#special delivery ;; queued post
Text
I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu
FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!
aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!
Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.
the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.
so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.
it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it
The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY
afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!
so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend
With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.
We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food
it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.
It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.
There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).
We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.
LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.
(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)
The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.
anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.
The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.
The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.
God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey
Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)
tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.
this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.
ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!
I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.
thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.
While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.
following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.
We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo
I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.
and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.
we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!
There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.
also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.
hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.
(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)
knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!
It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.
I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.
i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.
The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.
Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.
it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.
#everything everything#e e#RDF US tour 2023#this has been a post#jonathan fucking higgs.#god.#they all just like. referred to me plainly by my name a lot more than i was expecting in a way that was overwhelming#like to one another/other people and not just to me directly#i exist???? sounds fake#i will be thinking about this week for a hundred thousand years#my pliable head IS a walking hope thank you so much for NOTICING!!!!!!#pics to follow maybe on here but maybe just on twitter#where I am yes you guessed it @pliablehead if people want to lurk and see#ok fucking goodnight
31 notes
·
View notes
Text
DADDY ISSUES - Part Four: Vegas
Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)
Prompt: Your new life is amazing, without Elvis. Well, at least until you get a mysterious package in the mail that's about to change your life. [ Fem!Reader ]
TW: a friend fight with some harsh words that were painful to write but i don't think anything else!
Rating: Pg-13 || Word Count: 5058
A/N: ahhh it's been AGES i know but i've been working hard so expect lots of updates!! i have several parts already queued. i'll be posting a chapter every tuesday + thursday until the fic is completed!
also just a reminder that there's a playlist if you're interested and i've put the link to the taglist below!
Song Rec: vegas - doja cat
This is Part 4 of Daddy Issues. Find the rest of the series here!
[ masterlist | taglist ]
🦋 mila
─────•~❉᯽❉~•─────
A year later, you find yourself living in a brand new apartment with Trixie, the girl whom you stood next to during the chaotic filming of the 68 Comeback Special. Apparently, her family is extremely well-off and has absolutely no issue sending her money without question. Although you’ve tried to assure Trixie about a thousand times that you don’t want nor need the money she continues to shovel into your pocket, she insists on supporting you. At first, it was easier to give in because you actually really did need the money, since you were unemployed with no prospects and a scant resume. But now, you’re just starting to feel selfish.
Fortunately, with Steve’s help you’ve managed to secure a job working at KNBC, California’s NBC television station. You might still just be a secretarial worker, but a job is a job. Surprisingly, you find yourself with an unprecedented amount of free time compared to what you had when you were constantly picking up night and weekend shifts every other week at the diner. Not to mention that you make a lot more, too. It’s nothing to brag about by any means, but far more than enough to get you back on your feet. Slowly but surely, your debts dwindle little by little every day.
So far, living with Trixie has been pure bliss. She’s incredibly sweet and very neat and tidy. She doesn’t leave her laundry on the floor, always takes the trash out, and is usually cheerful in the morning. Some days, she even meets you in the kitchen with a carafe of steaming hot coffee already brewed. She never brings home creepy guys who hang around past their welcome and she’s nothing but respectful of your space. She works similar hours to you as a designer at a fashion magazine conveniently located only a couple of blocks down the road from KNBC.
You honestly couldn’t have asked for a better situation and, for the first time in a very long time, you feel safe, happy, and healthy. Little do you know what’s to come when a surprise package shows up on your doorstep.
You’re in the bathroom, elbows deep in water and soap as you wash your face first thing in the morning. Trixie, the early morning bird she is, has been awake for several hours already and is in the kitchen making breakfast. With the bathroom door closed, you can hardly hear anything going on down the hall so it takes you a moment to process Trixie’s shout that you’ve received a delivery. Squinting your eyes to protect them from the soap sliding down your face, you turn toward the door and yell back.
“Who’s it from?”
A few seconds of silence pass before Trixie replies.
“Uh…Y/N, why are you getting a package from E…ley?”
You shake your head. You can barely hear her over the sound of the water and the closed door. Your fingers quickly scramble to turn off the faucet and you grasp for a towel to hurriedly dry your face before rushing out of the bathroom. Sticking your head around the corner, you glance at Trixie with furrowed eyebrows.
“What did you say?” you ask.
“The package,” she responds, holding it up, “it’s from Elvis Presley.”
“I…from who?”
“Can you hear me, honey? Elvis. Elvis Presley? Famous musician and actor? We're both huge fans? We were in the audience while he filmed his comeback special on NBC? Ringing any bells here?” Trixie gestures wildly, her eyes big and wide.
You shake your head and approach her, holding out your hands so she can pass the package along to you. As soon as it touches your fingers, you snatch it up and sit down on the couch in the living room. Sure enough, as you look at the address label on the package, there it is. Elvis Presley.
To be perfectly honest, you’ve all but forgotten about him. With everything going on in your life, you’ve been too busy to pay attention to celebrity gossip or keep track of the music charts. You also have to admit that you might have been more inclined to forget him after suffering the embarrassment of turning down his…offer.
Glancing up at Trixie, you see her biting the nail of her thumb anxiously, a big grin breaking through her face. You shake your head again and sigh a deep breath before your fingers start digging into the wrapping of the package. Once you’ve torn through the wrapping paper and flipped open the cardboard box, your fingers catch onto something soft and silky. Shooting a confused expression at Trixie, you pull out the object and stand to let it unfold. Your breath catches in your throat as it drops down into its full form. Trixie shares the expression, her gasp accompanying yours.
“Oh my god…” she says in awe.
You hold it up to your body and wander over to the floor-length mirror hanging in the entryway. As you press the fabric against your figure, your eyebrows raise. It’s almost the same blue color as your horrible dress from Chadney’s Restaurant, the one you’d been wearing when you officially met Elvis for the first time. Although the color is comparable, the quality is nowhere near the same. This dress is made of silk, softer than any fabric you’ve ever felt before, and definitely a major upgrade from the scratchy cotton of your old work uniform. The dress has a sweetheart neckline with a cut out of the side and a leg slit that rides higher than you’d normally be comfortable with. As you run your fingers over the seams, you feel a few hand-cut jewels. They look like diamonds, although your brain is incapable of believing that.
“Hey, there’s a note with it,” Trixie’s voice knocks you out of your disbelief and you turn toward her.
She hands it over to you and, as you unfold it, two long green strips of paper fall out. Trixie bends to pick them up and examines them as you read the handwritten script of the letter out loud, although the handwriting is atrociously difficult to decipher.
“Cinderella,” you pause and gulp as your brain flashes back to the moment when Elvis had first called you that. When he’d invited you into his dressing room after the special. When he’d pulled your panties from his robe pocket…
“Cinderella,” you clear your throat and continue, “I figured I oughta replace that blue dress you ruined on account of me. I hope you like this one better and that you find the rest of the contents of this package to your taste.”
You pause, your eyes wandering over toward the package which, apparently, has more to give. You reach for it, digging underneath the wrapping paper until your fingers curl onto something lacy. You pull it out and heat immediately floods your face and neck. Trixie’s hand flies onto her mouth as you both stare in silence at an expensive-looking lingerie set hanging from your fingertip. You immediately drop it back into the package and shiver.
“What does the rest of the letter say?” Trixie asks, leaning forward to glance at the note over your shoulder.
“Uh…replace that blue dress, blah, blah, blah…contents of this package…Don’t make me wait until midnight. And don’t forget who-”
You stop abruptly as your brain circles around the last few words of the letter.
“What?” Trixie asks, peering more intensely over your shoulder. “What does it say, Foxie? I can barely read his chicken scratch.”
Foxie is the nickname Trixie had started calling you. Until this point, you’ve never understood why. But as your eyes roam over the contents of the package Elvis sent you, you start to understand that maybe you’re more of a fox than you realized.
“Don’t forget who owns you, princess.”
Trixie’s mouth pops open and she stares at you with wide eyes. You collapse further onto the couch and cover your eyes with your palms. Your heart pounds in your chest as you run through everything you just discovered.
“Wait, I’m sorry…did I miss something?” Trixie asks. “What the hell is all of this, Y/N?”
“It’s nothing,” you reply a little too quickly. “It must be some kind of a joke or something. I don’t know.”
“Some joke! Some expensive joke. These fell out of the letter,” she says, handing over the two green strips of paper.
Your eyes widen as you scan the printed text on the paper. Two tickets to one of Elvis’ concerts at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. You run a hand over your face and toss the tickets back into the cardboard box they came in. With a building rage, you grab onto the other contents of the package and shove them back in, tucking the wrapping paper back over them like a blanket.
“No, no this is insane. I don’t know what kind of sick joke this is. But no,” you mutter to yourself.
“Y/N, honey…I really don’t think this is a joke. I mean, two front row tickets to an Elvis Presley concert in Las Vegas? Do you know how expensive these are? Who would blow that much money just to get a laugh? I can’t even think of anyone else you know and I certainly didn’t pull this stunt.”
“Look, I don’t know, but I can’t believe that…well, he wouldn’t have any reason to send this to me. I mean, I told him no the last time he offered, so he should-”
“What? What do you mean you ‘told him no?’ Y/N what is going on here that I don’t know about? I’m completely lost.”
Shit. You slipped.
“Oh, no. It’s nothing,” you stutter, waving your hands frantically. “It was…nothing.”
“Well, it was obviously something?” Trixie gestures to the package. You sigh and she places a hand on your shoulder. “Foxie, I’m your best friend in the world. You can tell me anything.”
Your gaze drops down to her brightly painted purple nails and you heave a deep breath before lifting your gaze to hers. Her eyebrows are furrowed in concern and you know that she genuinely does care about your well-being.
“You’re technically my only friend in the world, Trix. But yes, I guess something did happen that I never told you about.”
“Well, what is honey? Now, I really have to know,” she gestures to the package again and you chuckle.
“Well, to start off, the 68 special wasn’t the first time I saw Elvis. I saw him in 1956 at Russwood Park, too.”
“Right. I remember. We’ve talked about it plenty of times. What does that concert have to do with this?”
“Well, I maybe…kind of, sort of…did an embarrassing thing.”
“Like…what?” she quirks an eyebrow and you squeeze your eyes shut to counter the embarrassment you feel rising in your chest.
“I slid my underwear across the stage at that concert,” you blurt, wincing at the memory of your own actions. “And apparently I made an impression because he, Elvis I mean, sent his producer to bring me to the dressing room after we filmed the special. It was several hours after, so you were probably long gone by then. I was staying with my cousin, Steve, you remember him. Anyway, so I wound up in Elvis’ dressing room and it was just the two of us and he just…he just pulled my panties out of his pocket! The ones I’d given him, you know, years and years ago. I mean, I never in my wildest dreams would have expected…do you think he washed them? I mean, ew!”
“Calm, Foxie! Calm and focus. Slow words.”
“Right, sorry,” you laugh painfully and gulp before continuing. “Uh, after he pulled my panties out he sort of asked me if I…like, if I wanted to be his…sugar baby?”
Trixie’s eyes close and reopen wider and she leans forward as if she hasn’t heard you correctly. She blinks in shock.
“Well, what did you say? Did you tell him no?”
“Yeah, I said it was wrong. That I’m not the kind of person who sleeps with married men. Apparently, he didn’t take the hint because…” you gesture again to the infamous package.
“Yeah, I’d say not. What did he offer you? That’s how it works, right? You take care of him and he does something for you?”
“He offered to pay my debts and buy me gifts and stuff. The usual things, I imagine?”
“And he hasn’t contacted you since then until now?”
“Not one time.”
A few moments of silence pass. Trixie settles back into the couch, tapping her finger on her leg, obviously deep in thought. Your eyes just lazily drag around the scattered contents of the package as you contemplate what to do.
“Maybe…” Trixie starts, “you should go see what he wants?”
Your head snaps toward her.
“What?”
“I don’t know, maybe…maybe he has a different offer for you. Or maybe you can finagle your way into an even better arrangement.”
You throw your hands up, motioning for her to stop.
“Trixie, what are you talking about? I can’t do this. It’s wrong.”
“Yeah, I know, but you could use the extra cash and, after all, it is Elvis Presley.”
You just stare at her for a moment, your eyes flicking around her face to see whether she’s joking. Based on what you gather from her expression, she’s being completely serious. You scoff and stand up, grabbing harshly onto the box to take it right to the trash can.
“I can’t believe you would even say that, Trix. I expected better from you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Trixie asks, standing and propping her hands on her hips.
“For God’s sake, Trixie! The man is married with a baby. What would I do to all of that if I said yes? I’m not a homewrecker. All he wants to do is use me anyway. He’ll probably drop me in three days for another woman. No thanks, not gonna happen. I’m not doing this.”
“Well, give it all to me, then,” Trixie shouts back, stalking over toward you and grabbing ahold of the package. You pull back firmly, preventing her from snatching it out of your fingers.
“Excuse me? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna go see him?”
“Maybe I will.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but he doesn’t want you. He wants me!” you shout, ripping the package away from her.
“Oh, that’s very nice of you. If you’re not gonna take him up on it, someone should!” she yells back, reaching for the package again.
“If you didn’t want to support me financially any more you could have just said it!”
“Don’t even!” she holds up her pointer finger. “You know very well that’s not what this is about. I have no problem helping you. You’re the one who’s always complaining about how pathetic it is that you have to mooch off me.”
“And not everyone has the luxury to just leave their lives, you know!” you yell. “I have to work, Trixie. To pay my bills, to keep my car, to avoid going to prison. Not everyone’s mommy and daddy are around to bail them out when they make stupid decisions!”
Right after the words escape your lips, your eyebrows unfurl and grief settles quickly in the depths of your stomach. When you notice a few glinting tears gathering in Trixie’s eyes, the reality of what you’ve said and its consequences are all too clear. Trixie huffs and stares at you for a moment before spinning on her heel and stalking down the hallway to her room. You drop the box on the counter and thrust your face into your hands, jumping at the rigid sound of her bedroom door slamming shut.
“Why don’t you just leave me alone?” you whisper to Elvis’ nonexistent frame as you toy with a piece of the wrapping paper.
You’d lied to Trixie, which you now feel increasingly bad about. You had heard from Elvis. Just a few letters here and there for the first couple of months after you rejected him the first time. You threw them all away without opening a single one. After a while, they just stopped coming and you thought you were in the clear. You were obviously wrong.
You glance around the apartment, thinking about how lucky you are to even be living here in the first place. Guilt racks through your body painfully and you sniff back a couple of tears before reaching across the table to grab the two tickets. As your eyes circle around the words, you sigh and then shuffle down the hall toward Trixie’s room. With a deep breath, you knock quietly on the door and lean against it.
“Trixie? I’m so sorry, Trix. I’m just overwhelmed and frustrated. I didn’t mean to call you stupid or…shame you for your upbringing. And I really shouldn’t dare considering how much you’ve done for me,” you say quietly, resting your forehead against the door. “It just feels so…unreal. This whole Elvis situation. Don’t get me wrong, of course I’m interested but it just…feels so wrong. He’s married with a kid and I…I’m scared.”
You wait a few seconds but hear nothing on the other side of the door. You turn with a dejected sigh and retreat to hide in your room. But as soon as you turn your back, the door clicks open. You whirl back around to see Trixie peeking her head out.
“I’m sorry,” you say but she holds up a hand.
“Don’t apologize. I’m the one who should be doing that. I have no right telling you what to do with your life. I certainly shouldn’t be mad at you for not accepting. This situation is very…unusual. I guess I just got jealous at the idea that the Elvis Presley wants you so badly that he went to all this trouble. And I hate to see you struggling. I know the money would reduce a lot of stress so I just think you should…I don’t know, consider it.”
“I know, Trix. I could use the money, of course. But I’m scared and embarrassed. What’ll happen if I eventually get old or uninteresting? If he gets bored of me and drops me for someone else? I barely know the man but he feels dangerous to me. Steve said something about him being unfaithful to his wife and…it’s just all so much.”
Trixie nods, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms over her chest. You sigh loudly.
“At the same time, though…” you offer a small smile and pull the two tickets from your back pocket. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take him up on this? It’d be a shame to waste two front row tickets, especially with how expensive they are nowadays. And it would give me the opportunity to tell him off once and for all. What do you think? Another roomie adventure?”
You wiggle the tickets in the air with a suggestive shrug. Trixie laughs and nudges the door open with her hip. She throws her arms around your shoulders and you lean into her touch, closing your eyes and squeezing tightly. When she releases you, you’re greeted by a massive smile on her beautiful face.
“I guess we should get packing, then,” you say, gesturing at the tickets which have tomorrow’s date printed all over them.
“I’ll call the hotel and make reservations!” Trixie shouts, clapping her hands together.
With that, she disappears into her room to start packing. You trudge back into the kitchen to retrieve the package and then disappear into your own room. A few minutes later, you hear Trixie’s favorite Elvis record playing from her room.
You spend most of the day packing and preparing to leave since you’ll need to depart first thing in the morning to make the concert on time. At least one full hour is spent on the phone with your boss at KNBC as you try to explain why you can’t come in tomorrow. Another hour is wasted when you spend it calling everyone you know at the office to see if they’ll fill in for you. Luckily, the last person on your contact list agrees to take your shift. You thank them endlessly and accidentally promise an autograph from Elvis, although you aren’t sure if you plan on being that close to him.
You pass out as soon as your head hits the pillow that night and, even though you’ve both slept in, you and Trixie are groggy as ever in the morning.
As you lift your suitcase from the bed, your eyes land on the package from Elvis, half-unopened and not packed in your case. You pause in the doorway for a moment, staring at it. Last night, it was all too clear why you shouldn’t bring it. The answer to his proposal was and always would be a firm no. But this morning, as your gaze falls frozen on the beautiful things he’d sent you and the haunting words he’d written, your heart thumps with anticipation. Sighing frustratedly, you click open the suitcase and shove both the dress and the lingerie inside.
You and Trixie leave LA around 11 a.m., piled into her blue Jeep Wagoneer. Two hours into the four hour trip, you switch off and take the wheel so Trixie can get some extra rest. She was awake until two in the morning pairing up the perfect outfits. To your surprise, the drive is over in a flash and, the next thing you know, you’re inching through the Vegas Strip, stuck in horrific traffic.
You check your wristwatch as you get caught by yet another red light. You have roughly four hours to get ready for the show. After parking and checking in at the front desk, you take your bags upstairs to get unpacked. Even with exploring the hotel, grabbing dinner, and getting changed for the concert (which includes the forty minutes you spent debating whether or not you should wear the blue dress Elvis sent you), you find yourselves with time to spare. You decide to head down early and see if you can get seated before the rush.
When you arrive outside of the showroom, you’re shocked to see the area relatively deserted. You check the ticket twice to make sure before approaching the security guard standing in front of the doors.
“Hi,” you say cheerily. “We’re here for the Elvis show and were just wondering if it’d be possible for us to be seated a little early? If not, that’s alright, but we figured we’d check.”
“Well,” the guard starts, his eyes tracking not-so-sneakily up and down yours and Trixie’s figures. “We normally don’t allow people in before the scheduled time, but I might be able to make an exception for two ladies as lovely as yourselves.”
He winks and you press your lips together to keep from laughing. You glance at Trixie out of the corner of your eye and see her holding a finger to her mouth to mask her amusement.
“Oh, that’d be awfully sweet of you…Henry,” Trixie says, flashing him her most charming smile.
Your eyes drop down to see his nametag which reads Henry. You bite your tongue as you watch Henry flash Trixie a smile. He glances around the surrounding casino floor to see if anyone else is watching before pushing open the big black door behind him. He gestures with his hand.
“Please come on in, ladies. Will you need help finding your seats today?”
“Oh, you’re too generous, Henry,” you say as you both glide past him into the showroom. “But I think we’ll be alright. If we get lost, we’ll be sure to find you.”
You throw in a wink for good measure and spin on your heel, dragging Trixie into the room. Only a few steps inside and you’re both laughing so hard that you can barely breathe. Your laughs dry up in a couple of seconds, however, when you start to take in the space. You mutter in awe and point around the room, admiring details like the golden curtains pulled over the stage and the ornate statues adorning each column. You pull out the tickets and use them to direct you both toward your seats in the front row.
“Damn, we’re literally right here,” you muse, glancing straight ahead of you onto the front of the stage.
You’re seated at a round table that’s clad with a very fanciful tablecloth, dishes, and wine glasses. A candle, unlit, rests in the middle of the table and there’s a note propped up against the glass. You tilt your head as you reach out to grab it.
“Oh my god,” you mutter as you read the writing on the outside. Princess.
“Ooh, what’s that?” Trixie asks, plopping into one of the chairs next to you. You open the note as you join her.
“Princess, I’m so glad you made it. When you get here, come see me backstage. I have a present for you,” you read, your eyebrows furrowing.
You glance at Trixie but she just raises her eyebrows and shrugs. With a deep breath, you grab onto your purse, still clutching the note in your fingers.
“Alright, well I guess now’s as good a time as any to break the hard news. I’ll be back, I hope. If anything happens to me back there, you get everything in the apartment,” you say with a goofy smile.
Trixie laughs and shoos you away just in time for the showroom doors to open and release a line of audience members into the area. You hurry toward a door on the left side of the stage which you assume leads to the backstage area, considering the security guard who stands in front of it. You clear your throat before announcing yourself.
“Uh, hi! I’m here to see Elvis. Well, everyone is here to do that, I guess, but I have this note and uh…well, here,” you say nervously and hand over the letter. He examines it as you wait and anxiously wring out your fingers.
“Y/N?”
Your head spins as a vaguely familiar voice sounds from behind you. A smile immediately spreads across your face as you recognize Elvis’ producer, Jerry. You give him a wave and a shrug as heat creeps into your face.
“Hi…” you greet him quietly.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he says, approaching you. He waves off the guard dismissively. “She’s good to go. He’s been expecting her for a long time. Here, I’ll show you back.”
The guard shimmies out of the way so Jerry can open the door. He gestures for you to enter with a smile and you thank him as you step through.
“Changed your mind, huh?” Jerry asks as you follow him through the backstage area.
“Uh, no actually. Not really. I’m just here to tell him to save his postage,” you say, feeling the need to justify yourself although you can’t explain why.
“Can’t blame you. These kinds of situations don’t work for everyone, although this will be a first for him.”
“Do you think he’ll be disappointed?” you ask jokingly.
“Oh I’d bet on it.” Apparently Jerry didn’t take your question as a joke. “Like I said before he’s been waiting for you, specifically, for a long time. I’m sure he’ll be very disappointed, but don’t let that stop you. It is your decision, after all. Good luck.”
Jerry points toward a dressing room door with big black letters which read ELVIS. You clear your throat and thank Jerry. He nods curtly and then spins on his heel to return to the work he probably needs to get done before the show starts. You straighten the hem of the blue dress he’d sent you and clutch firmly onto the strap of your purse, into which you’d also stuffed the lingerie at the last minute. It suddenly occurs to you that perhaps you were supposed to wear the lingerie under the dress…
Oh well, you think to yourself. Too late now.
You take a few deep breaths and smile awkwardly at the cast and crew who pass through the area on their way to get ready for the show. You know it’s ridiculous to think that everyone knows why you’re here but, despite the sheer unlikeliness of it all, you still feel embarrassed and shameful that you actually came. A few times, you debate backing away and returning to your table with Trixie to just enjoy the show. But something stops you every time. Eventually, your desire and curiosity move you forward and your knuckles knock on the door three times.
Ignoring the fight or flight mechanism that triggers in your chest, you wait for the door to open. In a matter of seconds, your wish is granted and he stands before you. He’s wearing an incredibly detailed white jumpsuit with flared pants and a popped collar. It’s unbuttoned all the way down to his waist and you gulp as your eyes immediately fly to the bare skin of his chest. As your gaze flicks back up to his face, you find him smirking down at you, his eyes already hungrily digesting your figure which stands in front of him. His body is elongated and pulled taut as he leans against the doorframe. He still looks good, as healthy and as sexy as ever, although his sideburns and hair are much longer than they had been almost a year ago.
“Princess,” he says in a voice even deeper than you remember. You begin to notice the painful thudding of your heart against your chest as his eyes take you in. “I figured you weren’t comin.”
This is it, the perfect opportunity for you to reject him and explain why you can’t take him up on his offer. But your brain stalls. It’s completely blank as you stare up at him with helpless doe eyes. He examines your figure once more before pushing the door open to create a space underneath his armpit for you to enter. You glance up at him, waiting for further instructions as if you need a translation. He flips his head toward the room.
“Inside.”
─────•~❉᯽❉~•─────
Reblogs, likes, comments + feedback are extremely appreciated! Please help support your content creators!
**If you notice any triggers or grammatical errors that I missed, please let me know! :)
taglist: @mrsjna @floralcyanide @austinbutler17 @slutforsomegoodlettuce @datsavageavenger @misspygmypie @yourfriendhenrywinter @queenslandlover-93 @kittenlittle24 @slutforblueeyes @theliterarybeldam @guns-n-queen @x-earthangel @adoreyouusugar @butler-trouble @kaycinema @mamaspresley @dontbesussis @littledanette @yagirlalexx @hangmanswhore @dark-as-love @adoreyouusugar @gemstone9 @austin-butlers-gf @dollfaceyourfear @tis-the-season-of-the-witch @coldonexx @austin-butlers-gf @sagesolsticewrites @mommy-maia @atombombbibunny @lexlexl3x @solo-pitstop-vibes @hopefulinlove @lordandmistress @domaniquessidehoe @elvismylove-blog @amiets2 @itsametaphorbriansblog @powerofelvis @beautyofelvis @austinstyles
#elvis#elvis 2022#austin butler#milasfics#milaselvisfics#milasthings#milaselviscontent#sugar daddy elvis#daddy issues
92 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sam’s Masterlist
Here is small post that I feel is important information before making a request.
smuts and nsfw content is marked with a *
items that are striked out are either being reworked, written, or edited atm
fics without a link are queued up and will be released later in the week
wasabi
special delivery
Valentine’s Day*
animals*
the game
spy, part 2, part 3
let me sleep on it*, i’ll give you an answer in the morning
broken bond, on the mend
stuck*, the box*
tested, tested 2, tested 3
second time’s a charm
first time*
pescatarian
hair:done
two little snowmen
i cried all the way to the altar
referee*
she’s got you
Deaf reader x Sam
translation needed, no translation needed, fluent, poetry in motion, guilt, aftermath
#sam gvf#sam kiszka#sam#sam kiszka gvf#sam x reader#greta van fleet#gretavanfleet#greta van fleet x reader#greta van fleet smut#greta van fleet fanfic#danny wagner#danny gvf#daniel wagner#danny x reader#jake kiszka#jake#jacob kiszka#jake gvf#jake kiszka x reader#josh gvf#josh kiszka#joshua kiszka#josh kiska x reader
96 notes
·
View notes
Text
hi! welcome to kielle’s very first album, fluffvember! fluffvember is a 30-day writing event revolving on fluffy scenarios. each day will alternate between bnha and haikyuu up until the 22nd, and the 23rd until the end will be haikyuu-centered.
continue below for more info!
NOTICE: ia bc of typhoon ulysses and its aftermath (+ mf exams.) my heart is literally breaking rn. fluffvember will most probably continue early to mid-december, so fluffcember, ig? lol all fics that are getting posted in november are queued.
ONE: THE HEARTH OF HOME ft. iwaizumi hajime
they say the hearth holds the warmth, light, and love of a home. iwaizumi begs to differ. | 1.10
TWO: FILL-IN DATE ft. kaminari denki
somehow, the stranger who sat in front of you managed to snag the position your supposed date was supposed to be in after you got stood up. | 1.47
THREE: TITLE ft. oikawa tooru
DESC. | word count
FOUR: SPECIAL DELIVERY ft. hawks
keigo unleashes a very fancy trick under his sleeve after a misunderstanding with you. | 0.97
FIVE: FALLING FOR YOU ft. kageyama tobio
DESC. | word count
SIX: LOW BUDGET FINAL DESTINATION ft. mirio togata
mirio, as he insisted you call him, takes you to an amusement park for your first date, oblivious about the fact that you never quite got over your phobia from that one final destination movie. | 3.26
SEVEN: TITLE ft. sugawara koushi
DESC. | word count
EIGHT: TITLE ft. aizawa shouta
DESC. | word count
NINE: RED VELVET ft. tendou satori
all you wanted was a banana cake but you also made a successful, albeit messy, red velvet someway. | 1.58
TEN: TITLE ft. bakugou katsuki
DESC. | word count
ELEVEN: TITLE ft. bokuto koutaro
DESC. | word count
TWELVE: TITLE ft. dabi
DESC. | word count
THIRTEEN: TITLE ft. yamaguchi tadashi
DESC. | word count
FOURTEEN: TITLE ft. shigaraki tomura
DESC. | word count
FIFTEEN: TITLE ft. matsukawa issei
DESC. | word count
SIXTEEN: TITLE ft. midoriya izuku
DESC. | word count
SEVENTEEN: TITLE ft. kuroo tetsurou
DESC. | word count
EIGHTEEN: TITLE ft. todoroki shouto
DESC. | word count
NINETEEN: TITLE ft. hanamaki takahiro
DESC. | word count
TWENTY: TITLE ft. kirishima eijirou
DESC. | word count
TWENTY ONE: TITLE ft. miya osamu
DESC. | word count
TWENTY TWO: TITLE ft. shinsou hitoshi
DESC. | word count
TWENTY THREE: TITLE ft. ushijima wakatoshi
DESC. | word count
TWENTY FOUR: TITLE ft. miya atsumu
DESC. | word count
TWENTY FIVE: TITLE ft. tsukishima kei
DESC. | word count
TWENTY SIX: TITLE ft. semi eita
DESC. | word count
TWENTY SEVEN: TITLE ft. sakusa kiyoomi
DESC. | word count
TWENTY EIGHT: TITLE ft. kyoutani kentaro
DESC. | word count
TWENTY NINE: TITLE ft. kozume kenma
DESC. | word count
THIRTY: TITLE ft. akaashi keiji
DESC. | word count
omg look who whipped up her speech in under an hour and proceeded to focus on this. it is i <3 and i am so excited aaaah guess which date is my birthday bc this gorl chose one of her mains as the character lmaooo AND I THOUGHT THE BACKGROUND COLOR OF THE HEADER AND TRACKLIST WERE WHITE BUT WHY DOES IT SHOW UP LIKE A VERY FAINT LIGHT BLUE COLOR (っ╥╯﹏╰╥c) I AM BLIND
#haikyuu#haikyuu fluff#haikyuu angst#haikyuu scenarios#haikyuu fluffvember#bnha#bnha fluff#bnha angst#bnha scenarios#bnha fluffvember#IT GOES SO WELL WITH NT RECORD LIBRARY THEME I AM THRIVING#MIGHT BE LIFTING MY OWN CHAIR BUT#THIS IS SO CUTE#HSGAKAKDA BYE#wait the fluffvember tag i forgot LMAODIEKDK#fluffvember#THESE TAGS DON’T HAVE ANY TYPOS IN THEM I AM CRYING#FOR THE FIRST TIME#my own fluffvember tag I FORGOT OMG#there <3#i am a clown turns out there is a typo in the record library thing ToT#heart’s been broke so many times#fluffvember 2020#my tags are so chaotic i am deeply sorry
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
tags!
general!
#🧹 :: pitstop upkeep— important updates and posts!
#🗒 :: jay’s sticky notes— just me talking about random shit lol
#🚏:: see queue later— queued posts!
#📦 :: outgoing orders— recommendations/reblogs
#🎞 :: image attachment— art reblogs or posts w prominent images!
#🪆 :: jay’s taking a 15— ask/tag games
#🥧 :: fresh outta the oven— nsfw tag (minors block this!!)
writing & asks!
#🔖 :: menu items— find my works here!
#📫 :: placing an order?— received asks
#🛎 :: order for— general asks with the name of the user who sent them!
#🥡 :: special delivery for— mutuals tag!
#🥤:: to go orders— anon asks
#🤞🏽:: jay’s baes— me getting matched/self ships w characters!
events!
#starlight100event— my 100 followers event! [CLOSED]
1 note
·
View note
Video
youtube
Capt. Rock - “Cosmic Blast”
Street Sounds Electro 6 by DJ Maurice & DJ Noel
Song released in 1984. Mix released in 1985.
Electro / Hip Hop
***Song starts at 5:49 and ends at 12:07***
I just wanna preface this long-ass post I had queued up for today to say rest in peace to MF DOOM, the greatest rapper of all time, bar none, and an incredible beatsmith, too. No one has ever had quite the incredible way with words that DOOM had or managed to cultivate the air of mysterious intrigue around themselves like he was able to with his mask. I saw him perform once at a festival in 2007 and I don’t even really know if it was actually him on that stage. It would’ve been one of the DOOM-iest moves to trot out an impostor to perform his own songs while he still got to collect that check; a move whose abject ballsiness you really can’t help but just chuckle at.
Fuck this year, royally, man.
A rhyming cannibal who's dressed to kill and cynical
Whether is it animal, vegetable or mineral
It's a miracle how he get so lyrical
And proceed to move the crowd like a old negro spiritual
JUST REMEMBER, ALL CAPS WHEN YOU SPELL THE MAN NAME
* * *
There’s so much to dig into with this record, and I’m not even really sure where to even begin with this post, but I guess I’ll start with the Aleem twins, two (duh) enterprising guys from Harlem who loved all kinds of music. Born in the mid-40s, the Aleem twins got their musical education from many local sources. They frequented the Apollo Theater and then a legendary local gangster, Jack “Fat Man” Taylor, signed them to his label, Rojac Records. The Aleems didn’t go anywhere with Rojac, but they learned the ins and outs of running an independent record label and they also met the enigmatic Blowfly, who was an in-house writer for Rojac at the time. Through Taylor the Aleems also met Jimi Hendrix’s friend and love interest, Lithofayne “Faye” Pridgeon, who ended up hatching quite a scheme involving the Aleems and Hendrix.
Pridgeon wanted to get Hendrix evicted from his apartment, in which he lived with her friend June Vasquenza. So Pridgeon sent the Aleem twins to the apartment to kick him out, with one of them to claim that he was going to marry June in order to help her secure a green card since she was undocumented at the time. But the plan fell apart when the Aleems actually met Hendrix and discovered that the three of them all shared a deep passion for music. Rather than Hendrix being evicted, the trio would end up sharing an apartment together.
Hendrix would then ship off to Europe and become a superstar, but upon his return to Harlem, he kept close to the Aleems. They provided backing vocals on a number of Hendrix songs and they also promoted a street fair in Harlem that Hendrix headlined, which took place just a few weeks after his legendary performance at Woodstock. Hendrix had bigger plans for the Aleems, too; he was set on producing an album that they were planning, for which they would call themselves the Ghetto Fighters. Hendrix envisioned the album as a “street opera.”
But then in 1970, while in London, Jimi Hendrix tragically died, which, to say the least, put a really big crimp in the Aleems’ plans. However, they kept at it throughout the remainder of the 70s; they expanded their group to four members, including their sister, Juliette, changed their name to The Prana People, and got to be managed and financed by New York Knicks star, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe (Is this post New York enough for you yet?). In ‘77, the Prana People released their debut album, and in ‘79, the Aleem twins decided they wanted to move towards more of an electronic sound and ended up releasing a club hit called “Hooked on Your Love,” which stayed on the Billboard Dance chart for months and had both a barely known Jocelyn Brown and a young Luther Vandross on backing vocals.
Off of the success of that record and from being disillusioned by aspects of the music business, the Aleems decided to start their own independent label, NIA Records, which was to release disco, funk, soul, electro, and hip hop music.
Around this same time, Jack “Fat Man” Taylor, who now owned the famous Harlem World club, wanted to promote his neighborhood’s burgeoning hip hop scene, and in 1980 released a record called Rapper’s Convention, whose a-side featured a duo who would break off afterwards and call themselves Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde. A frequent patron of Harlem World was a guy named Ronnie Greene, and he would one day run into Mr. Hyde and convince him to make him Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde’s DJ.
Fast forward to 1982 and the Aleem twins are holding auditions to put out a new George Clinton and Tom Tom Club-influenced electro-funk-hip hop record called Cosmic Glide. It’s a record that introduces a main character, Captain Rock, who’s an extraterrestrial that just wants earthlings to get down to his space-funk jams. The Aleems and Mr. Hyde already had the song written and Mr. Hyde then brought Ronnie Greene in to audition to be Captain Rock. And even though Greene had never really rapped before, he managed to win the Aleems over with his smooth delivery, his cool and varied flows, and his swaggeringly captivating mic presence.
However, despite it being a quality tune, “Cosmic Glide” didn’t perform all that well. But the next Captain Rock record, 1983′s The Return Of Capt. Rock, again written by Mr. Hyde and the Aleem twins, fared much better, and also became the first record to really earn a name for the NIA label. This new bit of fame for both Greene and NIA then allowed for the third and fourth Captain Rock records, respectively 1984′s Capt. Rock To The Future Shock and Cosmic Blast, to flourish. “Cosmic Blast” became both Captain Rock’s biggest and best hit and it also marked Ronnie Greene’s musical peak. Mr. Hyde had moved on to do other things, so the Aleems allowed Greene to write the song’s lyrics and they also involved him in the production process.
Not long before “Cosmic Blast” was recorded, Doug E. Fresh, who was also a Harlem resident, had released a record called The Original Human Beat Box, and that was a record that was simply fly as fuck. It put Doug’s deft skills as a beatboxer on full display, and it also gave Ronnie Greene the idea to include some beatboxing on his own upcoming record. So he got his friend Richie Rich, who was a pretty good beatboxer himself, to come breathily box his beats for “Cosmic Blast”. And with Richie Rich, and an unforgettable electro-chiming melody supplied by the Aleem twins, and Greene’s fun party-rocking rap demeanor as Captain Rock, that quartet spun some real, dynamic, mid-80s New York gold.
It was actually a quintet though, because also in on the fun of that record was none other than Marley Marl, who’d go on to become one of hip hop’s greatest, most prolific, and most important producers. While mixing “Cosmic Blast,” Marley discovered, totally by accident, how to sample drums. He was trying to take a riff from a song, and in the process of playing back “Cosmic Blast,” discovered that he had lifted a snare drum, too. But the snare he had sampled sounded better than the drums that were originally programmed, so he kept the sample as is. This discovery led to an epiphany for Marley, in which he realized that he could sample any drum from any point within any record that was in his massive collection and then use those sampled drums as part of his own drumbeats instead of having to program the drumbeats on his own with a drum machine. This was a huge freaking deal; Marley’s beats could now sound uniquely authentic, like the drums had come from an actual drumkit, instead of sounding like they had come from the same inferior-sounding drum machines that every other producer was using. Pandora’s Box had suddenly been opened for Marley Marl with “Cosmic Blast,” and it helped set him on a course to attain legendary status as a producer.
But there’s even more to this story. Not only was electro big in New York; it was pretty popular in the UK, too; so much so, that Captain Rock actually went out there to perform at Wembley Stadium for a hip hop and electro festival called UK Fresh ‘86. He had absolutely no idea that people in the UK even knew anything about his music, but a compilation label called Street Sounds, which specialized in electro and hip hop, had been lacing their mixes with Captain Rock songs since ‘83, and in 1985, a pair of UK DJs by the names of Maurice and Noel included “Cosmic Blast” on the sixth installment of Street Sounds’ wonderful Street Sounds Electro series.
It’s there you’ll find this fantastic version of “Cosmic Blast,” which features the addition of some really dope scratches from DJs Maurice and Noel that you won’t hear on the original cut; and those scratches have a way of really fucking enhancing the song. Maurice and Noel speed things up a little bit, too, which raises the pitch ever so slightly, and makes the tune way more danceable, overall. They also completely transform the third verse by mixing in other dubby vocals from Captain Rock and then instead of running with the electric guitar solo from the original, Maurice and Noel close their version out with more scratching with a little Run-D.M.C. mixed in there.
Very cool stuff all around. An already incredible jam made even better by two British DJs. Ring in the new year with this shit. Long live electro!
#electro#electro music#hip hop#hip hop music#rap#rap music#old school hip hop#old school rap#music#80s#80s music#80's#80's music#80s electro#80's electro#80s hip hop#80's hip hop#80s rap#80's rap
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Boredom busters
My friends and I found that nothing can be boring with your F/O around so I'm here to test that!
Send in a prompt and your favourite of my characters and I'll write a little paragraph of how they make tgat boring activity fun.
Being stuck in traffic
Standing in line
Being on hold
Junk mail
Slow internet
Watching adverts
The routine of everyday life
Sitting in a waiting room
Queuing in the post office
Having no money
Tidying up the house
Waiting in for a delivery
Doing the washing-up
Waiting for/Delayed trains
No wifi/signal
Watching paint dry
Waiting for a lift
Pausing your show to wait for someone.
Waiting for a download/update
Another boring activity (pick you're own)
Special thanks too @pureangleda, @snowflakeimagines and @rainbowut for helping we come up with this idea.
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Form Podcast: A New Defender Transcript
A transcript of the Form Podcast episode covering VLD season 4 episode 6 “A New Defender” with Nora Lewis-Borbely, Alex Eby, Lauren Guerard, and Lika Leung interviewing with Kyle Anderson.
Vrepit Sa!
[Chimes]
Female voiceover: Now entering Nerdist.com
[Intro music - VLD opening theme]
Shiro’s voice: Paladins, welcome to Form Podcast.
[Intro music continues for a few more bars, then fades out]
KA: Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Form Podcast, the official Voltron commentary podcast. My name is Kyle Anderson, thank you again for joining us. We are here at the end of season 4, everybody. It’s “A New Defender”, season 4 episode 6, and I’m here with four people who help make Voltron happen. And they’re going to go around the room and introduce themselves. They are:
NLB: Hi, I’m Nora Lewis-Borbely, I’m the production manager on Voltron.
LG: I’m Lauren Guerard, I’m one of the production coordinators on Voltron.
AE: I’m Alex Eby, I’m a production assistant on Voltron.
LL: I’m Lika Leung and I’m also a production coordinator on Voltron.
KA: Alright, we will talk about what that means once we get started on the episode. So everybody at home, get your, uh, Netflix episodes all queued up to 0:00, and we will hit ‘play’ in 3, 2, 1, play. [pause] And we’re off and running, everybody. Thanks for joining us. [laughter] So what do you--yeah, what does--what does that mean, “p-production coordinator”, w-what does, for people who don’t know, uh, the ins and outs of animation and television-making? What does that mean?
NLB: So, uh, in short as a production manager, basically I work with a line producer to oversee the crew, to oversee the budget, and then to oversee the overarcing schedule from pre-production all the way to post-production and delivery. And then our production team are really the kind of the unsung heroes of our show because they do a lot of--they’re kind of the core of our team and they do a lot of facilitating.
LG: So basically, when you’re looking at these shots, sort of everything that you’re seeing of the screen is an individual design. So a lot of our jobs are tracking those designs. Um, I think right now in our database there’s something like 13,000 total designs? Um, so, it’s a lot to keep track of. Enough to--enough to warrant a job.
KA: Sure.
AE: Uh, and then as the assistant, I just help all the coordinators in any way that they need it, and then I also have a little bit of coordinating things, as well. Um, just… yeah. [laughter]
KA: Sounds like you got a lot to, uh, l-lot on your plate at any given moment.
NLB: Yeah. The tasks are coming from a lot of different directions because, like, we work with Studio Mir in Korea, so, like, it’s a lot of back and forth with them, like, trading designs back and forth, making sure they’re approved or if they’re noted, like, um, that they know what needs to be addressed. Uh, and then we also do CG designs in-house, so, like, and with a different studio, so going back and forth with that, like it’s a completely different group of people who are working on the CG-specific designs. Um… Yeah, it’s a lot.
LG: Yeah, and then I think the other thing to kind of note is that every single stage of production basically has to be tracked and make sure we’re on schedule, and everything’s on time. As you move through different drafts of a script, or, uh, different variations of a storyboard. All of that information needs to be tracked. And that is a lot of what our production team does. It’s really helping the artists make sure that they have everything they need to be able to create this amazing show.
KA: Mm. Is everything s--very, uh, detailed and color-coordinated?
LL: Yes.
[laughter]
KA: It has to be.
LG: Yeah, I mean, like each lighting environment, that’s the thing, there are, like, hundreds and hundreds of variations of our main characters because it’s every single different lighting situation that they’re in. Um, each time a character changes costume, that’s considered a brand-new design, so that’s why we get to a number like 13,000. [laughter]
KA: Is that high? I mean, I don’t know, have you worked on programs that are much lower than that?
NLB: It’s very high.
KA: Okay.
LG: Uh, yeah, it’s a very high number.
KA: It sounds super high.
LG: Yeah, it is.
NLB: It is a high number. Um, there’s a lot of detail that goes into a show like Voltron that is kind of unique to a show like this. Um, as Lauren briefly hit upon, every single character is colored to that environment and it’s something that’s a really, really special touch that our artists do because what that does is it makes the character feel like they’re actually in that environment. Opposed to if they just have the same color scheme in any location, uh, they don’t blend into the world quite as well. But, that means that every single character that goes to every single location, not only do you need a design for that location and that character, then you also need a color design of that character in that location.
LG: And then, also a thing I think that’s--I have, like, I’ve worked on shows where I haven’t seen this level of detail where I’ve worked on another show where, like, you’d make a design and it’d be for a chair. And that’s the chair you have in that show. Every time you see a chair.
KA: [laughter] That’s the chair.
LG: That’s the chair. And in this show, it’s like, “Well this is an Altean chair and you really need to think about how the Alteans would, like, go about designing a chair.” And so it’s, like, different from the Galra chair. It’s--
KA: Right.
LG: --a lot. [laughter]
AE: But you know, it’s that level of detail that really makes the show special.
KA: Mm-hm.
AE: It’s something that Joaquim and Lauren and Ryu and Christine and [Beyond? I know that’s wrong but the name isn’t familiar and sounds like that so I’m going with that for now], uh, as well as Kristy Sang and Anthony Wu. Um, all of those producers and design supervisors care a lot about all of those little minute details. And that’s what really makes the environments as, uh, I mean, as immersive and encompassing as they are.
KA: Yeah. And as we’re seeing here, the Galra--every-everything in each of the, uh, different species even has their own specific set of colors and designs, too, which… yeah. Which, I guess, y’know, viewers can almost take that for granted because it is such an immersive show, but that’s, you know, that’s why--it’s good you guys are here to tell me all this stuff because I’m just like, “Aw, fun! Spaceships!”
LL: I think the other fun tidbit about our show is how unique compared to other 2D shows is the technology on the screens. There’s a lot of--oh! There’s a screen right there, actually. Yeah, that screen has its own design. Every screen, every UI that shows up in their cockpits, that has--oh, there’s one, too--has its own design attached to it. And it’s a unique design. And every single one of these screens, not only do we have to call it out, which means we make note of when it appears in that scene, we also have to design it.
KA: Mm.
LG: Yes, that’s a pretty interesting thing that I think Lika has to deal with in particular is, uh, so she does the initial phase of looking at the storyboard animatic, which is just when they put all the storyboards together to make basically a rough version of the episode. She watches that and calls out every single object and character that is in each in--like each individual shot, and then particularly with the screens it’s just, “Okay here’s this screen and here’s the specific thing happening on the screen.” Sh-she does it all the time. [laughter]
KA: She’s nodding.
NLB: She’s nodding.
[laughter]
KA: She agrees.
NLB: She’s nodding.
KA: So do you get--did you get a chance to--like, do you still watch it and-and as a “fan”, quote-unquote? Because everybody who’s come in here so far has been like, they love working on the show but they also enjoy watching the show. But do you--do you just sit there and go, “Well there’s this element, and this element, and this element”, like, ‘cuz you’re the one who knows, like, all that stuff. You’re like the-the keymaster of all that.
NLB: I think for me in particular it’s super fun when we do the, um, crew screenings together. Like that’s the first time we’ll watch it all put together. So, like, we’ll see all these individual designs and then, like, it’s its own unique fun thing to get to see it all animated. Like, we don’t get to see that until much later in the process.
LL: Yeah, I think a little-known fact is, uh, when we’re dealing with production or pre-production is actually what our stage is, we’re doing all of these design call-outs off of that animatic. So we’re dealing with a black-and-white or very rudi-rudimentary colored, um, animatic, and while our animatics are beautiful ‘cuz our artists put a lot of effort into them, they’re not--they don’t look like the final show. So, when you are dealing with day-in and day-out with that black-and-white animatic and then you actually get to see those designs appear in the show and everything animated for the first time, it’s--it’s really amazing because I know our team, like I said, we deal with the black-and-white animatic and then we see the designs come in and out. So that design of Naxzela we just saw, we got to see the planet getting designed, the actual design for the planet, but we’ve never seen it animated until the actual show came out.
KA: Mm.
AE: I personally get very excited to hear the sound effects and the music because that’s not something we get to experience until the very end.
KA: Mm-hm.
AE: So yeah. Not watching silence is pretty cool. [laughter]
[laughter]
KA: And it’s such a--like a--I got to host the panel at Comic-Con this year. We watched the first episode of season 3 in a huge room with like big, booming bass and everything like that I’m like, “Yeah, that’s how you want to watch a Voltron episode, I think.” Um…
AE: I do miss the scratch, though.
[laughter]
LG: So, uh, to those who don’t know, when we have to do our storyboards, our actors record all of their lines. They record all the lines in the script. And sometimes if a line gets changed, or if, um, an actor was unable to come in and record at that point, we do what’s called a scratch record, where somebody on our team is assigned to voice that character for temporarily just so that we have the lines for rough timing. And some of our crew are particularl--particularly talented at scratch. And, uh, they’re always really fun lines, so that--we always get to deal with those in the animatics. They’re not in the final episode, though.
KA: But do you keep those? [stammering, others laugh] Also, could you then go back and, like, re-- “I’m gonna put the scratch track over the finished episode.”
LG: Oh, totally.
KA: That… yeah. [laughter]
LG: That would be amazing.
AE: I should do that.
LG: You should do that.
[laughter]
LL: It would be wonderful and awful.
[laughter]
AE: Gonna do it.
KA: Uh, have there been episodes--because you deal with so many elements in each episode, uh, I don’t know--do you know offhand the episode that had the most amount of individual--or what number that might’ve been?
LL: I always feel like I take special note of the ones that have less because I’m so excited about it.
[laughter]
KA: Because you’re like, “Look at that!”
LL: I know those episodes. [laughter]
KA: What if there was an episode where it was just like, “Eh, there’s a bunch of people in a room talking, no lights on or anything.”
LG: Oh, wow.
[laughter]
AE: That would be... whoo.
[laughter]
NLB: Sorry, I just got really excited because that’s a really nice low design-count episode. Um, no, I would say the episodes that have the highest design count are gonna be the ones where you go to a new location for the first time.
KA: Mm-hm.
NLB: Because all of that is new, so all of that needs to be designed. Uh, episodes where you’re seeing lots of people, new people, those also need to get designed.
KA: Mm-hm.
NLB: So those are going to be really high episode countsa--er, high design counts, sorry. The--these finale episodes, uh, interestingly enough, tend to be low design counts because, for example, in this episode, uh, a lot of these locations we’ve already been to in the previous episode. And there’s a lot of fighting in space and it’s very exciting to watch it, but a lot of those designs we’ve seen in other episodes, so it’s actually lower new design count, but there’s still plenty of designs being used in that episode.
KA: Sure. Yeah, it’s not like there’s four.
[laughter]
LG: The mermaid episode has already come out, right?
AE: Yes.
LG: Okay. Because that was a high count ‘cuz that was like a new environment, lots of new characters, they all had food.
AE: All underwater.
LG: All underwater.
KA: Yeah. Then there would’ve had to been designs for Hunk and Lance.
LG: Mm-hm.
KA: Things that I’m sure if they’re--if they’re done properly people don’t notice these new changes and things like that, but maybe people don’t know that that’s what goes into it.
LL: Yeah, I--before I actually joined this industry, I had no idea how much work went into these.
KA: Yeah.
LL: And I didn’t realize that every single one of these scenes you see, there is somebody who has to call out every single design that’s in that scene, and then every single one of those designs has to be drawn and created.
KA: Mm-hm.
LL: And you kind of don’t think about that as a viewer sometimes.
KA: No. And that’s good, that is a good thing.
LL: [laughter] That’s the goal right?
KA: That is the goal. If you wanna be invisible, it’s like sound effects, too. You don’t want to notice the sound effects, unless it’s, like, the silly stuff.
[laughter]
KA: Allura’s hand magic, that’s a different element. Now all I’m gonna do when I watch the show is count all the different things.
AE: Yeah. Would that be a comp element?
NLB: I know, that was the one thing I was thinking, like, “I think that was comp.” So, like, there are certain things that we’ll call out, like, that we just, like, say, “Hey, animator, we trust you, like, go for it.” Most of it we don’t because that’s just way too much responsibility, like, then you’d get so far into the process and be like, “We have to redo this entire sequence.” It’s ridiculous, so--that’s sort of the thing is like, you’re--you’re calling these things out and you’re designing these in advance so, like, they have that to start animation. And animation is such an involved process, like if you’re waiting ‘til after it’s already animated to realize you didn’t like the color for that, then it’s way too late.
KA: And since you guys--most of what [stammering] you said what your job does at the beginning of the process of an episode, how long is it from what you’ve done your job to when you get to see even a mostly-finished episode?
LG: There’s…
[laughter]
LL: Lauren’s doing calculations.
LG: I am doing calculations. Um...
KA: We’ll add a sound effect for that.
[laughter]
LG: It’s a lot of months.
KA: Okay.
LG: Um, I mean--I mean I can, yeah, I don’t know how much detail I can truly kinda go into for the schedule for that, um, but it’s--we’re talking several months between the time that we send that design, um, set overseas for them to actually start--for Studio Mir to start animating the product, ‘til we actually see the final product come back here. So, a lot of months.
KA: A lot of months. And i-in the interim time you’re working on an episode, you know, several more episodes, do you ever find yourself being like, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that” when you--
All: Oh yeah, all the time.
NLB: I mean, you’ll definitely go, like--especially when you’re dealing with an episode that’s in storyboards versus all, like, sort of, like, at the point of color designs, even though that’s all pre-production, that’s all pre-animation, those are so far apart in the process that they can be, I mean, [laughter] you’re like, you go from one meeting to the next and you’re like, “What’s this episode?”
KA: [laughter]
NLB: Like, what is this?
AE: Yeah, it’s even--it’s really fun, kind of, seeing the fan response for things and actually kind of watching the episode when the fans get to see it. But sometimes it gets confusing because uh-- our story, events happen and things change. And someone will talk about something, and then you’re just like, “wait a second.” Uh- as an example when uh- when seasons one and two came out where Keith was piloting the Red Lion, and then the uh change happens where Keith gets into the Black Lion. There was a period of time where we had associated Keith with the Black Lion, and fans had only seen Keith in the Red Lion.
KA: Mmm
AE: So it kinda-- Sometimes you get confused.
KA: Yeah, yeah. [Laughing] As it would. Because you’re so far ahead and the fan [laughing] reac-- yeah it means you’re having to remember what people are talking about online like “what is this?”
NLB: I think that there are things that fans assume were put in the show because they’re like “aww they saw we responded to this in Season 1.” And we’re like, dude, no. [laughing]
KA: You have no idea.
NLB: It’s been there.
KA: You predicted it.
AE: Our fans are really great at predictions. [Laughing] Um yeah after season 1 came out there were some great predictions and then season 2 came out. I mean, they were true, they came to fruition and it was--it was fun to, kind of, see some of the fandom predictions sometimes.
LG: Yeah. We read them all.
KA: You do?
LG: Oh yeah. [laughter] I hound for fanart and, like, reactions when it comes out on Netflix I’m just on the internet reading all the Voltron tags to see what people are saying.
AE: And then she’ll post it onto our group chat so the whole crew gets to see
LG: I do. And there’s a whole board dedicated to fanart that I have picked out that we just hang up so everyone can see it. So we do see the things that fans post a lot.
KA: But it in no way impacts how the show is made, everybody.
[laughter]
LG: It’s true.
KA: Way too far in advance.
LG: We do enjoy it, though. We absolutely love to see fanart, and it, um--and i-it’s just so great that the show is appreciated and the show is loved, and it makes us feel really great to see that, so, we--yeah--we look for it, we seek it out, we see it, and we-we love it.
KA: Do you--do you all have favorite characters?
AE: Yes.
[laughter]
LG: Uh, mine’s Pidge. I always try to voice her in scratch recordings.
[laughter]
NLB: Of the main… I think probably Hunk. Yeah, Hunk is pretty solid.
KA: Mm-hm.
AE: Ooh, that’s hard. I really like Allura. I mean she is just such a powerful female character and I love that about her, but Lance is also a ton of fun. So… [laughter]
KA: Whoever’s piloting that Blue Lion, that’s all you really care about.
[laughter]
AE: Yeah, I mean, really, I’m just attached to the Blue Lion.
[laughter]
LL: Oh yeah, I just, you know, go for the comic relief, so Coran is definitely my favorite.
KA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
NLB: I know, can we shoutout, like, Bii-boh-bi?
KA: Yeah.
LL: Oh, Bii-boh-bi’s so good. Definitely.
KA: Bii-boh-bi is the noise of anyone who if anybody does swear--
NLB: That’s what we--oh, fabulous.
[laughter]
KA: This is a particularly beautiful episode, I think, visually because, I mean, it’s a culmination of so many things, but it is so… it has such a unique style, I think, to it.
LG: Yeah, I really love seeing these fight sequences with the ship and I think--I think it’s because I really… So, Voltron is a CG design, and I think it’s… you know, that decision was made for a multitude of reasons, but I love the fact that our team at Studio Mir is so talented that they can take the CG design and, uh, basically integrate it flawlessly into a 2D show where if I hadn’t been told that Voltron was CG, I probably wouldn’t have assumed it. So, seeing these fight sequences involve a lot of these CG elements mixed with our 2D elements, and I think that’s--it’s--from a production standpoint it’s really special to watch that happen.
KA: Mm-hm. Well it’s very singular in terms of, uh, animated programming to have that kind of integration. But yeah, I remember the first time y-you see the new design or updated design of Voltron it’s like, “Oh my god it’s so cool”.
[laughter]
NLB: And then you’re just like, “And I’m working with those people every day, so… the people who made that. That’s neat.” [laughter]
KA: Now we’re just watching the episode. This is what happens sometimes.
NLB: Yeah. It’s definitely like watching that shot and knowing like, “Is that Haggar’s phase 1 or 2 in the background?” Like--
KA: [laughter]
NLB: That’s Keith with his helmet off.
LL: Yeah! Oh, that’s right, so every time a character has a helmet on or helmet off, that’s a new design.
KA: Mm.
[laughter]
KA: Helmet on, but with--er, helmet off, but with suit on is diff--
LG: Yup, 100% different for sure.
[laughter]
LG: Yeah, I mean we have sheets and part of our job is we have these sheets that we’ll say, “Okay, this is scene, you know, 100”, and every single design that’s in that scene from background to character to prop to all the different color variations, they all get called out just for that scene. So pretty much we go through these episodes with a fine-tooth comb, decide, writing down every single design and color design that happens in that--in each individual scene.
LL: So it’s like, if you like Excel, or databases, a career in production might be for you.
[laughter]
AE: We’re all organizational nerds. [laughter]
KA: Which isn’t what I--yes. That’s a fun--it’s a fun thing to be. I don’t have the patience to be one of those, but I always want to be. I was--I was in college I was always like, “God, if I could just have, like, the perfect spreadsheet.”
[laughter]
AE: Lots of folders. So many.
LL: It’s true.
LG: I don’t know. I think it’s fun and satisfying. [laughter] But that’s a true sign that I’m an organizational nerd, so…
NLB: It is, like, probably one of the favorite parts of my job because I keep a lot of, like, physical paper from, like, the Excel spreadsheets that we print out and stuff, and when I get to, like, move one to my “done” folder, like, physically take a piece of paper from one folder to the next folder. It’s like, “We finished all the designs,” and it’s the best.
KA: Do you--what do you do with all the, like, the finished ones? Do they eventually go into an even bigger drawer?
NLB: I just keep them forever. I just keep them, and I look at them, I’m like, “I don’t have to think about that anymore.”
[laughter]
NLB: Like, “Look at that paper. That’s obsolete now.”
KA: Do you all still have all your old school papers, too?
LL: I do.
[laughter]
LG: Wow.
LL: Yeah, they’re in the closet.
NLB: That’s impressive. How many boxes?
LL: It’s like two boxes, I kept it from my favorite classes, but I was like, “We paid for this.”
[laughter]
NLB: That’s true.
LG: That’s very true.
LL: This is what I have left of college.
[laughter]
KA: An old en--old textbooks that are way out of date now.
LL: Yeah. Exactly.
KA: So we’ve reached the end of the episode, and I feel like we barely scratched the surface of you guys’ jobs.
[laughter]
KA: So, we’ll have to have you guys come back, uh, later on, if you would like once we get into season five, which as we record this does not exist yet. As far as we know.
[laughter]
KA: You guys are on, like, season 28 probably. But anyway, um, thank you guys for joining us on the podcast. If you have social media you would like to plug, feel free to do so now. If you want people to follow you on Twitter or Instagram or anything.
AE: Do I. [laughter]
NLB: I know, it’s like, well that’s the thing, is I’m like, well I have artist friends that I know. I mean I could plug their stuff. I’m not… [laughter]
KA: Alright. Well that’s okay. You can follow me on Twitter, everybody, if you want to, because I’m, ya know, a dumb [Bii-boh-bi] who talks a lot at @funcitonalnerd, um, and thanks for watching and listening along with us, uh, and we will see you once season 5’s around here on Form Podcast. Thanks, everybody.
NLB: Bye!
LL: Thank you.
AE: Thank you.
LG: Thanks!
[outro music, the rest of the VLD theme]
Female voiceover: Now leaving Nerdist.com
[chimes]
#TeamPurpleLion#voltron#vld#strafe#executive meddling#voltron legendary defender#animation#cartoons#transcript
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
How To Keep Your Food Business Going During The Covid-19 / Corona Crisis With The Help Of Delivery Software In All Over The World?
TrackQlik#1 Delivery Software in Madrid Spain helps to monitor the delivery staff. As more cities and countries follow social distance measures in an effort to reduce the Coronavirus outbreak, local businesses will feel the effects. Until further notice, governments around the world are ordering restaurants, bars, and other food businesses to close shop. So, how can the food industry try to keep its head above water during these difficult times, and how can consumers help support their local food and hospitality business?
TrackQlik#1 Delivery Software in Madrid Spain
Offers and/or takeaways
There is still a way to serve our customers - delivery or takeaway - two options that most support, if not all local governments in countries and regions are not in lockdown.
To offer delivery, you can easily sign up with a third-party platform such as Uber Eats, Delivery Software in Seville Spain, Juste, Glovo, etc. and their ready-made infrastructure, resources, and a network of riders. And so can we. Most of these delivery services have already implemented a "contactless delivery" policy, which means couriers place food or delivery bags at the customer's doorstep, so they can collect it without any human interaction.
How to get started with Uber Eats
Go to Bereavement and click on "Add your restaurant" in the footer section
Fill out the form with your restaurant information: name, address, number of locations, meal-type, ...
Wait until the Liberties contact you to confirm your partnership
You receive an Overeats platform starter kit that includes online ordering software, an Robert's delivery bag, and a hint bullet.
You get an onboard session to guide you through Delivery Software in Berlin Germany and the platform (a free photo shot is included for your menu).
Overeats provides all order, delivery and payment logistics
Your restaurant listing is live and you may start ordering on UberSites
How to get started with Delivery Software In Valencia Spain
Go to Delivero.com and click on "Partner with us" in the header section
Fill out the form with your restaurant information: name, address, number of locations, meal type.
Once you've set up your menu, Delivery Software In Valencia Spain will send you a tablet with online ordering software.
You get an on-ship session to show you how to use the Delivery Dashboard and track your performance.
Delivery supplies all orders, delivery, and payment logistics
Your restaurant list goes live and you can start receiving orders on Delivery
If you are worried you will be buried in an online order, without having enough experience with online ordering, you can automate the online order flow using the Delivery Software in Barcelona Spain. This solution pushes your delivery orders to your point of sale system, so you can easily manage your online sales channels.
Another great alternative to the takeaway offer - just make sure you pay close attention to hygiene and distance so that your customers and staff feel safe:
Offer contactless payment transactions if possible, and clear your payment terminal after each transaction if contactless payment is not supported.
Avoid touching door handles and other surfaces.
Establish a disinfection/hand washing station for customers and staff.
Show the minimum distance between users queued on the floor.
Wear disposable gloves - when handling cash payments - which you should try to avoid as much as possible.
If you can, try integrating an "ordering" module into your website, an online ordering section. Delivery Software in Munich Germany allows customers to order online - and usually pay - before they eat at the store. If you have your own Delivery Software in Cologne Germany, you can also offer delivery with this module.
Sell more of your food and/or stock
Food Buffets can also be used to add or sell stock on your website. Many restaurants may not have had time to sell all their destructive goods before closing. Presenting it to your customers at a reasonable price can help you prevent wasted food and make some money at the same time.
Sell gift cards and offer vouchers
Another way to get the support of your loyal customer base is to buy gift cards that they can use in the future. You can sell gift cards online and (e) send them to the customer, including thank you notes or personal messages.
Managing cancelled reservations can also be difficult. At this time it is unclear how the situation will develop and when, and some customers do not want to reschedule at all (for example, tourists may have to cancel their trip altogether). Therefore, you can try to offer vouchers whenever possible, asking users to redeem these vouchers in the future.
Think creatively
The home kitchen says you can only sell food or drinks. One creative way to do more business would be to sell recipes, ingredients, and/or trade goods online. Your message can be like "Make your home a little piece of home", giving your customers a special recipe for your signature dish, sides, sauce, or cocktail. You can even supply ingredients or branded merchandise used in combination.
Ask your customers to share their incentives online
The power of social media should not be underestimated, especially at such times. People all over the world are trying to raise money, raise awareness, and support local businesses. So, if you offer delivery or take-off, start selling gift vouchers or offer other concessions, share more of your stories, posts, and messages with your online followers. Ask to do Delivery Software in Hamburg Germany will significantly increase your supply.
TrackQlik Features:
· Mobile Biometric Digitization with Voice & Facial Recognition
· Field Survey
· GeoFencing Software
· Field Document Verification
· Field Force Data Collection
· Field Force Request Management
· Field Force Route Optimization
· Field Force Task & Expenses
· Field Service Management
· Order & Delivery Tracking
· Transportation & Fleet Tracking
· Mobile Forms & Field Data
· Field Service Visibility & Management
Services TrackQlik offer:
· Survey Digitization Services
· Quality & Quantity Assurance
· Field Inspection & Surveillance
· Digital Stock Reconciliation
Click to Start Whatsapp Chat with Sales
Call #:+923333331225
Email: [email protected]
0 notes
Photo
SHOPIN TOKEN SWAP UPDATE — BLOCKWELL PARTNER TO BRING RETAILERS NEW FUNCTIONALITY ON THE BLOCKCHAIN
Happy Sunday!
It’s an exciting time as we gear up to re-distribute Shopintokens to participants of our TGE.
If you’ve been following the story closely (https://medium.com/@ShopinApp/blockwell-and-shopin-partner-to-reissue-tokenswap-d1cd8d71cb8c) you will know we have been working hard to ensure there is a smooth process ahead.
What’s become more prevalent is the opportunity toinclude new functionality on the blockchain, that we are planning for the retailers and brands in 2019 and 2020. These include:
The universal shopper profile (2019)
The Shopin Brand Intelligence Engine(2019)
Ad exchange (2019/2020)
Branded Tokens for the retailers and brands (2020)
A peer-to-peer token exchange for shoppers to swap branded tokens (2020)
This kind of foresight is enabling us to think ahead, as the contract is non-upgradable.
In tandem with this, we have had some delays getting in touch with the major syndicate leads and aligning all the distribution data. These are incredibly complex distributions, which we are taking special care to ensure excellence in distribution.
These opportunities are rare and often come at unusual and unexpected times. We’re taking full advantage to integrate these features into the contract, as well as make sure a high standard of compliance.
We’re wishing everyone a superb New Year, wherever you are and whomever you are with. Here’s to a powerful 2019 for us all.
Eran Eyal— Founder and Co-CEO of Shopin
Josh from Blockwell:
It’s Josh from Blockwell. Those of you that follow the Telegram channel know that we’re pretty much ready to hit the swap button on the updated Shopin token. I know there’s been some concerns about how long this has taken, which is fair given the idle time you all experienced prior to our engagement.
The typical token distribution is as simple as having a list of wallets, a list of token amounts, and queuing things up en masse. Sending the actual tokens is the easy part as we demonstrate here:
https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/token/0x4e0a5b4271049f98ca7b6932eca7113b44720129
The real difficulty with your situation was:
the nuance around syndicates,
individuals,
KYC, and
the lovely challenge of syndicate members who were secretly acting as their own syndicate and whose members filed as individuals. This would cause a situation where we almost hit the button a couple weeks ago on what would have let those guys collect twice the tokens they were owed.
We’ve since solved all of those issues, and as we were preparing to queue things up Friday morning, I had the time to think through the token from your side of the equation. See I’m quite pleased with where it is from my side, with regards to the compliance tools, the ability to sort out things like the double pay problem, and the ability to hand this off to Shopin and their counsel and know that between the admin controls and the attorney controls they have everything they need to keep this thing alive regardless of where the regulatory climate heads.
As I got to thinking about it from your perspective though, I got a tad less happy with where the quality of the crypto product is. This is why you don’t have tokens sitting in your wallet at this very moment. I reached out to Eran and company for some ideas on additional holding variables and “hooks” we could put into place for Georgi(Shopin CTO) and the tech team’s ML and web interfaces to interact with the token in the coming months and years.
Once these tokens go live they will not have an upgrade function. They can be shut down, re-swapped, or sent to a wallet that gets frozen for a crosschain atomic swap but ERC20 is permanent. At most it can be locked up and swapped again in a few years. This led to an idea which I’ve explored with some of you in the Telegram and am now presenting here.
But first, a stark reality for those of you who haven’t grasped it: It will be a while till your tokens are liquid. This is not 2017. The world knows that this is more complicated than it was both for projects and for people like yourselves. Those projects that don’t address the missteps of their rush head first into an emerging technology will have them addressed by authorities eventually.
There are The kind of boxes the Shopin team is dedicated to checking, on the compliance and product integration side, to remove the lock timer and/or turnoff pause. This is being done by their counsel, we give no legal advice and offer no legal recommendations.
Blockwell believes that great solutions to the world’s challenges can accomplished with token technolgy. Viewing the current Blockchain industry and marketplace we see a misunderstanding of the potential and capabilities of tokens. The current industry has a myopic view when categrizing between only security or utility tokens and there’s a lot more potential then what’s currently been attempted.
Regardless, any token within our ecosystem that has raised money or is planning to raise we mandate an attorney and we put the issuance controls in the hands of the people who are trained make those calls. Our expertise is in the deep tech and the fundamentals of product design. We have tools to make compliance easier because we try to think about all sides of product design and usage which brings us to the choice I’m presenting to you today:
We can hit the button and send you these tokens as they already are, locked but securely in your hands.
We can continue to release Rinkeby iterations with “small” tweaks that we (meaning Blockwell, Shopin, and most important of all you guys) come up with and want to test.
We’ll finalize feedback on this coming Friday and deliver on Tuesday 8 Jan instead.
I’m open to either scenario, Shopin was a fixed bid and designed for us to solve one last really big problem before we move into our own compliant fundraising and scaling mode. I’m happy with where the product is on my side of the table, and I’m confident that with what we’ve learned from this we can take on any challenge the world of tokens has to offer.
That said, I’m committing another week towards experimenting on the ways to make it better on yours. From a business perspective we are far more on your side than we are on Shopin’s and they’ve known that since the beginning. We don’t pull punches but we also don’t believe in wasting time with blame, regret, or distractions. We prefer using our collective minds to turn dark clouds into silver lining.
The better economical move for us is to just send out #1 and be done with this so we’ll certainly respect that decision. We will be dropping a version of #2 on Rinkeby (which you can view at Rinkeby.etherscan.io) to all wallets which are on the list for Shopin tokens shortly. It has the ability for you to set a minimum price for Advertisers and Brands to be able to engage with you and for those entities (who have their own role associated with the token) to pay that price even through lockup.
Here’s a rudimentary example of that concept in action: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/tx/0xcb7542e5ef07a4ffe231d74f8da436b385ed49b58a3a6758bba4d10d1285d584— Notice it’s a transfer but it’s also a function call from the input. If we go with option 2 we’ll do a few of these tests based on your feedback. This is a tokenomic model refinement and it’s something we are building into the core of the Blockwell product.
The BrandBidding concept isn’t speaking for the future of Shopin or their business model. It’s an experiment to get your minds going as the only way this is valuable to us is if we have a user directed ideation cycle. We’re more than clear on how top down token designs look but we’re open to an experiment in what giving the community of token holders a platform to experiment creates.
Regardless of the path we will need to wrap by Tuesday 8th January 2019 at absolute latest so please bear in mind. On the Rinkeby delivery, we’re working out a final piece of functionality to allow us to properly destroy the Rinkeby tokens after testing is complete so there can be no consideration of them as securities or taxable transfers.
To keep us efficient on processing which option to go with, please give your direct feedback to us here: https://goo.gl/forms/veAuTBYS1aQJ1Dhr2
Our mission at Blockwell is to raise the bar of quality while lowering the barrier to entry for businesses and early adopter as the industry as a whole moves into the “Early Majority” of the Technology Adoption Curve. We’re happy to have stepped in to help solve this problem and hope you’ll be as satisfied with the end result as we are with the insights we’ve gained working for you.
Here’s to a happy New Year.
Original Post here
0 notes
Text
We CRACKED Into The First Two Disneyland Easter Egg Flavors Of The Year! Wanna SEE?!
It’s time for the Easter Bunny’s most exciting Disneyland delivery: Chocolate Easter Eggs! These popular and limited-time Candy Palace treats are a must-get for the Easter season, and we’ve cracked into the first TWO flavors of this year!
Disneyland Easter Eggs
Click here to read all about when the eggs FIRST arrived at Disneyland this year — plus DETAILS about this year’s flavor schedule!
We looooove the Disneyland Easter Eggs, which are packed with fudge and coated in milk chocolate. Packaging has changed a bit over the years. It used to be more botanical, and now it’s simpler and features fewer bunnies.
(Click here to see what the previous boxes looked like!) Happily the price hasn’t changed much over the past few years; you can still get your egg for under $10!
Disneyland Easter Egg
The new packaging really shows off the egg, and we love that about it. The Chocolate Cream Fudge Egg is decorated with a purple and blue sugar pansy.
Chocolate Cream Fudge Easter Egg
Chocolate Cream Fudge Easter Egg
You’ll want to double check the flavor just in case that flower decoration changes. Ingredients and allergen info are included on the bottom of the box.
Chocolate Cream Fudge Easter Egg
Once out of the box you can get a sense of the size of the Easter Egg. It might look diminutive for the price, but remember: this egg is literally a dense egg-shaped piece of fudge covered in chocolate. It’s super rich and super sweet.
Chocolate Cream Fudge Easter Egg
But we still don’t recommend sharing. You could, of course, and maybe you even should. But these are so special and delicious, you’ll want to keep it for yourself.
Chocolate Cream Fudge Easter Egg
The Chocolate Cream Fudge is rich and chocolate-y — perfect for spiking that blood sugar as you scoot off to your next ride or attraction. And really perfect for celebrating the start of spring and the Easter season.
Chocolate Cream Fudge Easter Egg
BUT if you’re asking us (and you might be), the best Disneyland Easter Egg flavor we’ve tried is Peanut Butter Fudge. You know us: we’re all about that chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo life. Combine those in a Disneyland Easter Egg and you’ve got a treat that’ll have you hopping.
Peanut Butter Fudge Easter Egg
Note the Peanut Butter Fudge egg has a yellow and orange daisy on top, but it’s otherwise the same in outward appearance as the chocolate version.
Peanut Butter Fudge Easter Egg
Inside is a whole other story! This peanut butter fudge is a terrific texture that’s dotted with small chopped peanuts. It’s definitely still sweet, but there’s a subtle contrast of salt from the peanut butter that is a welcome diversion.
Peanut Butter Fudge Easter Egg
Truthfully, you can’t go wrong with either Disneyland Easter Egg option, so we say: buy one of each! And then go back next week because the flavors are expected to change to chocolate-nut and vanilla-nut! What?! Yeah, don’t mind us if you see we’ve queued up at Candy Palace… again.
Looking forward to all the spring and Easter eats in the Disney Parks? Subscribe to the DFB Newsletter today so you never miss a bite!
Which Disneyland Easter Egg would YOU crack into? Let us know with a comment!
Related posts:
Review: NEW Chocolate-Covered Raspberry Hearts at Disneyland!
Halloween Time Review: Halloween Hot Dog at Disneyland’s Refreshment Corner!
Halloween Time Eats: Orange Sugar Churro with Candy Corn Dip in Disneyland!
from the disney food blog https://ift.tt/2UasbR0
via https://ift.tt/LNvO3e
0 notes
Link
Rosie said: "We weren't expecting this at all. It was a big surprise when the delivery came, they said 'It's a gift from Bono!'
"It was like ten pizzas. I was like 'What?! Oh my God'. It was very kind, he cares about the fans."
There is a long history between Bono, the fans, and pizza.
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
tag dump
#here's to you kid ;; promo#it's a hick-sicle ;; submission#is it everything you hoped for ;; answered ask#special delivery ;; queued post#shameless self advertisement ;; self promo#out of power ;; ooc#blah blah blah ;; mun talks#double agent ;; zeke#the electric man ;; cole#don't ask why ;; ask meme
0 notes
Text
John Lewis customers can books slots to avoid queues
John Lewis fightback: Retailer testing virtual queues amid fears social distancing and winter weather will kill off sales
Customers at ten Waitrose and John Lewis stores will be able to book a timed slot to shop from Monday
Last month bosses were forced to shut eight John Lewis stores and axe 1,300 staff
By Tom Witherow For The Daily Mail
Published: 16:50 EDT, 21 August 2020 | Updated: 17:00 EDT, 21 August 2020
Shoppers at John Lewis and Waitrose will be able to book a slot to avoid long queues as part of bosses’ fightback after the coronavirus lockdown
It is one of two schemes being launched next week to entice customers back to its stores.
Customers at ten Waitrose and John Lewis stores will be able to book a timed slot to shop from Monday.
Shoppers who are faced with a long wait when they arrive will also be able to enter a virtual queue using their mobile phone, allowing them to wait in a cafe or their car.
At the same time John Lewis has announced an interactive sports zone featuring high end kit from Sweaty Betty, Stella McCartney sportswear and £2,000 Peloton exercise bikes to give customers a ‘live studio experience’.
The first concession opened in the Oxford Street store yesterday, and another eight will follow in stores including Southampton, High Wycombe and Horsham.
The twin announcements are the latest moves to turn the ailing retailer’s fortunes around after profits crashed from £452m in 2016 to £146m in the year to January.
Last month bosses were forced to shut eight John Lewis stores and axe 1,300 staff after boss Dame Sharon White warned sales could fall by a third this year. She has already announced a slew of plans to re-invent the department store, including turning empty shops into ‘affordable’ private homes and expanding into horticulture and garden products.
It is also rapidly boosting its investment in online shopping, while taking steps to maximise sales in shops.
The move to implement queuing technology comes amidst worries social distancing will obliterate sales as wet winter weather sets in.
From Monday customers will be able to book a slot to do their shopping or join a virtual queue using their mobile phone.
They will be able to send a code via text message or by scanning a QR code – a special barcode that can be read by smartphones. When it is close to their time to enter, they will receive a text message asking them to come in.
The trial comes at a crucial time for Waitrose, which is preparing for its deal with Ocado to come to an end on September 1.
Pedal power: Interactive sports zones feature £2,000 Peloton bikes
Peter Cross, a director at the supermarket, said: ‘This brand new trial will let you wait for your turn in line from the comfort of your car, ensuring that everyone can continue to shop safely and seamlessly.’ The same system will be applied to individual departments in John Lewis such as children’s shoes or technology. The app, called Qudini, also allows staff to track the number of customers in a shop, helping to ensure it does not become too crowded.
Retail expert Richard Hyman said: ‘This sounds like a good move. It’s bizarre to book a slot for your food shop, but these are bizarre times.
‘There’s no doubt that some people will be put off by queuing in the rain, and retailers need to capture those sales, particularly John Lewis. I think other shops will follow suit.’ John Lewis customers can already pre-book a slot to get shoes fitted. Waitrose has also recently rolled out a drive-through collection service in 70 supermarkets.
Social distancing and changing shopping habits are already having a drastic impact on the High Street. John Lewis expects 60 per cent of its sales to come from online, up from 40 per cent before the crisis.
The rapid changes have already pushed John Lewis to launch beauty masterclasses, personal styling sessions and personal shopping over video conferencing.
Waitrose is also aiming to expand its delivery business to 250,000 food orders each week as it prepares to cut ties from online grocer Ocado next month.
John Lewis partnership, which will release its half-year results on September 17, has 43 department stores and 364 supermarkets, and employs over 80,000 staff.
Advertisement
Share or comment on this article:
Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.
The post John Lewis customers can books slots to avoid queues appeared first on Shri Times News.
from WordPress https://ift.tt/3aY2GIN
via Blogger https://ift.tt/3iZZ2Rl
0 notes
Text
Bumble is Hosting a Series of Virtual Events This Weekend to Help Canadians Stay Connected
In these quarantine times, “weekend plans” may no longer be a concept but Bumble is trying to get Canadians out of their isolation ruts with a series of virtual events built to foster a sense of community and connection. Their first-ever Bumble Hive @ Home series runs from today through Sunday, and features a jam-packed schedule of workshops, workouts, happy hours and more.
Friday’s events kick off with a Bumble BFF Panel at 5pm EST featuring Kenzie Brenna, Shan Boodram and Vanessa Grimaldi discussing how to stay calm and connected during this challenging time. Actress Shay Mitchell will then join Bumble Hive @ Home at 6.30pm EST for a digital happy hour, with stylist Jessica Mulroney and journalist Tracy Moore scheduled to host a similar happy hour on Saturday at 6pm EST.
Friday’s activities culminate with a Movie Night over Zoom with Drunk Feminist Films, a Toronto-based collective of feminists who provide snarky, insightful commentary to mainstream films. Queued up for the night is the 2001 film Save the Last Dance, starring Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas. “Get ready to raise a tall glass of Cherry Washington as we collectively box-step our way through teen drama, weird dads, and white tears,” promises the group. The Zoom party begins at 8pm EST, with DFF also live-tweeting the film using #DFFxBumble from 8.15pm onwards.
View this post on Instagram
This Friday, May 8th… it’s time to change out of your lounging sweatpants and into your dancing sweatpants—we’re going to Stepps Nightclub… virtually! We’re teaming up with Bumble for a virtual movie night… and we’re bringing you Save the Last Dance! Get ready to raise a tall glass of Cherry Washington as we collectively box-step our way through teen drama, weird dads, and white tears. DFF, along with special guest hosts @imbobswaget, @berneets , and @amilniazi will be your guides. Zoom party begins at 8:00 pm on Friday, May 8th! Not into Zoom? We’ll be live-tweeting the film using #DFFxBumble starting at 8:15 SHARP – so get your Netflix queued up and meet us on Twitter. To RSVP, download Bumble and swipe on any mode to match with Hive @ Home profile: https://bumble.onelink.me/3396940749?pid=influencer&c=drunkfeministfilms #BumblePartner #bumblehiveathome
A post shared by Drunk Feminist Films (@drunkfeministfilms) on May 5, 2020 at 1:55pm PDT
Other scheduled activities over the course of the Bumble Hive @ Home weekend include workout classes with Barre Belle and MISFITSTUDIO, tarot card readings by The Good Spirit, a panel on virtual dating while social distancing, a Skincare 101 workshop with vegan beauty brand Sarisha Beauty, and a brownie baking tutorial with Morgan Lunn, founder of online cookie delivery business Girl Gang Goodies.
With Canadians across the country in lockdown for two months and counting, the dating app has seen a 71% increase in video calls at the end of April compared to early March, demonstrating the desire for human connection and interaction. According to Bumble Canada, the average video/phone call time is 33 minutes, another indication of users’ need for fostering connection even while self-isolating.
Bumble’s Hive @ Home series runs all day from May 8 to 10. For more details and the full schedule, download the Bumble app, swipe on any mode to match with the Hive @ Home profile, and visit the website here.
The post Bumble is Hosting a Series of Virtual Events This Weekend to Help Canadians Stay Connected appeared first on FASHION Magazine.
Bumble is Hosting a Series of Virtual Events This Weekend to Help Canadians Stay Connected published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/
0 notes
Link
SRINAGAR: Braving the snow and cold, Abrar Ahmad, 18, is one of the thousands of Kashmiris who regularly spend hours journeying on a packed train just so that they can go online as the region grapples with the longest internet blackout imposed by Modi government.
Stepping off the crammed train – dubbed the “Internet Express” by Kashmiris – in the nearby town of Banihal, the passengers make a beeline for cafes where they pay up to 300 rupees ($4.20) for an hour’s broadband.
“I couldn’t have afforded to miss this opportunity,” Ahmad told the Thomson Reuters Foundation after filling out an online job application at a teeming internet cafe, where dozens of others hit by the 162-day internet shutdown queued behind him.
“There is no one else in my family to take care of my three younger siblings and me,” he said, adding that his father, a mason, lost his leg in a road accident last year.
Indian Occupied Kashmir has been without broadband and mobile data services since Aug. 5 when India’s government revoked the special status of its only Muslim-majority state, splitting Jammu and Kashmir in two.
Despite a United Nations declaration in 2016 that the internet is a human right, shutdowns have risen in recent years as governments from the Philippines to Yemen said they were necessary for public safety and national security.
India claimed it cut communications to prevent unrest in the valley, where more than 40,000 people have been martyred since 1989.”
LIMITED RESOURCES
The disputed region’s internet ban has impacted everything from relationships to access to healthcare, said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia policy director at global digital rights group Access Now.
In addition to introducing the democratic world’s longest internet clampdown in IOK, Access Now said India also accounted for two-thirds of global shutdowns in 2018.
“Punishing an entire population on the basis of saying potential violence or terrorism might occur is extraordinary,” said Chima.
“I felt suffocated inside,” said Danish, a Kashmir University scholar who declined to give his full name. “This internet gag is driving me crazy.”
But he prefers the lengthy trek to Banihal to trying to get online at one of the hundreds of internet kiosks the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has set up in the valley, where demand hugely outstrips supply.
It has done anything but that, say locals.
Outside a courier company in Srinagar, two delivery executives chatted idly by a bonfire, saying no internet meant no packages.
“We are the only two who still come to the office. Some 50 boys have lost their jobs,” said Touseef Ahmad. “If the internet is not restored soon, I can lose my job.”
Dark future
Tourism – for decades the backbone of the scenic region’s economy – has been badly hit.
Every year, people from across India flock to the Himalayan region to enjoy its snow-capped mountains and scenic Dal Lake, home to hundreds of ornately-carved houseboats whose owners rely on tourism.
Bashir Ahmad Sultani, president of Kashmir’s Shikara (Boat) Association, said there was no work for more than 4,000 boatmen.
“We are going through very bad times. Some of us are not even able to arrange two square meals for our families,” said boatman Mohammad Shafi. “We are looking at a dark future.”
The restriction has served a major blow to tour operators, hoteliers and artisans as well.
Jeelani, 52, said he has been struggling to pay for his daughter’s tuition and daily groceries since his monthly salary was slashed by three-quarters to Rs6,000 in October.
“I have been told that I can’t get even this amount if tourists don’t start arriving in a few weeks,” he added.
The government has not said when internet will be restored, despite calls from civil society and the United Nations.
Without it, many locals say they may have to take up manual jobs such as on construction sites – or even pack up and leave.
The post No internet, no jobs: People in Occupied Kashmir board ‘Internet Express’ appeared first on ARY NEWS.
https://ift.tt/2srdugE
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
teacat-star-blog
نصائح الحمل للحفاظ على نفسك في صحة
oneleggirls
The most beautiful girls just have 1 leg!
pleasantenemy-blog
Pleasant Enemy
thealleywallart
Sans titre
salexectrian-heir
Salex Writes Here