#i will never find anyone like michael holden

[sproldenlover]

[tearsonthepage]

little snippet from a sprolden fic i started writing and promptly abandoned and idk what to do with it so here you go😭

——————————————————————————

Victoria Spring hates people. She has for as long as her memory could ever possibly stretch to find. Which is why it was such a curious feat when she found herself wanting to be around Michael Holden more and more.

People don’t like Michael Holden. He’s okay with that. It’s been like that as long as he could be bothered to remember. Which is why it was such a curious feat when he found himself wanting to be around Victoria Spring more and more.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The pair met in an unused computer lab when following a trail of post-it notes (that led them to find the Tumblr blog that would terrorize their town and weasel into their minds for the next few months, that’s another story, though). The two (to the naked eye) looked like polar opposites. A cold and cynical young lady who detests social interaction, especially if it’s unnecessary, and a bright and optimistic young man who is as close to eccentric and loudly wild as anyone from a town like theirs could be. Of course, real people aren’t so black and white as descriptions like that make them out to be. Tori can be cold, cynical, blunt, and pessimistic, but she’s also a loving older sister, a caring friend, and a rather smart person. Michael can be bright, eccentric, and optimistic, but he’s also angry, sad, and loathing. The both of them can exist on both sides of the emotional scale, that’s why they work together. The “sun and moon,” but the sun is also in outer space and the moon still glows in the night sky.

Michael didn’t have any friends, Tori had a few she hardly tolerated. They may not have had a huge circle but that didn’t stop everyone from being shocked when they kissed on that burning roof. People had heard enough about those two to know that never in any universe should they have crossed paths. Them existing in tandem blew the student populations’ minds. The two were the textbook, bad sitcom, corny novel, dumb movie polar opposites, and not in a way they ever thought could be an opposites-attract thing.

[theatreocelot]

Shed: Exploded View, by Phoebe Eclair-Powell

A review

Date of viewing: 19/02/24 (Mon 19 feb 2024)

Place of viewing: Royal exchange theatre

Story rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cast rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Design rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heavy trigger warnings for discussions and depictions of domestic violence, child loss, depictions of dementia, depictions of grief, allusions to eating disorders, allusions to mental health issues and sexist language.

Shed: Exploded view is a masterclass in theatre that I cannot in good faith recommend to anyone. Following the story of Lil (Haley Carmichael), Abi (Norah Lopez Holden), Naomi (Lizzy Watts) and their partners, Tony (Wil Johnson), Frank (Jason Hughs) and Mark (Michael Workéyè) it is an awareness piece on relationships and domestic violence. Spoilers ahead, trigger warnings will apply in part to this review.

I found the most pleasant story to be that of Lil and Tony, an older couple who married in 1995, as they navigate their relationship, with both of them being married before, as well as Lil’s frustration as Tony loses himself to dementia. I found their relationship to be sweet, compelling and heartbreaking, Lil especially was amazingly played, Haley Carmichael did a fantastic job, however I feel the story does hit one of its sticking points here that keeps getting hit throughout all 3 of the parallel stories, it plays it’s dark themes far to much for shock value, when Lil shouts in frustration at Tony who doesn’t understand why he can’t leave the house (the play jumps around in time from between 1995 and “now” (2024) so parts are set during lockdown), it is shocking and distressing to watch, however as a tragedy, it misses the emotional catharsis, as well as this, it is mentioned that before Tony, Lil was married to an abusive man, however this plot point is mostly brushed over (being mentioned only a couple of times, most notably in Lil’s final monologue (which was brilliant btw, I love this cast so much)), serving mostly to act as a parallel to Abi’s abuse and eventual murder at the hands of Mark, this left it feeling like there was missed potential in Lil’s story, however as a whole she was a good character.

The second plotline follows Naomi and Frank, a middle aged couple who married in 1995 and encountered Lil and Frank on their honeymoon and later go on to have a daughter- Abi. Naomi is by far the stand out character of the show, with the best of the stage time being given to developing her relationship with Abi. Overall, Naomi’s relationships with both Abi and Frank feel realistic, however it suffers from a similar problem, when Naomi performs her final monologue at the end of the play (another brilliant monologue, I find myself wondering if this play would’ve been better if viewed as a collection of disconnected monologues), the energy stays very heightened, like the story is tripping over itself to make you feel something, to the point where it only leaves you feeling overwhelmed. Frank was very well played and his relationship with Naomi was believable to how a marriage when one of the partners is disloyal (however as I have never been in a relationship, I cannot attest to that).

Abi and Mark’s plotline is where the story trips over its own feet the most, from the starting monologue, the story foreshadows that Abi is going to be violently murdered, so when she meets Mark at university and has dubiously consensual sex with him, it becomes quite obvious that it will be by his hand. The play goes out of its way to show the good times that Abi and Mark have in their relationship, showing that abusive partners are not always the stereotype of abuse, however these moments can sometimes fall a bit short, as it shows them seemingly only having nice couple times, then takes a drastic turn near the end, the idea was good but the execution was a bit heavy handed. Abi and Naomi’s relationship is by far my favourite, their moments are some of the only reprieve the audience gets from the constant distress the characters are in, however the play does seem to want to portray Abi as having some resentment towards Naomi, but this does come across as teenage angst. A major area Abi’s characterisation falls a little bit flat for me is her past history of eating disorders, while Mark does make fun of her for being fat and we do have one scene of her running up to her room as a child (followed by Naomi and Frank talking about food and a doctor), it feels glossed over in a similar way to Lil’s abusive ex, like the story expects us to see this in Abi’s character, without actually having her react in a way that would be consistent with this.

In conclusion, Shed: Exploded view is a beautiful play with brilliant actors that acts as a masterclass of shocking your audience, however the characterisation can sometimes fall short and the story lacks the emotional catharsis it needs to be a truly compelling tragedy, I think it would be interesting to watch it again, to see if it would be different when it can’t shock me.

[glenrocklibraryteens]

Book Review: Solitaire

Solitaire by Alice Oseman Young Adult Fiction Page Count: 400 Rating: 5 - Solitaire was a good read, I very much enjoyed the story’s writing and pace. Reviewer: Rebecca Torres

Our protagonist, Victoria Spring— a reserved and pessimistic college student, thinks much about her life. She’d describe it as “quite boring”; however, she would soon be proven wrong. Many things out of the ordinary happen— whether it be good, bad, or something in between— Tori has much more to look forward to, rather than her usual boring days.

To begin, it should be noted that you do not have to read the Heartstopper series to understand the events of this story. Solitaire is a stand-alone novel, anyone can pick up. Now that this fact has been addressed, I can truly begin this review. Alice Oseman’s novel ended up taking me through a rollercoaster of emotions. Each piece of dialogue felt like a real person; I easily envisioned every scene, like it was something out of a movie. Books with this quality are very enjoyable. However, it has to be said— the writing was not my cup of tea in the first few chapters. It was hard to continue reading her boring, and repetitive thoughts for three chapters. You need to be pretty patient to get to the better plot points, which is the reason I give Solitaire 4 stars. As said from the beginning,—Yes—I soon grew fond of Tori’s narration, as well as later situations involving her. I find curiosity and wonder in her character— she’s dynamic, yet wishes not to be. She meets people, it changes her. She witnesses things, it changes her. She gets through obstacles, it changes her. She, however, is in denial. Victoria Spring lives her life as if these things aren’t happening; This is often my way of dealing with emotions, so I easily sympathize with her character. Being content with her everyday life: going to school, blogging, watching a film every night— that is her life. The first instance that doesn’t follow her “everyday life” is a ruse at her school. It’s better known as “Solitaire”. It is a blog that posts humorous things as well as random mottos. She and another, Michael Holden, are the first to know of it. And from the many mysteries of this weird blog, begins the interesting months of Victoria Spring’ life.

Extra Note: I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys coming-of-age stories. An accurate depiction of Solitaire’s writing is that of the movie, Lady Bird. Though very different characters, the story gives off the same feel of indie films.

“Solitaire the Playlist” https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4KFitTYFby69AqJgIIs8m3?si=Qvos81BYRl2NSmvhqqZDbQ

“ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” by Tyler The Creator: With its sad undertones, this song describes the end of something. This song reminds me of the ups-and-downs of Tori’s relationships with people. She is not good at reaching out to people; she believes it hard for people to genuinely like her. Tori also presents to us she has issues with some of her friends’ behavior. Whether good or bad result, she confronts the issue, and regrets doing that often.

“There is a Light That Never Goes Out” by the Smiths: This song is mentioned in the book by Tori. She describes the group, The Smiths, as something so called “vintage” phonies listen to. Though our main character has such dislike for the group, it further emphasizes her comments on the world around her.

“This Charming Man” by the Smiths: I believe this songs’ lyrics can easily connect to everyone in the story. The lyrics depict that a person doesn’t know their place. Most of the characters Tori interacts with, along with herself— they don’t know their place in the world. They do things differently, to think otherwise.

“This Charming Man” reminds me much of Michael. He enjoys the band, but it is more about the melody’s energy— if his personality were a song, it would be this one.

“No Surprises” by Radiohead: Tori tells us she listens to random music by Radiohead. I feel as though she would connect with “No Surprises” the most. The song’s overall feel is similar to Tori’s emotions. She expects bad things to happen to her as lyrics narrate. This song also describes the beauties of life, as she often does. Both do it in such a way of randomness. They tell us such depressing things, yet still find beauty in the little things.

“Fool” by bôa: Tori and Michael try to find their forms of escapism; this song describes exactly that action. In a place where both feel they don’t belong, they get along well. Yet, they both have their individual issues to deal with. “But when I look inside I find the place to try, to hide, to fly” is a perfect lyric to describe what they do when given a problem. Though different people, Victoria Spring and Michael Holden aren’t very different.

[pinballwitxh]

keep on - imagine - holden ford

summary : Holden runs into an old college friend at the club and together they reminisce on their school days, and the many drunk nights out they had.

warnings : MAJOR sexual tension cause that’s always fun, dirty dancing, mention of drug use and alcohol, cursing (ITS THE 70S BABY)

a/n : I love my baby Holden and the second season was so worth the like 2 year wait we had so here’s a small imagine on our fave bby. Also I listened to Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson while writing this.

18+ ONLY FROM HERE DOWN

It was rainy outside and all Holden wanted to do was go home, shower and go the hell to bed. Patiently he stood in line at the gas station, waiting for the attendant to return from his “smoke break.”

The bell above the door rang and he turned to the side slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of the patron.

“What can I do ya for, dude?”

Holden turned to face the attendant, who seemingly returned out of nowhere. Holden handed him some cash and grabbed for a bag of candy as well.

“You still enjoy Reese’s Pieces?”

The young agent turned to the voice behind him, nearly reeling at the sight of an old college friend. She was dressed to the nines in an outfit perfect for the disco.

“Are those the same boots you used to wear in college?” Holden smiled at her.

She grinned back and threw her arms around him, “It’s been a long time, Holden Ford.”

He chuckled nervously, eyeing the friends in tow with her for the night, “Y-you look good,”

She twirled in front of him, “My disco wardrobe is even bigger and better than the last time you saw it.”

Holden shoves his hands into his pocket, “I have no doubt about that,”

“Who is this?”

She turned back to the friends that were with her and introduced them, “This is Holden Ford, met him through my cousin back in college. Which was like, what, five years ago?”

“It feels a lot longer,” Holden said, “Listen it was so great to catch up, but I should be getting home-“

“Why don’t you come out with us?”

Holden’s jaw shut as he considered the invitation. It was Saturday night, and he really wanted to go to bed. He wanted to sleep, and watch television.

“You don’t have to stay the whole night,” she winked at him, “Remember how late we would be out? With those nasty hangovers the next day?”

“Well hopefully both of us can handle our alcohol better now, I’ll join you.” He said.

She smiled at him and clapped his shoulder, “Let me pay for my gas and then you can follow us downtown.”

He chose to ignore the drugs that the attendant slipped his old friend and smiled happily at her when she joined him outside. As they pumped their gas, Holden took his time to study his old friend. She had changed so much since college.

She was still just as pretty, but something about her under the station lights and the way her bell-bottoms cling to her thighs made something stir inside of him.

No, this was still the same girl, the same best friend from college. He couldn’t think like that.

- - -

This was a nightclub he had never heard of, not that he spent a lot of time at the clubs surrounding Quantico. Lots of young agents and students were moving to the D.C. area so he imagined there were lots of nightclubs he had yet to hear of.

He jumped when she took his hand and drug him to a booth along the wall. Her friends took their places on the dance floor and she sat across from him. She smirked at him, “I take it you’re not into illegal activities much anymore,”

He chuckled, “Not really.”

“Light up with me in the bathroom?” She asked.

Holden looked around nervously, “Light up what-“

“You know exactly what I mean, just follow me.”

Apparently it didn’t bother anyone that he had followed her into the women’s restroom, seeing as most people here were high off their minds or drunk. They probably didn’t even notice them.

She reached into her bra and pulled out a freshly rolled joint, followed by a lighter also tucked into her shirt. Holden leaned against the sink and watched as she took a deep drag from the joint, her lipstick staining the wrap as she pulled it away.

She looked at him, “Things are definitely not the same anymore,”

He cocked his head, “What do you mean?”

“Obviously you’ve been successful. At least successful enough to not be able to take a drag from this joint,”

Holden plucked the joint from her fingers and she gasped in mock anger. He shut his eyes and took a long drag, inhaling through his nose at the same time. She smirked at him and crossed her arms, leaning on the sink as well.

“Maybe some things are the same,”

He opened his eyes and exhaled, “What’s changed for you?”

She took the joint from him, “It’s hard to find a job for an artist with a degree in psychology.”

“So you’re. . .”

“Unemployed for the time being,” she said as she took a puff, “But right now I work at the laundromat,”

Holden snickered, “That sounds incredibly fun,”

She rolled her eyes and passed the smoke back to him, “It pays the bills.”

He leaned back against the counter and sidled up next to her. Her eyes roamed his face and the familiar features she didn’t realize how much she had missed. There arms were nearly touching and she could feel the heat from his body.

He pulled the joint from his mouth and turned to look at her, his eyes catching on her stare. She smiled as he blew the smoke in her face, laughing.

“Wanna dance?” He asked suddenly.

The music was slightly muted through the walls and for a moment she realized they truly weren’t alone. She took the joint and pulled another long drag, “If you can keep up with me,”

He rolled his eyes, “Everyone had to make room for you on the dance floor,”

“Can’t help it,” she said as she leaned in close to him, blowing the smoke gently from her lungs and in his face.

There noses were mere inches apart and the smoke began to clear. For a moment longer they held gazes before she abruptly pulled away and tugged him out of the restroom.

The dance floor had gotten significantly smokier since the time they had been in the bathroom. Holden smiled as she cheerfully pulled him through the crowd, excited to dance.

Somewhere in the middle of the floor she stopped and turned to face him, “Loosen your tie, agent.” She said quietly as her fingers cooled around his striped tie.

He laughed as she attempted to loosen it, taking over for her when she got frustrated. He wished he could’ve changed before coming, being spontaneous in the social world was not something Holden did often.

Holden watched her hips sway as she twirled around him, dancing to the rhythm that everyone else in the club could feel. Her shirt hung loosely around her torso, but part of him could just imagine what she looked like underneath the clothing.

He shook his head at the absurd thoughts and took a deep breath.

The familiar feeling of the drugs working in his system started to make their presence known. The music was louder, he could hear every single drum beat and twang of the guitar. The floor vibrated underneath all the dancers and he could feel everytime she danced close to him.

“Now this I remember,” she said as she danced up to him, “Remember how high we used to get?”

“It’s been a long time,” he sighed, his feet begging to move and dance around.

He took a sharp inhale when she wrapped her arms around his neck loosely, “I’m sure you’ve still got some rhythm in you, dance with me.”

His brow quirked, “Like this?”

“We can try something new,” she winked.

Her hands ran down his shoulders and over his arms, sending shivers up the agent. She took both of his hands in hers and soon she had him dancing around with her. They laughed and sang together in the colorful lights of the club.

His arms snaked around her waist at some point, she didn’t know when due to time seeming to slow down. His head settled in the crook of her neck, pulling himself closer to her.

She smiled at the touch and danced against him, dipping low and pushing her backside against his front. Holden let out a small growl as she grazed against him and pulled away quickly.

Her eyes were hooded as she stared him down, “Maybe things will be different tonight,” she whispered, pulling his ear down to her mouth.

Her hot breath tickled his neck and he grabbed onto her sides. She gasped as he squeezed her hips in his strong grip, his fingers trailing over her skin.

Slowly she wrapped her arms around his neck again, their faces inches apart now. Holden grinned at her and guided her hips against his, “Surprised you haven’t stepped on my toes yet with those big boots,”

He winced slightly as she did just that, “You haven’t changed a bit, Ford.”

“Just call me Holden,” he responded.

She nodded, “Okay then, Holden.”

They ground against each other to a song that they both knew from their college days at the discos. She could remember those nights so well.

Holden would be piss-drunk against the wall while her cousin flirted up every girl that came his way. She would dance like no one was watching and Holden would cheer her on from the side. Eventually he would make his way to the dance floor and join all of his friends. They would laugh at his drunken dance moves and poor attempts to talk to females.

Michael Jackson songs would fill the disco and nearly all the attendants were their peers. It was a time everyone loved.

Her mouth was parted in close-ecstasy and her eyes were shut. Holden ran his hands back up her sides and drunk in the sight of her in his arms. Something he never expected to happen, ever.

She was always wilder than him and he felt like he could never keep up with her. She had a blooming social life, while being able to keep up with her grades in their college days. Holden was always glad to watch from the sidelines and encourage her.

But he never realized how ethereal dancing with her could be.

She opened her eyes and found his gaze close on her. As she dipped beneath his hold his eyes travelled down to her chest, hungrily eyeing her.

“Eyes up here, Mister FBI,” she tilted his chin up slowly upon standing up.

His face was serious as he directed his stare back to her own orbs. She felt slightly intimidated, it was a look she had never seen on Holden before and reminded her instantly that they were not in college anymore.

“We’re going for another round in the bathroom, wanna join?”

Their stares were broken when her friends approached them. He pulled her closer to him, silently asking her to stay on the floor with him. She shook her head, “Later I will,”

One of her friends giggled at the sight of Holden’s arm so tightly around her. Before leaving she leaned in and whispered, “I hope you get it tonight, girl!”

As soon as they were out of sight Holden groaned and pulled her back to him. She laughed, “People are gonna notice how excited you are for me if we stay out here much longer,” she pushed herself against his erection, “My friends won’t mind if we leave,”

Holden smiled down at her intensely before squeezing her sides, “We can go back to my apartment.”

She threw her head back with a laugh, “It’s a good thing we aren’t in dorms anymore.”

THE MASTERLIST

[pastelwitchling]

This prompt is courtesy of Anonymous.

I was wondering if you could do a prompt for one of two songs. The first is Taylor Swifts “Come back... be here” where Michael writes a letter to Alex while he’s enlisted. The second is “Be Alright” by Dean Lewis where Kyle gives Alex some advice after everything that’s happened with Michael. Thank you so much and you are one of my favorite writers, whenever you post my day gets significantly better ❤️❤️

***

               Alex opened his eyes slowly as the sound of a lock and key echoed throughout the entire bunker. His lids felt heavy, his body weighed down, yet he curled in deeper on himself against the cold metal wall as the door opened and light poured in, making him wince and look away. He heard footsteps slowly approaching him, and he shut his eyes tight. Then a hand touched his shoulder. It was cold and stiff, but Alex knew it wasn’t his father’s.

               He looked up with a gasp, his brother Flint towering above him with a hand over his mouth, as if signaling at him to stay quiet.

               Alex gripped his brother’s wrist, but nodded. His fingers were tight on his brother’s skin, but Flint seemed to hardly notice as he stood, nudging Alex up with him. Alex got to his feet, swayed, and nearly fell again before he had Flint’s arm around his waist, keeping him steady.

               “Come on, Alex, he’ll get mad if he sees you like this,” Flint said, releasing Alex once he knew he could stand on his own.

               Alex put a hand against the wall and said nothing. He let Flint lead him out of the bunker, fully aware of what his father would do to him if he saw him leave first. Flint kept walking until they reached a door at the far right end of the house, and Alex stopped just as Flint’s hand touched the doorknob.

               Flint noticed. “Stop it,” he said in a hushed tone. “You know what’ll happen if you don’t see him.”

               “Let’s just leave, Flint,” Alex pleaded. “Just – take me to Maria, or Jim Valenti.”

               “Alex—”

               “I can’t drive, I just need you to take me,” he said, gripping his brother’s arm with both hands now. He hated it, having to ask Flint or anyone for help. He hated to sound so afraid, but after what his father had done to Michael…

               “Please,” he begged. “He’ll just lock me up again, you know he will. Please, Flint!”

               But Flint only looked away, seemingly conflicted about something. Alex narrowed his eyes. He knew that look on his brother’s face. “You know something, don’t you?” When Flint didn’t respond, Alex tightened his grip on him. “What’s he planning, Flint, what’s he going to do?”

               Flint clenched his jaw, yanking his arm away. “Why couldn’t you just stay away from that guy? None of this would’ve happened if you had.”

               “Flint,” Alex said, and before he could get another word out, Flint opened the door to reveal a large office. The floor was carpeted in brown, the walls were covered with framed photos of Jesse’s military friends, of Alex’s brothers, of their medals and certificates. There was not a single space of wall left for Alex. Alex doubted there would ever be.

               His father was sitting behind a desk, working on some papers, and in two armchairs sat Alex’s two older brothers, Jack and Holden. Holden looked up at him when he walked in, Jack didn’t bother. Alex caught Holden’s eyes before his brother looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. They all know something.

               Despite himself, Alex felt the dread that had been building in his chest since the door to the bunker opened rise. He tightened his hands into fists at his side.

               “Have you had any water today?” His father asked, not looking up from his papers. Alex’s eyes went to the clock hung on the wall behind his father and saw that it was four in the afternoon.

               Alex merely shook his head, and his father placed his water bottle in front of him. “Drink before you get dehydrated,” he said in a scolding tone.

               Alex stared at the bottle, willing away the protest that if Alex died of dehydration, it would be because his father had scarcely given him any food or drink since he’d locked him up.

               “Where’s Michael,” he asked, and he could feel his brothers’ gazes burning holes into his head. “What’d you do to him?”

               Jesse’s pen stilled on his paper, and instead of answering, he took out what looked like a form from a file beside him, and placed it in front of Alex next to the water.

               Alex frowned. “What’s this?”

               “Military enlistment form,” Jesse said simply as if he was talking about the weather.

               Alex’s dread built up. “Okay?”

               Jesse sighed, setting his pen down and looking up at Alex with that detached expression he always wore. Alex scoffed, though he felt more panic than humor.

               “You’ve got to be kidding.”

               “Alex,” Holden said, his eyes avoiding his brother’s. “You know he’s not.”

               “I’m not signing that.”

               “I’m not giving you the choice,” Jesse said.

               “It’s not up to you,” Alex said through grit teeth. “I’m not signing.”

               Jesse stared, and Alex saw his jaw clench. “Okay, Alex.” He stood. “Listen to me very closely. There is no where you can go that I won’t find you. As you’re still seventeen, you are still a minor.”

               “My birthday’s in a few months,” Alex tried, though his voice trembled even to his own ears. He wouldn’t sign that form, he wouldn’t. “I’ll be eighteen, and then—”

               “And then what?” Jesse cut him off. “Where will you go? You think that boy will help you?”

               “Michael,” Alex breathed. “What’d you do to him—”

               “What’ll you do? Live out of his truck?”

               “How do you—”

               “No one cares about you, Alex, not like I do,” he said. “No one will be able to protect you like I do.”

               “Protect me, protect me,” Alex muttered, and slammed his hand on the desk.

               Jack stood. “Alex—”

               “You keep saying that – since mom left, since you found out I was gay, since you threatened Jim Valenti to stay away from me – you always say that, dad, what does it mean? Protect me from who?”

               His dad said nothing, and maybe it was because Alex had eaten so little lately, maybe it was the exhaustion of moving after weeks of being locked in the bunker, maybe it was the sudden light after so much darkness irritating his eyes, but Alex couldn’t take it.

               He huffed a humorless chuckle, his head ducked. He muttered, “You’re psychotic.” He looked up to see his father staring back at him, his expression unchanged. “You’d rather I die in war than be with a guy.”

               Jesse stared at his son a moment, then crossed his arms behind his back as if he was talking to one of his soldiers. “You’re a failure, Alex. You always have been. By the time they were your age, your brothers were lining up to enlist, but not you. Never you.”

               “Because I know better.”

               “You know nothing.” He narrowed his eyes, considering Alex, then said, “How many battles do you have to lose before you decide to stand up and win? You could be so much more.”

               Alex said nothing for a moment, shaking his head. Then, “You’re never going to change. You hate me for what I am, and you’ll see me blown in a desert somewhere for it before you see me refuse the family legacy.”

               “That legacy is an honor.”

               “It’s a curse. It glorifies bloodshed and condemns anyone who’s different. But really, dad? You’d even condemn me? Aren’t you tired of being the bad guy yet?”

               “Alex,” one of his brothers tried, but Alex couldn’t bother to know who. “Alex, maybe you should—”

               “I’m your son,” Alex said, his voice barely over a whisper. “How could you be so evil?”

               “You’re smart, Alex,” he said. “Much smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

               Alex looked to the ceiling, exasperated. “Oh my—”

               “You have the ability to thrive, just as your brothers have. You’ve known I wanted you to enlist after high school—”

               “Please, dad, who do you think you’re talking to? I know you! I know what you think of me, and I know you sure as hell don’t think I’m good enough for the Air Force.” He turned to his brothers, his eyes burning. “Damn it, would one of you say something?!”

               None of them did. They never did.

               His fists shook, his nails digging into his palms. It stung, but it kept Alex from crying in front of them. He would’ve rather died.

               “Enlistment periods have ended,” Jesse said casually as if Alex had said nothing. “But as master sergeant, I can make an exception. We return to base tomorrow, and I expect you to be ready by then, your name on the dotted line.” He slid the form closer to Alex and sat back in his chair, his arms crossed, expectant.

               Alex’s eye twitched, and he smirked humorlessly. When he spoke next, his voice was raspier and quiet, but it echoed throughout the entire room. “I won’t be you.” He stepped closer, his smirk falling. “I will not be you.”

               And before he could hear any of their responses, he turned and left. He forced his steps slow, knowing that any one of his brothers could try coming after him, talking him into coming back, into hearing their father out. But Alex wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

               When the front door closed behind him, he ran.

               *

               Michael grunted as he parked his truck behind the Wild Pony. He didn’t know where else he could go that he wouldn’t be kicked off the premise, and Maria had always let him do whatever he wanted. He clenched his jaw as the engine finally turned off, and reached into the large pile of acetone bottles in the passenger seat, chugging it down in seconds.

               But no matter what, it never stopped. The veins in his hand still throbbed, his fingers still twitched and spasmed, and after that Ortecho and the rest of them and the memory of that damn cave and that damn car, the heavy weight in his chest pulled him down with every step.

               He stepped out of his truck, leaning against it. After the news they’d received a few weeks ago, Michael doubted Maria or her mother would be in any mood to humor him with a drink, and after Liz had left and Max…

               Michael shook the thoughts of his brother out of his head. He still had Isobel, but he couldn’t go talk to her, not now. He took a deep breath of the cold air, trying to get the picture of Rosa and the others out of his mind, but he couldn’t. He could still see their horrified expressions, their cold, lifeless faces, the look in his sister’s eyes as Rosa’s body fell from her arms, as she looked to Michael with a numb, empty expression and told him that Rosa couldn’t be trusted.

               Michael inhaled sharply, finishing his bottle of acetone before he tossed it aside, his eyes shut tight. I can beat this, he thought, though it was overrun with images of Rosa, of Isobel, of Max’s tears.

               “Gu-Guerin?”

               Michael opened his eyes with a gasp, and saw Alex Manes standing there. Alex, who he hadn’t seen in weeks; Alex, who hadn’t returned any of his calls; Alex, whose older brothers had all but kicked Michael off the property when he’d shown up, demanding to see Alex and know he was okay. His Alex. And suddenly, every picture of death, and guilt, and misery was gone. It was just them.

               “Alex,” he breathed before he shot forward. Alex broke into a cry, and ran into Michael’s arms, Michael unable to help but lift him slightly as he wrapped his arms tightly around him. “Alex, Alex,” he panted into the crook of Alex’s neck, one hand on his back, the other in his hair.

               “Guerin,” Alex cried, and Michael pulled back to see his cheeks streaked with tears, his eyes filled with fear, his hands shaking on Michael’s arms. The moonlight shined on his face, and Michael could now see he had dark circles under his eyes, bruises on his forehead and cheek, his lip was cut, and his nails were covered in dry blood as if he’d been scratching at walls for weeks. Michael hadn’t seen him in weeks. What had Jesse done to him?

               “Alex, what—”

               “It’s my dad,” Alex stammered. Michael had never seen him so scared. “Guerin, he got—he got a—he’s making me—he told me to—I don’t want to do it, Guerin, I can’t—”

               “What, Alex, slow down,” he held Alex’s face in his hands. “Slow down, hey, look at me, I can’t understand what you’re saying. What happened? Where have you been all this time?”

               Alex looked like he was trying to control his breathing, his fists tightening in Michael’s jacket. “I… I…” he tried, then he stopped, his frown deepening as he looked down at Michael’s hand. It was bandaged, the white stained with red from blood that had leaked through.

               Alex gasped, stepping back. “Your – your hand.” His eyes filled with tears, his voice cracked. “Your hand, Guerin, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

               “No, hey, don’t,” Michael pulled him in. “Don’t. This wasn’t your fault, Alex, it wasn’t…”

               But Alex was shaking his head, as if he couldn’t hear Michael. He wiped his face, his hands shaking. “The hospital, let’s go to the—”

               “I already did,” Michael lied, moving his hand so that it was hidden from Alex’s view, his other hand on Alex’s cheek. He missed him so much, he couldn’t believe he was standing here in front of him now. “They did what they could, they healed it.”

               “No.”

               “Yes.”

               “You’re lying,” Alex cried, and Michael’s heart ached. With anyone else, he may have been annoyed at the insistence, angry at Alex for not believing him, but all he felt was warmth and gratitude. Now, after everyone had left him, Alex was still here. Michael briefly wondered when he would disappear, too, but pushed the thought away, hard and fast, vowing that he would do whatever it took to keep Alex with him. He could lose everyone else, but not Alex.

               “Alex, look at me,” he said, his voice calm as he pulled Alex to his chest, his hands tight on Alex’s waist. “I’m fine. I’m okay. I don’t regret being in that toolshed, do you?”

               Alex said nothing, and Michael felt panic rise in his chest. He still remembered the feel of Alex’s soft skin, his breathy moans against Michael’s ears, the smile when Michael couldn’t help but savagely attack his lips with his own. He was hanging onto that. Would Alex really let go?

               Alex swallowed. “Let’s go to Mimi,” he said. “She’ll know what to do. She has herbs and stuff that heal better than anything from a doctor.”

               Michael thought of Mimi, Maria’s mother – thought of Maria, the last time he’d seen her, the way she’d cried.

               “Alex, we can’t go bother them now.”

               “Don’t worry, they’ll help!”

               “They’re still crying, we can’t…” Michael trailed off, hoping he wouldn’t have to mention Rosa’s name, hoping Alex would stop insisting, but his brows only furrowed.

               “What are you talking about?” he asked, bringing a hand up to wipe his face dry. “Why are they crying?”

               Michael stilled. “That’s not funny, Alex.”

               “What’s not funny?” Alex stepped closer, and Michael felt that panic rise to his throat. Oh no, he thought. Could Alex not know? Where had he been these last few weeks?

               “You never heard,” he muttered.

               Alex looked frustrated now. “Never heard what? What happened?”

               Michael swallowed. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to be the one to say it, but… if he didn’t tell Alex, someone else would. And he didn’t think Alex could survive it if someone else said it.

               “Liz Ortecho’s sister died a few weeks ago.”

               Alex blinked, as if he didn’t hear him right. He stumbled back, and Michael caught him.

               “Rosa?” he muttered, his voice barely over a whisper, his eyes staring through Michael. Michael nodded. “How?”

               Michael clenched his jaw. “Car crash,” he said, the lie burning his tongue like poison. How had he found someone who was impossible to lie to? “Drunk driving. She killed two other girls with her.”

               Alex’s lower lip quivered. He shook his head, his hands painfully tight on Michael’s shoulders. “R-Rosa… no, she… Rosa, are you sure?”

               Michael’s eyes burned, but he only nodded once stiffly. Maria and Liz, he could’ve handled. Isobel and Max, he could’ve handled. But this, seeing Alex like this… it was too much.

               “Alex,” he said, his voice cracking despite himself. “Let’s just – let’s get in the truck, okay? Let’s go for a drive, come on. Alex, please, get in the truck.”

               But Alex was pulling away from him, his gaze ahead and unfocused, hands covering his ears as if it would block the world out, his eyes brimmed with tears. I did that, Michael thought. I’m killing him. “Alex,” he tried again, pulling on Alex’s arms. No matter how much Alex struggled, Michael couldn’t let him go. He needed him to breathe, to stay floating above the water.

               “Alex, please,” he begged. “Please, just come on. Let’s go somewhere, anywhere you want.”

               “And Liz?”

               “Alex—”

               “And Liz?”

               Michael shook his head, the words struggling to make their way past his lips. “She left town the day after.”

               Alex exhaled shakily, his stand weakening. Michael caught him, holding on tight enough to leave bruises. Alex held him back, though Michael couldn’t feel Alex’s breath against his chest. Was he trying to suffocate? To end this?

               “Alex,” he breathed into his hair. “It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay.”

               But Alex said nothing, he only held on tighter to Michael. They stayed like that for a long time before Michael got Alex into his car, and drove off.

               Michael didn’t know where he was going, but it was just him and Alex on the open road, the moonlight shining through, painting Alex in silver, and he couldn’t help but reach over and take Alex’s hand. Michael interlaced their fingers, drawing strength from him. Alex had looked completely numb since they’d left the Wild Pony, having not said a single word or shed another tear, and had his fingers not squeezed Michael’s back, Michael might’ve thought he’d gone completely devoid of any emotion. Somehow, the thought scared him just as much as losing Max or Isobel. How had this man come to mean so much to him?

               “Are you hungry?” Michael asked after what felt like half an hour of driving. “We can stop somewhere.”

               Alex said nothing for a long moment, then he said, his voice so quiet that Michael had nearly missed it, “Everything’s broken.”

               Michael watched the road. “So we fix it.”

               “How?”

               And Michael thought of Isobel’s wide, scared eyes, of Max’s misery and silent please, begging him not to take on a burden he knew Michael couldn’t. And somehow, Michael had lost them both. Something had changed, had shattered beyond repair, and Michael had lost them.

               “No more losing,” he said, his hand tightening in Alex’s.

               A pause, then Michael felt Alex’s fingers hold his back just as tightly. “No more losing,” Alex agreed, and Michael glanced at him. He was staring straight ahead, at something Michael couldn’t see, but he no longer looked numb. His brows were furrowed slightly as if in thought, his chin lifted slightly in determination, and Michael realized with no peace in his chest that Alex had never looked like that.

               He lifted Alex’s hand to his mouth and kissed it, keeping Alex’s fingers against his lips as he glanced at him for his reaction. Alex looked over to him, not smiling, but both afraid and determined at the same time, and Michael wondered, not for the first time, where Alex had been these past few weeks, and what had happened to him. Maybe, Michael thought, I wasn’t the only one that shattered.

               *

               Alex had asked Michael to drop him off in front of his house, keeping a distance so that his dad didn’t see them from the window and pull a gun or something, and despite Michael’s many protests, Alex promised him he would be alright.

               “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Michael asked, taking Alex’s sleeve to keep him from leaving.

               Alex could only lean forward, taking Michael’s lips in his and kissing him until they were both breathless. Until the press of their lips hurt.

               “I’m coming tomorrow, Alex,” Alex heard after he closed the car door, making his way up the front steps of his house. “I’ll see you then! Alex, did you hear me? First thing tomorrow!” Michael said, though Alex thought it sounded more like a scared promise. I’m coming tomorrow, you’ll definitely be here, won’t you?

               Alex clenched his jaw, his eyes shutting tight as he reached the front door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.

               “I love you, Michael,” he whispered, his fists against the door. “I’m sorry.”

               Alex opened his eyes. He had to focus from now on. He took a deep breath and made his way down the hall, past his brothers’ rooms, his own room, the kitchen, and the living room.

               “Alex,” Flint suddenly appeared as Alex neared his father’s office, grabbing Alex’s arm as he spoke in hushed whispers. “Where have you been? It’s past midnight!”

               “Did you know?” Alex asked. He wasn’t going to bother with staying quiet. His brother looked confused, and Alex resisted the desire to scream. “About Rosa,” he continued, deadly calm. “Did you know?”

               Flint at least had the decency to look taken back, and Alex found himself so unsurprised that his eyes didn’t even burn. There would be no more tears. He snatched his arm from his brother’s grasp.

               He stepped into his father’s office, Jesse still at his table, working on some forms, the enlistment form still at the opposing end, facing Alex, just as it had been several hours ago.

               Without a word, Alex marched over, took a pen from his father’s desk, and signed the form. It was only when he set his pen down did his father look up. His eyes went from the paper to Alex’s face, and Alex took a deep breath. He wasn’t afraid, he realized. His heart was thrashing, and he would’ve rather not thought about everything that was to come, how his life would change. But he wasn’t afraid. Not now. He had a feeling that fear would return, but not in this minute.

               “I’ll join the Air Force,” Alex said, and his father watched him. “I’ll train, I’ll fight, I’ll use every cell I have to be the best there is. And then,” he leaned in, his voice darkening, “I’ll burn you to the ground.”

               His father stopped working and leaned back, regarding Alex thoughtfully. “So that’s your endgame. Destroying me.”

               Alex stood straight and turned. “Destroying you wouldn’t hurt you. No,” he said, and just as he reached the door, he stopped, “I want you to feel what I felt.” He looked over his shoulder at his father who, for the first time, seemed to see him. Good, Alex thought. He wanted him to pay attention now. “I want to destroy the thing that you love, and I want to make you watch.”

               *

               Hey, Alex,

               I don’t really know how I’m supposed to start this. Not really a letters kinda guy.

               I got a job, a mechanic. Sanders owns the place, he’s letting me fix up this old airstream. Says I can have it if I can get the air-conditioning to work. I won’t be living in my car anymore.

               Max is sheriff now. Keeps arresting me anyway. It isn’t as fun as you’d think to have a brother in law enforcement. He keeps enforcing it on me. Did you laugh? Did I just make you laugh? I can’t see you, so you’re gonna have to tell me.

               You remember that guitar you gave me? I still have it. I don’t have a lot of time to play it anymore, but you gave it to me, and it was out of tune, too, so I fixed it. You’re welcome.

               Would you actually get any of these if I sent them now? I don’t even know. No one will tell me anything. None of them know why I want to know, and I don’t want to tell them. I keep thinking that if I keep it a secret, you’ll come back. I’d probably be the last to know, and that would kill me, but you’d be back, so I could take it.

               I miss you, Alex. I miss your smell, and your taste, and the way you feel. I can’t stop thinking about you, and it’s driving me crazy. I still think about that morning I showed up at your house. I saw you in that uniform, getting into the car with your brothers and your dad. When you drove off, I chased after you. I called you, and begged you to come back. Did you know that? Did you even hear me?

               Come back already, Private. I love you—

               Michael crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the bonfire, taking the beer bottle beside his chair and chugging half of it down. He watched as the paper lit up in flames and turned to ash. Another message burned away. He settled in his seat, hoping to forget he’d ever written it, what the words in it meant, what he had been about to say – what he was always about to say – but he found himself unable to look away from the paper. Someday he would send one of these letters. Though he knew that was a lie.

***

The second I heard Taylor Swift’s song, I imagined everything leading up to Alex’s enlistment, and I just went with it. I’m sorry if it deviates from what you had imagined, but I want to thank you for the prompt, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading regardless 💗

[jgroffdaily]

[This article appears in the September 16, 2019, issue of New York Magazine.]

Within minutes of my meeting Jonathan Groff, he asks if I would like a slice of cherry pie, and then, only a short time later, if I would like to be eaten by a giant plant. The first I readily accept because Groff and the rest of the cast of Little Shop of Horrors have thoroughly analyzed the desserts they picked up for a bus ride down from New York to the suburban Philadelphia puppet studio where they’re rehearsing for the day, and they’ve all concluded it’s the best option. The idea of being eaten by a plant seems a little less palatable, considering the contortions involved in entering the hippopotamus-esque maw of the man-eating Audrey II, which is operated by several puppeteers, and because I’m not sure if Groff is making a serious offer. I learn quickly that he is always offering you things, and those offers are always serious.

The puppet in question represents the largest form of Audrey II, a sassy carnivorous horticultural oddity that convinces Seymour, an awkward flower-shop assistant, to commit murder in the pursuit of fame, fortune, and a suburban life with the original Audrey, a human who works with him. The day I visit, Groff, playing the misfit Seymour (despite good looks that actor Christian Borle, who plays the maniacal dentist, Orin, describes as “scrumptious”), and his castmates are climbing inside Audrey II one by one, figuring out how each of them will die. Wearing a hat from Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “On the Run II” tour, Groff jumps inside wielding a floppy machete, which is so un-aerodynamic it keeps getting stuck in Audrey II’s lips. Groff suggests a real machete prop would be sturdier, and they try substituting an umbrella, which flies out more cleanly. Michael Mayer, the director, says with satisfaction, “It’s a belch!”

Staging this revival of Little Shop is “illegal fun,” as Groff puts it. The original ran from 1982 to 1987 but never transferred to Broadway, at the insistence of writer-lyricist Howard Ashman, who wanted to preserve the show’s off-kilter spirit in a smaller space. Ashman and composer Alan Menken would go on to fill the Disney Renaissance — which consisted of films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast — with the Marie’s Crisis–ready melodies and queer subversions you can already hear in Little Shop (Ashman died of aids-related complications in 1991). Despite a Broadway staging that kicked off in 2003, this version is staying put at the Westside Theatre Off Broadway in hopes of preserving the quirky spirit of the original. There’s a lot of laughter in rehearsal as well as dress codes like a “kimono Wednesday,” which Mayer enforces by handing me a spare kimono when I drop in that day.

I can’t imagine anyone who is consistently involved in or adjacent to homicide having a better time. In addition to playing a murderously nice guy in Little Shop, Groff stars in Netflix’s David Fincher–produced drama Mindhunter, playing an FBI agent who interviews serial killers; the show is based on the real work of John Douglas, who was one of the first criminal profilers. Considering he’s no big fan of true crime, Groff is somewhat confused about how he became a poster boy for gore and mutilation, though he’s enjoying the texts from friends who point out that even when he does musical comedy, there’s a dark edge involved. A few days after we meet in Philadelphia, we’re talking over breakfast at the cozy Grey Dog in Chelsea, where he insists on paying for everything, picking up all the water and utensils, and getting up from the table to refill my coffee cup when it’s empty.

Groff signed up to star in Little Shop this spring after careful consideration, by which I mean he got the offer and then listened to the original cast recording on repeat for a whole weekend. He’d never played Seymour before, unlike the majority of white male theater actors, but he had positive memories of seeing the first performance of the 2003 Broadway version just after high school, when he was rehearsing the role of Rolf in a non-Equity tour of The Sound of Music. “I wanted to make sure that I’m bleeding for it eight times a week,” he says, which is his measure for doing musicals; he wants to make sure he won’t get bored with the material. Even now, when I assume he might want a break from it during rehearsals, Groff still has the album on repeat. “I never went to college, and I’m not educated, really, so I couldn’t say, like, intellectually why that is,” he says. “When I listened to it, it shot through my heart.”

There’s a clue, however, in the way he remembers obsessing over the film version of the show as a seventh-grader, standing in his kitchen with the song “Skid Row” on repeat — specifically when Seymour sings, “Someone show me a way to get outta here.” It was an appealing message to a closeted kid whom Groff describes as just “a sweaty, uncomfortable person with a secret that was so deep-rooted I wasn’t even flirting with the idea of being myself.” With a little distance from that version of himself (the child of a phys-ed teacher and a horse trainer, growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and occasionally having to clean stables on the weekends), Groff recalls the kinds of tells that seem obvious in retrospect, like, say, listening to “Skid Row” on repeat. Or developing an obsession with I Love Lucy, which he still watches before going to bed. Or dancing along to the Donna Reed’s Dinner Party album when his parents weren’t home. There’s a similar longing in Little Shop, which has the queerest kind of perspective on its central couple, as Audrey and Seymour imagine an unreachable, heteronormative life away from skid row and where she looks “like Donna Reed.”

If there’s a murderous kinship between Little Shop and Mindhunter, it extends to the shows’ shared skepticism about that white-picket-fence-style normalcy. Holden, Groff’s profiler character, is a cardboard cutout of a man with a girlfriend who introduces him to 1970s-style sexual liberation, but he is ultimately more fascinated with the deviancy of the killers he’s interviewing. To play him, Groff shuts down his charisma, amassing such emptiness between his angular jaw and his eyebrows that you wonder if he’ll slip into deviancy himself. It’s a performance of square, even sinister straightness that feels close to the best-little-boy performances of closeted queer men, though what seems to thrill Holden most in the show are his interviews with killers. “Sexuality is so complicated, and the people I’ve ended up working with who have cast me in straight parts are interested in looking at things in a complicated way,” Groff says, noting that he feels the argument about whether gay actors can play straight, or vice versa, has gotten “sillier” as time goes on. “Being out and gay and being myself, it allowed me to find people that weren’t closed-minded.”

Groff came out when he was 23, without directly consulting his agent, after he’d become an idol to the nation’s theater teens of Facebook by starring as the sexy, rebellious, tousle-haired Melchior in Spring Awakening. “I was so compartmentalized,” he says, “singing about sex but then not talking about it.” He remains thankful for the way Mayer, who also directed that show, choreographed the explicit sex between himself and Lea Michele’s Wendla clinically, without asking them about their own experiences. He hadn’t spent too much time worrying about the aftereffects of coming out on his career, which were more limiting in 2009 than they are now. “I did think I might not be seen as a romantic lead, but ultimately I was okay with that,” he says, explaining that he was in love at the time and didn’t want to hide it. “At 23, I’d rather just have a real romantic relationship than pretend to have one with a girl.”

Several years after coming out, Groff booked a leading role in HBO’s Looking, a comedy-drama about gay men in San Francisco, which he calls one of the most fulfilling roles he’s had. The series ran for two seasons and got a wrap-up movie but never quite found a viewership, even among queer audiences, instead receiving, as he puts it, “a total mixed bag of very extreme reactions.” Some of that was because people just didn’t like the show — which was often slower, more interior, and whiter and fitter than people may have wanted — and some of it was because it was “carrying a lot of weight; there wasn’t a lot of specifically gay content on a major cable network.” To Groff, making the show opened him up to the possibility of using material from his own experience in his work. Among the cast and crew, “we would talk about stories about PrEP and uncut dicks and monogamy,” he recalls, among “so many stories about anal douching,” and those anecdotes would make their way into the scripts. He was used to a sort of “closeted training of the mind” to abstract himself from his own experience. Looking taught him he could use it.

Recently, Groff has developed an ability to end up near the center of cultural sensations. He stepped in for Brian d’Arcy James as Hamilton’s fey Britpop version of King George III midway through the show’s Off Broadway run. It was a somewhat ideal gig, given that he was onstage for only about nine minutes a night, performed crowd-pleasing kiss-off songs, met Beyoncé, earned a Tony nomination, and got a lot of reading done backstage. This fall, he’s in Disney’s sequel to Frozen, where he returns to play Princess Anna’s rugged (at a Disney-appropriate level) love interest, Kristoff. In the first movie, while Idina Menzel’s Elsa got the vocal-cord shattering “Let It Go,” Groff sang only a few lines of melody between Kristoff and his reindeer, Sven. This time around, he’s putting his Broadway training to use with a full-length solo. It’s the second one he recorded for the movie, since the writers had one idea for a Kristoff piece (“a jam”) but then canned that song while promising Groff they’d write something different, which he didn’t quite believe. “Then they fucking wrote that other song,” he says, characteristically effusive. “I was like, Wow, and the animation of the song is so brilliant.”

As personable as Groff is and as successful as he has become — and as beloved, especially among theater fans and people like my mother — there’s a point at which he maintains a certain distance, in what feels like a way to stem his own impulses. He doesn’t use any social media, though he did consider it when Looking was struggling, before he realized “I’d have to be good at it and want to do it, and I don’t.” He has never thrown himself a birthday party, because the impulse to make sure everyone’s having a good time would stress him out too much. In behavior that reminds me of both a secret agent and Kim Kardashian, he regularly goes through and deletes all his texts after responding to each of them. “I want to make sure I get back to everyone,” he says, holding his iPhone up in front of me to reveal the remarkably few surviving messages.

Before Groff gets up to leave breakfast and travel to rehearsal by way of the single-speed bicycle he rides around Manhattan, we end up talking about the larger trajectory of his career. Considering that he’s scaling down for a revival run of a musical Off Broadway, was he ever the kind of actor who thought of his work as building up to something? A big film? A franchise? “I think I gave that up when I came out of the closet,” he says. “I gave up the idea that there was an end goal or ideal or some kind of dream to work toward.” An image appears in my mind of the life Audrey sings about in Little Shop, a place that’s comfortable, traditional, and expected, somewhere that’s green. “When I moved to New York, what I wanted was to be on Broadway. That happened and then I came out, and it’s sort of been anybody’s guess since then,” Groff says. “I like when something makes me cry or I can’t stop listening to it. Okay, I want to do that.”

Little Shop of Horrors is in previews and opens October 17 at Westside Theatre Upstairs. Buy tickets here.

[roselukes]

2800 Miles - Chapter 3 - l.h.

Previously

Summary: Luke knows what he wants, but he also knows he can’t have it

Tag List: @sassy-asht0n @happycrimiscalum @rosesarered516 @hoe4hemmo @heartbreakashton94 @climatehood @calumspeachy @dukehoods @holidayhood @wrappedaroundcal @mistletoemichael @plainwhiteluke @irwinkitten @irrevocablylukes @astroashtonio @catchinqcalum @irwinvalentines @hollyjollyhood @biggestslutforcalum @calumhampton @angelmikeyy @hotmessmichael @curlyhairedpopstars @meloncal @lukeschestnuts @thecashtonexpress @calsjackets @boytoynamedcalum @alyssarester @ssophisticated-simplicityy @calistajs

Disclaimer: plot was inspired by the app Choices’ story The Royal Romance

The night went on and Gwen was getting antsy. She had been sitting at the table for nearly two hours before Luke finally arrived at the ball. “Well, the prince sure is fashionably late.” Michael laughed.

“The prince is never late, everyone else is simply early.” Gwen said, smiling a little.

“Are you trying to quote Princess Diaries?” Michael laughed harder.

“I’m not trying, I’m succeeding.” Gwen pouted, kicking his shin lightly.

“Okay, you two, cut it out.” Ashton rolled his eyes playfully. “Gwen, you need to get ready to meet the prince. First impressions are incredibly important.”

“But, he already knows me?” Gwen furrowed her eyebrows.

“Yes, but no one else here knows that. And, they can’t know that.” Michael added. “People need to think you’re freshmeat like everyone else.”

“Okay, okay.” Gwen sighed and stood up. “He probably won’t even remember me.”

“It’s been a day, Gwen. He’s gonna remember you.” Calum laughed. “Go get in line.” Gwen stuck her tongue out at him and walked over to the forming line of suitors. She stood behind Alyssa with Hattie behind her.

“I hope you don’t think you’ll actually win this. You have no chance with the prince.” Alyssa smirked. “I’ve known him since we were kids. I have the strongest relationship with him out of everyone here.”

“Sure you do, Cruella.” Gwen rolled her eyes. She crossed her arms and watched as the suitors talked with Luke. Alyssa walked up to Luke and kissed both of his cheeks.

“Lovely to see you again, Lukey. Hope we find a time to dance tonight, I know how much you love dancing with me.” Alyssa giggled and squeezed his hands.

“Yes, I’m sure we’ll get the chance to dance tonight.” Luke assured her. “Always a pleasure, Lady Alyssa.” The guards ushered her away, just as they had done with those before her.

“Hey there.” Gwen smiled as she walked up to Luke.

“Oh, my God. Gwen, what are you doing here?” Luke asked, his eyes lighting up.

“Michael’s family is sponsoring me, so you’ll be seeing more of me here.” Gwen giggled. Luke grinned widely and pressed a soft kiss to Gwen’s knuckles.

“We don’t have much time here, so promise you’ll save the last dance for me?” Luke asked, holding her hand close to his chest.

“Absolutely.” Gwen smiled and squeezed his hand as the guards ushered her away. Gwen couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she walked back to her table.

“Gwen, you didn’t tell me you knew the prince.” Hattie gasped.

“I met him in New York, but keep that on the DL. I don’t need speculation about my motives here.” Gwen whispered.

“You can tell me about it later, but I should go find Holden. I’ll see you later.” Gwen nodded and watched Hattie walk away.

“This is so crazy.” Gwen shook her head. “All of these girls are here in hopes of marrying the prince?”

“He has hella money and the highest authority in Australia. Of course, they want to marry him.” Ashton laughed.

“Well, I’d marry him even if he was the one working in a rundown bar in New York.” Gwen huffed and took a bite of another scone.

“That doesn’t matter here. He’s going to choose someone who can run a kingdom with him, regardless if he loves her or not. Love has nothing to do with managing a kingdom.” Michael sighed.

“It’s not fair.” Gwen mumbled with her mouth full.

“Hey, will you act like you’re supposed to be here? Stop eating so much, and stop talking with your mouth full.” Michael groaned, pulling the scone away from her.

“I’m sorry, I’m hungry.” Gwen crossed her arms.

“If you’re gonna eat, eat some vegetables or something. Something that won’t make people think you’re fat. Nobility always keep their image in mind. Image is everything.” Michael explained.

“Look, I’m not gonna stop eating. These people can say whatever the hell they want about me, but I’m not gonna change who I am.”

“You’re gonna have to change, if you want to become queen.” Calum added.

“Maybe I don’t want to be queen. I just want to make Luke happy, and me being here, is making him happy.” Gwen stood up quickly and walked away from the table.

“She has a point. Luke doesn’t look as miserable as he did when he came in.” Ashton mentioned.

“Yeah, but still. She needs to try and fit in.” Michael crossed his arms. Gwen walked to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.

“Checking to make sure you look good enough for the prince? Let me help: you don’t.” Alyssa laughed as she came out of one of the stalls. She looked at Gwen as she began washing her hands. “I don’t like you, but I’ll still give you some advice. If you want to impress the prince, wear red. Also, ditch all the earrings. He’s not into body art or excessive piercings.”

“And, why should I believe you?” Gwen rolled her eyes.

“Because, I know the prince better than anyone else here. If I don’t get to marry him, it should be someone like me, and that person is you.” Alyssa dried her hands and fixed her hair in the mirror. “You also might want to try exercising. You’re looking a little pudgy.” Gwen frowned and looked down at her stomach as Alyssa walked out of the bathroom. Tears filled her eyes as she rubbed her hand over her stomach. She took a deep breath to try an compose herself before walking out of the bathroom.

“There you are, I’ve been looking for you. It’s almost time for the last dance, and you haven’t danced with Luke yet.” Michael said as he walked over to her. Michael furrowed his eyebrows as he saw the tears in Gwen’s eyes. “Gwen, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fat, that’s what’s wrong. I don’t belong here with these women.” Gwen sniffled.

“Hey, is this about what I said? I’m so sorry, Gwen. I didn’t mean to make you think you were fat, that’s not at all what I was trying to say. I just said it so you’d think more about how people saw you, not that you need to watch your weight.”

“It’s Alyssa. She said she was giving me advice, and she told me to exercise because I’m pudgy.”

“No, you’re not pudgy. Gwen, you are beautiful. You belong here just as much as anyone else.” Michael sighed. “Don’t listen to anything Alyssa says. Ever. About anything.” Gwen nodded and wiped her eyes. “Now, go dance with your prince.” Michael pushed her in the direction of the ballroom. Gwen shook her head and walked back into the ballroom.

“Gwen, there you are. It’s time for our dance.” Luke grinned, grabbing her hands.

“You should know, I don’t know how to dance.” Gwen smiled and placed her hand on his shoulder.

“Just let me lead you through it.” Luke smiled and pulled her body close to his. He kept his hand on her lower back as he swayed along to the music.

“I wish we could be alone.” Gwen sighed, running her fingers through his hair.

“I do too. There’s so much here that I wish I could show you.” Luke leaned his forehead against hers. She smiled softly and continued to sway with Luke. He squeezed her hip gently before leading her out to the balcony.

“What are we doing out here?” Gwen asked, looking up at Luke.

“Getting some alone time.” Luke chuckled and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. Gwen smiled and leaned back against him as she looked out at the view of the garden.

“This view is beautiful.” She hummed, and looked up at Luke.

“The boys and I used to spend all summer out in the garden. We used to always go swimming in the fountain.” Luke laughed at the memory.

“You mean, you used to have fun?” Gwen joked, nudging his side.

“I always have fun.” Luke pouted. “Especially when I don’t have to be royalty.” The two of them stood out on the balcony for what felt like hours, but was only minutes. “We should get back in there. My father’s gonna do the closing remarks.” Gwen nodded and followed him back into the ballroom.

“Meet me in the garden in 20 minutes.” Gwen whispered to him before walking back to the boys.

“What were you and the prince doing on the balcony?” Hattie asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Just talking, looking at the view, enjoying each other’s company.” Gwen shrugged.

“He keeps looking at you. I think he really likes you.” Hattie giggled, making Gwen blushed.

“We have chemistry.” Gwen smiled softly. She took a seat next to Hattie as the king gave the ending remarks.

“Alright, I’ll see you in the morning for the derby. Have a good night, Gwen.” Hana smiled as she exited the ballroom with the other suitors and guests.

“There’s a derby tomorrow?” Gwen looked at Michael.

“Yeah, that’s one of the events. There’s a derby and then a picnic.” Michael explained.

“Great, I get to watch horses run.” Gwen rolled her eyes.

“Hey, you’ll be meeting the queen tomorrow. So, be on your best behavior and make sure you’re prepared to try and impress her.” Michael crossed his arms. “It’s important that she likes you, so promise me you’ll behave.”

“Fine, I promise.”

“Alright, now go get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day.” Gwen nodded and stood up, leaving the room. Instead of heading to her room, she walked outside to the garden. She took a seat on one of the benches and waited. She waited for nearly 10 minutes before Luke finally showed up.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” Gwen smiled and stood up.

“I’m a prince, it’s hard to sneak away.” Luke smiled and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?”

“No, tell me more.” Gwen giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I couldn’t keep my eyes off you all night.” Luke chuckled, pulling her closer. “I’d never seen anyone so beautiful before in my life.”

“You’re full of shit.” Gwen laughed and kissed his cheek. She let go of him and walked over to the fountain. “So, you really swam in here?”

“Yeah, it’s 5 feet deep.” Luke smiled and sat on the edge of the fountain.

“Who makes a fountain 5 feet deep?” Gwen laughed and sat next to him.

“My mother.” Luke smiled. “My mother loved this garden. She spent all of her time here, and when I’m out here, it’s like she’s still with me.”

“How did she die? If you don’t mind me asking..”

“I-it’s a difficult story..” Luke sighed and looked down at his hands. “What about your parents?”

“Both of my parents were addicts. That was really the only thing they had in common. They met at narcotics anonymous and made me. They were picking up their next fix when the dealer shot them both. He apparently thought they were narcs.” Gwen sighed. “When I turned 18, the orphanage gave me the case file on them. I didn’t know anything about them until I was 18.”

“I’m sorry, that must have been incredibly difficult.” Luke sighed, holding her hand.

“I wish I could say it made me upset, but I was only 4 months old when they died. So, I don’t remember them at all. I couldn’t say anything about them.”

“Let’s talk about something happier.” Luke sighed and squeezed her hand. “Did you enjoy the night?”

“I enjoyed everything up until Alyssa called me fat, but then dancing with you made everything better.” Gwen smiled softly.

“Alyssa is a stone cold bitch, but she was once my best friend. She used to live here with us, you know.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t let anyone forget.” Gwen rolled her eyes.

“You’ll get used to her.” Luke sighed. “So, why did you want to meet here?”

“For some real alone time. I flew all the way from New York to be here, so I’m gonna get as much alone time as I can get with you, even if it means I lose sleep.”

“You know, people usually want to hang out with Prince Luke, but you just want to hang out with Luke. You’ll never know how happy that makes me.”

“To me, you’ll always be just Luke. That’s why I can do this.” Gwen smirked and pushed Luke into the water.

“Gwen!” Luke yelled, laughing as he wiped the water from his face. “I’m in a suit.”

“And, I’m in a dress.” Gwen giggled and jumped in. Luke laughed and pulled her close.

“You are crazy, Guinevere.”

“Crazy for you.” She giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. Luke grinned and pressed his lips to hers. Her lips molded against his in a deep kiss.

“I’ve wanted to do this all night.”

“That makes two of us.” Gwen smiled and kissed him again.

[ofphcenixes]

[ TASK001 ] THE INTERROGATION.

"yeah and i’m just a teenage dirtbag baby...” and other song lyrics not appropriate to listen to before you speak to cops about an actual police investigation

PART ONE ( YOU )

Do you have any criminal history? Anything big or small that you want to make us aware of?

Blue swallowed hard. His rap sheet was longer than the time that had stretched since blue was adrift in the waiting room to now, facing his fears as the police examined him from every angle. He sighed, knowing that they were fully aware of his criminal record but knew he had to acknowledge it eventually. “Uh... well okay, for the record, all of this was when I was a kid. A stupid kid. Not to say I’m not stupid now, but-” the female detective cut Blue off, shaking her head slightly as she gestured to the camera. “Please remember that you’re being filmed, Mr Hawthorne. Everything you say can and will be used against you should the need arise.” There was an empathy to her features, as the young cop watched as Blue pursed his lips and sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ve been arrested for... possession of marijuana. Breaking and entering. I was caught joyriding once...” Blue trailed off, his skin an unnatural crimson as he looked down at his folded hands. He’d made a lot of stupid decisions as a kid, when he derailed from the forefront of society and fell to the fringes. He couldn’t help but feel his hammering heart as the detective looked over the files before her. Blue then felt one more confession on his tongue. 

“Okay there’s something else... there was an awkward thing at Daisey’s vigil that you may hear about and just so you know it was completely accidental and-”

“We know about the All Star incident.”

“... well, that’s everything then.”

What is your connection to Daisey? How did you know her? How well did you know her?

The penetrating glares of the two detectives made Blue wrestle with his seat to find a spot that was comfortable. It was well recorded that Blue was not a fan of Daisey, nor pretended to care for her in any capacity before her death. That callous stench was pungent to the police, and Blue knew he needed to do what he does best - lighten the mood. “She and I were like, in the same after school stuff when we were kids,” he commented brusquely, his arms crossed over his chest. “I haven’t.... really spoken to her since then. I do know she had a pet pig called Sparkles, though. I hope her family didn’t end up eating him.”

Have you visited the blog site “veritasexposed”? If you have, how credible do you find the information on this site? Do you know who runs the website?

The question, oddly enough, made Blue feel a little more at ease. The gossip blog just didn’t seem fathomable to the blond, and he felt the respite from the tension as he leaned forward to take a sip of the water that had been rested on the table. Blue shrugged as he took a sip, before placing the glass back down - his hands sturdy. “A lot of it just seems to be... gossip,” Blue quipped, taking in a deep breath. “I mean, Jonah and Zephyr seemed... affected by what happened. But a lot of the other stuff kind of just sounds like a prank. A cruel prank. A prank that I do not condone.” Blue had no idea why he was acting so weird in the interview - he knew his truth, and that these questions were merely a standard. It didn’t help him from awkwardly chuckling to fill the silence as the two detectives looked at each other. 

PART TWO ( DAISEY )

Do you remember where you were the night Daisey went missing? If so, where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with?

Blue didn’t remember parties well - his consumption of alcohol often rendered him useless in anything requiring memory. He does remember that his team had won the football match that night, and that Blue was in no condition to drive to the after-party as he pregamed a little too hard after the victory. The only reason he remembered the night at all was that the very next day, social media was aflutter with posts about Daisey and her disappearance. “St Etienne Knights had a football game that night...” Blue recollected, as the junior detective jotted down key notes on a wad of paper. “After the game some of the boys and I pregamed for a while, then headed to the captain’s for a customary homecoming party.” Blue paused, as he remembered more details of the night. He also remembered that he spent some time that night... well, a lot of the time that night in one of the bedrooms upstairs. He felt himself blush as he thought about it. “Anything else you’d like to add, Mr Hawthorne ?” The lead detective prodded, almost in accusation. Blue absolutely began to panic as his mind raced to put together a more solid alibi for that evening. The words tumbled out before he could give them permission. “I... spent most of the night fucking Sofie Youngblood.” The young detective choked on air as the lead detective’s eyes widen. Blue stared at them, already feeling like he wanted to melt into the carpet. Blue could swear he heard laughing outside the room and behind the one-way glass. Blue stammered out an apology as he realised how truly ill-conceived that sentence was. “Sorry I didn’t mean to be, uh, crass, I just panicked and -” the young detective watched Blue incredulously as the lead detective sighed. “We’ve come to expect nothing less, Mr Hawthorne. We’ll proceed with the next question, then.”

Where were you the night Daisey’s body was recovered?

"In a snowman suit.” It was almost like time slowed to a complete halt, as Detectives Grant and Forrester exchanged a glance. Blue was curious yet simultaneously terrified at how much he was botching this interrogation due to his rampant nerves.  “I mean, fuck, I mean excuse me, I was at the Christmas carnival, working as a mascot handing out candy canes.” Detective Grant had taken to pacing across the floor as she asked her questions, her eyes often darting to the analogue clock on the wall. Blue felt compelled to do the same. “Was there ever a point where you were not in costume, and someone could vouch for your whereabouts ?” Blue’s heart sank as his features blanched. “I hung out with Holden for a bit without the helmet for a bit.” Officer Forrester then looked to Detective Grant, as she muttered the word ‘Woods’ back to him. Blue’s eyes widened. 

How familiar are you with the Ashmont woods? Have you been there often? Have you recently ventured out here? If so, why?

If Blue were smart, he probably should have lied. He spent a lot of time in the woods, along some of the more popular tracks as he went for morning jogs. But instead of say “I mean, I don’t know Ashmont woods, but I know Holden Woods.” It was clear that Detective Grant was already growing tired of Blue’s one-liners, but Michael seemed to be enjoying it. Blue, however, wanted the sweet release of death that Daisey had found. Shit. Wait, cops can’t read minds. Blue is fine. Fine. “But uh, seriously, I jog there sometimes. Only on the paths though, don’t wanna get lost. Bugs are scary.”

Blue could almost hear the eyerolls. 

PART THREE ( THE INVESTIGATION )

Do you have feelings towards the investigation? Any comments?

"The curfew is annoying,” Blue mused softly, his fingers tracing across the speckled surface of the table. Officer Forrester cleared his throat at Blue’s announcement, his soft gaze consumed by the confusion culminated by one Blue Hawthorne. “We, uh, we meant thoughts pertaining to the active investigation of Ms Rutherford’s case.” Blue wanted to burst into tears. He wanted to run home back to the student villa and eat skittles with Holden as they cuddled. He did not want to deal with this anymore. “And, well, I mean... you’re doing a good job. Hopefully you find the killer soon.” Blue couldn’t sound more awkward if he tried. 

Do you have any people you feel the police should look into? Please, let us know who and why.

Blue looked sincerely at the police for a moment, truly waiting for them to slap handcuffs around his wrists - despite the fact he hadn’t done anything. Blue was jittery, no doubt, but there was something about the question asked of him that ignited something in the deepest recesses of his heart. He was never fond of Daisey, and after what she had done to him as kids he’d never see her in a forgiving or even fond light. But even she, one of the most callous and unforgiving one could ever meet, Blue knew her family had the right to know who had taken away someone so close. And although he wanted to joke about who could have killed her, Satan struggling to do the task himself, something to that effect... it finally hit Blue that Daisey wasn’t away on vacation or hiding out in her mansion. She was dead. Her body had been fed back to the Earth, and someone here took the only thing Daisey really treasured. He felt a thickness in his throat as he looked back up to the cops solemnly. “No, I.... I don’t know. I don’t know anyone who could do that to someone else.”

And for the first time in the entire interrogation, Blue felt no regret as his words filtered through the space between them. 

[bethgreeneishopeunseen]

Has anyone in he cast called out some of the bullshit writing? Especially surrounding Beth? One thing that annoys is how the actors seem to never find any fault in the writing and I'm like "come on". I mean they're not idiots.

Laurie Holden has always made it clear she wasn’t happen with what happened to Andrea, and a few months ago she even acknowledged that Scott Gimple gave Andrea’s last moments some dignity. (Check out my Beth-Andrea tag: X.) I think Michael Rooker or Norman Reedus might have expressed frustration that Merle was killed off for Daryl’s development. Most recently Steven Yeun has expressed his frustration with how Glenn’s character was handled leading up to his death, as well as in general (X). (Which I really appreciate. Steven Yeun and Reggie Lee have used their positions in Hollywood to discuss Asian-Americans in the media, and they opened my eyes to it. I’m so happy, proud, and excited about Steven’s upcoming projects and that he’s founded a production company to help Asian-Americans get roles.)

In regards to Beth’s “death”, there’s been radio silence. Emily has supposedly been off the show for almost three years, long out of a contract, and she can speak freely if she wanted. She could express whatever feelings she had, and if I were her, I would have been angry. She was just promoted to main cast, Beth was given a major storyline, and then cruelly killed off without any resolution. Yet she sings the show’s praise. If you didn’t know any better, you would think she was still on the show. AMC probably pays her well to do this as part of her salary.

The rest of the cast hasn’t really said anything negative about the show because it’s their job. They have to support their projects, contractually.

[locke-writes]

So You've Begun To Love Green Day

Alternative Titles: Everyone Knows Green Day Why Is Someone Making an Info Post About Them

Who The Fuck Is Green Day And Why Should I Know Them

Green Day Is Cool But I Don’t Know Shit or

Has Green Day Always Been This Great?

The answer is yes by the way. They have always been great and will always be great.

I preface this by saying that I am by no means a Green Day expert or a Green Day historian (although I could be if anyone wants to hire me), I’m just a Green Day fan who knows a few people who like Green Day and some people who are just learning about Green Day. This post pretty much came because I’m impulsive and a few people said if I’d make it they’d read it so here it is.

This post is going to have a few different parts to it. An overall band bio (where did GD start), band member bios, discography listing plus songs from each album I recommend (links to music videos/individual tracks provided for those without Spotify), a brief where should you start if you wanna start listening to GD (this will be my opinion so any other Green Day fan out there can share their own if they’d like), and other side projects and things the guys have done that’s to be checked out.

Let’s get on with it then.

Tagging: @monsieur–lafayette @ordinaryornate @galaticpanda

Who Is Green Day? AKA Where Did They Come From? Note: This is not a full band biography, I don’t dive deep into where they were in their lives for every album. Links will be provided at the end for where you can find further info.

The history of Green Day is kinda sorta complex. Ok not really but they did start from two separate bands. Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt met at age ten while attending the same middle school. The two quickly became friends and Billie who had been playing guitar for a few years began teaching Mike. These lessons led to the two of them jamming together and in 10th grade forming the band Sweet Children, with another friend on drums. Jumping into the punk scene Mike and Billie found their home at 924 Gilman Street, a punk club if you will. Sweet Children began booking shows however mainly getting the last slot on the bill. In 1987 Mike and Billie would replace their drummer and in turn John Kiffmeyer, (better known and credited on the early albums as Al Sobrante). After the replacement of their drummer Sweet Children began gaining popularity amongst the Gilman crowd. The more attention they received the more they caught the eye of Lawrence ‘Larry’ Livermore, founder of Lookout Records. Larry saw the band play at a house party and was 'instantly captivated’ as he said. Sweet Children were signed to Lookout soon after and began to release EPs, however before the first release Sweet Children became Green Day after attendees of Gilman began writing Green Day on jackets after the band played a song with that title. It was a spontaneous name change but clearly it has worked out. Green Day’s first two EPs (Slappy and 1039 Smoothes) allowed them to go on their first (technically official) tour. It was a small tour but one that would have many significant moments (one of which was a show in which Billie met his future wife, Adrienne). The biggest moment was the announcement from Kiffmeyer that he’d be leaving the band to attend college. This would leave Green Day without a drummer unless a replacement could be found. That replacement was Tré Cool. Tré began drumming at an early age and became a member of Larry Livermore’s band the Lookouts where he was given the nickname Tré (He was born Frank). Billie and Mike had seen Tré play at Gilman many times, and Billie had jammed with Tré on occasion. For one show in November of 1990 Tré would join Mike and Billie for a show and would cement the friendship between the trio. Tré would become a temporary replacement for Kiffmeyer unti 1991 when he became Green Day’s official drummer. This led to more touring, the bands first album Kerplunk, and eventually the major label success that led them to where they are today.

For further information and a more detailed account of what happened during and after check out the following (Band Bio #1, #2 and perhaps grab the book “Nobody Likes You” by Marc Spitz

Band Member Bios Note: This is only for Billie, Mike, and Tré and may not be extremely detailed (I don’t wanna bore you but ask if you wanna know more). Touring Members such as Jason White, Jason Freese, and Jeff Matika are obviously important members of the band but their bios will not be included

Billie Joe Armstrong was born to Andy and Ollie Armstrong on February 17, 1972. He is the youngest child, having 5 older siblings. His father Andy was a jazz musician and truck driver while his mother Ollie worked at a restaurant in town. Billie began singing at a young age, even recording his first record at age 5. His first guitar, “Blue” (a Fernandes Stratocaster), was given to him by his father and he began learning how to play by his father and by teaching himself. Being the youngest Billie was often left to his own accord which often meant getting into trouble but did allow him to meet Mike Dirnt. When Billie was 10, his father died of lung cancer, leaving just his mother to raise him and his siblings. After his father’s death music became a much more important part of Billie’s life leading him to form Sweet Children and eventually drop out of high school to pursue it as a career (which we can agree did in fact work out). Billie does lead vocals and guitar for the band

Mike Dirnt was born Michael Ryan Pritchard on May 4th 1972. Mike’s birth mother was a heroin addict and he was given up for adoption. His adoptive parents raised him until they divorced when Mike was 7. Mike briefly moved in with his father but eventually came to live with his mother and sister. Mike’s home life was fairly rocky and he often spent nights at the Armstrong household while he and Billie were in high school. He officially moved out of his home at age 15, living in his truck for sometime before renting a room at the Armstrong home. While also performing in Sweet Children, Mike supported himself throughout high school by working as a busboy and a cook. After he graduated high school (being the only member of Green Day to do so), he took about a years worth of courses at community college but never continued due to the bands success. Mike does backing vocals and bass for the band.

Tré Cool was born Frank Edwin Wright III on December 9th 1972. Born into a military family Tré moved around quite a bit before his family ended up in California. Discovered by Larry Livermore, Tré began playing drums in The Lookouts when he was twelve and it was there that he earned his nickname. Once Kiffmeyer left Green Day, Tré took his place and soon after joining dropped out of high school to focus on music. He did eventually earn his GED and took classes at community college but again dropped out because of the time he spent with the band. Tré’s family was supportive of his dreams and his father was the one to give the band their first touring van, an old renovated bookmobile. Tré does backing vocals and drums for the band.

Discography and Song Recs (Note song recs will be only for full length studio albums, however the discography includes EPs and Live Albums. Links provided). The recommended songs for the compilation albums will solely be the original tracks

39/Smooth (1990)

Slappy (1990)

Kerplunk (1991): 2,000 Light Years Away, Christie Road, 80, Android, Who Wrote Holden Caulfield, Sweet Children,

1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours (1991, Re-released combination of 39/Smooth & Slappy): At The Library, Don’t Leave Me, Green Day, Going to Pasalacqua, The Judge’s Daughter, 409 In Your Coffee Maker,

Dookie (1994): Longview, Welcome To Paradise, Pulling Teeth, Basket Case, She, When I Come Around, Coming Clean, F.O.D

Insomniac (1995): Geek Stink Breath, 86, Brain Stew, Jaded, Walking Contradiction

Nimrod (1997): Nice Guys Finish Last, Hitchin’ A Ride, The Grouch, Redundant, Scattered, Uptight, King For A Day, Good Riddance

Warning (2000): Warning,  Blood Sex and Booze, Castaway, Misery, Waiting, Minority, Macy’s Day Parade

International Superhits (2001, Compilation Album with previously unreleased tracks): Maria, Poprocks & Coke, J.A.R

Shenanigans (2002, Compilation Album with a new original track): Ha Ha You’re Dead

American Idiot (2004): American Idiot, Jesus of Suburbia, Give Me Novacaine, Letterbomb, Homecoming, Whatsername

Bullet In A Bible (2005, Live Album)

21st Century Breakdown (2009): 21st Century Breakdown, Christian’s Inferno, Peacemaker, Murder City, The Static Age, American Eulogy

Awesome As Fuck (2011, Live Album)

Uno (2012): Nuclear Family, Carpe Diem, Let Yourself Go, Angel Blue, Oh Love

Dos (2012): Fuck Time, Stray Heart, Amy

Tré (2012): Brutal Love, X-Kid, Sex Drugs and Violence, Amanda, 99 Revolutions, The Forgotten

Demolicious (2014, Previously Unreleased Demo tapes)

Revolution Radio (2016): Bang Bang, Revolution Radio, Still Breathing, Youngblood, Ordinary World

Where should you start?

The easiest place would be American Idiot and then 21st Century Breakdown. From there try out the early stuff with Dookie, and then try the song recs per album.

Side Projects.

Green Day has a lot of side project so in general here’s a few (and yes some are GD under different names). The big one of course is American Idiot the Musical but…

Billie: Pinhead Gunpowder, The Network, Foxboro Hot Tubs, Formerly (and album with Norah Jones, Producing stuff for SWMRS (previously Emily’s Army, The Boo, Matt Grocott & The Shrives, and some acting gigs

Mike: Foxboro Hot Tubs,  The Frustrators, Screeching Weasel, Squirtgun, some acting gigs, restaurant owner

Tré: The Lookouts, Foxboro Hot Tubs, The Network, and acting gigs

Any questions or comments can be sent my way through my inbox

[meltedmagazine]

AN INTERVIEW WITH DEL WATER GAP

      “IN THIS WIDE AND PERILOUS ALL-TOO-BIG WORLD DEL WATER GAP WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR BEING CLOSE.” Close through their music, close through their emotionally raw lyrics, close through the heartfelt voice mails piling up on the band's answering machine. If there's one thing the trio isn’t, it’s far away. Grounded in their own blend of folk rock and the occasional trumpet appearance, they’re always just a phone call away according to their new EP title: 1 (646) 943 2672. I had the opportunity to talk to lead singer Holden Jaffe about the EP, the good ol’ days, and voice mails.

_____________________________________________________________

What's the significance of the place Del Water Gap? You guys are from New York so how did you end up with that name?

     Good question, I admittedly have never been to the Del Water Gap. However when I was 16 or so I was in a noise rock band called Great Blue Heron that was based out of New Jersey, Morristown and so I ended up driving around that area a lot and saw a lot of signs for DWG and one day we were driving and I was sitting shot gun and I saw it written on a box truck and it was written in sort of like primitive handwriting, it looked like it was scratched in and I just thought it looked really cool so I added it to my growing list of band names cause I was trying to start my own band and it ended it up at the top of the list and it has remained!

You put a phone number as the title of your newest EP and you can call it and leave a message, what was the purpose of that?

    We were turning in the EP and I had a few names and I was really stressing over it trying to come up with the right name. The EP had to come out soon and I started thinkin and I was like i don’t know the names of any EP’s, I know some album names but the bands I like the most as far as EP’s go I don’t know the names so I was like okay maybe we can do something different here and right around that time I lost my phone. I left it on a plane and it was in rural New Hampshire and I felt very off the grid and I didn’t have my phone for the first time in years. I didn’t have a computer and I realized in trying to get in touch with my parents I didn’t know their phone number anymore and I didn’t know anyone's phone number and I was like wow this is really interesting we’re living in this time where you don’t need to know anyone's phone number which was probably a really intimate thing to know at one point, you know the 1950’s you probably knew everyone's phone numbers, all your best friends your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your parents, your grandparents. You had to so I was like yeah you know that's such a gesture to give someone a phone number right and know it and I think in the era in music right now where's there's so many bands and there's spotify you're constantly being exposed to bands and it's sort of a blur and i thought it would be an interesting gesture to sort of offer access to me and the rest of the group and sort of as an experiment too to see if people would reach out. People have reached out so.

Any really unique messages?      Yeah I have. I decided that I wasn’t going to pick up the phone unless I’m in my room because I didn’t want to take the phone outside because I was like if I lose this phone like you know so I’ve gotten a lot of messages, I get about 20 a day. I try to go through them and I’ve been sort of collecting them and listening to them. A lot of them are really interesting, a lot of them are people being very genuine and sweet and calling from all over the world and just sharing messages about finding music at a certain time in their life when it meant a lot and a lot of people very surprised like ”wait what this actually works.” A lot of stoned people on spotify calling. I picked up the phone once, I’ve only been there once for an actual phone call, I picked it up and it was a kid from Nova Scotia and he said “hello” and I was like “hello” and he was like “who is this” and I was like “dude you’re calling me who are you” and he was like “I’m so and so I saw this on spotify and thought i’d call this” and I was like “yeah dude whats going on” and we just talked for a bit. To me it sort of proved my experiment was a success I was able to connect with some stranger and it was a really pleasant and he texted me later and was like “yo I love the record,” it was nice.

Song off the EP that means the most and why?

    There is a song, the last song on the record that's really special to me, it's called “Love Song For Lady Earth” and I’m really proud of it as a song but also I just wrote it at a really formative time for myself. I was staying in Charleston with my mom, in Isle of Palms, it was like the off season, not the tourist season so there wasn’t really anyone there and it was really cold and I was dating this girl at the time and we weren't really getting along and we were cooped up in this house and she flew back to New York and I was there with my mom for another week and a half and I just wrote a lot over that 2 weeks for whatever reason. Some of the best songs to this day, something about just being holed up there and not being able to leave and feeling sad but in a really comfortable way, and I ended up writing that song and it's just one of the few songs I never edited, it just sort of came out well and yeah it feels good, it feels like a good summary of a few years of life into a few minutes.

What was it like to play your new songs at the Sofar session you guys did a while back? What was the emotional change to play it live?

     It’s funny because I sort of cut my teeth as an acoustic singer/songwriter boy, you know doing a lot of acoustic guitar and vocals just playing shows by myself playing guitar and singing. Once I started playing in a rock band I sort of realized in a lot of ways bands can be a crutch as far as what you can get away with, how clean you have to be with your playing and your signing and I just find it much easier to talk in front of a room with a band behind me and that's nice but it's also nice to be reminded that you know you have to treat it as a craft. At Sofar sounds and those types of shows, it's a good opportunity to step outside of my comfort zone. I really like playing Sofar, I’ve done a few of them and it’s always been a good experience and it  reminds me which songs are actually good cause you know everyone's sitting there staring at you reacting in real time which isn't always true at venue shows, people are always talking and texting and it's whatever but at Sofar the expectation is that you engage.

What is it like to be an artist in the 21 century?

    You know it's obviously changed everything about our society and it’s had the equal effect on the music industry. It’s changed more in the last 2 years then probably the 60 years prior. The main thing I’ve seen in being a band in the era of social media or whatever you want to call it is image. It's obviously really prevalent in music and affects people's willingness to click anything in this age of content it's so based on image so it’s obviously challenging but it's also a challenge in that we have to create content that's a little more challenging and innovative even within its own world. Like if you’re going to be another white guy making guitar rock then you need to do it well and I think it’s a healthy thing but there's definitely times when it can be distracting. There's been periods of time for myself and I can speak for my friends in bands where the music falls behind to a lot of other work and it needs to maintain a certain level of presence in the social sphere.

So for “Hightops” and “Vanessa” you used a zoomed in part of the picture that you used for the album cover, what's the significance?

    Well actually there's a really interesting story behind the photo so I’m just going to tell you about that first. I was on reddit and there was a subreddit called ‘old school cool’ and I saw a photo and was like this is a really completing photo, something about that, the red gloves right in the middle, the look on this woman's face, this is a really cool photo. Naturally I was looking for content so I messaged the user and was like “hey shot in the dark I was wondering if you own this photo I was wondering if I could license it from you for my album cover” and I get this email back within 30 seconds and it's this guy like “yo this is so crazy i'm 14 years old I live in the mountains in china and yes this is my mom she’d be honored if an american band would use her for your album cover” and I was like what? It was such a funny and immediate response but he was like yeah the one thing is he wanted his dad's name on the album cover because he took the picture and I was like “ah i don't know if we can do that I don’t know if I can put your dad's name on the front but I can credit him.” I had that picture and I was thinking about how to put together the singles and I just thought about the idea of what it would look like to have 2 single album covers and then the full album cover together in a line because the way they’d present visually as a package as if they were 2 sort of 7 inch single sitting on a self and what would that look like and so that's what I thought would be a good angle.

So “Hightops” was the last song released before the full EP. What was it about that song that made you want it to be the last thing people heard before the release?

   The few people I played it for thought it was special so naturally I was like okay maybe this is special. I wrote it with a  guy who I really admire named Michael Tighe, who was Jeff Buckley's guitarist, and he’s just a reallyseasoned musician, he’s played on a lot of great records.  I met him and became friends with him and this was the first song we wrote together and it was very indicative to me personally of this friendship and mentorship so that obviously affected it and it seems a little different than the other songs I structure, the writing was more classic and it just felt right

That song as well as “Be My Own” stuck out to me, can you tell me a little bit more about that one too?

    “Be My Own” is on the record we put out 2 or 3 years ago and that song I wrote in Hawaii.  I was in Hawaii with my best friend and at that time he was living in this very open lofty house and his sister's bedroom didn't really have walls, well it had walls but it kind of ended 2 feet before the to of the ceiling, so we were in the kitchen hanging out trying to be quiet in case she was sleeping there. We were just sitting on the floor and I was messing with this song and I was with this girl at the time who I really liked and she was sort of the first girl I brought home to my parents so I was like ‘wow so romantic the idea of domesticity like wow isn't that romantic like you can have breakfast and make the bed together wow you know.’  I’ll never forget just sitting there with him writing it and he was helping me out and finished it. I wanted to put it on that record and it was my freshman year of college and I was living in this dorm room with the sweetest guy but he was always in the room. I said “hey what's up dude you're still here you know I’m trying to record a little bit.” I actually recorded, I made myself get comfortable with recording when he was in the room. I was like “hey just be quiet for like 3 ½ minutes, it’ll be chill” and so I recorded that song and he was walking in and out of the room and I just managed to get through a take without him ruining it and that was the one that ended up on the record so once again very indicative of the time and the living space.

What's the NYC music scene like?

     Well I went to NYU so I’m very much apart of the NYU scene which is very mixed. I went to this school for Clive Davis and it’s a very pop centered program, so there's a lot of bands that were in my class that are really doing impressive things in the pop world and equally there's a lot of indie bands and rock bands like Del Water Gap who play shows here and tour constantly and go to college. It’s a good place to be for music. 

LISTEN TO DEL WATER GAP HERE

interview by SAMANTHA SULLIVAN

photo by CAITLIN MESSINGER

[roseisread]

Top 25 Movies of 2016

I saw 51 of the many more films released in 2016, so naturally this list suffers from the usual incompleteness. But of those 51, the movies listed below are the ones that really stuck with me, entertained me, moved me, or made me see the world through a different lens after the credits rolled. Some of them are deeply personal and hold great meaning; others are just a great excuse to laugh or shudder or sob about something that doesn’t matter so you don’t have to think about the things in real life that might evoke that reaction for a couple hours. 

If you saw something amazing that didn’t make the list, be sure to let me know so I can add it to my watchlist (or defend my choice to leave it off the list of faves). 

25. Zootopia (Netflix) At a time when the world was finding reasons to divide itself into fractious subgroups, along came a winsome little animated film about tolerance and eschewing stereotypes. The animation is top notch, the story is funny and action-packed, and any scene featuring the sloth from the DMV threatened my ability to breathe because I was laughing so hard. If you missed it in theaters, be sure to catch up with it on Netflix. It’s a real gem. 

24. The Conjuring 2 (Amazon/iTunes rental) The first Conjuring got a ton of acclaim but I wasn’t that enamored with it. This one, on the other hand, totally delivers. Once again, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson star as paranormal investigators who are plagued by dark forces. This time, the action centers on a family in England (inspired by the somewhat infamous Enfield Poltergeist) with an unwanted apparition who interacts with them in all kinds of upsetting ways. Rather than relying solely on jump scares, there’s a lot of great suspenseful sequences and practical effects that use the atmosphere and physical space to masterful effect. Plus, the characters are likable and we are rooting for them which goes a long way toward making this a better than average horror movie. 

23. The Edge of Seventeen (Theaters) Hailee Steinfeld plus Woody Harrelson equals brilliance. Add to the mix the savvy direction of first timer Kelly Fremon Craig and the charming supporting cast (particularly Hayden Szeto) and you have a winning combo that leaves other teen dramedies in the dust. The story is relatable for anyone who experienced high school: Nadine feels alienated at school and at home, partly because high school sucks and parents just don’t understand but also partly because she sees herself as just a little bit superior to her peers and family members. She’s a classic Holden Caulfield type, really. When her best friend starts dating Nadine’s brother and mortal enemy, she takes it as a personal betrayal. Between this, her crush on a bad boy type, and her tentative steps toward romance with a nerdy but sweet classmate, she’s got a lot on her plate. Naturally, she takes solace by venting to her favorite teacher, the bemused Harrelson who takes all of her abuse and whining with stoic aplomb. 

22. Jackie (Theaters) I was born in 1981, which means I don’t have any personal connection to Jackie O. the way people of my parents generation did. I don’t have recollections of seeing her on TV or experiencing the Kennedy assassination, but I’ve been hearing about it all my life and thus feel like I know the story. This movie took me by surprise by showing me something new, something I’d never considered: The personal grief of a tremendously public loss. Natalie Portman embodies the carefully manicured public persona as well as the private devastation of Jackie Kennedy in the days surrounding JFK’s death. It’s not a traditional biopic, and not a traditional historical drama. That makes sense coming from Chilean director Pablo Larrain, who also gave us the excellent political thriller/comedy No a few years ago. He captures pivotal moments and edits them together into a kind of fractured consciousness befitting the recently bereft Jackie. 

21. 10 Cloverfield Lane (Amazon/GooglePlay rental) I’ve still never seen the original Cloverfield (I know, I know), but I do love me some John Goodman being a possible creeper so I had to see this movie. The title really was an afterthought; the story was written independent of the horror franchise and marketing decided a built-in audience and some name recognition would boost ticket sales. All of this to say, you don’t need to know or love Cloverfield to know and love 10 Cloverfield Lane. Essentially it’s a chamber piece, modeled on some of Hitchcock’s techniques (Lifeboat/Rope/Dial M for Murder).  Oh and also the original script got a once-over by a certain Damien Chazelle, who was once slated to direct it as well until Whiplash got greenlit and then he got a little busy making a movie called La La Land which may or may not be definitely coming up later in this list so... yeah. But anyways. It’s got that breathlessness and intensity Chazelle brought to life in his other movies, but this time in an actual horror/suspense setting. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher, Jr. play Goodman’s reluctant houseguests in his underground bunker. Goodman claims to be protecting them from something horrible outside; they’re not sure whether to believe him or to trust their instinct that the something horrible is Goodman himself. All three performances are excellent, and your nerves will be frayed little bundles by the time 103 minutes is up. 

20. Certain Women (Theaters) Just watching this movie made me feel physically cold. It takes place in Montana, and is essentially a triptych that follows three different women in the same small town. The first, played by Laura Dern, is an attorney with a particularly high maintenance client (Jared Harris). The second is a woman (Michelle Williams) who feels alienated from her husband and their teenage daughter, even as the family is working on building a house together. The final story, and by far my favorite, focuses on a farmhand (the glorious Lily Gladstone in a breakout role) who chances upon a night class taught by Kristen Stewart and becomes transfixed. This is a quiet film, about women who yearn for more than their lives so far have given them. Each one deals with the small injustices and tiny victories that ordinary events bestow, but one senses beneath the surface a lingering question of “Is this all there is?” In that way, it’s totally relatable. There aren’t a lot of major plot arcs here, but that’s exactly the point of the film. In watching this movie, you realize that Henry David Thoreau’s quote about the masses leading lives of quiet desperation might well be answered by Simone de Beauvoir: “I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.” 

19. Don’t Think Twice (YouTube/GooglePlay rental) If you listen to podcasts at all (especially This American Life, WTF, or You Made It Weird), you should know the name Mike Birbiglia by now. He’s a comic turned actor/writer/director and this is his latest original work. This time, he enlisted fellow talented comics to join him onscreen: Chris Gethard, Gillian Jacobs, Keegan Michael Key, Kate Micucci, and Tami Sagher play his friends and fellow members of an improv troupe. They’re all people you know or have been--starving artist types who are holding onto a dream that comedy will one day pay the bills and take them to the next level. When that actually happens to one of them, the group dynamic shifts considerably. As Morrissey so accurately sings, “We hate it when our friends become successful.” But really, the truth is we hate ourselves when our friends become successful. It makes us question whether it’s a matter of deserving it or working hard or random chance.  The great thing about this movie is the blend of truly hilarious comedic moments and stirring emotional honesty. It’s about friendship, it’s about surviving your thirties, it’s about figuring out if the dreams you’ve had your whole life are the dreams you still actually want to come true. If you can get through Gillian Jacobs’ incredible solo improv performance toward the end of this movie without tears, you get to be the new Clear Eyes spokesperson instead of Ben Stein. 

18. Love and Friendship (Amazon Prime) This movie features one of the funniest characters of the year, an immensely clueless rich dolt named Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), who marvels at the existence of peas and struggles to arrive at the correct number of commandments. Who could be responsible for such a creation? Well, who else but the writer whose best work pokes fun at social climbers and wealthy nitwits: Jane Austen. Whit Stillman adapted her little known work Lady Susan into this charming and hilarious period piece starring Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Stephen Fry, and Xavier Samuel. Beckinsale does her absolute greatest work in this movie--I had no idea she was capable of this kind of performance, and she absolutely slays. As far as Austen adaptations go, this one is my favorite since Clueless--and that’s about the highest praise I could offer. 

17. Don’t Breathe (YouTube/Amazon/Vudu Rental) The premise of Fede Alvarez’s sophomore thriller is simple: A trio of young Detroit opportunists break into the home of a blind veteran (Stephen Lang) after hearing he’s got a lot of cash in the house, figuring it’ll be an easy score. But they underestimate this particular blind man and his ability to protect his home and property. The result is a fast-paced cat and mouse game that will definitely have you holding your breath for long chunks of time. I had a blast watching this movie, even if it should have ended a few scenes earlier than it did. 

16. Hell or High Water (Amazon/iTunes/GooglePlay Rental) One of my favorite pieces of music, classical or otherwise, is Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. This composition was directly inspired by a speech delivered by Henry Wallace in 1942, which outlined the cause of freedom and the stakes of World War II while also setting a tone for the whole century as one in which ordinary people--the common man--would share the same standard of living, of educational and economic opportunity, of scientific discovery.  An excerpt of this speech reads thusly: “When the freedom-loving people march; when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and to sell the produce of their land through their own organizations, when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively, and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them truths of the real world in which they live — when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead.” Well, the world has continued moving since those words were spoken, but those opportunities are certainly not yet open to everyone despite promises all around that anyone in America should be able to succeed on grit and good will alone. When grit and good will fail to deliver, some people give up and some people become outlaws. That’s where we find our protagonists in this movie, Toby and Tanner Howard (Chris Pine and Ben Foster, respectively), as it opens. They’re robbing banks out of perceived necessity, and also out of a sense of Karma not acting quite fast enough for their liking. Meanwhile, a pair of Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) get assigned to the case and aim to catch up with whoever’s responsible and give ‘em hell.  The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, and the screenplay contains scintillating dialogue and the kind of characters you might find in a classic Western, plus a final showdown for the ages. On the performance side, there’s not a weak one in the bunch. Chris Pine proves he’s more than just a pretty face and Jeff Bridges sheds his Dude persona to give an even better performance here than in his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart. If you need a movie to watch with your Dad that you can both enjoy, this is that movie. 

15. De Palma (Amazon Prime) Sisters. Carrie. Dressed to Kill. Blow Out. Mission Impossible. Body Double. Scarface. The Untouchables. Casualties of War. About 20 other films--all directed by Brian De Palma, the subject of this documentary. For some, he’s alienating. For me, this guy is legendary. His films pick up where Hitchcock left off and go running off in their own bonkers directions, oozing style and excess and delivering tawdry and thrilling twists along the way. I’m convinced that one day he’ll be revered by film students and not just genre lovers, and at that point this doc will serve as a Hitchcock/Truffaut type text.  The doc is really just De Palma going through his filmography chronologically, shots of him talking edited together with clips from every one of his movies and archival behind the scenes footage. That might sound boring but I promise you it is not. He tells lots of stories, does not shy away from pointing out the flaws and issues in his movies, and reflects on the reception his movies have received from critics and cultural scholars over the years. He also tells some fascinating stories from his youth that shed light on the types of movies he grew up to make. He also talks a lot about his techniques and the way his shooting style developed. If you are interested in filmmaking or De Palma or both, this movie will have you riveted from start to finish.

14. Manchester by the Sea (Theaters) For a meditation on grief and loss, this movie made me laugh a lot. That might sound inappropriate, but if you’ve ever experienced loss yourself, you know it’s not linear and doesn’t follow rules or codes of conduct. Sometimes you laugh at inopportune times. Sometimes you want to cry and can’t. Sometimes you melt down at the sight of frozen food (see what I did there? Melt/frozen! Ahh I kill me sometimes).  Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges make a great onscreen team, with Affleck playing Lee Chandler and Hedges playing Patrick, Lee’s teenage nephew. They’ve both lost someone important to them, but neither is great at opening up on the subject. Lee does his best to take care of his nephew, but he feels ill-equipped to be the stable parental figure Patrick needs. For his part, Patrick would prefer to keep things the way they are. “I have two girlfriends and I’m in a band!” he points out, and who is Lee to argue with that kind of logic? 

Of course I can’t finish discussing this movie without highlighting the luminous presence of Michelle Williams, who owns every second she’s onscreen (which isn’t very long). Her final scene with Affleck broke me right in two. 

13. Born to be Blue (Digital Purchase) Every year springs new musical biopics upon us, to varying degrees of creativity and critical acclaim or derision. My favorite one from 2016 was Robert Budreau’s nonlinear narrative inspired by incidents from the life of Chet Baker as portrayed by Ethan Hawke, who gives his best performance outside a movie with “Before” in the title. For the unfamiliar, Chet Baker is best known as the singer of “My Funny Valentine” today, but he was also a prominent jazz trumpet player and part of the West Coast jazz scene in the 1950s and 60s. As so many artist types, his genius was often threatened by his dalliances with substances and people whose momentary glamor gave way to decay and destruction. 

Hawke captures Baker’s charming qualities as well as his tendencies toward self-sabotage, and the movie does not feel like a typical biopic as it incorporates a more meditative approach than a chronological one. There’s also a movie-within-the-movie which adds to the novel feel and keeps this from just hitting all the major events in Baker’s life in order. Carmen Ejogo is excellent as Baker’s primary love interest, a complex and well-drawn foil for the troubled musician. Her character is an amalgam of real life people, but she stands out as more than just your typical long-suffering wife/lover trope. 

12. Fences (Theaters) August Wilson’s intimate play gets the cinematic treatment at the hands of Denzel Washington, who both directed and stars here. Troy (Washington) is a garbage man who drinks a lot and talks a lot more to his wife Rose (Viola Davis), his friend Bono (Stephen Henderson), his son Cory (Jovan Adeppo), and others who show up at his doorstep.  The story is simple, but the characters are anything but. This may be my favorite ever Denzel performance, and certainly my pick for Best Actor in a Leading Role of 2016. Davis is phenomenal too, in a quiet but steady way. And not as many people are talking about Stephen Henderson, who played Bono in the play as well as the movie, but he’s excellent.  If you want to hear beautifully written dialogue (and monologues), see some of the year’s best performances, and be moved by a family drama that feels relevant even though it was written and set in a bygone era, go see Fences. 

11. Midnight Special (On Demand) In the first of two Jeff Nichols-directed movies that came out in 2016, Michael Shannon (a frequent Nichols collaborator) is a father trying to protect his son. The boy has some unique abilities, to say the least, and everyone from cult leaders to government agencies wants to exploit those abilities. It’s part superhero origin story, part Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and all about the joy, terror, and unbridled love that come with being a parent.  The movie features memorable visuals as well as supporting performances from Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, and Adam Driver. The ending may leave you with more questions than answers, but the emotions it evokes are unmistakable.

10. Tower (iTunes) In 1966, a lone gunman stood atop a tower on the University of Texas campus and opened fire on the unsuspecting people below. For the next 96 minutes, chaos and carnage took over the scene as law enforcement and campus officials tried to devise a way to stop the shooter without endangering more lives. This documentary tells the story of that day from the perspective of people who were there, using interviews and re-staging events using rotoscoping animation.  The result is one of the most powerful documentaries in recent memory (outside of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence). Hearing from victims, bystanders, police officers, journalists, and students who experienced this firsthand reveals so much about the nature of trauma, the way we react in extreme circumstances, and the contrast between what was then a first-of-its kind incident and what is now an all too frequent occurrence: The campus shooting spree. It’s never preachy, just lets each person tell their own story. Always, the focus is on the people on the ground rather than the person behind the violence. It’s a must-see film.

9. Arrival (Theaters) Denis Villeneuve has become one of my favorite directors of recent years, and it’s great to see a film of his get embraced so widely by audiences as well as critics. In case you haven’t yet seen it, this movie features Amy Adams as a linguist and Jeremy Renner as a scientist. Both of them have been recruited to help the government communicate with the aliens who have recently parked giant pods all over the world.  The movie opens with a much more human story, and if you cried at the beginning of Up you will certainly shed tears here too. I won’t give more away than that, but what happens informs the emotions and decisions made throughout the film in interesting ways.  I love the visuals of this film, and the emotional arc of the story. I also adored all the technical linguistic things that were going on, and I don’t know enough about science or language to know whether they were plausible so I’m just going to assume ignorance is bliss and aids in suspension of disbelief. There is one scene that seems to create a divide in audiences between loving and hating this movie. I won’t explain beyond saying it involves a phone call, so if you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about. I can understand the criticism, but for me it was not enough to derail all that came before and after.  If you haven’t seen this yet and you like your science fiction with a few tugs on the heartstrings, this is definitely worth your time. 

8. The Lobster (Amazon/iTunes/GooglePlay Rental) I adore this movie, but that does not mean you will. I have to put that caveat right up front. In fact, at least one person I recommended this movie to absolutely hated it. So, take my opinion with a grain of salt but I will try to convey truth in advertising.  Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous films were Dogtooth and Alps, makes his English language debut with this dystopian romantic comedy. Colin Farrell, John C. Reilly, Rachel Weisz, Ben Wishaw, Lea Seydoux, and Olivia Colman are the human subjects who populate the story. In their world, if you find yourself without a partner, you go to a hotel where you have 45 days to pair up with someone. If you do not find a suitable match, then at the end of 45 days you get turned into the animal of your choice. You can extend the time of your matchmaking opportunities by going out to the forest and hunting “loners,” people who have escaped from the hotel in the past and choose to live lives of solitude.  It’s a wacky premise, but leads to numerous laugh out loud scenarios in addition to the more plaintive moments. I should warn you that there is a scene or two of violence involving an animal, which may be tough to watch for some. That may be one of the reasons people hate it. But as a critique of human behavior and society’s obsessions, it’s quite an effective parable. 

The latter half of the film takes a different turn, and while I don’t want to give away what happens, that’s why I called this a “romantic” comedy. You may not want to watch it with your date on Valentine’s Day, but if you do it should certainly give you much to discuss afterward.

7. April and the Extraordinary World (YouTube/Vudu/GooglePlay/Amazon Rental) This animated steampunk French film features a talking cat and a whipsmart girl and an underground lair and a bunch of other wondrous things that I don’t dare attempt to describe. It’s an alternative history film, it features the voice of the marvelous Marion Cotillard, and it should’ve been nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. Alas, it was not. But if you want to watch a gorgeous, funny, charming film that might inspire a generation of girls to go into STEM careers, watch this. 

6. The Neon Demon (Amazon Prime) I feel intoxicated every time I even recall this sumptuous film. If you missed my review of it earlier this year, go check it out and then go watch this film... if you dare.

5. Sing Street (Netflix) This is, hands down, the feel good movie of the year. Written and directed by John Carney, who gave us Once and Begin Again, this film is set in Ireland in the early 1980s. The premise is simple, really: A boy starts a band to impress a girl that’s out of reach. Not only does he hope to impress her with the music, but he convinces her to star in their music videos since she’s seeking a career as a model. Then he has to actually form the band, and learn how to play instruments and write songs. Along the way, his older and cooler brother educates him on the cool musicians of the day: The Smiths, Duran Duran, The Clash, The Jam, Hall & Oates, The Cure, Spandau Ballet.  The original songs in this film are super catchy and fun, and serve as homages to the great bands referenced above. If you’re a sucker for the films of John Hughes, the music of the 80s, and stories about brothers and coming of age and following your dreams, this is the movie for you. 

4. The Handmaiden (Theaters) Take a novel  set in Victorian England about pickpockets, conmen, and insane asylums that’s been referred to as “lesbian Dickens” (Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith), and set it in colonial South Korea, and make sure it’s directed by the guy who made Oldboy. This is a recipe for the most gorgeously photographed, erotically charged, bonkers in the best way movie of the year.  I don’t want to get too far into the story which has so many delicious surprises, but the quick version is that an orphan pickpocket goes to live with a rich but possibly mentally ill young woman to serve as her handmaiden. This is all in an attempt to con said rich young woman into a marriage plot with a smooth talking ne’er do well man. And there’s also the added wrinkle of the rich girl’s creepy uncle, who collects banned erotic books and holds readings in his library for men who pass through. It’s a very unsettling atmosphere for two young ladies, and they form a bond with one another in spite of themselves.  There are moments of horror, laughter, and blush-inducing romance in this unrated film (don’t watch it with Grandma unless she has a very open mind and you have a very comfortable relationship). Its runtime is 145 minutes but I wanted to stay in this world forever. 

3. Green Room (Amazon/iTunes/GooglePlay Rental) We lost too many good people last year, and Anton Yelchin was one of the losses that hurt the most. In this movie, he gives arguably his best performance as a member of a punk band that gets in way over its head when they take a gig for gas money that takes place in a remote area where most of the audience is neo-Nazi skinheads. They get through the performance, uncomfortable as it is, but the real trouble happens later when one of them witnesses something their hosts really don’t want them to see. From there, it’s a tense stalemate as the band members have to improvise and evaluate who can be trusted. The movie is directed by Jeremy Saulnier, who gave us the excellent and underrated Blue Ruin a few years ago. This one has a similar blend of regular people in irregular situations, with plenty of blood and gore but also a fair bit of humor and a whole lot of real raw punk rock, both on the soundtrack and in the aesthetic. It helps that Saulnier was in a band himself back in the day, so he brings a real authenticity to the characters in the movie.  This stayed atop my “best of the year” list all the way into December, when I finally saw the last two films on my list. I’ve watched it multiple times and would watch it many more. If you took delight in a video of a Nazi getting punched a few weeks back, you should definitely watch this movie. And if you didn’t, well, you should still watch this movie. 

2. Moonlight (Theaters/Digital Purchase) Barry Jenkins (director/co-writer) and Tarell Alvin McCraney (co-writer) have created a moving, timeless piece of visual poetry in this film that captures three significant chapters in the life of a young man named Chiron. When we first meet him, he’s maybe six or seven years old and people call him “Little.” He hides out in an abandoned house to escape from neighborhood bullies, and is discovered by Juan (Mahershala Ali), a local drug dealer with a complicated moral compass. Juan and his wife Teresa (Janelle Monae) become de facto surrogate parents to Little, whose mom (Naomie Harris) works late and brings random men home and sells their belongings off piece by piece to afford the drugs she craves.  In the second chapter, Little is now “Chiron,” in high school and life hasn’t gotten easier. He’s still quiet, still has a troubled relationship with his mom, and feels pretty alone in his peer group with the exception of his friend Kevin. He and Kevin share an unexpected but life-changing evening on the beach that is intimate and believable and raw. The next day at school, however, another life-changing exchange takes place between the two young men and this one is even more visceral in its immediate and long lasting impact on Chiron’s future. Finally, we see him as “Black,” a little older and transformed from the skinny vulnerable teen into a muscular, physically intimidating presence. He’s clearly fighting against his past by embracing everything he can to seem larger than life and untouchable, in both his physical appearance and his lifestyle. He gets a phone call one night that reconnects him with a part of his past he could never quite shake. I won’t spoil what happens next, but the final twenty minutes of this movie are a perfect encapsulation of long-suppressed feelings finally forcing their way out into the open. It’s such a personal story, but the specifics make it so relatable that it feels universal in its specificity.  The performances in this movie are wonderful, the cinematography is gorgeous, the score is amazing--I could go on for years. To me, this movie showed a story I’ve never seen on screen before, from a perspective that’s completely underrepresented in pop culture. It never feels manipulative or stereotypical or preachy--just real and achingly human. Some moments in this movie have replayed themselves over and over in my mind hundreds of times, and even having seen it twice in the theater I can’t wait to study every frame of it on multiple viewings once it’s available on Blu-Ray. I want it to seep into my bones the way it seeped into my heart. 1. La La Land (Theaters) “This is the kind of movie that just fills your heart up,” I texted a friend the second I exited the theater after seeing La La Land the first of three times (and counting). And every time I watch it, my heart overflows a little more. Here’s a film that will resonate differently depending on your frame of mind when you watch it, the same way Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind can feel funny or sweet or tragic or dark or romantic depending on your current relationship status.  At first glance, Damien Chazelle may seem to be showing off in his follow up to Whiplash, tapping into an easy sentimentality that short circuits our center of reason by throwing in references to Singin’ in the Rain, Casablanca, West Side Story, and an LA that probably only ever existed in the imaginations of the people who never actually visited the City of Stars but fell in love with its many portrayals on the silver screen. And yes, Hollywood does love stories about itself and yes, the novelty of an original movie musical does scream “anachronistic film school prodigy.” So I get the skepticism, I truly do. I can’t promise this movie will live up to the hype of a record-tying number of Oscar nominations for you, but I can tell you that it means so much more than that to me. It’s not just another charming but forgettable throwback (I’m looking at you, The Artist).  In case you haven’t yet experienced this movie, a quick breakdown: Sebastian and Mia, portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, are both in LA chasing their dreams of artistic success. He’s a jazz pianist; she’s an actress. Neither has quite made it, and “making it” to them means doing something authentic on their own terms which makes success even more elusive. Compromise may be part of real life but neither of them is quite ready to give up the fantasy yet. Their relationship starts off adversarial, then tentative, then before you know it they’re literally floating into space so carried away are they with love and visions of a future together. The stages of their lives and the story are divided up by seasons, and sure as summer follows spring, you can’t get through the year without the fall. Fall in this movie has a double meaning, and the cute flirty interludes give way to frustrated sighs and changing priorities. Other seasons follow, which I will not spoil, but I will say that the final five or ten minutes of this movie could stand on their own and still be my favorite film of 2016. People compared Whiplash to The Red Shoes, and I would make the same comparison to this film although for different reasons. The ballet sequence of The Red Shoes and the final sequence of La La Land share an artistic splendor the can induce wonder and catharsis in equal measure. I’m prone to quoting Charles Bukowski, so I’m going to close by quoting him again. I think the following poems explain the core of this film, and why it resonates so much with me: “the area dividing the brain and the soul is affected in many ways by experience – some lose all mind and become soul: insane. some lose all soul and become mind: intellectual. some lose both and become: accepted.” --You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense “if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.” --So You Want To Be a Writer?

[comicsnsuch]

Quick Hits

It’s been a minute since I posted any original content but not to worry loyal readers, all is well.  I may have been gone but I read a bunch of stuff, new(er) and older! So let’s do some quick hits!

Action Comics #1021

Published by DC Comics

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by John Romita, Jr & Klaus Janson

This is the last part of the Year of the Villain crossover tie-in story which saw “Apex” Lex Luthor and his amped up Legion of Doom team up with Leviathan and invade Metropolis.  I’m glad this arc is over because I found it to be a bit middling. As I have said, and will say again, I’m not reading the current Justice League run so I don’t have a real investment in the outcome of this story other than which pieces get moved forward in Action Comics. Young Justice and the Justice League guest star, and the whole thing feels a little talk-y for what should be a big slugfest. Leviathan shows what a badass he is and reminds you that his organization is a real threat to the DCU, and that you should check out the upcoming sequel mini-series. It was fun to see Conner Kent ( the 90’s clone Superboy) interact with Superman. John Romita, Jr’s art is “meh” this issue as it has been throughout this story. His depictions of Gorilla Grodd (Gorilla Man?) and Cheetah are almost painful to look at. I’m a big John Romita, Jr fan (and defender if need be). I love his run on Amazing Spider-Man with JMS, his work on Daredevil and I think he killed it on the DKR: The Last Crusade one shot that came out a few years back, but it feels like he is not dialed in on these last few issues of Action.  There is one panel where the Red Cloud has Superman on his knees and is choking him out that is a homerun. Next issue the series is going to catch up with the Superman title timeline-wise and Supes will have to deal with the repercussions of going public with his secret ID. Bendis does a good job hooking you in to come back for more with the cliffhanger between the Red Cloud and the leader of the whisper mafia.

6 out of 10.

Batman Superman #7 & 8

Published by DC Comics

Written by Joshua Williamson

Art by Nick Derington

I have not read the previous six issues of this series where Batman and Superman face off against the Batman Who Laughs’ Infected heroes.  I read the preview of the first issue that ran in the back of most DC comics and thought that was a strong preview with a good hook, but still I did not pull the trigger on the series. Nick Derington’s art as guest artist for these two issues, is what did it for me.I enjoy his artwork and said to myself “What the hey, it’s only two issues, right?” Well, turns out that was a problem because at the end of the second issue I wanted more of this story. I feel like it wrapped up a bit too quickly. Perhaps I’ve become too conditioned to the six issue story arc format? In this story Superman, Batman and Ra’s Al Ghul team up to stop General Zod from resurrecting the citizens of the bottle city of Kandor using a Lazarus pit. Joshua Williamson does a good job with the characterization of Ra’s Al Ghul. The plot moves along briskly, at almost a pulp serial pace, with new locations and fight scenes abounding. Even though I have not read the previous 6 issues and certain issues of other series referenced here I never felt lost or like I was missing out. Nick Derington killed it. Clear action and storytelling done in his signature style. Anyone wanting to see more of his work should check out the Batman Universe mini-series or the first volume of the Gerard Way Doom Patrol series. If Derington returns to this series, I’ll be back as well.

8 out of 10.

Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda # 6 & 7

Published by Marvel Comics

Written by Jim Zub

Art by Scot Eaton (#6) & Lan Medina (#7)

Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda is a fun little series for those of you who may have been thinking about picking it up, but haven’t. The stories are told quickly, with each being only two issues long so far, and the team changing up each arc. I feel like this makes this title perpetually new reader friendly-ish, as long as you have a passing familiarity with the characters and the events of their respective titles, mainly Avengers. I’m not reading Avengers and reading this series is not a problem for me. The premise here is that when smaller problems pop up that aren’t “Avengers worthy” current Avengers chairman, the Black Panther, calls on the Agents of Wakanda to save the day. Gorilla Man, Broo, Mockingbird, Kazar, the Wasp, Man-Wolf and Okoye from the Dora Milaje are a few of the characters who have popped up so far. Issue #6 was wrapping up a two parter where the Agents of Wakanda reluctantly worked with Deadpool to stop some rogue SHIELD LMDs, including the Livewires! This was the first story arc in the series that I thought was a bit of a drag, even though some prior issues were a bit predictable. I blame this on the presence of Deadpool. A character who can become annoying quickly if not handled properly. Over all issue #6 was a nice capper on the story and sent me out on a quest to track down the Livewires’ mini series from 2005.  Issue #7 is the start of a new story arc that finds the Agents on hand at Avengers Mountain dealing with attacking Fin Fang Fooms! How cool is that? It was a so-so issue but had a great cliffhanger, promising a cool follow up issue. Despite my being ho-hum on these specific issues, this series is a lot of fun. It features a lot of cool underused characters, solid stories and artwork. Jim Zub and team deliver a great meat and potatoes comic book that is deserving of a wider audience.

7 out of 10.

Butcher of Paris #3 & 4

Published by Dark Horse Comics

Written by Stephanie Phillips

Art by Dean Kotz

In case you couldn’t tell, I took the pause provided by the quarantine to pull some comics I wanted to read and organize them alphabetically.  This is another series I’ve been enjoying and am disappointed that the last issue won’t be released for who knows how long. For those interested this is the story of the hunt for a serial killer in Nazi occupied Paris. Previous issues had focused on the hunt for the killer while French authorties struggle to work under their Nazi inavders. Now that the occupation is over, new twists are introduced.  The Nazi’s are being taken to task and our hero detective is accused of having aided the Germans! Meanwhile the killer is still at large.  I feel like this comic is well researched both art and storywise. Strong plotting, smart dialogue and stylish art propel things along. The art is drawn with a slashy brush line, leaving open lines in the art and is colored with a limited palette making this book visually stand apart from your standard superhero comic. Everything about this comic, beyond the settings and characters obviously, feels very European to me, like it was previously published in album format overseas before being broken into standard comic size chunks for release in America. I mean this as a big compliment. If you’re enjoying any of the Hill House line of comics, a Euro comics fan, or looking for something without a member of the capes and tight brigade in it, allow me to recommend this to you. It’s a great mystery and I can’t wait to find out how things wrap up and the fates of our characters.

9 out of 10.

That’s the last of the new comics, on to the older stuff!

Nine Volt #1-4

Published by Marvel Comics

Written by Cliff Son and Anthony Chun

Art by Anthony Chun

Released in 1997 by the Top Cow branch of Image Comics, Nine Volt is the tale of a girl robot, an alien invader and a government agent working together to stop an alien invasion by a different race of aliens than the one on our team of heroes! 

Back in the 90’s (like the Bojack Horseman credits song) I purchased the first issue of the series and that was it.  More recently, I said to myself, you need more comic books, so I tracked this series down. I’m glad I did.

This was a fun time. 

Re-reading the first issue of the series I can see why my younger self wouldn’t seek out the rest of the series. It’s basically all set up with not a lot of action, jumping from scene to scene with little explanation of who, what or why. A lot of the story is rooted in the reader having an understanding of the book’s influences and references, which I will say that I did not have at my disposal at the time. A lifetime of nerdery later, I’m better prepared for the world of Nine Volt.

First, the art by Anthony Chun is good, a little raw, but good. Definitely has an Arthur Adams element to it as well as a good dose of general 90’s comic book-y ness. It brings to mind the art of Dan Fraga on Kid Supreme ( a book I was obsessed with for some reason).  A quick Google turns up that Anthony went on to work in animation, including stints on shows like Bob’s Burgers and Rick and Morty!

By issue #2 things are up and running. The good alien is being confronted by our girl robot character, Digit, an Impulse type character (young, raised in VR, a bit impetuous), and two governmental agencies are arguing over jurisdiction. All the FBI agents look the same, fun! After a brief dust up the alien, Ragnor, is soon working with Digit and the good guys. Meanwhile the bad aliens are taking control of a young, grunge-y looking preacher and his flock. The team assembles, led by a real Dirk Squarejaw type, Frank Holden from Defsci (Defensive Science? I dunno). A love story is started, it’s revealed that Digit is the daughter of the crazy professor that made her, Ragnor reveals the story of how the evil aliens decimated his home world. There’s a battle against the bad aliens where Digit, may or may not have heroically sacrificed herself . It’s a bit anticlimactic and some stof the plot lines mentioned advance a bit  too quickly/tritely. That being typed, the creators pull this off nicely. It was very entertaining, if a little light. 

If there was more to this series I would read it and it’s a shame there’s not more. 

I’m ready for the Kickstarter reboot!

This, as stated earlier, was a lot of fun. It’s got an X-Files/Independence Day vibe to it, with all the aliens and secret government agency stuff. Plus a good dose of 90’s Image goodness. Despite Digit being prominently featured on the cover, she pretty much equally shares page time with all the other characters and is not treated as a cheesecake pin-up.  The art, although raw and Image-y, doesn’t push style over storytelling. 

It all adds up to a good read. A back issue bin gem!

7 out of 10! Recommended!

I read more but I can’t remember what, so that should say something about the quality of those books.

Until next time!

[networkingdefinition]

Vietnam Quotes

Official Website: Vietnam Quotes

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• A country that has been through as much as Vietnam has to have some crazy music somewhere. – Henry Rollins • A first novel of astonishing force, craft and beauty, The Headmaster’s Wager conjures up a dizzyingly evocative wartime Saigon in the story of Percival Chen, a Chinese schoolmaster in Vietnam. This extraordinary book made me weep. Read it. – Janice Y. K. Lee • A great read; an exciting, frightening account of organized crime today. But like all important works of nonfiction, it goes further… This book is must reading for anyone with an interest in the enduring effects of the Vietnam War, the subject of crime in our streets, and the issue of personal responsibility in a harsh, chaotic world. – Le Ly Hayslip • A lot of people have warned President Clinton that Bosnia will turn into another Vietnam, which would be embarrassing for him because he’ll have to go back to college. – Bill Maher • A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death.I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America. – Myra MacPherson • After every major conflict – World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the fall of the Soviet Union – what happened was that we ultimately hollowed out the force, largely by doing deep across-the-board cuts. – Leon Panetta • After four or five different wars, I grew weary of that work, partly because in an open war, open to coverage, as Vietnam was, it’s not that difficult, really. – Morley Safer • After the ’30s, we said, “no more Munichs.” And it got us in a lot of problems. Then we said, “No more Vietnams.” Now if we say, “No more Iraqs,” the next one won’t be an Iraq. It will be something different. You can’t learn lessons. – Brent Scowcroft • All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it. – Michael Herr • America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. – John le Carre • America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help-because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.- Martha Gellhorn • Any of these Vietnam vets that have been there and know the deal, they don’t feel that any Hollywood endeavor about the Vietnam era has ever gotten it right yet. – Sam Elliott • As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding. – Alan Moore

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Vietnam', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_vietnam').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_vietnam img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Back in the old Corp, we weren’t training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam. – R. Lee Ermey • Because the GIs were sent massively to South Vietnam, maybe it’s a good idea to have a broadcast for them. – Hanoi Hannah • Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters. – Margaret Atwood • Before we put an American in harm’s way, tell us why. No one wants to see the region descend into further chaos. There’s a lot of concern about getting embroiled in another Vietnam and … about sending American troops once again to fight someone else’s war. – Xavier Becerra • Being in Vietnam changed him [Johnny Cash] fundamentally. He was devastated when we went into Iraq. – Rosanne Cash • Bill Klinton was the ultimate rock star as president. I don’t think as a result of his presidency we will ever have a rock star as president again. In the same way that we will never get involved in another Vietnam. – Joe Eszterhas • But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn’t be drafted until we were 20. – Mel Gibson • But despite their heroic acts, the Vietnam Veterans of America continued to struggle to establish a combat badge in honor of these brave pilots and medics. – Tim Holden • By 1973, John Kerry had already accused American soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, thrown someone else’s medals to the ground in an anti-war demonstration, and married his first heiress. – Ann Coulter • By the year 2025, 500 million people will die of smoking. Now, that’s a Vietnam War every day for 27 years. That’s the Titanic sinking every 27 minutes for 27 years. – C. Everett Koop • Charles Reich discredits reason because it has been used to justify the war in Vietnam, which is like deciding that because your mother has cooked you a few bad meals you must never eat again. – Molly Haskell • ‘Dare to Discipline’ was published in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and a culture of rebellion. The book was written in that context, but the principles of child rearing have not changed. – James Dobson • Everybody respects the Vietnam Veterans of America. – R. Lee Ermey • Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform,” she said. “I know Big John Karpinski was,” I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John’s son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag. – Kurt Vonnegut • For my generation – the “Children of Nixon,” as I call us in the book – the Lebanese civil war was an iconic event. Downtown Beirut became a metaphor for so many things: man’s inhumanity to man, what Charles Bukowski called “the impossibility of being human.” It shaped our perceptions of war and human nature, just as Vietnam did for our parents. We used it to understand how the world works. – Annia Ciezadlo • Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we’re going down a rabbit hole once again – and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I’ve done some damn good here! – Errol Morris • From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted in the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government. – Noam Chomsky • Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn’t have happened. – Bob Schieffer • Have you ever had any anger about President Bush – who spent his time during the Vietnam War in the National Guard – running, in effect, a campaign that does its best to diminish your service in Vietnam? You have to be at least irritated by that, or have you been? – Dan Rather • Helvetica is the font of the Vietnam War. – Paula Scher • Hollywood never knew there was a Vietnam War until they made the movie. – Jerry Stiller • How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? – John F. Kerry • I always felt more emotionally attached to Cambodia than I did to Vietnam. – Ed Bradley • I am afraid if the present trend in Vietnam continues that direct confrontation, first of all between Washington and Peking, is inevitable. – U Thant • I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • I believe the liberal international order is under assault from Russia, and from other authoritarian regimes, and it is being questioned from within the West by nationalists, by nativists, and by people who doubt our – doubt the values of the West. We’ve gone through periods like this before; in the ’70s, after Vietnam and Watergate, and certainly in the ’30s, when people thought liberal democracy was dead, and the future belonged either to the fascists or the communists. – Daniel Fried • I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle. – Barry Goldwater • I couldn’t be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War. – Larry David • I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was. – Maya Lin • I didn’t like anti-Vietnam War art. I didn’t like feminist art. I thought it was heavy-handed and stupid – as art. – Robert Barry • I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy. – William Westmoreland • I flew in combat in Vietnam. I got shot at, I shot back, I got shot down. Compared to this flight, I felt a lot safer in combat. – Dick Rutan • I get very sad when I think about Vietnam where there seems to be no choice but violence. This violence goes on for centuries perpetuating itself. – Yoko Ono • I had been in that part of the world as a soldier in Korea, so I had been interested in Vietnam. – Michael Caine • I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds of energies in rehabilitation of its poor as long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • I like automatic weapons. I fought for my right to use them in Vietnam. – Oliver Stone • I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money.” (On Vietnam War) – Charles de Gaulle • I said to the president’s wife, Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason. – Eartha Kitt • I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture – the threat, the interrogation. But it didn’t happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC’s head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam’s police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.) – Eddie Adams • I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service. – John F. Kerry • I served two tours of duty in Vietnam. I won the Bronze Star. I won the Purple Heart. – Ron Kovic • I think most of us secretly know – and those of us at the radical middle are inclined to say – that without such concepts as duty and honor and service, no civilization can endure. … I suspect most Americans would respond positively to a [draft] if it gives us some choice in how to exercise that duty and service. … Exactly the kind of choice my generation did not have during the Vietnam War. – Mark Satin • I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis. And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of that last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions – whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam – that we can work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running. – Robert Kennedy • I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren’t weak. Isn’t that what Nixon kept saying? “We have to show the world that we’re not weak.” So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. ‘Cause we couldn’t beat these kids in black pajamas. – Stephen King • I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it. – George McGovern • I try to express with the camera what the story is, to get to the heart of the story with picture. In battle I look at things first in terms of people, second in terms of strategies or casualties… To tell a story, you don’t photograph one hundred dead civilians to prove there were one hundred dead civilians. You photograph one dead civilian with an expression on his face that says, This is what it’s like if you’re a dead civilian in Vietnam. – Horst Faas • I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it’s harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam. – Francis Ford Coppola • I want to make sure that the Coast Guard people in Vietnam know that I am hearing about them often and that I am pleased with what I hear. – Wallace M. Greene • I was arrested 1965. I had come back from the merchant marines, got into conversations about the war. I had never heard of Vietnam until I was in the merchant marines in constitution square in Athens, and I picked up the New York Herald or the International Herald Tribune and there was my first introduction of the word Vietnam. – Bill Ayers • I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. – Jon Voight • I was getting money for showing one man killing another. Two lives were destroyed and I was getting paid for it. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam’s police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.) – Eddie Adams • I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.- Benjamin Spock • I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon’s urgings for me to go there. – Sammy Davis, Jr. • I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.- George McGovern • I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. – Stephen Ambrose • I was very much a child of the 1960s. I protested the Vietnam War and grew up in a fairly politicized home. My father was like a cross between William Kunstler and Zorba the Greek. I grew up among left-wing lawyers. – Marianne Williamson • I wasn’t for Vietnam. When I told that to the hippie newspaper, all my people got nervous. – Loretta Lynn • I went to Vietnam; it was my first assignment as a reporter for the UPI, and I never could get away from the war. – Neil Sheehan • I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of the things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I’m…very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families. – Jane Fonda • I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century. – Oliver North • If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • If John McCain were really a war hero he would’ve won Vietnam. – Zach Braff • If people become ecstatic the whole society will have to change, because this society is based on misery. If people are blissful you cannot lead them to war — to Vietnam, or to Egypt, or to Israel. No. Someone who is blissful will just laugh and say: This is nonsense! – Rajneesh • If Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot placate ISIS, how are we ever gonna be able to? And placate is clearly what John Kerry, who once served in Vietnam, and Barack Hussein O and Hillary Clinton think is the only thing we have to do is placate them. Because we’re at fault, see. – Rush Limbaugh • If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people’s vanity and foolishness. – Kurt Vonnegut • If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we’ll have to fight in San Francisco. – Lyndon B. Johnson • If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves. – John Kenneth Galbraith • If you get a President (Hillary) Clinton, you might well find, just as after Vietnam, that there is a retraction from Iraq and of American influence in the world. And in a couple of years the Europeans will be complaining about that too. – John Bolton • If you look at China – and frankly, Vietnam now is doing a big number, and you look at Japan and India and Mexico – Mexico’s killing us at the border and they’re killing us with trade. – Donald Trump • If you run an Internet search on Vietnam and the war, most of the information you get begins at about 1962. I think this is telling. It is missing the whole period that led up to the reasons the war happened in the first place. – Brendan Fraser • I’ll always have the memories of guys I lost in Vietnam. And I’ve lost friends since the war, but I’ll always have the memories. The riches are great, but riches aren’t everything, because when you go you can only take your memories and your word and your honor to the grave with you. – Michael E. Thornton • I’ll tell you what I really think about politicians. The other night I watched some politicians on television talking about Vietnam. I wanted very much to burst through the screen with a flame thrower and burn their eyes out and their balls off and then inquire from them how they would assess the action from a political point of view. – Harold Pinter • I’m not going to say I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I’m going to say I’m opposed to war. But I’m also opposed to protests that deny other people their rights. – John Wooden • I’m not so sure that people consider homelessness to be as important as, say, the Vietnam War. One should never even try to equate them because, of course, they’re tragedies on both sides of the coin. – Graham Nash • I’m old enough to remember John Kennedy sending a few advisers into Vietnam. I’m very worried we’ll get in and we’ll get mired down in something we don’t have any idea what to do [with]. – Jim McDermott • In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison – they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years. – Noam Chomsky • In F-111, I question the collusion between the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism, and advertising. – James Rosen • In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do. – Hugo Black • In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962. – Noam Chomsky • In the ’60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know? – Yoko Ono • Iraq was a war of choice, like Vietnam. – Chuck Hagel • It doesn t require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed it won t be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate. – George McGovern • It is a fact that the Left routinely resists, then as now: Americans fought and died in Vietnam for freedom, just as they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Whatever mistakes generals and policymakers have made along the way cannot detract from that essential truth – which should be a part of any reliable history. – Arthur L. Herman • It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail. – Jeannette Rankin • It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.) – Junot Diaz • It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. – Walter Cronkite • It was a tough press conference for President Bush. He spent the first ten minutes trying to pronounce Fallujah. … Bush insisted that Iraq is not Vietnam. Of course not, he avoided Vietnam. – David Letterman • It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam. – Mitt Romney • It would be good for the workers in Vietnam even as it helps make sure that they’re not undercutting competition here in the United States. – Barack Obama • It would take 2,000 Vietnam Memorials to list the [Twentieth] century’s war dead. – Kim Stanley • It’s a weird scene. You win a few baseball games and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by reporters and TV men with cameras asking you about Vietnam and race relations. – Vida Blue • It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas. – Ronald Reagan • It’s very common to say that Star Wars in the late ’70s, that was kind of perfect for Cold War culture and the aftermath of Vietnam in the ’60s to have an upbeat, hopeful, cartoonish tale of a hero’s journey. I think those explanations are easy to offer and almost always wrong. – Cass Sunstein

• John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam in the prison camps took torture to avoid saying. – Paul Galanti • Let us put an end to self-inflicted wounds. Let us remember that our national unity is a most priceless asset. Let us deny our adversaries the satisfaction of using Vietnam to pit Americans against Americans. – Gerald R. Ford • Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that. – Richard M. Nixon • Many of the architects of the Vietnam War became near pariahs as they spent the remainder of their lives in the futile quest to explain away their decisions at the time. – Graydon Carter • Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there. – William Westmoreland • Moms and daughters can negotiate over anything, and they can go on longer than it took to settle the Vietnam War. – Steve Schirripa • Money, as a sort of drug, has become a great danger to our development. There will be no progress in our country unless we win the fight against corruption. This is a question of survival for the Communist Party of Vietnam and for socialism. – Nguyen Minh Triet • Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early ’60’s – the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam’s rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that’s part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it’s fabrication. But it’s “official truth” now. – Noam Chomsky • My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing “Welfare Cadillac” (instead performing the anti-war songs “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and “Man in Black”). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist’s capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities. – Rosanne Cash • My father had gone to Vietnam. – Elizabeth Edwards • My film is not a movie; it’s not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. – Francis Ford Coppola • My shoulders sagged. Really, is it too much to ask that I be able to come home from a long day of work and relax? Oh, no. I have to come home and read a bunch of letters written to the love of my life by his fiancée, who, if I am correct, had him killed a hundred and fifty years ago. Then, as if that is not bad enough, he wants me to explain the Vietnam War. – Meg Cabot • My solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese Communists] frankly that they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we’re going to bomb them into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power – not with ground forces. – Curtis LeMay • News footage came on the TV during dinner of bloody bodies coming back from battle in Vietnam, or the race riots in the South, people getting hosed in Selma, Alabama, or the Biafra war, where I got my name. In my household, it was explained and discussed with the children, as a way of educating us from when we first started grade school why racism and war were wrong, what this all really means. – Jello Biafra • Ninety-five percent of women’s experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive… women didn’t go to Vietnam and blow things up. They are not Rambo. – Jodie Foster • No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. – Richard M. Nixon • Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place. – John F. Kennedy • Nuclear power will be the Vietnam issue of the 1980s. – Jerry Brown • Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share. – Dalton Trumbo • Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions. – Phillip Noyce • On my discharge, I had the challenge of putting my life back together but Vietnam stuck in the inner recesses of my mind. – Doug Rice • On the Vietnam War: I’ve lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I’ve lived under situations where you don’t declare war. We’ve been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war. – Lewis Blaine Hershey • One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans. – George H. W. Bush • One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict. – Walter Dean Myers • One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America’s national security. – George McGovern • One-hundred facts about Vietnam and we studied the fact sheet and got in to these arguments and it was fantastic, and I remember one moment when we heard two students saying don’t talk to those guys, meaning my brother and me. They’ve just memorized that stupid fact sheet. And we thought, gosh do we sound that good? It didn’t seem possible. But that was my introduction to politics. – Bill Ayers • Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation. – Lyndon B. Johnson • Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective – taking over the South by force – could not be achieved. – Lyndon B. Johnson • Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam. – Lyndon B. Johnson • Our young men in Vietnam have not only acquitted themselves in an outstanding manner during combat operations, but they also have been outstanding ambassadors of goodwill in the vital civic action and pacification work among the tortured populace of South Vietnam. – Lewis William Walt • Philadelphia reflected the national turmoil over race and the Vietnam War, often exploding on my watch. – Andrea Mitchell • President Bush is not fazed by other candidates’ war records. He said, I may have not fought in Vietnam, but I created one. – Craig Kilborn • President Bush’s campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his services records thrown out. – Jay Leno • President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone. – William Westmoreland • Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. – Zbigniew Brzezinski • Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami and London. – Nicholas Stern • Robert Capa: He was a good friend and a great and very brave photographer. It is bad luck for everybody that the percentages caught up with him. It is especially bad for Capa. (On Capa’s death in Vietnam, May, 27, 1954) – Ernest Hemingway • Since There are so many questions about what the president was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda denouncing America’s racist war in Vietnam? – Jeff Gannon • So much of my work involved the Vietnam War that it would have been obscene to show it in a gallery. But now, it’s different; it’s important to remember and to enable the young to discover what to some of us is still so present. – Martha Rosler • So one important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it. Their service should be honored. – Paul Begala • Some 30 years later I found myself back here again [in Vietnam] on what was to be a short visit that lasted months, and since then I’ve been living my life with one foot in Ho Chi Minh City and the other in Fair Oaks, California. – Doug Rice • Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish. – Henry A. Kissinger • Some people just wanted to blow it all to hell, animal, vegetable and mineral. They wanted a Vietnam they could fit into their car ashtrays. – Michael Herr • Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka. – James Buchan • Sure Vietnam is a dirty war. I’ve never heard of a clean one. – Bob Hope • Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam. – Marshall McLuhan • Thank you for the sacrifices you and your families are making. Our Vietnam Veterans have taught us that no matter what are positions may be on policy, as Americans and patriots, we must support all of our soldiers with our thoughts and our prayers. – Zach Wamp • The American claim that the bombing of North Vietnam was directed against military targets does not withstand direct investigation. – Noam Chomsky • The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam. – J. G. Ballard • The American people today are involved in a warfare more deadly than the war in Vietnam, but few of them seem aware of it and even fewer of them are doing anything about it. This is a war that is being waged against the American environment, against our lands, air, and water, which are the basis of that environment. – Norman Cousins • The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements. – J. William Fulbright • The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • The boys that were running away from America because they didn’t want to get involved with the Vietnam War had come to me. They would tell me how they felt. – Eartha Kitt • The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100% of which were black, were the ultimate sacrifice. – Marion Barry • The Contessa was surely way ahead of her time, too, in believing that men were not only usless and idiotic, but downright dangerous. That idea wouldn’t catch on big in her native country until the last three years of the Vietnam War. – Kurt Vonnegut • The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You’ll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There’s no end to the possibilities! – Jim Carrey • The hardest thing for me in Vietnam wasn’t seeing the wounded and dead. It was watching the big transport jets come in, bringing loads of fresh new boys for the war. – Johnny Cash • The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses. – Edward Abbey • The International Control Commission isn’t doing anything, it’s never done anything. What good does it do to be on it or not? Before opening the embassy in Hanoi, I gave it a lot of thought, but it wasn’t really a painful decision. American policy in Vietnam is what it is, in Saigon the situation is anything but normal, and I’m happy to have done what I did. – Indira Gandhi • The lessons I learned in Vietnam and in the NFL reinforced one another: teamwork, sacrifice, responsibility, accountability, and leadership. – Rocky Bleier • The only important lesson from the Vietnam War is this: Democrats lose wars. – Ann Coulter • The Quiet American is anti the people who took them into the Vietnam War. – Michael Caine • The race for the White House should be about leadership, and leadership requires that one help heal the wounds of Vietnam, not reopen them. – John F. Kerry • The same people that are with me for not going to Vietnam because I saved them and their children.The same people will give me hell if I turn to them and say, ‘let’s free my people now’.They’re with me on one part of my beliefs about the war, that’s all. Not for my freedom. – Muhammad Ali • The TPP is another corporate-backed agreement that is the latest in a series of trade policies which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, pushed down wages for American workers and led to the decline of our middle class. We want American companies to create decent-paying jobs in America, not just low-wage countries like Vietnam, Malaysia or China. The TPP must be defeated. – Bernie Sanders • The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security. – George McGovern • The U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement in 1954. But in the late ’50’s the United States organized an internal repression in South Vietnam, not using its troops, but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh – which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam. – Noam Chomsky • The United States can certainly defeat North Vietnam, but the United States cannot defeat a guerrilla war which is being raged from a sanctuary through a pattern of penetration, intervention, evasion, which is very difficult for a technologically advanced country like the United States to combat. – Zbigniew Brzezinski • The United States must keep a low profile in Vietnam so we can negotiate its neutralization like we did in Laos . – Roger Hilsman • The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names. – William Westmoreland • The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn’t make it. – Henry A. Kissinger • The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man. – Ho Chi Minh • The violence of the Left is symbolic, the injuries are not intended. The violence of the Right is real – directed at people, designed to cause injuries. Vietnam, nuclear weapons, police out of control are intentional forms of violence. The violence from the Right is aimed directly at people and the violence from the Left is aimed at institutions and symbols. – George Carlin • The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I’d call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America’s whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn’t part of the local atmosphere.- Stephen Vizinczey • The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.- Stephen Ambrose • The war in vietnam threatened to tear our society apart, and the political and philosophical disagreements that separated each side continue, to some extent. It’s been said that these memorials reflect a hunger for healing. – Ronald Reagan • The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. “Defeat” will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity and venality of the Establishment’s role will force a policy review. – Terence McKenna • The worst nightmare I ever had about Vietnam was that I had to go back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror. – Oliver Stone • There are some similarities, of course (between Iraq and Vietnam). Death is terrible. – George W. Bush • There are two types of courage involved with what I did. When it comes to picking up a rifle, millions of people are capable of doing that, as we see in Iraq or Vietnam. But when it comes to risking their careers, or risking being invited to lunch by the establishment, it turns out that’s remarkably rare. – Daniel Ellsberg • There’s just no question that the United States was trying desperately to prevent the independence of South Vietnam and to prevent a political settlement inside South Vietnam. And in fact it went to war precisely to prevent that. It finally bombed the North in 1965 with the purpose of trying to get the North to use its influence to call off the insurgency in the South. – Noam Chomsky • These men were wrongfully rejected, the veterans. The fighting man should never have been blamed for Vietnam. – Neil Sheehan • They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that’s what happened. – William F. Buckley, Jr. • This Memorial Day should remind us of the greatness that past generations of Americans achieved from Valley Forge to Vietnam, and it should inspire us with the determination to keep America great and free by keeping America safe and strong in our own time, a time of unique destiny and opportunity for our Nation. – Richard M. Nixon • This nation should be less worried about putting the Vietnam syndrome behind us than restarting the World War II victory syndrome that resulted in the Vietnam syndrome in the first place. – Karl Marlantes • This war in Vietnam is, I believe, a war for civilization. Certainly it is not a war of our seeking. It is a war thrust upon us and we cannot yield to tyranny. – Francis Spellman • Tim O’Brien’s book about Vietnam, The Things They Carried, has won every award, is studied in college and is considered to be definitive. But it’s fiction. – Dave Eggers • To me, Columbine is just as awful as Vietnam and it’s just as awful as anything else. – Marilyn Manson • Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam… These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America’s leadership in the world. – Gerald R. Ford • Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because] from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time. – Dan Quayle • Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war. – Jeane Kirkpatrick • Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes. – Kurt Vonnegut • Vietnam was as much a laboratory experiment as a war. – John Pilger • Vietnam was really an idealistic thing to stop the spread of communism, which, incidentally, it did. It was a pretty costly way to do it, but it achieved its goal. – Tom Wolfe • Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods. – Michael Herr • Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time. (…) Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning. Long time. – Alex Garland • Vietnam, we take over by doing pedicure! That’s how we take over. We take over one foot at a time, damn it – that’s the plan of attack right there. We take over from the toe up, that’s the plan. We spread over USA like fungus from the toe. – Dat Phan • Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal. – Conrad Black • We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible. – Ronald Reagan • We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric. – John F. Kerry • We ended the war in Vietnam, and brought the troops home. – Jill Stein • We have forgotten that Vietnam, and Iraq resent being invaded and know the ground better than we do. – Wendell Berry • We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers. – Joni Mitchell • We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. – Martin Luther King, Jr. • We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it….I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come. – George McGovern • We went to America a few times and [Brian] Epstein always tried to waffle on at us about saying nothing about Vietnam. So there came a time when George [Harrison] and I said ‘Listen, when they ask next time, we’re going to say we don’t like that war and we think they should get right out.’ That’s what we did. – John Lennon • We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children. – John F. Kerry • We were very excited and we brought speakers in – then it so happened that there was a marine recruiter in the center of campus and one of our brothers, one SDS person put up a sign with a quote from the Nuremberg trial and an arrow point at the marine recruiter, saying, “This man is a war criminal.” My younger brother and I, he was freshman and I was a sophomore, got caught up in the debates that were swirling around the center of campus and the young Trotskyists had put out a fact sheet on Vietnam that was phenomenal. – Bill Ayers • We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and businessmen. Thirty years ago, no one could have foreseen the huge expansion of the Vietnam War, wage and price controls, two oil shocks, the resignation of a president, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a one-day drop in the Dow of 508 points, or treasury bill yields fluctuating between 2.8% and 17.4%. – Warren Buffett • Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They’re working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler. – Barbara Bush • What happened in the following years? Well, I think that among the educated classes it stayed the same. You talk about humanitarian intervention, it’s like Vietnam was a humanitarian intervention. Among the public, it’s quite different. – Noam Chomsky • What really happened in Vietnam was- all these things are away games for the American military. We’re not on our home turf, which means to succeed there has to be a partner. And the definition of partnership is someone willing to risk their lives in their home area to prevail because they think it’s necessary to build a decent life and a better life for their people. – William J. Clinton • What we do with this peace-whether we preserve it and defend it, or whether we lose it and let it slip away-will be the measure of our worthiness of the spirit and sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in two World Wars, Korea, and in Vietnam. – Richard M. Nixon • When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that. – Ang Lee • When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don’t pry into other people’s business. – Maya Lin • When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves. – William Westmoreland • When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won. – Howard Zinn • When the women’s liberation movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, at the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe in the basic principles of any of those philosophies. – Michael Moore • When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It’s lost in Afghanistan. It’s lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now – you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army – not America, not anybody – can control. And it’s just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world. – Arundhati Roy • Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? – Muhammad Ali • Why was the United States so afraid of an independent South Vietnam? Well, I think the reason again is pretty clear from the internal government documents. Precisely what they were afraid of was that the “takeover” of South Vietnam by nationalist forces would not be brutal. They feared it would be conciliatory and that there would be successful social and economic development – and that the whole region might work. – Noam Chomsky • With 450,000 U. S. troops now in Vietnam, it is time that Congress decided whether or not to declare a state of war exists with North Vietnam. Previous congressional resolutions of support provide only limited authority. Although Congress may decide that the previously approved resolution on Vietnam given President Johnson is sufficient, the issue of a declaration of war should at least be put before the Congress for decision. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • With respect to where we are now, we have a voluntary army. And if we ever go back to conscription I hope that at time it will be the kind of conscription that was put in at the end of the Vietnam War. And that is, everybody is equally liable to be called to serve the nation in time of conflict. – Colin Powell • With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy—something a lot of people didn’t notice and maybe still don’t. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliché archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff was like reading Vietnam War fiction on peyote. – Steven Erikson • Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior. – Max Cleland • You don’t attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. – James Hillman • You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam. – Richard M. Nixon

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