you know, when we were kids, like, the first thing my dad would do when he would buy a house or rent a house, would he put up plywood on the walls in the basement so we could just shoot pucks. And so everywhere we went, we had a shooting room. And then when me and Quinn got our house, I know the Vancouver video got a lot of like love or whatnot, but when we got the house we were like, ‘Hell yeah, we got to have a sick shooting room.’ So.

Darren Millard: So a tricked out shooting room, right?

Jack Hughes: What's that? 

Darren Millard: It's a tricked out shooting room. Like all the bells and whistles?

Jack Hughes: It’s got what you need. I can't say. It's like, anything, like, insane, but it's really good for us. We put our roller skates on and turn the music on and just go shoot pucks.

Darren Millard: Tunes and everything?

Jack Hughes: Yeah.

Darren Millard: I love that. What are the tunes?

Jack Hughes: I listen to country, so.

Darren Millard: Nice. Yeah, I like that. One timers for some fun here. Okay, who would you pick as a roommate?

Jack Hughes: Luke Hughes, ‘cause he's my roommate right now.

Darren Millard: How much is he paying you?

Jack Hughes: Nothing.

Darren Millard: Just a bad deal. Last drive through that you went through?

Jack Hughes: Last drive through, um… maybe Tim Hortons really early in the summer.

Darren Millard: Have you ever drove a standard transmission car?

Jack Hughes: No. 

Darren Millard: Nicest car you've ever driven. 

Jack Hughes: Umm…

Darren Millard: You know what, you know what standard transmission car is though?

Jack Hughes: Yeah, of course. Yeah. [laughs]

Darren Millard: Nicest car you've ever driven?

Jack Hughes: Nicest car I've ever driven. I have no clue. I can't even.

Darren Millard: You can't even narrow it down?

Jack Hughes: Well, I don't like. 

Darren Millard: For most of us it's pretty obvious 

Jack Hughes: What's, what's obvious for you?

Darren Millard: Like I don't have, I would say like a Porsche 911. I drove, but you probably driven a bunch of nice cars

Jack Hughes: I haven't though. 

Darren Millard: Really? 

Jack Hughes: No.

Darren Millard: So have you ever driven one with, like, butterfly doors or anything like that.

Jack Hughes: I play in the NHL. I'm not some… car guru. [laughs]

Darren Millard: You're going to Formula One, U.S. Open, all that.

Jack Hughes: This guy thinks my car garage is insane! Like it's just loaded up.

Darren Millard: What's your car right now?

Jack Hughes: Just a Range Rover.

Darren Millard: That's pretty good. Movie theater or stream at home. What do you want to watch a flick with?

Jack Hughes: Probably stream at home. 

Darren Millard: Best player on your ten year old team.

Jack Hughes: Best player on my ten year old team… Riley Damiani, plays with AHL Texas Stars now. He could shoot the puck, he could... He could do it all.

Darren Millard: Yeah?

Jack Hughes: Yeah. He's a - he's still a good player.

Darren Millard: Do you think he would say you, just out of default, on your ten year old team or do you think he-

Jack Hughes: No, he was.

Darren Millard: He was that good.

Jack Hughes: He was that guy. 

Darren Millard: Yeah?

Jack Hughes: Yeah.

Darren Millard: Of the other three major sports: Baseball, basketball, football. Which one would you be best at?

Jack Hughes: If I- I played baseball growing up, so maybe baseball, but I would like to say basketball, but I’m not tall enough.

Darren Millard: Last concert you went to?

Jack Hughes: Last concert was, I think, Morgan Wallen.

Darren Millard: Good for you.

Jack Hughes: I saw him. He was pretty good. Dierks Bentley, I saw Dierks actually. And then he did the awards. Well he did the awards like two weeks later. The only mistake I didn't- I made was not getting a picture with him because he's like, been my favorite country guy for like, years.

Darren Millard: Okay, we're going to set that up.

Jack Hughes: It- yeah.

Darren Millard: Okay. Stevie. Stevie Mayer? [NHL Chief Content Officer who is in the room.]

Jack Hughes: Well it was like, honestly, it was quick, you remember?

Steve Mayer: [unintelligible]

Darren Millard: We're going to set that up.

Jack Hughes: No, he was in the zone. I didn't want to like like, come on. 

Steve Mayer: [still talking]

Jack Hughes: I didn't want to be like Mr,

Darren Millard: Steve Mayer is like, somehow got into this very [Jack cackles] secure area. 

Steve Mayer: [More unintelligible] have to go in [?]

Darren Millard: You know what? It's an echo. It's a dressing room. We want the guys to feel comfortable. Nothing gets things done, like bringing you into this spot and making it happen. We're going to get that picture. We're going to make sure it happens. Because he's here.

Jack Hughes: Right.

Darren Millard: Because Steve’s here. Okay. Nice job. Let- let's jump on a scale of 1 to 10, what's this been like? What- 1 to 10 rate this-

Jack Hughes: This interview?

Darren Millard: Yeah.

Jack Hughes: It's been great. Good convo, good scenery. Nine.

[bulkyphrase]

Stucky for Steve Stans

I feel like I don't rec enough Stucky, so please have this list of some of my favorite Steve-forward Stucky fics!

Not a Perfect Soldier by TooManyBattles (Skarabrae_stone) (@captaintoomanybattles) (Mature | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 93,354 words)

Summary: In a world where HYDRA was wiped out in the '40s, Steve is found by the Army rather than SHIELD. General Thaddeus Ross wants a perfectly obedient super-soldier at his command, and to that end, he sets out to break Steve to his will. As Steve struggles to come to terms with all he has lost, his life in captivity is only made bearable by the presence of another prisoner-- another super-soldier known only as "Soldat". Then the Avengers strike a deal with Ross to "borrow" him for missions, and Steve is faced with a team who dislikes him, an organization he doesn't trust, and the question of what he's willing to do to escape Ross's clutches.

Lessons in Normality by relenafanel (@relenafanel) (Explicit | No Archive Warnings Apply | 38,002 words)

Summary: Things Steve knows about his boyfriend Bucky: How he looks with his face relaxed in sleep. That he can perfectly flip pancakes. The way he’s open about things Steve is still adapting to, like therapy and depression and sex toys and being a millennial. The way he laughs with his mouth wide open and his eyes squinted, and the cheerful way he cheats at cards and loses at laser tag. The way he seduces Steve with a knowing glint in his eye. The way Steve responds to it, stronger each time, taken by his beauty and competence and snark and compassion (or the compassionate way he boots Steve in the ass when he needs a push). Things Steve doesn’t know about his boyfriend Bucky: That he’s an undercover operative gathering intel on Hydra, SHIELD, and which Steve is affiliated with. Otherwise known as The Honey Pot AU

I Remembered You Were Mine by hobbitdragon (Explicit | Rape/Non-Con | 4,455 words)

Summary: Steve awakes in a strange place with a familiar face standing over him. He has no idea where he is or how he got there, but at least Bucky is with him. Also available as a podfic read by Tipsy_Kitty (@tipsyxkitty)

More below the cut!

Demon Seed by SucculentHyena (@succulent-hyena) (Mature | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 92,478 words)

Summary: [Transcript 00:11:48] MS: You were with him the most throughout the course of events, both before and after. Your account could shed light on something we may have missed. JB: What difference will that make? MS: It could make all the difference. Captain Rogers’ case is unprecedented, he’s the most intact victim we’ve ever recovered- JB: [laughing] You call that intact? -Excerpt of Interview with Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes regarding the Incident.

How Can You Go On With Such Conviction? by Jaune_Chat (@jaune-chat) (Explicit | No Archive Warnings Apply | 23,085 words)

Summary: Steve Rogers is a professional alpha with an unfortunately famous name. A veteran who specializes in people with top-secret clearance, he’s been having some particularly interesting clients lately. This brings him to the attention of SHIELD, who think an alpha like him could be just the person to help a very ill Asset they have. But Steve has more up his sleeve than just one set of skills when it comes to helping the people he cares for.

Ring the Bell Backward by Dira Sudis (dsudis) (@dsudis) (Teen And Up Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 13,234 words)

Summary: "I know how it is," Wanda said. "Being half of something. I would go anywhere if I knew he was there waiting for me." Also available as a podfic read by sallysparrow017

only living boy in new york by beardsley (Mature | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings | 2,683 words)

Summary: Steve wakes up in a VA hospital in Manhattan, and nothing is the same.

darling heart, i loved you from the start (but that's no excuse for the state i'm in) by voxofthevoid (@voxofthevoid) (Teen And Up Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 19,727 words)

Summary: “I thought you’d make a terrible Nazi but turns out you’d make a terrifying one instead.” The year is 2012. Loki has vanished with the Tesseract, and Manhattan is a blazing wreck. A very tired Steve Rogers goes home and meets another very tired Steve Rogers. Or, the one where Steve saves the mind stone for last and decides to fuck the timeline beyond all recognition, which regrettably involves crawling delicately up Hydra's asshole and less regrettably involves showering a very confused Bucky Barnes with affection.

On a Pale Horse by leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) (@leveragehunters) (Teen And Up Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 25,765 words)

Summary: Fast and fierce, the Horse Guard protect the Kingdom and its people, and they welcome anyone into their ranks-noble, commoner, or peasant-so long as they can ride a horse like they were born to it. Guard Barnes—Bucky—has come to the Kingdom's largest horse fair to find a new horse. He's supposed to choose from one of the approved horses; instead he finds himself buying a tall, skinny, angry stallion with the ridiculous name of Steve. Bucky can't leave him behind, but he's nothing like what Bucky's looking for and everything Bucky doesn't want. But Bucky's more right than even he knows because Steve's not a horse at all. He's a man under a curse, victim of a powerful sorcerer's temper and magic, and he's bound to never, by action or deed, reveal what he truly is. It's gonna be one hell of a ride. Also available as a podfic read by Tipsy_Kitty (@tipsyxkitty)

Steve Rogers Is (Not) A Good Influence by attackofthezee (noxlunate) (@attackofthezee) (Teen And Up Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 4,181 words)

Summary: Steve’s left staring at the kid- Peter, his brain helpfully reminds him. The kid is staring back. “So, you’re, like, Captain America, huh?” Peter asks, and he looks a little starstruck but less so than he did when he’d stared at Tony Stark’s jet taking off. “Uh, yeah.” Steve says, staring hard at a spot just past the kid’s shoulder as he shoves his hands as deep as they can go into the pockets of his jeans. “Call me Steve.” “Cool.” Parker breathes, and Steve tries not to think about just how badly this is going to go. Aka Steve Rogers' American Tour Of Waiting For His Brainwashed Boyfriend To Come Back And Blowing Up Hydra is interrupted when Tony Stark dumps Peter Parker into his lap.

cascades. by orange_crushed (Mature | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 152,138 words)

Summary: “Holy shit,” Howard says, crackling through the speakers. “You alive in there?” Lying is a sin, of course, but Steve’s not sure what else he can do. He’s already lied to the government and Bucky and God Almighty; and himself, himself most of all. He ought to tell the truth. That he’s not quite what they hoped for. That perhaps they should put him back into the ocean. “Probably,” he says, instead, listening to Howard’s tinny laughter; and waits for the blast doors to unlock. Also available as a podfic read by quietnight (@quietnighty)

Into That Good Night by Nonymos (Explicit | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 73,540 words)

Summary: Steve Rogers has lived for entirely too long—long enough to see the world's end. The heroes are gone, and the Earth is pushing what's left of mankind towards the exit. But when a makeshift team rises from the ashes, when a mysterious presence all but drags Steve there, he begins to think there may be hope yet. As they shoot for the stars one last time, Steve will get proof yet again that the future is nothing if not an echo of the past.

How to Woo the Winter Soldier by writeonclara (@writeonclara) (General Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 21,570 words)

Summary: “I think I’m ready to date again,” Steve said. “What,” Natasha said. “What?” Clint said, lowering his binoculars. He blinked at the dumbstruck look on the Captain’s face, then followed his gaze to where he was staring dopily at—at the Winter fucking Soldier. “Steve, no,” Clint groaned. Or: Steve courts the Winter Soldier. Also available as a podfic read by Akaihyou (@akaihyou)

Bait and Switch by galwednesday (@galwednesday) (Teen And Up Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 2,650 words)

Summary: "Post-action tacos?” Tony suggested. “I’m thinking that place by Fordham. BattleBot, you in?” “Can’t,” the Soldier said, typing something into his phone. “I have a date.” Tony stopped talking for an entire three seconds. “You. Have a date.” The Soldier looked up and blinked, clearly nonplussed to find Sam and Tony both staring at him. “Yes.” “With who?” “My boyfriend.” “You have a boyfriend. You have a boyfriend?” Tony looked like he’d just walked into a lamppost, and then the lamppost had handed him a birthday present. Also available as a podfic read by Nendian

[noosphe-re]

In architecture, concepts can either precede or follow projects or buildings. In other words, a theoretical concept may be either applied to a project or derived from it. Quite often this distinction cannot be made so clearly, when, for example, a certain aspect of film theory may support an architectural intuition, and later, through the arduous development of a project, be transformed into an operative concept for architecture in general.

Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts

[spinef0ryou]

An interview with Dave Mustaine from this month’s Metal Hammer magazine. Transcript under the cut.

THE REVENGE OF DAVE MUSTAINE

Forty years ago, Megadeth emerged from a maelstrom of drugs, carnage, and raw fury. Now, the man at the centre of it looks back at the birth of one of metal’s most iconic bands.

WORDS: JON WIEDERHORN

It has become one of the most oft-repeated legends of metal history. At 9am on April 11, 1983, Metallica woke up guitarist Dave Mustaine and told him he was out of the band. They were holed up in a divey live-in rehearsal space in Queens, New York, preparing to record their debut album, Kill 'Em All. With hardly an explanation, they handed him a one way bus ticket back to Los Angeles, and James Hetfield drove him to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. Without a dime in his pockets, Dave boarded the 10am bus, which was scheduled to arrive in LA four days later.

Broke and hungry, he spent much of the ride looking out the window, stewing in rage. His drinking had become a problem with the rest of the band, though the tipping point came when he attacked James Hetfield after the latter allegedly kicked Dave's dog. Still, Metallica were about to head into the studio to record their full-length debut without him, after he had written four songs, seven guitar leads and two sets of lyrics for the album. And that stung like hell.

Sitting on the bus, he glanced at a political postcard he had picked up along the way. It was from California Democratic Senator Alan Cranston, and it read in part: ‘The arsenal of megadeath can't be rid,’ political speak for, ‘now that the U.S. has ramped up its production of nuclear weapons, the genie is officially out of the bottle.'

It was like a bomb exploding inside Dave's head. ‘Megadeth: what a cool name for a band.’ Inspired, he started scribbling new song lyrics on the back of a cupcake napkin. This was the basis of the very first Megadeth song, titled Set The World Afire, which would eventually make its way onto the band's third album, 1988's So Far, So Good...So What!. But on that bus heading across the middle of America, Dave was determined, driven and hungry. Failure simply wasn't an option.

It's 40 years since that fateful bus ride, and Dave Mustaine has lived multiple lives. He's endured drug addiction, countless line-up changes, the death of close friends and his own throat cancer diagnosis (he got the all-clear in 2020). But the one constant throughout has been Megadeth, the entity he imagined into being while staring out at the passing landscape and seething.

"I was driven by revenge" recalls Dave of Megadeth's inception today, speaking to Hammer from his home in Nashville. "I was angry about what happened with Metallica, and all the way home I kept thinking, 'I'll just be faster, I'll be better, and my songs will be heavier."

It didn't take Dave long to get back on his feet once he returned to Los Angeles following his unceremonious dismissal from Metallica. Crashing at friends' houses in Hollywood, he began looking for bandmembers for his new project. Word soon began to spread - the guy who got kicked out of Metallica for being too fucked-up was back. And he was pissed off.

"Somehow everything turned into this thing where we had a band ready called Fallen Angels" says Dave. "I thought, "Uh, no we don't.!' I didn't even have a full band yet."

Trading under the name Megadeth - after the phrase he'd seen on that political postcard - he began trying to piece together a stable line-up, something that proved easier said than done. A churn of guitarists and drummers came and went throughout the rest of 1983 and into 1984, none sticking around permanently.

Some interesting characters passed through their ranks. One drummer, Dijon Carruthers, was the son of Hollywood actor Ben Carruthers (best known for his role in the 1967 war movie The Dirty Dozen). Another drummer, Lee Rausch, claimed he'd sold his soul to Satan, something that even Dave, who had performed occult rituals, found too bizarre (Lee, who died earlier this year, later became a committed Christian). And then there was a young guitarist named Kerry King, who briefly pulled double duty in Megadeth and his own band Slayer.

"When Kerry sat in with us [for five gigs in early 1984), he was doing us a huge favour" Dave says. "He didn't have any plans on being in Megadeth because he loved Slayer, and that was his band. I really didn't want to take him away from another band. Poaching bandmembers has never been something I've been into."

Finding a bassist was easier. Recently transplanted Minnesota native David Ellefson had moved into the apartment below Mustaine, and paid his new neighbour a visit to ask where he could buy cigarettes and beer. The two men got talking, and Mustaine plaved the AC/DC- and Judas Priest-loving Ellefson some of the music he'd written for his new band. The bassist liked it and threw in his lot with the guy living upstairs.

That just left the task of recruiting a singer. Dave didn't see himself as a vocalist, so they tried out a few other people. They either looked wrong (one guy turned up to rehearsal in make-up) or sounded wrong. It didn't help that the music he was writing was faster, angrier and more complex that any mainstream metal of the time. Eventually, someone suggested he do it himself.

"I was reluctant right up to the last minute," he says. "And then I finally said, OK, fuck it, I can't be worse than some of these other dudes."

Even while the line-up was solidifying, Dave kept writing. He was determined not to produce songs that sounded like his old band, which wasn't easy given his input into Metallica's early material.

"When I was in Metallica, I was kind of playing at Lars's level, because Lars was still learning to play drums back then," he says. "But watching James play guitar for the first time was kind of shocking, because I didn't know he knew how to play guitar. We just got fed up one day of auditioning guitar players, just like I did with singers. And he picked up this guitar and started playing, and inside I'm going, 'Get the fuck out of here. How can you possibly be satisfied being a singer when you play like that? Why not be both?' I've always thought he was a really talented guitarist."

The first 'proper' Megadeth line-up began to take shape in mid-1984. "There was a guy, Jay Jones, who managed another band and was a very scandalous person," says Dave. "He came into the rehearsal studio when he heard me in the room playing and said, 'Have I got a drummer for you!"" That drummer was Gar Samuelson, who had formerly been a member of a jazz/ fusion group named The New Yorkers.

Dave agreed to meet Gar in his studio and, right from the start, was impressed by his jazz swing, crushing hits and jarring mannerisms.

"Gar sat down on a couch in Mars Studios, and he was smoking a cigarette," says Dave. "He fell asleep and his cigarette burned through his hand and burned his fingers. I thought, 'Shit, this guy is crazy. wonder what he's into?”

What he was into was heroin, the reason he nodded off mid-cigarette - something Dave himself would find out soon enough. Today, the singer speaks highly of Gar's abilities (the drummer died in 1999, reportedly of liver failure).

"We became great friends, and his jazz style complemented my riffing," says the singer. "I gotta give credit where credit is due. He had a lot to do with the sound of that first Megadeth record. He had taste and technique for days."

Megadeth entered Hollywood's Hitman Studios in 1984 and recorded a three-song demo, Last Rites, which featured Last Rites/ Loved To Deth, The Skull Beneath The Skin and Mechanix, the latter a gas station sex fantasy that Dave had written when he was in his earlier band, Panic, and brought into Metallica (who would subsequently change the lyrics and rename it The Four Horsemen). Desperate for someone to help promote them and bring them dope, Megadeth hired Jay Jones as their manager/ pharmaceutical supplier.

It was Jay who helped find the final piece of the jigsaw. Guitarist Chris Poland had been a member of The New Yorkers with Gar Samuelson, and, more recently, a group named No Questions. Like Gar, he was a jazz guy - and, also like Gar, he was a heroin user. He had little interest in playing metal, but he was interested in a pay cheque to fund his own drug habit. Despite that, Chris and Dave hit it off musically, the spontaneity of the former's playing meshing with the growing complexity of the songs the latter was writing.

Mustaine and Ellefson weren't strangers to drugs, though they initially favoured weed and beer, but they soon gave in to temptation and started dabbling in smack as well. With time, dabbling became binging. For Mustaine, narcotics were a coping mechanism, a temporary respite from hunger and homelessness.

“I liked getting high, but it was more about escape than anything." he says. "If there was a moment we were awake, we were looking for drugs because that's how horrible our existence was. We were scratching and clawing to get someone to take notice of us and thank God, no matter how fucked-up I was, my first priority was making music and playing good shows."

After sending Last Rites to various L.A.-area indie labels, Megadeth caught the attention of New York’s Combat Records, who gave them $8,000 to record their debut album, Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good! They stumbled into Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, plugged in and got by on a combination of ambition and muscle memory. One day, when Dave asked Jay where his bandmates were, his manager told him they had just spent $4,000 (half the budget for the album) on blow, smack and frozen hamburgers. Dave promptly sacked Jay, cajoled another $4,000 from Combat, hired engineer Karat Faye, and paid him $50 a day to finish co-producing the album with him.

“We did the takes quickly, with Dave, Gar and I in one room, playing together, with no click tracks," Ellefson told Metal Hammer in the mid-2010s. "You can hear the tempos shifting around, depending on whether it was a 'heroin take' or a 'cocaine take'. It's funny now, but I wouldn't recommend that approach."

Since three of the songs were from the Last Rites demo, Megadeth only had to finesse another four tracks and a cover of Nancy Sinatra's 1966 hit These Boots Are Made For Walkin'. Once the album was finished, Megadeth hit the road, though the severity of his addiction meant Chris had to sit out the first two weeks of the tour.

"He was a real Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because of his personal issues," Dave says. "As much as I loved Chris and tried to get close to him, what he was doing just took precedence over anybody and anything. What they say is true. You become powerless over that stuff. So, when you came down to it, I didn't mean anything to Chris, Megadeth didn't mean anything to Chris. All he cared about was what he was doing on the side."

On the road, Megadeth spent many nights crashing at fans' houses, preferably apartments owned by nurturing women turned on by bad boy rockers. They spent other nights in Motel 6s and when nothing else was available they would sleep in the van.

"The shows were out of control because hardly anyone knew what moshing was," Dave says. "They weren't familiar with crowdsurfing. Kids would just jump up on the stage and there was no stagediving protocol. Some of them would run over to you and grab your mic stand to get some picks off. They'd bang into your guitar or try to scream into the mic. Then someone would shove them off the stage. It was pure balls-to-the-wall metal insanity."

The band environment was no more relaxing offstage, especially when Chris and Gar needed to score.

"They'd sell a whole bunch of gear to buy drugs" Dave says. "We'd have to drive around town to all the pawn shops and instrument shops looking for all the drum pieces, or other pieces of equipment."

The situation wasn't helped by the fact that their label didn't seem to care about the band. A particularly demoralising moment came when the band ran out of money and didn't have enough gas to get to the next gig.

"I called up the vice president of Combat and he was a real piece of work" Dave recalls. "I told him I was at the hotel, and I needed gas money to get to the next town so we could get paid. And the guy says, 'Get a day job."

Other, more weak-willed musicians probably would have quit there and then, but not Dave Mustaine. Every obstacle, every element of adversity, provided extra determination not to let getting kicked out of Metallica mark the beginning of his downfall.

Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good! caught the attention of the thrash scene when it was released in June 1985, not least thanks to their frontman's connection with Metallica. It was a subject was brought up in every interview, usually resulting in shit talking from a still-bitter Dave.

The vengeful drive that had given Megadeth their initial impetus hadn't abated. Dave found time between gigs, fixes and after-show debauchery to write a bunch of new songs on the road to add to the ones he'd been stockpiling since the beginning of the band.

One day Mustaine and Ellefson were at Killing Is My Business... producer Karat Faye's house when the frontman picked up his bandmate's bass and began playing a rolling, strident riff. Ellesfon was blown away. It took them two hours in the rehearsal room to turn it into a song. On the car ride to that rehearsal, Mustaine had turned to the bassist and asked: "What do you think of Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?” Megadeth had the name of both their second album and - in the truncated form of Peace Sells - its iconic near-title track.

Lyrically, Peace Sells was a world away from metal's traditional fascination with swords'n'sorcery and the occult, injecting a dose of politics into the Megadeth's melodic thrash attack. What do you mean, "I don't support your system"?" sneered the singer. 'I go to court when I have to.'

"I tried to keep up with what was going on in the world and I still do,” Dave says. "I mean, it's not especially deep or anything. It's kind of like the credo of Al Bundy from the (late 80s/early 90s] TV show Married... With Children if he was a metal fan. That's a silly comparison, but it's what was in my head at the time. And I wrote all the lyrics on the wall of the practice room. When you're writing on a wall there's not much room to come back with an eraser. I don't know if they painted over the wall, but they probably should have excavated it and sent it to some kind of museum.

Despite their tensions with Combat, the label stumped up a budget of $25,000 for Megadeth to enter Malibu's Indigo Ranch studio with producer Randy Burns to record their second album. Even before the album was released, major labels had begun sniffing around the band. One person who was interested was Michael Alago, the A&R hotshot who had recently signed Metallica, but Dave had no interest in being on the same label as his former bandmates-turned-antagonists.

"I didn't want to play second fiddle to them." he says.

In the end, they signed with Capitol, who opted to buy Megadeth out of their contract with Combat and bring in producer Paul Lani to remix it and give it a slicker sound. Along with the deal came a noticeable improvement in the band's financial situation - as Capitol's shiny new thrash metal band, Megadeth received more tour support and bigger royalty cheques than they'd ever got on Combat. But much of the money they were now making went into their expensive pharmaceutical habits. Even though he was deep in his own addiction, Dave knew that providing some sense of leadership was important, now more than ever before.

"I quickly realised that when stuff goes wrong - and it does go wrong - that if you're the leader, you need to take responsibility for shit even when it's not your fault,” he says. “You need to step up and make it right. I look at stuff and say, 'I've got to do whatever I can to make this right. We've come too far for everything to go sideways."

To Dave Mustaine, righting the ship has also meant knowing when it's time to make changes. In June 1987, Megadeth wrapped up the tour in support of Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? with two shows in Honolulu, Hawaii. When the band got back to LA, Gar Samuelson and Chris Poland were jonesing for a fix. According to the frontman, they ended up selling band equipment again to buy more drugs. It was the final straw.

"I was totally fed up," Mustaine says. "I guess it was just one too many times driving around Los Angeles trying to find everybody's band gear. I told Ellefson, 'Well, that's it. I'm breaking up the band and I'm getting rid of those guys. If you want to stay with me that's fine."

David Ellefson did stay, though Chris and Gar were history. They'd eventually be replaced by guitarist Jeff Young and drummer Chuck Behler, whose one-album tenure - they appeared on 1988's chaotic So Far, So Good... So What! - proved to be no less volatile.

Forty years after Dave Mustaine formed Megadeth in the wake of his firing from Metallica, much has changed about both the band and their leader. Today, he's the sole remaining original member and the only one who has played on every album (after leaving and rejoining the band in the 2000s, David Ellison was ousted for a second and seemingly final time in 2021 following an online sex scandal.) The singer himself cleaned up long ago, embracing his Christian faith in the process.

But at the same time, the single-mindedness and stubborn streak that saw him pick himself up post-Metallica and build an entirely new band remains intact. Lesser musicians would have folded a long time ago, but not Dave Mustaine. And it all dates back to those earl vears when he had so much to prove and nothing to lose.

"We went through everything, man, from what happened on the road, to homelessness, to starvation," he says. "The panhandling, the sleeping on people's floors. The destitution the desperation and poverty. We survived it all."

MEGADEATH’S LATEST ALBUM THE SICK THE DYING… AND THE DEAD! IS OUT NOW VIA UMC

Sidebar:

THE SONGS THAT BUILT MEGADETH

The best of Megadeth’s 80s output

Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good! (1985)

The snarling, sneering, 100mph title track of Megadeth’s debut album and a defiant ‘fuck you' to his ex-bandmates in Metallica.

Mechanix (1985)

Aka the song that begat Metallica's The Four Horsemen. Megadeth’s version is faster, sleazier, and had flames shooting out of its exhaust. 'Made my drive shaft crank/Made my pistons bulge,’ indeed.

Wake Up Dead (1986)

Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?'s opening track is a thrash song like no other, possessed of an oddball arrangement and lyrics that detail an extra-marital affair. The 'Diana' in the lyrics was Mustaine's real-life girlfriend.

Peace Sells (1986)

An iconic 80s thrash song: Dave takes aim at The Man over a massive bassline and ver instant-classic riff. It was purloined as the theme to MTV News, for which Mustaine claims he never got a penny.

Good Mourning/Black Friday (1986)

Begins with a downcast, jazz-adiacent guitar duel before it utilises circuitous riffing and glorious half-step abuse to show just how different Megadeth were to everyone else.

The Conjuring (1986)

Dave once claimed to have buried part of a hex in this occult-inspired rager ako featuring an evil-sounding guitar run, which explains why he stopped playing it for years after re-embracing his Christianity.

My Last Words (1986)

A Favourite of Lars Ulrich, apparently, and it's easy to see why, with its climactic build and fist-pumping gang-vocal climax, the Peace Sells... album closer is a tension-and-release masterstroke

In My Darkest Hour (1988)

So Far, So Good... So What!'s power ballad written in response to his ex-Metallica bandmates failing to tell him about Cliff Burton's death. The disdain at being left to fend for himself is tangible.

Liar (1988)

One of metal's greatest diss songs, aimed at former guitarist Chris Poland. Dave reels off a list of vituperative personal insults at his despised ex-bandmate before reaching an apoplectic climax: 'You... you... you fucking LIAR!'

Hook In Mouth (1988)

The 80s was the PMRC decade, and motormouth Mustaine had something to say about it on this scathing, bass-driven rebuke to the ‘Washington Wives' who were trying to silence metal and hip hop's freedom of speech.

"METALLICA WOULD COME TO OUR SHOWS!"

Ex-Megadeth bassist David Junior' Ellefson looks back on his early days in the band

WHERE DID YOU FIRST MEET DAVE MUSTAINE?

"I'd moved to Hollywood with my friends and Dave had an apartment directly above. We went and knocked on his door to buy cigarettes and he went, 'Down the street' and slammed the door in our faces. We went back later and asked him where to buy beer and he looked us up and down and said, 'All right, now you're speaking my language."

HOW MUCH INPUT DID YOU HAVE IN THE SONGWRITINGEARLY ON?

"Dave wrote the songs that cast the die of whatever Megadeth was going to be, but at the same time those songs were put together in the band room, and when you're in a room together there's a lot of collaboration. There are musical moments that happen that would never have happened with one guy putting, the songs together on his own.”

HOW WAS IT PLAYING WITH SLAYER'S KERRY KING, WHO WAS BRIEFLY IN THE BAND?

"Going to San Francisco with us opened his eyes to what thrash metal was, seeing bands like Exodus. Kerry went back to LA and Slayer took the make-up off and became more the band that we knew them to be."

HOW CHAOTIC WERE THOSE EARLY DAYS?

"Everything in Megadeth was chaotic because we were poor and we were on drugs. Some bands 'party' and to me that's beer and a little weed, hanging out. When you get into heavier drugs like cocaine and especially heroin, that’s not partying. You’re going down a very dark, secluded road.”

YOU AND DAVE WERE HOMELESS FOR A WHILE, RIGHT?

"Oh yeah, we were living in the rehearsal room, living in my van, finding people to take us in to crash at their house. Me and Dave would hock our guitars on any given week. We had these little phone sales jobs so when we got some money together we'd go get our guitars out of hock so we could go to rehearsal that week."

WAS THERE A RIVALRY BETWEEN BANDS IN THE SCENE?

"I'd say there a friendly rivalry. Dave was obviously furious about being let go from Metallica but Lars and the guys would come to some of our shows. For me, the rivalry was never Metallica. i'd listen to them and go, 'Fuck, they're hitting every mark. I know it was hard for Dave because how could it not be to look to the left and see Metallica going straight to the top?'

HOW DO YOU LOOK BACK AT YOUR TIME IN MEGADETH?

"No regrets and 100% pride. I will always be a lifelong champion of that band and legacy because It never would have happened without me - I financed the Killing Is My Business tour on my dad's credit card! I'm very proud of the years I was there. It's a cherished moment in time."

TO HELL AND BACK, THE NEW ALBUM FROM DAVID'S NEW BAND, DIETH, IS OUT NOW VIA NAPALM

[dduane]

Ludwig Bemelmans' NY Oyster Bar Shellfish Pan Roast Recipe

I love Ludwig Bemelmans for many reasons that usually have more to do with writing and his challenging career arc than with food (more details here). But this post's about the food, and a specific favorite recipe.

In his collection of "slice-of-culinary-life" writings La Bonne Table,  Bemelmans passes on a bit of info that many New Yorkers, or visitors to the city, would be glad to have: the original recipe for one version of the famous shellfish pan roast served at Grand Central Terminal's venerable Oyster Bar and Restaurant (a venue much appreciated by the cats in the Feline Wizardry series, as well as by the series's author, who ate there as often as she could afford to while living and working in Manhattan).

So here's the image of the page in La Bonne Table where the recipe/method appears, and a transcription of the method. Bemelmans gives the version for the clam pan roast. For an oyster panroast like the one in the header image, I just substitute canned oysters and enough fish stock or consommé to equal the amount of clam broth Bemelmans quotes. All kinds of shellfish work brilliantly in this (and if you're actually in the Oyster Bar some time and feel inclined toward this dish, you might like to order the combination one, which has a little bit of everything). I've broken up the original block of his text for readability's sake: may his kindly shade forgive me.

We went to rake for cockles, which are like our clams, except for their globular structure, and they taste like Little Necks. I gave the hostess a recipe, which I found in Grand Central Station's sea-food bar, where a Greek chef who makes it wrote it down for me and showed me how it's made. It is one of the best things to eat, simple to make-- in fact, nobody can go wrong. It's a meal in itself, and it costs very little.

You need paprika, chili sauce, sherry wine; also celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, butter according to your taste, and clams. I use cherrystones, which are washed and brushed, and then placed in a deep pan with their own liquid. For each portion of eight, add one pat of butter, a tablespoon of chili sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, a few drops of lemon juice and 1/2 cup of clam broth. Add a dash of celery salt and paprika.

Stir all this over a low fire for three minutes. Then add four ounces of light cream or heavy cream, according to your taste, and one ounce of sherry wine, and keep stirring. When it comes to the boiling point, pour it over dry toast in individual bowls. Add a pat of butter and a dash of paprika and it is ready to serve.

If you have made too much of it, put the remainder in a container in your refrigerator. It will be as good, warmed up, a week or a month* later. It's called Clam Pan Roast, if you ever want to order it at Grand Central Station's Oyster Bar. I understand the recipe originally came from Maine.

*I love his enthusiasm here, but frankly I wouldn't leave this in the fridge for any month. A few days maybe. (Though it must be said, I couldn't leave it alone that long anyway. It's really good.)

[boxdstars]

A letter from the Chief Auror..

hi gang! Im back with.. more mara posting (who could’ve seen it coming)

I’m just messing around with some in-universe post game content. So here’s a little test of a letter sent to the MC from Amara, ten years post graduation. It’s a little vague but it ties into some plot stuff i’ve been drafting >:)

if you know me, you know a lot of amara’s story is very much focused outside of the hogwarts tenure, it’s a whole long thing with lots of theatrics and high stake thrills — involving some ancient magic antics

I also have a transcript below the cut, because the cursive is a little blurry and isn’t the most legible lmaoo

My dear fellow,

I confess, it has been some time. My sincerest apologies for my absence at the 10 year anniversary celebration since our graduation. In truth, I’ve been entirely preoccupied with a most pressing issue here at the office.

Moreover, I must regrettably call on you immediately. There is a situation stateside which if I remember correctly, may be of use to your talents of sorts. I shan’t elaborate on the nature of your abilities, though I’m sure you can imply what I’m getting at.

I’ve sent an envoy from the MACUSA Department of International Relations to assist you in this matter. His name is Peter Buttonwood. I admit, he’s a bit sheepish.. though to my chagrin, the only staff available at my whim on such short notice. You’ll find him in the Three Broomsticks in room 2. Ask Sirona.

Rendezvous with me immediately, Peter will escort you overseas and show you the way through Manhattan. Dress appropriately for the occasion, I’ve just stocked up on a couple bottles of my finest bourbons and gins should that strike your fancy. You’ll need to drink after you hear this.

At your earliest opportunity,

A. Ambrose

Chief Auror

[eretzyisrael]

by Martin Kramer

The text may help to explain a remark made by Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion to the Israeli cabinet, after he’d met with Oppenheimer at the latter’s request. Ben-Gurion said he “had the impression that some sort of Jewish spark lit up the man.”

That impression may have originated in Oppenheimer’s speech. Ben-Gurion certainly heard it. The prime minister delivered the keynote at the same dedication, and sat with Oppenheimer in the front row. Oppenheimer, in his own speech, made several references to Ben-Gurion’s remarks. (When Oppenheimer said “It is not only the Prime Minister of Israel who has his difficulties,” he was referring to Ben-Gurion’s admission that he didn’t understand much about physics.)

What’s the source for Oppenheimer’s text? Oppenheimer spoke from notes, but he didn’t have a copy of the speech as he delivered it. “I gave my notes on the ceremonial talk to your press officer,” he wrote to Meyer Weisgal, his host, “and have no record at all of what I said.” At Oppenheimer’s request, the Weizmann Institute sent him a tape with the extract of his speech, secured from the Voice of Israel, which had broadcast the proceedings. The following text is a transcription of the delivered speech, from Oppenheimer’s papers. While the Jerusalem Post reported a few portions of his remarks the day after he spoke, the speech is published here in full for the first time.

I’ve appended an extract from another speech that Oppenheimer gave for the Weizmann Institute on December 2, 1958, at its annual fundraiser at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. There Oppenheimer reflected on his visit to Israel the previous May. It complements the Rehovot speech.

Some of the persons mentioned by Oppenheimer in the two speeches:

Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and 1922 Nobel laureate. Although baptized a Lutheran, his mother came from a distinguished Jewish family, so he fled Denmark during the Nazi occupation. He later assisted Oppenheimer in the Manhattan Project. Bohr had already lent his prestige to the Weizmann Institute during an earlier visit in 1953, and he also spoke at the 1958 dedication, for which the Institute commissioned his bust.

Meyer Weisgal, Zionist author and fundraiser, and confidant of the late Chaim Weizmann. At this time, he was chairman of the executive council of the Weizmann Institute. He would become the person in Israel closest to Oppenheimer.

Benjamin Bloch, physicist by training, administrator of the Weizmann Institute, and a friend of Bohr and Oppenheimer. (Felix Bloch, the Swiss-American physicist and 1952 Nobel laureate, also attended the 1958 dedication, but Oppenheimer’s reference to “Dr. Bloch” clearly refers to Benjamin.)

Abba Eban, Israeli statesman. In late 1958, he was at the end of his service as Israeli ambassador to the United States and chief delegate to the United Nations, and had been named the next president of the Weizmann Institute.

Ernest (later Lord) Rutherford, New Zealand-British physicist and 1908 Nobel laureate, a friend to Chaim Weizmann in Manchester.

[warwickroyals]

Wikipedia Snippets (2/∞): Ruby

Transcript under the cut - HQ images [1] [2]

Ruby, Princess of Danforth, GCW, RGO, GSK, GCLII (born Ruby Dewitt Claypoole; April 13, 1916 - August 30, 2006), was a member of the Sunderlandian royal family. She was the wife of Prince George, Prince of Danforth, the eldest son of King George II and Queen Anne. Ruby was thus Princess of Danfroth from her marriage in 1939 until her husband’s assassination.

Ruby was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Wall Street stockbroker Isadore Collins Claypoole and his socialite wife Gladys Cecile Dewitt. Ruby spent her early childhood divided between Manhattan and her maternal grandparents’ country estate in New Haven, Connecticut. Precocious by nature, Ruby was educated at Spence School in New York and later went on to study art history at Barnard College. While a student at Barnard, Ruby met her future husband at a dinner party in Manhattan. The following year, Ruby and George began a low-profile relationship during which she earned the affection of George‘s parents and siblings. George originally proposed to Ruby in 1936, but the couple didn’t announce their engagement until after Ruby graduated in 1938. The match was initially controversial in Sunderland for multiple reasons, mainly Ruby’s American nationality and her Jewish heritage. However, Ruby gradually endeared herself to the public with her intellect, love of children, and her interest in Sunderlandian history, culture and arts. Her fluency in foreign languages made her very popular abroad as well.

As Princess of Danforth, Ruby planned to accompany her husband on diplomatic tours to Europe, but these plans were halted following the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, the prince and princess became vocal in their condemnation of Nazi Germany, with Ruby drawing the ire of Adolf Hitler on several occasions. Following the 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, George was instrumental in Sunderland revoking their formal neutrality and mobilizing against the Axis powers, but he was assassinated the following year by a member of the National Socialists Union of Sunderland.

Ruby and George had no children, and following George’s funeral Ruby withdrew from public view, taking up residence at Woodbine Castle. After the war, Ruby slowly reemerged in the public, becoming an avid photographer and globetrotter. The Princess Dowager as she was widely known, remained a popular figure, consistently carrying out public duties during the reign of King James II and later that of her nephew, Louis V. Ruby died in her sleep at the age of 90 on August 30, 2006, with her last public appearance being at the 4th birthday party of her grand-nephew, Prince Alexander of Danforth, two months prior.