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vagrantblvrd · 3 years

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modern au wth biker luke meet the parents

Friend, you brain-thoughts, I like them. <3!

(Modern AU idea.)

Let’s say this takes place sometime after Luke’s old biker gang comes to town, at least a couple of months afterwards to allow Din to recover from the shenanigans.

I mean, he likes Luke’s friends just fine, they’re all good people and he definitely appreciates the fact they were there for Luke and his family when he needed them to be, but...they can be a lot.

So.

A few months down the road and things are pretty much back to normal for Din’s odd little family, right?

He and Luke attempt to do Real Dates but the universe at large tends to conspire against them in the form of shenanigans like car trouble or that time the the water main broke and Din got roped into helping fix it and other assorted reasons.

Which, honestly, fine with both of them.

Neither of them are all that big on stuff like that, and are just as happy with staying in with takeout and watching a over with Grogu.

(Or, you know, Cara or one of their friends taking Grogu for the night so they can have Alone Time, although half the time that just means one or both of them ends up a snoring, drooling mess before the credits roll on the movie they’re watching, but that’s fine too, because sleep? But also morning frisky times and the whatnot, or just being sappy saps who are totes married who send the morning in bed smooching and making fun of their bed hair and dumb faces and anyway, they do just fine, you know?)

Once in a while, though, the planets align or some BS and they get to go on a Real Date.

Tends to result in one or both of them being !!! and ??? because it’s been a while since they’ve been on one of those or they overthink the whole thing like they aren’t sickeningly gone over one another and more or less married already, but still!

Must make an effort to show how much they love and cherish the other and want them to feel special and such. (Also, their friends/family have had Meetings about this stuff, insist they have at least one (1) Real Date every six (6) months so they can see how normal human beings socialize.

ANYWAY.

Their anniversary is coming up and everyone insists Din and Luke have one of those Real Dates, right?

There are actual strategy meetings to make sure every possible complication/disaster is accounted for, their friends are going to make sure this thing happens or so help them!!1!

Din is honestly a little terrified of telling them it’s not that serious a matter, and Luke thinks the whole thing’s hilarious. (Gets this wistful look on his face when he gets a glimpse of the war room Din’s friends set up in the back room of Boba’s bike shop and makes yet another vague reference about that time his family was at the heart of a vast conspiracy that spanned decades and effects are felt even now, and yeah.

Din gets sent all over the city to Prepare for Real Date.

According to his friends and loved ones he needs a new haircut, and a new suit - which, fair, the last one was from a job and kind of technically stolen because that time he had to go undercover and there was a suit..shop..and anyway, he apologized, but that’s neither here nor there.

SO.

Din’s all over the place on errands his friends and loved ones assigned to him and it’s less trouble to go along with all this than trying to reason with them.

(And honestly, he’s kind of looking forward to it in a weird way?)

Anyhow.

He’s just leaving the final fitting for his suit - all shy and embarrassed because Cara and Fennec went with him to decide on what he/they wanted for him that first time. They’d both given him the softest smiles when he settled on one he liked, fabric and color and all that, approved and told him he cleaned up nice and anyway, he kind of likes the thought of doing that for Luke, okay. It’s...nice.)

Thing is, though.

He’s had the weirdest feeling the last few days, week, maybe. Like. It’s weird but he the thing where he used to work as a bounty hunter with/for Boba and he learned to trust his instincts, so he’s not completely caught off guard when he gets cornered in the parking garage after his last fitting.

A couple of guys he doesn’t recognize, lean guy in all black and a long coat. Long-ish hair and a scar over one eye. Black gloves - something about that sticks in his head, niggling little thought, something familiar.

The other one’s broader built, a little shorter. Din’s mind categorizes him as the muscle. Wearing a dark jacket, baseball cap pulled down to hide his eyes but there’s something familiar about him too, knocking around in Din’s head.

Definitely a threat, but it’s the first guy Din knows he doesn’t want to turn his back on.

Just this aura of threat, and dangerous, and don’t look away from him in Din’s head and for the first time in a long time he wishes he still carried a gun.

Not that he’s helpless by any means, knows hand-to-hand and all that, martial arts and boxed when he was a kid. Also, you know. That collapsible baton that strictly speaking he shouldn’t have, but knowing Boba means exceptions get made, and it’s one he’s never felt all that guilty about. Especially in situations like this one.

Din hasn’t gone for it because for all the bad vibes these guys are giving him they haven’t done anything yet and he’d rather not be the one to start something.

(Paperwork, you know. Also, his date with Luke.)

Oh, they’re between him and his minivan, acting like a couple of tough guys with the posturing but it’s not just that.

Din knows the difference between idiots who watch too many action movies and think they’re worth anything in a fight and the real thing and these two aren’t the useless kind.

So far all they’ve done is stand intimidatingly, which is strange as hell, but fits with the rest of Din’s life, and anyway.

Just as Din’s starting to wonder if this is going to end in a fight, like, really actually, he hears a bike. Aggressively. Getting closer. Aggressively.

Nothing weird about it because they’re in a city and people drive bikes, and hey. Parking garage where people sometimes park their bikes while going about their business elsewhere and really, he tells himself, it’s just some random person who rides a bike.

REALLY.

Only thing is.

It sounds familiar?

Like.

Really, unfortunately familiar in that he swears he’s worked on it himself a time or two. Become unbearably fond of it’s owner, and please, please, please don’t let it be Luke.

So, you know, of course it’s Luke.

Comes roaring into the parking garage, Din sighing and like oh, goddammit, as he and his two new BFFs listen to Luke approaching.

Bike going vroom vroom and tires squealing as he makes it up every level of the parking garage to where Din and his BFFs are.

And it’s like, there’s part of him worried Luke’s going to crash, but the rest of him knows Luke’s a good driver, knows he knows every little quirk of his bike and how it handles and when Wedge and the others were visiting he got to see Luke show off just how good he is.

(It had been utterly terrifying because potential for death and whatnot? But als super hot, so. You can see how Din is conflicted there.)

Anyway, Din is standing there listening to the love of his life vroom vroom up several levels of the parking garage to, like, rescue him or whatever, and the guys who cornered him are sharing this look like why are we even surprised by this and shrug at each other going from top tier threats looking Very Tired all of a sudden that’s kind of confusing, and entirely relatable.

FINALLY they see Luke coming up the ramp and he’s headed right for them, does that totally rad thing where he swings the back of the bike around as he screeches to a stop, solidly between Din and the other two.

Dramatic as hell, but to be fair Din had been warned about that, something about it running in the family and anyway.

Luke himself warned Din. Obi-Wan warned Din, as well as sharing stories of the stuff he and Luke’s dad got up Before while they worked for the same agency. Cody warned Din, shooting a loot at Obi-Wan and dropping his voice so the other man wouldn’t overhear “Don’t let him fool you, Anakin learned most of that from him,” but there was fondness under the scowl aimed at Obi-Wan’s back that Din understood because, well, Luke.

Everyone in Luke’s life Din’s met told him about the Drama that runs in the Skywalker family, so this?

Yeah.

“Luke,” Din says, because the other two are definitely armed, and love of his life who helped expose a massive conspiracy theory and all, but also maybe not the brightest idea to do this right now. Or ever, really. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Luke being Luke, he ignores Din.

Reaches up to pull his helmet off, and Din notices he’s not wearing the glove on his right hand, or the synthetic skin over the prosthetic, like he was in a hurry, didn’t take the time to “pretty it up” for other people the way he puts it, vague shrug strange smile on his face, like there was something more important on his mind.

(Din never got the full story about it, just knows it’s tied to whatever happened to his family and the everything that turned Luke’s life upside down, ended up with him in Din and Grogu’s life.)

Luke sets his helmet down in front of him, and gives Din a quic once-over, checking to see if he’s okay before he lets out a sigh. Flashes Din a smile, relief, something that’s simply happy to see him, and a bit like an apology.

Looks like he’s about to say something, but then the lean figure in black takes a step towards them and the smile drops off Luke’s face and his head snaps around to the other two.

The figure in black stops, goes still.

Din stares because he’s never seen Luke look like that in the time he’s known him.

(Remember a night out with Luke, Obi-Wan, and Cody, Luke laughing about double dates and Obi-Wan’s exasperated smile as they watched Luke and Cody in the middle of a game of pool when a pair of drunk idiots wandered over and tried to pick a fight.

A comment they had been far to overhear but easy enough to figure out with the ugly sneer tossed toward the table Din and Obi-Wan were seated at, something that wiped the tolerant smile off Luke’s face, had him pushing past Cody who was trying to de-escalate the situation, and saying something that made the drunkard go white. Scared shitless as he dragged his friend away.

Din had looked at Obi-Wan who just sighed, faint smile on his face as he shook his head.

And Din, Din had said he’d ever seen Luke angry before -

“Angry?” Obi-Wan had said, amused? “Well I suppose you wouldn’t have.”

He’d taken a drink, and leaned towards Din like he was sharing a secret, just between the two of them, and laughed. “You still haven’t, by the way, in case you were wondering. Trust me, you’ll know when you see it.”

There’d been something else too, about Luke taking after his father that way, weight of history Din wasn’t privy to behind it and a fond exasperation Din knew well.)

“Hey, Dad,” Luke says.

He sounds.

Well, the thing is, Luke doesn’t sound angry.

Or, not just angry.

He sounds careful, controlled. Tense. Like he’s a lot of things at the moment, and the wrong word, moved, from his dad - Luke’s dad - will be the deciding factor.

The figure in all black - Luke’s dad? - sighs. Rubs the back of his neck with a hand, shares a look with the man next to him who shrugs.

“Luke,” he says, sounding...sheepish, caught out. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Din winces on his behalf, feels an odd sort of kinship with the other man who snorts, mutters something like not a great idea.

Luke nods, sounds like oh, no, yeah, I totally understand that.

“I know,” he says. “Good thing mom called to tell me you were coming for a visit.”

Luke’s dad winces. “Oh she did, did she?”

It goes on like that for a bit before Anakin apologizes for pulling this nonsense, approaching Din in a parking garage like something from a spy movie -

“Well, I mean,” Luke says later, once things aren’t quite so bizarre. “He is a spy, so. You know.”

They all head to Obi-Wan’s center where they can “talk” because Luke was supposed to go there to help with administrative stuff or whatever before Padme called, and anyway, surely Anakin and Rex wouldn’t mind?

Obi-Wan takes one look at all of them, the way Luke makes sure to be between Din and the others at all times and pins Anakin with a look.

“Oh, Anakin,” he says, amused and dismayed. “What did you do?”

Din misses a lot of what’s said, things going over his head because Luke and unresolved issues and his dad’s earlier antics, and anyway, anyway.

Din gets a call and goes outside to take it, waves off Luke’s worried look because he’s not done reading his dad the riot act about not being a complete menace about Luke’s life, dad, c’mon.

But the thing is, the call’s not a number he knows, he just needed to get out of there for a moment.

Imagine his surprise, suspicion when he hears, “I hope my idiot of a husband didn’t make too bad of a first impression.”

Because it’s Luke’s mom, and he’s definitely not going to think about how she got his number after the everything with Luke’s dad, and just.

They have a conversation, one that’s actually nice. She asks after Luke, if he’s taking care of himself, if Din is helping in that regard. Asks how Din’s doing, how his adorable son of his is, and Din knows okay. Knows Luke’s sent her pictures of Din and Grogu, the three of them, when he talks to her, but it’s still a surprise how much he talks about them to her?

When he says that, just a random comment he didn’t mean to say there’s a moment of silence and then she laughs. Tells him her son is head over heels for Din, that she’s never seen him like this with anyone, and he adores Grogu, and just.

It’s a lot to take in, hear someone else say, and she must know it because she’s so gentle the rest of their coversation, laughs again as she asks him not to think too badly about Anakin, and he tells her he’ll try, because wow, what a first impression to make,you know?

Just as they end the call the door behind him opens and Din looks up to see Anakin.

He looks...awkward. Embarrassed? Something.

Din watches as Anakin goes over to Luke’s bike, remembers Luke telling him it used to be his dad’s.

Watches the complicated mess of emotions that wash over Anakin’s face as he looks at the bike, runs a hand along the side of the gas tank Luke repainted when he joined that biker gang of his.

Anakin sighs, shoulders slumping and when he looks at Din he doesn’t look like the intimidating figure in the parking garage, like threat and danger and the smart ones run.

He looks. Tired. Worried. Older than he should be, but with what he knows about Luke’s family Din’s pretty sure he knows the reason for that. For what h thought he was doing in the parking garage, maybe, Din’s still on the fence about that.

He understands why Anakin did that, just. Like Luke says, Complicated.

The important thing is that Anakin apologizes to Din. Tells him he’s maybe kind of an idiot - Din is like OH??? - and the Thing with his family that is definitely his fault, but he is trying to work things out with them and he’s just.

A touch overprotective as a result of the everything, so.

He just.

Worries.

Din is like, no, no, he gets it? But maybe try not to look like you’re going to murder your son’s boyfriend in a parking garage maybe? (Assuming Din survives the Skywalker family.)

Some awkwardness and then Anakin’s like, “I didn’t think he’d keep it,” about the bike, because Issues.

And Din is like, well, okay, and tells him what Luke told him about it. About Padme giving Luke the bike and that summer he spent restoring it, about his friends -

“Yeah,” Anakin says, and laughs. “Never expetd him to join a biker gang.”

The thing is he doesn’t sound surprised by that, or even a little worried. Probably used to hiding bodies, or he’s just met Luke’s friends and knows there isn’t anything to worry about there.

Anakin tells Din about how he got the bike, stories when he was a dumb kid and asks if Luke ever managed to get this things with the bike fixed.

Tells Anakin no, it still acts up and is the reason Din and Luke met when the bike broke down that first time, and to his surprise Anakin actually laughs.

“That’s...huh. Padme and I met under similar circumstances.”

Which, weird?

But Anakin’s looking at Din with this tentative little smile, and Din is like, well, he doesn’t know what just that he understands being protective of his people.

So they talk about the bike, and Din tells him about meeting Luke - leaves out the awkward flirting bits but he can tell from the looks Anakin gives him he fills i the details himself.

And then!

At some point Anakin pulls out a little multi-tool because you can’t aways cart a toolbox around with you Din is like, just wonders if Anakin knows Luke carries one for the same reason Well, that and the fact his prosthetic hand can be temperamental and such.

“Well this is definitely better than what I thought I’d find,” Luke says, surprising the two of them who have kind of taken the bike’s engine a little somewhere along the way?

Anakin and Din trying to pinpoint what’s wrong with the bike even though no one has for years by this point, and it’s like uh, ooops?

Because it’s Luke’s bike now and they didn’t mean to, but Luke is just. Amused, fond. Goes over to them and asks if they found the problem yet and when they say no clearly they must continue, and anyway.

Obi-Wan comes out after an hour, maybe two and looks at the three of them with raised eyebrows.

Tells Anakin that Padme’s flight just landed and Cody and Rex left to pick her up from the airport - which.

Huh, that explains where they went. The three of them notices, waved and all but were caught up in figuring out the bike Issue and didn’t give it much thought,

Also, Luke and Din are going to be late for their reservations if they don’t get going and then it’s like.

Anakin all flustered because Padme - knows he’s in trouble with the whole parking garage incident but Padme, and Luke and Din share this look with Obi-Wan because it’s seriously adorable.

Also, though, also.

Luke and Din and a quick conversation off to the side while Anakin goes inside to get cleaned up - smudge of oil or grease on his face, and his hands are filthy and just.

Yes.

And then Luke asks if Obi-Wan and COdy had plans for the night, all casual and such, and Obi-Wan has this little smile on his face.

Because he knows these idiots so well, and tells Luke that no, he doesn’t actually, is there a reason Luke’s asking?

And of course Luke is asking because Luke and Din cancelled their reservations, but there’s a nice restaurant they know that should still have roo for their group if no one object.

Just a nice little family dinner out, and anyway, no pressure?

So of course they do the family dinner thing - Anakin worried because the whole everything from earlier and takes Din and Luke aside and apologizes again, and that they should go have their date and it’s like.

Luke gets this look on his face, all soft and kind of sad and touches his dad on the arm to get him to look at him.

“Just. Don’t do anything like that again, alright?”

That look from the parking garage on his face again for a split second, and Anakin clearly sees it, knows understands.

Looks at Din to see what his feelings are on things and Din just shrugs because while it had been a bit much, he did understand, and anyway.

So.

Din gives Luke a ride home to get ready for the dinner - Luke insisting Din show him the new suit...later, which gets poor Din all flustered while Luke laughs at him, and anyway, anyway.

The go off and have their family dinner, where Din is rightfully in awe of Padme and the way Anakin dotes on her. Gets this soft little feeling in his chest at the easy relationship between her and Luke, and leans over to Obi-Wan at one point like.

“Are Cody and Rex related?” because there’s a definite resemblance between them.

Obi-Wan almost chokes on his wine, and manages to get out something about the two of them being from a big family. Gets this little smile on his face and tells him to ask Boba about it sometime, and anyway.

Padme gets Din alone for a private chat while everyone’s bringing the cars around and getting ready to say their goodnights.

Apologizes for Anakin again and tells Din they both like him very much, and Din while Din is trying to think of something to say about that Anakin pulls up to the curb.

Padme gives Din a mischievous little grin and presses a kiss to his cheek, tells him that what they like most about him is how happy he makes their son, and while he’s all flustered from that gets in the waiting car with Anakin.

Luke comes over, worried little frown on his face and Din is like, so confused?

Luke’s parents are so confusing, and Luke laughing at him about it while he herds Din over to the minivan isn’t helping, and anyway, anway.

For a day that started rather ominously, it ended surprisingly well.

And!

Din even gets a goodnight kiss for his troubles, so you know, good day.

#star wars nonsense #dinluke #modern au idea #anon #replies #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#Anonymous

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theonethatcompletesyou · 6 years

Text

Would You Be So Kind - Chanyeol (EXO)

Word Count: 2,627

Genre: High School AU, slight angst

Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader

Warnings: None!

A/N: This was supposed to be a short drabble like my Sana one. But it quickly got away from me. Whoops! Check out the song here!

Please fall in love I think it’s only fair There’s gotta be some butterflies somewhere (wanna share)

--- based off the song “Would You Be So Kind” by dodie

Summary: A lot of people assumed that you disliked Chanyeol. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Or; it started with pink hair, and it sort of devolves from there.

<< Previous Track Next Track>>

Chanyeol dyed his hair pink, and that threw off your whole day.

You found yourself looking his way more than usual, anticipating when he would turn the corner, and you could catch a glimpse of him once more. Your heart beat faster when you spotted him in the distance, laughing and talking with his friends.

It was just like the time he dyed his hair dark red—except much, much worse.

Even Chanyeol noticed your odd behavior when, after telling another one of his terrible jokes, you simply walked away instead of giving him your usual snarky remark..

“What did you do to make her mad this time, hyung?” his friend Sehun asked him as you walked away for the third time that day.

“No idea,” Chanyeol replied,—and maybe it was you being delusional, but thought he sounded disappointed.

Guilt settled into your stomach, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to talk to him when your heart threatened to leap out of your chest.

The whole day continued like that way, and the heavy feeling in your chest worsened as it went on.

By the time your last class ended, you resolved to talk to him. The ‘kicked puppy’ glances that he gave you during class were simply too hard to ignore. Surely you could get over your social ineptitude enough to engage in small talk, right?

Maybe not.

Still, your feet made you catch up to him in the hallway as he leisurely walked to the exit.

The words came out of your mouth before you could stop them. “How come you dyed your hair, Chanyeol?”.

He jumped and whirled towards you. His big eyes blinked a few times before answering you. “Oh! I lost a bet with Baekhyun.” He looked away, avoiding your gaze. “Why? Do you think it looks bad?”

“I think it suits you,” you admitted, giving him a small smile.

His eyes snapped to you again. You tried to convince yourself that the blush on his cheeks was just a trick of the light. “You think so?”

Chanyeol gave you a smile then, one that made the storm inside your chest calm and settle. He ran a hand through his pink hair, and your hand twitched with the sudden desire to do the same.

“Yes,” you said, slightly dazed. “I like you a lot.”

His eyes widened, and his hand dropped to his side. You wondered why he reacted that way until registered the words that came out of your mouth. You bit the inside of your cheek so hard, you tasted blood. The silence between you stretched on, and the longer that neither of you said anything, the harder your heart seemed to work.

Chanyeol snapped out of it first with a blink and a slight shake of the head. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

His voice startled you out of your daze. In lieu of answering, you simply turned around and walked out the door.

The sun shone brightly when Minji went to meet with you. It was unusually warm for an April afternoon. She had gotten a text from you that simply read ‘SOS,’ and as soon as she got out of detention that day, she met you at your usual spot outside the library. She sighed when she looked at you. She pursed her lips when she set her things down on a metal table.

“(Y/N), are you okay?” she asked, her tone wary. “I got your text earlier.”

You sat with your head on the table and groaned in response.

“Is it about Chanyeol again?” she prodded.

You moaned louder.

“That bad, huh?” she teased.

You pouted. “Minji, I messed up really bad.”

Minji’s brows scrunched as she took in your expression. “Wait, so tell me exactly what happened?”

You covered your face with your hands, the feeling of mortification tumbling over you like a wave.

“You know how he dyed his hair pink?” you mumbled.

Minji nodded.

“I tried to tell him about how cool I thought it was,” you felt your face become more and more heated with each word, “and I said ‘I like you a lot’ instead of ‘I like your hair a lot.’”

Minji tipped her head back as she laughed with a full-bodied bellow. The movement caused her dark brown hair to flow down her back. In any other situation, you would have marveled at how effortlessly pretty your best friend was. Instead, you glared.

“It’s not funny!” you yelled, causing people nearby to turn and gape in your direction.

Minji continued to laugh. You buried your head in your hands, wanting the ground to swallow you whole.

“You’re a terrible friend,” you said, voice muffled behind your hands.

“I know,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “But that’s such a you thing to do.” She smirked, “Especially since everyone is under the impression that you hate him.”

You sneered. “Okay, I don’t laugh at his jokes a few times, and suddenly I’m his mortal enemy.”

Minji rolled her eyes, “Sure, it’s just that.”

You glared, “What is that supposed to mean?”

She shook her head, “Nothing, nothing.” She reached over and patted your shoulder. “Don’t worry (Y/N). I’m sure everything will work itself out.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. I turned around and just left him there. He probably thinks that I actually hate him or something! I have no idea what to do!” You ran a hand through your hair. “Am I just supposed to pretend it didn’t happen? Am I supposed to confront him? Am I supposed to move away to Russia?” You tugged on Minji’s sleeve. “Tell me what to do?!”

Apparently done being comforting, she shook your hand off. “For goodness sake!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Just talk to him if it’s bothering you this much!”

You shook your head, panic filling your chest at the thought of once again interacting with Chanyeol. “No, nope! Out of the question! You might as well set me on fire.”

“With how annoying you’re being, I may as well do that.” Minji’s phone buzzed on the table, and she snatched it up. Her brows furrowed again as she hastily typed something into her phone. She ignored your questioning noises as she shoved her things into her bag.

“Where are you going?” you whined.

“I forgot I have an appointment,” she answered. “Plus, you’re difficult to talk to when you’re like this. Do yourself a favor and give yourself a self-care day.” With that, she turned around and walked away.

“Come back!” you yelled as she the distance between you increased. “I thought you loved me!”

She shook her head, refusing to look back at you.

Rude.

Unbeknownst to you, Minji slipped into a bright red car waiting for her. She smiled at the person in the driver’s seat.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me,” greeted Baekhyun with a grin.

Minji smiled back. “No problem. I have a feeling that I know what you wanted to talk about anyway.”

“And what is that?”

Minji crossed her arms. “Oh, come on, Baekhyun. Chanyeol is your best friend, and (Y/N) is mine. They happen to have the biggest not-rivalry in the history of our school. Not to mention that she blurted out her not-so-secret feelings to your best friend and hasn’t recovered since.”

Baekhyun’s shoulders relaxed. “So her feelings are genuine, then?”

“Of course they are!” she exclaimed, appalled at the underlying accusation. “What kind of person do you think she is?”

Baekhyun shrugged, “I don’t think she’s a bad person, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that the things that I’ve been hearing about her at school and what you’re telling me about how she feels about Chanyeol are contradictory.”

Minji scoffed. “She might have communication issues, but she isn’t cruel. She’s just very bad at expressing her feelings. I didn’t know that she considered me her best friend until she got me a necklace for my birthday last year.”

“I’m sorry for making assumptions, then,” he said with an apologetic smile. “But the point still stands, your friend broke my friend. Can you make her fix him?”

“Funny,” Minji said with a smirk. “I was about to ask the same thing.”

They both leaned back in their seats, staring at each other before suddenly bursting into laughter.

“We really need better friends,” Baekhyun said once his laughter died down.

Minji nodded in agreement.

Baekhyun looked out the window in thought. Minji glanced through her phone and read several texts from you, apologizing for how you acted and to come back. She rolled her eyes, but a small smile broke through her expression.

You were so lucky to have her as a best friend.

A flurry of movement occurred next to her, and she turned to see Baekhyun with his whole body facing her. If he were a cartoon, there would be a light bulb above his head.

“I just have possibly the best idea of all time,” he announced, his eyes twinkling in a way that made Minji think that maybe it was the opposite.

“What is it?” she hesitated.

Baekhyun flashed a smile that she could only categorize as ‘crazed.’

It was two days later when Baekhyun leaned against the door to the locked storage room. “I felt like that was too easy,” he commented casually.

“I wouldn’t think too much about it,” Minji said, ignoring the noises of confusion and subsequent angry knocks on the door. “I really don’t think they’re as clever as they like to think they are.”

On the other side, you pounded on the door. “I hate you, you suck!” You yelled. “I’m going to murder you when we get out of here!”

“Baekhyun and I are going to get ice cream! If you two resolve this within an hour, then I’ll get you your favorite,” Minji said, her voice muffled through the door.

“Not even ice cream will make me forget this betrayal!” You screamed.

Chanyeol banged on the door as well, “Baekhyun! I can’t believe you’re part of this!”

“Sorry, Yeollie~” Baekhyun sang. “It’s for your own good—and my own sanity.”

“Bye, you two!” yelled Minji, her voice getting further and further away.

You kicked the door in frustration. You stalked to the furthest wall and slid down, drawing your legs to your chest. You caught Chanyeol’s eyes; you felt like you were burning under his stare.

He shuffled toward you and settled at your side. Your heart raced in response.

“Do you think they’ll keep us in here long?” he asked quietly.

“Knowing my friend, we’re not getting out of here until we resolve our issues,” you sighed.

“I don’t have issues with you.” He scowled. “You’re the one that has issues with me.”

“That’s not true at all!” you exclaimed. Panic rose in your chest. This was the worst idea ever.

“Isn’t it though?” snapped Chanyeol. He glared, but you could see some of the sadness there, too. “I try to talk to you every day. But every time I talk or make a joke, you purse your lips at me. You roll your eyes when we make eye contact. You stiffen up whenever I’m near you, like now.” He pressed his lips together in a thin line. “I just wanted to know what I did to make you hate me.”

“Why do you care?” you snapped back.

“Because I made you laugh when I first met you!” he yelled. “And then, you didn’t, and I’m pretty sure short of streaking through campus, I would do anything to make you laugh like you did that first time.”

You stayed silent after his confession; he looked away from you. A heavy pause hung in the air.

“I think you’re funny,” you mumbled. He looked toward you again, but you made yourself stare straight ahead. “I think you’re hilarious. I also think you’re sincere and charismatic.”

“Then why do you treat me like that?”

“Because I’m…none of those things.”

Chanyeol’s eyebrows drew together. “What is that supposed to mean?”

You rubbed your hand over your face, “I’m not good at talking to people in general, okay? The only reason I have the friends that I do is because they talked at me so much they decided we were friends. I’m socially inept, especially with cool people like you.”

His face perked up. “You think I’m—”

You held a hand up. “Not the point.”

“So you’re mean to me because…you’re shy?”

You groaned, “Yes? No? Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You do realize that you just gave every possible response to that question, right?”

“Look, I didn’t think that you noticed me, okay? And you actually paid attention the first time I gave you a snarky response. So I did it again and again, and I sort of thought that our relationship was like that after a while. But I never meant to mean it maliciously. And then rumors started spreading that I hated you—and it got out of control!”

He leaned back until his head hit the wall.

“We’re idiots,” he pronounced.

You cocked an eyebrow in confusion. “How so?”

Chanyeol disengaged from the wall and crawled towards you. He didn’t stop until he was inches from your face. His big eyes twinkled in the dim light, a soft smile gracing his features.

His proximity made your heart thunder in your chest.

“Let me make this clear,” he began, “you’ve always had my attention. I crave it like a man in the desert needs water. I always thought my liking you was obvious. You acting like you were disgusted with me felt like a rejection, but I played along, anyway.” He ran a hand through his cotton candy hair. “When you blurted out that you liked me, I thought it was a cruel joke.” He looked deep into your eyes. “But it wasn’t a joke, was it?”

You shook your head fervently, “I meant it. I just—I’m bad at—”

“I know, sweet girl,” he said, voice dropping an octave. “I don’t want you to be nervous talking to me.” He reached over and played with the ends of your hair. You felt your heart stutter. “Just tell me the first thing that comes to mind,” he continued. The combination of the action and his soft voice sent you to a dreamlike state.

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. “You playing with my hair is giving me butterflies.” When you opened your eyes, Chanyeol was gazing at you with a fond smile.

“Funny,” he whispered. “I feel that way whenever I see you.” He grasped his chin in a mock-thinking pose. “Now, what do we do about that?” He let go of his chin to grasp your hand, his large hand covering yours completely. His calluses were rough against your skin, but his touch was gentle. “Maybe we could share them?”

You giggled. “You’re such a dork.”

His face lit up at your reaction. “Got you to laugh, though.”

You nodded, “That you did.” You used your free hand to text Minji. “I’m gonna get mint chocolate chip. What do you want?”

“I just gave you the world’s greatest pick up line, and your mind is stuck on ice cream?!” Chanyeol exclaimed.

“It’s the least our friends can do by trapping us in a storage room to fend for ourselves. It might take a little longer for them to come get us though. Is that okay?”

Chanyeol squeezed your hand. “I don’t mind that at all.”

“Me neither,” you replied, sending the text.

“I like you, just so you know.”

You looked at him stone-faced, “I got that.”

He frowned, but you reached toward him and kissed his cheek. “I like you, too.”

#exo #chanyeol #exowritersnet #chanyeol scenario #exo scenario #Park Chanyeol #my stuff #kiki writes stuff sometimes #mine

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cheomonsbasssy1986 · 3 years

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harpertimothy1994-blog · 3 years

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moksha-l-blog · 4 years

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Iceland visiting evaluation

1. Customer expectation

The scenery there is the same as I expected, it was breath-taking. And the service is better than what I expected. Customers have expected basics like quality service and fair pricing. When I was in Iceland, we could feel Iceland's service to customers all the time. I originally thought that a tourist city like Iceland has a large number of people and local people would have a bad attitude. But they were not. Every day when I meet the hotel staff, they will say hello to me. That was a very comfortable service, that means they did not have an arrogant attitude and each of them was friendly enough to speak clearly. Probably because Iceland is a tourist city, they know how to make customers satisfy. Consumer expectations reflect both past and current product evaluation and user experiences (Smith, 2018). I think it would be better if Iceland could add more public toilets in some places. As facilities are provided and awareness grows, visitor numbers will increase. (Butler, 2005) When we were climbing the snowy mountains in Iceland, I noticed that the fences on both sides of the boardwalk were fragile, just a rope, and in some places, there was no protection. In this case, once the flow of people becomes large, it will be very dangerous. Iceland should also add some basic protection facilities.

2. Tourism sustainability:

“Sustainable tourism development requires the informed participation of all relevant stakeholders, as well as strong political leadership to ensure wide participation and consensus building. Achieving sustainable tourism is a continuous process and it requires constant monitoring of impacts, introducing the necessary preventive and/or corrective measures whenever necessary.” Tourism is like the economic driver. Tourism development is vital to a country. But if not developed well, it also may cause damage to the local people or environment. The aim of sustainable tourism is to increase the benefits and to reduce the negative impacts caused by tourism for destinations.

Iceland set slogans for environmental protection, it is the most convenient and simple way to warn people to protect the environment. And I also found that cigarette butts rarely appear on the ground in Iceland. When a place is clean, people who have the habit of throwing garbage everywhere will be embarrassed to litter. For decades, the notion of sustainability has been a challenge for many developing destinations in peripheral areas (Espiner et al., 2017). Environment impacts to destination can be positive and negative. Because of its unique scenery, there still many tourists would like to go again. But at the same time, there also have people think even though Iceland is very beautiful, they would not come again because of the cold weather. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence keep summers chilly, with most of the archipelago having a polar climate. Every tourism area has a “carry capacity”. As I mentioned above, in addition to increasing protection measures, the method of protecting tourists' safety when climbing snowy mountains can also control the flow of people up the mountain and climb the boardwalk in batches.

3. Tourism motivation:

Tourists tend to occupy a significant place in the socio-theoretical landscape. The major purpose of the traveller is to have a glimpse or to gaze at the surroundings like a piece of land, a sea, a group having a different ethnicity or a ritual. All these tend to interact with each other and determine the traveller’s perception and also influence his observations on the basis of any pre-visit narratives which the tourist tries to construct. According to Swarbrooke , the six categories of motivation are: ‘physical’ (chief purpose being relaxation, improvement of health, need for exercise and sex); ‘cultural’ ( to experience novel culture and for the purpose of sightseeing); ‘status’ ( driven by the desire to be exclusive and to seek fulfilment ; ‘personal development’ ( to seek knowledge and to learn novel things); ‘emotional’ ( as a source of nostalgia, fantasy, romance, adventure as well as spiritual needs) and ‘personal’ ( for visiting friends and relatives or to escape from something). Tourists are majorly concerned about their own experience and try to get the maximum out of each experience irrespective of the length or purpose of visit. (Pearce, 2015: 6). “The need for destinations to create a unique identity – to differentiate themselves from competitors – is more critical than ever.” (Morgan & Pritchard, 2002)

Iceland is well known for its untouched nature and unique atmosphere. Most people travel to Iceland for reasons of Aurora and beauty. Many people travel thousands of miles to Iceland just for its distinctive snow scene and watching the aurora. And it has been insisting on developing its own characteristics. There are many introductions and guides about Aurora in the hotel lobby where I live. Tourism is considered as a world-wide socio-economic phenomenon which has arisen from the basic human need of seeking leisure, to establish contact with nature and also the desire to travel to new places and experience different kind of cultures. Tourism plays a key role in contributing towards the well-being of tourists by providing opportunities to spend their holidays, entertain themselves, escape from boredom as well as fulfil their other human needs and desires.

4. Life cycle

There is no doubt that tourism areas are changing all the time, from butler’s tourism area life cycle we can divide the life cycle of the attraction into seven parts: Exploration, Involvement, Development, Consolidation, Stagnation, Decline and Rejuvenation. The TALC has gone on to become one of the best-known theories of destination growth and change within the field of tourism studies. It is arguably one of the most significant contributions to studies of tourism development because of the way it provides a focal point for discussion of what leads to destination change, how destinations and their markets change and, even, what is a destination. I think Iceland is still developing. The development stage reflects a well-defined tourist market area, shaped in part by heavy advertising in tourist-generating areas. As this stage progresses, local involvement and control of development will decline rapidly. (Butler, 2005)

(from: Wikipedia)

It is clear that Iceland's tourist population has continued to rise in recent years

Tourism can involve location, local transportation, accommodations, entertainment, recreation, nourishment and shopping. All this together made up a destination. If a tourist attraction wants to extend its “life”, it needs to strengthen sustainable development and customer management. Customer management can be achieved from the perspective of target marketing. Targeting marketing can divide customer into different categories. While categorizing, tourism destinations can choose the desired customer group. This can control the flow of people and limit customer behaviour at the same time. As Iceland is a tourist destination known for its nature, Iceland needs to maintain sustainable development and protect the environment to extend its “life”. Through Doxey’s theory, Iceland is still in the “APATHY” stage. Services provided to foreign tourists were for a long time an insignificant part of the Icelandic economy, rarely contributing more than 2 percent to GDP. Doxey’s (1975) ‘Irridex’ model suggests that communities pass through a sequence of reactions as the impacts of an evolving tourism industry in their area become more pronounced and their perceptions change with experience. Thus, an initial euphoria is succeeded by apathy, irritation and, eventually, antagonism. Human feelings are mutual, and the attitude of local residents towards tourists often depends on the behaviour of tourists. Another important factor affecting the development of tourist destinations is seasonality. Most people choose to go to Iceland in winter because it is a good season to see the Aurora and scenery at that time is the most beautiful. Iceland could do some activities during the off-season.

Conclusion

Iceland is still developing. It can have better development or decline in the future depends on its tourism policy.

Reference

https://www.salesforce.com/research/customer-expectations/

Morgan, N. and Pritchard, A. (2002) Destination Branding. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann

Smith, S., 2018. Customer Expectations: 7 Types All Exceptional Researchers Must Understand. 2 march.

Espiner, S, Orchiston, C & Higham, J, 2017. Resilience and sustainability: a complementary relationship? Towards a practical conceptual model for the sustainability-resilience nexus in tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 25, 1385–1400.

Swarbrooke & Horner (2011). Consumer behaviour in tourism. Routledge: Abingdon.

Pearce, P. L. (2005). Tourist Behavior: Themes and conceptual schemes. Clavedon: Channel View.

Butler, R. (Ed.). (2006). The tourism area life cycle (Vol. 1). Channel view publications.

"krpano - thorsmork". Vr-iceland.grandpano.sk. Retrieved 13 August 2018.

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toddrundgren-interactive · 7 years

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Nothing/Anything: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren

From Here to Utopia

by David Fricke for Trouser Press, July 1978

Todd Rundgren lies comfortably against a pillow on the living room floor of his Bearsville, New York retreat, located just off a winding, ill-paved driver’s challenge called Mink Hollow Road. Against one knee-high landing is a row of records encroaching its way across the room. The first one, front and center, is a copy of Rundgren’s first solo album, Runt, no doubt the result of a quiet stroll down memory lane.

“Actually, I just produced a punk album by Jean-Yves Labat – M. Frog – the original synthesizer player in Utopia. One of the tunes is a re-working of a song from that album called ‘I’m in the Clique.’ His new album is called Froggy Goes A’Punkin’.” Right there, in barely over 25 words, is the gist of Todd Rundgren’s stormy ten-year career as one of American rock’s most prodigious and, at times, petulant geniuses.

Alternately a defiantly individualistic solo artist, a much-sought-after producer of hits for other occasionally less-talented folk, and the democratically inclined lead guitarist for a band and ideology called Utopia, Todd Rundgren is all things to only a few understanding people. His records with and without Utopia since 1973’s A Wizard, A True Star have sold at a modest but discouragingly fixed rate of approximately 200,000 a pop – enough to keep his commercial momentum at a respectable pace, but not enough to keep him from languishing in the shadowed obscurity that is the scourge of all cult figures. But Rundgren would seem totally unaffected by his inability to make a large-scale artistic impact on an audience he feels is brainwashed by the false promises of 70s pop and the insensitive record industry prophets that make them. Much like the Number 6 character portrayed by Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, Todd Rundgren writes for himself the role of a man who consistently defies the powers-that-be who, in this case, would emasculate the creative potential of any single musical project he might care to name. He will cite such scurrilous activity as going back as far as his celebrated late ’60s stint with Nazz and then detail the problems he claims he faces in pursuing a musical career, either on his lonesome or in the company of fellow Utopians. Take, for example, his solo recording contract with Bearsville Records. “I deliver albums on approval. I’m not obligated to deliver any albums to them, but I can’t take an album to another label either. I just sort of do what I feel like doing and they have the option of putting them out or not putting them out. The way they behave when I deliver them, I don’t understand why they bother. You’ll have to ask them.”

I did just that, calling Bearsville’s California office to ask company head and long-time Rundgren confidante Paul Fishkin about Rundgren’s business circumstances and the company’s attitudes toward the music Rundgren says they have no commercial faith in.

“There is a certain level,” Fishkin replies, “on which Todd likes to think of himself as independent. He’s also a very – what’s the word? – mercurial personality and much to his credit he’s never wanted to be categorized. That’s what makes him so unique. But that also makes it very frustrating for us because we would like to sell more records.”

So would Todd, but for him, that’s not the bottom line.

“That’s another argument I have with the record company. They feel that selling 150,000 albums in this day and age makes you irrelevant, that it has to be a million and a half albums to be worth anything. Their whole attitude is like world conquest or manifest destiny where you’re just supposed to expand and expand and expand in the same way the economy does until you hit your recession and your economy collapses.

“I don’t particularly feel that way. I feel that it seeks its own level. I can’t force it any greater. I’m not attempting to be anyplace, underground or overground. I’m just attempting to do what I feel I should do in terms of making records.”

Fishkin, a week later and 3000 miles away, makes Todd’s point for him.

“He makes the music in his head at a given moment. And that music is the story of his life at that moment.”

Raz-A-Ma-Nazz

The fourth largest music market in the country, Philadelphia nevertheless endures a perennially bad rock’n’roll reputation. The East Coast industry focus makes an occasional stop there, paying due respects to the bastard children of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand – that South Philly brigade of acne-free faces like Frankie Avalon and the imminently forgettable Fabian – with more recent tributes paid the R&B factory run by Philadelphia International’s Gamble and Huff.

As a result, the city’s young white rockers still fight an uphill battle trying to make even their own local audience aware of the talent developing there, only to find their fortune in a two-hour drive to the north. The psychedelic joyride we now know as the late ’60s found many of Philly’s aspiring rock bands coming about as close as they ever would. Mandrake Memorial, Edison Electric Band, Elizabeth, Sweet Stavin Chain, High Treason – they all snagged fleeting moments of recognition with albums of fair to excellent quality. But by 1968, there was no question about who reigned supreme, even if they didn’t gig with the same regularity and took a casual pass on hippie ethics. Nazz – generally through the services of the still-18-year-old Todd Rundgren – were unanimously, if begrudgingly, voted most likely to succeed. That, in the end, Nazz dissolved in a flurry of infighting and managerial mishaps, Rundgren attributes more to the times than the place.

“Nazz was certainly out of context in the sense that it wasn’t typical of what was happening at the time.”

Rundgren has been talking about his own musical tendencies at any given time vis a vis those considered in vogue at that given time. It is a theme he sounds throughout the conversation and Nazz is just another case in point.

“It wasn’t exactly out of context,” he submits, “because we were the premiere local band at the time. We did have a large following. But the Nazz was considered out of context because the music that was happening was not at all like ours.

“First of all, everybody was taking a lot of drugs. The whole thing was that late ’60s music evolved out of this street-level thing, like San Francisco and so on. Like, ‘hey, blues.’ Except I’d already gone through the blues trip with Woody’s Truck Stop.”

Actually, Rundgren had been through that and more by 1967 when Nazz first reared its Anglo-foppish head. He could count to his credit the usual Beatle-copy and Britrock cover bands like Money (the same heard at the start of side four of Something/Anything). As a young, impressionable lad growing up in the depressingly nondescript Philly suburb of Upper Darby, he ignored Elvis Presley (“A lot of people who emulated him were machismo-greaser-killer types who were always out to kill me.”), opting for what he describes as the “art school personality” personified by the Beatles, “wanting to be a little different and strange and still have people like you.”

Come 1966 and Rundgren fancied himself a budding white bluesman, heading for center city Philadelphia and joining forces with an early hippie configuration, Woody’s Truck Stop, which held forth at the bohemian Walnut Street hangout called the Artist’s Hut. Paul Fishkin, who managed the Truck Stop for a time, describes the group as “sort of the Grateful Dead of Philadelphia.” However, their few claims to fame were Todd, a marginally excitable album on Smash (post-Todd), and a guitar player by the name of Alan Miller who raised a court ruckus when his high school suspended him for not cutting his hair to a regimental length. Such were the times and the times were not with Todd because he was (depending on whom you believe) either tossed out of the Truck Stop for not taking drugs (Fishkin’s story) or because he didn’t like the band’s drug scene (Todd, natch).

His next stop was what he calls “high concept,” a very Beatle-y trip to include singer-organist Stewkey (from the group Elizabeth), bass guitarist, occasional songwriter, and old friend Carson Van Osten, and ex-Munchkins drummer Thom Mooney. Stewkey remembers that it was Todd and Carson who formulated the idea for Nazz, then recruited him and Mooney to complete the band. As Nazz, they eventually released the first so-called progressive rock record out of Philadelphia (“Open My Eyes” b/w “Hello It’s Me”) and, with the debut album Nazz, defined an entirely new 1967 sound that could be described in today’s terminology as “power pop.”

“Nazz was a high concept band,” reiterates Rundgren. “We emulated a lot of English bands like the Who and Small Faces and really wanted to be as big as the Beatles, so we conceptualized everything on that level. The music was designed to have more of a common denominator, play more of an eclectic thing – a lot more vocals than what was happening at the time. At the time, everything was endless guitar solos. We had long conceptual songs, but even those were a high level of composition, as opposed to dropping acid and jamming.”

But was it just guitar solos and acid? Few of the bands, local or otherwise, who played Philly’s psychedelic showplaces like the Trauma, the Electric Factory, and the Second Fret coffeehouse even dented the charts with their extended paeans to the new consciousness. A glance at any one of the Top 100 lists of the late ’60s would reveal the Beatles at the height of their power, the Who slipping in every once in a while, and American groups like the Grass Roots, the Union Gap, and Paul Revere and the Raiders taking their turns with alarming regularity. If anything, Nazz’s neo-Whoish energy wedded with Rundgren’s gift for writing inescapable melodic hooks should have made them prime contenders.

“Well, Nazz wasn’t really counter to things that were happening,” he’ll say, implying that maybe it was more the creative atmosphere which was at fault.

“As I recall, a lot of my influences at the time were popular, but in other aspects. Like Jimmy Webb and the type of things he was doing influenced me to write ‘A Beautiful Song’ (the extended orchestral opus on Nazz Nazz). It’s just that we were joining a lot of disparate influences in the Nazz and it was a combination that wasn’t necessarily accessible.

“It’s also conceivable that the Nazz could have been more successful if our management had been a little more realistic. If we had played around more consistently and had a chance to develop our performance to the extent that we were developing our recording, then things might have happened differently. But our manager had this theory that if we had played around too much, we would establish ourselves as having a ‘low’ price tag. He was very money-oriented, mostly because he spent money at an incredible rate.”

So even with the first album, Nazz were left to their own devises. Despite production credits for Chicago producer Bill Traut (Shadows of Knight, etc.) and, on “Open My Eyes” and “Hello It’s Me,” Michael Friedman, Rundgren says that Nazz went the whole thing alone. “He (Traut) just sat there and read the trades while we were working. Then he mixed the album and a couple of hours later flew back to Chicago. We wound up remixing the whole album anyway. Michael Friedman was the partner of our manager at the time and he just wanted to have his name on the record somewhere. But all he did was sit around…”

…and read the trades, no doubt. But the end result soon obscured any of the shit flying around in the managerial arena. Nazz was and still is a refreshing, uplifting experience, totally lacking in artistic pretension. The rock (“Open My Eyes,” “Lemming Song,” “When I Get My Plane”) is raw at the core with a distinctive and imaginative polish to complement the gentility of ballads like “If That’s the Way You Feel” and “Hello It’s Me” (still an undeniable classic reflecting the urban soul colorings of Rundgren’s musical upbringing). Only “Crowded” bears compositional credits other than Todd’s (“Wildwood Song” is a group effort), in this case Stewkey and Thom Mooney. So while Nazz was not totally a Rundgren showcase, it set an auspicious example for the future.

Somebody then had the ingenious notion of sending Nazz to London in the fall of ’68 for recording purposes, sheer brilliance when you consider the wealth of English influences displayed on Nazz (the opening chords from “Open My Eyes” are straight out of the Who’s “I Can’t Explain”). Work permits being what they are, Nazz finished only one track in their two weeks there – a Carson Van Osten song called “Christopher Columbus” that later showed up in re-recorded form on Nazz III. (The original version of “Christopher Columbus” along with a different studio take of “Open My Eyes” can be heard on The Todd Rundgren Radio Show, a 1972 Bearsville promotional issue.) Nazz then headed for California’s sunny climes to do the second album and there the problems began in earnest.

“The Nazz always had internal problems, personality conflicts. For instance, the lead singer, Stewkey, was not inspired to do a lot except sing. Originally he was supposed to be an organ player, but he never practiced organ. I had been playing piano in the meantime and subsequently, by the time we got to the second record, I ended up doing most of the keyboard work.

“The drummer, Thom, and I had constant conflicts of an ego nature that had nothing to do with the professional direction of the band. We would get in the studio and if I were to say ‘play it this way,’ he would purposely play it another way, just to keep things going. By the time we got to the second album, we were just stomping in and out of the studio, fights all the time and shit like that. It was not the best set-up internally.”

Stewkey takes some exception to Todd’s criticisms, concurring that, yes, there were internal problems but Todd was just as much a part of the proceedings. As for his own role as organ player, “Todd knew that I didn’t play well. I never took piano lessons or anything. I just started to play as a music fill-in at the time. And I proceeded to get into the singing aspect of it. I never thought I was meant to be a virtuoso.” He does, however, play all of the ivories heard on Nazz.

When queried about Todd’s domineering role as composer, arranger, and de facto producer, Stewkey claims that ‘Todd always felt like he was the only one anyway. It got to a point where we weren’t even important anymore. On the second album, for instance, there are some tunes that I’d never heard before I even got into the studio. He would be off by himself and we didn’t even know what he was doing. A lot of hassles went down with the band and he just separated himself from them.”

For Rundgren, though, the breaking point came with a controversy involving the group’s second album, released in 1969 as Nazz Nazz. As he explains it, all of the material found on both Nazz Nazz and Nazz III came from the same 1968 Hollywood sessions, done after Nazz returned from London. Together they would comprise a double album – at least, he thought so – entitled Fungo Bat. (“We were really getting out there…” – Todd.) But the real bone of contention for Todd was the fact that on most of the Nazz III tracks he, not Stewkey, had originally sung lead vocals.

“I wanted that record to be a double album, including all the material. In fact, we had a whole double album mix. Somewhere around here” – Rundgren gestures casually across his living room – “I have the lacquers or the master tapes of it.

“But they (meaning a combination of band members and record company higher-ups) decided to make it a single album and on the songs I sang removed my voice from the master tapes and put Stewkey on instead. That became Nazz III.”

Yet Stewkey was just as surprised to see Nazz III in a record store in Madison, Wisconsin almost two years later. Regarding the erasure of Todd’s voice from the tapes he comments, “They just didn’t sound good as far as I was concerned.” “First of all, I didn’t want a double album. I thought it was bad timing – we had a hard enough time selling a single one. And a lot of that material on Nazz III shouldn’t have come out.”

If that was the case, why bother to overdub the new vocals? “They – the record company and the people involved in it – wanted me to.”

While Rundgren claims that was only one of the points of dispute within Nazz, the Nazz Nazz controversy was his last. He and Carson Van Osten took their leave almost simultaneously. “Carson was a pretty mellow, easy-going guy and just didn’t like the situation,” says Todd. “I split shortly after that.”

Stewkey and Thom Mooney kept a version of Nazz alive until mid-1970, when Mooney split for California (only to resurface briefly on albums by the Curtis Brothers and Tattoo with ex-Raspberry Wally Bryson). Carson retired to a promising career as an animation artist, Stewkey eventually hooked up with Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen for a couple of short-lived projects, and Todd set his sights on production work. With hardly more than two years and three mildly successful records to show for them, Nazz dissolved without a whimper. Easily years ahead of their time, they swam upstream in a river of sonic psychodaisical jive that, with their Marshall stacks and tie-dyed shirts, had no time for classic pop melodies. Today, the rock’n’roll pundits would call it power pop and “Open My Eyes” would be a Top 10 charter all over again. Or would it?

Stewkey: “We went too fast. I think if we had played around and functioned like any band that takes two or three years to get up the ladder, we would have hit really big.”

Todd: “If Nazz were together now, it would be really sick!”

Promise ‘Em Something, Promise ‘Em Anything, But Give ‘Em the Hits

Ironic, isn’t it? Todd Rundgren’s latest solo opus, Hermit of Mink Hollow, currently garners more airplay and public attention within a month of release than most of his recorded output since the puzzling Wizard. Both the solo and Utopian Rundgrens have been making undeniably curious if not totally accessible music for nigh on those ensuing five years and while even Todd admits to certain flaws in the flow, he won’t even recognize criticisms of his refusal to follow the pop path laid out by the gold record success of 1972’s Something/Anything. Add to that a prestigious track record of hits produced for other folks and you wonder where one – Todd, Runt, Utopia, etc. – ends and the other begins. They all, in fact, begin in 1969.

More interested in “developing a musical style without having to deal with someone’s reaction to it,” Rundgren passed on both forming a band and going solo in order to acquaint himself with the wonders of the studio. It would be fair enough, then, to say that Rundgren’s decision to head straight off for the console instead of the microphone has colored his solo and group activity since. Although his voice has become almost immediately recognizable, all Rundgren records possess a studio gleam, a definitive “sound” that can only be his, and the same goes for, among others, the Hall and Oates, Grand Funk, and Meatloaf records he has produced with variable success. Whatever the content, however recorded, they all literally scream “Rundgren.”

About his “sound” Todd says, “It’s very hard for me to describe it in words, but I know the difference between the way I produce and the way other producers work. For instance, my main area is in terms of the sound and the arrangements can vary very broadly. For example, I probably do the widest variety of types of production of almost any producer – country, blues, jazz-rock, straight-ahead rock’n’roll, nearly MOR, and then my own albums. That’s opposed to, say, Richard Perry who only does a certain MOR-type of album. He uses the same musicians, exact same drum sound – it sounds like a Richard Perry record with a different lead singer on it.”

Todd describes his first production assignment, a Philly band called the American Dream, as a “chance to learn certain basics” which proved beneficial in more ways than one. With the 1969 job came the opportunity to christen the just-opened Record Plant in New York. A brand new console and similarly shiny new equipment presented considerable deterrents for the three or four engineers who tried their hands at the Dream album. Finally, Todd took the matter into his own eager hands, working the board and subsequently learning the most advantageous thing you could possibly know as a budding young producer – how to engineer.

That ability allows him maximum control when recording himself or Utopia. Still, he insists that recording all by your lonesome – instruments, vocals, the works – is no big deal if you know your way around the limitations. Most of the instrumental and vocal work on his first two solo works, Runt (1970) and The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971), were his own with only rhythmic help from the Sales brothers (Hunt and Tony), some guys from the Band, and on one Runt track, from the American Dream.

In fact, Runt was recorded on speculation by Todd after Bearsville Records, for whom he was staff producer, gave him a budget (“as a concession”) and told him, literally, to go make an album. Prior to this, Todd had done some writing, little outside playing, and a lot of session-engineering, including the Band’s Stage Fright. Apparently Bearsville expected nothing much above the ordinary because, as Todd tells it, “when I brought back Runt, they were more or less shocked that I had actually done it and that it displayed a certain amount of originality. So they signed me up after the album was finished.” Nine months later, Bearsville figured they had some hot property. Through the good promotional offices of the aforementioned Paul Fishkin, “We Gotta Get You a Woman” (written for and about Fishkin) went Top 10 and everybody waited with baited breath for the follow-up. But The Ballad Of… spawned no hits, even if the stuff of which they are made was there in spades, and went on to an all-time sales dive for Todd. “That was my least successful album in terms of sales, although people say it is the most coherent in terms of songwriting and nowadays could be one of your across-the-board MOR-type records. But at the time it wasn’t fashionable. Nothing I do is fashionable at the time I do it.”

But if The Ballad of Todd Rundgren is an album Billy Joel would kill to call his own, then Something/Anything is the best album Paul McCartney never made and, in retrospect, it is easy to see how S/A can be singled out by (generally former) fans as the quintessential Todd, the absolute height of his melodic and lyrical powers. Here was a four-sided, 24-song declaration of independent genius, further set aside from the mainstream by two common denominator hits, the extraordinary “I Saw the Light” and a re-recording of “Hello It’s Me,” and, as Todd calls it in the liner notes for side one, “a bouquet of ear-catching melodies.” Besides, recording it was a cinch.

“I originally planned to do Something/ Anything all myself because on the previous albums I did everything except the bass and drums – the bass just being sort of a big guitar and the drums I had sort of fooled around with to some extent.

“The only challenge in doing that was playing the drums. Since everything was so highly arranged, it didn’t amount to a lot of complexity. It was essentially just arrangements, which was no problem for me. Y’know, sit down, take a half hour, and work out the part. After that, it was easy. “You usually start with the drums and it’s hard to play the drums to nothing, the reason being that halfway between the song you forget where you are. It’s hard going through the song, trying to sing it all to yourself, the whole arrangement, and keep it in your head without getting lost. And a lot of times, I would have to use an edit or two to get through the song. I’d forget and stop, but the first part would be so good that I couldn’t do it over again. I’d start in the middle, edit it together, and overdub everything from there.

“Since then, I’ve been influenced by a lot of R&B drum players, so the style’s a little different, a little more syncopated, more complicated turn-arounds and things like that. On Something/Anything, for the most part, I was playing rhythm, whereas on my new album, I’m playing, to some degree, what they call “melodic rhythm.”

“The operetta (‘Baby Needs a New Pair of Snakeskin Boots’) only took a day or so to do – three songs in one session and the rest in another. The other three sides only took like three weeks to do. I would essentially do a track a day, working on some stuff at home on the 8-track. I did ‘Breathless’ and ‘One More Day’ at home.

“I can’t remember, but I think Something/Anything was conceived as a single album and just turned into a double. I was writing material so fast that it became a double album. That was one reason why I changed my style so radically on the next album – because it just became too simple to write songs like that, almost mechanical. I would sit down at the piano and there would just be standard changes and combinations and lyrically it was the same subject matter. I had to break out of that rut. I didn’t feel I was doing myself creative justice.”

Ooops! Wrong Rundgren!

“In terms of cycles, I guess my apogee is their perigee and vice versa. I’m just cyclically 180-degree off from whatever else is happening. But it’s a big world and there’s a lot of people in the same boat as me and somebody’s gotta appeal to them.”

If only by default, that somebody is Rundgren, a rationalization that accounts for the continued release of records bearing his name, even if the general public and press corps eye each waxen item with the suspicion that there is something on that record they want little or no part of. To some, it’s the frantic instrumental deluge marking “A Treatise on Cosmic Fire,” a 30-minute epic from Initiation which Todd admits will appeal “to very few people that aren’t musicians. It appeals to musicians who want to hear something different as well as on a technical level, particularly people who are more or less removed from the mainstream of pop music.”

To others, the idealistic sociology coloring his Utopian lyrics should have nothing to do with the business of making popular music, a criticism that Todd vehemently denies. In again referring to the roundly panned Initiation, he insists that, like with any record or song, “I was determined to write lyrics entirely about something I believed in, rather than something I simply speculated about or had idle thought about.” The success and subsequent constant critical referrals to Something/Anything drained him, at least temporarily, of the urge to write love songs of the moon-June-spoon variety. A Wizard, A True Star and Utopia were the almost disastrous result.

“After doing Something/Anything, I had become deeply involved with production and sound. From that, I conceptualized this whole recording studio and built it from scratch. That was Secret Sound in New York and Wizard was the first album done there. The studio was designed to be able to produce all these sonic illusions and the whole Wizard album was an attempt to do that.”

A collection of songlets ranging from the fluid electronic backdrop of “International Feel” to the hard pull of those Philly-soul roots in the “Cool Jerk/Smokey Robinson/Curtis Mayfield medley, Wizard was certainly, as Rundgren indulges in characteristic understatement, “the most radical departure that I’d made up to that point.” His follow-up to Something/Anything, it could not help but alienate his substantial singles-buying audience. And the album scarfers had a time of it, too, something for which the aborted first Utopia tour can be properly blamed.

Undertaken in the spring of ’73 and lasting no more than three gigs, the first Utopia tour was an unmitigated bomb. Even in his hometown, Rundgren found few believers and while he admits that not a lot of folks had yet made the transition from S/A to Wizard, he feels it might have worked if his manager at the time, Albert Grossman (Dylan, Band, etc.) had shown a little more faith in financing the stage extravaganza. Still, survivors of the Philadelphia show opened appropriately by King Crimson can only babble about lengthy Mahavishnu-like jams, a large dome under which M. Frog conducted extensive business on synthesizer, and the black outfits offset by shocks of white fur on top of each and every head. It was trouble enough telling Rundgren from Moogy Klingman, much less sitting back and trying to catch a few bonafide songs.

Since then, Utopia – now a streamlined four-piece with Todd the only original left, in the company of Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and John Wilcox – has developed a stage show so high on P.T. Barnum showmanship that it’s no small wonder that Utopia’s tours are underwritten by record advances and royalties. Despite that, Rundgren says that all the Utopia records have been performance-inspired. “In all cases, the material was either performed live first or was designed to highlight the stage show, as with the Ra album and the sphinx and pyramid staging that went with it.”

But for every Utopia album, there is a solo Rundgren issue, a pattern to which he has no explanation. “Actually, Faithful preceded Ra by a considerable stretch of time and then after Ra, there was Ooops! Wrong Planet! which was another Utopia album. You see, I’d been pretty much totally involved with the Utopia road concept and, as a result, didn’t record a Todd Rundgren record in something like two years. We’ve been touring extensively, so our records have reflected our touring experience, whereas my solo albums are more or less closed environment things.”

The latest in the lengthening line of Rundgren solo projects, Hermit of Mink Hollow takes that assessment to its logical conclusion. Where Todd, Initiation, and Faithful were all recorded with a variety of Utopians and sympathetic outsiders, Hermit takes Something/Anything that final step further – it was produced, arranged, written, played, and sung by Todd R. with the unsolicited help of absolutely no one. What that has to do with the fact that it is his most immediately accessible album since S/A is anybody’s guess. Even Todd’s.

“In my solo albums, except for a few instances, I have always dealt in song styles. Initiation had at least one side of songs. Todd was very song-related, too, although it incorporated the instrumental stuff that came to a head on Initiation. Wizard was more like songlets, an attempt to break certain restrictions in songwriting. Faithful was all songs as well. In fact, Faithful was the penultimate song album in a way because I took archetypal songs of the ’60s like ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and reviewed those with a ’70s approach. Then on the ‘original’ side, I did my interpretation of those ’60s influences. So, for me, that was the ultimate song album, totally self-conscious song stylizations.

“As for the recent album, I wrote songs as an opportunity for me to sing as opposed to playing, which is what I mostly do with Utopia. It is a chance to do a number of different styles of singing and essentially highlight my voice.”

Case in point is the opening track, “All the Children Sing,” a light, harmonic exercise of vocal expertise overlaying a rhythm track of guitars, basic bottom, and harpsichord. The choral break in the middle, though, is a classic example of Rundgren’s studio methodology. You think you hear about a dozen little Rundgren’s ooh-aahing in the background when, in fact, Todd has overdubbed himself maybe three times to achieve the effect. And the same goes for the lead vocal harmonies. “When I do vocals, I essentially have a lead voice and three background .voices. The way that they are arranged is what gives you the impression that there are more or less. Essentially, it’s studio dressing. I used to double each voice in the background vocals. Now I just do them all with one voice. So there are actually less voices than there have been on previous albums. But the point is that I have different vocal control now and there is different technology for creating sound…” Here he pauses, as if to think of a way to summarize the recorded effect, “…sound-picture sound.” Technology not withstanding, Hermit of Mink Hollow literally glows with melodic light, a vivid aurora borealis of lyrical changes, high harmonies, and instrumental gloss. “Hurting For You,” “Bag Lady,” “Bread,” and “Fade Away” are all living testament, not only to Todd’s wizardly control of the mixer, but also to write songs that, despite possessing the obvious hooks upon which commercial success is hung, are head and shoulders above the AM and FM wallpaper against which Rundgren incessantly rails.

“Any record company executive now will tell you that people don’t listen to music and that’s what music now is designed to be — not listened to. It’s essentially wallpaper and people don’t want to hear music that puts them through an emotional trip, some kind of spectrum of feelings.”

On that account, notice the legend appearing on each side of your copy of Hermit. Side one is tagged “The Easy Side,” side two “The Difficult Side.” Be not dismayed because Todd assures you that this is merely a clever “in” joke. He explains that when he first delivered the album to Bearsville for release, the twelve songs were in an entirely different order. However, the company felt that demographic theories on such matters made a difference in his case (“These different theories on such matters made a difference in his case (“These different theories about listener response are supposed to override whatever it is you intended, the mood you want to create.”). Bearsville prexy Paul Fishkin feels that Rundgren “could make those changes and not affect the album as a whole, but he considers it meddling.”

In any case, Bearsville presented Todd with a list of songs they felt would program better together on one side (“Those tunes acceptable on the MOR crossover theorem…”) with the ones they figured were too challenging – in other words, annoying and grating” on the other. Hence, “Easy” and “Difficult.”

“The funny thing is that it makes no difference to me whatever. The only reason I did it was because, in that particular instance, it made no difference to me. I don’t know what the fuck they were talking about. So I did it, figuring it was their particular wank and they can think what they want.

“You see, record companies just sell the record, so they say it can be done. But it’s not their obligation to play it and then live with it once they do. That’s what is so hypocritical about the business. The artist has to live with what he creates. In that way, most things that record company people say to me goes in one ear and out the other.”

Todd’s relationship with Bearsville and the industry at large cannot be all that bad since he still makes records and at least gets them on the street, which is more than a lot of other die-hard idealists can say. And Fishkin admits to an undying respect for Todd’s independent stance. Still, respect doesn’t count in the $7.98 retail race.

“I guess,” he says in conclusion, “I’ll always be a revolutionary because I don’t want to be part of the establishment. I don’t care who the establishment is, either. I just want the option to be exactly who I am and, as a result, I will always be on the outside.”

Meanwhile, Back in Philly…

What, I’m sure you’re all asking, happened to that post-Rundgren Nazz that went to Dallas and eventually went the way of all has-beens? And what does Cheap Trick have to do with it?

Yes, these are questions to which you no doubt want the answers and ex-Nazz lead singer Stewkey was more than happy to oblige.

“After Todd and Carson quit the band, Thom Mooney and I went to Dallas bringing two people with us from Philly, a bass player named Greg Simpler and a guitar player named Craig Bolan, who used to play with Thom a long time ago in the Munchkins. As the Nazz, we played around the Southwest. We tried to hook up with some management people out there, but that didn’t work out. So we finally disbanded the group after about six or seven months. That was in mid-1970.

“Thom went to California, while I stayed in Texas. Maybe a year or so later, I got a phone call from Rick Nielsen. He wanted to know if I wanted to come to Illinois to sing with his band. So I went up there and sang with his band – it was called Fuse at the time.”

This version of Fuse came together after their lone Epic album (of which Nielsen has little good to say), was recorded. According to Stewkey, Thom Mooney played with Fuse for a time in Illinois, but left again, and eventually Fuse headed to Philadelphia and were rechristened Sick Man of Europe. The personnel changed with some regularity, with the band including at times Nielsen, Stewkey, Tom Petersson (also of Cheap Trick), and Philadelphians Hank Ransome (longtime Philly drummer) and Cotton Kent (jazz-rocker and Sigma Sound session regular). As Sick Man of Europe, they recorded a number of demos which have since turned up on a bootleg album, Retrospective Foresight, as a collection of Nazz out-takes, although most of the tracks actually aren’t. It actually features Nazz III tracks, a live take of “Open My Eyes” that Stewkey thinks might be the Texan Nazz, and rough takes of “Lemming Song” and “Train Kept a ‘Rollin’.” The Sick Man of Europe tunes on the record are “I Ain’t Got You” (a Stewkey original), “He Was” (another Stewkey comp), and Nielsen’s “So Good to See You” (billed there as “Ready I Am”).

In any case, Sick Man eventually brought in a drummer from Illinois (not Bun E. Carlos) whose name Stewkey can’t remember. And then…

“I don’t know. I left again. Actually, I got fired. I just had bad luck with two bands.”

Stewkey is now living in Philadelphia, doing sporadic writing and, for awhile, was gigging acoustically in a duo. When asked about his personal relationship with Todd during the Nazz period, he refers back to Todd’s aversion to drugs.

“When I was playing with Todd when Nazz was first together, I’d like to go out and get high. And he didn’t like that. I thought Todd really got impossible after awhile. If we weren’t working and I wanted to go out and see a chick or get high with a couple of friends, he’d really get upset about that. Which I didn’t understand. Y’know, people like to have fun, Todd.”

#todd rundgren #david fricke #trouser press #articles #interviews #long #70s #78

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A Psychic Visit with Nouriel Roubini: The Mother and Father of All Crypto Skeptics

This post was originally published here

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Admit it – you already hate that this article exists.

That itself is no small testament to the man it’s about, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, the outspoken economist and professor whose tweets, interviews and public testimonies this year have seemed to treat the entire cryptocurrency movement with all the tenderness of an insubordinate prison inmate.

In the process, Roubini has arguably become the embodiment of an incumbent intellectual class that sees cryptocurrency as responsible for not just a massive price bubble but a flurry of frauds and scams that have bilked consumers out of billions with the promise that their token of choice could eradicate everything from poverty to disease.

“The mother and father of all bubbles gone bust?” That’s still how Roubini describes what others have called the next internet, and if there’s any hope he’ll soften his stance when the cameras aren’t rolling, Roubini quickly snuffs it out.

“The words are not a provocation,” he reaffirms.

In person as in video, he draws almost no distinction between the technology and the admittedly opaque industry that has sprung up around it, even going so far as to dismiss bitcoin’s answer to the double-spend problem, its core technical innovation, as having earned it a spot in a “future museum on clever economics of the past” – and little else.

Over two days of interviews, this is the closest he’ll get to a compliment.

Still, if there’s a moral to our sprawling conversations, it’s this: while innovators in the crypto community are quick to demand that others see their vision (and overlook their faults), Roubini is living proof they aren’t always so empathetic as to extend this courtesy to others.

Indeed, what’s surprising in Roubini’s case is how unilaterally he’s inspired hostility. He is, after all, no recent apparition in the world of economics, where he’s hovered between rock star and also-ran status in the decade since his 2006 prediction of a global financial crisis. Further, he shares many of the same critiques of the financial system as cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Have you ever stopped to read any of Roubini’s articles? Have you actually read his 37-page testimony before the U.S. Senate? (He has a suspicion you haven’t.)

But if Roubini is to blame for his gleeful hyperbole, admittedly casual grasp of technology and a command of English that betrays his long journey to the U.S., then crypto enthusiasts are guilty of not making an effort to read past his soundbites and understand his arguments.

From his office at New York University, Roubini is keen to first direct the dialogue to the scars he’s accrued in the resulting war of words. Denial-of-service attacks, death threats, spam emails – if Roubini sees the worst in cryptocurrencies, he’s seen also the worst in their supporters.

With a leg on a desk, he breaks apart a Kind bar as he discusses his response.

“When people try to bite you… Not just barking but biting dogs… An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…” he says, later pursing his lips to punctuate the lingering sentence.

Behind a desk, there he is, finally, the weary professor wondering what the hell happened in class while he was in the hall.

First, a few grievances

Sorting the good from the bad in Roubini’s arguments, however, is a tall order.

If Roubini is at best a passionate defender of economics and the canon of learning it comprises, he often does himself a disservice in conversation.

A fair amount of that appears to stem from two factors. One, Roubini’s convictions are actually fairly simple, and two, he often buries his point under responses to tangential topics.

Roubini looks at his phone in his offices at New York University.

Asked about the specifics of his own research, Roubini is quick to give an answer, citing a study he’s read on the high rate of ICO failures – “in any legitimate industry, you don’t get 81 percent of scams in the first place,” he says – that is, before he starts decrying crypto’s association with alt-right ideologies and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Asked if bitcoin can be viewed separately from other cryptocurrencies, with less mature code or markets, he gives a strong response – “bitcoin is based on blockchain and cryptography and authentication based on proof of work” – before turning the subject to how it’s “AI, machine learning and a combination of big data and internet of things” that will revolutionize finance.

“Ninety-nine percent of anything crypto and blockchain is vapourware,” he continues.

In Roubini’s mind, there’s a clear connection between all these points. However, it’s hard not to feel like Roubini is sometimes avoiding your question or simply using it as a vehicle for whatever point or grievance he was going to air in the first place.

For example, it’s the accusation that he’s in the pocket of banks that seems to get the most airtime and ire, despite the fact this isn’t brought up in any questioning.

“That’s nonsense. I’ve written about the financial crisis and the distortions that lead to the financial crisis,” he says, adding of his detractors: “They don’t know anything about money so they want to reinvent everything, decentralize everything.”

My attempts to halt the flow from topic to topic seem to do little to break Roubini’s momentum, and next, we’re on to how he’s been unfairly categorized as anti-innovation.

“People tell you are a dinosaur, they throw you this nonsense. If you believe in innovation, you have to believe in blockchain or crypto. It’s become a fad,” he says. “There are thousands of fintech companies, they’re not going to give you a shitcoin.”

If you’re about to tune out now, re-read the sentences above. In short, Roubini believes crypto isn’t working because it isn’t delivering results, that crypto entrepreneurs demonstrate a poor grasp of economics and that they underestimate the impact of other technologies.

So far, nothing all that objectionable. Later on, he offers a more subdued take, one that is unusual as it could be characterized as a sober and salient distillation of his views.

“I try to give you the skepticism of an economist. I may not understand anything deep about technology,” he says. “My view is that models of digital and mobile payment systems are working, and they all have to do with fintech.”

A detour to Death Valley

Still, if Roubini can be lauded for strong convictions, deeply buried, it’s hard to tell how exactly he’s arrived at some of his conclusions. Is he someone who studies deeply or goes with his gut?

It’s a question that has been asked about Roubini before, most notably in his New York Times profile entitled simply “Dr. Doom.” “When the economist Anirvan Banerji delivered his response to Roubini’s talk, he noted that Roubini’s predictions did not make use of mathematical models and dismissed his hunches as those of a career naysayer,” an excerpt reads.

Indeed, in our conversation, Roubini seems to see-saw between implying his opinion is driven by research, and at other times, indicating it’s simply the result of spotting human nature.

In fact, the latter appears to be a common denominator in the predictions that have defined his career to date – his sentiment on the U.S. housing bubble and the crypto crash were both inspired, he says, by moments in which he was able to recognize realities beyond numbers.

“I was in Basel for Art Basel [in December 2017]. Thousands of people go there because it‘s big parties and they don’t know anything about art, and everybody was telling me, ‘Should I buy bitcoin?’” he recalls. “Price action every day has nothing to do with fundamentals. Even strangers come up to you and say, ‘Ah Roubini, should I buy bitcoin?’”

“It was the same light bulb that I drove to Vegas and Death Valley, and I saw thousands of empty homes, people brainless. FOMO is the driver of every bubble,” he continues.

Alone, the blurry lines between Roubini the researcher and Roubini the soothsayer might not be much for conversation – he at one point even makes a joke about economists and weathermen – but they’re more problematic when he applies the same logic to his opinions on technology.

On some subjects, Roubini even ends up sounding like cryptocurrency supporters, using similar language and assurances to back his statements.

Yes, you can really own these cards on the blockchain.

Take for instance his insistence that technology should be easy to intuit. “I’m not a technology guy, but even I understand the logic of what technology is about… what’s enough for a layperson who wants to understand it,” he says.

The statement seems to conflate two realities that are certainly true of all technologies – they can be extremely simple to use, yet also contain almost untold intricacies that end up being entirely shielded from the user. Still, it’s an emphasis he makes repeatedly.

“I’ve read dozens of papers… about Casper and sharding … technology is complicated, but an intelligent person should be able to read one thing… it could be astrophysics, popular science … so that a reader of the Wall Street Journal could make sense of it,” he says.

Here, he draws most often on experiences with the internet, in which he describes himself as an early adopter of the technology. According to Roubini, he even coded in basic HTML, using Microsoft Frontpage, in the early 1990s, work that resulted in a simple blog that aggregated links on past financial collapses and that helped him build an early consulting business.

(Unfortunately, the blog, originally hosted by NYU, no longer exists. Roubini says the content was transferred to a website for the Roubini Global Economics, a later consulting venture, and that the blog posts and any records of it have since disappeared.)

“I wanted to know why things were going bust,” he recalls. “It was every blog, papers on Indonesia, Malaysia, it was a big set of pages and a directory. I had hundreds of thousands of people using this piece of junk and each page was a country and subtopic.”

But if Roubini benefitted from a platform of information delivery that lowered costs such that his writings could be accessible the world over (or at least to those who owned expensive, boxy computers and dial-up internet connections), he doesn’t draw similarities to cryptocurrency.

“It was sub-pages and I could do hyperlinks. But it was all done by myself. Everyone was using the internet because it was amazingly useful. I went through the internet and I know when there’s a technology, you know certain things that change completely,” he says.

Now, remove the nouns here and put in your favorite crypto words.

Finally, the points

Soon after, Roubini and I hail a cab and take our argument out on the streets of New York. The sky is still a gun-metal gray, but it’s brightening, and so, too, are my prospects for more participatory conversation.

Me: “Can we agree it’s new?”

Roubini: “Yes, but I don’t think that it’s a new idea that can work.”

Me: “What about new markets that are digital where frictions on exchange are high?”

Roubini: “Why do people use the cloud of Amazon or Microsoft? Because there is a bundle of services and these things have some price. So, competing with them will be impossible.”

Me: “But don’t we want to democratize finance? To allow more people into more opportunities.”

Roubini: “People say in this space… the paternalistic government doesn’t let me invest. There is a good reason it cannot be sold to non-accredited investors.”

And on and on, until finally, I think I start to see the points.

Roubini hails a cab in New York.

Stripped of all the hyperbole and internet chest-banging, Roubini can be seen as having three core critiques when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Whereas cryptocurrency supporters see the financial crisis as an issue that can be eradicated by clever code and by removing power from incumbent players, Roubini views central banks and incumbents as necessary inventions that have benefited market stability.

Second, he doesn’t believe tokenized services can be used in areas where they would compete against real-world goods and services, which could simply adjust their prices. (“Dentacoin is a failure. Say, you have most dentists, even 10 to 30 percent, using dentacoin… they coordinate and increase the price of the services you need the token for … they’re creating a cartel.”)

Third, and perhaps most importantly, he believes that tokenizing every good or service to make it tradable on a blockchain would reintroduce problems economists believe they have already solved centuries ago through the creation of money.

“I asked myself whether bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and assets could satisfy the definition of money or a currency,” he says in a rare reserved moment. “There are standard definitions. A key one is a unit of account. Otherwise you end up into barter.”

Me: “Don’t you think computers could programmatically barter cryptocurrencies?”

Roubini sighs and looks at me like I’m someone who’s going to fail Economics 101.

We’ll always have Dallas

The back and forth is occasionally exhausting, with neither of us quite hitting a middle ground. Though, credit where credit is due, Roubini doesn’t seem to lose his energy.

Just when it seems all hope is lost, though, a small miracle appears on the street in the form of a fortune teller named Dallas. Sitting near a besparkled sign, she’s offering readings for $10.

Sign for fortune readings on streets of New York.

Say what you will about Roubini, he’s not without a sense of humor, or even a playful willingness to hear out others. Soon, he’s bought into my idea that we should ask her questions about the future of money and have her settle our arguments.

Roubini (to Dallas): “The question is, he believes that there is a great future for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, I believe there is no future for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, so we need someone like you who can read in the future, and tell us.”

She looks up at us, startled, but she’s buying it.

Dallas: “That’s that thing that you invest in, like you buy it for a certain price … it goes up.”

Roubini: “He thinks it’s the future of money and it’s going to change everything.”

Dallas: “I don’t think it is.”

Pete: “Is this your psychic opinion?”

Dallas: “It’s my psychic opinion.”

Pete: “So … it’s not going to be useful for anything.”

Dallas: “Well, I had people that got involved in it and it didn’t go so good… It’s really difficult… really confusing.”

We thank her, and to my surprise, Roubini reaches into his wallet and actually pays her $10.

Good for a few laughs, but not worthwhile, I think as we walk back to the office. Still, Roubini seems to linger on the conversation, and he seems impressed enough for me to believe he thinks the conversation was worth the money.

As we walk away, he’s smiling, considering.

He adds:

“You know, a lot of psychics… they’re just good psychologists.”

Now, think about what that says about us.

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Art by HyperDragons / MixMarvel (@mixhyperdragons)

Photos by Pete Rizzo for CoinDesk

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generouslyteenagealpaca-blog · 6 years

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