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0aurelion-sol0 · 3 years

Text

"There's no place like gnome."

Stranger Things 3: The Game.

Gnomes 1-10. 🧙‍♂️

IT'S FINALLY HERE!

It's no secret that the Duffers take a lot of inspirations from Pop Culture. From the most well known movies to the more obscure comics, they are always able to sneak a reference somewhere everytime. And they are also able to make it connected to the story.

I've bragged about how the Stranger Things expanded universe in media is one of the best out there compared to many others. I think that the Duffers, the writers or people in the highest places of the marketing are really paying attention to what comes out of the ST franchise because there is no way to have such content with so many details without someone looking into them.

And ST3: The Game is a very good example of that.

So let's start! The first 10 Gnomes out of 50 that you have to find in the game.

BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW!

"There's elements that could please those who makes metas/analyzes or theories. Especially things related to possible future plot points, easter eggs, references in previous seasons mainly season 3 like unsolved mysteries or unanswered questions and for future seasons such as season 4 like foreshadowing or teasers, trailers or as of lately the sneak peek."

If you have anything you'd like to add, might think I have missed or think it might be referencing something else don't hesitate to share it by commenting or reblogging.

(Say thanks to @hawkinsschoolcounselor for having helped me with some of them. )

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Gnome #1: Johnny

"He's here... with an axe."

Overall plot:

"The film's central character is Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the isolated historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Wintering over with Jack are his wife, Wendy Torrance, and young son, Danny Torrance. Danny is gifted with "the shining", psychic abilities that enable him to see into the hotel's horrific past. The hotel cook, Dick Hallorann, also has this ability and is able to communicate with Danny telepathically. The hotel had a previous winter caretaker who went insane and killed his family and himself. After a winter storm leaves the Torrances snowbound, Jack's sanity deteriorates due to the influence of the supernatural forces that inhabit the hotel, placing his wife and son in danger."

So I assume a lot of you know The Shining by Stanley Kubrick. A movie which was adapted from the novel of the same name by Stephen King in 1977.

There's a lot of things that could have served as an inspiration for ST.

A boy/child who has psychic abilities = Eleven has psychic abilities such as telekinesis. Will has his True Sight which consist in seeing what the MF was seeing and feeling.

Now there's also the theme of family and parenthood that is also a big theme in Stranger Things. Especially abusive parenthood such as Brenner, Lonnie and even Hopper to a smaller degree.

In Shining, Jack tries to kill his family with an axe due to supernatural forces that are in the hotel but there's a difference between King and Kubrick. While King specifically said that Jack was heavily influenced by the Hotel, Kubrick shows that Jack always had that sinister violence in him even before they arrived at the hotel.

It's interesting to draw a parallel to Billy and Will, both characters called William who tried to kill their families and other people while being possessed. But Billy compared to Will was shown to have been abusive even before that. Dacre Montgomery also said that he was inspired by Jack Nicholson's performance in the Shining for his character Billy.

Joyce and Jonathan were shown to get ready to fight the monsters by taking an axe.

It's also interesting to note that Jack dies in the snow while a blizzard is happening outside the hotel. Much like the storm of the Mindflayer who is in the Upside Down, the same Mindflayer who "likes it cold". While in the book, the Overlook explodes and burn.

(Cold vs Fire much like everything Upside Down related not liking Fire.)

Also "Johnny" = "Jonathan", it's kind of similar and Jonathan did wield an axe before. Maybe this is teasing parts of Jonathan storyline next seasons ?

The gnome was also found in Mike's basement, Mike who wants to be a writer when he's older just like Jack.

Let's just hope that Jonathan and Mike don't get the same fate as Jack.

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Gnome #2: Christine

"Two bright, beaming lights for eyes."

Overall plot:

"Written by Bill Phillips and based on Stephen King's 1983 novel of the same title, the movie follows the changes in the lives of Arnie Cunningham, an awkward and unpopular teenager, his friends, his family, and his teenage enemies in Rockbridge, California after Arnie buys a classic red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine, licence number CQB 241, a car that seems to have a jealous, possessive personality – and a mind of its own, which has a bad influence on Arnie. After working on a car in a junkyard owned by Will Darnell, Arnie drops his glasses, starts dressing like a 1950's greaser and develops an arrogant and paranoid personality. He than decides to invite and date the most beautiful girl in highschool, Leigh, who will soon become the next victim of Christine."

I was actually quite surprised by how this story parallels Stranger Things a lot.

First off, Christine is very much like The Mindflayer, a dangerous supernatural being set out to destroy anyone who is in her way, the people who tries to take the things that she thinks belongs to her or threatens her. This is very much relevant to The Mindflayer who after being hurt by the Fire created by the Hawkins Lab was upset and attacked everyone he could. Or as Will putted "Not me, everyone else."

This is very much like Christine who tried to kill Leigh because she was taking her place in the life of Arnie. Christine also tried to kill the bullies of Arnie who after a conflit with him, tried to destroy the car which angered Christine heavily.

The Mindflayer has been described someone who views himself as superior to other species and wants to conquer them, even if it's not his real "goal", the description fits anyone who is possessive and paranoid.

Both the MF and Christine are associated with the color red. Red storm = red color of the car.

Arnie ressembles Will and Billy alot. Will is an awkward and unpopular teenager who after being possessed by the Mindflayer became very different and more violent. Billy was shown to be paranoid, jealous, violent and his look even ressembles the one Arnie takes after repairing Christine.

Both of these boys have the same name as Will Darnell, the owner of a junkyard. Just like the boys in Season 1 who takes shelter in a junkyard, or in season 2 where they fight the Demodogs.

Billy dies, killed by the Mindflayer just like Arnie who was completely possessed by Christine who tried to kill Leigh and Dennis, his best friend after they tried to destroy the car when they realised the supernatural nature of it.

Billy's car ressembles a lot Christine with those lights on. Especially with shots like in the Void or at Starcourt during the night.

Chrissy, a new character that will be in season 4, the most popular girl in Hawkins High like Leigh, has a name that is the diminutive of Christine. It is said that under the perfect surface lies a dark secret. Much like the car Christine, while a beauty is actually a dangerous supernatural being. We'll see if the both of them actually connects in the show.

Also it is set in California where Billy and Max come from and has been rumored by many people due to set leaks (The Surfer Boy Pizza Van.) that it is where the Byers went. I won't get into it in this post but this could be a tease or hint of that IF the set leaks ARE true and not fake to mess with people and the fandom.

Arnie also dies in a car crash having been completely possessed by the evil powers of Christine which is something we see in the sneak peek of ST4. It also reminds of Carrie who has a bully named Chris who she kills in a car crash with her boyfriend Billy aka William.

So will someone die from that car crash ? Who is it ? Chrissy, Joyce, Lonnie ? We can only speculate.

The gnome is also found outside the Wheeler's house where Karen lives near the community pool where Billy works and where the car of Billy is located during the first few chapters of the game. Again, a "bad boy" hitting on the beautiful girl in town. (with a lot of creepy subtext all over it.)

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Gnome #3: Doc

"Always mumbling something about being late."

Overall plot:

"Set in 1985, in the town of Hill Valley, California, the story follows Marty McFly, a teenager accidentally sent back to 1955 in a time-traveling DeLorean automobile built by his eccentric scientist friend Doctor Emmett "Doc" Brown. Trapped in the past, Marty inadvertently prevents his future parents' meeting—threatening his very existence—and is forced to reconcile the pair and somehow get back to the future."

So I don't think I need to explain why this is here given how much it has been shown and mentioned in season 3. But few things are interesting here, the fact that California is mentioned is a big deal for me again. I know you are aware of the set leaks just as I am aware, if we can trust them than this could be a hint of that location.

Next, we have the theme of Time. Now ever since ST4 was announced, clocks and times have been a key feature in the promotion. Who know what this might mean but again, we're not going to develop that in the post.

There is also the whole funny scenes of Robin realising that indeed Marty's mother had tried to "bang" her own son. Now given the nature of the shown, certain images in the show during certain events and certain stories, you know to what it connects and to which theories it connects. Won't develop further on it but it can be used as an element that can go into those theories.

The gnome is also found outside of Starcourt Mall where Robin and Steve talk about "Back to the Future". It is also where Billy has his "Back to te Future" moment with his car going extremely fast just like the DeLorean.

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Gnome #4: Indiana

"Master of Adventure."

Overall plot:

"After arriving in India, Indiana Jones is asked by desperate villagers to find a mystical stone and rescue their children from a Thuggee cult practicing child slavery, black magic, and ritualistic human sacrifice in honor of the goddess, Kali."

Fun fact, on Twitter for ST3 promo, a parody poster of this same movie has been posted here of the official ST account.

Jim is obviously Indiana Jones, the look speaks for itself and when he is in the Tunnels in season 2, there's a lot of Indiana Jones imagery.

And of course Kali as 008, a Hindu goddess but as we will see here, it parallels more the Mindflayer.

In 1935, Indiana Jones survives a murder attempt by Lao Che, a crime boss in Shanghai who has hired him to retrieve the remains of Emperor Nurhaci. With his young orphaned Chinese sidekick, Short Round, and the nightclub singer, Willie Scott, in tow, Indy flees Shanghai on a cargo aircraft. While the three of them are asleep, the pilots (employed by Lao Che) dump the fuel and escape via parachute, leaving the plane to crash over the Himalayas. The three narrowly manage to survive by jumping out of the plane on an inflatable raft.

(I wonder if this could be something we see in season 4 with Hopper where he tries to escape on a plane and ends up crashing somewhere or is betrayed by someone who he asked the help of. Now it's a trio and in season 3, Jim, Joyce, Alexei and Murray are the main group that fits this trio. Jim for all the fighting and crazy shit, Joyce and Alexei are kind of like Short Round, they are the sidekicks of Hopper. Murray the role of Willie Scott since she speaks Chinese and him Russian and that Jim just like Indy finds annoying sometimes. Alexei is also kind of like Willie since he kinda goes along with them.

But if we also look at season 2, El is alot like Short Round since she is kind of an orphan too and has a father figure later on. It could also be Will since Hopper is with him a lot of times through season 2. Also Willie did felt out of her element like Alexei because of course he is Russian. Willie in itself doesn't have a lot in common with Joyce but still it's another connection to Will since she has a name close to the one of her sons. Something that does fit a bit more is Jim and Hopper both escaping death, of course Hopper at the end of season 3 but also during season 3 at the farm where he's being shot at by Gregori and than the car doesn't work and explodes and they have to make their way through the forest.

Willie Scott could also be referenced when El disguise herself as this pretty blonde girl in season 1.

Now however, Scoop Troops does fit certain parts of these trio. All the fighting with Steve like Indiana Jones but Robin got his brain because she cracked the code. Dustin and Erica are kinda like short round (especially Dustin who has kind of the same hat as short round.) and are referenced with all the others as children by Robin. Steve doesn't feel in his element like Willie with the three of them who are nerds just like Erica who also doesn't want to accept it. And Robin just like Willie speaks some languages.)

They ride down the mountain slopes and fall into a raging river, eventually arriving at the village of Mayapore in northern India. The villagers plead for their aid in retrieving the sacred stone (shivalinga) stolen from their shrine, along with their missing children, by evil forces in the nearby Pankot Palace. Indy agrees to do so, hypothesizing that the stone is one of the five Sankara stones given by the gods to help humanity fight evil. (It's kinda like Alexei who turns his back on the Russians, for his life of course and agrees to help Hopper close the gate to save Hawkins and their kids before monsters start to appear or may attack one of their kids. Now the stone could be something similar to the promethium or the two keys who opens the gate and is a highly valuable ressource. It also may be the Flayed who are needed to create the monster for the Mindflayer.)

The trio receive a warm welcome at Pankot Palace and are allowed to stay for the night as guests, attending a lavish, but revolting, banquet hosted by the young Maharajah. The officials rebuff Indy's theory that the Thuggee cult is responsible for their troubles. Later that night, Indy is attacked by an assassin. After Indy kills him, he discovers a series of tunnels hidden behind a statue and sets out to explore them, overcoming a number of booby-traps.

(This could be like when Hopper, Joyce and Murray disguised themselves as Russian soldiers but was than discovered by Grigori who attacks them.

The tunnels could be both groups discovering that there is a secret russian base underground and a gate which explains why there are monsters again in Hawkins but it also be the Source, Brimborn Steel Works, where the Mindflayer is lurking underground where he has cult-like followers who makes sacrifices for him to grow bigger and bigger.

It's also like the Tunnels in season 2 who explains why the soil of Hawkins seemed to literally rot. )

The trio reach an underground temple where the Thuggees worship Kali with human sacrifice. They discover that the Thuggees now possess three of the Sankara stones and have enslaved the children to search for the last two, hidden in the palace catacombs. As Indy tries to retrieve the stones, he, Willie, and Shorty are captured. Thuggee high priest Mola Ram forces Indy to drink a potion that puts him into a trance-like state in which he mindlessly serves the cult. (It's very much like Robin and Steve who after discovering the gate are catched by the Russians and than drugged to answer their questions. But also like the Flayed who drinks the chemicals and serves the Mindflayer like a mindless cult.)

Willie is prepared for sacrifice, while Shorty is put to work in the mines with the other children. Shorty escapes and returns to the temple, where he first frees Indy and, later, the Maharajah from the effects of the potion. Indy saves Willie and retrieves the stones. After freeing the children, Indy fights a hulking overseer and leaves him to be killed by a rock crusher. (Basically Dustin saves Steve and Robin. Willie being prepared for sacrifice is kind of like El prepared for sacrifice by Billy in 3x08 but also frees Billy from the effects of the Mindflayer by making him remember his mother, a pretty blonde woman like Willie and sacrifices himself. And Hopper fights Gregori, a "hulking overseer" and kills him.)

The trio escape from the temple, pursued by Thuggees, and barely escape Mola Ram's attempt to flood them out. They are again ambushed by Mola Ram and his henchmen on a rope bridge above a crocodile-infested river. Indy cuts the bridge, causing several of the henchmen to fall to the crocodiles and leaving the survivors to hang on for their lives. As Mola Ram and Indy struggle, Indy invokes the name of Shiva, causing the stones to glow red-hot and burn through Indy's satchel. Two of them fall out; Mola Ram tries to catch the third, but burns his hand and falls from the bridge and into the river, where he, too, is eaten by the crocodiles. (This can be connected to all the kids fighting in Hawkins with the Spider Monster. But the bridge could also fit for the key in the secret base where Hopper and Gregori fights. The gruesome death of Mola Ram is similar to the gruesome death that Gregori has.)

Indy catches the stone safely and climbs up just as a company of British Indian Army riflemen, sent by the Maharajah, arrive and open fire against the Thuggees to drive them away; the surviving Thuggees are soon cornered and arrested by more soldiers. Indy, Willie, and Shorty return safely to Mayapore with the stone and the missing children. (While it may end well in the movie, we know Billy and multiple people die, the Thuggees unlike the Russians have been captured while the Russians where all able to flee before the US Army arrives and Hopper is presumed dead. Only the children in both stories are alive but are probably traumatized for life.)

All in all we can see that this movie might have had a big influence on the plot of season 3 through many characters and more. It may have some hints about possible events for Hopper in season 4 or even beyond but that's about it for. It's a nice package of comparaisons and references though.

The gnome is found in the Hawkins Community Pool where Billy is. The same Billy who obeys mindlessly the Mindflayer and sacrifices people to it. Just like the Thuggees with Kali.

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Gnome #5: Chunk

"Posed in some odd dance maneuver."

Overall plot:

"In the film, a band of kids who live in the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, attempt to save their homes from foreclosure and, in doing so, they discover an old treasure map that takes them on an adventure to unearth the long-lost fortune of One-Eyed Willy, a legendary 17th-century pirate. During the adventure, they are chased by a family of criminals who want the treasure for themselves."

So first, let's get this out of the way, Sean Astin who play Bob Newby, our beloved who plays a character named Mikey.

The Goonies is a 1985 American adventure comedy film co-produced and directed by Richard Donner from a screenplay by Chris Columbus, based on a story by executive producer Steven Spielberg. In the film, kids who live in the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, attempt to save their homes from foreclosure and, in doing so, they discover an old treasure map that takes them on an adventure to unearth the long-lost fortune of One-Eyed Willy, a legendary 17th-century pirate. During the adventure, they are chased by a family of criminals who want the treasure for themselves.

I wonder if this might hint at some Season 4 plot right here. The Hawkins gang faces the threat of Hawkins becoming a literal ghost down and might need to find something to save it. Also Willy like William, again Will is still there.

The Goonies include optimist lead Goonie Mikey Walsh, his older brother Brandon, the inventive Data, the talkative Mouth, and the overweight klutz Chunk.

Rummaging through the Walshes' attic, they come across a 1632 doubloon and an old treasure map purporting to lead to the treasure of legendary pirate "One-Eyed Willy", believed to be located somewhere nearby. Mikey considers One-Eyed Willy to be the original Goonie. (It kinda reminds me of Mike who got mad at Max in season 2 and told her they didn't need another party member. And he mentionned Will first right after him.)

The kids overpower and bind Brandon and make their way to an abandoned restaurant on the coast that coincides with the map; Brandon soon follows alongside Andy, a cheerleader with a crush on him ( there has been cheerleaders that have been reported in season 4 such as Chrissy.); and Stef, Andy's friend. The group quickly discovers the derelict restaurant is a hideout of the Fratelli crime family: Francis, Jake, and their mother. (Maybe it is both a reference to the Russians in season 3 who have a hideout under the mall who have many restaurants. Or the Lab who OBVIOUSLY does a lot of illegal activities. )

The Goonies find a tunnel in the basement and follow it (like the tunnels made by the Mindflayer in season 2), but when Chunk flags down a motorist to go to the sheriff’s station, he gets abducted by the assailants and imprisoned with their hulking, deformed, younger brother Sloth. (This is obviously like Dustin who befriends Dart in season 2, a literal Demogorgon in the making.)

The Fratellis interrogate Chunk until he reveals where the Goonies have gone, and begin pursuit. Chunk is left behind with Sloth, but befriends him. After Sloth frees both of them, Chunk calls the sheriff, and both follow the trail of the Fratellis. (This is very reminiscent of Hopper in season 1 who gets interrogated by Lab agents or Steve and Robin by the Russians.)

The Goonies evade several deadly booby traps along the tunnels, while staying ahead of the Fratellis. Finally, they reach the grotto where Willy's pirate ship, the Inferno, is anchored. (Will also has a ship, the rainbow ship he drew for Joyce, also Inferno literally means Hell just like what Hawkins has been called.)

The group discovers the ship is filled with treasure, and they start filling their pockets, but Mikey warns them not to take any on a set of scales in front of Willy, considering that to be their tribute to him. As they leave the ship, the assailants appear and strip them of their loot. They start to bind the Goonies and make them walk the plank, until Chunk arrives with Sloth and distracts the assailants long enough for the Goonies to jump overboard and swim to safety. (It's the opposite of the season 2 finale, where Dustin has to distract Dart so that the other could pass through the tunnels.)

The Fratellis proceed to grab all the treasure they can, including those on Willy's scales; this triggers another booby trap that causes the grotto to cave in. With Sloth's help, the Goonies and Fratellis barely escape.

The two groups emerge on Astoria's beach, where they reunite with the Goonies' families and the police. The Fratellis are arrested, but Chunk prevents Sloth from also being taken; he invites Sloth to live with him, which Sloth accepts. ("Unfortunately", Dart compared to Sloth probably died.)

As the kids describe their adventure to their parents, the Walshes' housekeeper, Rosalita, discovers that Mikey's marble bag is filled with gems he took from the ship and had not been seized by the Fratellis. Mikey's father triumphantly rips up the foreclosure papers, declaring they have enough money to negate the foreclosure. As the Goonies celebrate, they see the Inferno, having broken free of the grotto, sailing off on its own in the distance. (Could it be hinting at a possible happy ending for Stranger Things ?)

So Fratellis, is similar to fratello which means "brother, fellow, neighbor" which perhaps could be a reference to the Mindflayer who is kind of our neighbor since he is basically in the same places but in the Upside Down. The Mindflayer also has been paralleled to Billy and other abusive father figures. Billy who is the brother of Max. He has also been paralleled to Kali through his anger and him attacking people who hurted him or might hurt him. Could in itself The Mindflayer should be taken or seen as some sort of family figure ? Maybe him being always associated with Will The Wise especially in 2x04 or someone who has the name Will like Billy is a connection. The same Billy who also parallels Russians who just like the Fratellis have secret hideouts.

Though the Fratellis are more motivated by greed which fits Brenner, Lonnie (who tried to use his son's death to gain money.) or Russians most.

Now Willy, Willy is a captain. Maybe it could be hinting at the fact that Will has more importance to the story than we think. There's also Inferno, "Hell" which is Hawkins but also the name of the ship. And Will has a rainbow ship... Could Hawkins be the ship of Will where his adventures are taking place ?

As for the dance... well as you've seen upper in the post: it's the "Truffle Shuffle Dance". It's something that Chunk has to do before entering Mikey's house. It's similar to what Dustin do at the beginning of season 1 to the bullies when he makes his bones crack due to his medical condition, cleidocranial dysplasia.

As for where this gnome is located, it's in Weathertop where Cerebro is located which is fitting since Dustin has a lot of Goonies as inspiration for his character.

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Gnome #6: Elvis

"He's not dead!"

"Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known simply as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to both great success and initial controversy." - Wikipedia.

It is a lot known that people in the 80's thought that Elvis Presley was still alive due to his status and the aura he had as a celebrity. However, no matter how appealing this myth may be, he died of an excessive usage of prescription drugs which reminds me of Nancy who said she thought Tom was on drugs when he fired her and Jonathan while he an the Flayed were drinking chemicals. He also died in 1977, the same year "Heroes" by David Bowie came out which is a song that was used two times when we thought a character died when he was actually alive which are Will and Hopper. Will and Hopper both have a lot of rock in their Spotify playlist.

Also, I personally think that Steve has kind of an Elvis Presley aura to him especially in season 1. After all, Steve has a nickname "King Steve" and Elvis Presley is often nicknamed "The King" and both were popular with girls.

Fun fact: Dacre Montgomery who plays Billy who literally becomes the new "King" of Hawkins will play in the biographical music drama "Elvis" about Elvis Presley where he will play a character called "Steve Binder".

Also actor David Harbour also got married with singer Lily Allen by Elvis in Las Vegas.

It's also found hidden behind bushes near the Public Library. Maybe indicating that Elvis is still out there in the world and hiding.

Which also may be a reference to Brenner who has a similar haircut but also about the novel "Suspicious Minds", a prequel of ST taking place in the Lab when Brenner was doing his sinister experiments which is the same title as one of the songs of Elvis. Like Elvis, Brenner is still out there, hiding in Hawkins.

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Gnome #7: Jack

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull gnome."

Again another reference to Shining. So what you are seeing here is a proverb, it means: "It means that without time off from work, a person becomes both bored and boring."

In Shining, it represents Jack's slow descent into madness. But it could be a reference to Joyce, Jonathan and Nancy who all work their asses off and don't take a lot of time for themselves and so don't have the time to explore anything else than work which also cause for them not to be there when Will got kidnapped. It may also represent Jonathan's words to Nancy in season 1 where he "called out" the boring life she will have and that she will live like her parents so in this case the proverb becomes about societal norms.

Mike just like Jack is an aspiring writer, Mike just like other members of his family falls into these societal norms that are expected like work and overworking in this instance which makes them boring in the eyes of people like Jonathan. "No play" may also reference D&D which Mike started to ignore in season 3 and worried more pointless and superficial things.

Again, hope it doesn't foreshadow anything for these two characters.

This gnome is found in the Library which is fitting considering Jack wants to be a writer.

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Gnome #8: Flynn (Flynn Rider from "Tangled" (2010))

"Looks like he rides well."

Overall plot of Tangled (2010):

"The film tells the story of Rapunzel, a lost, young princess with magical long blonde hair who yearns to leave her secluded tower. Against her abusive foster mother's wishes who kidnappee her when she was young, she accepts the aid of an intruder to take her out into the world which she has never seen."

This story is literally what the boys was arguing about at the end of season 1.

1)The lost knight...

Flynn Rider is actually the son of a king and queen that were from a kingdom that got destroyed by a powerful opal. He was evacuated and placed in an orphanage. He made his reputation as thief.

So Mike and El both parallels this guy, well Mike is a palladin in D&D and he is the son of a wealthy family so he is basically a night. El however also lost her parents like him and has more attributes of a knight in season 1 than Mike.

Flynn is arrogant, which Mike can be a bit sometimes but the both of them can be extremely courageous and care a lot about the people they care about though they are not very strong, nor athletic. Maybe Flynn a bit more.

Also fun coincidence Flynn = Finn, the name of the actor who plays Mike. (almost the same name).

Both him and El run into each other in the woods. Just like Flynn who discover Rapunzel while trying to enter Rapunzel's tower but is knocked out by her who is none other than the...

2)The proud princess...

Well first Rapunzel = Eleven. Both of these girls have magical powers and are used by an abusive and evil parental figure who needs them for their own interest, Mother Gothel used the powers of Rapunzel to stay young forever (like an addiction, a drug) and Martin Brenner aka "Papa". They are both locked away somewhere. El in the lab and Rapunzel in the tower which they both seeked to escape out of. Both believed that these parental figures loved them while it was not true. El also has long blond hair in season 1 like Rapunzel. And both quickly form a relationship with a boy they just met. Both don't know who their real parents are and wants to find them. While Rapunzel has long blonde hair, El had a shaved head.

Also in season 2, El is locked in a cabin in the woods because of Hopper because he believe it is not safe out there which is exactly what Mother Gothel tells Rapunzel. Just like her El disobeys and seeks to discover who her true parents are.

Rapunzel seeks to know what are those floating lights that always appear on her birthday, it is actually her parents who are the king and queen of a kingdom not so far away that do that every year hoping one day she will come back to her. She is a "lost princess". It is very similar to Terry Ives who was communicating through the lights to El.

Rapunzel's power comes out of something that is also connected to something famous in ST.

3) Weird flowers in the cave...

Rapunzel's power come from a flower called "Sundrop flower". = Sunflower which is said by Terry Ives.

This flower can pretty much heal anything including mortal wounds. The Queen got pregnant with Rapunzel but was also terribly sick so she took this flower to heal herself and while doing so, Rapunzel got this ability.

This is very reminiscent of Terry Ives who was pregnant with El and took part in the MKUltra experiences that gave her these powers including certain drugs. She is also "ill" in a way as she is now stuck in a loop. At least from what we saw.

But Rapunzel also parallels another character.

Will Byers. Will could communicate through lights to his mother, just like the parents of Rapunzel and Terry Ives.

The weird flowers could be referencing the sort of vines that entered inside of him in the Upside Down which gave him his "now-memories".

Both had abusive parental figure that would lock them somewhere for whatever reason. (Lonnie with Will in his trunk.)

(Also Hopper may have tried to separate Mike and El but he wasn't like what a Lonnie or Brenner would have been. This is why yes, the situation in season 2 parallels but Hopper truly wished good for El while Brenner and Mother Gothel didn't care for any of these two.)

Same is for Lonnie, he doesn't care about Will.

Since Will is a cleric, both him and Rapunzel have the same time of power. Powers that El doesn't have:

To heal the sick and injured

To revive the dead

To work as a shield

Given this story, it may hint at the fact that Brenner and Lonnie may try to take El and Will for their own greed and purposes.

Since Rapunzel parallels both Will and El, you know what that means for Flynn who parallels Mike.

Flynn in the movie is stabbed by Mother Gothel and dies before cutting the hair of Rapunzel killing Mother Gothel in the process. Rapunzel mourns him and one of his tears heal him.

If Flynn parallels Mike, than something bad could happen to him. If Will does have powers and has feelings for Mike, a supposed death may reveal his powers.

And if he has the same powers as his cleric role, than he could heal those who get hurt or even bring the dead back to life.

If Lonnie sees Mike around Will, given he is homophobic. He may try to hurt him so that he doesn't go near Will again which could lead to him being in grave danger.

Of course all of that is just speculation.

This gnome was found on the parking lot of Starcourt where El decided to break up with Mike and we saw Will smiling in the background.

Also I don't know but... "Looks like he rides well", I mean there's certain undertones to that which are... I don't know how to process that but from what you've just read, Mike apparently rides well. I mean I have nothing against gay sex jokes but still...

Even if it's unintentional, it's how it'll sound on the internet.

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Gnome #9: David

"At 399, he's the oldest gnome around."

So this gnome was already in the first ST official mobile game. And this reminds me a lot of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit but also and of course; Dungeons & Dragons.

The World of David the Gnome, originally titled David, el Gnomo (also known as David, the Gnome), is a Spanish animated television series based on the children's book The Secret Book of Gnomes, by the Dutch author Wil Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet. The series was originally created in Spain by BRB Internacional (who were also responsible for the Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds franchise (Like Dart in season 2 and Mike, Lucas and Dustin where very much like the Three Musketeers in season 1.) and other cartoons such as Bobobobs and Around the World with Willy Fog)

The series presents the gnomes as a kind species, of 15 centimetres (6 inches) of height, and between 250 and 300 grams (8 and 10 ounces) of weight depending on gnome body mass. According to their habitat, different types of gnomes are distinguished: the ones of the forest, the ones of the garden, the ones of the farm, the ones of the house, the ones of the dunes, those of Siberia (David = David Harbour = Hopper = Hopper is in Russia), and nomadic "gypsy" gnomes (commonly looked down upon by other gnomes). A gnome's lifespan is usually 400 years, though there is one example of a couple in the Balkans living 550 years.

Gnomes such as the main characters live in pairs in comfortable caves or holes under trees [kinda like Hobbits] (in their case in the company of a pair of mice and a cricket). Their diet is mostly vegetarian. They are helped by the animals of the forest (kinda like Radagast who is the password to Castle Byers who is located in the woods) when travelling long distances or when they need to arrive quickly at a specific location. Gnomes work in various ways to repair the damage inevitably caused by humans. They also have the power of telepathy and mind control. (kinda like El or the Mindflayer, or even Galadriel in The Lord Of The Rings.)

Their main enemies are the trolls, malevolent and clumsy creatures who always make trouble for the other inhabitants of the forest, as well as gnome poachers. They have supernatural powers that are really strong but they have a weakness, if the sunlight gets on them, they turn to stone.(could be referencing all the Upside Down creatures who don't like sunlight and everything hot.) [Also very much like the Hobbit.] Also one of the trolls was voiced by someone who had the name Henderson, like Dustin Henderson. I also think it references a comic where some bullies attack Will and Mike calls them trolls.

Here are the most important characters:

David is a gnome of the forest. David is 399 years old, making him the oldest gnome around (since gnomes live no more than 400 years exactly, except Franklin, the gnome from the west, who lived 550 years), although he possesses exceptional constitution. David is a doctor, and he uses his knowledge of many fields, such as hypnosis and acupuncture, to heal his patients, usually animals, such as his faithful friend Swift the fox, or other gnomes. David also befriends a bird that, when he whistles, immediately arrives to quickly transport him to wherever necessary. For longer trips, he sometimes travels in a basket attached to the neck of the bird. (It may be a reference to clerics who are known to heal their allies and travelling with birds reminds me of Gandald who sometimes has the help of Eagles in some stories.)

Paul is David's twin brother. Not only does Paul have a normal moustache in contrast to David's handlebar moustache but his jumper is a darker shade of blue, he has a bigger nose, his gnome hat is dark blue whereas David's is red, and his trousers and boots are an inverse of David's: David's trousers are brown and his boots are beige, while Paul wears beige trousers and dark boots. (Of course this is a reference to Will and El who have been compared a lot of times throughout the show and who a lot of people in the fandom consider them siblings and twins, Will has a lot of Red in his wardrobe while El has a lot of blue.)

This gnome was found in a secret Russian base underground in Weathertop where Dustin discovers the Russian transmission coming from their main base located under the mall like a cave (like where gnome lives.). There are also gnomes in Siberia and having the name David, the name of Hopper's actor creates a connection since right now Hopper is in Russia. It may also be a nod to the group of kids who are all little gnomes running around the forest with their magical powers.

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Gnome #10: Baskin

"Robin's favorite gnome."

Now this is a funny one.

This is a reference to the famous Baskin-Robbins which is a chain of ice cream restaurants that did special ice creams for Season 3 because of Scoops Ahoy. It is Robin's favorite gnome because they literally share the same name.

Baskin could also be a reference to the film of the same name where Five police officers, Remzi, Arda, Yavuz, Apo, and Seyfi, are dining at a restaurant, during which they have a discussion. Their meal is interrupted when they receive a distress call from Inceagac, a town known for being the focus of strange rumors. During the trip Seyfi has a terrifying vision of a bloody figure and accidentally drives their van into the water. Stranded, the officers eventually make their way to Inceagac, where they find themselves in an abandoned building (back in the Ottoman days, this used to be a police station), captured by cult members and are subjected to a number of increasingly bizarre and surreal scenarios. In the end, they realize they have all inadvertently wandered into Hell.

It has alot of similiraties with stories like Silent Hills or Hellraiser, two stories that inspired Stranger Things especially Hellraiser for Stranger Things 4. And it fully embraces the satanic imagery and themes which is something we are going to see with the satanic panic and also has the theme of time, dreams and visions.

We'll see how much season 4 decides to use those sort of elements in the show.

Well this gnome is easy to find. It's in the Scoops Ahoy parlor next to Robin. USS Butterscotch seems to be very popular there

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Gnomes 11 - 20 coming soon.

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melisa-may-taylor72 · 3 years

Photo

QUEEN BEFORE QUEEN

THE 1960s RECORDINGS

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

PART 4:

THE OPPOSITION

JOHN DEACON WAS THE QUIETEST MEMBER OF A MIDLAND-BASED FIVE-PIECE WHOSE GREATEST AMBITION WAS TO PLAY ANOTHER GIG.

Initial research John S. Stuart. Additional research and text: Andy Davis.

John Deacon was the fourth and final member to join Queen. He became part of that regal household 25 years ago this month, enrolling as the band’s permanent bassist in February 1971. His acceptance marked the culmination of a six-year ‘career’ in music, much of which he spent in an amateur, Leicestershire covers band called the Opposition.

From 1965 until 1969, Deacon and his schoolmates ploughed a humble, local furrow in and around their Midlands hometown, reflecting the decade’s mercurial moodswing with a series of names, images and styles of music. The most remarkable fact about the Opposition was just how unremarkable the group actually was.

Collectively, they were an unambitious crew: undertaking precisely no trips down to London to woo A&R men; winning only one notable support slot for the army of chart bands who visited Leicester in the ‘60s (opening for Reperata & the Delrons in Melton Mowbray in 1968); and managing even to miss out on the option of sending a demo tape to any of the nation’s record labels. The band’s saving grace is its solé recorded legacy: a three-track acetate — although even this was done for purely private consumption, and has rarely been aired outside the confines of their inner circle.

It is perhaps indicative of the Opposition’s modest outlook that their most promising bid for stardom, a beat contest, was called off before they had the chance to play in the finals. For John Deacon and friends, it seems, merely being in a band was reward enough.

Considering of all of this, it’s easy to imagine the response to the following story, related in the ‘60s to one of the Opposition’s guitarists, Ronald Chester:...[ ]

...[ ] “There was a teacher who worked at Beauchamp School, which John attended, who told fortunes. They went to see her one Saturday and were told, ‘John Deacon is going to be world famous and very, very rich. Of course, they all fell about laughing. She was determined that this was going to happen. But they all thought it was a joke."

What particularly amused Deacon’s colleagues was the unlikeliness of this scenario, given the plain facts of his demeanour. John was born in Leicester in 1951, the product of affluent, middle-class, middle England. As a youngster, he was known to his friends as ‘Deaks’ and grew up to be quiet and reserved, what Mark Hodkinson referred to in ‘Queen — ‘The Early Years’ as “a ghost of a boy".

“He is basically shy,” confirms Richard Young, the Opposition’s first guitarist/vocalist, and later keyboardist. “I suppose he was quieter than the rest of us — but he was fairly static with Queen if you look at him on stage.”

Ron Chester agrees: “John was quiet by nature. His sister, Julie, was the same. Once he got going, though, he wasn’t any different from anybody else. But on first approach, you really had to coax him out of his shell. We’d have to pick him up. He couldn’t walk down the road to meet us."

CONFIDENT

Despite any lack of personal dynamics, Deacon was a capable teenager: “He was very confident," recalls another of the band’s guitarists, David Williams. “But in a laidback sort of way. He didn’t have a problem with anything. ‘Yeah, I can do that’, he’d say. We used to call him ‘Easy Deacon’, not because of any sexual preferences, but because he’d say something was easy without it sounding big-headed. I remember saying to him once, I’m going to have to knock off the gigs a bit to revise for my ‘A’ levels. What about you?’ ‘No’, he said, ‘I don’t need to. I’ve never failed an exam yet, and I’ve never revised for one’. Ultimately, he was just confident, with a phenomenally logical mind. If he couldn’t remember something, he could work it out. And, of course, he got stunning results.”

John’s earliest interest was electronics, which he studied into adulthood. He also went fishing, trainspotting even, with his father. Then music took over. After dispensing with a ‘Tommy Steele’ toy guitar, John used the proceeds from his paper round to buy his first proper instrument, an acoustic, when he was about twelve. An early musical collaborator was a school mate called Roger Ogden, who like Roger Taylor down in Cornwall, was nicknamed ‘Splodge’. But his best friend was the Opposition’s future drummer, Nigel Bullen.

“I’d first got to know John at Langmore Junior School in Oadby, just outside Leicester, in either 1957 or 1958,’' recalls Nigel. “We were both the quiet ones. We started playing music together at Gartree High School, when we were about thirteen. We were inspired by the Beatles — they made everybody want to be in a group. John was originally going to be the band’s electrician, as he called it. He used to build his own radios, before we had any amps, and he fathomed a way of plugging his guitar into his reel-to-reel tape recorder. He was always the electrical boffin."

The prime mover in the formation of the group was another Oadby boy they met on nearby Uplands Park, Richard Young. “Richard was at boarding school," recalls Nigel Bullen. “He was always the kid with the expensive bike. He played guitar, and what’s more had a proper electric, with an amplifier. He instigated getting the band together. Initially, we rehearsed in my garage, and then anywhere we could. John played rhythm to begin with. He was a chord man, the John Lennon of the group, if you like."

SWITCH

Despite his later switch to the bass, Deacon’s technique on the guitar also developed, as Dave Williams reveals: “Later on, I remember he could play ‘Classical Gas’ on an acoustic, which was a finger-picking execise and no mean feat. It’s a bit like ‘McArthur Park’, a fantastic piece of music, and when I heard it, I thought, ‘Bloody hell. You dark horse!’ Because he never showed off."

The Opposition’s first bassist was another school friend of John’s called Clive Castledine. In fact, the group made its debut at a party at Castledine’s ouse on 25th September, 1965 (their first public performance took place the...[ ]

...[ ] following month at Gartree’s school hall). Clive looked good and appreciated the kudos of being in a group, but he wasn’t up to even the Opposition’s schoolboy standards. “I was the least proficient, to put it mildly,” he admitted to Mark Hodkinson.“His enthusiasm was 100%,” adds Richard Young, “but his actual playing ability was null, so we had a meeting and got rid of him.” Deacon took over, initially playing on his regular guitar, using the bottom strings. “John was good,” Young continues. “It was no problem for him to switch to bass. He hit the right notes at the beginning of the bar, and we were a better band for it. Whereas Clive made us sound woolly, as anyone who just plonked away on any old note would, John was solid.”

DIARY

Young turned out to be the Opposition’s archivist, keeping a diary of each gig played, the equipment used, and the amounts of money earned (as indeed did John Deacon). Richard’s diary documented the day Deacon — now, of course, bassist in one of the world’s most famous groups — first picked up his chosen instrument. “In an entry for 2nd April, 1966,” says Young, “it reads, ‘We threw Clive out on the Saturday afternoon. Had a practice in Deaks’ kitchen, and Deaks went on bass. Played much better.’ John didn’t have a bass, so we went down to Cox’s music shop in King Street in Leicester, and bought him an EKO bass for £60. I paid for it, but I think he paid me back eventually.”

“John’s bass style with the Opposition was the same as with Queen,” reckons Nigel Bullen. “He never used to play with a plectrum, which was unusual, but with his fingers, which meant that his right hand is drooped over the top of the guitar. Also, he plays in an upward fashion, which I’d never seen before, certainly when we were in Leicester. Over the years, I’ve watched many bass players adopt that style. I’d say he has been copied a lot. I’ve mentioned this to him, but he doesn’t agree.”

Clive Castledine wasn’t the last member of the band to be dismissed. “The vocal and lead guitar side of the Opposition was changing all the while,” recalls Nigel. “Myself, John, and Richard Young were always there — as were Dave Williams and Ron Chester later on — but we had a succession of other musicians who I can hardly remember now. There was a guy called Richard Frew in the very early days, and a young lad called Carl, but he didn’t fit in. After we began playing proper gigs, Richard decided he wasn’t happy with his singing and wanted to move onto keyboards, so we brought in Pete Bart (formerly with another local band, the Rapids Rave) as a guitarist and vocalist. He was good, but again, didn’t last long.”

“Bart was a bit of a rocker, while we were all mods,” remarks Dave Williams. “We were impressed by mod bands like the Small Faces and the original Who. Bart seemed to come from a different era altogether.”

“Deaks had the Parka with the fur collar,” remembers Ron Chester. “And short hair, a crew cut. Mirrors on his scooter.” Richard Young agrees: “John was more of a mod than us. But you couldn’t really pigeonhole the band, because our music went right across the board”.

”Buying Deacon his bass was no one-off, and Richard Young is remembered as the group’s benefactor. Being older than the others, he had a steady job working for his father’s electronics company in Leicester, which brought him a regular, and by all accounts, generous wage. He rarely thought twice before splashing out on equipment for the other members.

RECEIPTS

“Richard bought me a P.A.,” recalls David Williams. “But he didn’t ask, he used to think that the group needed it. He’d buy it and then say, ‘You owe me this’. My mum used to get really annoyed. She’d was at that going- through-my-pockets stage, probably looking for contraceptives. She once found a receipt from Moore and Stanworth’s, a local music shop. It was for a Beyer microphone, which cost about £30. I was still at school, getting pocket money, and my mum said, ‘What on earth is this?!’ Receipts on the Sunday dinner table, that sort of thing. It was good, though. The group needed it.”

“I was dead serious about the band,” claims Young, who switched to organ with the arrival of Williams in July 1966. “Perhaps more so than anybody else. I could see it going nowhere if money wasn’t pumped into it.”

“Dick Young was an accomplished organ player,” adds Dave, “and he improved the group quite a lot. He always had plenty of dosh, and a car. But he was totally mad, a crazy bloke. He’d come round with an organ one week, then next week, he’d have a better one. He ended up with a Farfisa, with one keyboard on it, then one with two keyboards — one above the other. Then he had a Hammond, an L 100. which was really heavy. Then he had a ‘B’ series one. The ‘L’ was top-of-the-range and he sawed it in half to make it easier to carry!”

Dave Williams helped to improve the group as well. “He was at school with us,” says Nigel Bullen, “but in another band, who we always looked up to.” That band was the Leeds-based Outer Limits (who went on to issue several singles — without Dave — in the late ‘60s). “I joined the Opposition after they asked me to watch them and tell them what I thought,” recounts Dave. “The Outer Limits were older lads, all mods, but I was after something a bit more easy going, and the Opposition were my own age. They were okay, but I first saw them at John’s house, when they were still practising in bedrooms, and they were absolutely awful. I said, ‘Have you thought of tuning up?’ They said they had. But it sounded like they were playing in different keys — totally horrendous. It was so funny. They were so conscientious, they’d all learned their bits, but hadn't tuned up to each other. That was my first tip.”

“Our first proper gig was supporting a local band, the Rapids Rave, at Enderby Coop Hall,” recalls Nigel Bullen. “They used to play at this village hall every week. and then we ended up doing it every week for quite some time.” Richard’s diary records the Opposition’s debut taking place on 4th December 1965, and that the band’s fee was £2. Thereafter, they began to offer their Services in the local ‘Oadby & Wigston Advertiser’, which led to bookings in youth clubs and village halls in local hot-spots like Kibworth, Houghton-on- the-Hill, Thurlaston and Great Glen.

SCHOOL WORK

By spring 1966, the Opposition were playing every weekend, school work permitting. The peaks and troughs of their career are illustrated by the following memorable gigs: one at St. George’s Ballroom, Hinckley, on 23rd June 1967, when just two people turned up and the band went home after a couple of numbers; and a September appearance in a series of shows at U.S. Airforce Bases in the Midlands, at which they were required to play for four-and-half hours with just two twenty-minute breaks. It was nothing if not diverse.

“It didn’t seem to matter what you played,” says Dave. “People would clap simply because you were making music. They never said, ‘Do you do Motown, or soul stuff?’ ” The band’s repertoire initially consisted of chart sounds and the poppier end of the R&B spectrum. “Although we were inspired by the Beatles, we never did any of their songs,” claims Nigel. “But we covered the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and things like Them’s ‘Gloria’, and the Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’.

They also altered their name slightly to the New Opposition, which they unveiled at the Enderby Coop Hall. “The name-change was decided overnight, when John moved from rhythm to bass guitar,” recounts Richard, whose diary records the date of the transition as 29th April 1966. Interestingly, though, it makes no mention of another local group also called the Opposition, long thought to have been the reason for Deacon’s crew adopting the ‘New’. The change did act as an impetus for further development, however, instigated by Dave Williams, who soon took over as the group’s lead vocalist.

“When I joined they were doing all Beach Boys stuff,” he recalls, “and I think I may have brought in a little credibility. In the Outer Limits, I’d been playing John Mayall, the Yardbirds, that sort of thing, plus that group was into really good soul like the Impressions, and fantastic vocal bands from the States. So I had a broad musical knowledge by then, whereas the Opposition had been a bit poppy.” Appropriately, the words “Tamla” and “Soul” were now added to the Opposition’s ads and calling cards.

Towards the end of 1966, the New Opposition were enhanced further by the arrival of Ron Chester, who’d previously played with Dave Williams in the Outer Limits, as well as in an earlier band, the Deerstalkers. “Ron Chester was a bit eccentric,” claims Richard Young. “He never used to go anywhere without his deerstalker. He was a really good guitarist (“stunning”, adds Dave Williams). We were probably at our best when Ron was in the band.”

On 23rd October 1966, the New Opposition entered the local Midland Beat Contest. They won their heat, landing themselves a place in the semifinals on 29th January 1967. They won this, too, and steeled themselves for the finals, which were due to be held on 3rd March 1967, when they were to be pitched against...[ ]

...[ ] an act called Keny. The stars of the show would have been the nearest the Opposition came to having a rival: an outfit called Legay. (A year later, incidentally, this band issued a now collectable single, “No One” (Fontana TF 904,£80J.) Unfortunately, for all concerned, however, the contest never took place. “That was a fiasco,'' laughs Ron. “Somehow we won those heats, but in fact, I don’t remember seeing anybody else playing. I don’t know whether we won by default or not. After that, they pulled the plug on the competition — probably because they knew we’d be playing again!”.

CASINO

“The heats took place in a club in Leicester called the Casino, which was the place to play,” adds Nigel. “The guy who ran the competition was an agent for the club. His company was called Penguin (or P.S) Promotions and he walked like a penguin too, with his feet sticking out. The final was going to be held in the De Montford Hall, which is still the main venue in Leicester. We thought, ‘Crumbs, this is it, perhaps we might make the big time.’ But the guy did a runner with all the money — people had to pay to come to the heats. So the final was called off.”

David Williams wasn’t too fussed, as he scored another prize that night: “I remember taking a girl back to Dick’s car on the strength of us winning our heat. I said, ‘Can I borrow your keys, Dick? He said, ‘What for? You can’t drive!’ “

Were the New Opposition — or the Opposition, as they dropped the ‘New’ again in early 1967 — left in limbo by the cancellation of the Beat Contest? Having achieved the most public recognition of their talents so far, were they disappointed with the loss of the chance to prove themselves further?

“No. It was almost insignificant,” reckons Ron. “We didn’t really look upon it as a stairway to stardom.” And what would John Deacon have thought? “Nothing really,” suggests Chester. “ ‘It’s cancelled. What are we doing next, then?’ That would have been about the depth of it. We were a village band, all gathering at the church hall to try and improve our abilities. The financial aspect of it wasn’t in the forefront of our minds. We were more concerned with our music, and if we could get a booking doing it as well, to pay off some of the equipment, then that was a real bonus. Three bookings a week was enough for us while we were working or still at school.” Despite any dodgy dealings, history does have the Penguin promoter to thank for the only professionally-taken photograph of the Opposition. (“We didn’t go much on photos in the band,” remembers Dave Williams.) On Tuesday, 31st January 1967, two days after winning the semi-finals, the ‘Leicester Mercury’ dispatched a staff photographer over to Richard Young’s parents’ house in Oadby. Here, the group lined-up in the front room, looking more like refugees from 1964, rather than 1967. The only indications of the actual date are perhaps Ron Chester’s deerstalker hat and the ridiculous length of David Williams’ shirt collars — seven inches, no less, from neck to nipple.

“Dave was very extrovert,” recalls Nigel. “But we all had those silk shirts with the great long collars made by our mums and grandmas for our stage gear.” Dave admits: “Our clothes were all a bit mixed up. We had silk shirts with tweed jackets — which were fashionable for a while — and bell-bottoms. Musically, we were pretty good, better than...[ ]

...[ ] most of the local bands around that time, but we had this squeaky-clean, schoolboy image which let us down. I used to get frustrated when we were billed with other bands, and they’d all play with so many wrong chords but had a better image and still the punters applauded. Were they stupid? We were still at school — we didn’t leave until we were eighteen — and weren’t allowed to grow our hair long”.

“After the mod thing,” he continues, “long hair became really important. Bands were growing their hair right down their backs. I remember getting to one gig with John and Nigel a year or so later, and the other group were already on. And when they saw us they turned round and said, ‘Look! They’ve got no hair!’. We were quite upset about that”.

“We also went through the flower-power look,” Dave adds. “And then we got into those little jumpers without any sleeves that Paul McCartney used to wear, the ones so small that half your stomach showed. And then it was grandad shirts without the collars and flares.” Ron Chester: “The flowery shirts and flared trousers were everywhere. We looked like a right shower of poofters. But so did everybody else. You stood out if you didn’t wear them.”

1967 also heralded the arrival of an additional attraction to the Opposition’s stage show: two go-go dancers. At least, it did if the existing literature on the subject is to be believed. “I vaguely remember it,” admits Richard, “but speaking to Nig, neither of us can recal who those dancers were”.

Dave Williams throws some light on the subject: “They were the jet-set girls of the sixth form, they came from the big houses. They came to a couple of gigs and just started dancing. Somebody who booked us for the following week actually advertised us ‘with go-go girls’. But they were never really part of the show.”

ART

On 16th March, 1968 for a gig at Gartree School, the Opposition changed their name once again. “We called ourselves Art,” reveals Nigel, “because Dave was arty, that is, he was training as an artist. It was as simple as that.” Dave agrees: “It was my idea, because I’d been doing art at school.” Nigel Bullen was aware of another band using that name around the same time (the pre-Spooky Tooth outfit), but assuming them to be American, reckoned they’d be no confusion. As the Leicester-based Art never made it to London, there wasn’t.

Despite wording like “A time to touch and feel, to taste and experience, to hear and understand” appearing on the group’s tickets, Richard maintains that Art was “just the same band” as before. “Nothing changed."

“It was mutton dressed up as lamb, really,” admits Ron Chester. “We thought if we were called something different, people might come because they were curious. But it didn’t make a lot of difference. The audiences were captive at the places we played anyway. There was nowhere else to go on a Friday or Saturday night. Everyone used to roll up to see whoever was on, whether they’d heard of them or not.”

1968 was the year psychedelia caught up with many provincial British bands. The Art were no different, but their acknowledgement of what had been last year’s scene in London was via sight rather than sound. Their light shows seem to have been particularly memorable, as Dave Williams explains: “They were brilliant. We used the projectors from school, filled medicine bottles with water and oil, and projected through them to get this lovely golden, amber backdrop. As the image came out upside down, when we poured in some Fairy Liquid, it dropped straight through in a blob, but came out on the wall like a giant green mushroom cloud. It was amazing, and we had about four of them at the back, projecting over the band.”

John Deacon was party to another of Dave’s exploits. “One day,” recalls Williams, “John and I bought a 100-watt P.A. — which was pretty big for those days — and took it into the lecture theatre full of kids at Beauchamp School (which Deacon had attended since September 1966) for our version of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’. We cranked it up as loud as we could, put the light show on, and let off these smoke bombs, which were DDT pellets we’d got from the chemist. All the kids started choking, and then the headmaster walked in...[ ]

...[ ] with a load of governors. You could see the fury in his face. One of the governors asked what we were doing. ‘It’s a demonstration in sound and light, sir,’ I said. ‘We’re using these ink bottles turned upside down, but we’re a bit worried about these DDT pellets so we might knock the smoke on the head, but we’re still experimenting.’ And he fell for it!”.

INFLUENTIAL

Towards the end of 1968, a crop of new groups began to have a profound effect on the maturing schoolboys: Jethro Tull, the Nice, Taste, and in particular Deep Purple. Ron: “We used to buy Purple records and learn to play them. We’d seen John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the Downliners’ Sect in Leicester, the Nice, King Crimson. These sort of groups. We learned a lot from just watching them. They were influential. There was always a big discussion in the band as to whether we should do a particular song. Once we’d decided that, there’d be another big discussion as to how we should do it. Everybody had their say.”

Hair, too, had finally began to grow: “John grew his quite long,” recalls Ron. “We all had longish hair, but not shoulder length. We couldn’t look too unkempt for the normal side of life, but we didn’t want to be too prissy for the other end of the spectrum. That was when we started playing universities, and we went a bit heavier. The audiences were far more serious minded about music and more enthusiastic. In some of the youth clubs we’d been playing, the audience would be moving around on roller skates, or peeling bananas all over the place, things like that”.

“We felt we were making an impression towards the last year or two of the band,” he continues. But it went no further: “We were at school, some of us had jobs, and there was an element of common sense overriding what we would have liked to have done. None of us wanted to chuck in our apprenticeships or courses. If we’d had a flair for writing our own material, we might have taken off. But we just played what was popular, nothing different from most other groups. That wasn’t a basis on which to launch ourselves. So it never happened."

“We didn’t think that far ahead,” admits Richard Young. “I just thought of playing and getting repeat bookings. John was probably the least ambitious of all of us, to be honest. I think he felt that there was no mileage in what we were doing, although it was good fun. I think he had the impression that this was a hobby, a phase he was going through.”

Sometime in the Sixties, possibly 1969, but maybe earlier, Art recorded an acetate. Whatever the date, the crucial point is that John Deacon was present at the session. “We weren't asked to do it,” recalls Nigel. “We just wanted to make a disc. I think it cost us about five shillings.”

The venue was Beck’s studio, thirty miles south east of Oadby in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. “I’d never been in a studio before and it seemed awesome, really,” recalls Dave Williams. “It was a fairly decent-sized room for acoustics. It was all nicely low-lit, with lots of screens. The guy knew what he was doing.” Richard Young was less impressed, though: I’ve been in studios all my life,” he says. “That was just another session. Nothing about it stood out.”

The “guy” Dave remembered was engineer Derek Tomkins, who informed the group that they could record three tracks in the time allotted. “We’d only gone in there with two, ‘Sunny’ and ‘Vehicle’,” says Nigel, “and we didn’t want to waste the opportunity, so Richard knocked up a little instrumental called Transit 3’ — named after our new van, the third one — right there in the studio. Although we were purely a covers band, everybody had a bash at writing, but we never did anything of our own on stage. The exception was Transit 3’, which was incorporated into the set after this session.”

“ Transit 3’ was about about the only track we ever wrote," reckons Richard Young (“Heart Full Of Soul”, as reported in ‘As It Began’, is in fact a Graham Gouldman nurnber). “I initially had the idea, but I can’t really remember anything about it. It’s very basic. It wouldn’t take a great deal of effort to write something like that.” To the objective observer, “Transit 3”, taped in mono but well recorded, is a fairly uncomplicated, organ-led scale- hopper, reminiscent of Booker T & the MGs.

“Everybody was listening to ‘Green Onions’,” confirms Nigel, “so Booker T would have been an influence there.” But for all that, it’s well- played, with memorable lead and twangy, wah-wah guitar passages courtesy of Dave Williams. And, crucially, John Deacon’s thumping bass is plainly audible throughout. On this evidence, the Opposition were clearly a tight, confident outfit. “Transit 3” could have been incorporated into any swinging ‘60s film soundtrack, and no one would have jumped up shouting, “Amateurs”!.

UNFAMILIAR

The other two tracks, covers of Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny' and the more obscure, soul- tinged ‘Vehicle’ (later a hit for the Ides of March), featured a vocalist, but an unfamiliar one: another of the Opposition’s fleeting frontmen. “We had a singer for a while called Alan Brown,” recalls Nigel. “He came and went fairly quickly. He was good, really good. Too good for us, I think. That wasn’t him saying that. We just knew it.”

On both songs, Brown is in deep, soulful voice, sounding not unlike a cross between Tom Jones and the early Van Morrison — if such an amalgam can be imagined. The Art’s reading of “Vehicle” is edgy and robust, dominated by Richard Young’s distinctive keyboards and Nigel Bullen’s bustling drum work. Dave Williams is again in fine form, delivering more sparkling wah-wah guitar, while on the cassette copy taped from Nigel Bullen’s acetate, at least, John’s bass is very prominent, over-recorded in fact, booming in the mix.

“Sunny” goes one better, breaking into jazzy 3/4 time halfway through, before slotting back into the more traditional 4/4. It’s an imaginative arrangement, with alternate soloing from both Dave and Richard, while the whole track is underpinned by swirls of Hammond organ and John Deacon’s pounding bass.

“We did ‘Sunny’ as part of our stage set,” says Nigel, “but I don’t recall us ever going into the jazzy bit. That’s quite interesting. We might have talked about that before we went into the studio, but I think it was just for this session. Dave had two guitars, a six-string and a twelve-string, or it could even have been twin-necked. I still quite like the wah-wah he played on that track. By this time Richard would have been onto his second or third organ — he was heavily into Hammonds and Leslies."

Operating as they did in a fairly ambition- free zone, and having prepared the listener for a mundane set of recordings with their trademark laid-back approach, Art’s acetate comes as something of a revelation. Let any bunch of today’s schoolboys loose in a studio for an afternoon and defy them to come up with something half as good!

Just two copies of the Art disc are known to have survived. John Deacon’s mother is believed to own one and Nigel Bullen has the other. “I’d forgotten all about this record,” admits Nigel. “We know that one copy was converted to an ashtray!. We stubbed out cigarettes on Richards at rehearsal one night.” Although treated with anything but respect at the time, the importance of the disc is now apparent to Nigel Bullen: “This is probably John Deacon’s first recording, apart from tracks he did in his bedroom on his reel-to-...[ ]

...[ ] reel, which are probably long gone. Although, knowing John, they’re probably not!”

The beginning of the end for Art came in June 1969, when John Deacon left Beauchamp. With a college course lined up in London, his days with the band were obviously numbered. He played his final gig with the group on 29th August at a familiar venue, Great Glen Youth and Sports Centre Club. By October, he’d moved to London to study electronics at Chelsea College of Technology, part of the University of London.

Another blow was dealt in November, when the band's lynchpin, Richard Young, left to join popular local musician Steve Fearn in Fearn’s Brass Foundry.

“They were a Blood, Sweat and Tears-type of group,” recalls Richard, “and paid better money than I’d been used to. I was out five nights a week, on about £3 per night, against an average of about £10 between us.” The previous year, Richard had played session keyboards on the Foundry’s two Decca singles: “Don’t Change It” (F 12721, January 1968, £10) and “Now I Taste The Tears” (F 12835. September 1968, £8).

SAVAGE

Ron Chester departed shortly afterwards, and gave up music: “I left in the early 70s, after John Deacon moved to London. John was replaced by a bass player was called John Savage, who unsettled me. He had different tastes and drove us a bit hard. His approach was totally different from Deaks's, and he was much more interested in the financial side of things. We’d all been mates before, we didn't just knock about for the band. It just wasn’t the same.”

Nigel, Richard and Dave pushed on into 1970 with the new bassist, changing the band’s name again, this time to Silky Way. They returned to Beck’s studio to record a cover of Free’s “Loosen Up” with another vocalist, Bill Gardener, but that was the band’s last effort. Dave left after falling into Nigel’s drumkit, drunk on stage at a private party one Christmas. “I waited for them to pick me up the next day,” he recalls sheepishly, “but they never carne.”

Richard and Nigel moved into a dinner- dance type outfit called the Lady Jane Trio — “Corny, or what!”, laughs Bullen — but Nigel left music altogether soon afterwards to concentrate on his college work. Richard turned professional, moving into cabaret with the Steve Fearn-less Brass Foundry, before forming a trio called Rio, finding regular work on the holiday camp and overseas cruise circuit. In the late ‘70s, he joined a touring version of the Love Affair.

Down in London, John Deacon caught a glimpse of his future world-beating musical partners as early as October 1970, when he saw the newly-formed Queen perform at College of Estate Management in Kensington. “They were all dressed in black, and the lights were very dim too,” he told Jim Jenkins and Jacky Gunn in ‘As It Began’, “All I could really see were four shadowy figures. They didn’t make a lasting impression on me at the time.”

While renting rooms in Queensgate, John formed a loose R&B quartet with a flatmate, guitarist Peter Stoddart, one Don Cater on drums and another guitarist remembered only as Albert. The new band was hardlv a great leap forward from Art: they wrote no originals, and when asked to perform their only gig at Chelsea College on 21st November 1970, supporting Hardin & York and the Idle Race, they hastily billed themselves — in a rare fit of self-publicity for the quiet Oadby boy — as Deacon.

A few months later in early 1971, John was introduced to Brian May and Roger Taylor by a mutual friend, Christine Farnell, at a disco at Maria Assumpta Teacher Training College. They were looking for a bassist. John auditioned at Imperial College shortly afterwards. Roger Taylor recalled Queen’s initial reaction to Deacon in ‘As It Began’: “We thought he was great. We were so used to each other, and so over the top, we thought that because he was quiet he would fit in with us without too much upheaval. He was a great bass player, too — and the fact that he was a wizard with electronics was definitely a deciding factor!”

How did the members of the Art/Opposition back in Leicester, view John’s success with Queen? “It wasn’t sudden”, says Ron Chester. “First we heard he’d got into another group. We couldn’t believe that — were they deaf? There were all these sort of jokes going along. Then we heard he’d got a recording contract and the next thing he had a record out. It was a gradual progression. No one dreamed he would end up the way he did.”

“I don’t think we expected success for any of us" admits Nigel Bullen. “Richard maybe. He was the first one to go professional. But when John left for London to go to college, he left all his kit here. I thought that was the end of it for him. He had absolutely no intention of continuing. His college course was No.1. It was only after he kept seeing adverts for bass players in the ‘Melody Maker’ that he became interested again.”

He also seemed to lose some of that ‘Easy Deacon’ touch which so impressed Dave Williams in the ‘60s. “He’d ring up these bands,” continues Nigel, “but when he found they were a name act, he bottle out. When he went to auditions for anonymous bands, where he would queue up with about thirty other bass players, he had a bit of confidence. He just wanted to play in a decent band. Once I heard what Queen had recorded at De Lane Lea, and John played me the demo of their first album, I thought they were well set.”

CABARET

By early 1973, Dave Williams had forsaken a career in animation to join Highly Likely, a cabaret outfit put together by Mike Hugg and producer Dave Hadfield on the back of their minor hit, “Whatever Happened To You (The Likely Lads Theme)”. While Dave was in the band, they recorded a follow-up single which wasn’t released, before evolving into a glam rock outfit, Razzle, which later become the Ritz, who issued a few singles. “During Queen’s early days, before they’d had any real success, John came to see us once,” recalls Dave, “and said, ‘I wish I was in a band like this which could actually play some gigs’.” Dave concludes: “I remember John coming round once around that time, saying I’ve got a demo’. ‘So have I!’, I said. So we put his on first, and the first track was ‘Keep Yourself Alive’. My mouth dropped wide open and I thought. ‘Bloody hell! What a great track’. I remember saying that the guitarist was as good as Ritchie Blackmore — who was still our hero then — and thinking ‘They’re serious about this. This is the real thing’.”

RECORD COLLECTOR Nº 198 FEBRUARY 1996

⬅PREVIOUS: SMILE

https://melisa-may-taylor72.tumblr.com/post/639672109315014656/queen-before-queen-the-1960s-recordings

➡NEXT: IBEX, WRECKAGE & SOUR MILK SEA

@natromanxoff, @mephisto92, @moviestorian, @x5vale, @39-brian, @onegoldenglance, @crosmopolitan, @an-abyss-called-life, @his-majesty-king-mercury, @i-live-for-queen, @brian-39-may, @toomuchlove-willkillyou, @brimaymay, @sail-away-sweet-sister, @drummerqueenrmt, @old-fashioned-roger-boy, @briianmaay, @inui-mycroft, @deacytits, @iminlovewithrogscar, @drowseoftaylor, @brianmayislongaway, @balticlover, @astrophysicist-guitar-god, @miez-lakatz, @brianmayoucease, @jesus-in-a-life-boat, @aslongasthereismusic, @roger-taylors-car, @silapril, @sherrifanciesfriskyfreddie, @tenderbri, @brianmydear, @thosequeenboys, @millionairewaltz-carpediem, @painandpleasure86, @bribrifrenchfry, @xlucylennonx, @a-night-at-the-abbey-road, @inthedayswhenlandswerefew, @madformeddowstaylor, @queenrogertaylorfan, @let-roger-get-a-lunch, @queen-for-life, @rethought, @drivenbybrianmay @mymakeupmaybeflaking, @old-but-still-a-child, @let-roger-get-a-lunch, @warriorteam1924, @funnydressesweirdhairanddance, @painkiller80, @thefanhuman13, @yourtieddownmother, @hgmercury39, @brimi-stardust, @thefairyfellermercury, @retroromantics, @sailawaysweetbrimi, @sophiaintheskywithdiamonds, @holybrianmaywritingbear, @lydiannode, @39-yellow-daffodils , @ure-gonna-loveme-when-u-seeme, @kaykaybeachgirl, @foxmonkey, @deakysgurl, @redspecialandclogsandcurls, @briansrainbowsocks-deactivated2, @delilahmay39, @ohmybribri, @bless-the-queen, @everythingaboutfreddie, @doitforthevine67, @recordsoftheseventies, @rhysjoejoshtomfarisblog, @tenementfunsterwithpurpleshoes, @drummah-in-a-rocknroll-band, @beatlegirl1968, @maylorsqueen, @autumnscenemcyt, @gralto, @alittlepeoplemagic, @rainbowsockbrian, @frejudy, @drivenbybri, @yourlocalmusicalprostitute, @saik-ava, @omb-xx, @sassymaylor, @somekindofroger, @starlightmay, @freddiemercuryismylife, @sunshine112, @chrysochromulina, @glitteryloveravenue, @deakyislife51, @0-primejive-0, @just-a-skinny-lad, @bluewillowmom, @sassiesillie, @stesichoreanpalinode, @farrokhbulsaramercury, @tayloredofqueen, @rushingheadlong, @izzy-is-slightly-mad, @scandalacious, @0-my-fairy-queen-0 @39-volunteers-to-space@zodiacaldust, @deakytaylor, @queenband70s, @deakyeveryday, @drivenbybrimay @70smay

#Queen Before Queen #Pre-Queen Series #John Deacon #The Opposition #🎤🎵🎸👑⭐

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whatstheproblembaby · 3 years

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Fic: What’s in a Name?

The “Why does everyone call Shelagh ‘Mrs. Turner’ when all the other married nurses are ‘Nurse Whoever’ fic that no one asked for but I wanted to write anyways. ~1900 words, G, gen/friendship fic at the beginning but solidly Turnadette by the end.

Also on AO3!

Shelagh had thought she was above eavesdropping in corners in Nonnatus House after Trixie and Cynthia had roped her into their spying on Jenny and Alec all those years ago, but apparently, some things stayed with you. She was approaching the dining room from the hall, intending to enjoy a quick cup of tea and a catch-up with Trixie as she waited for Patrick to finish with an ulcer case, but the voices coming from the kitchen made her pause and shrink back into the wall. She was likely still visible if someone took the effort to look from the dining room - and anyone coming from the end of the hall would think she was ridiculous - but she thought the conversation that was going on might not benefit from her presence just yet.

“Trixie, you’ve been here the longest,” Lucille began.

“Yes, thank you for reminding me, Lucille,” Trixie replied with a faux-irritated huff.

“You know that’s not what I meant. You’re still a young woman, and you have valuable knowledge that the rest of us appreciate,” Lucille said. Shelagh could just barely see them entering the dining room out of the corner of her eye, noticing what she thought was a quick, loving hand squeeze between the two women as they and the others took their seats. “Especially about the history of Nonnatus.”

“That’s true,” Sister Hilda cut in. Sister Frances nodded emphatically beside her. “They give us some background at the Mother House, of course, but it’s no substitute for actually having your boots on the ground here.”

“I see…,” Trixie said. She took a sip of her Horlicks before continuing, “And what exactly about the history of Nonnatus do you want to know?”

“It’s not about the history of Nonnatus precisely, but it’s related. I think,” Lucille said, sipping her own drink. “It’s about Mrs. Turner.”

“She should be here in a moment,” Trixie said. Shelagh flattened herself even more against the wall when Trixie leaned out to scan the hallway for her, but to no avail - she saw Trixie’s eyes widen as they locked with her own. Shelagh shook her head, just once. Thankfully Trixie got the message, smoothly saying, “You could just ask her then.”

“I don’t know if what I’m about to ask is...painful, somehow.” Shelagh quirked an eyebrow at Lucille’s choice of adjective. “If you don’t know the answer, though, then I will ask once she arrives.”

“Fire away, sweetie,” Trixie said. She looked back up to where Shelagh was hiding, her face a perfectly unruffled mask. Shelagh could see in her eyes that she too had no idea where Lucille was taking this question, though.

“Why do we call Mrs. Turner ‘Mrs. Turner’ when we all called Barbara ‘Nurse Hereward’ after she got married? She’s also a nurse - are we being disrespectful?”

“I’ve wondered that, too!” Sister Frances chimed in. “She puts in as much work as the rest of us. Doesn’t she deserve the title?”

Shelagh pressed her lips together, stifling a laugh. She had been so worried about gossip and stigma when she first left the Order - she had never imagined that she would be so absorbed into her new life that people might not know anything about her past at all. Of course, she had never imagined that the staff at Nonnatus would shift quite so frequently, either. Once, it would have been Cynthia, Jenny, and Chummy sitting at that table with Trixie, and they would have had no need to ask.

“I suppose the simplest answer is that for quite a while, we never expected Shelagh to become Mrs. Turner,” Trixie said. “It was a joy for us to be able to say it, and she did retire briefly from nursing when she married. We just got used to it.”

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Shelagh said, finally stepping into the dining room and revealing herself. A chorus of startled noises punctuated her statement, along with Sister Frances splashing her Horlicks onto the table.

“Oh, lass,” Phyllis sighed, pushing herself up to grab a dishcloth from the kitchen. “Hasn’t the East End trained the jumpiness out of you yet?”

“I’m sorry!” Sister Frances said, taking the cloth and mopping up her spill. “But why didn’t anyone expect you to marry Dr. Turner, Mrs. - I mean, Nurse-”

“Right now, I think you should all just call me Shelagh,” she cut in, taking Sister Monica Joan’s usual seat at the foot of the table. Trixie got up at that, walking over to the kitchen to pour Shelagh a mug of Horlicks, too. “Or were you going to be circumspect about my first name as well, Trixie?”

“Had they asked, quite possibly!” Trixie said, passing Shelagh her mug and taking her seat again. “I didn’t realize your past was such ancient history. Or is it classified under the Official Secrets Act?”

“What are you two talking about?” Val interjected, looking from Shelagh to Trixie and back like it was a match at Wimbledon. “You’re making it sound like she has a secret identity or something.”

“Maybe she’s a Russian spy,” Phyllis teased. “Come to get classified intel on birthing babies for the Kremlin!”

“Close,” Shelagh said with a laugh. “But to answer your question, Sister Frances, I need to ask you and Sister Hilda one of my own first. Did anyone at the Mother House ever mention a sister who left the order back in 1958?”

“Not to me,” Sister Frances said. “But I only just took my life vows.”

Sister Hilda bit her lip for a moment before saying, “Now that you mention it, it rings a bell. I think Mother Jesu Emmanuel said something at dinner one day, but she didn’t say which sister it was. Did you know her, Shelagh?”

Trixie snorted into her mug.

“I was her,” Shelagh answered.

There was pin-drop silence around the table. Five sets of eyes bored into Shelagh, clearly begging to know more, while Trixie just quietly allowed everyone to process the moment.

“I was Sister Bernadette for about ten years,” Shelagh explained. “And Dr. Turner was married to his first wife, Marianne, for most of that time. But she passed away, unfortunately, after an illness, and after that...we grew closer.”

“So no one expected you to get married because you were a nun,” Val said. “That makes sense.”

“Well, that, and I was in a sanitarium for six months or so because I had tuberculosis. Your future generally gets a bit hazy when you’re diagnosed with a serious illness.” Shelagh took a sip of her drink as another round of stunned silence settled around the table.

“Is that all?” Phyllis asked after a moment. “You aren’t secretly a member of the Royal Family, or brewing bathtub gin out of one of the spare rooms-”

“No, I’m out of surprises for the day,” Shelagh said through a laugh. “But thank you for thinking I could be that interesting.”

“So when you two first met-” Lucille began, turning to Trixie.

“She was Sister Bernadette, terrifyingly efficient and completely off-limits for friendship. Or so I thought,” Trixie said, smiling. “And now Shelagh’s still terrifyingly efficient, but an excellent friend.”

“Gosh, Trixie, at least buy me dinner first,” Shelagh teased. There was a moment of shared laughter before Lucille spoke up again.

“No one’s answered my original question, though. Do you want us to call you Nurse Turner professionally, Shelagh?”

Shelagh took a moment to gather her thoughts before answering. “I do appreciate the offer, Lucille, but no. Patrick and I actually discussed this a little when I returned to nursing, and we were concerned that ‘Dr. Turner’ and ‘Nurse Turner’ would lead to confusion among our patients if they were trying to discuss diagnoses or treatments amongst themselves. And admittedly...I do quite like being Mrs. Turner.”

“Well that’s encouraging to hear,” came another voice from behind her, making them all jump. Patrick rested his hand on Shelagh’s shoulder from behind her chair, squeezing once in greeting before asking, “Are you ready to go home, Shelagh?”

“Unless anyone has any further questions?” Shelagh asked, smiling at her colleagues around the table before standing up and taking her mug to the kitchen. There was a flurry of “good nights” from all parties as Shelagh looped her hand through Patrick’s elbow and they made their departure.

“‘Further questions’?” Patrick asked once they were in their car. “Were you having a class I didn’t know about?”

“Not exactly,” Shelagh said. “I overheard Lucille asking Trixie why everyone calls me ‘Mrs. Turner’ and not ‘Nurse Turner,’ and that led to some, erm, revelations.”

“But why - no one knew about Sister Bernadette?” Patrick said, connecting the dots. “Not even Sister Hilda? I would think she was in the Order around the same time you were.”

“She had heard about a sister leaving, but she didn’t know it was me,” Shelagh explained. “Apparently there’s been so much upheaval at Nonnatus House over the last few years that our story has gone quite unremarked.”

“You’re not upset that Sister Bernadette isn’t more prominent, are you?” Patrick said, reaching over to take one of Shelagh’s hands in his. Their gazes met briefly before he had to turn his focus back to the road. “She - you - did important work during your time there.”

“I’d like to think I’m doing important work now, too,” Shelagh said, smiling over at her husband. “And I don’t care about being recognized for it, whichever name I’m using. Frankly, I think I’d find it harder to do my work if Sister Bernadette’s name was still being talked about. I’d always be concerned that I’m not...living up to her standards, or that people preferred one version of me to the other. Not that there are versions of me in the first place!”

“You have always been the same loving, determined woman I used to share an illicit cigarette with years ago,” Patrick said, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “I’d like to think you’re allowed to be more open about it as my wife, but even if you had stayed in the Order, I know you would be going above and beyond for your patients and colleagues, because that’s just who you are, regardless of the name you use.”

“If I had any doubts about the path I chose in life, that would have erased them,” Shelagh said. “You have always seen me so clearly, Patrick, and it’s helped me to see myself.”

“It’s mutual, my love. I don’t know how I would have handled certain events over the past few years without you helping me find my strength and courage when it was needed.”

“Oh, Patrick,” Shelagh said, waiting for Patrick to put the car in park and turn off the engine before reaching over to take his hands in hers. “Just listen to us. Timothy would be aghast if he heard all this ‘mushy stuff,’ as he used to call it.”

“Timothy’s not here, though, is he? Which means I can do this without fear of unwanted commentary.” Patrick pulled Shelagh in for a lingering kiss. By the time it was finished, Shelagh had just about forgotten any name she had had in her life.

A yell of “Mum!” came from the front door, startling them back into reality.

“Another name for the list,” Shelagh joked wryly. “But maybe we could resume what we were doing a little closer to bedtime?”

“With pleasure,” Patrick said, and they got out of the car.

#call the midwife #call the midwife fic #turnadette #turnadette fic #jen does words #g: fluff #no one asked for this but me but by god will i deliver anyways!!!

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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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LUCY SHUNS AUDITIONS

July 21, 1950

[In the below article, reprinted verbatim, Johnson writes using a lot of imagery and insider jargon. This sort of article was common in trade papers like Variety, but seems odd in a daily newspaper.]

Hollywood—(NEA) Lucille Ball slipped me the lowdown on her failure to pin to the canvas the dumb chick role in “Born Yesterday” and make it holler uncle. (1)

She’s got a touch of Francis the mule in her when it comes to auditions. (2)

Instead of scrimmaging for the role with Evelyn Keyes, Judy Holliday, Marie Wilson, Shelly Winters and Jan Sterling, (3) Lucille went bolting the other way.

The “let’s-see-if-you’re-it” boys pleaded and cajoled.

But Miss Anti-Auditions wasn’t having any of the competition, thank you.

“I figure if they want you, they want you,” Lucille plainspoke it. If you’ve got to read and test for it, to heck with it.’

She isn’t chronicled in Hollywood history, but once, badgered by her RKO bosses, Lucille went tripping over to David O. Selznick’s office for a whack at the Scarlett O’Hara role in “Gone With the Wind.”

That’s what curdled her in the first place.

“It was awful,’’ Lucille shudders. I was shaking all over when I hit Selznick’s office. My knees gave way. I did the whole audition in scrubwoman position. Selznick laughs and says thanks a lot. (4)

Judy Holliday landed the junkman’s doll role and Lucille grabbed a railroad ticket for a personal appearance tour with hubby Desi Arnaz. She strutted to Latin rhythms, swung a glittering purse in a manner dear to runaway girls and wisecracked for the customers. (5)

MIMICS OSCAR WINNER

At the last moment she nixed a dancing and singing routine. The star with the forest-fire hair shrugged:

“I decided it would be silly to compete with Grable.” (6)

A lot of movie queens laid in fresh supplies of smelling salts, ice beanies and copies of “Release From Nervous Tension” when word got around that Lucille was about to whoop it up on the six-a-day circuit. (7)

She’s a blister-raiser from way back and the air was shrill with ouches about a year ago when she whipped up an impression of an Academy Award winner.

But the girls can go back to worrying about other things—like shrinking from larger-than-life to television screen size.

Lucille didn’t let any “furriners” see the routine.

“It's for Hollywood only," she said. “I should take radio-active material on the road?”

Her Oscar-grabber routine is strictly for unreal anyhow, she says. and no blood relation to Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman or any other Screen Duse. (8) She insisted:

“She's any movie star, even me. This character has to go up on that stage and act surprised. She’s only been rehearsing what she's going say flor eight weeks. So she says, ‘Ye gads, me? But I’m so unprepared. Really, I didn’t dream...” Lucille is generally is as unflinching about the movie queen business as Pearl White was about onrushing trains. (9)

But her knees executed some wobbles that aren’t in Arthur Murray’s rhumba dance book when she checked into her first vaudeville dressing room. (10)

“Those stages—they’re so big.” she gasped. “Hey, I’d hate to get caught in the middle of one of those stages without bread and water.”

Lucille didn’t take any chances with out-of-town press interviews, either. “I once did a personal appearance tour with Maureen O'Hara and had to show up at a press party,” she grinned. (11)

My sinus - I just die from it - was acting up. The reporter next to me didn’t understand my puffed eyes and cold sores. He called Maureen a lady in his story. But he referred to me as a whisky tenor with red-runny eyes.”

Lucille’s brain cells work on direct current and she’s not one to make with the figure eights when a straight glide to home base would get her there quicker.

They still laugh about her exit line to Louis B. Mayer. (12) Mayer always referred to her as a thoroughbred and sometimes compared her to his famous horses. "Yes, and like your other nags, I'm leaving your stable," Lucille said when she decided to bow out of her contract.

She has high hopes for her new picture “The Fuller Brush Man.” Not that she enjoyed it: (13)

“Honey, this ones that I don t enjoy turn out be the best ones. This one put me in the hospital. My feet are still bandaged up. I’m a mess. No more physical-type pictures for me.”

# # # FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) The 1946 Broadway hit comedy Born Yesterday by Garsin Kanin was bought by Columbia Pictures. Things got complicated when its stage star, Judy Holliday, swore she would not do the film version. Columbia used this as fuel for publicity about who would win the role. Naturally, Lucille Ball was considered a top contender. As the article states, she was not eager, however, to prove her worth to the ‘let’s-see-if-you’re-it’ boys (aka producers). There was talk of Lucille performing the play in London, or summer stock, but her film contracts would not allow her time off for a stage run.

(2) Mules are supposedly notoriously stubborn animals - just like Lucy. Francis the Talking Mule was the star of seven popular Universal-International film comedies. The character originated in the 1946 novel Francis by David Stern III, adapting his own script for the first entry, simply titled Francis. On “I Love Lucy” Fred Mertz sometimes called Ethel “Francis” to indicate she was being stubborn about something.

(3) These were some of the Hollywood stars looking to play the part of Billie Dawn in the film Born Yesterday. Evelyn Keyes (1916 – 2008) was best known for playing Sue Ellen, Scarlett O’Hara’s kid sister, in Gone With The Wind (1939). Judy Holliday (1921-65), changed her mind about playing the role she originated on Broadway, but by then the casting net was cast, and she was just another performer on the short list. She eventually got the role, which defined her career. Marie Wilson (1916-72) was a zany comedic actress in the style of Gracie Burns. She was widely known as the star of radio and TV’s “My Friend Irma”. Shelley Winters (1920-2006) would be nominated for an Oscar the year after this article. She was adept at playing drama and comedy, and had a long-lasting career in Hollywood. She appeared on “Here’s Lucy” in 1968; Critics raved about her Jan Sterling’s portrayal of Billie Dawn in the Chicago touring company of Born Yesterday and Columbia brought her out to the West Coast to test for the film. At one point, she was actually announced to play the part but the role ultimately went to Holliday.

(4) Lucille Ball did indeed read (not screen test) for the role of Scarlet O’Hara, just like nearly all of the women in Hollywood in 1938. Ball told the story several times on television, each time with varying details, but probably most completely on “Bob Hope’s Unrehearsed Antics of The Stars” (1984).

(5) This is a vivid description of the “Cuban Pete / Sally Sweet” portion of Lucy and Desi’s nightclub act to convince sponsors to buy them as a couple.

(6) Betty Grable (1916-73) was considered one of the most famous pin-up girls in history. In addition to her million dollar gams (legs), she could sing, dance, and act, too. She guest starred with her then-husband Harry James on “Lucy Wins A Racehorse”, an installment of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” aired on February 3, 1958.

(7) “Release from Nervous Tension” was an actual best-selling book by Dr. David Harold Fink, published in 1950. Vaudeville and Burlesque shows were often known as the ‘six-a-day circuit’ because sometimes there would be as many as six performances of the same act in a day. Naturally, this did not apply to Lucy and Desi, who were big film and radio stars at the time.

(8) These were some of Hollywood’s top-line dramatic actors. Bette Davis (1908-89) had won two Oscars, and was nominated for several others during her long career. She was supposed to guest-star on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” in “The Celebrity Next Door” in 1957 but dropped out after a horse-riding accident, leaving the role to Tallulah Bankhead; Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020) had also won two Oscars, the second the year this article was published. She was best remembered for playing Melanie Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939); Ingrid Bergman (1915-82) was a Swedish-born actress, who, by career’s end, had scored three Academy Awards. When Johnson talks about “any other screen Duse” he is referring to Eleonor Duse (1858-1924), an Italian-born stage actress known for her grand, dramatic style.

(9) Pearl White (1889-1938) was best known as the silent film actress who was tied to the railroad tracks in “The Perils of Pauline” (1914).

(10) Arthur Murray (1895-1991) was a ballroom dancer and businessman best known for the chain of dancing schools that bear his name. Murray was often a punchline on “I Love Lucy,” especially when the subject of dancing came up. The Rhumba was a Latin dance that took America by storm in the late 1940s and 1950. Desi Arnaz often called his orchestra a ‘rhumba band.’

(11) Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015) and Lucille Ball had starred in Dance, Girl, Dance in 1940. As a result, the two went on a promotional tour that took them to several US cities, including the nation’s capitol.

(12) Louis B. Meyer (1884-1957), along with Samuel Goldwyn and Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures, had formed a new motion picture company called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1918. Over the next 25 years, MGM was "the Tiffany of the studios," producing more films and movie stars than any other studio in the world. Mayer became the highest-paid man in America, and one of the country's most successful horse breeders. Both he and MGM reached their peaks at the end of World War II, and Mayer was forced out in 1951, just a year after this article was written.

(13) Erskine Johnson gets the title wrong. Lucille had madeThe Fuller Brush Girl, a sequel to The Fuller Brush Man (1948). The film was released in mid-September 1950.

#Lucille Ball #Erskine Johnson #Newspaper #Fuller Brush Girl #Born Yesterday #Judy Holliday #MGM #Louis B. Mayer #Pearl White #Olivia DeHavilland #Bette Davis #Ingrid Bergman #Release from Nervous Tension #Eleonor Duse #Betty Grable #Desi Arnaz #Gone With The Wind

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shirtlesssammy · 4 years

Text

8x12: As Time Goes By

Then:

A family with a lifetime of happiness ahead of them!

Now:

1958:

In Normal, Illinois, a young boy is woken by his father wishing him sweet dreams and that he’ll see him in the morning. The father then heads off to work to a Men of Letters secret hideout. (Erm, I just looked at the episode order, we don’t know about the Men of Letter yet. Spoiler!) Anyway, the man enters and finds his colleague, Josie, waiting for him. It seems they’re getting initiated into some kind of secret society.

A hooded man beckons Josie inside first. As the man waits, he hears screams. He dashes inside to find pure chaos. A robed man with bleeding eyes gives him something, pleading, “Henry, do not let Abaddon get it.”

Josie is really Abaddon! She sees Henry and he takes off running, with Abaddon in close pursuit. He locks himself in a room and starts making a potion for a spell. He makes a sigil on a door, chants his spell, and jumps right into Sam and Dean’s motel room. “Which of you is John Winchester?”

They demand to know who he is. When he doesn’t answer, Dean body slams him against the wall. Still, he insists that one of them must know John Winchester. They want answers from him --but he merely tells them there’s been a mistake and tries leaving. Unfortunately, at the mention of John, Sam and Dean are on high alert, so they handcuff the guy, which he breaks from instantly and escapes. (Sam and Dean are now handcuffed to the chair.)

A man out of time, Henry gloms onto the one thing that looks even remotely like home --the Impala. He checks the date on the license plate and then breaks the window (!) to break into the car.

(Man, I think Dean gets his flair for dramatics from his grandfather because Sam just walked up and opened the passenger side door --doofus just had to open that door and slide over to steal the car.)

Back at the motel, the brothers test him for everything, but holy water doesn’t take out arrogance. John won’t talk to alpha-male monkey men. Dean lets it slip that John Winchester is his father. Before Henry can parse that fact, Abaddon busts through the door. She wants what he has.

Henry pleads with Josie, the woman Abaddon possessed, but gets nowhere. That’s okay, because Dean’s got his demon knife, and stabs her in the back!

But, uh, it was more like stepping on a lego than death for her, so the boys and Henry run.

The three of them pull over when they reach safety and Henry explains that Abaddon is a demon from Hell, and he is from 1958.

He needs to see John Winchester. Dean breaks the news that John Winchester is dead. Henry breaks the news that he’s John’s father.

Sam believes him. Dean is #TeamJohn (ofc) and says that Henry left when John was just a kid. Sam wonders if this was the reason --he traveled to another time and couldn’t make it home.

(Sidenote: I love that Sam’s willing to give his time traveling deadbeat grandfather more of a chance than the vampire that SAVED his brother’s life...hrmf. But it does play nicely with both brothers --Henry has to earn Dean’s loyalty, family or not.)

The family bonding includes discussing why Abaddon didn’t die from Ruby’s knife, shoving Abaddon back where she came, and learning about blood spells that require the use of the human soul. Henry is confused why the brothers don’t know about the last bit. “You’re Men of Letters, correct?”

Sam breaks the sad news that they’re hunters. Henry keeps winning Dean over by calling hunters “apes.” He then calls them legacies. “Legacies of what?”

Henry takes them to the Men of Letters secret hideout. It’s currently a comic shop.

Henry explains what Men of Letters are and why it’s important that the brothers carry on the family legacy. “So you’re like Yodas to our Jedis?” Yes DEAN yes.

Sam wonders why they’ve never heard of the Men of Letters. “Abaddon,” Henry concludes, and heads inside. He has the mysterious box still and wants to find another Men of Letters to help them stop Abaddon.

(Funny time travel generational jokes ensue.)

Sam borrows a laptop and finds the article detailing the night of Abaddon’s attack. Henry hears the name Albert Magnus, and boom, they’re walking around a dark cemetery. Magnus was a code word for other Men of Letters-- to alert them that something was amiss. He sees another grave marker and realizes that the message is here, and asks his grandsons, “You boys ever exhume a body?”

At the comic shop, Abaddon strolls in like she invented dark ennui. She reels the young clerk towards her, steals her memories, covets her shirt, and...sends the clerk off on a wonderful, all-expense paid vacation to San Diego Comic Con! That’s...definitely what happened.

In the cemetery, Dean and Sam dig out the body because they are SUCKERS while their grandpa sits his aging bones cleanly on the edge of the grave and oversees their work. Henry doesn’t know the body buried in the coffin, but he’s ready to investigate! He thinks a survivor may have stolen the identity of the buried body and may be still alive somewhere. Time to get moving! As soon as the Winchester boys rebury the body!

Back in the motel, I have to interrupt the recap for Motel Room Decoration Porn.

Henry whistles “As time goes by” like it’s a super normal thing to lounge around whistling songs while your future grandchildren research demons. They reminisce about the song. Henry bought a music box that played that song for John when he was a boy, to comfort him when he was scared. This tale brings GREAT comfort and not an OUNCE of jealousy to Dean, who changes the subject. The identity of the body belongs to someone who actually still lives in Lebanon, Kansas, and is terrifically old by now. Sam’s also uncovered a tidbit: according to their dad’s journal, Abaddon is a Knight of Hell. They’re the first-born and purest demons.

Henry muses over John’s journal, and flips the pages to reveal initials engraved in the cover: HW. John was using his father’s journal - the one Henry had purchased to chronicle his own Men of Letters studies after his initiation.

Henry realizes that he’s not heading back home after this mission. And although Henry is appalled that his son became a hunter instead of an esteemed Men (Man?) of Letters, he runs up against Dean’s defense of John enduring against hardship to become a hunter. While we often grit our teeth when we think of John and parenting in the same breath, I do get the sense that Dean’s defending his own life and choices here too. Dean’s emotions continue to radiate out of every pore like the sun on a cloudless day, because he lashes out at Henry for accepting his fate of never seeing his son again and being more loyal to the Men of Letters than his own family. Dean Bean!

Henry reads through John’s journal. SPOILERS! In the morning, Dean “I’ll never sleep under covers again” Winchester and Sam “How is my hair this perfect” Winchester wake up to discover Henry missing. Henry has left so he can fix everything! GREAT! Happy ending, episode done.

At a small new age shop, Henry demands spell ingredients. He knows they’re there because of the hunter’s signs in the window. The shopkeeper aims a shotgun at his gut.

Henry offers to buy some wholesome chamomile, and then blows powder at her face while saying a quick incantation. She passes out immediately. f r o w n y f a c e

At the motel, Dean and Sam realize that some spell ingredients, like an angel feather from their trunk, are missing. Henry is trying to cook up another time travel spell! More important than this fact, though, is that Dean and Sam keep angel feathers in the trunk of the Impala! Sometimes I think LOL okay angel wings are ethereal and quasi-metaphorical on this show and sometimes I think THEY HAVE FEATHERS that you CAN TOUCH and my mind slips down soft, feathery wing-kink adjacent side tunnels…...

Ahem.

I’m fine.

News crops up. There’s one dead at Astro Comics.

Sam interrogates the last-remaining Men of Letters. He tells Sam that Abaddon was a “hired gun” who destroyed everyone. In the box Henry took is the key to every spell, every bit of Men of Letters knowledge.

At the shop, Henry chants his time travel spell. When Dean tries to stop him, Henry tells him that reading John’s journal hurt. Dean reveals that reading his dad’s journal hurts “every damn time.” DAMN YOU DEAN WINCHESTER AND YOUR SOFT NOUGATY HEART!

Henry reveals his plan: he’ll travel back in time to an hour before Abaddon attacks and then THEY’LL have the upper hand. Dean’s concerned: he might not exist if Henry fiddles with the past.

Sam asks the last surviving Men of Letters how to stop Abaddon, but the old man has no useful advice. Instead, he counsels Sam to chuck the key into the secret lair and scram to keep the secrets safe from Abaddon. Then Sam reveals that Dean has the key and Larry’s wife stands up, her eyes flicking to black. It’s Abaddon! She slices up her old foe while Sam tries to scram.

Abaddon calls Dean and taunts him gleefully. She offers up a deal: Henry and the key in exchange for Sam. Henry’s still resolute about going back in time but Dean won’t risk him failing - not with “Sammy on the hook now.” Dean sleeper holds his grandpa.

At the meeting spot, Dean offers over a grim Henry in exchange for Sam. Yay! Family reunion again!

Henry circles Abaddon while Sam and Dean try to scamper away. Abaddon traps them though and then stabs Henry through the gut with her BARE HAND. YIKES. Henry shakes it off, though and shoots her through the chin. Oh, he also doesn’t have the box anymore! It’s just a pack of playing cards. “I’ve been played!” Abaddon should have said.

Instead, Abaddon shrieks in rage and then discovers that she’s trapped in place. Abaddon ate a devil’s trap bullet, so her powers are nullified. Dean slices her head off and tells her he’ll carefully dismember her and bury her under cement which is some REAL DARK SHIT MY FRIENDS. It’s actually a comfort to know that he couldn’t follow through on the whole piece-by-piece dismembering!

Dean congratulates Henry on his win, while Henry slowly dies in Sam’s arms. “We’re Winchesters,” Henry tells them. “As long as we’re alive, there’s always hope.” With his dying breath, Henry tells them he’s proud of John because of Sam and Dean and...you know what? It’s a sideways compliment, but I’ll take it.

Sam and Dean bury Henry in the old Men of Letters graveyard. “The Winchester and the Campbells,” Sam reflects on their legacy. “The brains and the brawn.” Dean doesn’t appreciate the poetry of it. He only sees the pain. He also thinks about John’s pain, thinking that Henry abandoned him so many years ago when he died for his grandsons instead. “Freaking time travel, man.”

Sam pulls out Henry’s mysterious box. Time to open it up and see what’s inside! “We are legacies, right?”

What, the Quote-ans?

Is it absolutely essential, sir, that you keep your hands on me?

That’s no way to treat a lady

Seriously? Dudes time-travelling through motel-room closets? That's what we've come to?

Let me get this straight. You traveled through time to protect something that does you-don't-know-what from a demon that you know nothing about?

We had a deal!

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn rewatch #spn 8x12 #as time goes by #dean winchester #sam winchester #henry winchester #abaddon #supernatural season 8

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years

Text

Letter from a disenchanted student of the Divine Principle

Many Unification Church members seem to think people who left the organization are like some kind of lapsed Catholics, but most of those people just recognized Moon’s absurd and contradictory rhetoric had absolutely no relationship to reality – I pointed out many of those obvious contradictions in my previous letter to Rev Moon. Even the vaunted Divine Principle was not his own teaching. Much of it came from a woman called Seong-do Kim whose revelations began in 1923. She stated that Jesus did not come to die (not new because other Christians had taught this previously), she also taught that the fall was a sexual sin (again not new because Jewish scholars suggested this long ago and anyone can recognize the association, even sex shops use a bitten apple to advertise their wares). She also taught about the change of blood lineage through the messiah – thus justifying all the deviant sexual activity involved in the pikareum rituals. Another source was a woman called Chong Deuk-eun who dictated a book called the Principle of Life in 1946-47. It was published in 1958.

The history parallels were taken straight from the teachings of Baek-moon Kim’s Israel Monastery – being the reason they finish in 1917, which was Baek-moon’s birth date rather than 1920 when Moon was born. The final Divine Principle book was composed by a committee guided by Hyo-won Eu with input from Young Oon Kim and various professors. So rather than being a direct revelation, the DP is actually an interesting amalgam of Christian theology, nineteenth century science, Oriental philosophy and shamanism – added to the insights and teachings that were taken from various Korean spiritual groups.  

This was why I felt free to approach much of the DP as almost allegorical because the main thing to emphasize was personal spiritual maturity – the development of a loving parental heart. (The real meaning of ‘perfection’.) I never believed that absolute Cain/Abel rubbish spouted by Moon and Japanese leaders. I remember one itinerant worker saying, ‘If my central figure tells me this red dress is blue then it’s blue.’ Absolutely insane – but this is exactly the kind of thing that has been propagated by the Moon family and their minions, especially in Japan, and it leads to all kinds of abuses.

  In addition to the DP we also have Rev. Moon’s great blessing theory, whereby through downing a glass of holy wine and being engrafted to his lineage we become capable of conceiving pure offspring, free from original sin. These ‘blessed’ children can then form the core of the heavenly kingdom on earth, of course with the ‘True Parents’ and their children at the absolute center. However, the proof of any pudding is in the eating – regardless of how good the recipe might sound. So let us look at the results, the fruits of the messiah and his teaching.

We can start with some of his own blessed children: Ye Jin – (Divorced.) Hyo Jin – was a drug addict, I saw him give a sermon one time when he was so stoned he had to hold on to the podium in order to stand up. He punched and kicked his wife, Nansook Hong, watched pornography, walked around with a gun in his pocket and beat up church members. (Divorced.) In Jin – was forced to resign her position because it became public knowledge about her affairs with two married members and the illegitimate child she had with one of them. (Divorced.) Un Jin – said clearly on TV that her father was not the messiah, and that the church was just about power and money. (Divorced.)   Hyun Jin, the kind-hearted business expert who wanted to cut the salaries of our church’s jewelry workers by a third – I saw a video of him calling a church leader an arrogant bastard and kicking him as the man knelt before him. No matter what the guy was guilty of, this was just one more example of the violence perpetrated by the Moon family. Which of course was epitomized by Cleopas, the black Zimbabwean supposedly embodying the spirit of Heung Jin, who went around the world viciously beating up men and women, putting some in hospital. He even threatened church members with a pistol. (All of it approved by Rev Moon who laughed at the beatings and had himself used a baseball bat on members.)  

Kook Jin – an arms dealer who said Abel wouldn’t have been killed if he’d had a gun. Divorced his wife and had himself re-blessed with a Korean beauty queen. He now has his own group of armed ‘knights’ willing to do whatever he orders. (Divorced.)   Hyung Jin, the heir apparent (according to him), lied about getting a BA from Harvard when he actually attained a lower qualification – and if he thinks the parable of the sower is referring to ‘absolute sex’ I think he needs to go back to Divinity School. His Sanctuary Church now promotes the owning of AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles, and has ceremonies with participants carrying these lethal weapons while wearing bizarre crowns of bullets. According to one of his recent speeches, all the women of the world are ‘Brides of Christ,’ and he of course is now in that Christ position.

Don’t want to go into details about some of the others as I feel sorry for them.

  So this so-called true family demonstrates clearly that there is no difference between blessed children and any others. Rev. Moon said as much in Korea when he was talking about Sammy Park, his illegitimate son. He said, ‘The sons from the concubine are better because there is more passion involved in their conception.’ So much for the value of the blessing.   

(Of course Mrs Moon blames the bad behavior of her adult, absolute ruler children on the poor church members, as though they could do anything to control it.)  

So now lets look at the practical results of all the members’ sacrifice and offerings:   This Parc One court case (the conflict that began between Kook Jin and Hyun Jin) resulted in at least 700 million dollars of church money going to lawyers and outside companies. This is at a time when Japanese church members were being bled dry; many could not even afford to go to the dentist. (They were commonly referred to as ‘the toothless ones’ in Japan.)  

Cheongpyeong – you couldn’t make it up – they were selling apartments in the spirit world! People have to be completely away with the fairies to buy into that. Mrs Hyo Nam Kim (Dae Mo Nim or Hoon Mo Nim) after being denounced as a fraud, walked away with assets worth more than 230 million dollars (including one of the top golf courses in South Korea), so her spiritual real estate business must have been doing very well. It’s as crazy as charging money so that your ancestors can attend workshops with the spirit of Heung Jin, or paying thirty dollars for two bottles of Danjobi shampoo to get evil spirits out of your hair. (This all of course also being done with the consent of Rev Moon.)

Mrs Kim was supposedly channeling Dae Mo Nim, the mother of Hak Ja Han, which was actually a strange choice because Dae Mo Nim and another woman had spent two years in jail for beating a mentally ill youth to death in one of these frenzied ansu sessions (where they beat bad spirits out of people).

That whole Cheongpyeong providence is merely old Korean shamanism, and just because people have spiritual experiences there doesn’t validate what is going on. Something many members don’t realize is that God works to educate and reach people regardless of what religion they are following.  

Rev. Moon often praised Korean culture but Korea was a slave society for most of its history. Although the number of slaves had declined during the nineteenth century the institution was not legally banned until 1894, and the system survived in practice until the 1920s. At least one third of the population were slaves in the past, and the children of slaves automatically belonged to their masters – with most wealthy men keeping concubines. The Koreans always had that tradition of the Yangban, or aristocrats, being served by everybody else, even having a caste of sex slaves for that purpose.  

Another tradition was idol worship and shamanism. All this drumming and beating at Cheongpyeong is actually for drawing spirits into people, not driving them out. The disgusting business of putting Moon’s semen and blood into the holy wine is more shamanism. Shamans believe if you can get someone to imbibe your bodily fluids they will come under your control. By the way, Rev Moon’s children used to refer to Mrs Kim and her people as ‘the witches of Cheongpyeong.’ To put this in perspective there are still over 300,000 shamans or ‘mudangs’ plying their trade in Korea.   

Conferences. After working on some of them I was shown very clearly that all those big science, arts and other conferences actually had no purpose other than glorifying Rev Moon. He wasn’t at all interested in any results from those meetings, only in how many famous people attended.

  About 500 million dollars is donated each year by the Japanese church, but where does it all go? What great world-changing projects do you see it used for? Of what use are all these glorious palaces? The one at Cheongpyeong cost over a thousand million dollars. Just think what good could have been done in the world with such funds. This particular palace is now adorned with giant statues of Hak Ja Han with Jesus kneeling before her and a much diminished figure of Sun Myung Moon in obedient attendance. She has effectively created a new religion centered on herself by changing the basic teachings and proclaiming herself as the Only Begotten Daughter of God, the wife of God, the mother of God and God himself/herself. (What kind of mental gymnastics the present members are doing to believe this utter nonsense is beyond me.) 

 I know each national church lives in its own little bubble, in effect creating its own version of the Unification society and cherry picking which headquarters’ directions to implement. Each country also seems to hold onto its own view of the ‘messiah,’ effectively editing out anything that does not conform to this ideal. However, with the advent of the Internet this can thankfully no longer be the case.

It is the very core of the Unification Church that needs to be examined. The whole church has been built on lies. Even Rev Moon’s life story is full of falsehoods. Remember that picture of him carrying the man on his back; he let it be known for years that it was him before finally admitting it wasn’t.

The stories about Heungnam – I heard a testimony from one of those early disciples where she went to visit him and found him drinking tea in a nearby village! Chung-hwa Pak had been an officer in the military and was put in charge of the prisoners. He designated which tasks the prisoners should do. He was able to give Moon time off so they could talk together about his beliefs. Moon was not always being worked to death as he later stated. 

He said he graduated in electrical engineering at Waseda University in Tokyo, but he actually only attended night classes at a technical high school. 

The Church made out that Moon was arrested in North Korea for preaching against communism, but the charges were really for bigamy and adultery. Chong-hwa Kim, the married woman involved, was also jailed. His anti-communist stance came much later.  

The story about him meeting Jesus on the mountainside is also untrue. It was Seong-do Kim who first told people she’d had these Easter revelations, then Baek-moon Kim claimed them as his, and finally Rev Moon – whose lies gave him away as Easter did not fall on the date he gave for that year. In his most recent account of that meeting he calls Jesus a bastard, and originally taught that Jesus should have had sex with his mother to restore the fall. He also claimed to have met and talked with Buddha, but until his first visit to India he thought Buddha was Chinese.   

The Tragedy of the Six Marys. This book described the pikareum, or womb-cleansing, ceremonies conducted during the early years of the Unification Church. For years we were told it was untrue, but before the book came out in Japan they started giving lectures explaining the providential reasons why Moon had to have sex not only with the Six Marys, but also with all the wives of the 36, 72 and even the 124 couples. Some of the members listening to those lectures left the church afterwards so they stopped giving them, but they started them again in Korea from what I heard.

The Israel Monastery was a pikareum church with Baek-moon Kim doing the womb cleansing by having sex with the female members. Another similar one was the Olive Tree Movement started by Tae-Seon Park. This had 300,000 members and the churches had special rooms to practice the pikareum rituals. So there were plenty of examples of this grotesque idea for Rev Moon to draw on.  

The holy wine ceremony is a symbolic sexual act, but for the first years of the church Rev Moon actually had sex with the female members. This is the core of the church and it is both vile and ludicrous.  

I don’t say these things lightly because I needed plenty of evidence before I believed them, but I know people in both Japan and Korea who attended lectures where this behavior was justified. In America Hyung Jin and Kook Jin have admitted such things happened. It was admitted by Young Oon Kim, Papasan Choi, Chung-Hwa Pak, President Eu’s cousin (Shin-hee Eu), Annie Choi (the mother of Sam Park), Deok-jin Kim and many others. Rev Yong also went around the world giving lectures explaining the dispensational necessity of such sex practices.

  God of Day and God of Night. There used to be a shrine to this primitive Korean god to the east of Seoul. (Moon was incorporating any kind of rubbish into his mythology by the end of his life.)

I could report on even worse activities and crimes but I think this is enough for now. The Divine Principle itself is a wonderful construct, (Hyo-won Eu being something of a genius) the only problem being that it isn’t true. So much of the numerology, four position foundations, triple objective purposes and so on, is actually meaningless. There was no sexual fall and inherited original sin and Satan are non-existent. The history parallels are extremely contrived, and although interesting, prove nothing at all. There are many more aspects of the book that don’t make sense. Some parts of course are helpful, Jesus not coming to die and so on, but none of these are original ideas, so the book certainly doesn’t prove that Moon is the Second Advent.

▲ Baek-moon Kim was born in 1917. He devised the parallels of history.

  As predicted nothing happened on Foundation Day apart from a few pointless ceremonies. The church leadership knew this would be the case, which is why they were already telling people to prepare for 2020, the 100th anniversary of Moon’s birth. Mrs Moon is emphasizing witnessing now. (Because tithes are an ongoing source of revenue.) She recently told the Japanese wives in Korea that if they don’t do well then their descendants will pay lots of indemnity. She seems to have forgotten what her husband said on October 27, 1999, ‘No more indemnity is needed. The providence of restoration is completed.’

  I personally think anyone still teaching the Divine Principle has to examine all of the above, and then ask themselves if they are just helping to propagate a gigantic destructive fraud? Thousands of people have gone through real suffering to enrich Moon and his family. Many of them had their lives ruined by being matched and married to people they could not relate to. It’s hard to believe but Moon’s church even advertised for any Korean men who wanted wives to come to one of those big blessings – just to make the numbers up, although he charged them between two and ten thousand dollars for each purchased bride. He then matched dedicated Japanese sisters to men who weren’t even church members – some of whom were unemployed drunkards or worse. (One of these wives eventually killed her Korean husband after suffering years of abuse.) Again, ask yourself whether these matchings were the action of a loving father, or an evil despot with no concern at all for the happiness and well-being of others?

  If members were matched with someone they could love and be happy with, then they were in the minority, as it was mostly a matter of luck. Remember he matched physical brothers and sisters on at least four occasions that I know of, then changed the matching when he was told about it, so it certainly wasn’t God guiding him.

  If people want God in their lives all they have to do is invite him in. Knock and the door will be opened. You don’t need to go to God through Moon or anyone else, and heaven is a place for heavenly people, so if you aren’t heavenly then no blessing, white robe or inseminated wine is going to get you in there.

And just to be clear, arrogance and avarice are not heavenly attributes.

  I believe anyone who has sincerely tried to serve God and create a better world has certainly not wasted their time, because God will remember their efforts whatever religion they followed, but the Unification Church, FFWPU, or Hak Ja Han’s new name for it ‘Heavenly Parent’s Holy Community,’ is nothing but a despotic money-making, power-seeking, destructive scam that should not be supported in any way.  

My apologies people, no jokes this time, I’m too disgusted by the whole sorry mess.  

Sloe Gin

______________________________________________

Newsweek on the many Korean messiahs of the 1970s

Hwang Gook-joo and his orgies

The Divine Principle is constructed to control members

Sun Myung Moon’s Theology of the Fall, Tamar, Jesus and Mary

Sun Myung Moon – Restoration through Incest

Shamanism is at the heart of Sun Myung Moon’s church

Japanese member, Ms. K, was forced to marry Korean man she did not like

Sun Myung Moon makes me feel ashamed to be Korean

The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic

Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child – Mother Jones

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

#Sloe Gin #Divine Principle

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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WHEN SOMEONE MAKES AN OFFER IN GOOD FAITH, YOU HAVE TO BE PROFITABLE

Because he pays close attention, a Navy pilot can land a 40,000 lb. Deals fall through. Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this. Here's an intriguing possibility. The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is probably ignorance. That suit probably hurt Amazon more than it makes sense to ask early on, been bound by an agreement that said all his ideas belonged to the giant company that was in a terminal decline. 047225013 mandatory 0. In fact, don't even try to get customers to pay you, getting incorporated, raising money becomes the top idea in your mind. This is more pronounced among the very best hackers tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, what you want to make money that you can't say what you think about what killed most of the great masters, because copying forces you to think well. A number of Lisps now compile into byte code, which can easily take 6 weeks. Questions aren't enough.

Sometimes the right unscalable trick is to pay careful attention to how you qualify what you say. And VCs have been provoked by their arrival into making a lot of people. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, they'd be amazed at how little there is and how little it does? You see the same problem, and all feel guilty about it. Imagine picking out apples at a grocery store. We really did have the biggest share of the stock market. You can't watch people when everyone is watching you. And investors, too, should explain itself. Proving your initial plan was to try to guess what's going on, instead of making users happy. The rest have died or merged or been acquired. Resourceful implies the obstacles are external, which they generally are in startups. Then you'll have to explain how neatly things sometimes turn out.

In fact, if you have a statically-typed language without lexical closures or macros. In the future, so far that we didn't. It doesn't matter if they underestimate you because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's probably powerful enough to win, and the number of good ideas, someone would already be the future price, and there were several will remember it for the rest of the company. The constraint between good ideas and growth operates in both directions. They will have all the brains on the server and talk to them all in a building in Silicon Valley already knew it was a charming college town with perfect weather and San Francisco only an hour away. Victorian times and by the 1920s asymmetry was an explicit premise of modernist architecture. One recently told me that when he went to the local public school. I'll tell you about a series A in phase 2. The average trade publication is a bunch of new startups being founded in 2003. Police State. Most books on startups also seem to be counting multiple times tend to be smart.

Buying startups also solves another problem afflicting big companies: they can't do product development. Exactly. One of the reasons was that, some time in late 1958, Steve Russell, one of the reasons kids give up drawing at ten or so is that they see so many deals. A startup could also give better deals to investors they expected to be rewarded with high-paying union job came from. For the next fifty years will have to do the same thing, they got it right. If you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd see something as I was walking in some steep mountains once, and that worked well. So the downhills of the roller-coaster are more of a disadvantage. Recently it was starting to break up. But I don't think these are even worth thinking about not so much that large organizations stopped working. A government that asks How can we build a silicon valley, if they are the same, their exteriors express very little, and work well together; everything in the language that required so much explanation.

Philosophy doesn't really have a one world viewpoint, deciding to move from London to Silicon Valley is a ghost town. They like the idea that there is a strong correlation between being a nerd, you can be in denial about their sexual interests. Maybe you're just running fast. Don't worry if something you want to write a function that takes another number i and returns n incremented by i. That has been the same: to beat the system. This is at least a precedent. Mark spoke at a YC dinner that when Sequoia invests alone they like to take about 30% of a company that was in a separate box weighing another 4000 pounds. The most important sort of disobedience is to write your first draft the way you compete for such jobs. Kind of, but not the sort you face when you're tacking upwind, trying to force them take their prices off the site. Then we'll trace the life of the company they do now, at sixteen? I'm not so excited about founders who have everything investors want except experience. But the problem with that.

That's why there's a special name for these topics. Html#f7n 14. Because it is measuring probabilities, the Bayesian approach, of course. If you can't, notably ineptitude and bad luck. And it turns out to be a good plan. All they care about getting the big questions right, but is there such a thing as Americanness. They just represent a point at the far end of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire 10 minutes. Because VCs like publicity. Ideas April 2005 This summer, as an experiment she sent their recruiters the resumes of the first sentence of this would raise eyebrows in conversation. There was a window of about two years when spam was increasing rapidly but all the big email services had terrible filters.

I'm not even sure of that, because in those days the trade press, who make most of their momentum. They didn't have ads for over a year. Or, for that matter. Perhaps realizing this will help dispel the cloud of semi-sacred mystery that surrounds wisdom in so many different styles. Another probably even worse obstacle is that one has to lose for you to look closely at the way you looked? That's a new problem, because looking down on the top as well as good ones. Imaginative people don't want to follow or lead. They have the same revenues, it's the same with technology. If you look at the site of a newspaper or magazine.

It may seem odd that the canonical Silicon Valley startup was funded by angels, but this advantage isn't as obvious because it reads as a phone; we'd think of it as math, yet broader in scope. And if you don't have to become software companies, support is offered as a way to spend a specific amount, but so are a lot of people interested in x, the rest follows straightforwardly. Beneath that the message there is: you should live better. Other players were more famous: Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann. If I had to go back seven paragraphs and start over. Steve Jobs. That was a surprising realization. College Will Change If the best startups. Apple products the way they'd await new books by a popular novelist. In the middle of a project you consider your life's work from. Power How wide is this territory? Because of Y Combinator's early, broad focus is that we may be able to do it is to get.

Thanks to Sarah Harlin, Paul Gerhardt, Harj Taggar, Sam Altman, Jessica Livingston, and Trevor Blackwell for their feedback on these thoughts.

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alcalavicci · 4 years

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Jill’s timeline of Dean, 1936-1979. She said something about working on an 80s timeline too but I didn’t find it:

Robert Dean Stockwell was born on March 5, 1936, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.

His father was Harry Baylis Stockwell, age 30, an 'artist' employed by motion picture studios. His original birthplace was Missouri. His mother was Elizabeth Margaret Veronica, age 24, a 'housekeeper' employed at home. Her original birthplace was New York. This was her second child. [Me: Jill somehow got his birth certificate. I guess this was in the days before they got a lot more secure about who got birth certificates?? Either way, it’s not really something I approve of because that’s applying genealogical methods to a living person, which genealogists generally frown on doing.]

1953 - 1956: The mystery years. Jill: “Dean left college in the spring of 1953, and disappeared for awhile until he showed up doing live television in 1956. When interviewers asked him what he had been doing, he spun quite a fanciful tale. There is no way for any of us to know how much is true, and how much he was making up. According to him, he changed his name several times, and began an odyssey of traveling across country doing odd jobs and living with the laborers of the land (Woody Guthrie, anyone? Bob Dylan also made up his own past when he hit New York. Must have seemed quite romantic at the time). “Dean says that he worked in the mailroom of a large company in New York....but when people began to figure out who he was, he hit the road. Worked on the railroad in Texas....in Mexico.....worked as a fruit picker.....worked in a bakery in New Orleans.....eventually ended up in New York again, and decided to try acting once more.

Jill: “Here are a few facts I've been able to find: Dean attended the University of California in Berkeley from 1952 to the spring of 1953, when he dropped out. His brother Guy was attending the university at the same time, and when Guy graduated (probably 1954), he became a schoolteacher in northern California. A former pupil of Guy's recalls Dean coming into the classroom occasionally to read Shakespeare to them (how cool would that be?). Also, Dean himself has stated that he was in 'northern California' when James Dean was killed in an automobile accident (which was the fall of 1955).

“Because of these few facts, I get the feeling that Dean was with Guy during a lot of these 'lost years.'

“However, he definitely was in New York during 1956, as that is where the live TV shows were originating from that he appeared in. He attended a few classes at the Actor's Studio, which is where he met Suzanne Pleschette. Since she is a real person, I will take that fact at face value.

“The rest is a mystery.” [K: I think there’s some truth to Dean’s claims- he was in NYC during the summer of 1955 and acted in a religious show, The Wise in Heart, to get money to go back to LA, according to Nature Boy. Nature Boy’s author confirmed this was pulled from a magazine interview with Stockwell. So, between the summer of 1955 and up to fall/winter 1955 at the earliest, spring 1956 at the latest, he was with his brother in Northern California, working as a logger, before going back to LA. Between spring of 1953 and the summer of 1955? I’m sure he found work elsewhere, was recognized there, moved, changed jobs, and that’s why he went through so many, but he may have exaggerated as well. After moving to LA, Dean soon met Berman. They had certainly met well before 1957- Dean wrote a poem that mentioned Berman’s son Tosh blowing out the candles on his 21st birthday cake.]

1957: A new adult Dean Stockwell emerges. Sometimes Dean says he went back to Hollywood in 1956, but another time he stated he returned to Hollywood on his 21st birthday, in order to collect the money that had been held in trust for him (it wasn't very much.......I'm thinking around $25,000, but I'd have to look that up). Dean turned 21 on March 5, 1957.

This is the period when Roddy McDowall took that photo of Dean's that shows up on the mantel in the QL show "M.I.A." [Me: Dean doesn’t look that young in the picture, based on his hair. I’m thinking the picture that’s in Roddy’s art book was taken around this time, while the MIA picture was taken in the early 1960s.]

There is so much happening between 1956 and 1957, that I have a feeling he was traveling between New York and Hollywood, rather than staying put in one place. He makes his first film as an adult, a western, titled "Gun for a Coward." "The Careless Years" will follow that one, plus countless appearances on TV dramas, plus a run in a Broadway play "Compulsion" with Roddy McDowall from late 1957 to early 1958 (while rehearsing for Compulsion, he appears in live TV dramas from New York........he was busy!).

Also, in 1957, he began to hang out with the beatniks living in Topanga Canyon, above Los Angeles. His address is listed as an apartment building in Hollywood (there's a photo of that building in our Files section), but he eventually buys his own home up in the canyon (I have no idea what year).

Dean states in the recent Neil Young biography that he spent a lot of time with the artist Wallace Berman and his family, and that Berman's revolutionary way of thinking was a profound influence on him. Berman was an avant-garde artist who worked with collages and symbols, often incorporating Hebrew letters (having to do with the Kabbala). When Berman's art exhibition was closed down due to obscenity, it was Dean Stockwell who bailed him out of jail (this was still 1957).

1957 - 1959: This is the period of time that Dean is hanging out at Jazz clubs, and is referred to as a Hollywood Hipster (with the likes of another child star, Bobby Driscoll), when he's not being compared to the late James Dean. He shows up in a documentary about the 'Beats' in California (a film I would love to get my hands on. :-) It's also the time when Dean's name is being connected to quite a few Hollywood starlets (Janice Rule, Diane Varsi, Ina Balin, Suzanne Pleschette, Sandra Dee).

1959 - 1962: At this point, almost every interview/article about Dean Stockwell centers on his relationship with another quirky personality, Millie Perkins. They were young, they were different from the mainstream, they were 'hip' without being obnoxious, and they made a cute couple. It's difficult for me to even figure out what else Dean was doing at the time, because everything centers around his marriage to Millie (1960 - 1962), and their efforts to hide from the press. They are married shortly after he finished "Sons and Lovers" and are going through a divorce by the time of "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

A brief glimpse into Dean's character is provided by Katherine Hepburn, during the filming of Long Day's Journey - he showed up for filming on the first day, an outdoor scene, without a coat during cold weather. That bothered Kate so much, she went out and bought him a coat, and had it there for him the following day. The director stated that Kate Hepburn had a soft spot for heavy drinkers. Apparently Dean arrived for work with a bottle of vodka close at hand. Sounds like he was getting a bit of a reputation.

1963: This is when Dean runs into Dennis Hopper again (they first met in New York in 1957, through their mutual friend Roddy McDowall). They become lifelong friends. Dean is mentioned in 'Andy Warhol's Diary' as being one of the guests at a party at Hopper's house, with Russ Tamblyn and Suzanne Pleschette. [Me: According to Semina Culture, this is also around the time when Dean met his longtime girlfriend Toni Basil.]

A photo of Dean from these days was taken by Dennis Hopper, and can be found in our Files, as well as in the Photo Album on our Website. [Me: That picture- with the egg on Dean’s face- was taken in 1965.]

1965 - Makes frequent appearances as a continuing character on the TV series "Dr. Kildare." Stars in a black and white film shot in France, titled "Rapture."

1966 - creates a short art film titled "Moonstone" with his artist friend George Herms

1966 and 1967 - in a sense, we can call these 2 years as 'lost years' or 'mystery years' also. Only called that because Dean's life at the time cannot be discerned by movies or TV appearances. Instead, we find Dean creating collages for Art Showings, living in Haight-Ashbury (verified by the beatnik poet Charles Plymell, who became a friend of his at the time), and perhaps sojourning in London for awhile. While in Haight-Ashbury, he attends parties at Plymell's apartment with the likes of Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. [Me: There was Mr. Paracelsus, Who Are You? early around this time, but after that, nothing until late 1967.]

1968 - appeared in the psychedelic hippie movie "Psych-Out"; according to sources, the only actor in the film who actually lived in the Haight district at the time. But not for long, because now he's reappearing in Topanga Canyon with Russ Tamblyn, and eating breakfast at the local restaurant there. He befriends the female owner, who introduces him to her new boyfriend - Neil Young.

Also starred in a British TV mystery drama (which puts him in London, if only briefly). [Me: This was Thirty-Minute Theatre: Before Breakfast.]

Also made appearances on The Danny Thomas Show, and FBI.

Finishes the decade by performing (most charmingly) in a Bonanza episode....... and writing a screenplay titled "After the Gold Rush." Introduces George Herms to the music of Neil Young during an acid trip.

1970 to 1973 = Dean continues to make short art films with his friend George Herms. Also makes a short documentary about the making of "Breakaway," which was an art film created by the artist Bruce Connor, starring Dean's girlfriend at the time, Toni Basil.

1970 = stars in the film "Dunwich Horror" with his friend from the 1950's, Sandra Dee. Asks George Herms to paint the hieroglyphics on his torso for a scene in the film.

1971 = Joins his friend Dennis Hopper and other "Misfits of Hollywood" in Peru for the making of Hopper's film "The Last Movie." LIFE Magazine does a cover story about Hopper down in Peru, and stories circulate about the wild times on the set. Hopper spends a year editing the film, but Universal refuses to distribute it. The title of the film is almost prophetic regarding Hopper's career. [Me: His stepmother Nina Olivette passes away this year.]

Also in 1971, Dean stars in two television movies - "Paper Man" and "The Failing of Raymond."

1972 = stars in a low-budget biker-on-the-road flick titled "The Loners." The press release for the film states that Dean Stockwell has 'been living in England.'

1973 = Stars in "The Werewolf of Washington." Dean later says that the script was funny, but he knew by the very first day on the set that he was in a stinker.

1974 = Appears in a play in Albuquerque called "Relatively Speaking," and tells an interviewer from the local paper that he is tired of being typecast as a murderous lunatic who guest stars on television dramas. He would like to try comedy. [Me: There’s a 1972 newspaper article about Win Place or Steal that says he’d love to do more comedy, but I think his first comedic role as an adult was in his 1964 episode of Burke’s Law.]

Also around this time he is showing up in Taos quite a bit, getting drunk and stoned in bars with Dennis Hopper. But even though he was getting quite a reputation in Taos (and not a good one - Dean quotes, with good humor, a person saying "I always thought Dennis Hopper was the biggest asshole in Taos - until I met the other guy....,"), that isn't his entire existence. He is also still living in Topanga Canyon above Los Angeles, and the magazine "Fighting Stars" does a cover story on Dean about his newfound interest, Stickfighting.

Dean comes across in the interview as an eager, enthusiastic man, younger than his stated age (the photos that accompany the article look like a man in his 20's instead of a man approaching 40), who has discovered the martial art Stickfighting after appearing in a low-budget film in the Phillipines. He is so involved with this sport that he brings his instructor over from the Phillipines, Remy Presas, to stay at his house. He also tells the interviewer that he really doesn't care if he never acts again, as long as he can be involved in this martial art.

At the same time, though, Dean is happy to give his blessing to an official Fan Club, started by a woman named Geordie James (whom our member Claire was corresponding with at the time). Dean even telephoned Ms. James when he returned from the Phillipines, and he sounded just as eager and enthusiastic over the phone as he comes across in the magazine interview. Alas, there was a fire at the home of Ms. James, and the Fan Club never got off the ground.

1975 = stars in another low-budget film, this time a comedy, titled "Win, Place or Steal," with his friend and Topanga Canyon neighbor Russ Tamblyn. [Me: This was filmed around 1972.]

Also in 1975, spends a fastpaced summer with his friend David Bowie, who was living in Hollywood at the time. Bowie recalls making the club scene with Dean and Dennis; Iggy Pop remembers them visiting him in the mental hospital.

1976 = Does the photography/artwork for the cover of Neil Young's album "American Stars 'N Bars" (9 years earlier, Dean had contributed a photo of the artist Wallace Berman for the cover of the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" album).

Also, in 1976, Dean and his girlfriend Toni Basil accompanied Dennis Hopper to the Cannes Film Festival for a showing of the independent film "Tracks," which both Dean and Dennis had appeared in. According to the gossip columns, there were parties on the beach from dusk to dawn, and it was here that Dean meets his future wife, Joy Marchenko. They begin a 5 year correspondence.

1977 to 1978 = Toni is very active in the punk rock scene, and the artist Bruce Conner makes a documentary about punk rock clubs in California, with her in it. Toni introduces Dean to the band Devo. Dean makes a tape of their music and gives it to Neil Young. Then Dean takes Neil to a club to see them.

1978 = Probably the beginning of the breakup with Toni, as she begins an affair with Devo's bass player. Dean moves in with Russ Tamblyn, still up in Topanga Canyon. During a frisbee game with Russ and Neil, the idea for "Human Highway" takes shape. Joined by Dennis Hopper and Devo, they begin filming a movie which will ultimately take 5 years to complete, and will end up being completely different than the original conception.

Stories circulate about the wild times on the set, which began as simple outdoor shots filmed around Taos, New Mexico, but which will end up being a very expensive studio set created by Neil Young's imagination.

1979 = Dean appears in Las Vegas doing comedy dinner theater ("Come Blow Your Horn"). Also directs an avant-garde play in Los Angeles called "Man With Bags," starring Russ Tamblyn (this is where our member Claire gets to meet him). A few weeks later she gets to meet him again at an art exhibition of George Herms' work, which includes a showing of Dean's film creation "Moonstone." A good time was had by all.

#stockwell sassies

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keepingupwithlinmanuel · 5 years

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Lin-Manuel Miranda and Friends Purchase Drama Book Shop

Previously:

Lin-Manuel Miranda is already a composer, a lyricist, an actor and an author. Now he’s going to be a bookseller.

Mr. Miranda and three of his “Hamilton” collaborators have purchased the Drama Book Shop, a century-old theater district purveyor of scripts, sheet music and other stage-related reading material.

The surprise move is an effort to sustain the store, which is a mainstay of New York’s theater scene — in 2011 it was recognized with a Tony honor for excellence — but has struggled to survive the brutal Times Square real estate market and recently announced that it was being forced to move from its current location.

The rescue plan is a joint venture between the “Hamilton” team and the city, which has pledged to find the store an affordable space in Midtown.

“The store is a gem and a cultural institution in New York, and we want to make sure it’s saved,” said Julie Menin, the mayor’s media and entertainment commissioner. As precedent for the arrangement with the bookstore, she cited the city’s work with the Berklee College of Music to save a Manhattan recording studio.

The Drama Book Shop, which currently sells about 155,000 items a year, will close at its current location, on West 40th Street, on Jan. 20, and will reopen at a new location, not yet being named, in the fall.

The new owners of the store are Mr. Miranda; Thomas Kail, the director of “Hamilton”; Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer; and James L. Nederlander, the president of the Nederlander Organization, which operates the theater in which the show’s Broadway production is running. They purchased the store from Rozanne Seelen, whose husband, Arthur Seelen, had bought it in 1958. (He died in 2000.) Ms. Seelen said she sold it for the cost of the remaining inventory, some rent support in the store’s final weeks, and a pledge to retain her as a consultant.

“It’s the chronic problem — the rents were just too high, and I’m 84 years old — I just didn’t have the drive to find a new space and make another move,” she said. “Lin-Manuel and Tommy are my white knights.”

The new owners all frequented the bookstore at various points when they were seeking to build careers in the theater.

“When I was in high school I would go to the old location and sit on the floor and read plays — I didn’t have the money to buy them,” Mr. Miranda said in a telephone interview from Puerto Rico, where he is preparing to star in a three-week run of “Hamilton” in San Juan that opens on Friday. “After college Tommy Kail and I met in the Drama Book Shop basement, and I wrote a good deal of ‘In the Heights’ there.”

In 2016, after a burst pipe caused damage to the shop, Mr. Miranda came to its aid by urging his fans to patronize it. The store needed a lot more help this time.

“They’re like family to us,” he said, “and when we heard that the rent increase was finally too precipitous to withstand, we began hatching a plan.”

The store is particularly important to Mr. Kail, whose post-college theater venture, Back House Productions, was a resident company at the store. “I was in many senses professionally born in that bookshop’s basement — I spent the first five years of my career there,” he said in a telephone interview from London, where he was checking in on the “Hamilton” production there.

Mr. Kail and Mr. Miranda both said that they were also inspired by “It’s a Wonderful Life,” in which townspeople rally to save an endangered family banking business. “There was no hesitation,” Mr. Kail said. “The Building and Loan was struggling, and we could do something.”

Mr. Seller’s office, which is already running a “Hamilton” merchandise store in Midtown, will oversee the day-to-day management. He said the book shop would have a revamped website and expanded programming; the goal, he said, would be to break even, which in recent years the store has done occasionally but not consistently.

A few more flashbacks:

The Drama Bookshop Ham4Ham

#lin manuel miranda #chris jackson #freestyle love supreme #in the heights #drama bookshop #guess i need a tag for that now :D #nyt #tommy kail #jeffrey seller #twitterico #articles

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fic-al · 4 years

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People Call Me Trixie

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE UNEXPLODED TRIFLE

As the number 55 made its return journey back to central London. Trixie was pleased she had visited her friend. Sister Bernadette had looked frail. Trixie was certain she had lost weight. Although difficult to tell in her more fitted dressing gown, rather than her usual habit, but her face did look thinner.

She had found her in good spirits, if not a little tired and a bit preoccupied, which was to be expected. She seemed particularly thrilled with the dead butterfly. Trixie, not for the first time, heard Marianne's laughter ringing in her ears. She knew exactly what Marianne would have said.

She had tried to talk to Dr Turner, she really had. Tried to take more of an interest in Timothy. She had asked them to join them in the dining room on more than one occasion. He always made some excuse, she had taken to making up a little bag of food for him to take home for the pair of them. Quite often he would leave before she had finished preparing it. Sister Bernadette always seemed to know what to say and Trixie felt awkward and out of place. A bit like a spare set of forceps, left behind in the autoclave.

By Christmas 1958, Trixie realized she had been more than a spare set of forceps. She felt like she had been offered a front row seat at Billy Smart’s Circus and had foolishly been sat facing the wrong way throughout the entire performance.

It was Christmas Eve, and she knew she wasn't the only Nonnatun, whose wedding invitation had seemingly got lost in the post. Unless of course they had arrived at Nonnatus House following its inhabitants and half of Poplar, being evacuated due to a newly discovered unexploded bomb. When she saw the bride-to-be coming out of the nuns makeshift chapel in the Rescue Centre. She could hardly believe her eyes. Trixie had seen her former colleague so little since she had last visited her in St Anne's and was still a little startled at seeing her out of the habit.

"Si..Shelagh! I didn't expect to see you here, on the day of your wedding!"

Trixie didn't know if she believed in fate, but she would put this meeting down to divine providence and ask her burning question, anyway. Even though she had been told to wait until after Christmas.

"We have a patient, Jenny and I, here in the Rescue Centre. Mrs Bridges, her husband is suffering from battle fatigue and I wondered if I could talk to Dr Turner. Obviously not today, I mean, I know this isn't a good time..."

Trixie reeled back on her heels at the sight of the anger in the former nun's eyes.

"No, this is not a good time, Nurse Franklin!" She snapped, "I am sure I don't know what you are talking about! Dr Turner is sat by his son's bedside and has been since yesterday evening." Shelagh seemed to gasp for air but continued,

"Timothy has polio and has been placed in an Iron Lung. I am very sorry to hear about your Mr...I can't imagine why you think Patrick would be more suited to deal with this, rather than the designated locum. If you feel it is an emergency, I suggest you refer to him, Nurse!"

Shelagh had finished talking through frustration and tears. Trixie could only watch her walk away. She had been on call all night, dashing between her patients, the ones who had been fortunate enough to remain in their own homes, then checking on Alan and Yvonne Bridges. She hadn't even been aware Shelagh had spent the night at the Leopold Institute or why?

Trixie found a quiet spot on the stairs and hugged her knees together. She knew it wasn't her fault, but she had only added to Shelagh's distress. She had been so wrapped up in her own efforts to help Alan; she hadn't questioned why Shelagh was at the Rescue Centre on the morning of her wedding. Or stopped to think before hastily asking for what she wanted.

Her thoughts soon went beyond Shelagh to Timothy and Patrick. Just over two years ago she had sat at the Nonnatus dining table and heard the worst news imaginable. She couldn't comprehend that today she had just been told similar news concerning the same family.

That old familiar taste of bile climbed up Trixie's throat, as the shouts and the laugher from the main hall started to echo and move further and further away. All Trixie could hear was the rhythmical ticking of the unexploded bomb a few streets away, she could hear it, keeping time. It was getting louder and louder.

The bomb did go off, but Trixie, everyone, and everything else survived. This time.

Yvonne Bridges was able to give birth in her own home and unbeknown to the sisters with her childhood sweetheart present.

Alan offered the emotionally tender Trixie a sweet sherry, after Jenny had left to meet Alec. She followed him into the kitchen.

"I think I will have one myself, just to wet the baby's head."

Trixie noticed him pull out a bottle of Famous Grouse scotch whisky.

"Yvonne's old man, got me onto this, never used to touch anything stronger than a pint a' mild, but he always fetches me one when he comes to visit." Alan poured a hefty measure into a tumbler, "A little nip, now and again Nurse, well it sometimes calms, what do you call them.. the horrors?"

Alan reached for a sherry glass for the midwife.

"Actually Alan, I wouldn't mind a nip myself. It's awfully cold in that beastly working men's club and if Jenny's boyfriend is right about Nonnatus, we may be there for a few more nights."

"Have a drop of the low flying bird, as my father-in-law always calls it." Alan poured her a rather large dram equal to his own. "You've earned it, you've really helped me Nurse, let me do something for you."

Trixie knew that she was now last on call and was rather glad of it after leaving the Bridges, once ensuring the baby's head was more than sufficiently wet. She was finding her bike didn't quite go in the direction she wanted.

She stopped at the little tobacconist off Chrisp Street, that never seemed to close. The proprietor had stocked Marianne's colour coordinated accessories and when Marianne finally gave up smoking forever; he switched his stock to Nurse Franklin's favoured all black selection.

As soon as he heard the bell chime, as she walked through the door, he was there. She wondered if he ever slept? He immediately took the Sobranie Black Russian from beneath the counter.

"What tickles your fancy today, Nurse? Something a bit special, it is Christmas after all! How's about a nice bottle of advocaat, I have Warninks. Makes a lovely snowball with a drop of Lowcocks lemonade. How are you off for maraschino cherries, sweetheart?"

Trixie realized she hadn't actually spoken since she stepped into the establishment. The eternally cheery shopkeeper always seemed to know what she wanted.

She had intended to buy a small bottle of scotch and try to hide it from the nuns, but maybe the garish bright yellow liquid combined with a bit of child's pop, wouldn't seem so much of a temptation to the sisters. It was Christmas Eve after all and it might be something even Cynthia might enjoy. She had a feeling Sister Monica Joan might not be able to resist.

As she was about to pay, she noticed something catch her eye, reflected by the glass of the countertop.

Trixie finally found her voice, "A bag of those too, please."

The lights were on at Kenilworth Row. Dr Turner's car was parked in its regular spot. Surely that was a good sign?

Trixie went up to the flat door where she had boldly let herself in maybe a hundred times before, but not recently, not these days. She tripped up the steps and stood on something soft.

"Damn and blast!" she cried as she removed, first her foot, then her work shoe, from a sherry trifle. It had been left on the Turner doorstep by some thoughtful patient . Trixie tried to repair the damaged greaseproof paper covering it, hoping no-one would notice.

She took a large handkerchief from the bottom of her nurse's bag, fumbling past the advocaat bottle. She tried to clean from her shoe, the cream, jelly, and hundreds and thousands. For the first time in her life, Trixie realized the popular pudding decoration was so aptly named. The tiny sugar sprinkles were in, her shoe, her stocking, between her toes and absolutely everywhere, hundreds and thousands of them.

Trixie sat on the step for a few minutes, took a deep breath of Poplar night air, nearly making herself dizzy. Wiped her leaking eyes, on the trifle and street muck, stained hankie and realized how ridiculous she must look. If Marianne came to the door now, she would...

Trixie put the small net bag with the shiny glass marbles through Dr Turner’s letterbox and slowly made her way to her temporary home, giving herself enough time to clear her head.

#call the midwife #trixie franklin #al's christmas fics #the ghost of christmas past for our trixie

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rancoeur-the-unfortunate · 5 years

Text

Pills (Chapter 12)

(1958 words!!!)

Packing his things wasn't the hard part, nor was the realization that he had just agreed to go camping with Zim alone where if one of them got 'lost' no one would ever find them. No, the hardest part by far had to be the part where he has to tell his dad and little sister that he's going in the woods with his worst enemy to save his life from a paranormal tracking group that Gaz and his dad had no concept of. That was the hardest.

He sat at the dinner table, it was one of those days where his dad was working home and had the time to have dinner with them. Beans for dinner, the usual.

Dib knew it was now or never. He couldn't just disappear after all.

Dib cleared his throat.

"Ahem so uh dad, Gaz I um have to tell you something."

Only his dad looked up at him.

"And what would that be,��son?"

"Well um, you remember Zim right? The green alien I'm always talking about."

"Of course! I remember your little foreign friend." The spoke proudly.

"He's not my-" Dib let out a sigh.

"Well Zim and I have decided to go camping... in the woods... alone... together." Dib bit his lip.

"Alright then just remember to bring your bug spray and stay safe. I know how rowdy you boys get." His dad chuckled.

"Wait really?"

"Of course I knew it was only a matter of time until you to decided to spend some quality time to together. I'll call the Skool in the morning and let them know the two of you will be absent."

"What? Wait, what about you Gaz?"

"I don't care Dib." She didn't even look up from her food.

"Huh."

Once dinner was done Dib let out a sigh of relief. That was a whole lot easier then he expected. Dib packed a few extra snacks and a pair of alien sleep cuffs just in case Zim wanted to do anything funny during their trip. He slung his backpack on, it was one of his dad's advanced backpacks with lots of storage. He made sure to pack a tent and other essentials.

The big-headed boy then made his trek to Zim's house. The alien was waiting for him on the fence post with the most unidentifiable expression he had ever seen on him.

His eyes were half-lidded and glossed over as if he fell asleep with his eyes open.

"Uh, Zim?"

"Huh, Wha?" Zim stood up with a start and in turn fell off the fence.

Zim stood up and glared daggers at the human before him.

"Took you long enough Dib-smell!" Zim hissed at him.

"Whatever you stupid alien let's go."

"Humph!"

The two started their walk to the forest, by the time they got to the campsite the sun was already setting. Dib started to gather kindling for the fire while Zim sat down on a rock. Once Dib believed he had enough wood he grabbed some flint and steal from his backpack and started trying to make a spark. It took him three tries before a fire finally started and Dib got started on making his tent.

Zim just sat there, staring deep into the fire as if he were searching for something.

The alien couldn't explain it but his whole body felt... weird. Like his body wasn't his anymore like it belonged to something else. He felt so fatigued all the time and he found himself feeling so sick. But he barely ever ate so all he was ever throwing up was spooch acid and white foam, but no blood thank the Tallest.

That wasn't all though, sometimes when Zim was alone he could swear he was hearing a disembodied voice but it was so faint he couldn't even make out the words.

Right now it sounds like the voice was yelling at him but it was still so faint he couldn't understand it. So the alien tried to focus on the crackling of the fire.

"So do you have your own tent?"

Dib's voice broke Zim from his haze.

"What?"

"I said do you have a tent."

Dib stood in front of his finished tent with a look of boredom on his face.

"What is a tent?"

Dib pinched the bridge of his nose and pointed to his tent.

"That! Zim do you have that?"

Zim shook his head.

"Should have thought." Dib shook his head.

He couldn't leave Zim out here it was freezing and he doubted Zim's body was built for concealing heat.

"Ok then, you're going to have to stay in my tent then."

"What?! In there?! With you?!"

"What would you rather freeze out here?"

"Yes!"

"Whatever I don't care Zim."

Dib crawled inside of his tent and zipped it up leaving Zim in the cold.

Zim glared at the tent for a little bit before deciding to climb up a tree and rest there for the night. Though the cold never the left him the sleep came easy though it felt restless not to mention Irkens SHOULDN'T sleep at all. Zim took off his disguise and fell asleep.

Zim sat up, he didn't know where he was. It was dark and quiet when suddenly the lights turned on and Zim had a chance to look around. He was in an Irken hospital, doctors and nurses surrounded him and it seemed as though they were trying to pin him down. It was only then did he realize he was struggling and shouting things in Irken. Words that Zim had no control of.

'Get off me, you worthless slaves! OFF! OFF!'

'Zim we're only trying to help you.' One of the doctors replied in Irken.

'Like hell you are! OFF ME! Before I blow this building to the ground with all of you useless pests in it!'

Zim managed to get his arm free of one of the doctors and socked one in the face knocking him to the ground.

'Zim! You need to take your medication!'

'Get that pill anywhere near me and I'll bite your hand off!' Zim hissed as more nurses came and repinned his arm.

'Who said anything about a needle?' The doctor smirked at him.

Zim struggled hard and snapped whenever a hand or arm got within range as the doctors in the back prepped his needle. If he was going down he was going down with a fight!

Zim jerked his legs and kicked the two unfortunate nurses who held him down, to the ground. Zim then used the leverage to kick the nurse to the right of him in the eye using his flexibility and scratch the nurse holding his other arm down. Some of the doctors were backing up at this point.

Zim tried to activate his PAC but the doctors must have disarmed it.

So instead Zim stood on the bed eyeing the head doctor who was down currently holding the needle and standing in the way of the door.

'Now Zim we only want what best for you.' He tried to sooth.

Zim wasn't buying it.

'Shut up! You are nothing but an incompetent servant to those tall bastards!'

'You're sick Zim. The mighty Tallest only want you to get better. Same for the rest of the Irken race."

'WRONG! YOU'RE ALL SO STUPID! YOU'RE ALL IN A DRUG INDUCED HELL AND YOU'RE SO HIGH YOU CAN'T EVEN NOTICE!'

'Get over here Zim!' The smaller Irken could tell the doctor was losing his patience.

'NEVER! I'll be dead before I surrender my free will!'

'That's it!' The doctor lunged at Zim just as he predicted.

Zim jumped over him and landed on his hand and jumped for the door.

'Ah! You won't escape Zim!'

Zim smirked at him, turned to open the door, and right there staring at him were his two worst enemies. They blocked the door and grabbed him by the arms before he could run.

'I thought you said there would be no problems, doctor.' Tallest Purple spoke with that cool calmness in his voice that made even the tallest of Irken's shack in their boots.

'Yeah, looks like Zim had a little bit of a struggle.' Tallest Red scanned the room noticing all the unconscious, convulsing, and cowering medical staff.

The doctor coughed.

'Um yes, that was a bit of a miscalculation on our part I am truly sorry my Tallest.' The doctor bowed.

'You wallowing pig!' Zim squirmed kicking and thrashing, but even with his immeasurable strength, he was no match for the Tallest.

'But it's great that you are here so we can finally test the effects of Ventive!' The doctor smiled up at them.

'What the hell is Ventive?!'

'Just a specialized drug that will finally stop your worthless attempts to bring down the empire.'

Zim snarled and snapped at the doctor as he drew near like a cornered animal.

The doctor then stuck the needle into Zim's neck.

Zim felt his body go limp against the Tallests' arms. Soon he felt two-fingered hands gently petting him. He smiled and leaned into the touch. He was sat down on the floor where he sat for a bit in a daze. Then he looked up and saw his mighty leaders. He turned and hugged their legs.

'My Tallest!'

Zim woke up to Dib's human hand poking him. He yelped and backed up promptly falling off the branch and onto the ground. He sat up and snarled at the human now currently laughing at him.

"What was that for?!"

"You wouldn't wake when I was calling you."

Dib climbed down the tree and sat on a log he had placed near the campfire that had burned itself out in the night.

"Want some snacks?"

"Zim brought his own." Zim huffed and sat on his rock and reached into his PAC and pulled out some Irken rations while Dib reached into his backpack and pulled out some chips.

The two ate in silence for a little bit before Dib spoke up.

"So... what did you dream about last night?"

Zim snapped at him.

"I dreamt nothing filthy human!"

Dib rolled his eyes.

"Didn't sound like nothing." He muttered, eating some chips.

"What are you talking about?"

"You kept screaming in Irken last night."

"What?! Wait, how do you know what Irken sounds like?"

"I don't. I just guessed."

Zim growled at him. This human was really testing his patience.

"My dreams are none of your concern Dib-beast."

"Whatever Zim."

The two sat in silence for a bit longer while they finished their respected snacks and sat up.

"So now what?" Zim crossed his arms.

"Don't know never been camping before." Dib shrugged while Zim's blood boiled.

"Don't worry though I brought a book that's full of suggestions for camping." Dib pulled a book from his pack labeled 'Boy Scout Handbook'.

"Ah! Here's one let's have a scavenger hunt!"

"A scavenger what?"

"A scavenger hunt. It's where we write off a list of objects and set out to find them. Whoever brings back the most that are on the list wins."

Zim thought about it for a bit and sighed, it was better than doing nothing this could give him the chance to study earth ground specimens.

"Ok."

"Cool here." Dib handed Zim a premade list.

"I was kinda already writing it this morning."

Zim rolled his eyes and looked at the list which (thankfully) had pictures.

"We meet back here by noon. Good luck Zim!" Dib ran into the forest.

Zim glared his way and shouted.

"ZIM NEEDS NO LUCK DIB-STINK!"

Zim then turned around and went his own way looking for the Earth objects.

#Pills #invader zim zadr #zim x dib #invader zim #zim #dib #gir #minnimoose #gaz #professor membrane #camping #nightmares #god I really hate tagging

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amoralto · 5 years

Text

MOJO: Paul McCartney – the MOJO interview. (May, 2003)

(Note: Finally, finally finished typing this up after @sweating-cobwebs requested the full interview what seems like ages ago. Quotes from this and the Yoko interview from the same issue - which I’ll probably type up in full later as well - can be found under the #2003 tag.)

In troubled times, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono remained undaunted and have found peace – with themselves and each other. Johnny Black met Macca in London.

by Johnny Black

When Sir Paul McCartney’s dark blue Mercedes drives into Docklands Arena and pulls up at the side of the stage, the 60-year-old man who climbs out looks sprightly, even jaunty. He throws his elegant grey jacket over one shoulder, as he proffers a broad smile to everyone he greets. There’s a ripple effect as he moves away from the vehicle, a small knot of his employees drifting along with him. Press officer, catering manager, sound man, security personnel… and they each have a little something they need him to do if and when he has a moment.

He appears to be taking it all on board, seems to placate them all, and by the time he pauses about 30 feet in front of the stage, the knot has dissolved and they’re all heading back to their appointed posts.

The figure briefly watches his mainly American band as they jam cheerfully around the distinctive chord progression of Walk Don’t Run by The Ventures, then joins them on the stage, immediately changing the mood as he leads them into Shakin’ All Over, the first truly great pre-Beatles British rock track. Given how much we seem to love speculating about McCartney’s motives, it would be easy to interpret this as a statement of intent – the British boss asserting his personality over his yankee staff – but it’s also undeniably a great track to warm-up on, and he seems to relish playing it. Up there on that stage, bashing away in front of an audience of less than 20 onlookers, he seems just as happy as he would be if he were basking in the approval of 20,000.

It’s March 14, 2003, and for the next few days the 12,000-capacity Arena – a far cry from the Liverpudlian sitting rooms where The Beatles first knocked their live sets together – is serving as McCartney’s rehearsal hall in the run up to a major European tour.

McCartney’s personal fortune was recently estimated at £620 million by People magazine. In the last year alone, he raked in £120m, of which £65m came from US tour receipts and album sales. But money, as he once famously pointed out, can’t buy love. And love, in the words of another Beatles’ classic, is all you need. In the enduringly poignant country music standard A Satisfied Mind, written in 1955 by Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes, such sentiments are explored more fully in the lines, “Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old, or a friend when you’re lonely, or a heart that’s grown cold.”

Looked at in that light, just how wealthy is Paul McCartney? Here’s a man, adored by millions, disliked by millions, whose young life was shattered on October 31, 1956 when his mother, Mary, died of cancer in the Northern Hospital, Liverpool. The following year, he befriended John Lennon, only to re-live his own grief over again when Lennon’s mother, Julia, died in 1958.

With George Harrison and Ringo Starr, he and Lennon formed the most successful band the world has ever seen, then watched helplessly as it was destroyed by drugs and greed, turning their friendship to dust along the way. After years of acrimony, he and Lennon had just begun healing their wounds and rebuilding their friendship when Lennon was stolen away from him again by the bullets from Mark Chapman’s gun.

The other major relationship that had brought stability into McCartney’s life was his lasting marriage to Linda Eastman, but that was also taken from him too soon when she died from cancer in April 1998, aged just 56. And it was cancer again that claimed the life of George Harrison on November 29, 2001.

To what extent can £620m heal the scars left by those assaults on McCartney’s famously cheery – and oft derided – bonhomie? The answer, as any fule kno, is that it can’t. So what is it that keeps those legendary thumbs aloft? It has to be more than just the buzz of playing Shakin’ All Over with a band half your age.

When, after an hour and a half, the first rehearsal is over, MOJO is pulled into Macca’s wake by press officer Geoff Baker. At the end of a walk through bare and stark backstage corridors, we arrive at the inner sanctum, a dressing room converted into something not unlike a Persian boudoir, complete with velvet cushions, exotic drapes, dishes groaning with fresh fruit and the smell of incense perfuming the air.

Sitting opposite him across a low table, there’s very little feeling of being in the presence of greatness. He wears his celebrity comfortably – like a favourite old shirt. He is perfectly polite, knows how to put a stranger at ease with an amusing aside but, above all, the passage of the years has made him even more gentlemanly. In the flesh, his boyish demeanour compensates for the lines and wrinkles that have come with age. Look into his face at close quarters and what you see are his eyes, still twinkling. Somewhere behind that twinkle, however, there’s a mind like a steel trap. You don’t get to where McCartney has got without one.

What would be a typical day in your life, like when you’re not working?

I tend to be the one who gets up to make breakfast. You’d die for my breakfast. It’s my Zen thing. I cut up all these lovely exotic things, normally in this order: I cut up a melon, a papaya, some kiwis, bananas, peach, and I make a fruit plate and it looks a bit like a mandala when I’ve done it – there’s all sorts of reasons why but it just have developed into this. We’ll also have tea, bagels, humous – quite a big, fancy breakfast. Then it’s a walk in the park with the dog, or if I’m in the country it might be a horse ride.

Later in the day, I like going to the pictures. We’ve got a great local cinema… Normally I’ll go with Heather, but I went to see Lord Of The Rings on my own. Loved it, whacking great film.

You can go to the cinema without being hassled?

Yeah. I do everything without being hassled. It’s actually been one of my pleasures. I actually like getting on the Tube, getting on the bus. I’ll do it if I’m walking and I see a bus going my way, I’ll just jump on. I did it in the 60s. George’s dad was a bus driver and he could never believe I’d do that. People can’t believe it. I had a guy in the street the other day, he was really worried that I was out on my own with no security. I said, “Gerraway.” I’ve always done that. I used to sometimes walk to Beatles concerts, and you’d get a screaming mass of girls and I’d say, “Come on, girls, calm down.” I’d do the big brother thing. I’m very comfortable with that. If not a movie, we’ll watch TV or a DVD in the evening – I usually try to see Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Blind Date.

Most of us watch Millionaire because we’d like to be one, but that can’t be the appeal for you…

I want them to be millionaires. Actually Heather wants us to go on as a couple. It was funny because we met Chris Tarrant (the show’s presenter) the other night and Heather, in her keenness, said, “We should come on the Celebrity Millionaire show,” … which is for charity, so it’s a good thing… she said, “I know all the answers Paul doesn’t know and he knows all the ones I don’t know.” Chris said, “No, you shouldn’t come on. You’d be terrible.” He just completely took the piss, which was hilarious, because you’d expect him to be really keen.

Somewhere in the evening I’ll have a drink, and get to bed maybe about 11. Is that early? And then I’ll go to sleep and snore. Apparently I snore, but not a lot.

A brace of young women arrive bearing a tray laden with Paul’s lunch – chunky raisin scones, toast and a major pot of tea. Immediately he’s on his feet, exchanging pecks on the cheek, addressing them both by name, inquiring after their well-being. He points at the various delights on the tray to indicate that MOJO is welcome to partake.

Your band on this tour is noticeably young and energetic. How did you find them?

My keyboard player Wix has been with me for years, but I was going to make a record (Driving Rain) in America with David Kahne. He rang me about 10 days before the first session and said, “Do you think you might want to play live in the studio?” So I said, “Yeah, maybe.” So he said, “Should I get a couple of musicians in case you do?” I said, “OK, if you like.” I just left it very sort of casual.

So he thought about some people he admired. He’d never worked with Abe (Laboriel Jr, drummer) but he admired his work. He’d worked with Rusty (Anderson, guitarist). So he told me he’d got these people with great attitudes and who were great players and who could sing.

So I came in on the Monday morning, met the guys, and immediately started making the album, basically live. And that was it. Then, when we did the Superbowl, we needed one more guitarist for that so I asked David, “Do you know anybody?” And he said, “Yeah, this guy Brian Ray.” And he seemed to fit in great.

What do you think people expect from you when they come to a show?

I’m trying to keep a balance, proportionate, between Beatles stuff, Wings stuff and solo stuff. I don’t want it to just be a Beatles show, but I don’t mind giving an audience my most popular stuff. If I go to see David Gray, I’d like to hear him do Babylon because I like that song. And I’d be pretty disappointed if Coldplay didn’t do Yellow, you know?

We still have to rehearse to stay fresh, we’re making some changes to the screens and the lights (at these rehearsals), and I am adding a couple of songs to the set, so it’ll be a slightly longer show.

You were always the one in The Beatles who would turn up at a pub and sing songs. You did it during Magical Mystery Tour and you did it in 1968 on the way back from recording Thingumybob with the Black Dyke Mills Band.

I’d been up in Bradford with (Apple press officer) Derek Taylor, and we were just driving back to London, and we all got bored, someone wanted a pee, so we stopped in a little town called Harrold. And I think when we got to the pub it was shut but we got it to open up and we had a drink and there was a piano there so I sat down and played Let It Be.

Is that as much fun for you as playing in Earl’s Court or wherever?

Yeah. It is. It’s just a different kind of fun. I really do like it. If there’s a piano around it would be very difficult for me to just sit and watch it. It seems to me, in my naivety, that it’s something you approach and tinkle, to see if it’s in tune. It’s not a great desire to perform, I don’t think. I think it’s more that I like music, I like piano… but guitar is best.

Your first instrument was a trumpet. Was that something you wanted, or was it foisted on you by a well-meaning parent?

At the time, I think I must have sort of coveted a trumpet. My dad was a trumpet player and I did like it but when I realised I couldn’t sing and play the trumpet at the same time, I asked him and he said he didn’t mind me trading it in for a guitar. I thought he might be a bit insulted, but he didn’t mind.

The head of another aide pops round the door. It seems the BBC has arrived to show Paul a DVD of a commercial he’s done for the Corporation. Then there’s more rehearsal to be done but maybe we can reconvene later. Not for the first time, McCartney is ushered politely out of reach.

Docklands Arena, soon to be ripped down and replaced with more commercially viable properties, is virtually devoid of character. Fortunately, the stage show devised for this tour offers no end of distraction for the senses. As well as serried ranks of lights of very sort known to man, and some ear-splitting pyrotechnics in Live And Let Die, there are over 30 giant video screens forming a semi-circle around one humongous mother-screen which can be raised up and down as required on worryingly noisy pulleys.

“All our fuckin’ technology and it sounds like a building site,” wails the sound man. He’s consoled by a crew member who’s seen it all before – Gerry Stickells, the legendary Hendrix roadie tempted out of retirement for this tour at McCartney’s personal request.

When he returns to the Arena floor after watching the BBC DVD, he notices that the text on the mother-screen – via which audience members can text each other from their mobiles – is smaller than it used to be. He calls over the lighting director and suggest that “maybe… it might be better if… don’t you think?” Moments later, with the text size already increased, Macca is onstage running the band through the entire show – not that they seem to need it. The set runs almost faultlessly, synchronised with the lights and screens to such an extent that even the ‘Na Na Na’ audience participation section of Hey Jude is rehearsed in real time, with Paul exhorting the imaginary throng – “OK, just the ladies now… fantastic… now just the guys…”

He’s on-stage, performing with more energy than at any time since the heyday of The Beatles, for almost three hours in all, but he comes off at the end barely out breath, and we repair once more to the inner sanctum.

It’s interesting that you use the on-stage screens during Lady Madonna as a gallery of feminist icons…

They actually had Madonna among the visuals, but I thought that was too obvious. So they asked what I’d like to replace Madonna with and I said, “The Queen Mother.” This was two weeks before she died, so when we started touring ti looked like we’d put her in as a tribute.

I didn’t notice Yoko Ono either. Are you two still feuding?

I know that’s the public perception of it, but I do not have a bad relationship with her. We’re not enemies, me and Yoko. We send each other Christmas cards and everything. She’s more like a distant relative.

But you are tussling over the credits to the Lennon-McCartney songs…

There’s no tussle at all, but if, on my songs, like Hey Jude or Yesterday, which John openly acknowledged, particularly in the Playboy interview, that he had nothing whatsoever to do with… John actually made a list for the Playboy thing showing which songs were his and which were mine. I would be quite happy if, on one of the songs, it would be allowed, for my name to just come first. But I’m really not fussed. It’s not anywhere near as big an issue as it looks. It gets played up in the press. It’s a hot little story. And it makes me look stupid. “Why the fuck does he want that?” It’s actually just a very little request.

More importantly for me, it’s Trades Descriptions. It’s so complex and I hate to go on about it but, for example, I was reading a book, an anthology of poetry, and one of the poems in it was Blackbird, which is my lyric. And it said by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Now John had nothing to do with those words, especially once they’ve been extracted from the music and put into a poetry book. I think it’s fair enough to put Blackbird in a poetry book by Paul McCartney. Give Peace A Chance… take my name off it. It was a great, great anthem of John’s.

It’s sort of a mild request I made to Yoko and it’s sort of been turned down. If she’d have said yeah, the publishing company could probably have sorted it out.

Do you think it matters more to other people than it does to you?

I don’t think anyone gives a shit.

But Alistair Taylor, who worked for you at NEMS and Apple for many years, told me he was very upset that you would want to change the credits. He says it was agreed at an early meeting that it should be Lennon-McCartney, and you agreed to that…

Well, number one, Alistair was not in the meeting where I agreed it. It’s all very nice these guys having these opinions, but here’s what I say and this is the truth. There was a meeting with me, John and Brian, in Hilly House, above a carpet shop in Albemarle Street. We went in and they said, “We’re going to call it Lennon-McCartney.” I said, “Well, OK, fair enough, but it would be good to have it occasionally McCartney-Lennon, wouldn’t it, just for fairness for me?”

And they said, swear to God, hand on heart, but there was nobody else in the room and they’re both dead, so there’s no way of me proving this, except I believe it, I was there, and nobody else who talks about it was there, and they said, “We can change it as we go along. And we can change it any time we want out of fairness.”

This was why, many years later, when the Anthology came about, I and Linda, who had just been diagnosed with cancer, rang Yoko, and said, “Could we just, on Yesterday, could we just switch that one track?” That was the original request. It was just for that one song. And Linda, God bless her, spent quite a bit of time ringing Yoko and that was the start of it all.

And now, I must just be resigned, because it doesn’t really matter, except from the point of view of this Blackbird credit. There is an unfairness there, I think. But it’s an unfairness I’m willing to live with. I don’t mind, and I do think it has rebounded on me a bit because people want to know, “What the fuck does he think he’s doing?” I’ve had letters from people saying, “Paul, you’re doing yourself no favours. I was a big fan of yours but this terrible thing of trying to ruin John’s reputation…” I’m not trying to ruin John’s reputation.

When Yoko was interviewed by MOJO, she said it wasn’t all black during the making of the White Album. There was some lighter moments. Is that how you recall it?

That’s absolutely true, yeah. We’d never have got an album made if it was as black as it was painted. It’s a good album. I remember we presented John and Yoko with an inscribed teapot, and that was a fun time. Unfortunately, because The Beatles were splitting up, the only thing anybody wanted to know about was the split.

It wasn’t all black, even then. We were all pretty friendly, and the times when we weren’t friendly was quite a small proportion of the overall thing. Unfortunately, that’s what gets remembered because it was the most significant proportion because it ended up in a divorce, as it were. In a divorce court, you don’t say, “Oh, she was really great. She’s actually fabulous, and I’m sorry we’re getting a divorce.” That’s what happened to us. Because of the circumstances we had to talk about all the shit.

I think because the Beatles had been by and large a happy, successful thing… four lads getting out of Liverpool, getting out of the working class money trap and doing well… that had all been an up vibe and then with drugs and stuff towards the end of the ’60s it was all taking a bit of a dip. The drugs weren’t working, nobody was giggling anyore, and the word ‘heavy’ came into the vocabulary.

Because all of that was going on it did get nasty. The thing with me having to sue the other guys. I wanted to sue Allen Klein but I couldn’t, so the only way to get out of everything for me and them was for me to sue them, and that was unconscionable, that was something I would never have thought of doing.

It was unfortunate because, in suing the other guys, not only did I get their backs up for a number of years, but the public perception was of me being the guy who sued The Beatles. I held off doing it for months, but it was pointed out to me that the only other option was to go with Klein. So I did it but, luckily, all things must pass, and it did pass. In the end, the others were glad I’d done it. There wouldn’t be Apple now. But it was a very ugly period, and ugly things I had to do to make it work.

You still seem very interested in politics, supporting the campaign to get ride of landmines. But the Wings single, Give Ireland Back To The Irish, was a very direct political statement.

See, I thought we were Irish. So it was a home problem for me… McCartney… Liverpool being the capital of Ireland… it was like a very personal take on it. What if there were Irish soldiers on the streets of Hendon or Speke? Would you like it? That was my take on it.

As evening falls over Docklands, McCartney is whisked off home to dinner with Heather, leaving a promise that if MOJO returns on Monday, a little more interview time will somehow be squeezed into a hectic day. Over the intervening weekend, his Radio 2 commercial, a radically reworked version of Band On The Run, begins airing, along with a short TV film about its making.

When we reconvene at the Arena on Monday morning, the ambience has changed. A troupe of dancers – including a young woman bent on squeezing herself into a tiny Perspex box – is rehearsing backstage; two insurance brokers have arrived to check out the pyrotechnics; the MOJO photography crew, rpomised first access to Macca, is anxious; and there’s an entirely new set to be rehearsed.

As before, Macca opts to take to the stage first. A guitar tech hands him a jumbo acoustic and they lanunch into For No One, followed by Things We Said Today, C-Moon, Honey Don’t… this is the Coliseum set. The band is still unfamiliar with several of the tracks so Macca strums through I’ve Just Seen A Face yelling out the chords as he proceeds. As Geoff Baker strolls past, MOJO inquires whether McCartney will perform Mull of Kintyre when the tour hits Glasgow. “Absoutely not,” says Baker. “We’re frantically seaching for a pipe band at this very moment for an entirely different reason.”

Up on the stage, McCartney says, “OK lads, let’s try Cor Blimey Luv!” and they thunder into Can’t Buy Me Love. Come lunchtime, he is unexpectedly taken off for a meeting in central London, but promises MOJO a swift return.

Two hours later, precisely as predicted, McCartney reappears.

A couple of the post-Beatles songs like Coming Up and Let Me Roll It seems to me to be much more powerful than the originals. Is this how you really intended them to be in the first place?

No. It’s an evolution caused by playing with this band. The parts are already there. What I like about this band is that I don’t really have to tell them. What I’ve done on this whole tour, this band, this new thing, is I’ve let everyone be, let them do their thing, and then if I don’t like it, I’ve reined it in a bit.

Rather than me dictating how to play it, I figure my dictatorial moments have happened – I wrote those songs and I did the original records, so now I don’t feel the band has to stick note-for-note to the original arrangements. It’s also a bit of a louder band than I’ve had before, a bigger sound, so that adds to it.

I know that Rusty is working on his own CD at the moment, but there’s presumably no chance in this band of the other members being allowed to contribute their own songs on the set?

I’ve had to take on the role of boss ever since Wings. It wasn’t like The Beatles any more. Denny Laine, for example, had the reputation of having done Go Now, so you might want to do that, but really the promoters and the audience tended to want to hear my stuff.

At your level of success, you’re effectively the head of a small company. How do you know whether the people are saying that what you do is great because it is great, or just because you’re the boss?

It’s almost impossible, but I think I’ve been at it long enough now to suss… I actually see people telling me, “That’s a great idea!” but I prefer people to speak their minds. So in this kind of team, they’re not just sycophants. They’re more likely to be people who’ll say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea but what if we did this?” And I’ll go, “Wow! Shit! That’s a great idea.”

Do you take to the role of boss easily?

I used to be frightened of it when I was younger because I thought, “We all hate bosses, don’t we?” But I had to get over it because with Apple, we suddenly had this company losing a lot of money we’d earned so I then had to actually tell people what to do – I’m talking about secretaries and staff, The Beatles was still a democratic thing, but we all became bosses then.

That was a strange moment for you, when you had to take over the business side as well as the creative…

We all had to do it, and that had all its famous problems associated with it. After that I had to decide how I would do it in my solo career, which is when I put MPL together. Very small beginnings, one little room in some film production offices, and at that point I really did become the boss. I had a secretary and everything, and then that thing grew, so yeah, I’ve got more and more comfortable with it. I don’t think I’m a very hard boss, but I kick ass when things go wrong.

Do you think your continued success over 40 years – which seems to include a fair number of younger fans – is a bit odd? It’s as if, in the ’60s, Al Jolson or Rudy Vallée had still been pulling in huge crowds.

I think our thing was stuff that goes for all generations. I’m singing things now that I wrote years ago and thinking, “Shit, that’s still appropriate.” Doing Calico Skies, for example, talking about “crazy soldiers, weapons of war”… and look at what’s going on around us right now.

I certainly don’t think it’s any reflection of the state of contemporary music. I think music right now is really great. I’m not an expert, because I’m not a kid buying it, but I always check out people who are said to be good. I’ll see somebody getting a Grammy and I don’t know them, so I’ll check that out.

For instance, I’d heard Eminem on the radio and I thought, “Clever. Good lyrics, good ideas.” So I just went to see 8 Mile and it’s a great little rock ’n’ roll film, like an Elvis film. I enjoyed it and I came out like when I was a kid, that feelgood thing coming out of a movie like you’re walking a bit taller.

What are the eternal verities of a great song?

It’s an indefinable magic chemistry which can come many, many ways. Starting at the top… it’s often a great title. It’s often great words, or great melodies, or great chords or a great sound… but the best ones have got them all.

And there’s always a magic moment. Send In The Clowns, for example, has that line about, “Isn’t it queer… oh, they’re here.” Or in The Drugs Don’t Work. I remember hearing that record, the acoustic coming on, but when he hits that line, it’s like, “Fucking hell, that has to be said.” It hadn’t been said before.

If I had to plump for one single element, it would be melody, because not all songs have got words. I can be moved by a great melody on its own.

Many artists adopt personas. Is that what happened with The Beatles?

We didn’t think that was what we were about. We felt more like a little group of students. It was more an art thing we thought we were doing. We were just (adopts exaggerated Liverpool accent) John, Paul, George and Ringo, you know? I think one of the great things about The Beatles, apart from the fact that we were damn good, was that we were very honest – that could be one of the things that has lasted. Also, we were artists. Our artistic development found a home in people’s hearts and they were able to follow it. Yellow Submarine is a kid’s thing; A Day In The Life is more grown up, so it was an interesting body of work.

It’s also a body of work that has haunted him ever since. Despite multi-platinum hits and a wealth of superlative tracks in his post-Beatles output, Lennon-McCartney remains the standard by which all contemporary songwriters, including him, are judged. John’s untimely death put him on a pedestal, moving him effectively beyond criticism, while McCartney got on with the job of living in the shadow of their unwieldy legacy. It must have been galling, for example, to release his acclaimed solo album Flaming Pie in 1997, while knowing full well that it would never match the sales of, or reap the critical plaudits heaped on The Beatles’ Anthology, a compilation of outtakes, backing tracks and rarities, which had been released two years earlier.

Nor did his renaissance man dabblings in classical composition, poetry and painting do much to revive public interest. But then, on June 11, 2002, Sir Paul McCartney married his ex-model girlfriend Heather Mills, in St Salvator’s Church, Castle Leslie, Glaslough, Ireland. Since then, although things haven’t gone exactly smoothly, it seems as if his life is more firmly back on track.

This is a man who obviously likes to be married, enjoys stability and finds pleasure in domesticity’s little routines, presumably to balance the whirlwind of activity that follows every move he makes outside of his front door. Watching him deliever the line, “Oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go” on the stage at Docklands, it suddenly seemed to rank among his most heartfelt.

Following the muted response from critics and public alike to his Driving Rain album of 2001, he makes no attempt to hide the fact that he’s revelling in the acclaim for and success of this tour in America, which has outstripped all expectations. For this 60-year-old knight of the realm to be the biggest-grossing US live act of 2002 – seeing off not just arch-rivals The Rolling Stones but also the young bucks – is clearly a source of immense personal satisfaction.

But who is he really? Bastion of the establishment? Rock idol? Contented hubby? Multi-talented renaissance man? Avant-garde pop genius? All of the aforementioned and more? Or just an old dopehead with a good head for a nice tune?

Over the years, you’ve been busted for marijuana in Scotland, England, Barbados, Japan, Scandinavia… you could probably get in the Guinness Book Of Records for being busted in most countries. Did anybody mention this in the process of making you a Sir?

No, nobody comes and says anything like that. You can be a terrible person and still be a Sir. It must be that way, because they gave it to me. The worst thing about being busted is that you go on computer records. So every time I go to America, they see my name on the database and they know I’ve been busted a lot, but I think they’ve sort of forgiven me. It’s like, “That was his wild youth but he’s all right now.” So they always let me through, but the drug busts, I have had to go and sit with the aliens in Customs, once or twice. It’s a bit embarrasing. That stuff never comes off your records.

What’s the most useful thing about being a Sir?

I can’t think of many useful things about it. George Martin says it gets you a good table in a restaurant, but I get a good table anyway. I ring up and ask for a table for 8.30 and if they say, “Sorry, there’s no tables left,” I will say, “This is Paul McCartney here.” Then you hear a bit of scuffling and suddenly a table becomes free. I don’t actually like doing that, but I will if I’m desperate. But I never say, “This is Sir Paul McCartney.” I never call myself that. I see it as being like a school prize. You don’t really go for it, but get it because of what you are. Like the art prize or the maths prize. It’s nice to get it because it’s an honour, a recognition of what you’ve done, but it doesn’t do you much good. For me, the best thing about getting it was that it was popular. A lot of people said, “Oh yes, he deserved that.” That was important to me.

How about Sir Mick Jagger?

Who cares? I think it’s cool. I don’t think it makes you anything. I think you are ‘it’ already and it’s a prize for being that thing. And Mick is Mick so that’s fine. I can think of people who should get them… like Eric Clapton. He’s a prime candidate. Sir Eric Clapton has a ring to it.

At your level of success, you’re effectively a company. How many people do you employ all told?

Normally, we carry about 140. When you’re in school or college, you’re a scruffy little bastard writing essays all the time, hoping one day that you’ll be a lawyer, a judge, a journalist, rocker, head of a company, your dreams are all there and I’ve actually got my visualisation. I feel very lucjy. I’m really aware that it’s not just me… I’ve had a phenomenal amount of luck.

Heather said, a few months back, that marrying you had brought her a lot of unhappiness. How do you, as a couple, cope with that?

I’d like to help her with it, and I hate to say this, but it’s more how does she deal with it, you know? I think the shock for Heather was that she’d been “Great model who overcomes accident and now she does a lot of work for charity and disabled people.” The minute she married me, it was, “Who does she think she is?” It’s really quite unfair, but she’s a sitting target. I think it did give her a lot of grief. The most grief, the worst thing about it, was that it actually affected the charities she was working for. People actually stopped donating because of what they read in the newspapers, which was largely untrue. They did a lot of silly things. There was a photo of Heather and I at Stella’s fashion show, and it looked like Heather was doing two peace signs with her fingers and some journalist said, “Oh, she’s copying Linda.” And actually, on closer inspection, it was my hands. But who cares? They’re just having a go. I mean, who gives a shit who gives a V sign?

They also claimed she was doing a cookbook when she wasn’t. We get asked to give a recipe to an Amnesty cookbook or a vegetarian society cookbook, so you do that and it comes out as she’s doing a cookbook. It’s changed a bit since the Parky show. A lot of people like that show, and she changed a lot of people’s minds. In fact, we were walking the dog in Regent’s Park this morning and somebody came up and said, “That was really good on the Parky show!” The main point she made that people appreciated was that with this sort of arbitrary press sniping, it doesn’t affect her so much as it affects the charity, and the disabled people who might have got a leg if there’d been the money raised.

Somebody in one of the papers even said she was under investigation for her charity work, and that completely undermines what she’s trying to achieve. It turned out not to be true but, as you know, the apology appears on page 10 where no one sees it three weeks after all the damage has been done. The same thing happened in the early days with Linda but, as Parky said on the show, it comes with the territory – marrying this guy. It’s not so much me, though, it’s just fame. The same thing happens if you marry Tom Cruise, or Michael Douglas. You get a load of shit. You may have married him because you love him, but now you’re a sitting target.

I noticed that George’s death elicited a very different reaction among my friends than John’s did. John’s was horrible because it was sudden and unexpected and he was young. But I think George’s death reminded my entire generation of our own mortality. It’s as if we measure our own lives alongside the lives of artists we loved. Did you get any sense of that?

To me, of course, it was more of a personal thing. Privately, I felt the same way about both of them. I had lost a dear friend who I would never see again. But when John died, because of the shock, during that day I was asked what I felt about John’s death and all I could stumble across was, “It’s a drag.” I couldn’t gather my thoughts. We were just in shock. I was just shouting stuff about the guy who’d shot John.

I was very lucky that my relationship with John had been healed. It had been vicious, but were phoning each other, talking about kids, baking bread, cats, being a husband – all the simple shit that really means a lot to me. That was the consolation before the terrible shock.

With George’s death, because we knew it was happening, I was able to be more considered in my reaction. I was able to go and hold his hand… but the bottom line is that I will see that man no more, and that’s a little bit horrific for me. When you lose someone dear you just wish someone could magic it all back again. And maybe there is some way, who knows, in the great beyond.

After all he’s been through, McCartney seems more at peace with himself than at any time since John’s death. He is keenly aware that, in the public perception, such actions as seeking to change the credits on Lennon-McCartney songs have tarnished his image, but he also knows that one of the greatest tricks of surviving immense fame is learning to recognise that you have an image, realising that your image isn’t you, and stepping away from it in order to get on with real life.

The punchline of that old song, A Satisfied Mind, is that, “It’s so hard to find one rich man in 10 with a satisfied mind.” There’s no telling how long it might last but it would seem that, for the moment, Paul McCartney is that one rich man.

Coming Up

While suffering a near-nervous breakdown during the Fabs’ prolonged disintegration, McCartney quietly worked on an ill-fated side-project that many now agree ranks among his best solo work. Chris Ingham basks in the understated glory of 1970’s McCartney.

Autumn of 1969, Paul McCartney was in a strange place. Feeling redundant following John Lennon’s announcement in an August meeting at Apple that he was leaving The Beatles, McCartney retreated to his farm in Scotland to drink, stay up, lie in and suffer what he would call “almost a nervous breakdown”.

At the same time, in the company of Linda, his bride of six months, step-daughter Heather and brand new baby daughter Mary, he also began to enjoy the ‘glow’ of being in a new family. By the time they returned to his St John’s Wood house for the winter, McCartney was sufficiently energised to do a little work from home. Plugging one microphone directly into a Studer multitrack with no VU monitoring or mixing desk, he overdubbed himself on drums, guitar, bass and keyboards, polishing his DIY recordings at Abbey Road (where he booked in as Billy Martin) and Morgan Studios, Willesden.

The resulting album McCartney – released in April 1970 simultaneously as The Beatles’ split became public knowledge – was almost universally received as a bit of a non-event. Modest, rough-hewn, semi-improvised, it was the unshaven opposite of The Beatles’ pristine work on Abbey Road which had appeared only eight months before.

Yet, over 30 years on, it holds up as a funky home-brew of a record, groovily lo-fi in a way that wouldn’t be fashionable for a couple of decades. The primitive experimentalism and bluesy jams that were for years dismissed as semi-distracted indulgence now sound, well, rather cool. The drumming is rudimentary but deep, the guitar playing bluesy and distinctive (and much admired by Paul Weller for one), the sound is warm and present, “very analogue” as McCartney recognises now.

And as an expression of where he was at – ‘home, family, love’ – it is as vivid as anything he ever did. The informal paeans to his new wife – The Lovely Linda, Oo You – are respectively radiant with natural affection and earthy passion while the majestic Maybe I’m Amazed confirmed that, when he felt like it, his ability to shape inspiration with unmatched pop craft was secure.

Elsewhere, if lovers of McCartney’s straightforward pop are short-changed – the delightful Every Night and Junk notwithstanding – it’s because he just felt like recording other things; the ethereal sound made by wine glasses (Glasses), a dusted-off Silver Beatles instrumental (Hot As Sun), or a rather compelling chant-and-percussion sound painting of an African tribe (Kreen-Akrore). It’s the very wilfulness of McCartney – the organic sound of an artist learning how to express himself in whatever way he pleases – that gives the album a “realness” that somehow appeals more with the passage of time.

As Paul wrote in 1970 to journalist Penny Valentine, who had spoken for many by expressing her disappointment with the record, “even at this moment it is growing on you.” It still is.

Timeless melody

A purveyor of silly songs? No, a compositional genius…

Peter Buck, R.E.M.: Ram is an amazing record. Ram On? That’s like something off Pet Sounds. The Back Seat Of My Car is amazing. Wings’ Wild Life is really cool. It just sounds like he was in the biggest band of all time, he goes, “Hey we just got a drummer, let’s make a record this week, without any songs!” Dear Friend is one of my favourite songs he ever wrote, which is probably about John. I love that song. I actually recorded it with the Minus 5. Needless to say, the stuff he did with The Beatles was pretty decent too. The thing that boggles my mind is that when they broke up, nobody was 30, and George was 26. He was 26?! Jeez.

Brendan Benson: It’s his genuine fascination for music and music theory, him as a composer, explorer and experimenter, especially his post-Beatles work. He’s a great arranger, the way he puts his songs together. Band On The Run is his masterpiece. It works on so many different level: it’s a simple pop record, yet the way he ties in the melodies throughout makes it something more. It’s a work of genius, so huge and epic yet never outstaying its welcome. He tears at the heartstrings with his mix of mellow, dark and pleasing sounds. There’s never anything harsh or abrasive, just super moody songs, full of melancholic nostalgia.

Andy Partridge, XTC: He’s so fab because he’s so ludicrously melodic and he’s not afraid to be soppy. It takes a lot of guts to do that. My favourite song? It’s Getting Better is so fantastically optimistic, with this great convoluted construction, twisting around. And that bass playing –it’s actually just like his singing, piping and flute-like. And Hello/Goodbye, those opening chords reach in like a ray of sunshine. Again, it’s ferociously optimistic. You know you’re going to have a good experience. It’s not this fake seriousness you get now. He’s never had a problem restricting himself to one thing – he can rock out, be avant-garde, do children’s music, pop for the teens… it’s preposterous that he’s seen as the second-best Beatle – I think the whole thing was an equally jewelled tug of love between them. Although I do wonder why you never see McCartney and Angela Lansbury in the same room.

Gladys Knight: For me it was when Paul took control of the group that The Beatles were at their best. He’s so gifted at writing words and I always choose songs for their lyrical content. I must have worn the grooves off Let It Be. I’d get up in the morning playing it, go to bed playing it, cook to it, clean up to it. The title track was just a song that touched my spirit and that’s why I decided to cover it, because it touched my soul.

Tom McRae: The man is a genius for melody. The second side of Abbey Road – particularly Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight is one of the greatest Beatles’ moments and Paul’s shining moment. It goes from this brilliant beautiful ballad, his voice so lush and romantic, to turning, in a split second, into a raucous rock number; the best of both sides of his art all in the space of one song. It’s so emotive and there’s a challenging simplicity in his melody and lyrics.

Ben Kweller: The first album I ever fell in love with was Let It Be. I was eight and listened to it non-stop. Paul’s lyrics are so focused on the subject matter and the emotion he brings to the songs is so sincere and honest. Those massive piano ballads like The Long And Winding Road just make me swell up inside. His voice is so pure and beautiful and his musicianship is often overlooked. He reinvented bass playing and excelled at the guitar, piano and drums.

#2003 #interviewed: paul #interviewer: johnny black #paul mccartney #full article placeholder tag

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years

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MARILYN MONROE

June 1, 1926 - August 4, 1962

Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson) was an actress, model, and singer. Famous for playing comedic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s and was emblematic of the era's changing attitudes towards sexuality. She was a top-billed actress for only a decade, but her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. More than half a century later, she continues to be a major popular culture icon.

"When I was five I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be. Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it.” ~ Marilyn Monroe,1962

Lucille Ball never worked with Marilyn Monroe, but meet her in 1953 at Ciro’s Nightclub on Sunset Strip, along with Betty Grable, and Red Skelton. Monroe’s immense popularity permeated Ball’s work none-the-less.

At the start of “Changing the Boys’ Wardrobe” (ILL S3;E10) the gang is heading to the movies to see “That picture we’ve been trying to get to for weeks with Marilyn Monroe.” The movie is likely Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which premiered in New York City in July 1953. On November 5, 1953, the same day the episode was filmed, Monroe’s new film How to Marry a Millionaire was released in the US.

The November 1953 cover of TV and Movie Screen Magazine saw Lucy (in “The Camping Trip”) and Marilyn wearing the dress she wore on the May 1953 cover of Life Magazine promoting Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Also on November 5, 1953, the town of Monroe, New York (60 miles from New York City) was temporarily renamed Marilyn Monroe.

The film later inspired much of the plot of “Second Honeymoon” (S5;E14), Lucy’s failed attempt to make their transatlantic crossing to Europe more than just a working vacation.

Monroe’s dinner companion turns out to be a seven year-old boy, just like Lucy’s ping pong partner turns out to be young Kenneth Hamilton (Harvey Grant).

Lucy gets stuck in a porthole just as Monroe did, also draping a blanket around her shoulders so passersby wouldn’t know what was really going on.

The idea for the burlap potato sack dresses in “Lucy Wants A Paris Gown” (ILL S5;E20) comes from Monroe’s real life.

In 1951 Marilyn Monroe took a series of high fashion photographs wearing a potato sack as a response to a journalist who said that she might look sexier in a burlap sack than her usual fashion choices.

Lucy first wore burlap at the end of “Mr. and Mrs. TV Show” (ILL S4;E24) as her scary version of a Phipps make-over.

In “Ricky’s Movie Offer” (ILL S4;E5) Lucy and Ethel argue about who looks more like Marilyn Monroe.

While Lucy has the facial features, Ethel has the blonde hair.

Fred (hilariously) settles the argument!

In “Ricky’s Screen Test” (ILL S4;E7) a long list of Hollywood names are dropped in anticipation of hobnobbing with celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe.

In “Lucy and Harpo Marx” (ILL S4;E28) Lucy wonders if Ethel might pass for Monroe to a near-sighted Carolyn Appleby. After Ethel tries to walk like Marilyn Monroe, Lucy decides that “nobody is that near-sighted!” Fred says that he looks more like Marilyn than either of them!

In “Lucy and Superman” (ILL S6;E13), the Appleby’s come over for a social evening that Ethel calls “the bore war” because the couples only talk about their children. As the scene opens, Caroline is in mid-sentence talking about a Marilyn Monroe film.

CAROLINE: “...and he picked up Marilyn Monroe, slung her over his shoulder and carried her off!”

Although the title is never mentioned, the film they are discussing is Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray. It was released in August 1956, two and a half months before this episode was filmed.

When “Lucy Does the Tango” (ILL S6;E20), she stuffs eggs down her blouse and Ethel stashes a some in her back pockets. Lucy tells her, “Whatever you do don’t try to walk like Marilyn Monroe,” but the ‘yolk’ is on Ethel when Fred suddenly enters through the kitchen door!

In “Lucy the Gun Moll” (TLS S4;E25), Lucy plays Lucy Carmichael and Rusty Martin. The name Rusty Martin was probably derived from Lucy’s hair color and the surname of Mary Martin, who introduced the song “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” (music and lyrics by Cole Porter) in the 1938 Broadway musical Leave It to Me. Marilyn Monroe sang it in the 1960 film Let’s Make Love. In that same film, Harry Cheshire, who played Sam Johnson in “Oil Wells” (ILL S3;E18), played Monroe’s father. Jerry Hausner (Jerry, Ricky’s Agent) and Joan Banks (Reporter Eleanor Harris in “Fan Magazine Interview”) played uncredited supporting roles.

Lucy and Marilyn shared a leading man in handsome Keith Andes. Andes was Lucy’s male lead in Wildcat on Broadway, and later played was featured on three episodes of “The Lucy Show.”

In 1952, he played opposite Marilyn in Clash By Night, an RKO picture.

In “Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio” (1952), the June 3, 1952 of Look Magazine actually had Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe on the cover! Monroe was promoting Clash by Night, and Desi had written a feature on his wife for the magazine. So Marilyn actually did appear on “I Love Lucy” - if only in a still photo.

Some Like It Hot (1959) is arguably one of Marilyn Monroe’s most popular films. What does it have in common with Lucille Ball? In 1958, both Lucy and Monroe were depicted at San Diego’s famous Del Coronado Hotel. It is the hotel that the Ricardo’s and Mertzes stay at in “Lucy Goes to Mexico” (LDCH S2;E1) as well as the backdrop for much of the film. Although Desilu filmed establishing footage of the hotel, the cast stayed in Hollywood, while Monroe went on location (as seen above). In “Lucy Goes to a Hollywood Premiere” (TLS S4;E20), Mr. Mooney says he wouldn’t buy a second hand nightie if it had been worn by Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot.

The Irving Berlin song “There’s No Business Like Show Business” was sung on “I Love Lucy” and “The Lucy Show.” Although it was originally from the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun (1946), it also served as the title and was performed (by Merman) in the Marilyn Monroe film There’s No Business Like Show Business in 1955.

In 1952, Marilyn co-starred by Richard Widmark (”The Tour” ILL S4;E30) in the film noir drama Don’t Bother To Knock. The film also featured “Lucy” players Lurene Tuttle (Fine Arts League President), Verna Felton (Mrs. Porter), Gloria Blondell (Grace Foster), as well as Harry Bartell, Olan Soule, Robert Foulke, and Bess Flowers.

That same year, Monroe starred in We’re Not Married! opposite Lucy’s friend and former co-star Ginger Rogers, as well as Eve Arden (”Hollywood at Last!”), Paul Douglas (”Lucy Wants a Career”) and Eddie Bracken (Too Many Girls).

One of Monroe’s most iconic moments came in March 1962 when she sang “Happy Birthday” as a birthday present to President John F. Kennedy in a public birthday celebration also attended by Lucy’s friends and co-stars Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Henry Fonda, Danny Kaye, Shirley MacLaine and Elliott Reid. A year later, Lucy Carmichael also gave Kennedy a present, a sugar cube replica of the White House on “The Lucy Show” with Elliott Reid doing Kennedy’s offstage voice as well as playing a small on-camera role!

"I never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something I'd rather have it sex than some other things they've got symbols of." ~ Marilyn Monroe, 1962

Monroe was married (and divorced) three times:

James Dougherty, Merchant Marine & Policeman (1942-46)

Joe DiMaggio, Baseball Player (1954-55)

Arthur Miller, Playwright (1956-61)

In “Lucy is Enceinte” (ILL S2;E10), Fred gives Lucy a signed baseball for his future 'godson’. When he asks Lucy to read out the signature, she at first says “Spalding,” the ball’s brand name, but then finds it is signed by Joe DiMaggio.

In “Ragtime Band” (ILL S6;E21), Little Ricky asks his Uncle Fred:

LITTLE RICKY: “Who’s Joe 'Maggio?” FRED: “'Who’s Joe 'Maggio?’ You talk more like your father everyday.”

In “Sales Resistance” (ILL S2;E17), Lucy compares herself to Willy Loman, the title character in Death of a Salesman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Arthur Miller first produced on Broadway in 1949 and made into an Oscar-nominated film in 1951.

Speaking of husbands, Desi Arnaz has something in common with Marilyn Monroe, too. Both of their souses were accused of being Communists by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s. Both Lucille and Arthur Miller were cleared of charges and their careers continued, although that was not true for many celebrities of the time.

Monroe died on August 4, 1962. The toxicology report showed that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning. Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed. The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times over the lethal limit.

The character of Ginger, the movie star castaway on “Gilligan’s Island” (1964-67) was described during casting as a combination of Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe. Tina Louise had Lucy’s red (ginger) hair and Monroe’s shapely physique. The series also featured Natalie Schafer (Phoebe Emerson) as Mrs. Howell, and Alan Hale Jr. as the Skipper. Hale performed on “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy”. Series creator Sherwood Schwartz was a Lucy fan. His brother Elroy Schwartz actually wrote scripts for Lucille Ball.

In the 2013 web-series “Ryan & Ruby” both Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe are given special thanks for their inspiration. The last name of star and creator Ryan Burton's character is "Carmichael", the same as Ball's character on the "The Lucy Show". In Ryan’s kitchen there are fridge magnets with photos of both Lucy and Marilyn.

Lucy and Marilyn are street characters at Universal Studios theme parks, their iconic hair and costumes making them instantly recognizable.

The same day Marilyn Monroe was born in 1926, another Hollywood icon with connections to Lucille Ball was also born, Andy Griffith. To read his birthday blog, click here!

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