#yeah this isn’t actually Taylor but it is for the sake of the edit
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June Contest Submission #22: Left in the Dark
Words: ca. 4,000
Setting: Modern AU, Airport
Lemon: No
CW: None
A flash of lightning brightens the whole sky once more. Four seconds later, the low rumbling of thunder pierces the pattering sounds of rain hitting the large windows of the airport. The glass is working especially hard today to keep the raging storm at bay, and it doubles as the only source of light in this massive blackout.
Elsa presses her palm against the cold glass. All around her, people are expressing their fear over how long this blackout will last, calling loved ones to tell them their flights have been delayed, or are meeting this darkness with great indifference. She envies all these people, wishing she could feel something that isn’t gut-wrenching guilt.
When she pulls her hand away from the glass, her imprint from the condensation trickles and fades moments later. The last update they received before the power went out was that the weather conditions would be keeping all planes grounded for at least four hours. If people chose to catch a flight tomorrow instead, they’d be reimbursed for the inconvenience.
A lot of people chose that option, but Elsa decided to wait. She didn’t want to spend any more time in Denver than she needed to.
An hour later, when the power went out, everyone including Elsa who decided to stick around began wondering if they made the right choice. She jumps as she feels the phone in her back pocket vibrate. Hesitantly, she pulls it out and is relieved to see that it’s just a message from her mother, telling Elsa to be safe no matter what she chooses to do.
It’s not like she’s stranded in unknown territory, she still has a couple of friends from college in the city who might let her stay over for a night. And if that fails, she has enough money for an Uber ride and a hotel room. But the stormy skies aren’t the only dark clouds in Denver that she wants to leave behind, so it looks like she’s staying.
Air traffic workers outside are desperately setting up flares and other alternate sources of light on the airfield, and no doubt the airport’s technicians are working to get at least the backup power working. They won’t stay in darkness for too long, she hopes, even if it feels somewhat calming at this moment. But what else can she do to pass the time for the next few hours? Text her friends and hope they’re up for a three-hour conversation? Edit her resume? Take a nap while snuggling her backpack and duffle bag to keep anything from being stolen?
“Wow,” she says, speaking her first word since yesterday. “My life really is just one big pile of nothing, huh?”
Her existential crisis is interrupted by the gentle plucking of guitar strings that cuts through the torrential silence. It’s familiarity compels Elsa to grab her things and find the source of the melody, and though her hearing is heightened by the darkness, she uses her phone’s flashlight to guide her way so she doesn’t step on anyone. The guitar strings guide her along and bring her closer before they’re accompanied by another sound: a sweet, gentle voice comfortably singing the lyrics to the song.
Ooh thinkin about all our younger years
There was only you and me
We were young and wild and free
The girl singing it sounds far too young for the lyrics to pertain to her, and yet her alto voice still carries a reminiscent feel to what she’s saying. Elsa follows the secret siren up to the aisle she thinks she’s sitting in, just as the girl reaches the chorus. Though she keeps her voice down to a near whisper, Elsa can’t help but sing along as well.
Baby you’re all that I want when you’re lying here in my arms
I’m finding it hard to believe we’re in Heaven
However, the music stops before the chorus ends and Elsa is left singing the last three words by herself. She purses her lips, mortified, taking a step back just in case she’s told to get lost.
“Why’d you stop singing? Your voice is really pretty.”
Now, Elsa’s even more embarrassed. She has enough common sense to realize the voice asking that question is the same voice that brought her here, but not enough to keep from shining her phone’s flashlight on her. Fortunately, the light only gets up to the girl’s chest before Elsa yelps and turns it off. Which isn't that much better, but she’ll take any victory she can get right now.
“Sorry, I didn’t think you heard me,” Elsa replies.
The girl chuckles, “Was I not supposed to hear you?”
“No, I mean I don’t know, I-I…” Elsa sighs, “I was embarrassed, I guess.”
“Well how about you stop being embarrassed and sit down?” It’s such a gentle command that Elsa doesn’t realize she could have said no until she’s used her phone’s flashlight to find an open seat right next to the mystery guitar girl. “So are you a big Bryan Adams fan or do you just know that one song?”
Darkness paints the corner they’re in and keeps Elsa from getting a good sense of who she’s talking to. It makes for one of the most interesting conversations she’s ever had. “Oh, I only know a couple of his songs, but I wouldn’t say I’m like a huge fan. A-are you?”
“Not really, but I’m a sucker for those classic love ballads, you know?”
Elsa nods before realizing she’s not going to see that. “Yeah, I know.”
She hears the woman adjust in her chair and the guitar strings squeak as she runs her fingers along the frets. “Alright, let’s see if you know this one.”
Before Elsa can ask what she’s doing, there’s a gentle yet deliberate strumming of the guitar strings unlike the soft fingerpicking from before. And once again, the woman begins to sing a song that Elsa’s quick to recognize.
And I’d give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be and I don’t want to go home right now
“I know this song too,” Elsa interjects with more excitement in her voice than she’s expecting. “It’s by the Goo Goo Dolls, right?”
The woman stops her singing, much to Elsa’s unexpected disappointment. “That’s right, Iris.”
“A-actually my name’s Elsa.”
“What?”
“Hmm?” Elsa cringes, realizing her mistake. “Oh gosh, you weren’t calling me…you were saying the name…of the song.”
She prepares herself for the laughter, but it never comes. “Elsa, huh? That’s a really pretty name, I like it.”
“You do? I- wow, that’s…I mean, thank you. For that.” This is so strange, she’s usually much better at talking than this, she has a degree in it for goodness sakes. But there’s something that’s keeping her tongue-tied and ruining her common sense. Maybe this woman really is a siren. “I’m from Rhode Island.”
“Elsa from Rhode Island,” the woman says like she’s trying to make sense of those words in that order. “Well you’ve got a very pretty voice, Elsa. My name is Anna. From Arizona.”
Anna. The name fits, even though Elsa doesn’t actually know anything about her, not even what she looks like. “Nice to meet you, Anna from Arizona.” Though they’re in the dark, Elsa can feel that Anna’s smiling at her. Maybe because Elsa’s smiling too.
“Alright, you’ve established your knowledge of the oldies…” Anna begins to strum a soft, basic chord progression. “Let’s see if you know something a little more modern.”
Elsa’s not a music expert in the slightest but she still listens intently, if only to hear more of Anna’s beautiful voice. When she begins to sing, they’re lyrics that Elsa doesn’t recognize.
I hear the beast, its awful cry, but never see its face
I feel the water coming down, it’s keeping me in place
And in this stormy weather, though I should be so afraid
I’m with the one who makes it fade away
Anna continues to sing, and Elsa is torn because she doesn’t know what this song is but she feels like she should. The voice accompanying the words make them sound much more beautiful and earnest, but the song is unrecognizable. When Anna begins to hum instead of sing, Elsa admits defeat. “I-I think you win, I’m not sure what this song is.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Anna says, abruptly ending the song. “Because it’s one of mine.”
Elsa gasps, “Not fair.”
She can sense the victorious grin on Anna’s face. “Hey, it’s a modern song. I started writing it today actually, well okay maybe writing isn’t the best word for it.”
“You wrote that today?” Elsa asks. “Have you written any other songs?”
“Yeah I’ve written a few, some of them are actually pretty good too, I think: Whenever I’ve got something in my head, I pick up my guitar and record my thoughts. I’m not trying to be the next Taylor Swift or something, but it…yeah it helps.”
A flash of lightning paints the windows and illuminates Anna’s silhouette for a moment, not long enough or bright enough to see any details other than the shape of her hair. It surprises Elsa when she realizes just how much she wants to see what Anna looks like. A minute ago, she didn’t even know this woman existed and now she finds herself considering the stupid idea of shining her phone’s flashlight on Anna’s face. Because nothing says “good impression” like blinding someone.
Another realization hits her, though it’s more of an unhelpful observation: Has it really been so long since she’s been attracted to someone that she’s falling for a random woman at the airport with a beautiful voice and nice…manners? Pathetic, she doesn’t actually know anything about Anna other than she writes songs and is from Arizona.
Hoping to at least remedy that, she searches her mind for something to ask. Something casual but informative. But Anna beats her to it.
“So Elsa from Rhode Island, you’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”
Elsa nods out of habit as thunder roars outside the airport walls, “Uh y-yeah, just a little bit yeah. And you’re…not that far from home, Anna from Arizona.”
Anna giggles like Elsa said something funny. “No, well not yet. I’m actually going to New Jersey and figured I’d save some money by taking a couple of connected flights instead of flying straight there. My parents are renewing their vows and of course they want me to be there for the ceremony. Remember that song I was singing? Heaven? That’s actually their song and I’m gonna surprise them by playing it.”
“That’s really sweet,” Elsa replies, relieved that she bit her tongue before making a joke about New Jersey. She hears a tap on hollow wood and the squeak of guitar strings as Anna slides her hand across them. She eagerly anticipates another song, but instead she gets another question.
“What about you? Any vow renewals waiting for you in Rhode Island?”
Elsa giggles, but it’s not as pretty or confident as her companion’s. “Ah no, there’s nothing…waiting for me back home.” Wow, that answer was much more depressing than she wanted it to be. Even if it’s true. “Well I mean there’s my parents. And my apartment. I guess my job counts too but other than that, there’s nothing else.” She feels like she’s making things worse.
“Oh dear.” There’s a heaviness in Anna’s reply, but Elsa doesn’t hear any pity which she’s grateful for. No one should pity her for the life she’s chosen. “So why’d you come to Denver? It’s not exactly a top vacation destination right now. Unless you like rain.”
“I love rain,” Elsa replies far too excitedly, as if rain is like her favorite thing in the world. “But no, I didn’t come here for a vacation. I…I came here…”
“Hey.”
Elsa’s startled by a hand that lands first on her upper arm and then on her shoulder. It’s soft, gentle, and she hopes it belongs to Anna or else this is getting awkward.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with,” Anna continues. But that’s the thing, Elsa feels very comfortable around Anna and she can’t explain why. All she can do is see and now feel her, but there’s something about Anna that makes her feel safe and trusted. Moreso than even her therapist.
Elsa sighs, the heaviness of this weekend’s events once again piling on her, hoping this will help her let it go. “I came here to call off my engagement with my…with my ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s- gosh, I’m so sorry that must have been really hard.”
Elsa shakes her head. “Don’t be. You didn’t know.”
“I know, but in my mind I thought you were like running from the law or something.”
“I wouldn’t have told you my real name if that were the case.” And she definitely wouldn’t be out in such a public place for so long, blackout or not.
“Wait so Elsa’s really your name?”
“Yes?”
“Holy shit, that’s pretty. I bet you’re like secretly royalty, aren’t you?”
“Nope, I’m just boring Elsa from boring Rhode Island.”
“Oh please. Boring people don’t get engaged.”
“…”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“No, it-it’s alright. The breakup doesn’t hurt as much as it should, it was a long time coming and I prepared myself for it. But it just happened, I’d feel bad joking about it so soon.”
Though talking with Anna helps, the darkness still plays with her perception. In her mind, she’s constantly playing back the exact moment she took off the ring and gave it back to Hans. She’s remembering the shock and anguish on her ex-fiancé’s face, like she’d just stabbed him in the gut. She hears on loop his last words of “Elsa, what can I do?”
And though the images are shocking, they don’t sting any more than being pinched on the arm.
“Still doesn’t give me the right to joke about it.” Anna sighs, and takes her hand off Elsa’s shoulder. It had been on there for so long that Elsa almost forgot about it, and now she’s disappointed that it’s gone. “I must seem like such a jerk.”
“No, you’re hilarious,” Elsa says truthfully. “I’m not offended, it’s…I got all the bad feelings out of the way a while ago. I only came to Denver to call things off because it’d seem insensitive to do it over the phone.”
“That’s noble of you.”
Elsa laughs pitifully, “No. I led him on in a long-distance relationship for months while I fell out of love with him. That’s not noble at all.” She feels a tingle along her shoulder, like something’s hovering above it. The feeling goes away a second later.
“You can’t do that to yourself, Elsa. You can’t put the whole burden of the breakup on yourself. I mean, what’s the reason you fell out of love with him in the first place?”
Oh that’s a long story that will take up the rest of the word limit. Elsa thinks about the important details, the ones worth sharing, and a silly, unhelpful thought flashes in her mind like the lightning that strikes once again: What would Anna think if she leaned on her shoulder right now? She shakes that thought away and starts with her pitiful monologue.
“We got engaged about a year ago, it was actually the last thing we did before I graduated from college and moved back to Rhode Island. He still had a year left, and the plan was that we’d get married once he graduated. But it’s like…I don’t know, it felt like I was two different people when I moved back. It’s like there’s ‘Elsa from Rhode Island’ who’s calm, quiet, and likes to draw and sing in the shower, and then there’s ‘Elsa from Denver’ who’s energetic and charming, and is always trying to cheer people up with kind words and stupid memes. And I wanted so badly for both of these Elsas to coexist, but the longer I was away from Denver and Hans, the more I realized how exhausting it was trying to be who I always used to be. And when I tried to be 'Elsa from Rhode Island’, Hans wouldn’t respond to that and think I was angry or something, so I had to flip the switch. It took a while to realize that I didn’t want to keep putting on that mask, and if Hans didn’t like who I really was, then…I couldn’t fix that. I cried and panicked and did all that other stuff when I finally decided to break up with him. So much so that when I finally did it, I had already moved on. Breaking up was just a formality, like signing my name on a piece of paper. Even so, I feel guilty for doing this to him and sometimes I wonder if I just wasn’t trying hard enough to be who I needed to be. It’s stressful to think about, and right now all I know is that…I don’t want to set foot in Denver ever again.”
After a long moment of silence, punctuated by the storm outside fighting to punch through the windows, Anna’s hand makes contact with Elsa again. This time on her wrist.
“Elsa…” she starts softly. “I don’t think he tried hard enough.”
Elsa raises an eyebrow, she’s heard this take from her parents and friends, but it hits a little more when Anna says it.
“I mean you weren’t in a relationship with yourself, right? He had to meet you halfway on stuff like this, especially if you’re going to commit the rest of your lives with each other. If he couldn’t accept who you are now, then what would things look like if you got married?”
“But people change in a relationship,” Elsa argues. “What if I was just scared to change? What if I was too comfortable with what was familiar and I was scared about doing something new?”
“Well, how much can change about yourself before you stop feeling like yourself?”
This is the first time anyone’s ever asked Elsa this question before, and it shuts her up quickly. All the while, Anna continues unfettered.
“I’m not trying to be your therapist, so I’m sorry if I cross the line anywhere. But I feel like…the best relationships are the ones where neither of you have to worry about what you look like to the other person. Like you have nothing to prove because you like yourself, and they make you feel comfortable with that. And I think if you get too caught up on the whole 'changing in a relationship’ thing, it means you’ve already lost sight of why you’re in a relationship in the first place. It’s not always about what you do for each other, but what you can do together. That’s…I mean I think that’s the beautiful part of being with someone you love. That you’re you, and that they’re them, and you’re yourselves doing stupid things like eating a grilled cheese sandwich on the balcony at 3 AM.”
Elsa’s so caught up in Anna’s wisdom that her silly joke catches her completely off-guard and she snorts, “What? Where’d that last part come from?”
Anna huffs, “Look, I really want a grilled cheese right now, okay?”
“Well, uh I think I might owe you one.”
“Really? For what?”
“For telling me what I needed to hear.” Boldness overtakes Elsa and she places her hand on top of Anna’s. Though the thunder roars and whines, Elsa swears she hears a hitching of breath. “You’re quite the love expert, Anna of Arizona.”
“Oh, uh…thank you? I don’t think I’m a love expert at all. I’ve never actually…”
She trails off, Elsa leans forward. “What was that?”
“I said I’ve never been in a relationship before.”
“Oh. Wow.” It sounds like Anna’s genuinely embarrassed by this, so Elsa reassures her. “Well, that sounds ridiculous.” Or at least she tries to.
Anna laughs, but in a way that you laugh when your parents are telling stories about dumb things you used to do as a kid. “You don’t have to do that. It’s my fault, I don’t put myself out there that much and it…I don’t know, I think I might be hard to love.”
Elsa gasps, “That can’t be true. I think anyone would be lucky to love you.”
“You don’t even know me,” Anna says in almost a whisper.
“I know enough. I know that you can sing and write songs. I know that you’re caring enough to comfort a total stranger on their breakup. I know that thunder storms don’t scare you.”
“I mean it’s just loud noises and rain,” Anna mumbles.
“And I know you have a beautiful voice. A beautiful mind. A beautiful heart.”
Anna doesn’t respond right away, but she does squeeze Elsa’s wrist in what she thinks is an expression of gratitude. The more they stray down this new path in their conversation, the harder it is to assume what Anna must be thinking. How she must be feeling. Elsa can only hope that she feels the comfort that Anna made her feel just a few short minutes ago.
She hears Anna take a breath like it’s something she’s forgotten to do. “You don’t know what I look like. I could be Medusa. Or a gross, alien thing.”
“I bet you’re a beautiful, gross, alien thing.”
That gets another laugh from Anna, this one with the joy and relief that Elsa was waiting for. “Well, I bet you’re a beautiful, gross, alien thing too.”
And that’s when Elsa feels it. That pull. The daring pull forward that she hasn’t felt in the longest time. In the dark, under stormy weather, and in the quiet of their secluded corner, Elsa admits to herself the bold attraction she feels for a woman she can’t even see. It’s exhilarating and terrifying, and the words she wants to say are on the tip of her tongue. The words “I think I want to kiss you” are ready to escape like a whisper.
But a flash of light hits wall to wall, brighter than the flashes of lightning from before, and interrupts all her thoughts. The airport is finally pulled out of its blackout, and the collective sigh of the remaining hopeful passengers rings through the corridor. Unattended luggage sits on dull, gray seats, people wake violently from their naps, and Anna-
Oh.
She can finally see Anna from Arizona.
She can see her large, forest green raincoat, her guitar on her lap with its polished rosewood and silver strings, her cane resting against her chair, her auburn-colored hair traveling down her shoulders, her freckles accenting her surprised expression…
And her milky, white eyes.
It catches Elsa so off-guard, that all she can do at first is sit up and blink. When words come back to her, she manages to stumble out a “Wow…”
Anna must sense the weight in Elsa’s reaction, and she shuts her eyes. “The lights came back on, didn’t they?”
“Y-yeah, I- they did. They finally did. I mean not finally, but…Anna-”
“No,” Anna interrupts, eyes shut painfully tight. “Please, you don’t have to say anything. I should have told you when we first started talking.”
“You didn’t have to, that’s not…I…this looks bad. Not look! Not- I’m sorry, I’m making you feel worse.”
“You’re not,” Anna protests, now ducking down to bury her face against her guitar. Through the covering, she says with gut-wrenching guilt, “I’m making you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable, Anna, I'm not. I was just surprised.”
“But in a bad way, right?”
“No! Not in a bad way.”
“Ugh, I should have told you. But I was too busy being stupid and crushing on you, and I forgot to just give you a head’s up like 'Hey by the way, I’m blind and have zombie eyes, I hope that doesn’t scare you’. Stupid Anna, stupid stupid-”
Elsa puts her hands on Anna’s shoulders and says her name, which causes the rambling woman to gasp and stop talking. When she’s sure that Anna’s not going to freak out on her again, Elsa says, “Please lift your head up.”
With a little assurance from Elsa, Anna finally sits back up and her hands rest on her guitar.
“Please…open your eyes,” Elsa asks with her hands traveling down to rest on top of Anna’s.
Anna shakes her head, though thankfully her expression has softened and it doesn’t look like she has a massive headache. “I don’t want to scare you.”
“I’m not scared, Anna. And I won’t be. Just please open your eyes.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
After a deep breath, Anna cautiously opens her eyes again, accompanied by another thunder strike. Though Elsa barely registers that, her focus is completely on Anna and the nervousness she can still see through her cloudy irises. At this point, someone much more deep, profound, and better with words would say something that would make Anna’s heart soar. And Elsa’s thinking of what she’d say if she were that kind of person.
But she’s not that kind of person and that’s okay.
Elsa smiles for the both of them and says, “I told you. You’re beautiful.” Expectedly, thankfully, and earnestly, Anna smiles too.
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hm hi maybe i will officially ask you if you want to hurt me and write a therapy fic. i vote malum but. you do as— no you know what i'm me this is a malum prompt i'm sending you okay love you bye
hiya taylor i hope you realized when you asked for this that it would be angsty as fuck, so i really can’t apologize for uhh writing something angsty as fuck!! BUT with a hopeful ending because we know how i am
tw for suicide ideation, suicidal thoughts, depression
read it here on ao3
-
Michael is winded from the moment they walk onstage.
He’s been all smiles all day. Somewhere he’d heard that smiling was supposed to trigger some kind of happy brain chemical, a creepy fake-it-’til-you-make-it strategy. It has not worked. Michael is exhausted from the effort he’s put into looking like he’s okay. The smile has become a grimace, and he doesn’t have the energy to make it look more realistic. Cameras capture upturned lips and that’s enough to convince them he’s happy, which is the important thing.
He doesn’t intend to watch those videos when they’re edited together. He can’t even bear to look in the mirror these days. The travesty of him that stares back out with dead eyes only makes him feel worse. At this point he’d doubted whether or not he could actually feel worse.
Standing in front of almost thirty thousand people, it turns out he can. Or at the very least he can feel equally bad in a different way. He’d been drowning before, but he’s choking now. Dying either way.
If he died onstage, slain where he stood, what would his band do? What would the thousands of fans do? Maybe it would be a mercy. Michael’s a liability right now. He’s frozen in front of thousands of people at the fucking O2 Arena, for fuck’s sake. The band is supposed to be skyrocketing and Michael is a faulty engine, fuel that’s caught fire. If they keep him around they’ll catch fire too, and then they’ll all be free-falling, instead of just him.
They’d hate him if he died onstage, though. Michael would hate himself too. At the O2, of all places, really? How much more of an attention whore can you be? Couldn’t have waited for a smaller venue to have a heart attack? Or maybe a hotel room? Someplace you could be alone?
Shit. Fuck. The loud cheering has wavered, and all three of his bandmates are giving him concerned looks. Michael fights for breath and finally — for better or for worse — manages to take in the oxygen he’d been missing. And then he forces yet another smile, for his bandmates — but he can’t look at them, can’t see the looks on their faces, not right now — and for the stadium. The sound of screaming doubles in intensity. Michael is already so tired, and they’ve only just started the show.
Luke yells something lead-singer-y and Michael’s hand shakes against the strings of his guitar until he starts playing, closing his eyes for a moment so muscle memory can take over.
It’s too loud. One way or another, he’ll drown; his lungs aren’t working the way lungs are supposed to, and if they’re not filling with air they might as well fill with water.
Holy shit, he thinks, because he knows enough to know that these are Dangerous Thoughts. But he can’t deal with that right now because they have a show, and after the show he’s fully booked with Pretending He’s Fine from now until forever.
On the opposite side of the stage, Calum catches his eye, and Michael tries to infuse his hollow smile with warmth, sincerity, anything to make that worried expression melt away, but he’s not stupid enough to think it’s worked, even when Calum turns away. Although Calum does turn away, so maybe it means he knows Michael’s lying and just doesn’t care.
You’re in the middle of a show, you fucking idiot, says Michael’s evil subconscious. They’re not going to stop the show in the middle just because you look like you’re seconds from death. You always look like that.
Right. Right. Michael’s done this to himself. Calum’s not crippled with concern, and he shouldn’t be; he’s Michael’s best friend, not his fucking therapist. Not that Michael has a therapist. Nor does he want one. No random stranger would give a fuck about his bullshit problems, and neither would a random stranger with a PhD.
Fuck. The crowd is getting louder. Is it possible for them to get louder? Or is that all in Michael’s head? Or is everything all in Michael’s head? Are the in-ears keeping the fans’ screams out, or Michael’s screams in? Fuck. Shit. Oxygen is being awfully unreliable today. It’s so loud. Michael closes his eyes again. He knows this song. He’s played this stupid fucking song a thousand times. He could play it in his sleep. He could play it in his casket. That might be what he’s doing right now.
Fuck.
-
Michael is in a constant game with himself, pushing his own limits just to see where he’ll snap. The way he sees it, it’s like exercising a muscle; wherever he breaks, he grows back stronger so he won’t break there again. At this point his threshold is high enough that when he’s feeling particularly masochistic — although when isn’t he — he really has to work for the breakdown.
It’s a blessing and a curse to be able to handle this much. It means that even when everything is wrong, Michael doesn’t collapse. Which means that he can still play an entire concert at the O2 Arena without having a meltdown, but also that by the time he actually does break, his insides are charred from all the damage control that hasn’t quite succeeded in containing it.
At least a hotel room is a better place for it than an arena stage.
He can feel it creeping up on him, and he knows it’ll be soon. It won’t take much. There’s already enough wrong as it is. The hotel room is too cold. It’d been nice for a little bit, immediately after the show when he’d been sweaty from the performance, but now it’s making him shiver.
He has sweatshirts, hoodies, blankets. But that would be cheating. Michael stays where he is, sitting at the chair by the window in the tank top he’d played in, staring outside at the sprawling mass of London with all its flickering lights. Sitting by the window is also definitely not helping the temperature situation, but Michael isn’t shying from the crash; he’s trying to induce it.
Just then, Calum comes out of the bathroom, still towel-drying his hair, and Michael knows what’s next.
Sure enough: “Hey,” the same way one might talk to a baby animal, like if Calum talks too loud he’ll startle it. “You okay?”
Guess, Michael thinks, swallowing. Take a guess. What do you think? “Fine,” he says, because that’s his line. Calum won’t believe it, as well he shouldn’t, since Michael is lying.
“You don’t seem fine,” says Calum. His voice moves around behind Michael as he gets dressed in joggers and a hoodie. “I saw you when we went on to play tonight. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.” There’s a pause. “Like you were a ghost.”
Michael swallows again, and it’s more difficult this time. His eyes sting; his fingers twist anxiously around the hem of his shirt. “That’s a bit dramatic.”
“Well, you didn’t see yourself,” Calum says.
“Was probably the lights.”
“Don’t be like that, Michael. It’s not like I think you’re okay. I know you’re pretending for the rest of the world, but you don’t have to pretend for me.”
Fuck.
This conversation is not going to be your breaking point, Michael thinks fiercely to himself. Calm down. He inhales raggedly, although it does nothing for his composure. He’s breathing around thorns only by telling himself that they’re roses, and all the while they shred the walls of his lungs, making it more difficult to cling to oxygen when he takes it in.
I’m not pretending, he wants to tell Calum, but he can’t. “Well, you don’t have to worry about me,” he returns. Fuck. His voice sounds shaky and the lights of London are swimming in his vision.
“I don’t worry because I have to,” Calum says. His voice is closer, but before Michael can figure out what he’s doing, he’s taken the seat across from Michael at the window, dropping a flannel into Michael’s lap. “I worry because I love you. You’re shivering.”
Is he? Michael hadn’t noticed. He looks down but he can’t see anything, but if he blinks then the tears will fall and Calum will notice and Michael will have to admit that maybe this is his breaking point and he doesn’t want it to be but he is cold and when he blinks even his eyes feel cold and he quickly looks back at the window and moves his hands on top of the flannel and Calum says, “At least put it on, it’s cold enough in here without wearing a tank top,” and Michael’s throat closes up because however much he can control himself around cameras and crew members and friends and fans, something about Calum makes him completely unravel.
Maybe it’s not that this is his breaking point. Maybe it’s just that this is a safe place to break.
(Maybe it’s a little bit of both.)
So he picks up the flannel and pulls it around his shoulders without putting his arms through the sleeves, and he sniffles and says, “Thanks,” voice all fucked up and wobbly.
“Yeah,” Calum says softly. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m tired,” Michael whines, and that’s the last he manages before he’s crying like a little kid, tears streaming — it’s been so long since Michael’s cried and he’d forgotten that tears were this relentless, fresh new ones falling now matter how many times Michael tries to squeeze them away — and Calum moves like he’d just been waiting and pulls Michael into a hug, where Michael hides his face and tries to hold his breath because he’s going to die eventually and it will probably happen soon and Michael would at least like to die in Calum’s arms, while he has the chance. But the sobs wracking his body force him to inhale so that plan falls through almost immediately. Because Michael can’t even die right. Fuck.
“Oh, babe,” Calum murmurs. His arms are tight around Michael. “I’m sorry, love, honestly, I’m so sorry.”
Michael can’t stop crying or else he’d say why are you sorry? even though he knows this is more of a sympathetic platitude than anything. Calum does sound sorry but surely he knows it’s not his fault — that this is Michael, all Michael, Michael’s fucked up brain and fucked up self and total inability to get his shit together like everyone else. The more successful the band gets, the worse he feels, and he knows that’s not what’s supposed to happen and he feels even shittier that he’s not being fucking grateful for everything the band is giving him and all the opportunities he has thanks to this, and instead is so stuck in his own fucking head that he’s tallying the passing days like an apocalypse survivor, counting each one he lives through. Or possibly counting down until his death.
The wrenching sobs slow to nothing. Calum doesn’t try to get Michael to talk, and that itself gets Michael to talk. The silence is worse, and Calum is here, and Calum is safe, and Calum loves Michael.
“I am not okay,” he mumbles into Calum’s shoulder, which should be a given at this stage, but Calum only squeezes him a little tighter and doesn’t interrupt. “I know that’s a shock.” Calum hums. “I can’t explain why. I don’t know. I just know that this…isn’t how okay people feel.”
“Yeah,” Calum says quietly.
“I don’t know what to do,” Michael says helplessly. “I don’t — I don’t know. But I keep — like — the things I think, you don’t even…you don’t want to know. If you’re worried now, you definitely don’t want to know.”
“I am worried,” Calum says. “But you can tell me if it’ll make you feel better.”
“I don’t want to. It’s not your job to be my therapist.”
“I’m not trying to be your therapist, I’m trying to be your friend.”
“It won’t make me feel better. I’m not going to tell you,” Michael says, though that just means Calum will draw his own conclusions, which might be worse. Not that anything is worse than Michael’s actual thoughts. He adjusts his grip on Calum, tightening his hold. The flannel is falling from around his shoulders, but he doesn’t want to move to pull it up.
“That’s okay.”
“I hate this,” Michael whimpers. It hits him like a hurricane how true that is. “I don’t like this. I don’t want to not be okay. It’s not worth the effort.”
“I know,” Calum says, rubbing circles on Michael’s back.
None of them are okay, truthfully. That’s why Michael can cry on Calum’s shoulder; he knows Calum would cry on his. It’s possible he’s a little worse than the rest of them, but he’s not alone. There’s a twisted comfort in knowing that he doesn’t really have to explain himself to Calum.
“I’m sorry,” he says mournfully.
“Don’t be sorry, you’ve got no reason to be sorry.”
Michael nods, though he’s still sorry. But they won’t get anywhere if Michael’s always apologising. It’ll only serve to annoy Calum, and right now Calum is all Michael has. If the world got any bigger it would crush him, so he keeps it close; it’s only him and Calum and the chill emanating off the window and the flannel dragging against Michael’s back.
Later, when the world expands again, when Michael can bear it, when he’s expelled all the water out of his lungs and stuck plasters over the cracks in his facade to hold himself together, Calum will sit with him on the bed with his laptop open before them and type up a search for virtual therapy despite Michael’s half-hearted protests. Later, Michael will sort himself out a little, Calum by his side to pull him over gaps when Michael’s too much of a coward to step across. Later, much later, a Michael of the future will write about the Michael of the present like he’s a distant memory, using past-tense verbs to make the most tragic sentences into a success story. That Michael is okay, or at least more okay.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I really think you’re going to be okay,” Calum whispers into his ear now, pressing a lingering kiss to the curve of his jaw.
Which doesn’t make anything better in the long run, but certainly doesn’t hurt to hear right now.
“Thank you,” this Michael sighs, as Calum tugs the flannel back up over Michael’s shoulders.
“Of course,” Calum says lightly. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Present Michael can’t see past this moment, but as he takes his first deep breath in days, inhaling the familiar scent of Calum and warm from Calum’s embrace, he thinks that if the future were to hold more moments like this one, it might just be worth living through.
#michael clifford#calum hood#malum#malum fic#5sos#5sos fic#fic#my fic#suicide mention#sorry taylor#but like i really am not sorry#you literally asked me for this#you SAID 'hurt me' idk wtf you were expecting#i hope it was something like this#there is just something about hotel rooms man#anyway. my lungs gave out as i faced the crowd blah blah blah#michaelownsmyheart#ask#answered
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Debunking
words- 1358
warning- cussing...? i think? slight mention of modest and simon
a/n- they’re out in this fic tehe
“It’s ready, H. Bring in the laptop.” Louis said as he pressed record on the camera and sat down on the couch. Louis and Harry were bored during quarantine and had nothing to do. I mean, did anyone? They had already watched every single movie on Disney + and every Netflix original movie and show. They were done and had nothing else to do. That was until Harry went through his suggested videos on Youtube. The first one that appeared was titled “if larry isn’t real, explain this.” Harry chuckled and clicked on the video before he got sucked into a hole of more and more Larry videos. After a while, Harry paused the video and rushed into the kitchen where Louis was cooking.
“I have an idea.” Harry said with a smile that spread wide against his face. It wasn’t that Louis thought it was a bad idea. He thought it would be funny and light hearted. But, they had only come out a couple months before and he still felt fear about what people were going to say. Yet, after some slight convincing and a little pushing... Louis obliged and got an old camera they had from the video diaries.
Harry sat down next to Louis and put the laptop on the table sitting in front of them. He looked at Louis and noticed the anxiety in his face by the slight creases in his forehead. He reached over and held Louis hand in his own.
“We don’t have to do this.” Harry muttered, smoothing his finger over Louis twenty-eight permanently painted on his fingers. Louis smiled at him and gripped his hand tighter.
“I want to do it, H. We’ll be fine. Our fans would never even let us see the hate.” Harry smiled at that. He was right. Even before they were out, they barely saw the hate because their fans were so quick to take the pages down. They have received nothing but love and unconditional support since they came out to the public a couple months ago. If you don’t count Simon that called them and told them they were wrong for expressing their love.. To which the boys blocked him.
“Let's do it,” Harry sighed as he brought the video up, “Hi! Im Louis Tomlinson.”
“Oh god.” Louis sighed, throwing his head back. Harry smirked.
“Oh wait, i’m too tall.” Harry smiled mischievously at the camera as Louis chucked a couch pillow at his head.
“You know who we are.” Louis rolled his eyes as he spoke
“Can’t assume that.” Harry replied
“Harry, why are we filming a YouTube video?”
“Oh yeah! Right, I found a bunch of Larry proof videos and we want to debunk them!” Harry said as he pointed at the camera, “We’re Larry by the way. We’re together. We met and starte-”
“For god's sake, let's start the video, Hazza.” Louis groaned as he sat up straighter. He reached over and pressed play on the computer.
“The original video is linked in the description by the way!” Harry shouted at the camera and switched his attention back to the screen.
“Harry didn’t hit his note properly because he was ill, so Louis supposedly talked to him in sign language and said ‘not a big deal sad one.’” Louis read the words when they appeared on the screen and soon watched what had just been said unfold.
“I mean, that's true. I think most of these are going to be true. Yeah, you all get a point,” Harry says with a faint blush painted on his cheeks as he read the next “proof”, “Basically just James Corden being a dark larrie.” Harry chuckled, “Yeah, he’s the darkest of them all. Him and Niall.” They continued to watch the video as the next clip faded in
“Louis, what was your first impressions of Harry?” the computer’s speakers sounded, “uhm, I don’t know. I think we had a few chats along the way.” The speakers continued as Harry laughed and covered his face with his hands.
“And your impressions were cool, cool guy? I like this guy,” Louis sat up, slightly embarrassed, “Yeah you seemed to be about.” Harry laughed hard as Louis paused the video and started laughing too.
“A few chats?” Harry laughed harder, gasping for air.
“My first impression of him was ‘wow someone is in fact, peeing on me.’” Louis laughed and jabbed Harry’s side.
“Hey!” Harry gasped. After a while of laughing and smiling so wide their cheeks hurt, they started the video again. The next clip was Harry playing with a pride flag on stage and Louis fonding over him.
“You look so in love with me there!” Harry smiled, looking over at Louis.
“I am.” Louis smiled back before the video continued on again.
“Harry thinking they were off camera.” Harry read with a tint of sadness in his voice. Louis noticed and reached his hand down to grab Harry’s off camera.
“Is Niall wearing a scarf?” Louis scoffed
“Look how young we are!” Harry replied
“Zayn really did look out for us.”
“I was just trying to love my boyfriend and then management was shooting daggers through their eyes and Zayn told me.” Harry slightly smiled. Squeezing Louis' hand tighter… remembering what it was like to be voiceless. The video continued.
“Louis jumping into Harry’s arms when XFactor was formed.” The screen read and Louis turned bright red and felt his face heat up.
“That is pretty gay.” Harry says, trying to hide his smile as he looks at Louis. Louis faked offense as he pushed Harry’s face away from him. The video continued on. As the next explanation showed on the screen, Louis grabbed a pillow and hid his face.
“Noooooooo.” Louis groaned
“Jealous Louis! Jealous Louis! Jealous Louis!” Harry chanted as he took the pillow away from Louis' face.
“My favorite song is called ‘I loved you first’” the screen read. Louis groaned louder as Harry grabbed his hand and pressed a gentle kiss to his twenty-eight.
“Taylor is actually our friend! She came over last time she was in London. She’s great.” Harry smiled at the camera
“Pushing it.” Louis mumbled from next to him as he suddenly got jealous and started playing with Harry’s rings. Harry only snickered. The next clip was soon to play.
“Serenading each other.” The screen read
“Oh this is true, we did it all the time in the band. I’ve loved him since we were eighteen.” Louis shrugged
“Sixteen.” Harry argued
“Eighteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Eigh- oh look at the next clip.” Louis said, quickly distracted.
“I won,” Harry whispered to the camera.
“Harold,” Louis squeezed his hand as Harry looked back at the screen
“Liam picks up a ‘Mrs Tomlinson’ hat and looks at Harry,” Harry reads.
“Your long hair was so nice,” Louis swoons as he puts his head on his hand. Harry rolls his eyes and looks back at the camera.
“I want that hat,” he whines quietly. The boys laughed at the next clip that showed
“Harry’s on vocal rest… what about Louis?”
“The tour bus,” Louis winks at the camera and stretches his back
“Look at Niall’s face! Oh my god!” Harry almost screams as he starts laughing yet again. The boys continued to replay that part at least five times and even called Niall to show him.
“We got yelled at by Daddy Direction and Captain Niall for that,” Louis scoffs. The last clip shows and is Harry singing Little Things to Louis.
“And all Lou little things,” Harry sings along with the laptop as he looks at Louis.
“Cheesy,” Louis acts disgusted but the smile peaks out a bit.
“The chicken stuffed with mozzarella cheese was too,” Harry smirked at the camera.
“Oh my god. Okay. Bye!” Louis says, getting up to turn off the camera.
“Bye! Treat people with kindness!” He shouts again to the camera as Louis turns it off.
“You have to edit it now,” Louis crosses his arms across his chest and smirks at Harry
“Ugh!” Harry groans as he throws himself sideways on the couch. Louis walks by him and kisses his head.
“Dork.”
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SpongeGuy Reviews Every Disney Sitcom Ever!: So Random! (1.1): “Cody Simpson”
You’re lucky “Pair of Kings” exists, “So Random!”, because it’s the only reason you’re not the worst one yet!
“So Random!” is what happens when All That, The Amanda Show and SNL have a baby who is babysat by TV Executives who were asked to write down stuff teenagers do/like and add the first random thing that comes to their mind, and then a sketch was written around this one “funny” joke and we were all force fed it.
...It sucks.
This review is also gonna be hard, since this is very different than the usual Disney Sitcom. In fact, it barely counts, but I let it slide. This is a spinoff of sorts of Sonny With A Chance, without Sonny (Demi Lovato), in which we see the “hilarious” sketches from the show she was in. Hard to see how it became popular. This is a sketch show, if you can call it that, and it blows. Let’s just get this over with.
SUMMERY: Cody Simpson performs "All Day".Special musical guest: Cody Simpson
Guest stars: Grace Bannon, Damien Haas, Matthew Scott Montgomery, Shayne Topp
Sketches: All Star Wheel of Fortune, Helmet Ninjas, Zombie Man, Rufus: Kid with Excuses, Tantrum Girl on Ponies
COMEDY: 0 Out of 5
In a sketch show, it’s hard to rate characters and story (though somehow I will try). After all, the whole point of a sketch show is to make us laugh, point out the absurdities in our life, maybe have a musical guest star, that sort of thing. In other words, in order to properly review this show, I must abandon my usual focus on meaning and character arcs and let the jokes dictate my opinion.
...The jokes suck balls tho.
All in all, we have 6 sketches (5 regular ones and an intro “bit” if you can even call it that), and each one is so average bottom of the barrel teen humor, that it makes the episodes ICarly made in universe look witty and sharp. There is nothing wrong with just being funny for funny’s sake, but this can’t even do that. There are youtubers with the budget of a potato chip post 2020 stock market crash who can make funnier things! But instead of just talking about how bad the comedy is, perhaps it’s best I literally just tell you what happens in each “bit”, just so you understand how banal this all is:
1. Wheel of Fortune, but it’s with Fred (the youtube star from back in the day), Taylor Swift and Willow Smith (Will Smith’s daughter). Fred is Fred, Taylor Swift sings about everything that happens to her literally, and Willow Smith repeats everything and whips her hair around.
2. The actors come out to say that there are changes (a pretty gross way to joke about Demi Lovato leaving due to the problems in her life) and a sketch is cut and then joked about once in what can be described as a joke? maybe?
3. Ninja’s don’t stop robber because they are too busy putting safety gear.
4. A literal cannibal Zombie keeps eating people, and a student uses that to his advantage to get a girl free to ask her out.
5. A kid has a lot of excuses and says “You won’t believe this but” 1 million times.
6. A girl gets all tantrumy about something stupid.
That’s it. That’s the only joke in each one. Here and there, there is a whiff of a different kind of joke, but basically each sketch has one joke, and it is repeated ad nauseum over and over and over again, in the illusion of randomness. Only here’s the thing: There is nothing random about easy celebrity jokes any moron on the internet can make, intros, safety gear, zombies, excuses that anyone with a bad joke book could have come up with and a girl getting a tantrum. For a show called So Random, you know what’s gonna happen every single time.
And that’s not funny.
CHARACTERS: 0 Out of 5
This is a sketch show, so unless I count the actors (whom have zero personality), I can’t really rate these characters, can I?
Oh wait, I can, the sketch characters, you know, the backbone of the show?
Yeah, well, they all suck. As stated before, they are all ONE joke. A zombie eats people. That’s... That’s not funny, in fact, it’s kind of disturbing. A ninja team keeps stopping for more safety gear. That’s the joke. A kid has the worst excuses. That’s so fodder you don’t see it in their own sitcoms anymore.
But that’s the joke. That’s the only joke. Even worse is that these characters aren’t just one note, they are so boring. Again, when all they are are jokes, and when we all know what the joke is the second they enter the scene, and there is only one joke, then all interest is lost. This is so by the numbers I probably could have written it in my sleep. But I’m not getting paid heaps of money to come up with ranbdom stuff, right?
No wonder this got cancelled after a season.
STORY AND HEART: 1 Out of 5
Instead of repeating myself yet again like this show does all the time, I think it’s best if I just address the one positive point I gave this show to save it from total 0. Cody Simpson’s song was kinda catchy. That’s it.
...This show sucks. I honestly have not much to say. What can you say about bad comedy? If something isn’t funny, it isn’t funny. Avoid this.
FINAL SCORE: 1 Out of 15
You wanna know how much I hated this? If it weren’t for Pair of Kings, this would be dead last.
...God I have 24 more of these.
Next time we have Liv and Maddie, a show I actually am interested in watching (mostly because I was sure they were played by 2 actresses not one, and that Maddie actually looks like a well written 3 dimensional character, so yeah, I’m excited!)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/100qHOP9aQ1AmKbrYuc--CQAP3LQnHfsS/edit#heading=h.ll5wwf6nowrv
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Two days after I said I’d upload it tonight, here it is! My October playlist is finished and it’s chock a block full of good music and also bad music that I love. From John Mellencamp to drone metal, from Katy B to Cassius, it’s all here and more. Deadmau5 also is here and for that I apologise.
Small Town (Acoustic) - John Mellencamp: Guess who had a legit emotional reaction to a John Mellencamp song this month, thinking deeply about what it means to be from a small town and how much this song gets right and wrong about identity and freedom in a small town versus living in a big town? This guy. I think this song works a lot better stripped down acoustically than it does in the album version. It gives the lyrics a lot more space, and really lays out just how simple the sentiment of the song is. It sets the tone of this month's playlist pretty well now that I think about it. I've been feeling like a real pea-brain hayseed this month and big chunks of this playlist really reflect that.
Katy On A Mission - Katy B: It feels like this and Hold It Against Me by Britney Spears (which was also 2011) is the moment that big american style dubstep completely crossed over into the mainstream, Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites was about six months ago and from there it was a tidal wave until oversaturation and complete death. But Katy On A Mission is different because it's at least got the credentials of dubstep pioneer Benga producing it and it doesn't go all-out on the super dirty bass, or even particularly have a big drop at all - it just uses it textually all the way through and it's better off for it.
I Only Have Eyes For You - The Flamingos: The way this song is recorded is insane. It literally sounds like they're at the bottom of a well. And it's mixed in that good early stereo hard-panned style so the lead is in the right channel and the whole harmony is in the left channel and absolutely soaked in reverb in a way that just sounds incongruous with the rest of the song. It sounds like a dream. My favourite moment is at about 2:30 when the harmony vocals get so large on the high note that they clip out and distort in a way that just sounds very, very cool.
Horses In The Sky (Live Version) - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: The Sound Of Animals Fighting was a post-hardcore prog supergroup where they were all anonymous (it was just the entirety of RX Bandits plus Anthony Green from Circa Survive) and I really wish they'd done more like this after their first album - because they still wrote very very good songs but they got lost in the mire of studio ambient interludes and being avant-garde for the sake of it which sometimes worked and most times just bored you which thankfully they only succumb in the end section of this version. Compare this to the studio version if you want to know what I mean, halfway through the guitar solo it just starts playing in reverse.
Split Wide Open - Cannibal Corpse: Here's what I mean about feeling like a pea-brain this month. Cannibal Corpse is proper troglodyte moron man music. It makes me feel dumb as fuck like a real stupid guy. There's something interesting about Cannibal Corpse's enduring ability to shock people, and that a band making such extreme music are at least a name that people know. They were in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for god's sake. Before Marilyn Manson and that wave of cabaret shock-rock really got into the popular consciousness Cannibal Corpse were making shocking, violent music without any of the glamour and I think it's served them well in the long run. Songs like 'Hammer Smashed Face' or 'I Cum Blood', are shocking in title, artwork and content to this day are still musically shocking to the vast majority, far more than Marilyn Manson's spooky androgyny and wearing like a top hat and having fangs or whatever that's aged like milk and become just another boring cliche. The idea of the devil being charming and sly, disguised in charisma is so much more boring than the devil just tearing you apart like mince meat and eating you. Anyway I'm here to say Cannibal Corpse is good music for dum-dums like me.
Funeraloplis - Electric Wizard: Someone's edited it now but it's still in the footnote links, but the best ever piece of writing on wikipedia was the quote on Electric Wizard's page where they were explaining the origin of their name because it said "Is the name Electric Wizard made out of two Black Sabbath song titles? [smokes a big bud of weed through a can] Hahahaha, yeah it is!" which is so good and sort of all you need to know about them.
I <3 U So - Cassius: Looking back through this list it seems I'm having a real 2011 moment for some reason. I don't think I *get* Cassius. From everything I read about them they seem to be french dance royalty but they literally have two good songs and they're both in this playlist. These two songs are very good though so maybe it's just that. Anyway it's a shame what Kanye did this to song on Watch The Throne but I don't blame him, it feels like this song is just impossible to work with. It's at a weird tempo, it's incredible loose, it basically has one section. I imagine this song would have frustrated a lot of DJs when it was popular cause I really don't know how you would mix in or out of it, but fuck it while it's on it's a great song!
Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes - Cassius: This is the other good Cassius song. I'm pitching it as the theme song for when they eventually reboot Skins. I really appreciate that this song has 1 idea and basically just does every variation it can with it before bringing it to a climax. When your idea is this simple and this good that's all you need. Also the big toms that kick in after the 'just one more' but are heaven sent.
It Took The Night To Believe - Sun 0))): Sun 0))) are such morons and it's so funny that you can be so dumb and so serious about this sort of music at the same time. On this song Greg Anderson is credited as Mystik Fogg Invokator and Stephen O'Malely is credited as Taoiseach, which is the name for the Irish prime minister. Whenever I listen to Sun 0))) for the first two minutes I'm like 'lol this sucks' but then suddenly the guy is like 'cry yourself to ash' and I'm feeling the pull of the void quite heavily. Basically it's just like that meme.
Seven Angels - Earth: I remember ages ago some guy posted Earth 2: Special High Frequency edition and it was just this whole album with a high pass filter on it which is a funny joke. Anyway it interesting to think of this album in the context of when it came out. Two years after Nevermind, six months before In Utero - grunge at the absolute height of its power, stoner metal like Kyuss and Sleep huge when suddenly this guy comes out of nowhere and distills guitar music down to its essence: slower, louder, heavier than anything else by an order of magnitude.
Mutual Slump - DJ Shadow: I finally saw Xanadu this month and now I can finally relate to the weird smiling breathing out your nose noise that she makes after she says 'I'd never hailed a cab before' in this song.
Walkin' On The Sidewalks - Queens Of The Stone Age: Queens Of The Stone Age's first album is 20 years old this year and I've been thinking a lot about how it was a two person operation. Josh Homme played and sang everything on this album except the drums and it's funny to think about writing this sort of music all by yourself outside of a jam structure. He really sat down with a pad and paper and wrote down 'outro: bass riff x400' and then recorded it just like that.
Witch - Maps & Atlases: I wake up with this song in my head so often it's insane. I think a triplet groove in 4/4 like this is such a good and underused feeling and this song really deploys is perfectly. I want more of this, the good kind of math rock where it's not just guys doing midwest emo tappy riffs that all sound the same.
Down 2 Hang - Kirin J Callinan: This is what meeting up with people from the internet feels like. It's kind of a shame that this album got completely overshadowed by the Jimmy Barnes screaming meme, and that it's the first and last a lot of americans will ever hear of Jimmy Barnes but in reality it's exactly what Kirin J Callinan wanted to good for him I suppose.
Fast In My Car - Paramore: If you can't tell already I'm having an extremely basic bitch moron man month and that included listening to this Paramore album a lot and telling my girlfriend about how isn't it so interesting that the guitarist Taylor York just took over drum duties for this album after their longtime drummer quit and did such a good job playing drums AND guitar and her rightly not caring at all. I'm always impressed by songs that keep the same chords through the verse and chorus, it seems impossible but it works great here.
Don't Stop The Dance (feat. Delafleur) - Breakbot: I'm clapping my hands to stress each syllable when I tell you that Disco Will Never Die.
Oqiton - Jeremy Dutcher: I'm so glad this album won the Polaris Prize because I feel like I would never have heard of it otherwise. I absolutely love it, and I think what I love so much about it is that it doesn't fall into the trap of similar projects like this in the past of smoothing out all the jagged edges and turning it into plastic pretty music from the untouched ancient peoples - it's a real and alive reinterpretation of old music that looks toward the future and past in equal measure. Including the actual original recordings in each track is such a smart move, it gives you the context you need so this album isn't about liner notes and extra sources and it lets those old recordings seamlessly fold into these new reorchestrations.
I Remember - Deadmau5 & Kaskade: Anyway moron month continues here with the only worthwhile contribution to the planet earth that Deadmau5 ever made, I suspect by letting Kaskade do most of the work. It sounds sadistic but I really appreciate how this song is nearly ten minutes long, I'm a big fan of any song with that much confidence that actually pulls it off.
Overtime - Jessie Ware: Fucking Jessie Ware is back and she’s got Bicep producing! I think I added this song to my playlist before it was even a minute in, I just heard the bassline and my brain stem said yes.
Body - Julie Jacklin: I really think Julia Jacklin might be the best songwriter around right now and I cannot wait for her new album. I guess this keeps with the moron man theme by telling it from the other side. I keep listening to this song and then getting into a real mood for about an hour afterwards so I can't imagine the damage the album is going to do to me.
Can't Tell Me Nothing - Kanye West: Throughout the whole ongoing Kanye drama I've been thinking of this song. " I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny, and what I do? Act more stupidly" "I'm on TV talking like it's just you and me". Anyway he's had is money right for a long time but it's becoming increasingly apparent that you really really can't tell him nothing. I think it's interesting that the thing that seems to have spurred him into clarifying his beliefs and finally backtracking on anything is that Candace Owens tried to credit him for the shitty Blexit thing and it turns out the one thing you can't do to Kanye West is manipulate him into putting his name on something he doesn't believe in or didn't create. It's insane that John Legend and Mos Def and Talib Kweli reaching out didn't change anything but Candace Owens taking one too many liberties absolutely did.
Like Wolves On The Fold - Colin Stetson: I've said it one million times but I love Colin Stetson. I love how straightforward this is for a Colin Stetson song. You can sing along to it! So much writing about him focuses on the intricasies of his technique rather than his resulting very human, very primal music. I feel like his music is not very far from beating on your chest and yelling a lot of the time (especially toward the second half of this song) and the saxophone element just makes it a lot more socially acceptable.
Sack 'Em Up, Pt. I / Sack 'Em Up, Pt. II - Gwenifer Raymond: Bandcamp had a really good article about American Primitive the other day https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/10/10/american-primitive-list/ and I found this album in it and fell completely in love instantly. I listened to it five times in a row. It's just incredible and I'm so glad that the music I love is finally being rescued from the mire of New Acoustic youtube men with their slapping and tapping and harp guitars and moving forward in new ways with artists like Sarah Louise, Marisa Anderson and Gwenifer Raymond. Women are finally allowed to play guitar now and thank fuck. One of the things I really appreciate about this album is just how written it feels. Every part, even the very swirly Part One of this song feels very purposeful, and if not totally written at least improvised in a tight framework before moving into the completely written second half. There's nothing wrong with improv but in a genre like this that's almost overrun with guys putting out hour long improv records it's refreshing to hear someone with such a clear vision execute it so expertly.
Bleeding Finger Blues - Gwenifer Raymond: Also, get a fucking load of this. An absolute powerhouse performance from a master. There's not enough solo banjo music around and it's a shame because I don't know if there's a better argument for banjo as a solo instrument than this song. The other thing I like about this album is there’s three banjo songs on it, which works well for breaking up the sequencing and making each song really distinct in a genre where albums can really blend together.
4:30 - Danger: It's a shame that Danger never really fulfilled his potential. With songs as good as this as 19:11 he seemed set. But then he took about a decade off before his debut album and I guess he lost something along the way. Anyway, doesn't matter because when you've got a song as good as this it's all you need. Also here's a good video where someone just put this song over the bar scene from Terminator which really accentuates the vibe in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z37R39-mff8
Crybaby - Abra: I love love love the production on this. A friend sent it to me because he said it reminded him of the Call Me Mr Telephone song I was raving about and he’s absolutely right. I love how formless it is, it goes through about three different verse ideas before finally getting to the chorus at about a minute and a half in and it’s only stronger for it. I’m so glad a new generation of darkwave adjacent people are discovering freestyle because this is great.
OMG!!! - Yelle: This song is probably best experienced with the music video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoWK4rV3INY It’s fantastic on its own, especially the “oh my god!” sample and the whole chorus section, but the video - titties out, covered in glitter, very very good dance move for the rising 'ooo' part, a hamster is there. Really accentuates it.
Copacabana (At The Copa) - Barry Manilow: Was thinking about this song the other day. Woke up with it in my head actually which was strange. I feel like this song and the Pina Colada song definitely take place in the same cinematic universe.
King Of The Dead - Cirith Ungol: I've been rereading Lord Of The Rings and also a very dodgy 70s sci-fi series called Dray Prescot and so divine fate has drawn me to discover Cirith Ungol. The good kind of metal where all the album covers could also be fantasy novel covers and all the songs are about how cool it would be to slay an ancient demon with a sword. I love this song because it feels impossible to sing it without doing some very dramatic face acting and also his voice is completely insane. I feel like this is maybe just how he talks.
Sugaree 10/21/1978 - Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead are good and ever since I came to terms with that I've felt like I'm always on the precipice of buying a box of tapes, covering my car in confusing stickers and dropping completely out of society. The problem with a big chunk of live Dead recordings that I've heard is that while the playing is always on point, the vocals can vary wildly - especially when they try any kind of harmony, but this recording is just great. Fantastic vocals with a lot of feeling, ample crowd noise so it doesn't feel like just a sterile soundboard recording, and of course an incredible extended jam.
Ring De Bell - Brother Resistance: I don't fully understand what rapso music is yet, I don't have enough understanding of the culture or surrounding genres. I basically just found this Best Of compilation and have been listening to it a LOT. As I understand it it's 70s Trinidadian calypso music that got very political, which is very cool. I'm a big fan of this sort of lyric where it feels like you could just go on and on for days about all the places you should ring the bell.
Kojack - David Rudder: The crown jewel of this compilation is of course this song I've posted about before and absolutely love to death. A protest song about them taking Kojack off the TV because it's too violent when shows like Dallas and Dynasty, which are far worse, remain on the air. Miami Vice! Before youtube comments and online petitions you had to make extremely good songs about this kind of thing, and its a huge shame that we've allowed this to die.
The Power Of Love - Celine Dion: I love Celine Dion because all her songs sound like they were recorded across 5 countries and 8 different studios and cost two million dollars. They always sound too expensive for casual listening to me, like I should have an emergency mink coat on me at all times just in case The Power Of Love starts playing in a supermarket.
Airworks - J Dilla: I've been listening to Donuts a bunch this month and really thinking about what makes him so good and the vast legion of Dilla imitators on soundcloud bad and I think this song is a good example. The main sample sounds straight up ugly, it's backwards and twisted to hell, the main strings part keeps folding over itself, it's just chaos but completely controlled chaos. Every imitator is so afraid to make a total mess like he does and is too focused on the underpinning laid-backness of the beat, where Dila somehow makes the relaxed feeling easily as a result of a million clashing elements.
Anti-American Graffiti - J Dilla: I also found a playlist on Spotify where someone had put together Donuts with all of the the original tracks it sampled (or at least the ones that are available on Spotify) and it's such an illuminating new way to listen to this album. https://open.spotify.com/user/keatonkreps/playlist/1TPeWt38uceWXD1Vhyf7wx?si=NJ_jHrYqQpCt18q-W9nrag
Marvel - Solillaquists Of Sound: Every genre has good music in it. Even rappity rap conscious hip hop has good songs like this one. There’s another song on this album called Popcorn that’s basically the It’s Media picture converted to a .wav but this song is good. Especially her vocals when they come in halfway through sounding like an astrology zine except good.
Rock Island Line - Johnny Cash: Johnny Cash has around one million songs about trains, including ‘Blue Train’, ‘Train Of Love’ and a song called ‘I’ve Got A Thing About Trains’ but this is the best one because it’s about train-related fraud and doing perhaps the most outlaw country manoeuvre ever and telling the toll man that you’re carrying livestock when you are in fact carrying pig iron.
I <3 U So (Skream's Made Zdar Feel Like He Was 20 Again Remix) - Cassius: Also as a kind of coda, here's Skream's version of I <3 U So, where he's completely ironed it out and turned it into a pulsing dnb thing which is always impressive to me when people completely reverse the feel of a song in a remix.
Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull - Refused: Stereogum had a really good article about The Shape Of Punk To Come on its 20th anniversary and whether it really did turn out to be the shape of punk to come. They asked a bunch of people whether the title seemed arrogant and the vocalist from La Dispute had a really good answer where he said "But it’s like calling your shot and then fuckin’ hitting a home run. If it was arrogant, it was justifiably so." which is so great. https://www.stereogum.com/2020358/refused-shape-of-punk-to-come-turns-20/franchises/sounding-board/
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Director's Cut: Paradise Lost?
Thanks! I know I mentioned it before, but I’m really excited to talk about this one!
Paradise Lost
My newest child, whom I love even though I have no idea how I’m going to feel about it in a couple of months.
The full backstory to it is that me and @janetcarter were talking Terra Nova, as we are wont to do, since we have our own batshit insane version of that show that only really makes sense to us. (It involves bondage dinosaurs, authoritarian regimes, oppressed Americans, spray bottles, 1789, and about 867% more gay than the original show could have possibly conceived of.) And they’ve been rewatching it, so they’ve been kind of liveblogging it to me, and we were discussing Taylor being an authoritarian bag of dicks again. (This is an ongoing conversation; it’s great.)
And they made the mistake of saying this:
And it eventually led to me doing a half-mad rant that would form the skeleton of Paradise Lost. In the annotations, see the original text in italics VS the final text.
“YEP.
“DIRTY WORK.”
“THERE’S NO OTHER WAY I CAN INTERPRET THAT ONE” “MAYBE SHE DOESN’T KNOW THE FULL DETAILS ABOUT PHILBRICK BUT YOU CAN BET YOUR ASS SHE KNOWS *SOMETHING*”
And, from there on, it was all Paradise Lost. I ended up copying and pasting those messages in a GDocs file, edited it, added some description and a few plot points, and within a day I had a one-shot.
So, I accidentally wrote a one-shot out in a Tumblr pm and I was just like, “You know what? Fuck it. I need to write a one-shot out of this. My productivity’s been low recently, anyway. Merry Christmas, Avery, hohoho. Have some angst.”
It was actually really exciting, in a sense, because this is a totally different setting than I’ve been working with for the last year and it was a chance to expand my horizons, even though, as has been HELPFULLY pointed out to me, it’s still set in the past. Just…millions of years ago as opposed to just hundreds. I played myself there.
(Annotations under cut)
Taylor’s kid talks when he’s drunk.
Pretty much the first new sentence that I knew I was going to include. I really like the idea of Mira addressing Lucas mainly as “Taylor’s kid,” like, despite him being a pretentious little prick who thinks he’s a genius, she still views him as a whiny kid.
It’s something they put up with for the sake of the mission, he comes in, gives them their marching orders, and takes a bottle or two of moonshine, the pink-purple liquid spilling across his lips along with the stories.
The fruit they come from is called “Frut” and it’s an ongoing joke between me, Avery, and @elluka, so it only made sense for me to include it here as an in-joke. Lucas loves that sweet frut juice.
Also: It is 100% canon that they make alcohol from it. I ended up having to look up what dragonfruit juice looks like to make sure this would be as authentic as possible.
Not that she cares enough to make sense of the stuff, to Mira they’re all the same as those calculations he draws out on the rocks in bold white chalk, rambling on and on.
Most of the others, they’re smart enough to avoid him, they’ve been out here long enough to know a Slasher in the woods when they see one. So, that means Mira’s the one to keep him company, giving him another when his stock runs out, praying that there’s enough left over to keep up morale, because that’s always a problem in a hellpit like this.
People get lonely, start thinking about the past, wanting things that they can’t have. The alcohol, even if it’s weak compared to the real stuff, helps them drown it out for a little while, though she doesn’t take it.
Sadly enough, we get so little Sixer development that we don’t really know what morale’s like in-camp, the show’s too busy telling us that these are Bad People because they oppose God Emperor Taylor, but I would suspect that, given that unlike the colony, they only ever intended to be here temporarily, it would have to be pretty miserable. How long were they told it would be? A couple of months, a year? After all the years it would be, I can only imagine the homesickness from some or the resignation from others.
Tl;dr: Yeah, I suspect they would be bargaining with Boylan for some of that frut juice or they have a still in-camp, though it probably has to take a backburner to more important things like medicine and food.
Instead, she keeps Sienna’s face in her head at all times, wrapping herself around it, thinking of her bright smile as she’d walk through the door, dropping the raggedy toy that Mira’d got her after a mission as she ran to greet her. (She tries to think of whether it was a T-Rex with the faded red fabric and the drooping limbs with the stuffing worn out of them or a spinosaurus, and when she can’t, she feels the need to get out of this place and back into the real world like a jolt in her brain.)
The reference to Sienna’s toy came in fairly late, but I actually really liked it, because (1) It adds that worldbuilding as far as Mira’s economic situation and (2) It reminds me of a bit from the original script where Terra Nova was HUGE, so of course dinosaurs would be a big thing now, and there’s a certain irony to Mira being sent to destroy something that her daughter loves so much in order to give them a better life. Also, I’d just seen a review for various spinosaurus plushies, so I might have been inspired.
It’s also really important that she refers to 2149 as “the real world,” as her way of distancing herself from whatever she does in Terra Nova, as well as distancing herself from Wash and her feelings for her. “This isn’t real, this is a job, it’s not the real world, it’s an alternative timeline.”
This time, there wouldn’t be another time. She’d get the job done, get home, and give Sienna the life that she deserved. And she doesn’t give a damn about what she has to do to get it. That’s what she tells herself, and it’s what she’ll believe.
One of the things that I really admire about Mira is how FOCUSED she is. That’s something that can be both a major pro, since it means that she’s very driven to get her goals, but it also means that she can be harsh when she feels like other people are falling behind and not focusing, even, say, to a young child like Leah Marcos.
Until then, she’d keep giving Lucas Taylor the moonshine, quietly hoping he’d choke on it, until he wound up drooling on the floor before going off to brood in a cave for the next six months.
In case no one can tell the level of respect I have for Lucas Taylor, Boy Genius.
Alright, but judging from Mira’s interactions with him, she is clearly deeply unnerved, and even though his calculations are necessary for getting her back home…well, if he chokes, it’s not really HER fault. It’s this terrible situation where she’s stuck with him even as she’s clearly scared by him and would probably want him dead under any other circumstances.
“You know what? Those people-I-I feel sorry for them! They’ll never know the truth about the Great Nathaniel Taylor,” he raises his arm suddenly, as if he was trying to give a clumsy toast, spilling moonshine everywhere.
“Seriously, WHY THE HELL wouldn’t Lucas at least tell the Sixers? He knows that to the colony, it’s The Great Nathaniel Taylor, but the Sixers don’t have any stake there”
Uh huh. Daddy Issues story #326 - Been there, done that, she thinks as she wipes some of the sticky liquid off of her cheek.
This was honestly one of my favorite lines to write. One of the things that I mentioned to Avery while I was live-blogging writing this is how much I honestly LOVE Mira’s POV, given how incredibly snarky she is. It’s like she’s aware of what show she’s a part of and she’s dedicated herself to ripping it apart.
I’m so used to working with viewpoint characters who were born centuries ago it was honestly a bit refreshing, as much as I love Lazare “Javert was busy so they booked me instead” de Peyrol and Solène “Women’s motherfucking March on Versailles” Mazurier. Mira is just so fundamentally DIFFERENT, being very blunt and no-nonsense as well as the aforementioned snarkiness, that she was really a treat to work with.
The way the kid talks, you’d almost think that this kind of thing was unusual . They were all soldier’s kids, these days. They’d all had to do what they had to to survive, and not all of them had mommy and daddy propping them up through the early years, either. Going from home to home, place to place, hoping that a bomb wouldn’t explode over their heads, holding a gun in their hand from the first time they could salvage one.
“Lucas was there, and in between crying about his daddy issues…why wouldn’t he expose Taylor to the world?”
It’s always been a pity to me that we really didn’t get all that much backstory development for 2149, except for that it’s a Very Bad Place, pollution, wars, etc., so it was a bit of fun trying to imagine what Mira’s past might have looked like given she’s obviously not as privileged as the Shannons or the Taylors, the former of whom are definitely INSANELY privileged. I have to think of when Taylor’s doing his whole “I survived 118 days in the wilderness” thing and Mira snaps back, “Yeah, we’re going on 1000.” There’s this…edge to her, and it takes a lot to impress her, and I have to think it’s because she’s survived so much that there’s really little that can surprise her.
She makes a non-committal sound in response.
“You don’t believe me, do you? Nobody else does, but you see -” Lucas laughs as he leans forward, and Mira wonders if he’s really lost it this time and what to tell Phoenix Group if their golden boy’s finally cracked under the pressure. “I was there. When my father killed him. And now-Now he wants. To kill me. I know everything, about how General Philbrick tried to get my father to step down, and my father killed him as if he was some carno that’d gotten lose. He buried him under Pilgrim’s Tree, he buried him there and let it rot, but-” Lucas smiles, sharp and predatory, and it hits Mira in the gut that he believes this “He couldn’t kill me. I know the truth.”
She eyes him as he is, trying to run it through her brain. Taylor’s a son of a bitch, but not a murderer. As if he doesn’t notice, he goes on, slamming down his bottle with a dramatic flourish as he spreads his arms out wide, “The great Taylor family tragedy-The mad king, the exiled prince, and, as always, no one listens to the oracle. But it’s all here,” he taps his head, “It’s all right in here. Don’t believe me?” He says, with the smug self-confidence that makes Mira want to punch his teeth out, even smugger with the alcohol. “See for yourself. Remember the name: Richard Philbrick.”
“'Don’t believe me? See for yourself.’ Lucas would say, with that smug self confidence that makes Mira want to punch his teeth out, settling instead for ignoring it.
I really, really hate writing Lucas, because it feels like no one would ever say this, but then I remember that he described his relationship with his father as “A Shakespearian drama that borders on Greek tragedy.” Like a pretentious douche who strings together important-sounding words. But, I do kind of like the idea of him treating himself and his father as just…players in a larger game.
Mira finds herself thinking of it long after he’s back to drooling on the floor, with a hell of a hangover coming in the morning. The kid’s been loose in the wild for too long, everyone knows it. It’s like playing with a tiger to get anything out of him, and most of the time, he speaks in equations, not words, as he holds his brilliance over everyone else’s head. God knows what goes on in his mind.
“And at first Mira wouldn’t believe it, because Lucas is demonstrably unstable + would make up ANYTHING to discredit his father, but as time goes on it makes more sense. And, after all, Philbrick has dropped off the grid”
The line about equations, not words is exactly how I feel whenever he appears on screen and the rest of the characters have to pretend that the words he’s piecing together actually make sense.
And he hates his father. Not that you need to be a genius to know that one. He’d say anything about him, so long as it’d rain on Taylor’s little “big bright beautiful tomorrow” parade. Taylor’s an optimist, always going on about that bright new future for everyone. Peace, love, the American way, all that bullshit. Murdering someone-It’s not his MO. There’s nothing in the three inches-tall dossier they handed off to her the week before she went through Hope Plaza that’d say that.
I had to get “There’s a Big, Bright, Beautiful Tomorrow” stuck in my head for this.
She turns in her hammock, watching the tops of the trees sway gently in the wind through the little netted opening that’s as close as she’s got to a window, as a pteranodon flies across the moon. There are times she could almost get to like this place. She thinks of Sienna and frowns. Almost.
You will never know how pissed I am that we never got to see “Mira’s Lair” as Taylor calls it. I think that they would have to have some form of netting to keep out the mosquitoes and any other creepy crawlies, but yet again, the worldbuilding was shit there and I’m sad.
(She remembers the first time she’d seen the moon, without the pollution there to cover it up or a million lights to dim it, white and gleaming and so big, Wash’s arm, strong and warm, around her as they’d made their way to the colony.)
The kid’s lying, she tells herself, there’s no point in taking the bait.
In the morning, he’s back to scrawling more equations on rocks, and she’s back to taking care of her colony. That should be it.
It isn’t.
It sits there in the back of her mind, buzzing like a little mosquito that she can’t quite swat. She hates that about the kid, how he can get under her skin, make her think.
Taylor as a murderer? It doesn’t fit with that squeaky-clean, messiah complex image he’s tried to work up. Not that he’d be the first. Everyone has their demons, and God knows what’s underneath that benevolent dictator image. But if he was, then…
If he was, then Wash is involved, too. But of course she can’t say that, because that would be admitting it to herself.
I have to think that given the amount of corruption in 2149, Taylor being a bitch wouldn’t be a surprise, and that’s something I tried to show, but that it doesn’t fit HIM (and, more importantly, Mira’s still trying to protect Wash in her mind.)
She ignores it, and ignores it, but it’s still there, in the back of her mind, and finally, she gives in.
“She ignores it, and ignores it, but it’s still there, in the back of her mind”
Is Taylor really capable of that?
“Is Taylor capable of that?”
So she checks. Still being in contact with 2149 has its perks, and she doesn’t have to run that kind of thing by Taylor (convenient, the voice whispers in her ear, that he controls the access to the outside world. She’d always thought it was so no one decided to get stuck on something dangerous like “democracy” or “basic human rights,” but it’d be useful as Hell if he was keeping something a secret.)
“And keep in mind: The Sixers can CONTACT THE OUTSIDE WORLD AND GET THAT INFO”
Philbrick’s missing they say, but there are holes in the record. Missing in South America? It’s the new “went on a long vacation and never came back.” And even if she’s not out there writing equations on rocks, she’s not stupid. Stupid gets you killed, where Mira’s from. Her employers play the evasion game, remind her what she has to lose if she presses, and she folds. Officially. But she knows one thing: Richard Philbrick’s dead, and wherever he is, it’s not South America.
So she checks. Philbrick’s missing they say, but there are all those little holes.”
Honestly, I hate writing any kind of detective work, because it all feels like a reach, so this was a hard section to write. But also absolutely necessary.
Boylan seems to know everything that goes on in the colony, for the right price, and she corners him one day after they’ve just gotten ahold of some medical supplies.
Thank God for Boylan providing the plot-convenient information. Or not providing it, as the case may be. He actually wasn’t planned, but when I was writing it, it felt like I needed more between the web search and Mira making her realization, so Boylan got to make an appearance. Yay, Boylan.
He just shakes his head, “Isn’t enough money in the world to make me tell you that.”
You know it’s bad when Boylan’s not willing to haggle for information. You know, it’s sad when you think of it: Boylan guarded Taylor’s secret faithfully for years, and only gave it away by accident…because he was tortured by the man he’d once considered a friend. Taylor deserved all the fallback from that one.
“You and he used to be old war buddies, now you can’t stand each other. So what happened?” She tilts her head as she stares him down, the way she knows makes her people stand down when they’re being stubborn.
He just shakes his head head again, walking away, and that’s all the confirmation she needs that something’s up.
Philbrick’s disappearance.
Taylor turning on his own kid.
Taylor turning on Boylan.
It all starts to make sense.
But there’s one thing left, one thing she needs: Proof.
The next time Lucas shows up, she glares at him, “The body. Where is it?”
He smirks in response and takes her to Pilgrim’s Tree.
I really debated including this section, because it seems to go against canon, but I couldn’t imagine anything LESS than that convincing Mira, when she knows that the body’s there.
That’s the thing with secrets: They never stay buried, especially if you leave someone alive to tell the tale.
“The thing with secrets is that they NEVER stay secret long” - Literally the first line of the rant that kicked this off.
And the body of a man, missing a limb in just the right place, well, that tells a story all on its own. There’s no point doing anything with it, when all they have’s the word of Taylor’s unstable son and a corpse against a legend. Better to put him back in the ground and wait for when it can be useful. As they cover the body again, spreading dead leaves across the upturned soil so it looks undisturbed, Mira feels her gut twist.
This was my haphazard attempt at keeping things consistent with canon, as much as it could be.
It’s never been personal between her and Taylor. It’s just a job, just like it always was (she tells herself as she thinks of trusting dark eyes sparked by the firelight as Wash sat opposite her, stretching a black hairband absently between her fingers, her black hair loose around her shoulders. That night, she’d forgotten her mission for a moment. Just a moment, but it was enough.)
“And slowly, but surely, things make sense. And honestly, Mira’s horrified, because it was never PERSONAL between her and Taylor. It was a job (she tells herself as she thinks of trusting dark eyes by the firelight).”
It doesn’t really make sense for MIra to have that undercurrent of bitterness that she has towards Taylor in canon; my girl’s a mercenary at nature, I can’t see her taking it personally. But this? Was honestly the first time Mira’s character clicked for me.
Also Wash + her hairband is one of my favorite things, in no part because of the 1789 crossover meaning that she and Laz get to bond over their ponytails. As is Wash sans hairband, because I’m gay. And imagining Wash’s younger, idealistic self honestly hurts, because Mira’s betrayal took so much of that from her.
She knows why she didn’t want to believe it: For Taylor to be capable of it, that means that everything Wash told her, all that bullshit about a better future, is a lie. Wash is always there by Taylor’s side, saying “How high?” even before he says “Jump.” (He doesn’t deserve it, she thinks; if she was with them, she’d be raking in a solid 2 or 3 figures more as a medic alone.) There’s no way she doesn’t know.
“And maybe she doesn’t want to believe it because for Taylor to be capable of it, that means that EVERYTHING Wash told her, about a better future, is a lie. Wash is as complicit as Taylor, she’s always there by his side, there’s no way she doesn’t know.
Also, props to Mira for STILL thinking about how much Taylor doesn’t deserve Wash even as she’s realizing that Wash is complicit in human rights violations.
She’s never been one for the new, better future that Taylor goes on about, about second chances and fresh starts, she has to spend her time on solid ground with what they have now rather than chasing after rainbows and unicorns. But when Wash talked about it, hope in her eyes, Mira’d almost…
And as it all comes together Mira feels a little bit of her heart (which is already mostly hardened, after years of war, years of eat or be eaten only a few inches of red pulsing muscle remain, and it’s for her daughter and Wash) calcify.
And as it all comes together Mira feels a little bit of her heart (which is already mostly calcified, years of war, years of eat or be eaten hardening it, only a few inches of red pulsing muscle remain, and it’s for her daughter and Wash) calcify.
This is one of the bits that remained virtually unchanged from concept to final product, mainly because I really, really liked it, and it’s probably the reason I ultimately ended up writing it down in the first place.
“Still doing Taylor’s dirty work?” She’ll ask, several years later, as Wash looks up at her in-Hatred? Anger? Surprise? Mira blames the smudged black eyeliner for hiding her eyes.
‘Still doing Taylor’s dirty work?’ I know the truth now, is what she’s really saying, I’m not naive anymore.”
Not that it matters. Not anymore.
She’s trying to say that it doesn’t matter what Wash thinks and that she’s over it, but she isn’t. She was still hoping, on some level, for Wash to say something. But then she doesn’t, and so Mira uses her as leverage for what she wants, telling herself that it doesn’t matter because it’s all for the mission, anyway.
I know the truth now, is what she’s really saying, I’m not naive anymore.
I know.
And somehow, it doesn’t feel as good as she thought it would.
This line was the only thing I could think of to end it on, even as I didn’t like it overly much, but I wanted it to be a very bittersweet at best ending from Mira’s perspective. She’s broken free of the lies Taylor told, at least she thinks so, she’s brought Wash down a peg or two, but it can’t be a victory because she really didn’t get what she really wanted, which was for Wash to renounce Taylor and jump in her arms.
My other alternate title was “Prometheus” [which I discarded because (1) It was Lucas levels of pretentious and (2) it centered Lucas rather than Mira], and I feel like both of the titles kind of encapsulates the idea there: You get the knowledge you want, but at what cost?
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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 28th July 2019
This is going to be pretty short and rushed I imagine, but we’ll see.
Top 10
Now, we have a funny top four, similarly to last week, full of Ed Sheeran, but not at our top spot, as “Senorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello is back at #1 for a second week after our number-two took it last week.
Our number-two, by the way, down one spot from last week, is “Beautiful People” by Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid. Now, the rest of the top four is Ed Sheeran.
First of all, at number-three, we have “I Don’t Care” featuring Justin Bieber returning at number-three, which, due to nonsensical chart rules, must be some kind of record for highest re-entry ever on the chart. We’ll talk about this more in the dropouts section.
Oh, yeah, and to my surprise, “Cross Me”, also by Ed Sheeran, featuring Chance the Rapper and PNB Rock is not moving at number-four. I figured this one would be in freefall.
Thanks to a Justin Bieber remix, and well, not much else, Billie Eilish’s “bad guy” is up eleven spaces to number-five? I’m puzzled about this one, honestly, if anyone could tell me what happened here I’d appreciate it; this should be floundering in the top 30 right now.
Thanks to the rise of “bad guy”, however, Lewis Capaldi’s “Hold Me While You Wait” is down a spot to number-six. Please drop off quicker, I’m begging you.
Also down a single spot on the chart is AJ Tracey’s “Ladbroke Grove” at number-seven.
Eilish claims another victim as MIST and Fredo’s “So High” is also down one spot to number-eight. Don’t worry, all of these songs will rebound.
Oh, and “Wish You Well” by Sigala and Becky Hill is also down a space to number-nine, but I’m still disputing the fact that song exists.
The #10 spot is, once again, held by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, Young Thug, Mason Ramsey and now that guy from BTS. Congratulations on a record-breaking 17th week at #1 in the US, but here in Britain, it seems oddly stable at #10, I expect streaming cuts to kill it any time now.
Climbers
Freya Ridings’ “Castles” is up eight more spaces off the debut two or so weeks ago, entering the top 20 at #18 and becoming her second ever single to chart there. I’m not complaining, it’s a pretty good song. Outside of the top 20, we have only one other gain here, and that’s “Ritual” by Tiesto, Jonas Blue and Rita Ora gaining more traction than I expected 12 spaces up to #28. I hope this doesn’t reach the top 20, it’s pretty trite and honestly would make an awful fit for Ora’s next album whenever in the next decade that comes out.
Fallers
We have plenty of these, however. First of all, “Goodbyes” by Post Malone and Young Thug continues its unfortunate slow-burning dive down five spots to #17, with “Someone You Loved” close in front by Lewis Capaldi at #19, thankfully down five spaces from last week. It’s not fast enough, but I’m just glad this is on its way out. D-Block Europe’s “Home” is down five to #25 after surprisingly staying pretty stable on its second week. The biggest surprise here, yet at the same time not a surprise to me at all, is Krept & Konan’s “I Spy” with Headie One and K-Trap collapsing down 14 positions to #32. While most British trap has a pretty short chart run, I at least expected this to last longer than any given D-Block Europe song. Oh, and “One Touch” by Jess Glynne and Jax Jones is on its way out down seven spots to #35 after pretty much flopping, especially considering it’s a Glynne lead single.
Dropouts & Returning Entries
Thanks to a nonsensical UK chart rule that to be fair made sense for situations like an Ed Sheeran album bomb, “Take Me Back to London” featuring Stormzy disappears entirely from its number-three debuts last week, and was replaced by “I Don’t Care”, which dropped out from #2 last week. It must be really confusing for those who don’t know all the chart rules to see stuff like this. Elsewhere, we have a couple dropouts so the new arrivals can move in, with “Bounce Back” by Little Mix proving that the damage control single doesn’t work, after dropping out of the top 40 in its sixth week from #34. Miley Cyrus’ “Mother’s Daughter” is out from #36, which isn’t a surprise, and neither is “Love of My Life” by Remedee, Not3s and Young Adz dropping out off the debut at #37. Young Thug’s “The London” with J. Cole and Travis Scott is also out from #38 and since we have no returning entries, let’s get straight to the new arrivals.
NEW ARRIVALS
#40 – “RAN$OM” – Lil Tecca
Produced by Nick Mira and Taz Taylor – Peaked at #11 in Canada and #19 in the US
I really did not want to talk about this song. This is... “Lil Tecca”’s first UK Top 40 hit (Yes, that is his name, it’s dreadful) and the 16-year-old’s first major-label single. He has like eight songs out and he’s essentially a younger, less interesting or even convincing A Boogie wit da Hoodie clone. A Boogie even has a song called “Ransom” that sparked a lot of buzz in him back when he started out. Some may say it’s the melodic New York trap scene repeating itself, I say it’s a clear “Homage” (Read: trend-hopping and copying another rapper for the sake of this complete nobody getting a lot bigger, especially now he has a label behind him). Nobody is talking about how he’s probably some kind of industry plant because nobody cares about the person, Lil Tecca, they care about the song, “Ransom”. This guy has no star power at all or even any potential as a legitimately interesting artist. Okay, let’s stop stalling and get to the meat and potatoes of this song, which are that hook and that video. The video, while uninteresting, was directed by Cole Bennett of Lyrical Lemonade and hence propelled the song to, you know, any sense of popularity, which it wouldn’t have gathered before at all, at least not to the heights of a worldwide smash and top 20 hit in the US. God, this guy infuriates me. I’m definitely going to talk about this song a bit more in January, if you catch my drift, but essentially, this song is melodic trap boiled down to its essence, with a Lil Tjay type beat carrying a Juice WRLD type rapper. There’s one barely-a-verse which lasts about 24 seconds, but the issue is the song is two minutes and 11 seconds long, and, yes, that chorus is infectious but not nearly as powerful as he thinks it is to carry the song for this long, especially since he has no charisma. It sounds like a Python programme wrote and performed a rap song, it really is some of the most monotonous, non-descript garbage to come out of SoundCloud rap. I hate this, it’s definitely on my worst list for 2019, and next!
#38 – “Sorry” – Joel Corry
Produced by Joel Corry
Is it bad that my first observation about this song is that some rapper is going to mention this in a sappy out-of-character love ballad? I mean, think about it, “Sorry” and Joel Corry rhyme. It’s going to happen. Anyway, who’s Joel Corry, you ask? Good question. His Wikipedia page or lack thereof redirects me to a record label called Ostereo which seems pretty successful, and they have a tiny paragraph on Corry. Apparently, he started establishing himself as a DJ on the MTV reality show Jersey Shore. This isn’t looking great, I know, but bear with me, he’s also a body-builder and now presents a radio show on KISS FM. Okay, so, really, much like Lil Tecca, he’s a complete nobody who got picked up by some big label who couldn’t care less about artistic intent, except this is a little more intriguing, considering Ostereo is an independent label and Joel Corry is a DJ, so I’m assuming it’s EDM and I’m right, but it seems snipped from a DJ set. You can tell in the intro, it sounds like the end of a song and an abrupt bleep transition, maybe that’s just for artistic effect but it doesn’t sound great. This is pretty standard deep pop-house, with an unnamed female vocalist singing over a lot of snare and keys, with plenty orchestral stabs to remind you a song is playing. Albeit oddly-mixed at times, the build-up is pretty affective, the drums sound cheap as hell though, as does that drop, it’s really anti-climactic and doesn’t really work at all. The final build-up and drop is admittedly pretty epic though, it gets rid of the anti-climactic minimalism and leaves just a club-ready synth melody over a lot of strings, it sounds really cool is what I’m saying. The build-up itself is manic as well, very interesting, and the singer seems to be a sample from Monsta Boy’s “Sorry! (I Didn’t Know)” featuring Denzie, and, yes, I know samples aren’t typically considered guest spots but the female vocalist is instrumental to this song and its success so surely a featured credit wouldn’t hurt. It’s not Denzie, and by the way, this is so much better than that Monsta Boy song thanks to how Denzie is one of the most incompetent singers known to man, and this female vocalist is actually pretty talented despite singing the exact same lyrics, and referencing Brandy, as in “The Boy is Mine” Brandy, which was unexpected. I’ve searched it up and I can’t find her anywhere, not even on the Genius page, so to me this is just a bit of a douche move.
Edit: I’ve done some extra research and the vocalist is Hayley May. It’s also from the Love Island soundtrack apparently, which makes me like the song a lot less on principle. I’d love to see more from May though, she doesn’t even have a writing credit on this song.
#36 – “Hate Me” – Ellie Goulding and Juice WRLD
Produced by Jason Evigan and The Monsterz & the Strangerz – Peaked at #18 in Hungary and #82 in the US
Oh, Ellie Goulding exists. Yeah, I forgot about that. Listen, I don’t hate Ellie Goulding, far from it, I think she’s fine, but at least lately after about 2015 or so, she has not been nearly as interesting as I want her to be, especially because the songwriting chops are definitely there. When I saw her collaborate with emo-rapper Juice WRLD of all people, I knew this would be far from interesting or good so I’m honestly starting to lose hope in that upcoming album, especially since her other singles “Sixteen” and “Close to Me” were far from special. This is Goulding’s 22nd(!) UK Top 40 hit and Juice WRLD’s third, and, yeah, this isn’t great. That hook is really desperate and this would work if her delivery wasn’t bratty and the lyrics really don’t fit and it feels very cluttered and rushed, like they’re just trying to get it over with... which makes sense, I mean that’s the topic of the song but it’s not convincing, because she wants an answer and she wants it quick, so she’d stop at nothing, surely, but the song’s really short and doesn’t really have any lasting impact. Juice WRLD doesn’t freaking exist, gladly, he doesn’t even join in with the chorus really, which by the third repetition gets really aggravating. The production is an airy mess with trap percussion and cloudy synths that cover Juice WRLD’s vocoder-fuelled performance to the point of not being able to recognise him. It’s not good at all, but I feel it’s just tolerable and bland enough for me to not dislike it. I never thought I’d say this, but Lil Peep did it better.
#12 – “How Do You Sleep?” – Sam Smith
Produced by Ilya – Peaked at #4 in Singapore and #29 in the US
Sam Smith’s second single from this upcoming new album and era, after the success of “Dancing with a Stranger” with Normani, seems to be a lot more energetic especially in comparison with his other two albums he’s released. He seems to have ditched the shoddy pop-soul and has gone straight into more danceable territory, which I’m not complaining about. I loved him on “Latch” and “La La La”, and thought “Dancing with a Stranger” was pretty cool, but other than that there’s not a single song by Smith that I like. Anyway, this is his 14th UK Top 40 hit, and you know what, it’s not bad at all. I love the twinkling synths that carry the song’s main melody, they’re cute but paired with trap percussion and intense sub bass can come off as both oddly sinister as well as infatuated, fitting with the content and subject matter of this song, in which Smith questions how his partner sleeps when he has Smith tangled in a toxic relationship which he can’t get out of, and that “love will keep them up tonight”. I love the second verse, where Smith admits he’s lost himself in his relationship through his subtly Auto-Tuned vocals that are still pretty impressive. The chorus is incredibly catchy while still being powerful and despite all this, that drop kind of sucks. After a great vocoder vocal bridge, the drop is really weak and squeaky, especially with that screechy synth tone, which doesn’t sound as melodramatic or pained as the rest of the song, and instead sounds incredibly lazy. It might grow on me, as the weeping of the drop is kind of humorous right now but could easily fit in with the song’s overall tone and mood, but we’ll see. Overall, this song surprised me, it’s actually really good bar from the trap and EDM elements possibly bogging it down a bit, I think Smith’s songwriting is definitely what shines here instead of Ilya’s production, which is disappointing since I usually love his production.
Conclusion
Yeah, I’m shocked too, but Best of the Week goes to Sam Smith for “How Do You Sleep?”, and Honourable Mention is reluctantly going to “Love Island anthem”, “Sorry” by Joel Corry featuring Hayley May, even if it’s not all that good, only decent. Dishonourable Mention is going to Ellie Goulding and Juice WRLD for “Hate Me” because of course it is, and Worst of the Week should be pretty damn obvious, it’s Lil Tecca’s for “RAN$OM”. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for more musical ramblings and I’ll see you next week.
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EPISODE 6: BEYOND THE BRANDO EFFECT
LISTEN: SOUNDCLOUD / iTUNES / GOOGLE PLAY
SOURCES: listed at end of transcript
NOTES: I deeply apologize for my Don Corleone and Cary Grant impressions.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, I'm Jack, and this is Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories, and this week, we're going to be talking about Marlon Brando and the way he helped to reshape Hollywood masculinity. This is kind of a three part episode, I think. This week we're talking about Brando, and next week we're talking about James Dean, and the week after that is going to be about Monty Clift. All three of them really sort of started this reshaping process of the way men behaved in Hollywood, and we're going to look at each of them in turn.
So, I debated how personal I wanted to get in the telling of this story. You know, this isn't a podcast about me, it's a podcast about queer Hollywood history. But the stories I'm telling, from back last week to the next two weeks, are going to be stories that mean a lot to me. They're about things that have shaped me, personally. I could sit here and give you a very impersonal account of some of the things that Brando did and a list of movies that he acted in, but even the blandest of filmographies would still be painted because I'm the one telling it, and I think that six episodes in, you folks can tell that I'm not very good at staying objective or impersonal.
Without going on a five minute long spiel about myself, sufficed to say that Brando is another actor who I've been interested in since I was a teenager. He was maybe the first or second person that had me thinking, “Do I want to be this man, or just be with him?” Specifically, I'm talking about him in A Streetcar Named Desire. It was another one we had to watch in school, and it was probably one of the first times that I was like, “Oh, thank God, I thought this black and white movie was going to suck, but it totally doesn't.” This is kind of the first time that I was exposed to classic Hollywood film that I can actually remember – It's a Wonderful Life and Gone With The Wind not withstanding, because one is on television every damn year and is unavoidable, and I absolutely hate the other one. So basically, Cary Grant and Marlon Brando are the two actors that have been with me more or less throughout my formative years.
But, I've gone all the way off topic. Basically, the long and the short of that is: the next few episodes are very dear and personal to me, and I apologize in advance if that clouds or colors my judgment or storytelling.
So, a little background information about Brando, in case the only thing you know about him is how to do a Don Corleone voice and say, “I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.” He was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska into a family that had a sort of weird, wandering vibe to it. They were all really into Eastern medicine, very big into Civil Rights and Native rights. His mother was an alcoholic for many years until she dried out and started some AA chapters, and he and his father never really got along. He had two older sisters, Jocelyn – who's a pretty famous actress in her own right – and Frances. They moved around a lot, from Omaha to Chicago and eventually to Santa Ana, California. He went to Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, but eventually dropped out – after the school board tried to expel him and then his fellow students rallied to let him stay, of course. Eventually, he followed his sisters to New York to try his hand at acting, and came under the tutelage of Stella Adler, where he learned the Method. He officially made it onto Broadway in 1944, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, Brando maybe wasn't the first person to employ the so-called “Method”, but I think he's certainly one of the most famous examples of it. For those of you not familiar with it, basically the point of the Method is to bring yourself into the role you're supposed to play. The very first tenet is “don't act – behave.” So when Brando would get a role, he would very notoriously and sometimes contentiously rewrite entire pages of dialogue. In On The Waterfront, he's almost entirely responsible for the “contender” speech that the movie is famous for. You know, he added his own touches to every role he got – he was very well-versed in makeup and costuming, and had a direct hand in Stanley's look in Streetcar, working closely with the costume director to make the look of a working-class good ol' boy perfect. I think that's part of why his appeal is so widespread, honestly. Every time Brando was on screen or on the stage, it feels like he's bringing a little more of himself to light, bringing a little more of his personality to the forefront, so people feel like they know him – even when they had no idea who he was behind the mask of his characters. I really think this is when the general public started to maybe feel more like they knew their favorite actors, to sort of blur the lines between the character and the person.
I think Marlon Brando holds such a place in the hearts and minds of film fans for a lot of reasons. You know, it doesn't matter what people talk about – all the bad jokes about him letting himself go in his later years, to the stories about how difficult he was on-set, to some of the shitty things my new arch-nemesis David Thomson said about people who employed method acting – the fact remains that Brando became a legend. My friends and I have a way of judging the character of celebrities that I think is a pretty good tool to use: Have they, at any point, stuck up for minorities – be it the queer community, people of color, immigrants, Native people, you know, any marginalized group – not when it was convenient for them, but when it was actually a detriment to their career? You know, good deeds done for attention or notoriety aren't truly good deeds. Dolly Parton comes to mind – she's come out in favor of the LGBTQ community over and over, despite her conservative fan base getting in a snit about it. I'm also thinking of Liz Taylor, who used to open up her home to people in LA who were going through treatment for AIDS and HIV and had nowhere else to go and kept it as quiet as possible. And, of course, I'm thinking about Marlon Brando sending Sacheen Little Feather up to collect his award as an act of protest on behalf of the treatment of Native Americans in the film industry and by the American government. It was a publicity stunt, yeah, sure. But the thing that you won't hear about is that Brando had been getting arrested at protests demanding Native people be given their rights and their land for years. He once got arrested at a fish-in along with a group of Native people, and when the police wouldn't release the others when they released him, he went right back to the protest and got arrested again. I mean, he was one of a very scant handful of white people that were allowed to speak at Black Panther events.
So, you know, it's really interesting to me that people tried to say that Brando only used declining his Oscar as a stunt to get notoriety, when really he was using it as a last resort to call attention to an issue he had passionate about his entire life. And Brando really was a man of passion. I don't think there's a single thing he did half-assed. When he died, he left behind a massive library filled with books that he had written in the margins of, and crates of screenplays that he had edited and added his own dialogue to. The very first play he was in was about the Zionist cause in Israel, and he toured to raise money for the new country and to bring attention to what had happened during the Holocaust. You know, this is a really early example of Brando using his work as a platform to raise consciousness about social issues. He did a movie called The Young Lions with post-accident Montgomery Clift where he played a Nazi officer, because he wanted people to see it and realize that the people of Germany during World War Two were just ordinary citizens. He wanted people to understand the social impact here – could they, with one charismatic leader and some political propaganda, also be persuaded to lose their humanity and become monstrous? I think that movie is incredibly important, especially in today's political climate.
Brando was a fascinating and complex person. I learned most of this information from a book called Brando's Smile by Susan Mizruchi. I liked the book quite a bit, but I took a few issues with it. She mentions that Brando was a victim of “sexism” because people saw his pretty face and assumed that he was an idiot, and I think she meant to say “objectification”. She also refers to Native Americans throughout the book as “American Indians”, which I disagree with for obvious reasons. Brando, throughout his life, referred to Native Americans incorrectly, in his writings and in his impassioned pleas for justice on their behalf. I think, you know, maybe Mizruchi was just referring to Native Americans the way that Brando did for the sake of clarity and continuity, but I mean, in that case, why not just make a note of it or make mention of it elsewhere? Why not just, you know, say, “Oh, you know, Marlon Brando referred to Native Americans like this but I want to point out that it's not the respectful way to refer to them today and I'm not going to refer to them as anything but Native Americans, don't be confused.” But, you know, whatever. That's just my opinion.
The Mizruchi book also mentions briefly that Brando met James Dean once. Only once. Way back in my very first episode, I mentioned reading this. Mizruchi says Brando met with Dean and they had a conversation, and then when Dean died, Brando said it was such a shame because the boy had real talent. I've since found a few photos of Brando and Dean hanging around with each other that basically proves that, at least in this instance, Mizruchi is mistaken. There's a lot of speculation about who Brando went to bed with, with fingers pointed at Dean, Cary Grant, Montgomery Clift and John Gielgud as rumored lovers. The thing is that Brando openly admitted in a 1976 interview for his biography The Only Contender that he had some kind of homosexual experiences. He goes so far as say that he wasn't ashamed of it, and he thought it was funny that people thought he and Jack Nicholson were having an affair.
You heard it here, folks: Brando himself confirmed that he was queer. I mean, he had a lot of wives and a lot of lovers and a lot of kids – and I say again that he's a very passionate man. He's someone that really looked at life and was like “I'm going to make the absolute most of my time on this rock or die trying.” I'm saying definitively that Brando was one of us: queer as a three dollar bill. The issue that comes up with him isn't whether or not he was queer, but who he hooked up with. A lot of this information seems like it's … well. I hate to call anything false, but I will say that it sounds incredibly bloated beyond the scope of what the truth might have been. Despite the rumor that Brando had a weekend fling with Cary Grant, Grant is quoted as saying: “I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of Method acting. It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that God-awful James Dean. Some producer should cast them all in the same movie and let them duke it out. When they've finished each other off, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and I will return and start making real movies again like we used to.” Ouch, Archie. Ouch. Now, Cary Grant getting nasty with someone he was supposed to have had a relationship with doesn't surprise me – he was pretty terrible to Orry Kelly after their split, but this goes way beyond what we would normally see out of him. Ironically, he calls out the three people this and the next two episodes are dedicated to, and talks about two more people that were also rumored to be gay or bisexual. C'est la vie.
I'll talk a little more about the relationship that Brando supposedly had with James Dean in our next episode, but now that I've confirmed that Brando was queer, I wanted to talk a little bit about how he was instrumental in the reshaping of Hollywood masculinity. So, if we think about the kinds of roles that Brando played when he was younger – and I'm thinking specifically of Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront and Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar – he's playing these men that are vulnerable and moody. They're very much overgrown children. James Dean and Monty Clift played similar roles in their films – they're these sort of sheepish, complicated characters with a lot of emotion and nowhere to put it. They were lovers, but they weren't lovers like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn. They were on the fringes of society but not like Jimmy Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Brando, Dean and Clift were part of this new wave of actors that came from the Midwest, betting all their hopes and dreams on being in the movies – but acting like they were too cool to care about whether or not they were famous. They played small town boys with big dreams, and they notoriously toyed with the press. Their sexuality was speculated on and about, and their appeal really was without limits.
If you think it sounds like I could be describing actors like James Franco, Ryan Gosling, Tom Hardy – or even, if we go back to before he was was a bloated abuser ruining my childhood in Harry Potter movies, Johnny Depp – then you're right. You know, I'm not James Franco's biggest fan – I had a friend back in New Haven who worked with some of the Yale Repertory dancers, and a few of them got to know him when he was attending Yale back in the aughts, and none of the stories I heard really endeared him to me – but I think, to me, he's just a weird harmless stoner who's trying really hard to cash in on being a weird harmless stoner for as long as he can. And, I'm not going to say the man can't act. But you can pretty much draw a straight line from Franco's pretentious comments about his art to the way that Brando used to torment interviewers. Gosling got turned into the “Hey, Girl” meme, and Tom Hardy's been dodging questions about his sexual history for as long as I've known who Tom Hardy is. I mean, Brando was quoted once as saying that he didn't think of being an actor as art or anything – he looked at it like a job. If that quote sounds familiar, it's because Ryan Gosling said almost the exact same thing a few years ago.
I'll be straight with you: when I read the article that compared Brando, Dean, and Clift's vulnerable masculinity to the likes of people like James Franco and Christian Bale, I almost threw up in my mouth, and I think it's because I look at contemporary actors like that, and I think to myself, “Christ, you know those guys get high off the smell of their own farts.” They just seem pretentious to me. And maybe one day I'll meet James Franco and we'll smoke a blunt together and he'll prove me wrong, but I also don't think I could look him in the eye knowing that he has to watch his own movies before he hooks up with someone. I digress. You know, I think it upset me at the gut level because of that, but when I posted up the article to my Facebook, my glorious friend Ricci pointed out that it seems kind of stupid to him that Clift and Dean have been dead for at least fifty years and Marlon Brando wasn't playing the moody, sensitive young man for at least as long, but we're still expected to trip over our own feet because Tom Hardy might have touched a dick once and James Franco sneers at the work that's provided him with millions of dollars and the kind of artistic freedom to openly mock a communist dictator. My buddy Ricci went on to say that these parallels didn't address the toxic parts of this “new” masculinity, and that it only allowed for certain emotions in certain spaces, made or expressed by certain kinds of men. This “Brando” masculinity really doesn't account for men of color, trans men, queer men. It's great that Brando got the ball rolling, right? But it seems like it's totally anachronistic and a little absurd that contemporary actors are still trying to hang onto that Streetcar, Rebel Without A Cause, From Here to Eternity nihilism in a leather jacket. Yes, I think it's important that the ball got rolling, and fuck yes, I think Brando, Dean and Clift are important actors in the 20th century. But do I think it's necessarily healthy that there are still people basing their entire persona on them? No. It's performative masculinity at its peak, and performative masculinity – even the non-violent kind – is still toxic.
It's really important, I think, to look back at the characters in the films I mentioned – all played by method actors – and kind of inspect their character traits. Stanley Kowalski used sexual violence as a means to an end. Jim Stark ended up surrounded by dead bodies because of an innate desire to conform and also impress. Robert Prewitt ended up dead after an almost compulsive desire to prove himself turned fatal. And even the actors themselves are cautionary tales. Brando was the only one of the three who lived well into old age, as Dean died in that car wreck and Clift died from heart failure after a lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse. Maybe back in the day, these expressions of alternate masculinity were actually directly going against the grain and they were almost revolutionary. But today, the same kinds of shows of bravado and swagger are just tired. And maybe that's not James Franco's fault, you know? Maybe that's society and the media still expecting so little from famous men that they think masculinity stopped evolving when Marlon Brando moved away from playing moody young men and into more austere dramatic roles. But that's not really fair – nor is it realistic. Maybe if we expected more from contemporary actors than being flip about their sexuality and being self-deprecating about their careers, then we could start to move on from the “Brando effect” and onto something more constructive and beneficial for the world at large. James Franco, please sponsor my podcast.
Thank you for listening to Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This episode was written, recorded, edited, and researched by me, Jack Segreto. Special thanks this week to Nessa for editing my script Ricci for adding invaluable commentary to the discourse. You can find a transcript of this episode and all our episodes, along with movie and book recommendations, fun facts and photos on our tumblr, tuckinpodcast.tumblr.com. You can also give us a like on Facebook at facebook.com/tuckinpodcast. We accept messages on both of those platforms, so please feel free to shoot us any suggestions for show topics and comments you might have. We put out new episodes every Wednesday, and you can listen to us on SoundCloud, iTunes and Google Play, so don't forget to rate and subscribe to us! We'll be back next week with an episode about James Dean and the power of legacy. See you next time!
SOURCES:
Brando’s Smile, Susan L. Mizruchi (2014)
The Brando Effect
Hollywood Stars’ Meanest Remarks
Marlon Brando’s Homosexual Celebrity Affairs Revealed (this fucing title you guys)
#( TRANSCRIPTS & SHOW NOTES. )#( EPISODE 6. )#queer history#hollywood history#queer history podcast#hollywood history podcast#podcast#new podcast#marlon brando#james dean
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vanderpump rules, season five, episode nineteen: i hate it when jax is right
Welcome back!
You look gorgeous!
Jax shows up at Tom’s apartment for egg smoothie time, because of course Tom Sandoval is the kind of friend who will make you a beet smoothie with a raw egg in it when you come over. They talk about Tom Schwartz’s triplet brothers, who, two days before the wedding, are not coming. I know Katie1 claims she planned this wedding in eight weeks, but this is family. It’s not even edited to try to make any sense of it all. Jax and Sandoval are spending $1500 on tickets for Tom’s brothers to come as a surprise. It’s a nice surprise and all, but… shouldn’t Tom have allotted some of that $50k wedding money for flights and accommodations for his own family? Literally, the money Katie spent on ugly ass tea towel/cum rag wedding invitations should have been spent making sure Tom’s family was there. As if I needed more of a reason to hate Katie, this one feels the most valid.
Kristen, Brittany, Stassi, and Scheana all arrive at the alterations shop to try on their bridesmaids dresses, and I have zero opinions about them.
Y’all know that’s a straight up lie - however, I don’t think these are the worst bridesmaids dresses I’ve ever seen. They’re grey satin, with a halter neck that Brittany is busting out of, and a slit so high these girls definitely can’t wear underwear. The fabric looks cheap, and the lace-up silver heels don’t help matters much. I love the color, the pockets and the length, though and yes, Katie - it is hard to find a dress that’s suitable for eight different body types, but maybe next time don’t have so many fucking bridesmaids? Maybe?2
Alas, we get further clues into how Katie and Tom funded this wedding - a sponsored scene at a Dylan’s Candy Bar where Tom’s collecting candy for the favors! We’ve already seen this once, with Scheana and her wedding, so I hope Dylan Lauren is getting her moneys’ worth. Jax picks out candy corn, as if I didn’t hate Jax enough.
Let me talk to you about candy corn. Candy corn is the god damn fucking devil’s candy. It’s not even candy. I firmly believe Yankee Candle sells all their extra wax-bits to candy companies and they’re like “Oooh, we have stock for next year’s candy corns!!!” What the hell flavor are candy corn even supposed to have? Sugary death? You know who probably liked candy corn? John Wayne Gacy. That guy who kept his daughter in the basement for years and had children with her. Steve Bannon. There are a million other ways to get a sugar craving fixed other than eating candy corn. Go make out with Mrs. Butterworth, for god’s sake. Candy corn is the reason we have the president we do. Candy corn is the reason we cannot have good things. It tastes like asshole. No, candy corn. No.3
Jax redeems himself immediately by loving on sour belts. I love all sour candies. I know Tom Sandoval is all “sugar-free, blah blah blah” but there’s zero fat content in Sour Patch candies. My friend with a massive eating disorder in high school taught me that. Sure, it’s a ton of sugar and chemicals that probably aren’t great for you, but zero fat. I’d rather eat that than ever eat a sugar-free Lemonhead.
I have opinions about candy. They are controversial. Mostly that Snickers are overrated and Butterfingers don’t get the proper respect they deserve. When did this become a candy blog?
Stassi was having anxiety about not having a date to the wedding, but she’s not concerned anymore. She just wants to have fun with her friends, and weddings are also great places to meet eligible bachelors. And she’s right and all, but she’s also… going to the wedding of her two best friends? I doubt there is going to be anyone there that Stassi hasn’t met, and if she hasn’t met them… they’re probably someone’s date. She’s fooling herself. Anyway, Scheana’s still trying to pretend that her marriage is perfect and there is some editor just relishing every time they have footage of her saying things like, “Shay and I went to therapy ONCE, and we never needed to go again. We learned to communicate.” Yeah, like how he communicated that he was stealing all your money and disappearing, Scheana? Like that? The cameras cut to Stassi looking hilariously bewildered, just like the rest of America. In all seriousness, though, watching the giddiness and excitement they all have as the wedding gets closer just makes me even more angry. They are ALL, and especially Katie, excited for a wedding and not even a marriage. Even Tom Schwartz is like, “All we need to do is get up there and do the damn thing,” as if they’re going to play chess and not make a life-long4 commitment after you “do the damn thing”. He’s excited to get drunk with his friends in a suit, Katie’s excited to get drunk with her friends in a dress, and neither of them seem to be particularly excited about being legally bound to the other for the rest of time.5
We’re back at Sexy Unique Restaurant, where Katie and Scheana are talking to Jax, and we get another moment of Scheana Schadenfreude when she’s like, “yeah, our first year of marriage was shitty, but at least we got through it now instead of ten years down the line where there are kids around.” Clearly that didn’t work out. Scheana wants to go to a fertility doctor, though, becuase hopefully by the next year, she’ll be pregnant and have a house.
I AM CRYING LAUGHING. OH MY GOD. And I laughed even harder when Jax, who is so old that his mom went into a shallow hole in the ground covered in animal skin and his dad pushed on her belly to get him out like the polar Eskimos, was like, “I’m pretty sure Shay has to be in the same ROOM as Scheana to make a baby.” Sex Ed, with Jayson “Jax Taylor” Couchy.
There’s a completely unnecessary scene of Lisa Vanderpump riding a horse up to Sexy Unique Restaurant, lead to another scene of Lisa pretending she has any involvement with the regular day-to-day ongoings of the restaurant. She catches a glass of sangria headed to a table, and damn, if that isn’t a short pour. There isn’t even any fruit in there. Lisa claims that Sexy Unique Restaurant has “the best pours”, but this articleshows me that their most popular drink has exactly 2 oz of vodka, and according to my bartender brother, that’s a very generous pour. I’m genuinely shocked, considering Sexy Unique Restaurant is basically just a tourist trap in WeHo. Good for you, Lisa, giving your customers what they deserve. For the prices they charge, I BETTER be getting a fucking double. Jax admits he fucked up - but not after at least trying to blame someone else by asking if someone drank out of it, Classic Jax - and then decides that at work, in the middle of his shift, he’s going to tell Lisa about Scheana’s decision to freeze some eggs. This seems entirely appropriate. Jax just doesn’t think it’s a good idea because... where is Shay, anyway? No one’s seen him. He’s been cynical about their marriage since day one, and mostly just wants to make sure that Scheana has the support system she needs.
Does anyone else think Jax and Scheana banged on the DL? Anyone else? Or is this the way Jax treats women he hasn’t slept with - with kindness, consideration, and overall decency?
Lisa says what she should be saying every time one of these people comes to her to talk about someone else - “It’s not my business until she makes it my business,” and tells Jax to get back to work.
Stassi’s storyline this season is Single Sexy Stassi In The City, and so she decides that she needs to have a photoshoot as a “pick-me-up”. When I need a “pick-me-up”, I go on ASOS and spend my entire paycheck. Or I go to ABC Kitchen and yell “GIMME ALLLLL THE CRAB TOAST!” Or I take a four hour nap. I don’t have a photoshoot. She’s going to be wearing a polka-dot mesh bodysuit and two other outfits. It’s... not the most flattering look, but she rocks it in the best way possible.
Remember last week when I was like, “Where is Lala? Where is James?” As soon as James came back, I just felt like screaming. Just the sound of his accent is so grating to me. If I didn’t have to write this blog, I would just fast forward through it. So instead, I’m gonna get a beer so I can suffer through this. James may not drink anymore, but I have to drink in order to tolerate him.
Okay, I’m back, and I have my beer. James is meeting with his walking vocal fry of a girlfriend and her mother and her sister, who I could have sworn was Kelly Dodd from Real Housewives of Orange County. I hope someone gets called a cunt at this dinner, and the likelihood is even higher now. James tells us the difference between Raquel and Kristen - Raquel is a queen, Kristen is “like a hooker that you fuck on the hood of your BMW in a car park,” which in case you forgot - ACTUALLY HAPPENED BETWEEN KRISTEN AND JAMES. James, it’s not an insult if it actually happened and you didn’t pay her. Basically, James admits that he doesn’t have a job because he got fired for having a hair-trigger temper and couldn’t stop getting into fights and his job. Remember: he’s saying this to his girlfriend’s mother and sister. If my boyfriend admitted any of this to my family over dinner, my mom would look at me, and say, “Who is this unemployed white boy that can’t even hold down a bus boy job in their mid-twenties, Amanda, are you smoking crack? Get him outta here.” and I would do so promptly and then sit down and finish my pesto pasta6 while we listen to Luther Vandross.
James tries to smooth it over by being like, “I love your daughter, and I love you all too, you’re my family,” when her mom shows some (deserved) skepticism. He actually cries when they say they trust him (WHY) and he says that he sees a future with Raquel. I am cackling. Can you spend your life with a vocal fry? I mean, Kanye West did it, so why can’t the White Kanye West7?
Katie is wearing one of the worst outfits I have ever seen her wear - a lilac maxi dress over a navy t-shirt - and they’re getting ready to head up to the wedding venue. Another sign that the planning of this made no sense - they’re bringing the cake up with them, two days before the wedding even is set to take place. That cake is gonna be nasty by the time they cut into it. They’re spending $50k on a wedding but not... having... the cake delivered? Tom wears fucking flip-flops while carrying it down the steps and nearly falls, and I’m thinking, “YOU COULD HAVE PAID SOMEONE TO CARRY THIS FOR YOU.”
I am straight up being Jessica Fletcher with my investigation into the Strange Planning of This Wedding, and I am LIVING.
They’re bringing a pinata with them, and Stassi’s like, “Knowing Tom and Katie, that pinata is probably full of condoms, gummy bears, Ninja Turtle action figures... maybe some weed.” And I’m like, “Do we know this about Tom & Katie? Do we?” I’ve never known them to be that kind of fun couple, unfortunately. They’ve never shown us them as that kind of couple.
Back at Sexy Unique Restaurant, Jax is behind the bar, Brittany is asking about goat cheese balls8, and... LALA’S BAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She’s been gone for two months, and Ariana is shook and not particularly happy to see her. Lala’s got a lot to say to Ariana that she didn’t feel appropriate or okay with saying over text - mostly how sorry she is for not showing up to her birthday. She says that sometimes when things get tough, she shuts down. She admits she’s not the easiest person to be friends with because of it. She’s in actual tears when this happens. Lala came by to tell Lisa to her face that she’s not going to work at Sexy Unique Restaurant anymore - I mean, I doubt she still had a job, but it’s nice to... get closure, I guess?
Lisa’s pretending to work at a computer when Lala comes in, and Lisa, much like Ariana, is SHOOK. Lisa does the classic Lisa thing where she reminds people of how much she’s done for them, but also reminds her that yeah - if you have a job, that’s a responsibility you can’t just disappear from. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Mindy Kaling - “Sometimes you just have to put on lip gloss and pretend to be psyched.” I’ve suffered from some form of depression since I was eleven years old. In the fourteen years since my first suicide attempt, I’ve learned to cope with it. Some days it’s literally impossible for me to get out of bed. Sometimes I’m on the verge of tears at work. But I also have this problem wherein which I care far too much about what others think of me, and live in chronic fear of disappointing anyone, so I show up. I come in, and I smile, and pretend like everything’s okay. Sometimes you have to do it, and it always sucks. Lala apologizes to Lisa, who basically is like, “thanks, but you weren’t totally honest about what was going on in your life.” Lala assumes she’s talking about her personal life, and admits that sometimes she makes the wrong decisions. She starts crying and admits what Lisa wanted her to - she suffers from anxiety, and that makes her life hard to deal with. I’m crying along with her. I get this so much.
I personally think it’s massively unfair that I can’t call out of work “depressed” or “anxious”. I’m mentally ill, I’m sick. But because no one can catch depression or anxiety, that’s not a valid excuse. The stigma around mental illness has made it so that it’s hard to even admit to other people that’s what’s going on. I wish I could tell my friends, “I’m sorry, I’m anxious today, I can’t hang out.” I mean, I could, but I fear the ramifications of me admitting that. It’s hard to admit to others when you’re less than okay. When I get overwhelmed, I shut down. I stop talking to people. I go on Do Not Disturb and I lay in my bed. This is my coping mechanism, and it’s not a great one. The cruelest thing is that Lisa seems to dismiss this as if it’s just “Oh, young, kooky Lala, at it again!” and not as the real issue that it is.
I hope Lala’s getting the help and support she needs. I really do.
In the car on the way up to the wedding venue, we find out that Tom Schwartz’s dad isn’t coming along with (so he thinks) his brothers. Meanwhile, Kristen and her overly-manicured boyfriend, Carter9 are packing their bags, when Kristen drops the accidental surprise bomb about Tom’s brothers after being told by Brittany early in the episode. Jax had gotten mad at Brittany for telling Kristen, but... Jax actually has a worse track record with keeping secrets than Kristen did. Kristen was prepared to take the secret that she fucked Jax to the grave.
Katie and Tom have arrived at their Woodsy Elegance Wedding venue, where someone carries the cake, and they’re given the shocking amount of their wedding. Another clue as to the fact that Bravo is probably paying for this - they would have to at least put down a final payment two WEEKS before the wedding, not two days before. The grand total for their wedding is $51,462 and change. Remember how Tom was like, “oh, wow, I’m dolphinately not spending $50k for a wedding”?? He didn’t, technically. And they’re paying by check, which is the EASIEST WAY TO TELL THEY’RE NOT PAYING FOR THIS WEDDING THEMSELVES.
Let’s also talk about the things that aren’t included in this:
Tom & The Groomspeople’s custom suits
Those ugly ass $18 tea towel invites
BOOZE
WEED
Cake
Various forms of entertainment
Bridal party gifts and favors
Flowers
Photography
This is an $85,000 wedding, at least.
Kristen and ugh, Carter10 show up, and Tom is lamenting writing a $20,000 check when that’s the same amount he owes on his student loans. Here he is, spending it all on a party. But here’s the thing, Tom - NO ONE IS STOPPING YOU. You’re entirely complicit in this. I know your parents went bankruptbut... you can totally just say, “Hey, why don’t we put this money towards me NOT being in debt?” They probably make $20,000 extra a year just doing stupid Instagram sponsorships. They can afford it. But this won’t come up again in a fight, no sir.
Speaking of Rachael O’Brien, she came with Stassi to the wedding! Apparently she and Stassi got lost driving up in the dark and were without cell phone service, but the camera in their car was still working, so they probably weren’t that scared. She’s surprised no one cares. If people cared, it would have been more than just a blip in the episode, Stass.
It’s the day before Katie and Tom’s wedding, and they’re all eating breakfast. Tom Sandoval did the most Tom Sandoval thing, which is losing his suit and that subsequently missing his flight because of it. God, I love you, Tom Sandoval. We hear that Tom’s dad isn’t coming to the wedding because he hates flying, his brothers can’t afford to come, and his sister can’t come because she’s working - in case you forgot, Tom and Katie got married on a Wednesday.11
We see everyone in else in LA getting ready - Jax is anxious because Tom’s brothers aren’t the most reliable of people, and Scheana and Shay are... tense. Oh my god. Shay is so clearly over this group, this show, and definitely over Scheana. But it’s also strange because.. She just asked him if he wanted anything to eat or drink up there at the house, because Kristen was asking, and he exploded. Huh. At Reno-Tahoe Airport, Lisa Vanderpump arrives with Ken, Giggy, and another fluff ball12 with Pandora and Jason. They’re staying at a resort, and Lisa is astonished by the... woodsyness of it all. She and Ken discuss whether or not Tom’s going to go through with it all. We know he does, but they’re valid in their arguments - Ken mentions that yeah, they’ve never seen Tom complete any task. Ever.
Back at the house, Jax, Brittany, and Ariana arrive, sans Sandoval13, and we learn that Sandoval got to the gate right as the doors were closing, so he missed his flight and will miss tubing that day. Meanwhile, Jax and Brittany are sleeping in the parlour room, and guess what?
The Schwartz Triplets missed their flight. Of course.
To Be Continued...
See you tomorrow!
Random Thoughts From The Desk Of Amanda:
Katie is the definition of “just because it’s trendy, doesn’t mean you should do it.”
I love that they made zero reference to the fact that we’ve seen them at Dylan’s Candy Bar Before - with Scheana.
Has no one told Tom Sandoval that sugar-free candy gives you the shits? Someone send him a bag of Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Bears.
I never thought it possible that there could be someone less motivated that Tom Schwartz, but... his brothers seem to be a mess.
And by Katie, I mean BRAVO PRODUCTION because none of the planning of this wedding is making any sense. ↩︎
This whole wedding has been an exercise in Katie showing off how Pretty and Popular she is. Most people don’t use their weddings to show off to their high school bullies, but then again, most people aren’t on reality television. ↩︎
Next time on Romance vs. Reality, AMANDA GOES IN ON PEEPS. FUCK YOU, PEEPS. WHAT DID BIRDS DO TO DESERVE THIS TREATMENT? ↩︎
Or in their case, twenty-six-month-long - I’m giving them a strong estimate, knowing they probably won’t last that long. ↩︎
God bless the people I associate with, because I don’t think any of them would get married just for a party. It helps not to romanticize things like that. ↩︎
Is it basil season yet? I would die for some of my mother’s pasta. ↩︎
I have refused to call James this on my blog because he calls himself that, but... I really couldn’t help myself. ↩︎
I have a high standard of cheese that has been deep fried - I will fight anyone over the last Three Cheese Ball from Olga’s Kitchen, a metro Detroit classic - but I weirdly doubt the goat cheese balls at Sexy Unique Restaurant are anything special. Now I want Olga’s, though. God damn it. ↩︎
Carter has literally done nothing this season but I fucking HATE him. I love a put-together dude, I am so pro-metrosexuality or really, men putting effort into their looks - hell I adore Tom Sandoval for doing so - but god, I really feel like Carter spends hours on his face. I bet Kristen is always on top when they have sex because Carter spent all his energy shaving. I hate Carter and his white supremacist haircut. ↩︎
Next season, I hope Carter goes with Rachael O’Brien and Vail Bloom into the Vanderpump Dungeon of Doom. ↩︎
Straight up though - why aren’t these people in the bridal party, either? In either of my brothers’ hypothetical weddings (that will never happen but still) if their respective partners don’t put me in their wedding parties... I mean. That’s lifetime beef. That’s forever beef. I would never say that directly to them, but... some things you never forget. ↩︎
Sometimes I’m worried about the lack of agency Lisa Vanderpump’s dogs seem to have. ↩︎
Sansdoval. ↩︎
#vanderpump rules#reality tv#tv recaps#this recap is so late#ONE DAY I'LL GET ONE#let's call it an amuse bouche
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last thing you ate. take the number of letters in the name of it, divide by the number of times this week you have sneezed (if more than the number of letters, divide by 2 first. if zero, use 3 instead) got it? now multiply the result by 1.5 and do every multiple of THAT result except numbers ending in 4.
edit: I TOTALLY MISREAD sorry dude
how do u expect me to know how many times i’ve sneezed this week i’m crying… i don’t sneeze a lot so let’s just say 2 times for the sake of it. alright? ALRIGHT. the last thing i ate was a banana so 6 x 2 = 12 then 12 x 1.5 = 18. gotcha.
8. Do you think it’s disgusting when girls get really wasted?
idc my guy. everyone should be able to get fuckin smashed if they want to
12. Do you own a pair of skinny jeans?
skinny jeans are like the only thing i own
16. Do you think you’ll change in the next 3 months?
maybe? hopefully for the best!
20. Are you starting to realize anything?
ur the only one in charge of improving urself. nobody can help you if you don’t help yourself first
28. What was the last thing that made you laugh?
fanart of the voltron paladins as sailor scouts. good shit.
32. Does the person you have feelings for right now, know you do?
she does and we are currently dating :^)
36. Do you know where the last person you kissed is?
already answered
40. Why did you kiss the last person you kissed?
again, i have not kissed anyone yet
48. Do you sing in the shower?
SOMETIMES… when i’m alone in the house. otherwise i’d never do it because i have a terrible singing voice
52. Do you think musicals are cheesy?
i don’t think about musicals… not really my cup of tea, but i’d say they’re p cute.
56. Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?
BOY i wanted to be a lot of things. an astronaut, a zoologist, a marine biologist, among many others. too bad getting a career in science isn’t nearly as easy as little me thought it would be lol
60. Wear slippers?
no. here it’s too warm for slippers
68. Favorite Taylor Swift song?
man oh man oh man!!! the classics are all really good and will always have a special place in my heart but style and wildest dreams are my fuckin jams.
72. Ever won a spelling bee?
already answered
76. Regularly burn incense?
no. knowing me that’d probably be a fire hazard but it’d be nice… i love incense.
80. Hot tea or cold tea?
cold tea all the way dude. but not that gross unsweetened shit
88. Ever have plastic surgery?
nope
92. Do you want to get married?
i don’t think about that too often tbh. i’m still pretty young, but yeah, i guess it would be nice… i like the idea
send me numbers!
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A Special, EXTRA BIG Edition of Reviewing the Hits (2016/2017)
It’s that time again! It’s time to review every song that topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016. Wait, you’re saying “that time again” passed sometime in December, or at the very least January, when people still gave a shit about reviewing the year that was? Fair enough. In my defense, I like to let the dust settle a bit on these hits before I review them to try to get a big picture on the previous year’s pop trends. Either that, or I am unforgivably lazy. Probably a combination of the two. My apologies to my three or so loyal readers who look forward to this column every year!
As a special treat, and so people might actually want to read this in May 2017, I’m not only gonna review all of last year’s number ones, but review all of the current year′s number ones up to this point as well. Relevance!
Just gonna do a quick rundown of 2016 (and I guess 2017), because it already feels like a billion years ago, but the most important trend on the charts in 2016 was the appropriation of Caribbean styles of music, particularly dancehall, into mainstream pop music. Hooray! Another fun, vibrant style of music for the pop charts to chew up and spit out until Ed Sheeran thinks it’s ok to use it.
The parallel story was the resurgence of Hip-Hop, the biggest beneficiary of new Billboard methodology that rewards stream counts as much as radio play. There are still many issues about Billboard methodology and the weighting and averaging of certain metrics over others, but the inclusion of streaming seems to me to be a positive development. Despite the surge in popularity of Hip-Hop in recent years, Top 40 radio is as segregated as it ever has been. Radio programmers are completely stuck in their ways, and less willing than they once were to shift genre or format boundaries to accommodate a rising hit song. The influence of streaming forces programmers hands, but they often don’t succumb to the popularity of the latest Hip-Hop or dance track until well after many genre fans are sick of it. Still, radio programmers still have control over what they play, and this can create a weird incongruity between the top song on the Billboard charts and the top song on the airplay chart--”Panda” and “Black Beatles” topped the charts, but you weren’t exactly hearing those tracks at shopping malls.
I guess what I’m getting at is this: Billboard is the culture now! Songs that would peaked in the outer reaches of the top 40 five years ago routinely reach the top ten--”Broccoli,” “2 Phones,””Don’t Mind,” “XO Tour Llif3″etc. Sometimes when I look at the charts these days, it feels like Billboard charts 80 of the most popular songs in America and leaves it to Complex and The FADER to pick the rest.
Edited to add: Can’t believe I forgot to mention this the first time around, but we are currently amidst a record run of men topping the Billboard chart. It’s been nearly a year since Sia topped the charts with “Cheap Thrills” and since The Chainsmokers’ and Halsey’s “Closer” came off the number one spot, there haven’t even been any female featured artists. I honestly have no idea what to make of this, and I have to think that it’s a blip. Hopefully, this will change soon and it won’t take another Taylor Swift or Adele to wrest the Billboard charts away from the grubby hands of Drake and Ed Sheeran and the rest of their male friends.
Anyway, onto the hits.
2016 - Pirates of the Caribbean
“Hello” – Adele; 11/14/15-1/16/16 (10 weeks)
Wrote about this song in last year’s recap! Here’s what I said (I still agree with most of it, though I probably would dock a point off the final score):
“Adele is the biggest star in music. It’s taken as a given nowadays, but let’s take a moment to contemplate how strange this is. Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Beyoncé have bigger Internet cults of personality and maybe more “cultural relevance,” but Adele is the only true four-quadrant star in today’s music business. Adele is treated like a unicorn by the music press—“so she sold 3 million albums, but Adele is the exception.” Well, yeah, she’s the exception now, but she didn’t magically fall from the sky on a pile of platinum albums. She developed. She stopped being that Amy Winehouse-imitator that many pegged her as when she first came to America in 2009, and developed her own take on that retro-style, foregoing the brassy horns of ‘60s soul in favor of the revealing songwriting and acoustic bombast of ‘70s singer/songwriters like Carole King. People these days seem to forget that Tapestry sold more albums than Off The Wall. Adele’s unique combination of affable and engaging personality, polished songcraft and unmistakable voice got her to the top of the music world, but she’s no unicorn. There can and probably will be another Adele, but only if they can belt out choruses as memorable as “Hello.”
Now for “Hello”: It’s alright. The chorus is great and ridiculously fun to sing along to and the song and the production perfectly build until the chorus explodes. Still, is this a song or just a chorus? The verse lyrics do not add much to the chorus and they don’t provide a coherent emotional arc and too often it seems like Adele and her backing band are biding time until the chorus comes again. Still, what a chorus!”
7/10
Justin Bieber - “Sorry”; 1/23-2/6 (3 Weeks)
A deceptively simple pop song with three chords, a dancehall beat, lots of cool sounds courtesy of Skrillex, and a maddeningly catchy chorus, “Sorry” feels like it should be better than it is. After a quatrain of massive hits in ‘15 and ‘16, Bieber enjoyed something of a critical rehabilitation, especially since most of pop radio seems engineered to recreate the hitmaking magic of “Sorry.” If you haven’t heard yet, Justin is an adult now, who likes to sing about “mature” subjects without any emotional maturity. I’ll give props to the man for trendspotting, but I’m not quite sold on his transformation. The superficially earnest and skin-deep faux-introspective lyrics are a bigger problem in his follow up hit, but the main thing that sidelines “Sorry” is Justin’ vocal, which is overly breathy, melodramatic, and often irritating. Still, it’s hard to deny the chorus melody and the production by Skrillex and Blood strikes an impressive balance between bubblegum pop and the harder-edged sounds for which Skrillex is famous. I don’t need to hear this song ever again, but it doesn’t make me mad.
5/10
Justin Bieber - “Love Yourself”; 2/13, 2/27 (2 Weeks)
“Love Yourself,” co-written by Ed Sheeran and produced with admirable restraint by Benny Blanco, recently won “Best Lyrics” in the 2017 IHeartRadio awards. Leaving aside award-winning couplets like “You think you broke my heart, oh girl for goodness sake/You think I'm crying on my own, well I ain't” and the censored title insult, “Love Yourself” is a cripplingly, hopelessly petulant song. It’s “methinks the lady doth protest too much” in musical form. To his credit, the Biebs does a decent job selling the performance--whatever sweetness there is comes from his voice not the composition. The stripped down arrangement, with amateurish, whispy electric guitar and a trumpet teleported in from a happier song, shines a spotlight on the nasty and vindictive words. I’m thinking that whomever Justin is singing about isn’t missing him too much.
2/10
Zayn - “Pillowtalk”; 2/20 (1 Week)
For a minute there it felt like 2016 would be dominated by former teen stars who are now all-too-proud to boast “Hey, I’m having sex now!” through their music. "Pillowtalk” is an oversung, oversexed, overproduced slog--clocking in at 3:25 that feels like an eternity. It aims for “Climax,” by Usher, but it barely reaches “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons. The song is called “Pillowtalk,” Zayn, so please stop shouting at me!
2/10
Rihanna - “Work” ft. Drake; 3/5-4/30 (9 Weeks)
A refreshingly minimalist, slinky slice of music box dancehall from the best damn pop star working. Nobody stood out on the radio in 2016 like Rihanna. The songs that tried to imitate “Work”--oh and there were plenty--failed to capture the confident spontaneity, effortless melodicism, and sheer force of personality exhibited by RiRi on the track. Most importantly, and the thing that makes “Work” such a radio standout, the producers know to stay out of Rihanna’s way, barely embellishing the original “Sail Away” riddim and letting the diva do her thing. “Work” sails towards a 10, but then Drake shows up to talk his favorite subject: what the object of his affection “used to” do. Ease up, man.
8/10
Desiigner - “Panda”; 5/7-5/14 (2 Weeks)
A bombastic trap anthem from an excitable Brooklyn teenager on the mic and a former Mancunian cell phone salesman behind the boards, “Panda” is one of the more unlikely number ones in a while. Desiigner bought the beat that eventually became “Panda” from producer Menace for the low low price of $200, after discovering the beat on YouTube. The track quickly caught fire, reaching the ear of Kanye West, who slapped his own version onto The Life of Pablo. Strangely enough, “Panda” caught more heat than any of Kanye’s solo tracks, climbing up the charts to become first solo rap hit to reach the top of the Hot 100 since 2011 (Wiz Khalifa, “Black & Yellow).
All that stuff is super cool and all, but besides the origin story, I'm fairly conflicted about this song. There are some truly unique aspects to the track that help me understand why it caught on so quickly. In an era where artists are encouraged to throw a hook at you right off the bat, it takes some balls for Desiigner to let the beat build--holding back for the first 40 or so seconds of the track, letting the natural contours of the instrumental and his wild ad-libs do the work. Did I say natural contours of the instrumental? Yeah, the beat is great. At first blush, it seems a bit rudimentary, but so few radio rap tracks actually have any dynamics--they’re all full steam ahead all the time. It’s refreshing and kinda weird to hear the LOUDquietLOUD formula that’s been done to death in alt-rock in a trap song.
But overall, despite the more interesting aspects, the whole of “Panda” is just garden-variety trap, but without the hook that makes trap music interesting--a unique personality. Desiigner can’t help if his rhythmic baritone sounds similar in timbre to Future, but he uses the EXACT SAME FLOW as Future as well. In fact, I bet there are STILL people out there who think that “Panda” is a Future song and the fact that it topped the charts before any real Future song feels a little bit like Pat Boone’s “Tutti Frutti” outselling Little Richard’s.
6/10
Drake - “One Dance” ft. Wizkid & Kyla: 5/14, 6/4-7/30 (10 weeks)
Leave it Drake to litter a scorching sample and piano loop with his atonal ramblings, magically transforming a potential banger into a Pavlovian stimulus to change the station. Do me a favor and listen to the original instead.
3/10
Justin Timberlake - “Can’t Stop The Feeling”: 5/21 (1 Week)
Like Pharrell’s “Happy,” JT’s “Can’t Stop The Feeling” is a feel-good cash grab from the soundtrack to a kids’ movie. Also like “Happy,” it’s a song that sounds a lot more like a jingle from a Coca-Cola commercial than a pop song that has any business near the radio. JT is a more engaging performer than Pharrell, so this has some sterile charm (and I dig the finger snaps), but mostly, this song is the sound of a once-great pop star grasping for a niche in today’s crowded marketplace now that the other Justin captured his sex appeal and Bruno Mars eclipsed him as the most beloved translator of ‘80s R&B slickness.
4/10
Sia - “Cheap Thrills” ft. Sean Paul: 8/6-8/27 (4 Weeks)
The second catchiest dancehall-influenced track to top the charts in 2016! (Due respect to “Work,” get lost “One Dance”). With the sound of pop music ever drifting toward the Caribbean, it was inevitable that one of pop music’s biggest dancehall crossover stars would rear his head for a comeback. And voila! Here is Sean-a Paul bringing back his bi-di-bam-bam to the pop charts, livening up an otherwise blah track. Sia, as usual, delivers a solid melody and a strong vocal, but the backing track is punchless with no memorable instrumental hooks and a barely noticeable rhythm section.
5/10
The Chainsmokers - “Closer” ft. Halsey: 9/3-11/19 (12 weeks)
When future social scientists study the popular music of America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, they will find that a single turning point plunged the quality of the artform into an irreversible decline: the moment that one dude from the Chainsmokers psyched himself up in the mirror and convinced himself he could sing.
2/10
Rae Sremmurd - “Black Beatles” ft. Gucci Mane: 11/26-12/31; 1/14/17 (7 Weeks)
I’M A FUCKIN’ BLACK BEATLE CREAM SEATS IN THE REGAL ROCKIN’ JOHN LENNON LENSES LIKE TO SEE ‘EM SPREAD EAGLE...
ahem. excuse me.
It’s hard for me to retain my critical faculties when listening to this song, but I’ll try my hardest to succinctly describe why I think "Black Beatles” is one of the greatest rap songs of the past decade or so.
First, Mike WiLL’s beat--with those strange, Eastern-style modal ascending fourths, the Glass-like arpeggiated synth riff that hangs in the air, the brilliant use of negative space in the bottom that transforms any room into a haze-filled cavern, those hi-hats that sound like a million monkeys crafting a masterpiece on a million typewriters...I can go on and on.
Second, I would like to congratulate Swae Lee and company for creating a five minute long song where nearly every moment is a hook. Seriously, there are at least seven or eight lines in Swae’s verse that could be the key line in a massive single (”New day, new money to be made,” “Like clockwork, I blow it all” “She think she love me, I think she trollin’”).
Third, while this might feel like a participation trophy for Gucci Mane and Slim Jxmmi, it’s not. Slim’s absurd lyrics and crazy high energy provide the perfect anchor lap, and Gucci’s verse provides some twisty wordplay as the cream filling the Rae Sremmurd oreo.
Are Rae Sremmurd the next Beatles? Probably not. Are they the trap N’Sync? Warmer. Either way, here’s to many more number one hits and trashed hotel rooms for these crazy kids, who hopefully never grow up.
9/10
2017 - THE YEAR THAT IS NOW
The Weeknd - “Starboy” ft. Daft Punk: 1/7 (1 Week)
In which Abel Tesfaye chops off his famous ‘do and magically transforms into Tears For Fears. Three-and-a-half minutes of build-up that never quite resolves into a climax. I’m not sure what Abel was going for with that chorus--”starboy” is a silly phrase that the song demands you take very seriously. I’m sorry--to me a “starboy” calls to mind the “Star Child” from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey or a superhero’s sidekick. Maybe he’s trying evoke David Bowie (”staaaarmaaan”), but this is a lot more Starship than Stardust.
5/10
Migos - “Bad and Boujee” ft. Lil Uzi Vert: 1/21, 2/4-2/11 (3 Weeks)
A sinister, cavernous, evil trap banger like this topping the Billboard charts?--momma we made it. This year, people finally realized that putting three uniquely talented, rappin’-ass-rappin’ emcees who finish each others sentences and help each other out with absurd ad-libs on every track was a very good idea. Failing that, just grab Quavo and let him sang. As great as Quavo is on everything, and he comes through here with a brilliant secondary hook (”yeah..dat way”), the real star of “Bad and Boujee” is Offset, who peppers Metro Boomin’s track with rhythmic witticisms and provides the year’s most memeable chorus. As for Lil Uzi Vert (eyeaaah)...well... it would have been nice to hear Takeoff on this track, but no matter, he shines on the follow-up hit, and our nation’s new national anthem, “T-Shirt.”
Is Migos better than The Beatles? No. Is “Bad and Boujee” better than “Black Beatles”? Almost.
9/10.
Ed Sheeran - “Shape of You”: 1/28, 2/18-4/29 (12 Weeks)
RIP Dancehall (1985-2017) -- Killed by a charmless, rhythmically challenged chia pet and the tinniest, rinky-dinkiest production to ever top the charts.
1/10
Kendrick Lamar - “HUMBLE.”: 5/6 (1 Week)
Considering all that Kendrick Lamar has done in the past five years, it’s kind of remarkable that people were concerned that Kendrick Lamar might have to sand off his rougher edges to achieve mainstream acceptance. Well, here he is in 2017, the biggest pure rap star in the world, and he gets his first number one, not with an attempted crossover but with a lyrical exercise, with a spare, pounding, piano beat by Mike WiLL Made It. Kendrick’s long-awaited successor to “Backseat Freestyle,” “HUMBLE.” is a bracing listen with the rapper delivering memorable line after memorable line in lockstep with the beat. “HUMBLE.” doesn’t quite have the emotional range or level of detail as some of the better songs on DAMN., but then again, I can’t think of a number one hit since the heyday of B.I.G. that has this level of pure, athletic rapping.
8/10
Bruno Mars - “That’s What I Like”: 5/13 (1 Week)
I’ve been doing this post every year for over a decade, and in that time, Bruno Mars has had SEVEN number one hits. So I’ve had plenty of chances to write about Bruno and I’ve made my opinion on him very clear: dude is a skilled craftsman and talented performer who’s never had an original idea in his oft-fedora’d head. In the past, I’ve levied that as a criticism, but now...I kinda like the dude. All it took for me to change my opinion was for Bruno to stop aping people like Billy Joel and start aping people like Zapp and Roger, or the Gap Band, or Teddy Pendergrass. “That’s What I Like” echoes the adult-oriented R&B of the ‘80s, but it doesn’t feel like as much of a retread as Bruno’s other big hits—borrowing stylistic elements but not in an obvious way. It’s a well-constructed song, written in 2/2 time with jazzy chords, endearingly dumb lyrics (“wake up with no jammies” “Julio cook that scampi”), and a big fat ‘80s-style analog synth on the bridge. What’s not to like?
8/10
DJ Khaled – “I’m The One” ft. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper, and Lil Wayne: 5/20 (1 Week)
Ever the master of A-List posse cuts, DJ Khaled built upon his recent Snapchat celebrity and earned his first number one hit with this beach bbq-ready slice of summer. This is possibly the most impressive combination of talent that Khaled has ever assembled on a song...so why is this so boring? I like most of the individual parts in the song, though I could really do without Bieber’s Caribbean patois at the end, but they come together to form this overlong mish mash. The main culprit, unfortunately, is the instrumental from Nic Nac, who I normally like a lot, which uses and abuses the ‘50s doo wop chord progression without dressing it up with sounds to make it more novel or interesting. I’m happy for Chance and Khaled for earning a #1, and I won’t change the station when it comes on, but “I’m The One” is overstuffed, brimming with wasted potential.
5/10
Luis Fonsi – “Despacito” (Remix) ft. Daddy Yankee & Justin Bieber: 5/27-6/10 (3 Weeks [so far])
The first Spanish-language track to top the Billboard charts since the “Macarena” propelled Bill Clinton to victory over Bob Dole in 1996, “Despacito” is an infectious, if rote, slice of Latin Pop, anchored by Puerto Rican cuatro and an expressive vocal from Luis Fonsi (who I’d embarrassingly never heard of before hearing this song). As the American monoculture fragments into dozens of competing scenes and genres vying for attention, the Billboard reign of “Despacito” demonstrates the positive effects of putting the charts in the hands of streamers instead of radio programmers.
Then again, those dastardly programmers had to sully this with a Justin Bieber intro. I understand that adding Justin Bieber to “Despacito” was the only way to convince English-speaking radio to play it, but its melody is plenty strong enough to stand on its own. The original version benefits from the counterweight between Fonsi’s verse and Daddy Yankee’s rap, which the Bieber intro throws out of whack. Add the fact that Bieber seems to lack respect for the original artists and it looks like a transparent cash grab from a guy who probably doesn’t need the cash. Still, 30 seconds at the beginning of the song can’t take away from the remarkable achievement from the two artists, nor the the Cuatro wizardry of Luis Fonsi.
6/10
BEST #1 of 2016: “Black Beatles”
WORST #1 of 2016: Lots of competition, but let’s go with “Pillowtalk,” narrowly edging “Closer”
BEST/WORST of 2017 coming at the end of the year--this is shaping up to become one of the best ever years for number 1 hits (no thanks to you, Ed).
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