#by then he had kept his arrangement for a while. But during the 1990s he decided to get rid of it for only $500. A year later Ronald had go

[xavierramzi]

FULL NAME:  xavier ramzi.

NICKNAME(S): x, zay, ramzi.

AGE:  thirty-two.

DATE OF BIRTH:  november 1st, 1990.

PLACE OF BIRTH: briar ridge, south carolina.

CURRENT LOCATION: briar ridge, south carolina.

GENDER: cis male.

PRONOUNS: he/him.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: heterosexual.

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: heteromatic

RELIGION: none.

OCCUPATION:  public relations executive for ramzi public relations.

EDUCATION LEVEL:  bachelor’s degree in public relations.

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: townhouse in briar ridge hills.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE, ETC.

FACECLAIM: zeeko zaki.

HAIR COLOR AND STYLE: dark. keeps it short.

EYE COLOR: dark brown.

EYESIGHT:  farsighted.

HEIGHT: six foot, five inches.

WEIGHT: two hundred and twenty pounds.

BODY AND BUILD:  athletic.

TATTOOS: tbd.

PIERCINGS: none.

CLOTHING STYLE:  casual / business.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: beard, eyes.

HEALTH.

MENTAL DISORDER(S): officially, none.

PHYSICAL DISORDER(S):  none.

ALLERGIES:  bananas.

SLEEPING HABITS:  he doesn’t sleep much.

EATING HABITS:  likes to cook, rarely gets to. prefers cleaner takeout.

SOCIABILITY: charming. likes to be around people when he’s in the mood for it, but he can fake it when needed. after all, it’s part of the job.

ADDICTIONS:  officially… he’d argue none.

DRUG USE:  none.

ALCOHOL USE: daily.

FAMILY, RELATIONSHIPS, ETC.

FATHER: karim ramzi.

MOTHER:  zahara ramzi.

SIGNIFICANT OTHER:  depending on the day, luciana ortiz.

BEST FRIEND:  mariana morales cabrera.

EXES:  luciana ortiz.

SIBLING(S):  none.

PET(S):  tbd.

BIOGRAPHY.

Normal. That was how Xavier would have described his childhood had anyone ever bothered to ask. His father, Karim Ramzi, spent all of his time furthering his company’s name, which his mother worked on various projects herself. Seeing that most of his time was spent alone or with some form of a childcare worker lamely watching over him, Xavier learned to entertain himself. He liked playing with cameras, liked being the star of the show. It wasn’t a lack of love that he suffered from, because every moment his parents had off work, though few and far in between, was spent giving him that love in some form or fashion. He knew a love so pure that he nearly felt guilty at times for ever being angry with them for their absence in his life.

Xavier excelled in school with the encouragement and motivation of his family. All his father ever talked about was the next big commitment the company was making and how badly he wanted his son at his side to make deals for the bright future to come. There was never a conversation about what he wanted for himself, never any other option than falling into the path his parents paved for him. Truth be told, Xavier wanted his own path. He was a star football player who had the entire world at his palms. Good grades, good stats, good political standing, but nothing could get in the way of the journey his parents wanted him to make. So, instead of accepting the full ride scholarship to a D1 football school, he opted for his father’s alma mater. After all, his parents were responsible for his luxurious life. The least he owed them was a step into whatever direction they pointed him to.

While there were kids in his class that worried about college tuition and how they’d ever pay off their loans, Xavier never knew the fear. His parents paid out of pocket and their generous donations made the Ramzi name well known around the campus. During his junior year, an argument with his father nearly caused the picture perfect image of himself to crumble. After some legal trouble (tbd) was covered up by his father’s firm, things changed for him. What little free reign he’d been given on life was swiped from his grasp. He kept his head down and finished out his schooling. Most people got cash for graduation gifts, but Xavier was given a key to a home in Briar Ridge Hills with a job offer attached.

He believed that the mistake he’d made was when his life turned into a PR campaign, but truth was, it had always been that way. His parents had ensured his picture perfect image for the sake of him joining the company name the moment he had the education to do so. It didn’t matter that there were others more fit for the job. He’d been born for it, raised to do it and quite frankly, he’d prepared for nothing else.

KEY POINTS

He’s a Briar Ridge lifer. His father owns Ramzi Public Relations and the firm has been running since before Xavier was born. His mother is a freelance designer who has been known to team up with the firm as well. It’s the family business and everyone knows it.

He’s got a pretty boy demeanor about him. He’s not what he seems and only a few people know that about him.

He’s a big surfer. He got into it as a teenager. Is also a big golfer because it’s hard not to be when your father drags you to the courses a few times a month, sometimes a few times a week to make face with a new client.

Is a frequent bar goer where his go-to drink is either a whiskey on the rocks or he’s a big sex on the beach fan.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

bar buddies

flirtationship

coffee associate

online friends

enemies to friends

unlikely friends

one night stand

neighbor(s)

surfing buds

clients from the pr firm

[starvingtongue]

timeline of events - vii verse - Anima

εγλ 1957 - Anna is born. Her father is a Shinra affiliated politician & her mother is a stay at home wife, enabling the family to live somewhat comfortably. Their house is located on one of the upper plates in Midgar. 

εγλ 1978 - Anna & Jyscal meet.Their meeting was unintentional at first, however, when Anna mentioned it to her father, their further interactions became very intentional when he realised who Jyscal was. His connection to Shinra led Jyscal to Anna and the two started dating a few weeks after their initial meeting. 

εγλ  1979 - Anna & Jyscal get married, much the surprise of those around them. Both were very smitten with each other at this point in time, despite the fact that their relationship was partially arranged. Anna didn't expect to fall for someone like Jyscal, let alone so quickly and for someone who worked for Shinra. She’d had her doubts about the company and the damage they were doing to the planet, but never looked into it too much. If her father ever got too suspicious about what she was researching, he'd always find a way to put an end to it. Anna moves out of her current apartment and moves in with Jyscal.

εγλ  1981 - Anna finds out she’s expecting & gives birth to Seymour later that year. Jenova cells are injected into Anna & Seymour (via his umbilical chord) as an experiment dubbed ‘Project Anima’. Nurses told Anna that the injections would help with the babies development. After the 3 month mark of her pregnancy, Anna was brought in for regular checkups at Shinra. Anna was very skeptical about the injections given to her, but as she had no concrete evidence against them, proceeded along with them anyway, with some gentle nudging from Jyscal. This later turned out to be a lie and Jyscal was the one to break the news.

After Seymour's birth, both he and Anna were brought to Shinra for regular checkups until he was 5. After that, they were brought into Shrina HQ, properly, and given their own rooms.

εγλ late 1982 - 1990 - Anna & Seymour are experimented on and observed inside Shinra. They are separated from most test subjects, mostly due to their connection to Jyscal, and the precaution that word doesn’t get out about the project. While they are not given the most luxurious care in the world, it’s marginally better than most would think. Seymour is given the necessary toys and education to help with his development and Anna is kept as healthy as she can be on their budget.

It’s during this period that Anna contracts an illness, probably due to the experimentation with Mako & Jenova cells. Shinra are able to stave it off as best they can, but know that their medicine cannot do much for long. They do not relay this information to Anna, but they tell this to Jyscal.

εγλ late 1990 // early 1991 - Jyscal help Anna & Seymour ‘escape’, after many years of experimentation and knowing that he’s hurt them both beyond belief. He gives them a small sum of gil for food and shelter to help them get started. It’s his last chance at recompense and while the higher ups do not know the full story behind their escape, they put two and two together regarding Jyscal's involvement and punish him accordingly.

εγλ 1991 - 1993 - Anna & Seymour are on the run. However, the experiments done on Anna & the subsequent illness she contracted inevitably leads to her and Seymour being captured. Seymour’s cries for his mother are one of the last things she hears before they’re separated.

εγλ 1993 - They are brought back to Shinra headquarters and separated into different sections. Seymour is told he will only be able to see his mother if he behaves and does what he’s asked. Anna is experimented on further, though she is not sure why, as she feels her only use to Shinra was through Seymour. She does not pretend to understand the science Shinra talk about.

εγλ 1997 - Anna succumbs to whatever illness she contracted & falls into a coma. She is placed on a life support machine in a hopes that she can be used as a bargaining chip if Seymour lashes out. 

εγλ 0003 - Seymour murders Jyscal and finds out where Shinra’s keeping his mother.

εγλ 0004 - Seymour manages to blackmail his way into being a carer for his mother after his father's death. Anna wakes up from her coma, very weak and requires intense physical therapy to be able to do anything physical. It is due to Seymour's influence at Shinra that this is able to happen. In the years that she's been in a coma, Seymour has worked his way up the ranks at Shinra. Anna is oblivious to this and she questions anyone who comes into her room about her son and husband. She gets no answers. 

εγλ 0005 - Seymour goes rouge. By some miracle, his escape is distraction enough to allow Anna to escape too. Both escape separately, not knowing that the other has escaped and is on the run. Seymour thinks his mother is still at Shinra and visa versa. Anna has had enough physical therapy to blindly stumble out of Shinra.

εγλ early 0006 - Seymour is found and is killed. Records of Project Anima are burnt. Attention turns to Anna and to find out where she is and could’ve gone.

εγλ 0005 - early 0008 - Anna is on the run. Again. Her illness presents with minor symptoms, which she posits is due to the lack of experimentation during her coma. she barely makes it to a harbour before she collapses due to exhaustion. she comes to in Costa Del Sol. She isn't sure how she ended up there, the days following her escape from Midgar a hazy blur. She stays in the region until she's sure the heat has died down.

εγλ March 0008 - She comes back to the Eastern Continent after hearing rumours that Shinra has been destroyed. Her stay in Costa Del Sol has her worried about Seymour and this is one of the main reasons she heads back. She has little hope of finding anything, but she goes regardless. 

εγλ Early April 0008 - Doubt gets the better of her the closer she gets to Midgar. Not fully trusting Edge either, she skirts around the edges of Midgar and heads to Kalm either. She helps out wherever she can to earn some gil, for food, or for a bed to sleep in. She gives whatever she can to the children she sees around, presumably without a home to call their own too.

εγλ December 0008 - Eventually, she figures that nobody is after her. If they hadn't found her at Costa Del Sol, they wouldn't find her there. Plus, Shinra probably had bigger fish to fry after getting destroyed by Cloud & Co. She believes that even if some semblance of Shinra is still around, they’re definitely not looking for her. She moves closer to where Midgar used to stand by scouting out a place in Edge to live in. By this point, she's built up enough money to at least rent a place.

εγλ 0009 - Anna moves into Edge permanently, though it’s not as if she has many belongings. The events of Advent Children happen and Anna picks up a job to make some extra gil. Noticing a lot of orphan’s on the street, she encourages them that her house is a safe space, not that there's a lot fo space, but she figured it might be safer then on the streets. 

εγλ late 0009 - Her house is now aflutter with tiny feet again. The orphans of the city now have a more, semi-permanent place to call home and through various jobs and maybe the selling of a flower or two, Anna has found a way to expand her house. It now has a couple of bedrooms that the children can sleep in, should they wish and while it’s not an ‘official’ orphanage, it better than nothing.

[mainsjoy]

Brooks and dunn swing it

While ramping up to release Reboot, an energized, duet-style retrospective pairing the two veterans with new-generation admirers, they were named to the latest class of Country Music Hall of Fame inductees. Meanwhile, the attention being paid to the solid gold and platinum country of the first Bush and Clinton eras - particularly the hearty output of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn - has morphed into more serious forms this year. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)īentley has kept the Knights gag going as a warm-up act on his arena tours. Dierks Bentley (left) and Thomas Rhett perform earlier this year as part of the Hot Country Knights, Bentley's affectionate send-up of '90s country that often includes covers of songs by Brooks & Dunn. During a spring 2015 performance in front a Nashville industry crowd, one of the special guests was "Ronnie Buns," played by Lady Antebellum singer Charles Kelley, who gamely preened through "My Maria," a Grammy-winning Brooks & Dunn redo of an early '70s tune, in a shaggy wig, aviator sunglasses and a lightning bolt print western shirt. Their set lists have included versions of songs by Alan Jackson, Tracy Byrd, Shania Twain and an array of other past hit-makers, but inevitably there's a Brooks & Dunn cover. A few years back, the canny, established hit-maker Dierks Bentley and his touring band cooked up a nutty but clearly affectionate, costumed caricature of '90s country singers and songs and dubbed themselves the Hot Country Knights. Up until pretty recently, nostalgia for country music from the particular moment of the early-to-mid 1990s was as likely as not to be expressed with a playfully knowing wink. Combs appears on Brooks & Dunn's new album, Reboot, which features contemporary country stars collaborating with the duo on a dozen of its classic songs. The four-minute song climbs to a crescendo that demands you test your speakers with big volume.Kix Brooks (left) and Ronnie Dunn (right) of Brooks & Dunn perform with Luke Combs (center) during the Academy Of Country Music Awards in April. From underneath the rubble sing a rebel song.” He continues to find silver linings as he sings the title phrase. Amid that electronic and acoustic mix, Martin’s reedy tenor provides a hopeful feel with lyrics such as “I turn the music up, I got my records on. After a synthesizer introduction that soars into thin air, “Every Teardrop” kicks in with a U2-ish guitar riff. On this first song off Coldplay’s next record (which is still baking in the studio oven, unnamed), frontman Chris Martin, the band’s resident optimist, finds love in the ruins and salvation in the power of music. Mark this disc as the front-runner in the 2011 race for best country album. The arrangements are also nimble, projecting a sense of country traditionalism without ever feeling stodgy.ĭunn seems to have the most fun with that tough/sensitive yin and yang in the powerful getting-back-to-his-baby song “How Far to Waco,” which is propelled by a Tex-Mex blend of mariachi horns and pedal steel guitar slides. There are no missteps on this 12-track album, especially when it comes to Dunn’s manly cowpoke baritone vocals, which are flexible enough to swing from tough-guy bark to the whisper of a sensitive man. In getting back to work following Kix Brooks’ retirement in September, Dunn mixes upbeat boogies such as “Singer in a Cowboy Band” (which is closer to rock-ville than Nashville) and blue-collar ballads including “Cost of Livin’.” It captures the best elements of when he had a partner while showcasing his individual strength as a singer. After a couple of decades as the “and” man in the hugely successful country act Brooks and Dunn, 58-year-old Ronnie Dunn steps out with his debut solo record.

[reallyhardy]

regent’s open air theatre LSOH (2018) breakdown

act one. herein, two years later, i try to remember as much as i can about this production with the help of gifs i took from the trailer and shutterstock images. let’s go!

THE BEGINNING. i went to see a matinee so it was daytime, but the stage set was all black-and-white very newspaper aesthetic. my sister and i were very close to the front, five rows back:

and here we are, excited for everything to begin. (note my giant tooth earrings. was really hoping they’d catch matt willis’ eye.) soon enough crystal, ronette and chiffon took the stage for the prologue, belted their faces off and got me hype from the first moment. their costumes were kind of punky, street style (my favourite look was on the girl with the green jacket and shiny leggings:)

skid row was great. the grey set really highlighted the colourful costumes, and for this first number the set stayed black-and-white so the only colour were the main characters and urchins, and the ensemble wore black-and-white costumes.

and i remember being so thrilled by the costumes - in this photo seymour is wearing yellow socks but by the time i went to see it they were pink (to match audrey’s hair!) and audrey is wearing fluffy slide slippers in the promo photos but when i saw it she wore a pair of blue open-toe kitten heels.

once the song ended we got to see some character personality: marc antolin as seymour was adorable. he was (for most of the first act at least) very goofy and beamed a lot, he had a very cute smile. his voice was quite high and nasal and silly and i honestly had a really big crush on him. jemima rooper as audrey was equally sweet and adorable - she had a cotton candy pink wig and started off in kind of a sexy-ish outfit, with a sheer off-shoulder top over a bra. her eye makeup was light blue (and the bruise bright purple) and she was really short compared to seymour. mushnik was super tiny and greasy looking.

every interaction seymour and audrey had was just! so cute. at the start where audrey and mushnik discuss orin (the ‘you don’t meet nice boys on skid row’ conversation,) seymour is stood behind them kind of goofing around and he flips his shirt collar up pretending to be orin and acting macho but at the end of the scene audrey goes quiet and carefully fixed his collar back down before she left and it was!!! emotions.

da doo i can’t remember anything about how things looked :( during grow for me it really highlighted how…cute seymour was. he beamed the whole time, and the plant puppet in its baby form was fantastic, (the pod head at the top opened up and had little human teeth lmao) and they used like… household objects painted green for plants. the roses were red toilet brushes:

with red ink on them so when seymour touched the bristles there was visible blood on his finger which was fun. lots of attention to detail in this production.

seymour on the radio i think happened off-stage? so we just hear him being interviewed while we watch mushnik and the urchins listen to the radio together. the choreography during you never know was really fun too, with seymour and the urchins dancing together, seymour did a lot of hip wiggles and kept trying to stop audrey ii from trying to bite at the urchins as he danced. one of the green ping-pong balls fell off the puppet but nobody slipped on it so it was fine. also GOD the voices of the urchins were just so good in this one.

somewhere that’s green is a song that makes me cry most of the times i listen to it or watch any versions of LSOH, but this is the first time i’d seen a version where audrey was also crying. during this number the actress climbed up onto the top of the mushnik’s store prop and she still had the bright purple black-eye makeup on as well as the cast on her arm so she looked so beat down and sad and it was just toward the end of the song at ‘i’m his december bride’ where her singing started to break down and she started crying, and covered her face by the time she got to ‘far from skid row’ with her voice breaking oh my god the tears were flowing VERY much from my eyes.

and as a note the actress did not have this beautiful wig on when i saw it, she wore one with much less volume - it could have been the same wig just styled differently, (tucked under/trimmed to be just sort of...round?) but it was just... so much less cute lmao, you can just about see it here in this cast mirror selfie:

anyway. then it was time for closed for renovation! this one was fun, audrey and seymour i think were just...arranging plants and other things? the ‘mushniks’ shop prop might have expanded a bit? they turned it around?

there were some cute little dancey bits with the three of them together:

then audrey & seymour talk a bit. audrey gives seymour the kind of advice that she also needs to be taking herself -- seymour asks audrey if she’d go shopping with him, and then orin arrives on the scene.

dentist was amazing. i’ve seen a lot of bootlegs of kind of lackluster orin scrivellos but… well, me and my sister decided we were absolutely going to see this production when we found out matt willis was playing the dentist. (we were big busted fans lol) he wore this insane painted leather jacket with this tooth-themed biker gang design (he and his backup dancers all had hell’s teeth on the backs of their jackets) and his dentist coat underneath had the sleeves ripped off to show his tattoos… they gave him white foundation to make him look i guess more ill/joker like? it totally worked. he honestly kinda stole the show and he totally exceeded my expectations (which is saying something because my expectations were that he’d be perfect for the role and that i’d enjoy his performance thoroughly!!!)

then he comes into the shop, comments on the plant, poses around, treats audrey terribly. and not only does he abuse audrey in front of seymour who iirc was watching horrified (as you would) but also poor seymour gets his junk grabbed twice by villains in this production too lmao, orin grabs and squeezes seymour’s junk while he’s yelling at audrey. it’s a theme i guess???

(hell of a promotion image, that one.) then orin and audrey leave and it’s time for mushnik and son. they did a lot of the usual ‘awkward-tango’ choreo and it was just excellent really. there’s nothing i didn’t enjoy about the number, plus mush was quite a short guy but had a real big voice.

you get a good view of all the fun things they used to represent plants here too: cleaning brushes, feather dusters, hairbrushes, a small fishing net, a bubble wand...

so feed me was great because it starts off of course with the plant puppet prop:

but then by the second verse (when it comes to ‘does this look inanimate to you’) they opened up the puppet’s leaves like a mouth and audrey ii in drag queen form emerged (to thunderous applause). [i found a short clip someone got on instagram a while back, you can watch it here!] she was holding a microphone in her hands so when it came to seymour’s responses she held out the mic to his mouth and it was :’) really funny. and seymour gets his junk grabbed again:

because he can’t catch a break. staging wise i think i remember this was very bisexual - it’s important to note that the first wig audrey ii wears strongly resembles the wig that OG audrey wears - and at times during this number audrey ii acts quite flirtatious with seymour and he seems receptive to it and has to visibly shake himself out of it.

audrey comes back for her sweater (iirc it was a VERY jazzy 1990s looking one in aqua green and pink) and seymour and audrey ii make up their minds about what to do with orin.

so seymour heads out - the dentists chair was just a beat-up shopping trolley with various things stuck on (see there’s what looks like a plunger, wrist restraints too lmao) and orin had a bunch of bloodied weapons such as a power drill instead of a dentist drill:

anyway i usually don’t enjoy now(it’s just the gas) as a number when i’ve seen it in bootlegs but again matt willis had tremendous feral energy and he pulled it off. plus the gear was quite retro-futuristic very cool looking:

it was also especially funny just after ‘now’ because after seymour runs off with orin’s body in the trolley he comes back in with it all chopped up and he was pushing dismembered limbs (the arm was even painted with matt willis’ tattoos and nail polish which was a GREAT detail) into the windows of the prop mushnik’s building that audrey ii was inside of, and he even threw up into the audience which was :’) gross but funny. it was yellow. i didn’t see if it splashed anyone.

then... intermission. will continue this in [part 2, which is here!]

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Rhonda Fleming (born Marilyn Louis; August 10, 1923 – October 14, 2020) was an American film and television actress and singer. She acted in more than 40 films, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, and became renowned as one of the most glamorous actresses of her day, nicknamed the "Queen of Technicolor" because she photographed so well in that medium.

Fleming was born Marilyn Louis in Hollywood, California, to Harold Cheverton Louis, an insurance salesman, and Effie Graham, a stage actress who had appeared opposite Al Jolson in the musical Dancing Around at New York's Winter Garden Theatre from 1914 to 1915. Fleming's maternal grandfather was John C. Graham, an actor, theater owner, and newspaper editor in Utah.

She began working as a film actress while attending Beverly Hills High School, from which she graduated in 1941. She was discovered by the well-known Hollywood agent Henry Willson, who changed her name to "Rhonda Fleming".

"It's so weird", Fleming said later. "He stopped me crossing the street. It kinda scared me a little bit -- I was only 16 or 17. He signed me to a seven-year contract without a screen test. It was a Cinderella story, but those could happen in those days."

Fleming's agent Willson went to work for David O. Selznick, who put her under contract.[5][6] She had bit parts in In Old Oklahoma (1943), Since You Went Away (1944) for Selznick, and in When Strangers Marry (1944).

She received her first substantial role in the thriller, Spellbound (1945), produced by Selznick and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. "Hitch told me I was going to play a nymphomaniac", Fleming said later. "I remember rushing home to look it up in the dictionary and being quite shocked." The film was a success and Selznick gave her another good role in the thriller The Spiral Staircase (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak.

Selznick lent her out to appear in supporting parts in the Randolph Scott Western Abilene Town (1946) at United Artists and the film noir classic Out of the Past (1947) with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, at RKO, where she played a harried secretary.

Fleming's first leading role came in Adventure Island (1947), a low-budget action film made for Pine-Thomas Productions at Paramount Pictures in the two-color Cinecolor process and co-starring fellow Selznick contractee Rory Calhoun.

Fleming then auditioned for the female lead in a Bing Crosby film, a part Deanna Durbin turned down at Paramount in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), a musical loosely based on the story by Mark Twain. Fleming exhibited her singing ability, dueting with Crosby on "Once and For Always" and soloing with "When Is Sometime". They recorded the songs for a three-disc, 78-rpm Decca album, conducted by Victor Young, who wrote the film's orchestral score. Her vocal coach in Hollywood, Harriet Lee, praised her "lovely voice", saying, "she could be a musical comedy queen". The movie was Fleming's first Technicolor film. Her fair complexion and flaming red hair photographed exceptionally well and she was nicknamed the "Queen of Technicolor", a moniker not worth much to her as she would have preferred to be known for her acting. Actress Maureen O'Hara expressed a similar sentiment when the same nickname was given to her around this time.

She then played another leading role opposite a comedian, in this case Bob Hope, in the The Great Lover (1949). It was a big hit and Fleming was established. "After that, I wasn't fortunate enough to get good directors", said Fleming. "I made the mistake of doing lesser films for good money. I was hot – they all wanted me – but I didn't have the guidance or background to judge for myself."

In February 1949, Selznick sold his contract players to Warner Bros, but he kept Fleming.

In 1950 she portrayed John Payne's love interest in The Eagle and the Hawk, a Western.

Fleming was lent to RKO to play a femme fatale opposite Dick Powell in Cry Danger (1951), a film noir. Back at Paramount, she played the title role in a Western with Glenn Ford, The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951).

In 1950, she ended her association with Selznick after eight years, though her contract with him had another five years to run.

Fleming signed a three-picture deal with Paramount. Pine-Thomas used her as Ronald Reagan's leading lady in a Western, The Last Outpost (1951), John Payne's leading lady in the adventure film Crosswinds (1951), and with Reagan again in Hong Kong (1951).

She sang on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour during the same live telecast that featured Errol Flynn, on September 30, 1951, from the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.

Fleming was top-billed for Sam Katzman's The Golden Hawk (1952) with Sterling Hayden, then was reunited with Reagan for Tropic Zone (1953) at Pine-Thomas. In 1953, Fleming portrayed Cleopatra in Katzman's Serpent of the Nile for Columbia. That same year, she filmed a western with Charlton Heston at Paramount, Pony Express (1953), and two films shot in three dimensions (3-D), Inferno with Robert Ryan at Fox, and the musical Those Redheads From Seattle with Gene Barry, for Pine-Thomas. The following year, she starred with Fernando Lamas in Jivaro, her third 3-D release, at Pine-Thomas. She went to Universal for Yankee Pasha (1954) with Jeff Chandler. Fleming also traveled to Italy to play Semiramis in Queen of Babylon (1954).

Fleming was part of a gospel singing quartet with Jane Russell, Connie Haines, and Beryl Davis.

Much of the location work for Fleming's 1955 Western Tennessee's Partner, in which she played Duchess opposite John Payne as Tennessee and Ronald Reagan as Cowpoke, was filmed at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California, (known as the most heavily filmed outdoor location in the history of film and television). A distinctive monolithic sandstone feature behind which Fleming (as Duchess) hid during an action sequence, later became known as the Rhonda Fleming Rock. The rock is part of a section of the former movie ranch known as "Garden of the Gods", which has been preserved as public parkland.

Fleming was reunited with Payne and fellow redhead Arlene Dahl in a noir at RKO, Slightly Scarlet (1956). She did other thrillers that year; The Killer Is Loose (1956) with Joseph Cotten and Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956), co-starring Dana Andrews, at RKO. Fleming was top billed in an adventure movie for Warwick Films, Odongo (1956).

Fleming had the female lead in John Sturges's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) co-starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, a big hit. She supported Donald O'Connor in The Buster Keaton Story (1957) and Stewart Granger in Gun Glory (1957) at MGM.

In May 1957, Fleming launched a nightclub act at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. It was a tremendous success. "I just wanted to know if I could get out on that stage – if I could do it. And I did! ... My heart was to do more stage work, but I had a son, so I really couldn't, but that was in my heart."

Fleming was Guy Madison's co star in Bullwhip (1958) for Allied Artists, and supported Jean Simmons in Home Before Dark (1958), which she later called her favorite role ("It was a marvellous stretch", she said).

Fleming was reunited with Bob Hope in Alias Jesse James (1959) and did an episode of Wagon Train.

She was in the Irwin Allen/Joseph M. Newman production of The Big Circus (1959), co-starring Victor Mature and Vincent Price. This was made for Allied Artists, whom Fleming later sued for unpaid profits.

Fleming travelled to Italy again to make The Revolt of the Slaves (1959) and was second billed in The Crowded Sky (1960).

In 1960, she described herself as "semi-retired", having made money in real estate investments. That year she toured her nightclub act in Las Vegas and Palm Springs.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s, Fleming frequently appeared on television with guest-starring roles on The Red Skelton Show, The Best of Broadway, The Investigators, Shower of Stars, The Dick Powell Show, Wagon Train, Burke's Law, The Virginian, McMillan & Wife, Police Woman, Kung Fu, Ellery Queen, and The Love Boat.

In 1958, Fleming again displayed her singing talent when she recorded her only LP, entitled simply Rhonda (reissued in 2008 on CD as Rhonda Fleming Sings Just For You). In this album, which was released by Columbia Records, she blended then-current songs like "Around The World" with standards such as "Love Me or Leave Me" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". Conductor-arranger Frank Comstock provided the musical direction.

On March 4, 1962, Fleming appeared in one of the last segments of ABC's Follow the Sun in a role opposite Gary Lockwood. She played a Marine in the episode, "Marine of the Month".

In December 1962, Fleming was cast as the glamorous Kitty Bolton in the episode, "Loss of Faith", on the syndicated anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Kitty pits Joe Phy (Jim Davis) and Peter Gabriel (Don Collier) to run against each other for sheriff of Pima County, Arizona. Violence results from the rivalry.

In the 1960s, Fleming branched out into other businesses and began performing regularly on stage and in Las Vegas.

One of her final film appearances was in a bit-part as Edith von Secondburg in the comedy The Nude Bomb (1980) starring Don Adams. She also appeared in Waiting for the Wind (1990).

Fleming has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2007, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

Fleming worked for several charities, especially in the field of cancer care, and served on the committees of many related organizations. In 1991, her fifth husband, Ted Mann, and she established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at the UCLA Medical Center.

In 1964, Fleming spoke at the "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley, a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of mandatory school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court, which struck down mandatory school prayer as conflicting with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Joining Fleming and Eisley at the rally were Walter Brennan, Lloyd Nolan, Dale Evans, Pat Boone, and Gloria Swanson. Fleming declared, "Project Prayer is hoping to clarify the First Amendment to the Constitution and reverse this present trend away from God." Eisley and Fleming added that John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Roy Rogers, Mary Pickford, Jane Russell, Ginger Rogers, and Pat Buttram would also have attended the rally had their schedules not been in conflict.

Fleming married six times:

Thomas Wade Lane, interior decorator, (1940–1942; divorced), one son

Dr. Lewis V. Morrill, Hollywood physician, (July 11, 1952 – 1954; divorced)

Lang Jeffries, actor, (April 3, 1960 – January 11, 1962; divorced)

Hall Bartlett, producer (March 27, 1966 – 1972; divorced)

Ted Mann, producer, (March 11, 1977 – January 15, 2001; his death)

Darol Wayne Carlson (2003 – October 31, 2017; his death)

Through her son Kent Lane (b. 1941), Rhonda also had two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly), four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane, and Cole), and two great-great-grandchildren.

She was a Presbyterian and a Republican who supported Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.

Fleming died on October 14, 2020, in Saint John's Health Center, Santa Monica, California, at the age of 97. She is interred at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, California.

[manjuhitorie]

Hitorie Interview - Skream! Magazine - Feb. 2021 Issue

First and foremost, I'd like to address REAMP as a whole. I couldn't help but pick up on signs inner turmoil and sorrow over wowaka's unfortunate passing, among a brand new resolve. What's your opinion on this such take?

Shinoda: We voluntarily chose to vent those feelings without any beating around the bush. This band has taken a huge twist in terms of the one who sings, writes, and produces the music, after all. There’s no point in hiding that, we felt. To be completely honest, even after all this time we still haven’t exactly regained our balance at all. Sad is sad. In order to express our choice to push onwards, the cards we had in our hands are.... -Actually the word “cards” was a poor choice. We merely had no other option but to express our feelings outright. ygarshy: We weren’t in the place to put together a theme or concept for the album or anything like that either. We felt baffled and confused by the very fact that we were making songs at all, but nevertheless I felt we had to do it, we just have to. We were wishy-washy so, we decided to hold the times we 4 made songs together close to our hearts, and use that as our foothold: to just try and write as we always do. Shinoda: Squeezing a song out was our one and only objective. Yumao: Yeah. The universe wowaka alone had created and his structures and all that.. To be honest, this new album is cut off from it... We chose to not agonize over trying to recreate it, and to rather let whatever we could just flow out of us.

I have a question about the timeline. After wowaka’s passing, when did you make the concrete decision to keep Hitorie alive?

Shinoda: To be real, we still haven’t even made that decision. Yumao: We haven’t concretely said “Let’s keep this up.” or anything. Our mixed emotions are still churning, or how to say it... When we wrote the music we become immersed and even excited about it but, once our songs were laid out on the table we came back to our senses, like “Uhm? Is this okay?” ygarshy: Even now I’ll have sudden thoughts like “Hm? What am I doing here?”, even when we toured as a trio for the Hitori-Escape Tour 2019, I never thought ‘Let’s keep going on like this’ as well, owing to the circumstances. Just, if we didn’t do it we would’ve lost out minds is all. Shinoda: He speaks the truth alright. ygarshy: If we had to make a thoughtful commitment, I think it would’ve taken us hundreds upon hundreds of years until we finally made a move.

Was there not any type of critical moment during the tour wherein you realized “We can do this?”

Shinoda: Truthfully, during the tour I was so deep into it that I barely even the foggiest memory as to what was going through my brain back then. What I can say for sure is that 2 years ago on June 1st at the Memorial Concert (At Shinkiba Studio Coast), before that day I hadn’t stood on the stage in months. For the past 10 years of my life I haven’t gone that long without the stage. So when I got up for the Memorial Concert, despite it being a tragic event, I felt that when I’m up on stage with this band my mental state is the most stable it ever is. We even all went out for Chinese food after that.

The three of you did?

Shinoda: Yep. We drank our heads off and talked about how “We could totally manage a tour too, eh?” Yumao: Since our HOWLS tour (Hitorie Tour 2019 “Coyote Howling”) was cancelled, we felt we owed something, that we had to do something. We may be sad but, even more important than that was the urgency of the situation.

So there was no resolve or concrete decision to tour and make an album then.

Shinoda: Yep, looking back, I think that’s right.

Were you writing songs while touring?

Shinoda: We started writing around March of 2020? Yumao: Due to COVID-19 we had a lot of free time on our hands, so we took the oppurtunity. Though it wasn’t as if we said “Alright, let’s get going!”, we just all knew it was imminent, and that we had to do it at some point. That point was then.

Which was the first song you wrote?

Among the ones which made the cut, “Marshall A” was the first one consummated at the studio. Though “Utsutsu” was the first one made in my head. Around the end of the tour in 2019 the idea for the phrases took form. I felt that if I was to ever write for Hitorie again, this would be it.

”Utsutsu” stresses sorrow way thicker and heavier than any of the other songs in the album, so it makes sense that it came first.

Shinoda: It gets my feelings across, doesn’t it... The lyric and sung melody of “Utsutsu da ne” were around since the beginning.

Did you each make a song voluntarily?

Yumao: Yessiree. It was like “I’m’ere writing, so you'd better pick it up too." Shinoda: We had the slogan "Let's make 10 songs in one month". Yumao: Even if it was one chorus of a song, that would be okay. Shinoda: In the end, the ratio of songs I, ygarshy and Yumao completed was 8:1:1 (Though in the album itself it became 6:2:2). It might seem unbalanced, but this is perfectly balanced for us. ygarshy: Shinoda just makes a heap ton of songs. Shinoda: From there we picked and chose.

Did you have any standards for which would make the cut? Such as befitting of the current Hitorie or not?

Shinoda: That too was all over the place. Personally when I write, I place importance in how it will pan out with Hitorie as a whole but, I also contemplated what would fit our band's current climate. "Should the guitar not be too distorted?" "Should it not sound too 'rock band-ish'?", my mind was going crazy, I thought it would be best if it was entirely chilled out and mellow. There  was a moment when a switch flipped.

It is true that songs such as 'tat' do take that direction, but after listening to the complete album I have to say, the rock band-ish style is in full bloom. There's a lot of distortion too.

Shinoda: Yep, it's distorted. Yumao: And it's rock (giggling). ygarshy: Listening to Shinoda say that just now made me upset.

Why is that?

ygarshy: Because I had purposefully intended for it to be distorted. Everyone: Ahahaha!

So you like distortion (laughing). To push this point further, would it be true to say that those are core aspects of Hitorie's style? Shinoda: Ahh, there’s definitely truth in that.

Yumao: The one most mindful of that had to have been ygarshy. Whatever we release next can’t be too distant from classic Hitorie, he was the one who secured how best to keep the string in tact.

Where was the poster song ’curved edge’ made in the creative process timeline? Shinoda: We upheld the slogan of 10 songs a month for about 2 months, and ‘curved edge’ was the final one. I wanted to make a classic Hitorie style riff-based song, but I didn’t want high-tempos. ‘curved edge’ was where I finally found the perfect balance between my wishes and Hitorie’s standards.

Hitorie never made songs with unwavering low tempos that take off into an uplifting dance breakdown at the chorus up until now after all.  

Shinoda: Yeah. We all made the silent agreement to absolutely not try and make songs like wowaka’s.

I can definitely detect wowaka’s influence on your music, which is natural after being in a band together for so long. So, you kept it at.

ygarshy: We’ve each grown a keen sense for this. Suppose we were to show wowaka a song we wrote that mimics his style... He would make a really disgusted face. We just know, we just have a sense for it.

Shinoda: That’s the thing he despises the most after all.

ygarshy: That’s right. It would be but as a parody. And we wouldn’t want to do that.

ygarshy, you wrote the songs ‘Image’ and ‘dirty, correct. The melody of them feel nostalgic and longing, yet simultaneously evoke a rush and shivers.

ygarshy: In my current state letting the music flow out of me is all I’m capable of. Last spring, or summer was it, where we were showing each other our songs I.... Felt sad. So sad. Like “Why am I writing songs for Hitorie? Why is this what it’s come to?”

Yumao: Yep yep.

ygarshy: That’s why “dirty” and “Image” both are not very elaborate pieces. There’s much room to mix up chords or arrange it to be complex but, I just really had no heart to do that. Whatever popped out of my head wasn’t tinkered in the slightest, my wish was to keep in its organic simple form.

So when you handled the arrangement of music as a band, did you change as little as possible?

ygarshy: For the two songs I brought in, they were nice and stayed as close to demo version as they possibly could. “dirty” especially has a garage-style melody and tone which clicks immediately, so the lyrics and singing were molded to follow suit. Shinoda: Him (ygarshy) and I are the same age and all, so I pretty much can grasp whatever he goes for. Like he was probably going for those late 1990’s declining vibes. ygarshy: Exactly. I had thought to myself that I wanted dirty lyrics, and he actually delivered just that. I’d like to hear the story behind the two songs Yumao wrote as well, “YUBIKIRI” and “faceless enemy”. Both melodies are pop.

Yumao: That just kind of happens with me. Shinoda: He makes my contemplating and agonizing look stupid, because those songs are just as clear as fresh water. Yumao: All I did was squeeze out whatever I could (laughing). To be honest, I think my songs will be the most unacceptable to Hitorie’s listeners. I may be a member of Hitorie, and understand Hitorie like the back of my hand but, from the start I knew I’m incapable of writing songs to Hitorie’s standards. I took a realistic approach. ygarshy: Though I really enjoy the music Yumao wrote before Hitorie. So when he brought it those genuine honest pieces, I was so happy. I think I like the songs more than he himself does.

The fact that you chose to keep Yumao’s songs in the album despite them not being perfectly Hitorie fashioned, sounds like proof that you’ve found your answer for this album.

Yumao: Pedaling to the mettle is what I have to do, it’s all I can do. No matter if it’s acceptable or not, I’m doing what I can. That’s one message behind my songs.

Your song “YUBIKIRI” as the final track of the album has a lot of impact as well. It’s a bright and cheery song yet somehow it brings a tear to the eye.

Shinoda: Doesn’t it?

Yumao: It’s very cheery and it’s the brightest of the mix, isn’t it. When I wrote I was riding the groove in over my head, so I asked Shinoda to make the lyrics sound immature, like something a teenager would click with. I felt knotted up inside, and I needed something to break the chains for me. Completely divert from what Hitorie should or shouldn’t do, I alone needed to express and vent myself. And that’s how this song happened.

Shinoda: Yumao made that direct request of me, so I steered my word choices far away from any purple-prose. The keyboard was played by NariHane of Passpied, and when those 3 were off recording the music without me, I finished the lyrics. That’s how quickly they were zipped out.

After completing a whole album, how do you feel, do you think you will be able to continue on like this?

Shinoda: I don’t know yet. We’ll have to hear the people’s opinions. ygarshy: And what are we going to do after hearing them? After performing all these concerts? is one apprehension I have but,.. everything feels so up in the air.

Yumao: I know we haven’t said anything conclusive but! I want people to know we have a mountain of hypotheses on how we could move forward, on how we could keep Hitorie going, on how we could keep wowaka alive but, for now this album was just a do-or-die for us!

Shinoda: We made it, that’s all we needed.

Yumao: Yep. It was an absolute for us. I want to get that point across. This album is our declaration: that “We’ve taken one step forward”!

[kreekey]

what's your opinion on the Yoko Julien stuff? Like how she treated him after John died

I have no definitive judgement of it, to be honest. Julian (and Cynthia) would’ve, ideally, been treated with the utmost kindness after John’s death, and their relationship with Yoko would’ve been better. That was not the case. However, Yoko also experienced great trauma after witnessing her husband’s death, and her relationship with John’s first family was not very close. @withthebeatlesgirls s​made an excellent post on this here: X. I agree with a lot of what they say, and the screenshots from Sean’s Twitter are telling.

I recently found a Reddit comment on this subject that I found interesting, please read all. Credit to /u/texum for the fantastic write-up. (Link to original thread).

Oh, neat, a bunch of hearsay that's been proven wrong.

>Yoko made Julian, John's first born son, buy back his letters from his deceased father.

This isn't true. First of all, they weren't letters, they were postcards. As Julian wrote in his book Beatles Memorabilia: The Julian Lennon Collection:

>"I had to buy all the postcards back. It's more than likely that when we [he and his mother] moved house stuff got lost or somebody would steal something."

He lost them in a move in England with his mother, some collector got them, and Julian bought them back at auction. John and Yoko never had them--the book reproduces photos of all the postcards and you can clearly see the UK postmarks on all of them. They're all dated 1971 or after, and John never set foot in the UK after that, and neither did Yoko until years after John died.

But at the same auction Julian bought these postcards, he also bought a sheet of recording notes for the song "Hey Jude" that had once been in the possession of Yoko. The recording notes are also reproduced in the same Memorabilia book. These notes had been in a suitcase of memorabilia owned by Mal Evans which Mal's book publisher had lost after Mal died. They turned up in the New York book publisher's basement about 15 years later, and the publisher gave them to Yoko to return to Mal's family, which she did. Mal's family then sold all the memorabilia at auction, and Julian bought those "Hey Jude" notes. Later interviewers conflated the two events, and Julian didn't bother to set the record straight, but if you notice Julian's wording in those interviews, he always carefully sidesteps the accusation that he actually bought the postcards from Yoko. He just says he's been using his father's money to buy his father's things back at auction.

If you think about it for two seconds, it's never made any sense: how would John have postcards he sent to Julian if Julian lived in the UK and John lived in the US? The answer is, he didn't. Julian received them, lost them, and then ended up buying them back from a collector at auction.

>John's will left nothing to Cynthia and Julian, and Yoko...fights him in court for years

First of all, why would Cynthia be part of John's will? Who puts an estranged ex-wife in their will? She already got a divorce settlement and was receiving alimony. Though she had got pretty screwed in that settlement, that's not Yoko's fault, and no second wife I've ever heard of has ever forked over money to a first wife who already took a part of their husband's earnings.

But secondly, this isn't actually true. Julian was included in John's estate. It's just that John didn't leave much of a will. It was basically a boilerplate, "If I die, my wife gets everything" except that John had set up a trust fund for Julian and Sean to start withdrawing from when they each turned 21. Julian John had started by contributing $100K per year for Julian, and then when Sean was born, he upped it to $250K per year to be split between the two of them.

But John died early, and had only been contributing to this trust fund since his divorce from Cynthia, so only about 10 or 11 years. There's was only a couple million dollars in it, and it was supposed to be split between the two sons.

Julian sued on the basis he would have got much more than that if John had lived, and he was trying to take as much as he could get. As far as Yoko was concerned, anything taken by Julian was taken away from Sean, so it took them about a decade to settle the lawsuit. In the end, Julian walked away with about $20-25 million, which was about 10% of the value of the estate at the time of John's death. He was also the sole heir to whatever value of John's estate had already been given to Cynthia through the divorce (which was considerably less, but again, that's not Yoko's fault, that's Cynthia's lawyer's).

Another really interesting comment from the same user, very much related. (Link to thread)

What did Yoko do to Julian? Julian wrote in his book Beatles Memorabilia: The Julian Lennon Collection that the postcards he bought at auction were ones he likely lost, or else were stolen, during a move from one house to another while living with his mother in the UK. The four postcards are reproduced in that book, and three of the four are also reproduced in Hunter Davies's book The John Lennon Letters. All are postmarked as received in the UK. The earliest of the four is from late 1971, where John sent his new address and phone number in New York to Julian. Meaning, those postcards were never in the possession of John or Yoko once they were sent to Julian in the UK, since John and Yoko never stepped foot in the UK between John's move to New York and his death.

There were some interviews in the late 1990s where interviewers said that Julian had to buy these postcards from Yoko, but if you actually listen to Julian's responses, he's always careful to avoid accusing Yoko directly, instead saying something more general about how Yoko never gave him anything for free and he was now using his dad's money to buy stuff he received from his dad. (Well, by his own admission later, he should have kept better track of the postcards.)

In Davies's book The John Lennon Letters, there is a letter that John sent to his cousin Liela in Scotland that details some of the drama. While Liela's letter to John isn't in the book, John is responding to her letter discussing some failed get-together between Julian and John's sister Julia. It seems that Julia wanted to visit Julian, and John had made some arrangements for it to happen, but when Julia arrived on the arranged date, Cynthia said that Julian wasn't there and turned Julia away (who had driven several hours to make the trip). John goes on to say in the letter that this was part par for the course, and he suspects Cynthia was keeping him and Julian from talking. John made weekly phone calls to Julian, and when John was separated from Yoko, these calls went right through. Julian and Cynthia even came to the US to visit once for an extended vacation. But as soon as John was back with Yoko, Julian never seemed to be there whenever John called, and John suspected Cynthia wasn't relaying his messages to Julian that he'd called. In the series of letters between John and Liela, it seems that Julian had an open invitation to come visit in New York any time he wanted to (John couldn't leave for most of the period due to visa issues) but there were only a handful of actual visits between 1971-80. John believed Cynthia was deliberately distancing Julian from him.

That's not to say John was a good dad. He hadn't been a good dad before the divorce and he did move to a different continent. But Yoko wasn't the issue. It seemed to be rather run of the mill arguments between the divorced parents, John and Cynthia.

The only other "bad" thing Yoko has ever been accused of regarding Julian is the lawsuit over John's estate. But again, this isn't really Yoko's fault. John died without any estate planning, just a boilerplate will that said his wife gets everything. He had started a trust fund for Julian and Sean, but at the time he died, it had a couple million dollars in it, or thereabouts, to be split between the two sons. Julian sued to get more, and there was surely some settlement offered along the way, but any smart lawyer is going to try to get as much money for their client as possible. It eventually was settled, but it took ten years. The amount was undisclosed, but the rumor is that Julian got around $20 million, which was around 10% of the value of the estate at the time of John's death. Maybe that's "unfair", but keep in mind also that John had already given a large chunk of his estate to Cynthia during their divorce, so Julian was heir to that, too. (Though Cynthia did get pretty screwed in that divorce - but again, that has nothing to do with Yoko, and everything to do with John and Cynthia's divorce lawyers.)

Overall, though, Yoko never really did anything in particular to Julian. Julian may have been upset about some money issues, but again, that's due to John's shortsightedness more than anything. Yoko and Julian never had much of a relationship from 1971 on, when Julian was still only eight years old, because there wasn't much visiting going on. And the reason for the lack of visits doesn't seem to be attributable to Yoko.

Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of misinformation or conflation about Julian and Yoko’s relationship. Sorry I quoted a whole bunch, but this user put it better than I ever could and actually made me aware that I held a bunch of assumptions that were actually incorrect about how Yoko and Julian's relationship functioned.

Here, Julian states that he’s forgiven Yoko:

I would assume that Julian and Yoko had time to reconcile and if he’s forgiven her, then fans should respect that and I think their relationship has bettered. And I think that if he had forgiven her, there must be a reason. Fans may not know the exact details why Julian forgave her, but there is no obligation and I’m just happy to hear that peace has been given a chance, using that same cliche from the video haha.

I do not think Yoko’s relationship with Julian makes her an evil person, though, not at all. I earnestly think she tried to do her best, but after seeing her husband's death, it changed her for a while. But her actions regarding Julian are sometimes twisted to make her sound like a deliberate villain, which I disagree with.

[corinthbayrpg]

NAME. Kaan Erdoğan AGE & BIRTH DATE. 650 & April 15th, 1370 GENDER & PRONOUNS. Male & He/Him SPECIES. Manticore OCCUPATION. Unemployed FACE CLAIM. Deniz Can Aktaş

BIOGRAPHY

( tw: death, suicide, spousal cheating ) Born during what was then the Ottoman Empire in 1370, Kaan was what was classified as an elite member of society. His father was a part of the government and had found himself a woman with which he hoped to spend the rest of his life with. Their first born child had been a girl so they sought to have another so they could have a boy. Kaan had been their blessing they had wanted from the start. They expected great things for him and he had only wanted to please his parents. His childhood had been spent, not with his sister, but in the fields training to become a soldier. The Ottoman Empire certainly hadn’t been lacking in those, but he wanted to lead those men into battle. He wanted to be the one that was looked at and feared for being the one that singlehandedly caused others to bow at the Sultan’s feet. It would be easier said than done for him to do so though.

When he was old enough to join the military, Kaan was already off to war. He had wanted to follow the Sultan into any battle, but he knew it would never be as simple as that. The wishes of a man born into wealth were just that: wishes. The glory and honor he so hoped to achieve as a member of the military was not what he had expected it to be. Some moments, when he sat around with the soldiers that were by his side, he hoped for more. He always wanted more than was given to him. Kaan’s wish had sort of come true when he had fallen in love with a woman who was the daughter of another powerful man like his father. They were both young, but they thought they had been in love. Rather, she thought she was in love.

Kaan knew he would want a family with her like his sister had gained with her husband. He married her as soon as he possibly could. It was what would now be called an arranged marriage. Kaan would have not called it that nowadays as he had always expected their love to be true. They had both been wealthy and he expected her to always be there whenever he came back from a battle. However, he would soon come to realize that it was true that hearts were made to be broken. Maybe he had expected too much or maybe he had been too blinded by the idea of having someone that he thought loved him unconditionally. He would have given her the world if he hadn’t seen her with another woman. Kaan had wanted to surprise her at the bathhouse she had frequented with the other women of rank like hers. If only he hadn’t, maybe he would have been spared the heartbreak.

It was after the Battle of Nicopolis that he had seen this. It made him wonder how long it had been going on. However, he pretended he had not seen it. This woman would be none the wiser, but he had been slowly plotting his revenge. He had thought of anything and everything. Never would he become Sultan, but he could have his own harem, couldn’t he? It was another wish he would never have, but could only hope for. It had been a dark night when Kaan had prayed to whatever deity would listen. It had been prayer for revenge that only one had shown their face for.

Hades appeared to him in all his dark and mysterious glory. Sure, Kaan had expected different, but if any deity would respond to him, he wasn’t surprised it would be this one. So he made a deal. Whatever the god of the dead wanted, He would be given. It seemed his revenge would come when he passed on. Kaan was okay to wait, but apparently it wouldn’t be long. He kept up his appearance with his wife of being happy while he plotted her death every night in his head. Not a year after he made this deal with Hades, he met his demise in battle. It was no tragedy to him as he knew what would come after. Nobody would be the wiser as to him dying and being brought back to life by the god of death.

Becoming an incubus had been a gift he hadn’t known he wanted, but it had been the thing that would give him the revenge he so desperately wanted. After only a few nights with the poor woman who had spurred on the wrath of an extremely jealous man, Kaan’s wife was depressed and on the verge of wanting death for herself. As soon as he realized she had taken her own life, he could only smile. It had created a void within him that could only be filled by the deaths of many at his own hands. It was power he so desperately craved and Hades had gifted him with this undeniable power that none would be the wiser of. His love and penchant for death could only be satiated with causing the deaths of others with only a few nights with him. It was something close to euphoria that he only ever felt when he was fighting in battle.

Throughout the years of him being alive, he had fought in many battles and caused the deaths of others by other means. His life felt fulfilling, but it would only get boring at some point. With every ruler that came and went, Kaan still felt the need to want that power for himself. It would be fleeting though. A being that simply could not die, unless by the hands of a shapeshifter, would certainly be one hell of a ruler for the Ottoman Empire to have. But no, he would keep to himself so that his life lasted longer than others may have wanted it to be. Kaan had moved on from his military life after the Turkish War of Independence in 1923. And, when Ankara was turned into Istanbul, he decided to make a new plan for himself. Since he had been so close to death for centuries upon centuries, he decided what better job to have than becoming a mortician. It gave him the opportunity to find victims such as the widows of the deceased that would soon find their lives ending and meeting with their lost lovers in the afterlife once again. He was only doing them a favor, wasn’t he?

Kaan got bored of the people in Istanbul after a while. There was only so many times he could move within the same place before he got tired of it. So he moved to a place in Greece called Corinth Bay in the 1990s. He had built up a funeral parlor he named after something the river in which Charon lead the newly deceased down called Acheron. It actually made him laugh when people stopped by to make arrangements for their lost loves and, without even realizing it, for themselves.

Traveling was something he decided on doing so he could find people that weren’t just widowed to take the souls of. Unfortunately, for him, he found one that he regretted taking. It had only been a shapeshifter, but love like that was something he had only ever thought he had once before. And trust was such a fickle thing to him. Kaan had only come back to Corinth Bay a year ago to get away from the mistake he had made, but this was the one time he just could not escape his past.

Luckily, he had not escaped that past he so desperately wished he could have. That shapeshifter ended up being someone he truly felt he could spend the rest of his life with. However, the guilt always ate him up inside to the point where he doubted everyone and everything. Even the people he trusted the most, he had felt like they didn’t want the best for him. Oh how wrong he was to believe such a thing. Maybe it was his past that made him think that everyone he cared for was going to turn their back on him. This was a different time though now. Nobody had turned their back on him and nobody was truly out to get him. Not out of the people he cared for, that was. Everything came crumbling down the night of the masquerade though.

Kaan had remembered seeing Ptolema’s face last. The knife had plunged into his heart before he had been able to breathe another word. Nothing had been said, but everything that had happened in his life had circled around his mind as his body hit the floor right in front of Acheron. Before he even realized what was happening, his soul was being sent to Tartarus to live out the rest of his days being shaped and molded into the monster most would have seen him as. He was no longer an incubus, but instead something much worse: a manticore. Maybe it had been the fear of himself that truly drove him mad in the decades upon decades he had spent in Tartarus. Nevertheless, he had been stuck there, but not without the company of others that had been tortured like him. That was truly all that kept him from going absolutely insane.

It had been years before Kaan felt a strange pulling from the other side of the veil. It had seemed like someone was desperately tried to pull him out of Tartarus. Kaan had thought it to be his opening, but it had been just a fleeting moment years ago. And then things changed for the better. He had thought that moment had been the catalyst when the veil fell and allowed him to break free from the chains he had been held by within Tartarus. Now that he’s back in Corinth Bay, revenge is the only thing on his mind. The woman that killed him would suffer and he would not stop until her head was on a pike in front of his home.

PERSONALITY

+ straight-forward, independent, analytical - vindictive, arrogant, aloof

PLAYED BY Kenya. EST. She/Her.

[gayenerd]

This is another article I found during the internet k-hole I went into while looking for information about Adrienne’s ex-fiance, saved in a document, and now can’t find online anymore. I think it was originally featured in the Mankato Free Press, but the author apparently had a blog detailing her 2009 efforts to get in contact with Adrienne and campaign for Green Day to play in Mankato again. There’s some more interesting tidbits about the Mankato punk scene and an interview with Adrienne there. 

Campaign Green Day: Reflection

By Amanda Dyslin

Free Press Features Editor

June 10, 2009 11:29 pm

— It was dark in the middle of the southern Minnesota countryside, somewhere by St. Peter in the summer of 1992.

On a farm with a barn and not much else, there was one light pole casting a shallow glow on three guys standing atop 6-foot wide, 5-foot tall wire spools — a makeshift stage to gain high ground over 200 or so people watching. Next to them was a big, old, beat-up beast of a car pulled up by the owner so 15 or so people could stand on top and gain a better view. One of them had a video camera.

Ben Gruber, then a sophomore at Loyola High School, was there. In fact, he and a buddy had helped haul equipment for the band, and even gave the drummer, Tre Cool, a ride before the show in Mankato. The music was good, he said. A lot more polished than other punk bands he’d seen in Mankato.

He was aware of the five-year-old band, born in Berkeley, Calif., he said. They’d put out a couple of smaller recordings, including their full-length debut “39/Smooth” on Lookout! Records. But they were two years from their breakthrough record, “Dookie,” which would have pretty much everyone at the show that night in awe of what they had experienced — maybe one of the last stripped down, small-scale punk shows Green Day would ever perform.

Mankato punk

The Libido Boyz are often considered the anchor of the Mankato punk scene in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was a time when the city was rich with garage and basement punk bands, drummer Chad Sabin said before a reunion show in 2007. PSD and Plain Truth were a couple of other bands that got a lot of attention at the time.

Marti’s All Ages Music, located where the Vietnamese restaurant Tonn is now on Front Street, was an open building with a bathroom and a couple of booths where kids could put on shows. A couple of bands went on to the big time after playing there. The Offspring was one of them.

Many claimed having heard of friends who had seen Green Day play at Marti’s. According to a former talent booker, the closest Green Day ever came to playing the venue was when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and his girlfriend, Adrienne Nesser, walked in and left right after The Offspring’s set in 1994. Marti’s tried to get Green Day to play the venue numerous times, but it was way too small for even the moderate level of fame they’d already gained pre-“Dookie.” Marti’s had the same trouble with the punk band Fugazi.

“It was pretty much no frills,” Gruber said. “There wasn’t much to do there.”

The bulk of the punk scene was made up of high school and college-age punk-rockers who would play anywhere, Sabin said. Like a lot of kids at the time, the Libido Boyz just wanted to play loud, chaotic music, which also is what people seemed to want to hear. Kids would cram into basements for concerts or listen outside garages.

“On any given week or weekend, there would be a show with anywhere from two to 10 bands playing,” Gruber said. “There was a really good crop of musician-age kids who were into (punk) for a while (before) grunge became very popular.”

During the next few years, the Libido Boyz got big. They played in the Cities and toured the state and eventually started playing shows across the country, including New York and San Francisco. Out West is where they met Green Day, who would become the biggest punk band to come through Mankato.

“They were just dirty punks like us,” Sabin said.

Former Libido Boyz bassist Dave Begalka said they played punk shows with Green Day from time to time while on tour. Mike Dirnt, Green Day bassist, actually did Begalka a big favor once when they played a show in Cleveland together.

Some of Begalka’s bass gear went missing, and a couple of months later he saw Dirnt when they both were playing shows in the California Bay Area. Turns out, the bass gear was mixed up with Dirnt’s equipment that night, and he’d been keeping it safe for him the whole time.

“I thought that was just downright a swell thing to do,” Begalka said. “As I recall, I think we couch surfed at Billy Joe’s that night. ... By the way, I still use the lost guitar strap that went around the U.S. with Green Day.”

The Libido Boyz and Green Day crossed paths in another way as well, through Adrienne, who was a student at Minnesota State University and living in Mankato.

The first lady

Adrienne (Nesser) Armstrong, now 39, was born in Minneapolis and started at MSU in the late 1980s, graduating with the class of 1994 with a degree in sociology.

She met Billie Joe on Green Day’s first tour in 1990. Some report it was a show at First Ave in Minneapolis, and she is quoted at greenday.net as saying only about 10 people were there. She asked Billie Joe where she could get a copy of the band’s CD, and the two hit it off.

While on tour, Billie Joe kept in contact with Adrienne by phone. Their first kiss inspired an early Green Day song, “2,000 Light Years Away.” Their relationship caused Billie Joe to arrange two tours around Minnesota so they could see each other, a relationship which lasted about a year and a half.

Although it’s unclear, witnesses who saw Billie Joe and Adrienne around Mankato during that time say the reason Green Day played shows in the area at all was simply because she was here. The shows weren’t a part of any tour, but rather impromptu ways to pass to the time.

The relationship fizzled after they decided the distance was too much of a strain. Adrienne got engaged to Billy Bisson, the frontman of Libido Boyz, the following year. Reports differ from either side, with some saying the relationship dissolved on its own. Bisson has been quoted as saying Billie Joe stole her away.

While in Mankato, Adrienne worked at various places, including the Piercing Pagoda in the River Hills Mall and Pagliai’s Pizza, and is described by those who knew her as a beautiful punk rock girl who everybody had a crush on.

Cheryl Rueda, manager of Pagliai’s, worked with Adrienne and three of the Libido Boyz at the restaurant when Adrienne was dating Bisson. Adrienne also babysat for Cheryl’s kids.

“She was a beautiful girl,” Rueda said. “I think the world of her. She was just a regular person.”

Thursday nights Adrienne babysat for Cheryl’s two kids, Andre and Marisa, who were about 3 and 6 at the time. She would often have a craft project or activity to do to keep them entertained. She even took them out trick-or-treating during a blizzard one year.

“She was their favorite babysitter,” she said.

Carrie Zempel Heise worked with her at a bar called The Jungle, now Dutler’s Bowl.

“I ran into her after the bar had closed down (she was working at Pier 1 Imports), and she told me she was moving out West soon,” Zempel said. “Months later, word got back that she had married Billie Joe, and then the next thing I saw was an interview with him in Rolling Stone magazine talking about his pregnant wife!”

When Adrienne finished school, Billie Joe convinced her to move to California and marry him. Rueda said it happened so fast it seemed she was gone over night. Before she left, she and friends had a big garage sale, said Amy Lennartson of Eagle Lake. She and Lennartson originally had plans to move to San Francisco together and open a business.

“She headed West that May, and I stayed over the summer to finish up my time at MSU,” Lennartson said. “Then, in true rock star fashion, I returned home from a Fourth of July vacation to a wedding invitation from Adrienne — to a wedding that had already happened.”

The wedding took two weeks to plan and happened in five minutes July 2, 1994, in Billie Joe’s backyard, according to the VH1 “Behind the Music” documentary. “We didn’t think about it, we just did it,” Adrienne said.

Protestant, Catholic and Jewish vows were exchanged because neither had a religion. The honeymoon took place 10 minutes from Billie Joe’s house at the Claremont Hotel. The day after the wedding, Adrienne found out she was pregnant.

The couple has two sons, Joseph Marciano, 14, and Jakob Danger, 10.

Adrienne now co-owns Adeline Records in Oakland, Calif., and Adeline Street clothing line. She works with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and co-owns Atomic Garden, an eco-friendly clothing and home goods store.

There is at least one friend in Mankato Adrienne is reported to keep in contact with. But said friend — whose basement Green Day was reported to have played in and who reportedly visited the Armstrongs in California — wasn’t eager to talk about it.

Rueda kept in contact with Adrienne for a while. Adrienne would send the Rueda kids Green Day T-shirts and things. She also sent a family photo to the Ruedas years ago. When Adrienne’s first son was 1 1/2, she came back to Mankato to visit and Rueda saw them. She was the same person she had always been, Rueda said.

A few years ago, Adrienne asked a friend in Mankato to go to the Ruedas’ house and videotape the kids so she could see how much they had grown up. Otherwise, the Ruedas haven’t heard from her since.

Big time

The night Green Day played St. Peter, the original plan was for them to play at someone’s house behind where Casey’s is now on Lee Boulevard in North Mankato.

Two local bands went on first. But the cops came and broke it up because of the noise. Gruber and his buddy offered to drive equipment and Tre Cool to a house on Fifth Street in Mankato, where somebody had offered up their basement. But the band took one look and said it was way too small.

That’s when a girl whose family lived off Hwy. 99 near St. Peter offered her place.

“This whole caravan of cars ended up driving out to her place,” Gruber said.

It was too hot to play in the barn. Gruber suggested the guys make a mini stage out of the wire spools, which they thought was pretty punk rock, even commenting on that stage and show later on a bootleg recording, he said.

Gruber said he later recognized songs such as “Welcome to Paradise” off of “Dookie” that they played that night — the night most people look to as the epitome of nostalgia when it comes to Green Day’s presence in Mankato. People still go to YouTube to check out the nine or so minutes of footage from that concert, despite being out of focus, jittery and too dark to see much.

“Took me back,” Gruber said of watching the footage. “That guy filming, he was probably standing right next to me and my friends.”

A couple of hundred people have similar memories from that night, having accidentally stumbled upon a concert that would become local legend. None of them could possibly have imagined what Green Day would become.

“Dookie,” released in 1994 — which followed 1992’s “Kerplunk,” having sold 50,000 copies — sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. That album, along with those of The Offspring and Rancid, is credited for reviving mainstream interest in punk music, and it won Best Alternative Album at the Grammy Awards.

Future albums, “Insomniac” and “Nimrod,” went double platinum, and “Warning” went gold. None of them reached the level of success of “Dookie.”

But 2004’s punk rock opera “American Idiot” changed everything. Debuting at No. 1 and selling five million copies, critics absolutely drooled over it. “American Idiot” won Best Rock Album at the 2005 Grammys and swept the MTV Video Music Awards.

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and won the Grammy for Record of the Year. During the band’s 150-date tour in support of the album, they drew crowds of 130,000 people over two days in the United Kingdom.

The band’s new album, “21st Century Breakdown,” was released worldwide May 15 and received rave reviews. Last week the band played “The Tonight Show” with Conan O’Brien.

Their world tour kicks off in July, with the Minneapolis show at the Target Center July 11.

Copyright � 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.

[youngwriter2003]

Shawshank Redemption (1994)

RATING: 9/10

(SPOILER REVIEW) 

From the blood-drenched prom queens to ax-wielding husbands, it's wouldn't be an overstatement to say Stephen King is the King of horror books that have been adapted. Yet one of his most popular movies would shock some. Pulling back from clowns in the swears to an inmate in a swear, Shawshank Redemption shows a different side of King’s mind. 

The 1994 film that would become a widely known prison reference, showed the viewers the life of a banker Andy Dufresne played by Tim Robbins, who was convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at the Shawshank State Penitentiary. Where he meets a group of “innocent” felons and the only guilty man there, Red played by Morgan Freeman. 

The prison is your every mill prison, the guards that will beat you for nothing, the inmates that make bets for smokes, and the groups of queer inmates dubbed the Sister that everyone is very aware of. Andy on the other hand kept to himself, annoyed others in a way that the narrator Red described as if he wasn't even in prison. Though very unconventional years, Andy makes his mark in the prison, from the library he sent letters to get made, to the 10 feet tunnel used in his escape. Andy was aware that his fate was set in stone, but he was also aware that with the time that stone could break. Giving him the attitude that annoyed many as stated, but also gave others the sense of normalcy that they have long forgotten. On the other hand, we have Red, he believed at one point in the past that he could get out, but let the stone form him and was set in his ways, only to be changed by his new and then lifetime friend, Andy. 

Andy didn't have much affliction with the other inmates other than with the Sisters. He even went as far as making arrangements with a guard that awarded his friend’s beers, and later the near-death of his main attacker. Though his intelligence Andy finds himself working at the library, which isn't much of one, more a place where Andy would end up doing taxes for those that worked at the prison. A job like that let him used outgoing mail to get him a proper library, then works as a secretary for the warden. Most of which isn't on the legal side. After that succeeding there, he takes on a prodigy Tommy and helps him to pass the GED. During this, he figures out that Tommy knows the real murder that killed his wife and her lover. With attempting to get Andy cleared, Tommy loses his life, and Andy is on his last straw. From then on, Andy makes his final moves to freedom. 

The movie emphasizes hardships and injustice. It takes a chronological approach to show this man’s life. The movie is well-executed, it took a simple premise and showed you a cinematic master perspective of prison life. Yes, some credit is due to King, but the acting and settings took the words and made even the ungratified view realize that it was one of the best movies of the time. It doesn't take much for you to realize that the friendship of two inmates to the realism of the prison system, and the embezzlement ironically from law enforcement, took viewers on a needed journey to show perspective. 

There were many clever shots that showed the mind states of characters though out the film. But the acting and the dialogue really cared about the film. If it wasn't for Morgan Freeman narrating we wouldn't have been able to understand the movie as much. It was clever to show the movie as Andy as the main character and yet everything was from Red’s perspective. 

What I found intriguing about this movie’s morphing abilities. It starts off as a crim and punishment film. Then a striving in the fire. Next, the effect of the prison system on inmates once realized. After the hardship of a lack of power. And ends, somewhat on a buddy film. It's interesting how if you just watch it objectively your likely to the way that it's a prison movie. When really the main character isn't imprisoned. 

I think you have to take into account that this was a book first, all the overtone attributes that the film brought you to have to understand you find out later, that Andy almost never felt trapped. He had the little tunnel that made him feel sain.  

The deeper meaning of all this, on the surface, is criminal injustice, when really we see how for Andy salvation for him is escaping Shawshank, redemption is the price of salvation. 

Films that are fictional auto/biographies of a characters life: 

Forrest Gump (1994)  - Forest

Stand By Me (1986) - Chris

Rounders (1998) - Mike

Non-fictional honorable mention: 

Goodfellas (1990) - Henry

Look, if you are looking for your everyday mill scary King movie this isn't for you. Andy isn't going to go on some murder spree or meet a clown on his escape route. You watch as an innocent man endures the hardship of prison while Andy is escaping from Shawshank as his personal Redemption.

[sleepyxcoffee]

@thewitchersecretsanta gift for @youkaineko !

Ultimately, this was all Master Varin’s fault.

It hadn’t, Vesemir explained, been mandatory for young witchers to hold a degree until 1990, when Master Varin had returned after spending six years obtaining a Bachelor’s in Chemistry whilst still doing all his… witchering. He had proclaimed the experience “eye opening” and “a good way to get to know humans” and some other bullshit Geralt didn’t fully understand.

Geralt had succeeded in evading the Trial of Uni, as he and Eskel had taken to calling it, for a grand total of two months after his Grasses, until Vesemir had all but scruffed him and dragged him to a computer with UCAS opened up. His only solace in the whole situation was that he and Eskel were applying to all the same universities.

Except then Eskel got a full scholarship to the University of St Andrews, which the trainers weren’t letting him pass up on, and Geralt… didn’t get a place at St Andrews.

Which was how Geralt had ended up at Edinburgh instead. It was still Scotland, at least, so it wasn’t that far from Kaer Morhen over on the Shetland Isles, or Eskel in St Andrews. It was a city, which was… less than desirable, but Geralt could work with that.

He could.

What he wasn’t so sure he could work with was the fucking disaster of a man he had ended up flatmates with. The others seemed alright - Shani and Priscilla gave Geralt his space, and didn’t bother him too much. They didn’t seem to mind that he was a witcher either.

Jaskier, on the other hand…

The best part was, Geralt hadn’t even met Jaskier in the flat. For the first half of his first semester, Room 4 in Flat 12 of College Wynd had remained blissfully unoccupied. Shani and Priscilla did their own thing - Shani was rarely in the flat anyway, being a medicine student with a ridiculously full schedule - and Priscilla spent most of her time doing her theatre society things. The girls were at least kind enough to not throw any parties in the flat, after the time Geralt had nearly murdered Priscilla with a glare for doing so.

No, Geralt met Jaskier outside the dean’s office, of all the possible places.

It was November, and Geralt had heard of some strange, possibly vampiric, activity occurring on the outskirts of Edinburgh, thanks to a contract for a witcher put up by the Metropolitan Police. Unfortunately, he was also the only fully trained Wolf witcher situated anywhere near Edinburgh, and he’d be damned if he let a passing Cat or Griffin or anyone hop in and take the kill. Remus had passed through last week, but he was all the way down in Yorkshire by the time the reports came in. The UK was large, and the Wolf School was only a hundred or so members strong. They didn’t have enough witchers to permanently station anyone in cities, their witchers instead roaming up and down the country.

Also unfortunately, Geralt had about five different assignments due the next week, but the police were getting antsy, nobody could find the stupid vampire, and nobody could even identify it. Geralt had wanted to just get up and leave to take the contract, but Vesemir insisted he had to go ask the dean for permission to miss his classes first, and also for an extension on his assignments, because Melitele knew Geralt might take a while.

So, much to his annoyance, Geralt had ended up sitting outside the dean’s office during one of his free periods, fidgeting and playing with his medallion and his hood pulled over his distinctly white hair, shadowing his cat-slitted eyes. Just because everyone knew he was a witcher didn’t mean he wanted to put himself on show.

Then a tall, slim man wearing a frankly ridiculous red raincoat over an even more ridiculous yellow crop top and absolutely horrifying high waisted jeans and incredibly impractical Ugg boots (it was Scotland, how were his boots not soaked through?) sat down next to Geralt.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully, in an obnoxiously posh accent. “I’m Jaskier.”

“Hmm.” Who named themselves Buttercup in another language?

Jaskier laughed. “Hmm. What an excellent name. I love how you just sit there and… brood.”

Geralt turned pointedly away from him.

“Come on, you can’t keep a man with…” Jaskier waved his hands wildly, “...a screwdriver in his pants waiting.”

That caught Geralt’s attention. “What?”

Jaskier rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Uh, yeah. Say, what are you here for?”

“Absence request,” Geralt said shortly.

“Right, those, yeah,” Jaskier laughed again and sank down in his seat. “I’m uh - well, I may or may not have stabbed my flatmate with a screwdriver while I was putting together this thing from IKEA?”

Geralt stared at him.

Jaskier’s arms flailed again, and he made an odd sound. “He’s okay - unfortunately - he just ended up bleeding a little and started screaming and our RA walked in, and, yeah, I’m here now.”

There was a moment of silence. Geralt… didn’t know what to say to that. He settled for sinking further into his chair.

“...so, uh. What do you need leave permission for?”

“Job.”

Jaskier made an interested sound. “Ooh, cool! I should get myself one of those. What’s your job?”

“Killing monsters.”

“Huh?”

Geralt was saved from having to answer further when the dean opened his door. “Geralt Rivia!” he called. Geralt stood and pulled back his hood.

“Here,” he said gruffly.

Jaskier gasped and leapt to his feet. “Oh my god, I know you! White hair, yellow eyes - you’re that witcher! Jerald Rivia!” Geralt speed walked into the dean’s office. He gave Geralt a confused look, but stepped aside to let Geralt in anyway. “Jerald - hey, wait, that’s how you say your name, right - wait, don’t leave! Hang on! I’m sure you have a treasure trove of stories -”

The dean shut the door, and Geralt sighed in relief. “What was that all about?” the dean asked. Geralt shrugged. “Right. Well then, Geralt, what did you need to see me for?”

Once the dean had granted Geralt his leave with minimal fussing (scary witcher eyes worked wonders), Geralt brushed straight past Jaskier to return to his dorm room, despite Jaskier’s attempts to reach out to him. He had a vampire to track.

***

The vampire, as Geralt now knew two days later, was a katakan. And not just any katakan - an old, experienced katakan who had left Geralt sore, out of Black Blood, and highly toxic. The smarting in his leg told him Swallow or even White Raffard’s was probably called for, but the white hot throbbing of his veins told him White Honey was a much better idea.

Geralt groaned as he stumbled into the flat. Shani and Priscilla were, predictably, asleep - it was four in the morning, after all, but there was a third heartbeat coming from the kitchen. Instantly on high alert, Geralt kept one hand on his steel sword as he opened the kitchen door.

Dancing in front of the countertop was… Jaskier? What was the strange man from the dean’s office doing here? He was dressed in shorts and a loose T-shirt, and, humming, put a metal bowl in the microwave.

“Stop!” Geralt exclaimed. Jaskier yelped and dropped a fork - which had, God help him, been going into the bowl. “What are you doing?”

“Geralt! Is that any way to greet your new flatmate - sorry for getting your name wrong, by the way - hey, what are you doing -” Geralt shoved past Jaskier to yank the bowl out of the microwave and slam it onto the counter. It contained… what might have been mac and cheese. “What are you doing - you’re getting monster guts everywhere!”

“You can’t microwave metal,” Geralt snarled. “It’ll blow up.”

Jaskier blinked once. Twice. “Well. Ah. Thank you for letting me know - you’ve just saved our flat. A true hero. Say, what are you covered in?”

“Katakan.” Geralt stepped away from Jaskier and shrugged off his swords. Jaskier’s eyes trailed them curiously.

“Katakan. So, that’s, what, a type of necrophage?”

“Vampire. Their true form looks like a giant mutated bat but they can disguise themselves as humans, and their healing is slowest when the sun is highest. Violent. Nasty.”

“You don’t say,” Jaskier mumbled, eyeing Geralt thoughtfully. “And what about you? Why are your eyes all… black? Is that your witcher true form or something?”

Geralt… had nearly forgotten about that. He pulled out a White Honey from his belt pouch and chugged it. Immediately, the warmth spread through his veins, and he felt the toxins clear. “Witcher potions. Too much is toxic for even us.”

“Oh wow, your eyes are going back to gold.” Jaskier peered at him curiously, then made a face and leaned away. “You reek. You need a long hot shower. I refuse to live with that stench.”

Geralt’s thoughts came to a grinding halt. “You live here? Since when?”

Jaskier scratched his head awkwardly. “Since, well, yesterday. Because I stabbed Valdo Marx, who completely deserved it by the way. Unfortunately, he’s fine.”

...Geralt suddenly felt unreasonably worried for his safety.

He was pleased to learn, however, that the screwdriver stabbing asides, Jaskier proved to be a surprisingly good flatmate. Sure, he seemed to be completely nocturnal, but he was quiet enough at night and didn’t make a mess. He talked a lot, but after the first five times he tried to engage Geralt in conversation, he left Geralt pretty much alone. Having lived at Kaer Morhen, that was all Geralt could ask for. Jaskier even tried to arrange flat bonding sessions, which turned out surprisingly well and meant Geralt actually spoke to Priscilla and Shani, even though one session had resulted in Geralt needing to Aard the oven.

The story had Lambert and Eskel cackling when Geralt told it to them over the winter break. It was supper time, and the three were sitting together sawing at hard meat which was probably at least a year out of date with their dinner knives. Things never did go well when it was Gweld’s turn to cook. At least this time there were no magic mushrooms.

“How do you fuck up cookies that badly?” Lambert wheezed.

“You made bread explode once,” Eskel reminded him.

Lambert waved his hand dismissively. “Yeah, but that was on purpose.”

Just thinking of the incident made Geralt groan. That had been interesting to explain to Vesemir, and Rennes had been distinctly displeased. Poor Lambert had spent the rest of the week waking up an hour before dawn to run laps in the frigid Shetland air.

“Compared to you, my university’s been fine,” Eskel said. “I haven’t had to take any contracts. Monsters don’t seem to like St Andrews.”

“The Trial of Uni is really fucking stupid,” Lambert grumbled. “The world already knows we’re freaks. Why rub it in our faces?”

“I don’t think that’s the point,” Eskel replied evenly. “Geralt?”

“Hmm.”

Eskel sighed. “Talkative as always. But really, Lambert, it’s not as bad as some people -” at this, Eskel threw a pointed look halfway across the Great Hall at Clovis, who even more pointedly ignored him - “make it seem.”

“It’s no worse than Kaer Morhen,” Geralt agreed. “Up for a round of Gwent?”

Naturally, Geralt won his round against Lambert, and then his round against Eskel, and Clovis, and Gweld, and Aubry, and Remus. He then promptly lost fifty pounds to Vesemir, but he at least had a few new cards, which was enough to please him. Unfortunately, Gwent had fallen out of fashion with humans sometime in the last century (the joys of having ancient instructors), so Geralt would have to wait until he met another witcher to play another round.

He returned to Edinburgh in high spirits. Aubry had offered to drive him and Eskel back to university, seeing as he planned on working his way down to Wales anyway. The car ride was long, but Geralt entertained himself with even more Gwent and bugging Eskel. Eskel returned what he got, and more than once Aubry had to remind them to not start sparring in the backseat of his car.

“I’ve had her for twenty years,” Aubry complained. “I refuse to lose her to a pair of rowdy green witchers.”

Unsurprisingly, Geralt was the first to return to his flat. The term didn’t start for another week, but witchers could hardly afford to lounge around all winter, what with the amount of monsters in Great Britain. Geralt didn’t have his own car, and so he was dependent on older witchers driving him back to university, seeing as he didn’t want to walk nearly four hundred miles.

The benefit of returning to university early, however, was that he had time to take on a contract. Someone had called Kaer Morhen just before he arrived to report “strange supernatural activity” in an abandoned flat. Geralt allowed himself a night’s rest, then set out to the apartment with his two swords.

It turned out to be a noonwraith, and that on its own would have been simple enough; noonwraiths were annoying little buggers, but they were manageable. No, the problem was when Geralt belatedly realised there was an alp in the basement.

The ensuing fight was hard and bloody. In the end, Geralt came out on top, but not without a wide range of injuries which left him on the ground wheezing. Eventually, he mustered the strength to take some potions and stagger back home, but not before texting Vesemir to let him know the contract was done. The contract giver would transfer money to Kaer Morhen, and Vesemir would send him his share. All in all, it was a clean system.

Geralt managed to stagger back to his flat. It was nighttime, and not many students had returned, meaning the streets were still relatively quiet. Those who did see him gave him a wide berth, murmuring and pointing, but Geralt ignored it. He just wanted to get home. A hot bath sounded excellent - then he could treat his wounds.

Unfortunately, Geralt discovered upon his return that someone else had arrived. He cursed his luck as he closed the door behind him. There was a suitcase in the front hall, and the kitchen door was propped open by a chair. Geralt could hear a man humming. Jaskier. Great.

Perhaps he could sneak past without Jaskier noticing - 

“Hello? Who’s there?” Jaskier called, and Geralt winced.

“Just me,” he called back.

“Ah! Geralt! How was your - Melitele’s tits, what the fuck happened to you?” Jaskier exclaimed. He dropped the piece of toast he had been holding and rushed to Geralt, hovering next to him. “Do you need the hospital? Should I call 999? I’m calling 999 -”

“Jaskier,” Geralt said forcefully. “I’m a witcher. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Jaskier said fretfully. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call 999?” His hand hovered over the phone in his pocket.

“I’m sure. They don’t know shit about witchers.” Geralt started limping to the bath.

“Wait. Let me help stitch you back up, at least. I’ve got a first aid certificate.”

“Dunno what good that is,” Geralt grumbled, but he grabbed the first aid kit off the wall and threw it at Jaskier anyway. He stepped into the bathroom and stripped off his clothes and armour - he could deal with that later. Geralt stood under the spray of hot water, wincing as it ran over his wounds.

He decided to forego the soap and shampoo, instead gently scrubbing himself down to get rid of the blood and dirt. The noonwraith had been in that house for a long time, and with folks too afraid to go inside, it had become unbearably dusty. When Geralt came out of the bathroom, dry and dressed, he found Jaskier had set up the first aid materials on the dining table with a chair pulled up next to it.

“Sit down, Geralt,” Jaskier said, and Geralt did just that.

***

Jaskier was a quick study, and Geralt soon became grateful for his help, even though he refused to admit it. Sometimes, Shani, who was a med student, had to help with treating Geralt’s wounds, although she often complained he was better off going to A&E. Geralt reiterated that there wasn’t much A&E could do for him - his potions were enough.

Every week or so, Geralt would sit in the kitchen reading through his course work while Jaskier helped stitch him back up. He was chatty as ever, but at least he got things done.

“Come with me to open mic night, Geralt, Essi and I are performing,” Jaskier would say (and Geralt did attend open mic night, lurking in the corner), or “have you seen Professor Rejk’s new tie? It’s hideous!” (and no, Geralt had not, but he made a special point of paying attention to Professor Rejk the next time he saw him).

It was an easy relationship, one akin to the bond Geralt shared with Eskel, and yet completely different. Jaskier chattered nonstop, but he didn’t make Geralt talk, and he knew when to leave a question alone. It was companionable and comfortable, and for Geralt that was enough.

***

In March, a bug started spreading across campus. Geralt’s classes shrank in size as students and professors alike ended up bedridden with a horrible cold. He thought nothing of it - he was a witcher, after all, and witchers were functionally immune to human diseases.

Poor Jaskier, unfortunately, was only human, and he did manage to get sick. It all started when Priscilla caught the bug from Essi (who had caught the bug from Valdo, who had caught the bug from a music professor). Jaskier spent his free time caring for his friend, and by the time the week was up, Priscilla was good as new, and Jaskier was sneezing nonstop.

“You look terrible,” Geralt told him one morning when he walked into the kitchen for breakfast. Jaskier lifted his head to sneeze at Geralt, then set it down back against his arms. Geralt wrinkled his nose. “Disgusting,” he said as he pulled the egg carton out of the fridge. “Want breakfast?”

“Yes please,” Jaskier said, sounding very congested. “I don’t want to go to class.”

“Then don’t,” Geralt said simply. He took the frying pan out of a cupboard and set it on the hob, switching it on.

“You know what, maybe that’s not a bad idea.” Jaskier eyed the eggs wistfully. “Can I have scrambled eggs?”

“Hmm.” Geralt retrieved a bowl from the drying rack and cracked in several eggs, then whisked them. He added milk and salt to the bowl, and oil to the frying pan. Jaskier watched with hungry eyes as he cooked the eggs.

“Best roommate ever,” Jaskier declared as Geralt placed a plate in front of him. Geralt hummed and served up his own eggs.

“Where are Shani and Priscilla?”

“Morning run,” Jaskier said between mouthfuls of egg. The two ate in companionable silence, broken only by Jaskier’s coughs and sniffles.

“Go back to bed,” Geralt said when they finished eating. He gathered their plates and filled the sink up.

“Will you bring me tea?” Jaskier asked teasingly.

“Hmm.” Geralt put on the kettle, and Jaskier laughed in delight.

“You will! I knew you were a big softie all along!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Geralt said, hiding his smile. “Go back to bed.”

“I’ll be waiting for my tea,” Jaskier said in a sing-song voice. “Best flatmate in the world, bringing his invalid friend tea.”

“You’ve got a cold, not the plague,” Geralt grumbled, scrubbing their plates clean.

“You never know! Anyway, are you heading to class?”

“Hmm. I’ve got a contract after.” Putting the frying pan in the sink to soak, Geralt dumped a teabag and an unholy amount of sugar into a mug. He poured in hot water and passed the mug to Jaskier, who took it gratefully.

“I’ll be here to stitch you up after,” Jaskier said lightly. “Anyway, off with you, or you’ll be late. I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah. See you later.” And as Geralt walked out the front door, he couldn’t help but feel as though he had found a second home.

[gravitascivics]

MAY THE SETTLERS FLOWER IN A NEW LAND

This blog is in the midst of telling a story – it began with the last posting and the reader is invited to go back and catch the first segment of this tale.  It has to do with the Puritanical origins of this nation.  And the story goes back to the disappointment Europeans felt over the discovery of the Americas.  During the 1500s, Europeans invested in western voyages so as to find a shortcut to the lucrative markets of the Far East.  No such route was found, but those voyages began the tumbling of various streams of “dominoes” that are still toppling today.    

         The last posting kept the reader in Europe, actually England, and this posting has a few more developments to relate emanating from that nation.  The previous posting left off with Elizabeth I’s (1533-1603) trying to handle the religious strife that befell her country.  Mainly there was the ongoing battle with Catholics who wanted to regain their prominence and that conflict even included an attempted foreign invasion from Spain – the Spanish Armada.  

This religious strife began before she was queen and was particularly intense during her predecessor’s reign, that of “Bloody Mary.” Back then, religious disagreements could and were bloody indeed, and in those earlier years Catholics had a supportive queen, Mary I and her husband, Philip.  Her aim was to reestablish Catholic dominance after her father, Henry VIII, split with the Roman church and made the Anglican Church dominant.  Mary died in 1558 after a relatively short reign of about five years.  What one needs to remember, religion and political leadership of a country were highly interwoven with each other at that time.

         After Mary died and Elizabeth became queen, she, Elizabeth, established the Anglican Church as official and barred open membership to other religions; and that included not only Catholics, but other upstart Protestant sects such as the Calvinists.  The sanctions against the Calvinists were mostly mild but starting in the early 1600s, more radical forms of that religion’s beliefs (the last posting reviews its tenets) began to be promulgated.  

Eventually, and this transcends Elizabeth’s reign, the more ardent, radical Congregationalists or extreme Puritans made their presence known. They took the Calvinist beliefs in the unconditional election; that is, humans are subject to God’s determination as to who is saved and who is not, and irresistible grace; that is, once chosen, a person will not reject God’s grace (the “U” and “I” of the acronym TULIP) up several notches.

         They, according to Guelzo, “… wanted membership in the[ir] church limited to only those who could give testimony and evidence of having received God’s grace, even if that meant separating … from the rest of England’s presumably impure society.”[1]  And the split with the crown grew after Elizabeth’s death in 1603.  Her successor, James of Scotland, intensified the government’s crackdown on these radicals.  

With his and his successor’s policies, the Congregationalists or Puritans started to look for escape from the island nation. And one group of them first sought refuse in the Puritanical Netherlands. Donald S. Lutz,[2] described these people’s experiences before getting to their eventual destination, the New England coastline.  

He has extensively analyzed the connection between these Puritans and original constitutional formulations in American development by studying how early American settlers from England and then Holland went about organizing themselves.  Starting with the Puritans who landed at Plymouth in 1620, certain federalist elements were established.

Lutz points out that the Puritans (this group specifically known as the Pilgrims) were interested in simplifying the religious practices of the English churches.  Being persecuted in England, they sought to “create a new city of God – a society run according to the dictates of the Bible.”[3]

Adopting the notion of a covenant, originally from Hebraic tradition and law of the Old Testament, the Puritans established a society and a “politick” on the following elements: a bonding between the members of the covenant, a calling upon God to witness the bonding, and the consent of each member to join the resulting communal union.  This latter element is a basic component; each member was free to bond and did so of his own volition.

Of course, all of this was accomplished by the drawing up and signing of the Mayflower Compact.  He writes,

 During the 1600s, over 100 other founding documents similar to the Mayflower Compact would be written by American colonists. Some of these agreements would create single settlements, while others (such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut) would join several existing covenanted communities into a broader association. In each case the people created by the agreement would be identified by those who signed the document. It is a peculiarly American trait that founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution have signatures at the end. This expectation is part of the legacy of early agreements like the Mayflower Compact; just as “We the People” is derived from “We the undersigned.”[4]

 And the Mayflower Compact introduced several other important ideas basic to the nation's political perspective.

First, it established the principle of adding or admitting new members to a covenant. Not all the signers of the Mayflower Compact were Puritans. A non-Puritan, though, was not given subordinate status. A new addition was awarded equal status with every individual of the original group.

This provision was the beginning of a standard that led to the constitutional provision that all new states, as they joined the national union, would be granted equal status with the original thirteen states (as demonstrated, for example, by equal representation in the Senate and extends to new citizens as well).

The second significant aspect of the Mayflower Compact was its Lockean logic. Before John Locke ever wrote a word, Puritans in America were living out his prescriptions by creating a society first and then creating a “politick” to govern it. “On the Mayflower we find the colonists doing essentially everything that Locke would later recommend.”[5]

One last contribution of the Mayflower Compact was its clear statement of political values which included commitments to justice, equality, respect for law, and community. Not mentioned was individualism. Instead, the following language dominates the document:

 … these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and of one another, convenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid … for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.[6]

 Defined in religious contexts, the Puritans brought with them strongly felt values and principles that would evolve in the formative, colonial years and provide the basis of future bills of rights principles.  

This covenant did not present a model for governmental structure. As such, it was not the first formal constitution in America.  That distinction belongs to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639.  But it did contain important elements; they are the forming a union based on consent a priori to actual governance, formulation of a formal agreement based on a covenant (a promise which called on God as witness to the agreement), and an integral commitment to equality – which, by the way, appears before any commitment to individuality or individual rights.

But before this tale totally shifts to North America, there are still some important developments to relate that took place in England.  More would happen there that prompted further exodus from that nation to North America.  The events also affected the formal format by which these early settlers departed England and helped determine the formal arrangements the settlers had with the mother country.

[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – transcript books – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 25. In the original, this quote begins with “The Separatists …” indicating the other term used to identify these believers.

[2]Donald S. Lutz, “The Mayflower Compact, 1620,” in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted,” ed. Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990), 17-23.  What this posting includes is an edited rendition of what this blog posted earlier in this blog.  See Robert Gutierrez, “At the Beginning: Mayflower Compact,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics (January 13, 2012), accessed March 4, 2021, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/preview/1954479639890698872/7769498729070174796 .

[3]Ibid., p. 18.

[4]Ibid., 19.

[5]Ibid., 21.

[6] Eric Bruun and Jay Crosby, “Combine Ourselves into a Civil Body Politick: The Mayflower compact,” in Our Nation's Archive: The history of the United States in Documents (New York, NY: Tess Press, 1999/1620), 46-47, 47.

[pocketseizure]

Disneybound

Case #0180602. Statement of Ted Nakamura, regarding a strange experience at the Haunted Mansion attraction in Disneyland, California. Statement recorded directly from subject on June 2, 2018.

Jonathan takes the statement of someone whose memories may not accurately reflect the events of his childhood. He then has a short conversation with Martin and learns something (perhaps not so) surprising about Elias.

The events of this story take place after Episode 103, "Cruelty Free" (the one in which Jon reads the statement of a farmer in New Zealand with a monster pig).

( This story is also on AO3. )

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jon cast a level gaze at the American sitting on the other side of the table. He was fit and clean-shaven, and he appeared to be in his early thirties. He wore a wide grin and a bright red shirt depicting Minnie Mouse posing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Jon sighed and pressed the record button of his tape recorder.

“Statement of Theodore Nakamura – ”

“Call me Ted, please. Or Teddy, if you like. All my friends do.”

“Ted Nakamura, regarding a strange phenomenon he experienced at the Haunted Mansion attraction in Disney World – ”

“Sorry, but it’s ‘Disneyland.’ Disney World is the one in Florida.”

“In Disneyland, California. Statement recorded directly from subject on May 25, 2018.”

“This is exciting! I love the detail you’ve devoted to authenticity. The tape recorder is a nice touch.”

Jon grimaced. “Statement begins.”

A hint of uncertainty crept into Ted’s smile. “I’ve never done this before. Is there a protocol? Maybe some sort of standard introduction I should start with?”

“Just tell me about the incident you came to report. You can start whenever you’re ready.”

“All right, I’ll start at the beginning.”

Ted clapped his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. Jon watched as his eyes made a brief circuit around the densely packed shelves arranged in disorderly rows at the rear of the room before finally coming to rest on one of the objects jammed between the accordion folders and cardboard boxes. He’d witnessed this process often enough that he could pinpoint the object of the man’s attention – a cloudy snow globe with a tarnished metal base. It wasn’t connected to any of the cases on file in the archives, merely something Gertrude had brought back from one of her travels on a whim.

“I guess you could say that I’m not the sort of person who would be the star of a Disney movie,” Ted began. “I’m not an orphan, and I had a happy childhood. My mother was an architect who moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles during the construction boom of the 1980s, and my father went to business school at UCLA and never left. His family is from Seattle, and they made some money in real estate in the 1990s. We’re comfortably middle class, but I went to one of the big public schools in Orange County.”

He paused, seeming to expect some sort of reaction. When it became clear that no such reaction was forthcoming, he continued.

“Even in LA, where everyone tries to stand out, high school was all about belonging to a group. I didn’t have any interest in the grandstanding of my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, and I didn’t have the looks or the talent for the student theater club, which is where a lot of kids like me spent a year or two on their way out of the closet. Mostly I kept my grades up and my head down as my circle of friends from middle school gradually went their separate ways.

“My mom worked from home, and she made sure our house had the first high-speed internet connection in my neighborhood. I don’t mind admitting that I spent a lot of time online. I posted an embarrassing number of bad stories about cartoon characters on LiveJournal, and I eventually ended up being invited to join a popular Disney fan community moderated by a friend of a friend. All the people I spoke with on the comm were strangers, at least at first, but we gradually got to know one another as we responded to each other’s posts and comments.

“Between one thing and another, we somehow managed to figure out that most of us were the same age. Oddly enough, a lot of us lived in SoCal, so we decided to meet up over the summer at Disneyland. Everyone showed up, and we had a great time. We met again the next summer, and then again after my senior year.

“Nothing bad happened, but I stopped updating my LiveJournal after that. I went to college in New York, got a job in the city, and fell out of touch with most of my online friends.

“I moved back to LA four years ago, not that I do anything glamorous. I manage the back end of a tech company’s website and intranet, mostly database stuff, but I still have an IG account. I started it just for fun, but I joined early and picked up more than a thousand followers in less than a year. Someone suggested that it would be cool for me to visit to Disneyland and post photos, so I thought, why not? Like, I love Disneyland!”

Jon cleared his throat. “And what is this ‘strange incident’ you came to report?”

“Hold your horses, I’m getting to it. It’s important that you know my background, right? What I’m trying to say is that I’d only been to Disneyland three times before. It wasn’t a major part of my life. But it was a good part of my life – that’s important.”

Jon nodded in acknowledgment. “Very well, then. Duly noted.”

“Disneyland was considered to be a little seedy when I was in high school, but it’s gotten fancy in the past ten years or so. It used to be that you could just walk in, but these days you practically have to make an itinerary. So I did some research, got a group of people together, and we went and saw the sights. Everyone wore an outfit to match the style of a character, and we took a lot of pictures. The photos were so popular that I hit 5k followers in less than 24 hours, can you believe it? Everyone and their sister is into DisneyBounding these days, but picking up that sort of following from on-location fashion photos was still a thing you could do in 2015.

“Like I said, I had a happy childhood, but no one ever paid me that sort of attention. It was such a dopamine hit, you have no idea. Or maybe you do?”

Jon grit his teeth. “Please continue with the statement.”

Ted laughed. “Pushy, aren’t you? But that’s all right. It’s weird, but I feel like I can tell you anything. Has anyone ever said that to you before?”

“You’re not the first.”

“Maybe it’s the librarian thing you’ve got going on – or archivist thing, sorry. Puts me right at ease. And I appreciate that. If there’s an adult who willingly goes to Disneyland for fun, especially someone like me, people tend to think that’s creepy. The therapist I was seeing at the time called it ‘Peter Pan Syndrome,’ of all things. I never went to another appointment with her again, but that’s beside the point. What I’m trying to say is that I kept going back to Disneyland, usually with friends but sometimes with my boyfriend, who I met on Insta. We bonded while sharing theories about the Haunted Mansion, which is… Well, it used to be my favorite ride in the park. It still is, I guess, but I can’t go on it anymore.

“It took me long enough to get here, but this is the part of my story that should interest you. The reason I like the Haunted Mansion is because it reminds me of my mother, who passed away from a heart attack while I was living in New York. It was very sudden, completely out of the blue, and I never got to say good-bye. I never cared about the Haunted Mansion when I was in high school – we all thought it was cringe for some silly teenage reason that probably involved how awkward it would be if we were in the dark with each other. It wasn’t until I visited the park again as an adult that I finally went on the ride. When I did, I had this sudden flashback to a childhood memory.

“I must have gone to Disneyland with my parents when I was young, because standing in the dark and listening to the music made me recall being on the ride with my mother. This was during the lead-up, before you get in the Doom Buggies and begin the ride proper. I remember being absolutely terrified by what I thought was an endless maze. I felt like that line, after it entered the building, lasted forever. Kids can be like that sometimes, but my memory of this is crystal clear – the corridor genuinely didn’t end. I felt like there were people all around us, there had to be, but somehow it was just me and my mother, alone in the darkness.

“And then I remember that this terrible thing appeared out of nowhere. I’m not sure how to describe it. It definitely wasn’t a person in a costume, but it was too realistic to be the projection of a cartoon, and it was talking to us in voice that sounded like laughter and crying at the same time. Like it was hurt, but it found its pain amusing. Meanwhile, the walls kept stretching, and as they got taller I started to see awful things in the gaps between the ceiling and the floor.

“My mother held my hand the whole time. She kept whispering to me: ‘It’s going to be okay. You are brave, and you are strong. Nothing in here can hurt you.’ Just that, over and over, until the ride was over.

“When we finally got out, I ran straight to my dad, who knelt down on the pavement on the other side of the gate and hugged me. He and my mother both patted my back as I cried. I was so relieved to be outside again that my tears wouldn’t stop.

“My dad seemed confused by how afraid I was. This didn’t occur to me until I started thinking about it much later, but isn’t it strange that he didn’t understand why a young child would be frightened by a scary ride?

“I moved back to LA almost immediately after my mom’s funeral, but Dad became a little distant with me. We were both grieving, and it must have seemed callous to him that I was posting shots of myself at Disneyland on social media right after Mom died. Really I just needed a break from the move, from my job, from mourning, from everything – and I guess a part of me felt like my mother would never die as long as I kept returning to that memory of her holding my hand in the Haunted Mansion.

“My dad eventually moved on and married a younger woman. She would probably be my evil stepmother if my life were a Disney movie, but she’s actually a princess, and I adore her. I spend more time with her than I do with my dad these days, but I’m trying to do better. I thought I could reconnect with him if I took him along with me on a visit to the park, but he turned down my invitation. He told me he enjoyed my photos, but that he had never been to Disneyland and had no interest in going. Too many screaming children, he said.

“That was a surprise to me, so I told him about my memory of the Haunted Mansion. While I was talking, his face went completely pale. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech – it was like all the blood had been drained from his skin.

“He insisted that he had never been to Disneyland with me and my mother, but then he told me something strange. When I was about five years old, we went to visit his family in Seattle. My grandfather had just taken on management of a property in Capitol Hill, one of the old Gothic Revival mansions that used to be common there before the neighborhood gentrified. It was an old house, almost as old as the city itself, but my grandfather was having trouble finding potential buyers. The property had been designed by the student of a famous British architect by the name of Robert Smirke, and he wanted my mother to come take a look. Do a walkthrough, point out any potential areas of interest and value, that sort of thing.

“According to my father, my mother had a bad experience in that house. She refused to talk about it with him or anyone else, and she never went back to Seattle. She took me along with her on her tour of the property, and I was apparently just as upset as she was when we came out, even though my dad says we spent less than ten minutes inside. If I thought this place was the Haunted Mansion, and if the ride at Disneyland evoked such a strong memory, it makes me wonder – what did we see in that house?

“I checked with my grandfather, and he said the property never did find a buyer. The only person who seemed seriously interested was a British woman by the name of Gertrude Robinson. Shortly after she made inquiries, the place burned down. Imagine my surprise when I ran a search and learned that this Gertrude Robinson was employed by an institute dedicated to paranormal research.

“So,” Ted concluded, meeting Jon’s eyes, “I gave you my statement. I hope it will be useful to you. I was wondering what you could tell me in return.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. As you can see, we’re still in the process of organizing our records. We’ll investigate to the best of our abilities and contact you if we learn anything.”

“I would love that, thank you. Well, you have my information so…”

“We’ll be in touch. I believe I see my assistant Melanie hovering around. She used to have a large following on social media herself. I’m sure she’d be happy to show you outside.”

“So you’re from LA,” Jon heard Melanie say as she held the door open. Ted directed his dazzling smile at her, which she returned before allowing the door to slam shut behind them.

“Statement ends,” Jon muttered as listened to their conversation growing fainter. He ended the recording and leaned back in his chair.

“Any thoughts you’d like to share, Martin?”

“Oh, I, um,” Martin stammered. “I didn’t want to interrupt the, you know. The statement.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he emerged from between the shelves.

“It’s fine, Martin. It was a relief. To know that you were listening.”

“I’m sorry, I… What? It was?”

“I’ve never been good with people like that.”

“People like… Wait, excuse me?”

“People who are so…” Jon made a vague gesture to illustrate his point. “Sunny. Bright. Content. When someone comes here to make a statement, they’re usually upset.”

“Ah, right. I can see what you mean. But he looks like he just got back from a trip to the happiest place on earth.”

“The happiest place on earth?”

“You know, Disneyland Paris.”

“Disneyland Paris? They finished construction?”

“A few decades ago, actually.”

Jon sympathized with Ted Nakamura’s father. Between the crowds and the relentless sunshine, he couldn’t imagine a more ghastly location, and by this point he considered himself something of an expert on cursed geography.

“I don’t suppose we’ll have to go there ourselves to investigate,” he said, making an attempt to smile. He failed. His muscles were still tense from the process of taking a statement, and his face felt frozen.

“Really? You… want to go to Disneyland Paris? I suppose I could come too, I mean, if it’s not…”

Jon was alarmed by how red Martin’s face was becoming. Did Martin want to go to a theme park? Jon didn’t know much about Disneyland – or Paris, for that matter – but his childhood had been unusual, to say the least. He’d never asked, but Martin’s family couldn’t have been much if he had nowhere to sleep but down here in the archives. Perhaps he could use a vacation. Perhaps they both could.

Jon turned to face his assistant. “Martin, I…”

“Did someone say Disneyland Paris?”

Jon frowned. “Does this conversation interest you, Elias?”

“I heard you were planning a trip. You really must go sometime. It’s fantastic, quite the experience. I went myself, back in 1996.”

Elias made a quick series of taps on the screen of his phone before holding it out in front of him. Jon and Martin leaned forward to get a better look.

In the photo, Elias was posing next to someone wearing a Mickey Mouse costume. He wore an aloha shirt over denim shorts, and he was grinning from ear to ear. The camera had caught him in the act of pulling a tall man with a square jaw and a severe expression into the frame. The image quality was poor, but the man seemed far too pale for the summer sunshine.

Jon’s frown deepened. “And that is…?”

“Oh, this is Peter. You’ll meet him soon enough, I’m sure.”

“Do you, um. Do you go to Disneyland often, then?” Martin asked.

“Just the once. Peter lost a bet, you see.”

“Right.” Jon couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had a bad feeling about this.

“I wouldn’t mind going back. We could all go together, make an office party of it. It would be fun. You do know what fun is, don’t you, Archivist?”

Martin’s eyes darted between Elias and Jon. “I don’t think it’s safe to…”

“Come now,” Elias interrupted. “Would you have any reason not to?”

“China.”

“Excuse me?”

“China. I need to follow up on a statement, something Gertrude was looking into before she traveled to New Zealand.”

“Excellent. I’m glad that’s settled. I’ll leave you to your preparations, then.”

“Damn it.” Jon clenched his fists on the table as Elias left. A trap had been set, and he’d walked right into it.

“Don’t feel bad,” Martin said, oddly perceptive. After everything they’d been through, Jon was coming to appreciate that about him. “At least we know that Elias is still human. He likes Disneyland, after all.”

Jon wasn’t convinced that a fondness for theme parks qualified someone as being ‘human,’ but what would he know? He had to admit that Elias was right about one thing – it would do him good to get out of the archives.

“Are you really going to China, then?”

“I suppose I am.” Jon removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead.

“I’ve always wanted to go someplace like that, somewhere far away,” Martin said, his eyes darting to the tape recorder on the table. “I’d like to hear about it. If you don’t… If you don’t mind, of course. Maybe I could, I mean, we could go out for a coffee together. After you get back.”

“All right,” Jon replied, replacing his glasses. That would be rather nice, actually. “After I get back.”

[justforbooks]

Ellis Marsalis, Jazz Pianist and Music Family Patriarch, Dies at 85

The father of Wynton and Branford Marsalis and a prominent performer and educator, he succumbed to complications of the coronavirus.

Ellis Marsalis, a pianist and educator who became the guiding force behind a late-20th-century resurgence in jazz while putting four musician sons on a path to prominent careers, died on Wednesday in New Orleans. He was 85.

The cause was complications of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, his son Branford said in a statement.

Mr. Marsalis spent decades as a working musician and teacher in New Orleans before his eldest sons, Wynton and Branford, gained national fame in the early 1980s embodying a fresh-faced revival of traditional jazz.

Mr. Marsalis’s star rose along with theirs, and he, too, became a household name.

“Ellis Marsalis was a legend,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans wrote on Twitter on Wednesday night. “He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz.”

That was not always so. Mr. Marsalis’s devotion to midcentury bebop and its offshoots had long made him something of an outsider in a city with an abiding loyalty to its early-jazz roots. Still, he secured the respect of fellow musicians thanks to his unshakable talents as a pianist and composer, and his supportive but rigorous manner as an educator.

Once they reached the national stage, the Marsalises’ advocacy of straight-ahead jazz made them renegades of a different sort. Wynton, a trumpeter, boldly espoused his father’s devotion to heroes like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, and he issued public broadsides against the slicker jazz-rock fusion that had largely displaced acoustic jazz during the late 1960s and ’70s.

Photogenic, erudite and fabulously talented, Mr. Marsalis’s children and many other young jazz musicians he had taught — including Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison Jr., Harry Connick Jr. and Nicholas Payton — became the leaders in a burgeoning traditionalist movement, loosely referred to as the Young Lions.

“My dad was a giant of a musician and teacher, but an even greater father,” Branford Marsalis said in a statement. “He poured everything he had into making us the best of what we could be.”

In an acknowledgment of the patriarch’s influence as well as his own talents, the National Endowment for the Arts in 2011 named Mr. Marsalis and his musician sons Jazz Masters. It is considered the highest honor for an American jazz musician, and until then it had been awarded only on an individual basis.

By that point, the Marsalises were widely understood to be jazz’s royal family. Wynton had become the founding artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, the world’s pre-eminent nonprofit organization devoted to jazz, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1997. Branford was a world-renowned saxophonist and bandleader with three Grammys to his name. Mr. Marsalis’s two other musician sons, Delfeayo, a trombonist, and Jason, a drummer and vibraphonist, were well established as bandleaders.

In addition to those sons, Mr. Marsalis is survived by two nonmusician sons, Mboya and Ellis III; a sister, Yvette; and 13 grandchildren. Dolores Marsalis, his wife of 58 years, died in 2017.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 2004, Wynton Marsalis said that his father had always led by example — expecting, rather than demanding, a high level of seriousness from his students.

“My father never put pressure on me.” he said. “He’s too cool for that kind of stuff.” Asked to define his father’s brand of cool, he explained: “The house could fall down and everyone would be running around, and he would still be sitting in his same chair.”

Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. was born in New Orleans on Nov. 14, 1934. His mother, Florence (Robertson) Marsalis, was a homemaker. His father owned the Marsalis Motel in suburban New Orleans and was involved in the civil rights movement. The motel’s guests included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York, the future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall and Ray Charles.

Mr. Marsalis started out as a saxophonist before switching to the piano in high school. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music education from Dillard University in New Orleans in 1955 and taught at Xavier University Preparatory School until enlisting in the Marine Corps in the late 1950s. There he became a member of the Corps Four, a quartet of Marines that performed jazz on television and radio to aid in recruitment.

After leaving the Marines he taught briefly in Breaux Bridge, La., then returned to New Orleans with Dolores and their four children to work at his father’s motel while playing shows at night.

Mr. Marsalis performed and recorded throughout the 1960s and ’70s with a variety of modern and progressive jazz musicians, including the drummer Ed Blackwell and the eminent horn-playing brothers Cannonball and Nat Adderley.

He later earned a master’s degree in music education from Loyola University in New Orleans and led the jazz studies program at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts for high school students. It was there that he mentored such future stars as Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Connick as well as his own children.

He later taught at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of New Orleans, where he served for 12 years as the founding director of its jazz studies department.

Reviewing a 1979 performance by Mr. Marsalis at the Carnegie Tavern in New York just before his family burst onto the national stage, John S. Wilson of The New York Times introduced him to his readers. “Unlike the widely accepted image of jazz musicians from New Orleans, Mr. Marsalis is not a traditionalist,” Mr. Wilson wrote, describing him as “an eclectic performer with a light and graceful touch” and an “exploratory turn of mind.”

Four years later, Mr. Marsalis made another New York appearance, at a next-door locale with a similar name: Carnegie Hall. There he gave a solo concert, oscillating between original compositions and jazz standards.

“Mr. Marsalis’s interpretations were impressive in their economy and steadiness,” the Times critic Stephen Holden wrote. “Sticking mainly to the middle register of the keyboard, the pianist offered richly harmonized arrangements in which fancy keyboard work was kept to a minimum and studious melodic invention, rather than pronounced bass patterns, determined the structures and tempos.”

Before Wynton and then Branford found acclaim, Mr. Marsalis had recorded only sporadically. But once they all became nationally known, that changed. In the 1990s, after the Young Lions boom he had helped unleash led major labels to reinvest in straight-ahead jazz, Mr. Marsalis released a series of albums for Blue Note and then Columbia.

In 2008, Mr. Marsalis was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

He had held a weekly gig for decades at Snug Harbor, one of New Orleans’s premier jazz clubs, before giving it up in December.

Always hungry for knowledge, Mr. Marsalis saw himself as a perpetual student. In an interview with Offbeat magazine in 1989, just after joining the faculty at the University of New Orleans, he said: “I’d like to get involved in a course on physics to get a good understanding of the physical aspects of the universe. There are literature courses I’d like to take. I might one day. I don’t buy the idea that colleges are just for young people.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[beginagainunsolved]

RYAN: This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we cover the murder of the Bertinelli crime family, a prominent Italian mob family operating out of Gotham, New Jersey.

SHANE: Oh, I love a good mob story.

RYAN: Yeah, well, you might want to find someone else to move your couch for this one.

SHANE: Well, Ryan, now I’m titillated. 

RYAN (wheeze) Titillated?

SHANE: Titillated! 

RYAN, NARRATION: In the 1990s, the Bertinelli family was perhaps the most powerful crime family in Gotham City. Headed by Franco Bertinelli, the family enjoyed great wealth thanks to their deep ties with the mafia.

SHANE: That’s the dream.

RYAN: Being rich thanks to the mafia? That’s the dream?

SHANE: Frankly, Ryan, all rich people are shady. At least being rich thanks to the mafia is upfront!

RYAN: I’m sure they didn’t go around telling everyone ‘hey, the mafia made me rich!’

SHANE: Their last name is Bertinelli, Ryan. They didn’t have to tell people. People just knew.

RYAN: (wheeze)

SHANE: Look me in the eye and tell me Franco Bertinelli isn’t the most cliche mobster name you’ve ever heard.

RYAN: It --- It is pretty cliche, I have to give you that one.

SHANE: You do. 

RYAN, NARRATION: Well known around Gotham and the surrounding area, the Bertinellis were believed by many to be all but invincible due to their connections. This would change in the late 1990s. 

SHANE: Mafia life didn’t end well for them? It usually ends so well.

RYAN: How many stories have we done about mafia life ending less than well now?

SHANE: That’s, like, 90% of our job at this point. Just reading ‘idk, mafia?’ off a slideshow.

RYAN: And you still want them to move your couch.

SHANE: It’s a heavy couch! I’m not going to get indebted to them or anything. They’ll move one couch, I’ll do one thing for them, and we’ll be even!

RYAN: (wheeze) That’s not how the mafia works!

SHANE: How would you know?

RYAN: Because 90% of my job is reading ‘idk, mafia?’ off a slideshow.

SHANE: Touche. 

RYAN, NARRATION: In the late 1990s, when Franco’s daughter Helena was eight years old, an unknown person ordered a hit on the entire Bertinelli family. To this day, it isn’t known precisely who ordered the hit, but sources from within the organization claim that the contract came with an order to spare “the sister.” 

SHANE: Oh my god, there are nuns in this?

RYAN: What? (wheeze) No! Why would there be nuns in this?

SHANE: The Sister! Like a nun! These mobsters just didn’t want any nuns hurt.

RYAN: I promise you, this story has absolutely no nuns. 

SHANE: I’ll believe it when I see it.

RYAN: You’re seeing it right now, because I’m telling you.

SHANE: Hm.

RYAN: Ugh.

RYAN, NARRATION: The assassin who carried out the hit took this to mean that Helena, Bertinelli’s daughter, was to be spared. While Franco Bertinelli, his wife, and the rest of their family were slaughtered, Helena would survive the experience. She would, however, witness her family’s death.

SHANE: Can’t do that.

RYAN: Kill an entire family while their eight year old watches? Yeah, that’s not great.

SHANE: God that’s --- This is terrible. 

RYAN: Yeah, seems like they could have gone about it a little better.

SHANE: Like, maybe take the eight year old in the other room?

RYAN: Still not great!

SHANE: Well, no, Ryan, murdering a child’s entire family is never going to be great.

RYAN: But, yeah. You’d think they could have ‘spared’ her a little better here.

SHANE: These mafia hitmen need to stop taking things so literally!

RYAN: Actually… We’ll touch on that some more in the theories.

SHANE: Did I solve it?

RYAN: (wheeze) How is that anything remotely resembling a solve?

SHANE: I solved it!

RYAN: No! Stop saying you solved things.

SHANE: Jealousy is a bad look on you.

RYAN, NARRATION: For years, it was unclear what happened to Helena. Many people believed the rumors of her survival were false and that she had been killed along with her family. Other claims stated that she was sent to live with family in Sicily. Whatever the case, it’s clear that if Helena survived, she kept a low profile.

SHANE: I mean. Wouldn’t you?

RYAN: Yeah, if my entire family was killed in front of me at eight years old, I probably wouldn’t be going to many parties.

SHANE: (in a bad English accent) Oh, hello! Why, I haven’t seen you in years! My father? Ah, yes! Brutally murdered in front of me. My mother? Also brutally murdered! My brother? Why, it’s funny you should ask! He, too, was brutally murdered!

RYAN: (wheeze) Why are you doing English? They’re Italian. 

SHANE: All rich people are British, Ryan.

RYAN: No they’re not.

SHANE: At parties they are.

RYAN: That’s definitely not true.

SHANE: How do you know? Have you ever been to a party for rich people?

RYAN: ...You got me there.

RYAN, NARRATION: So, who ordered the hit on the Bertinelli family? Why were they killed? And, perhaps the bigger question, why was Helena Bertinelli, an eight year old girl, the only member of the family to survive? Let's get into the theories. The first theory points to Stefano Mandragora, a Sicilian mob boss, as the man behind the order.

SHANE: This is a boring theory. Where’s the excitement, Ryan? Where’s the pizzazz?

RYAN: I’m getting to the excitement! Would you let me finish?

SHANE: Get on with it! 

RYAN, NARRATION: This theory seems plausible, but the real meat comes from the local family tasked with completing the hit. Santo Cassamento was the leader of the Cassamento Family, one of Gotham’s Five Families. Because the Bertinellis were also one of Gotham’s Five Families, Cassamento would have had regular contact with them. This theory states that, during meetings and gatherings with the other Five Families in Gotham, Cassamento fell in love with Franco Bertinelli’s wife, Maria.

SHANE: Ooh, that is juicy. 

RYAN: Oh, it gets juicer.

SHANE: Go on.

RYAN, NARRATION: This theory goes on to claim that Helena Bertinelli wasn’t the daughter of Franco Bertinelli at all, but was in fact an illegitimate child conceived between Maria Bertinelli and Santo Cassamento. When tasked with eliminating the Bertinelli family, Cassamento knew he couldn’t save the woman he loved, and instructed the assassin to spare their daughter instead.

SHANE: That’s kind of sweet, in a way.

RYAN: How is that sweet? She died! He let an assassin kill her!

SHANE: Yeah, but --- It’s like Romeo and Juliet!

RYAN: I’m not convinced you’ve read Romeo and Juliet.

SHANE: I saw the movie.

RYAN: Which one?

SHANE: The one with Leo.

RYAN: That one’s pretty good.

SHANE: Yeah! See, I don’t have to read it. No one needs to read when they can just watch Leo do all the hard work for them.

RYAN: That’s… No. 

SHANE: You heard it here first, kids! Reading’s for chumps!

RYAN: No!

RYAN, NARRATION: A second theory believes that Helena Bertinelli was spared accidentally. According to this theory, there were no secret instructions to spare her at all. Rather, the eight year old got lucky when she managed to avoid the onslaught of bullets that killed her family and survived by hiding beneath her mother’s body until most of the assassins cleared out. When one of the assassins was tasked with confirming the kills, he couldn’t bring himself to kill the little girl and instead arranged for her to be taken to safety in Sicily before telling his employer she was dead.

SHANE: That’s horrifying.

RYAN: What part? The part where she only survived by dumb luck, or the part where she hid under her mother’s body?

SHANE: Actually, I meant the bit where her hair got a little messy --- OF COURSE I MEAN HER HIDING UNDER HER MOTHER’S CORPSE, RYAN. What else would I possibly mean? Jesus.

RYAN: (wheeze) Yeah, that’s --- That’s obviously terrible. I mean, this story is horrifying for Helena Bertinelli no matter what theory is the truth. Even if none of them are the truth, it’s clearly a terrible situation for an eight year old to be in.

SHANE: Agreed.

RYAN, NARRATION: The final theory is perhaps the most tragic --- that Helena Bertinelli wasn’t spared at all. In this theory, Helena was killed alongside her family, and the woman using her name now is an imposter hoping to gain control of the Bertinelli fortune. 

RYAN: This might sound far-fetched ---

SHANE: --- Actually? I could see it.

RYAN: Really?

SHANE: Sure. I mean, a rich family happens to die and you bear enough of a passing resemblance to their eight year old to pass as her 20-something years later so you figure, why not give it a shot? It’s not like there are many people around to contest it.

RYAN: That’s true.

SHANE: I mean, what, the assassin who killed them is going to come forward now and say, ‘Hey, that’s not Helena Bertinelli! I know because I killed that kid!’

RYAN: (wheeze) Good point. I doubt the assassin is going to come in to disprove it. What about the, uh, the moral implications of posing as a dead eight year old to get her family’s dirty money?

SHANE: I mean… They’re not great? Obviously pretending to be a dead person for money isn’t awesome. 

RYAN: It is dirty money, though.

SHANE: Yeah, Ryan, but the eight year old didn’t have anything to do with that!

RYAN: Yeah, that’s true. It does feel pretty disrespectful.

SHANE: Hey, you know me --- I say let the dead be dead.

RYAN: Are you about to pick a fight about ghosts right now?

SHANE: Not unless you’re going to pull a ‘Helena Bertinelli is a ghost’ theory out of your ass.

RYAN: Well, now that you mention it…

SHANE: Uh uh. This episode is OVER, buddy. Save your bullshit for the Post Mortem.

RYAN: (wheeze)

RYAN, NARRATION: Who ordered the hits on the Bertinelli family? Why was their eight year old daughter spared? Was she spared? With the only potential witness to the crime itself a traumatized eight year old girl and the threat of retribution from the remaining members of Gotham’s Five Families preventing anyone from coming forward with more information, the truth behind this massacre will likely forever remain… unsolved.

WHAT UNSOLVED MYSTERY DO YOU WANT TO SEE NEXT?

[blackkudos]

Taj Mahal

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942), who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, a singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments. He often incorporates elements of world music into his works and has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Early life

Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Jr. on May 17, 1942, in Harlem, New York, Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was raised in a musical environment; his mother was a member of a local gospel choir and his father was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player. His family owned a shortwave radio which received music broadcasts from around the world, exposing him at an early age to world music. Early in childhood he recognized the stark differences between the popular music of his day and the music that was played in his home. He also became interested in jazz, enjoying the works of musicians such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson. His parents came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, instilling in their son a sense of pride in his Caribbean and African ancestry through their stories.

Because his father was a musician, his house was frequently the host of other musicians from the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S. His father, Henry Saint Clair Fredericks Sr., was called "The Genius" by Ella Fitzgerald before starting his family. Early on, Henry Jr. developed an interest in African music, which he studied assiduously as a young man. His parents also encouraged him to pursue music, starting him out with classical piano lessons. He also studied the clarinet, trombone and harmonica. When Mahal was eleven his father was killed in an accident at his own construction company, crushed by a tractor when it flipped over. This was an extremely traumatic experience for the boy.

Mahal's mother later remarried. His stepfather owned a guitar which Taj began using at age 13 or 14, receiving his first lessons from a new neighbor from North Carolina of his own age who played acoustic blues guitar. His name was Lynwood Perry, the nephew of the famous bluesman Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. In high school Mahal sang in a doo-wop group.

For some time Mahal thought of pursuing farming over music. He had developed a passion for farming that nearly rivaled his love of music—coming to work on a farm first at age 16. It was a dairy farm in Palmer, Massachusetts, not far from Springfield. By age nineteen he had become farm foreman, getting up a bit after 4:00 a.m. and running the place. "I milked anywhere between thirty-five and seventy cows a day. I clipped udders. I grew corn. I grew Tennessee redtop clover. Alfalfa." Mahal believes in growing one's own food, saying, "You have a whole generation of kids who think everything comes out of a box and a can, and they don't know you can grow most of your food." Because of his personal support of the family farm, Mahal regularly performs at Farm Aid concerts.

Taj Mahal, his stage name, came to him in dreams about Gandhi, India, and social tolerance. He started using it in 1959 or 1961—around the same time he began attending the University of Massachusetts. Despite having attended a vocational agriculture school, becoming a member of the National FFA Organization, and majoring in animal husbandry and minoring in veterinary science and agronomy, Mahal decided to take the route of music instead of farming. In college he led a rhythm and blues band called Taj Mahal & The Elektras and, before heading for the U.S. West Coast, he was also part of a duo with Jessie Lee Kincaid.

Career

In 1964 he moved to Santa Monica, California, and formed Rising Sons with fellow blues rock musician Ry Cooder and Jessie Lee Kincaid, landing a record deal with Columbia Records soon after. The group was one of the first interracial bands of the period, which likely made them commercially unviable. An album was never released (though a single was) and the band soon broke up, though Legacy Records did release The Rising Sons Featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder in 1992 with material from that period. During this time Mahal was working with others, musicians like Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Muddy Waters. Mahal stayed with Columbia after the Rising Sons to begin his solo career, releasing the self-titled Taj Mahal and The Natch'l Blues in 1968, and Giant Step/De Old Folks at Home with Kiowa session musician Jesse Ed Davis from Oklahoma, who played guitar and piano in 1969. During this time he and Cooder worked with the Rolling Stones, with whom he has performed at various times throughout his career. In 1968, he performed in the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. He recorded a total of twelve albums for Columbia from the late 1960s into the 1970s. His work of the 1970s was especially important, in that his releases began incorporating West Indian and Caribbean music, jazz and reggae into the mix. In 1972, he acted in and wrote the film score for the movie Sounder, which starred Cicely Tyson. He reprised his role and returned as composer in the sequel, Part 2, Sounder.

In 1976 Mahal left Columbia and signed with Warner Bros. Records, recording three albums for them. One of these was another film score for 1977's Brothers; the album shares the same name. After his time with Warner Bros., he struggled to find another record contract, this being the era of heavy metal and disco music.

Stalled in his career, he decided to move to Kauai, Hawaii in 1981 and soon formed the Hula Blues Band. Originally just a group of guys getting together for fishing and a good time, the band soon began performing regularly and touring. He remained somewhat concealed from most eyes while working out of Hawaii throughout most of the 1980s before recording Taj in 1988 for Gramavision. This started a comeback of sorts for him, recording both for Gramavision and Hannibal Records during this time.

In the 1990s Mahal became deeply involved in supporting the nonprofit Music Maker Relief Foundation. As of 2019, he was still on the Foundation's advisory board.

In the 1990s he was on the Private Music label, releasing albums full of blues, pop, R&B and rock. He did collaborative works both with Eric Clapton and Etta James.

In 1998, in collaboration with renowned songwriter David Forman, producer Rick Chertoff and musicians Cyndi Lauper, Willie Nile, Joan Osborne, Rob Hyman, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of the Band, and the Chieftains, he performed on the Americana album Largo based on the music of Antonín Dvořák.

In 1997 he won Best Contemporary Blues Album for Señor Blues at the Grammy Awards, followed by another Grammy for Shoutin' in Key in 2000. He performed the theme song to the children's television show Peep and the Big Wide World, which began broadcast in 2004.

In 2002, Mahal appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot and Riot in tribute to Nigerian afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. The Paul Heck produced album was widely acclaimed, and all proceeds from the record were donated to AIDS charities.

Taj Mahal contributed to Olmecha Supreme's 2006 album 'hedfoneresonance'. The Wellington-based group led by Mahal's son Imon Starr (Ahmen Mahal) also featured Deva Mahal on vocals.

Mahal partnered up with Keb' Mo' to release a joint album TajMo on May 5, 2017. The album has some guest appearances by Bonnie Raitt, Joe Walsh, Sheila E., and Lizz Wright, and has six original compositions and five covers, from artists and bands like John Mayer and The Who.

In 2013, Mahal appeared in the documentary film 'The Byrd Who Flew Alone', produced by Four Suns Productions. The film was about Gene Clark, one of the original Byrds, who was a friend of Mahal for many years.

In June 2017, Mahal appeared in the award-winning documentary film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon, recording Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere" on the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. Mahal appeared throughout the accompanying documentary series American Epic, commenting on the 1920s rural recording artists who had a profound influence on American music and on him personally.

Musical style

Mahal leads with his thumb and middle finger when fingerpicking, rather than with his index finger as the majority of guitar players do. "I play with a flatpick," he says, "when I do a lot of blues leads." Early in his musical career Mahal studied the various styles of his favorite blues singers, including musicians like Jimmy Reed, Son House, Sleepy John Estes, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin' Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, and Sonny Terry. He describes his hanging out at clubs like Club 47 in Massachusetts and Ash Grove in Los Angeles as "basic building blocks in the development of his music." Considered to be a scholar of blues music, his studies of ethnomusicology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst would come to introduce him further to the folk music of the Caribbean and West Africa. Over time he incorporated more and more African roots music into his musical palette, embracing elements of reggae, calypso, jazz, zydeco, R&B, gospel music, and the country blues—each of which having "served as the foundation of his unique sound." According to The Rough Guide to Rock, "It has been said that Taj Mahal was one of the first major artists, if not the very first one, to pursue the possibilities of world music. Even the blues he was playing in the early 70s – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff (1972), Mo' Roots (1974) – showed an aptitude for spicing the mix with flavours that always kept him a yard or so distant from being an out-and-out blues performer." Concerning his voice, author David Evans writes that Mahal has "an extraordinary voice that ranges from gruff and gritty to smooth and sultry."

Taj Mahal believes that his 1999 album Kulanjan, which features him playing with the kora master of Mali's Griot tradition Toumani Diabate, "embodies his musical and cultural spirit arriving full circle." To him it was an experience that allowed him to reconnect with his African heritage, striking him with a sense of coming home. He even changed his name to Dadi Kouyate, the first jali name, to drive this point home. Speaking of the experience and demonstrating the breadth of his eclecticism, he has said:

The microphones are listening in on a conversation between a 350-year-old orphan and its long-lost birth parents. I've got so much other music to play. But the point is that after recording with these Africans, basically if I don't play guitar for the rest of my life, that's fine with me....With Kulanjan, I think that Afro-Americans have the opportunity to not only see the instruments and the musicians, but they also see more about their culture and recognize the faces, the walks, the hands, the voices, and the sounds that are not the blues. Afro-American audiences had their eyes really opened for the first time. This was exciting for them to make this connection and pay a little more attention to this music than before.

Taj Mahal has said he prefers to do outdoor performances, saying: "The music was designed for people to move, and it's a bit difficult after a while to have people sitting like they're watching television. That's why I like to play outdoor festivals-because people will just dance. Theatre audiences need to ask themselves: 'What the hell is going on? We're asking these musicians to come and perform and then we sit there and draw all the energy out of the air.' That's why after a while I need a rest. It's too much of a drain. Often I don't allow that. I just play to the goddess of music-and I know she's dancing."

Mahal has been quoted as saying, "Eighty-one percent of the kids listening to rap were not black kids. Once there was a tremendous amount of money involved in it ... they totally moved it over to a material side. It just went off to a terrible direction. ...You can listen to my music from front to back, and you don't ever hear me moaning and crying about how bad you done treated me. I think that style of blues and that type of tone was something that happened as a result of many white people feeling very, very guilty about what went down."

Awards

Taj Mahal has received three Grammy Awards (ten nominations) over his career.

1997 (Grammy Award) Best Contemporary Blues Album for Señor Blues

2000 (Grammy Award) Best Contemporary Blues Album for Shoutin' in Key

2006 (Blues Music Awards) Historical Album of the Year for The Essential Taj Mahal

2008 (Grammy Nomination) Best Contemporary Blues Album for Maestro

2018 (Grammy Award) Best Contemporary Blues Album for TajMo

On February 8, 2006 Taj Mahal was designated the official Blues Artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In March 2006, Taj Mahal, along with his sister, the late Carole Fredericks, received the Foreign Language Advocacy Award from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in recognition of their commitment to shine a spotlight on the vast potential of music to foster genuine intercultural communication.

On May 22, 2011, Taj Mahal received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He also made brief remarks and performed three songs. A video of the performance can be found online.

In 2014, Taj Mahal received the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement award.

Discography

Albums

1968 – Taj Mahal

1968 – The Natch'l Blues

1969 – Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home

1971 – Happy Just to Be Like I Am

1972 – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff

1972 – Sounder (original soundtrack)

1973 – Oooh So Good 'n Blues

1974 – Mo' Roots

1975 – Music Keeps Me Together

1976 – Satisfied 'n Tickled Too

1976 – Music Fuh Ya'

1977 – Brothers

1977 – Evolution

1987 – Taj

1988 – Shake Sugaree

1991 – Mule Bone

1991 – Like Never Before

1993 – Dancing the Blues

1995 – Mumtaz Mahal (with V.M. Bhatt and N. Ravikiran)

1996 – Phantom Blues

1997 – Señor Blues

1998 – Sacred Island AKA Hula Blues (with The Hula Blues Band)

1999 – Blue Light Boogie

1999 – Kulanjan (with Toumani Diabaté)

2001 – Hanapepe Dream (with The Hula Blues Band)

2005 – Mkutano Meets the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar

2008 – Maestro

2014 – Talkin' Christmas (with Blind Boys of Alabama)

2016 – Labor of Love

2017 – TajMo (with Keb' Mo')

Live albums

1971 – The Real Thing

1972 – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff

1972 – Big Sur Festival - One Hand Clapping

1979 – Live & Direct

1990 – Live at Ronnie Scott's

1996 – An Evening of Acoustic Music

2000 – Shoutin' in Key

2004 – Live Catch

2015 – Taj Mahal & The Hula Blues Band: Live From Kauai

Compilation albums

1980 – Going Home

1981 – The Best of Taj Mahal, Volume 1 (Columbia)

1992 – Taj's Blues

1993 – World Music

1998 – In Progress & In Motion: 1965-1998

1999 – Blue Light Boogie

2000 – The Best of Taj Mahal

2000 – The Best of the Private Years

2001 – Sing a Happy Song: The Warner Bros. Recordings

2003 – Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues – Taj Mahal

2003 – Blues with a Feeling: The Very Best of Taj Mahal

2005 – The Essential Taj Mahal

2012 – Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal

Various artists featuring Taj Mahal

1968 – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

1968 – The Rock Machine Turns You On

1970 – Fill Your Head With Rock

1985 – Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed

1990 – The Hot Spot – original soundtrack

1991 – Vol Pour Sidney – one title only, other tracks by Charlie Watts, Elvin Jones, Pepsi, The Lonely Bears, Lee Konitz and others.

1992 – Rising Sons Featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder

1992 – Smilin' Island of Song by Cedella Marley Booker and Taj Mahal.

1993 – The Source by Ali Farka Touré (World Circuit WCD030; Hannibal 1375)

1993 – Peace Is the World Smiling

1997 – Follow the Drinking Gourd

1997 – Shakin' a Tailfeather

1998 – Scrapple – original soundtrack

1998 – Largo

1999 – Hippity Hop

2001 – "Strut" – with Jimmy Smith on his album Dot Com Blues

2002 – Jools Holland's Big Band Rhythm & Blues (Rhino) – contributing his version of "Outskirts of Town"

2002 – Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume III – Lead vocals on Fishin' Blues, and lead in and first verse of the title track, with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Alison Krauss, Doc Watson

2004 – Musicmakers with Taj Mahal (Music Maker 49)

2004 – Etta Baker with Taj Mahal (Music Maker 50)

2007 – Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino (Vanguard) – contributing his version of "My Girl Josephine"

2007 – Le Cœur d'un homme by Johnny Hallyday – duet on "T'Aimer si mal", written by French best-selling novelist Marc Levy

2009 – American Horizon – with Los Cenzontles, David Hidalgo

2011 – Play The Blues Live From Lincoln Jazz Center – with Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton, playing on "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" and "Corrine, Corrina"

2013 – "Poye 2" – with Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba on their album Jama Ko

2013 – "Winding Down" – with Sammy Hagar, Dave Zirbel, John Cuniberti, Mona Gnader, Vic Johnson on the album Sammy Hagar & Friends

2013 – Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War – with a version of "Down by the Riverside"

2015 – "How Can a Poor Boy?" – with Van Morrison on his album Re-working the Catalogue

2017 – Music from The American Epic Sessions: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – contributing his version of "High Water Everywhere"

Filmography

Live DVDs

2002 – Live at Ronnie Scott's 1988

2006 – Taj Mahal/Phantom Blues Band Live at St. Lucia

2011 – Play The Blues Live From Lincoln Jazz Center – with Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton, playing on "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" and "Corrine, Corrina"

Movies

1972 – Sounder – as Ike

1977 – Brothers

1991 – Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

1996 – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

1998 – Outside Ozona

1998 – Six Days, Seven Nights

1998 – Blues Brothers 2000

1998 – Scrapple

2000 – Songcatcher

2002 – Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

2017 – American Epic

2017 – The American Epic Sessions

TV Shows

1977 - Saturday Night Live: Episode 048 Performer: Musical Guest

1985 - Theme song from Star Wars: Ewoks

1992 – New WKRP in Cincinnati – Moss Dies as himself

1999 – Party of Five – Fillmore Street as himself

2003 – Arthur – Big Horns George as himself

2004 – Theme song from Peep and the Big Wide World