Hera

Colors

Her mother had named her Hera, so many years ago. It was a name of bravery, her mother would tell her through the mirror as she brushed out her long red hair every night. A name of beauty and elegance. Most importantly, it was a name of power. No man could ever – would ever – dare to betray a woman named Hera. And of course, her mother had been right.

It was a fine a day as October could produce. The air was crisp and thrilling without being too nippy or mean. Through the trees above her she could see snatches of blue, the elevated crisp blue that only seemed to exist in autumn. Mostly, though, she only saw red. The trees she was forging a path through had rid themselves of every last bit of chlorophyll and there wasn’t a drop of green to be had. Some yellow, and some orange, but mostly red. Red all around, waving in the trees above her and crunching under her feet below. Hera was smelling red. She must have been. This light crunchy smell that tickled her sinuses must be the scent of red. Odd. She would have thought it smelled more like wood smoke.

Hera stopped at a tree and dug her nails into the bark. Pain. Pain was good. Pain would keep her mind sharp. Keep her from floating away like a red leaf on the wind. There should have been pain at her belly, but shock had taken all that away and all that was there was a full, cool numbness. She didn’t want cool and she didn’t want numb. She wanted hot. She wanted burning. There had been a flaming ember in her belly and it should still be sizzling. Hera forced a deep breath and kept walking, unaware of the bloody handprint she had left on the tree bark.

Behind her she could still hear cars on the highway. That meant nothing. Autumn air carried sounds for miles. If she turned around she wouldn’t see the glorified horse trail they all unironically called a highway, or the closed Dairy Queen. Maybe she would catch sight of its red sign, or its equally bright red roof. Hera had a feeling, though, that if she turned around the only red she would see would be from the leaves. Better to keep walking forward.

She hardly ever left the city, certainly not to come out to the suburbs. But that’s what these were. Suburbs. Not the wilds of northern Maine, or even the bland repetitive nothingness of Western Mass. This was east Mass, the little towns and hamlets all pushed up against one another. Sure, right now all she could see was trees and red leaves. But it wouldn’t be long until she found something. A backyard. Another road. A creek or a river or something she could follow that would lead to some little nothing town filled with people who claimed they lived in Boston even though Boston was thirty miles east. Liars, all of them. Everyone, liars. All the time, liars. Lie about this and lie about that, just nothing but lies and-

“No!”

Hera slapped herself, relishing the sting. She was sitting. When had she sat down? Slowly, deliberately, grunting and yelling all the while, Hera got herself standing. She cursed the pain in her belly, completely forgetting that just a few minutes ago she had been wishing for it. It felt like her insides were burning, and she could picture the little red campfire someone had built there, the flame whipping one way and then another from an invisible wind, scorching whatever it could find. The pain would keep her sharp. She had to keep moving.

When she found the next road or backyard – and she would – she would find a way to get to a hospital. Anything that could identify her was back in the woods behind her, buried under leaves by now. Her ID. Her credit cards. The picture of her and her mother she had always kept. Gone, behind her. She needed a hospital, and she needed to go to one as a Jane Doe. If they found her before she could get surgery, before some over-stressed doctor with a secret morphine addiction could stitch her up well enough to run, it would be over. They’d smother her in her sleep. Put an air bubble in her IV line. Or, worst of all, handcuff her to the bed and read her her rights. No, thank you.

No one was going to put Hera in a cell. Hera Pauleen O’Malley, given a name of power as a baby and expected to use it. When you grow up in Southie and have fire-red hair and the last name of O’Malley, well, there’s lots of ways to get power but only one that had just sounded like fun. Like real power, none of this office politics bullshit. She had shown them what a woman named Hera could accomplish. Shown them she would live to her name. Graceful. Powerful. Never to be betrayed by a man.

Of course it had been Shirelle who had shot her. Shirelle to wait for the trunk to be open and the price to be set before she had whipped out a badge. Told her to freeze. And then shot a fire into her belly. Her mother had been right. No man would ever betray her.

The wall of red leaves began to thin, and Hera realized she could see a house. Cozy red brick with a playset in the backyard. Smoke spiraled up from the chimney. All she had to do was cross the yard and pound at the back door. Whoever was in that house would call 911 and soon those red emergency lights would be splashed everywhere and she would be taken to a hospital. Fixed up. Better than ever. Ready to find Shirelle and show her the power behind her name.

The leaves were red, and so were Hera’s hair and jacket and blood. It took the Costanos until the next morning to see the dead woman sitting at the tree line of their backyard.

Big John and Roberta: A Biddies and Broken Hearts Story

The Biddies and Broken Hearts

John Robinson sat at the kitchen table in front of the wood fireplace and wished he had a scotch. Oh, he could have one if he really wanted. He was staring at the bottle in its cardboard case, sitting at the top of the liquor cabinet. No one would say a single word to him if he poured himself a little into one of the tumblers and ‘partook,’ as his Daddy used to put it. But, as far as anyone knew, no one was making scotch anymore. And if they were it wasn’t getting to the Biddies. He had to be choosy about scotch. Everyone had to be choosy about everything, really.

He never ‘partook’ back then, before. Not never, he supposed. A glass of red wine on Christmas, a beer on the Fourth of July. Little enough that it counted as never. They had never kept alcohol in the house, and he never craved it. So much had changed, though. Things that weren’t supposed to change once you hit the big 5-0 but change they did, so why not start drinking a little bit more? He had figured it might help with the nightmares. And it had. A little.

The hardware store on Main Street had been his. Still was, but he hadn’t been in it in months and once upon a time it had been his life. Now it was just an empty front, a fake to fool any thieves and marauders who happened to drift this far up the mountain. A surprising amount, he had to admit. Sure it was late winter, damn near spring, but he wouldn’t have tried to cross the mountains for another month. At least. Maybe some people just don’t know.

He’d barely glanced at his store at first. It wasn’t until those two fools had been dealt with and Birdie was hustling the beaten man toward the Biddies that he really looked at it. He’d given the man his boots, knowing he still had a couple of pairs stashed in his old office. He’d let the others get a couple blocks down before going in. The store, like the others, had been shut up. Holding in the smell. He was afraid every time he went in, a little more of the smell would leak out. Like the scotch, he had to savor it.

Big John, tearing up at the smell of his old store. The nails and the leather and the grease. More differences. Back then, everyone had called him Big John, and no one expected to see Big John cry. Now people just called him ‘John’ or ‘sir’ and everyone cried occasionally so no one really cared anymore. Old habits die hard. Hiding emotion. Wishing for the old life back. He had sat at his old desk for close to half an hour and did just that.

John Robinson, born and raised in Broken Hearts. Everyone called him Big John, and at six and a half feet tall it wasn’t one of those ironic nicknames. His Daddy had opened the hardware store and given it to Big John when he’d retired, and Big John had split his time evenly between the store and his family. His wife, Jewel. Their kids, Candace, Corey, Ashley. No. Corey, Ashley, Candace. Remember them by age, damn it. Not the order they died.

This was the problem with memories. Even the good ones inevitably led to death. The regulars, who would come in and shoot the shit over a bucket of nails. Tell him their plans. Ask for advice. Barry Winslow and Alex Cooper and Hayley Morgan. All dead. Getting into arguments with Rita Black who owned the vegan café next door and always insisted it was his job to clear the sidewalk in front, for some reason. Dead.  His store. Stuffed and mounted. Dead.

John was just about to heave himself up and get that glass of scotch after all when Birdie came in from the hall. Roberta Wicky. The only other soul in the Biddies who had lived in Broken Hearts. She looked at him, and him she, and they both knew. Birdie pulled out two glasses and the bottle without even asking.

“Sitting in the dark again?” she asked, sitting down.

“Didn’t even realize.” He hadn’t. It had still been early evening, last he remembered. Birdie poured them a couple fingers each and pushed his glass over to him. They let the glasses touch just briefly before each took a swallow. Before, Big John and Roberta had only met in passing. Big John knew her father, Robert Wicky. Bowled with him on Wednesdays. Sold him the supplies for his never ending backyard project. Listened to him rave about his son and complain about his daughter. Maybe there had been something to complain about with Roberta, but as well as John knew Birdie he doubted it.

“Well,” he said after the grimace, putting the glass down gently. “What’s the verdict?”

Birdie finished her scotch, reached for the bottle, stopped.

“The man’s a fucking mess,” she said. “The bruises don’t go down his legs. I think they did that to him for show. The cigarette burns, though…Wendy’s pretty confident about reversing the frostbite in his fingers. He’s probably going to lose a couple toes, though.”

“What about upstairs?” he asked, tapping his head. “It occurred to me this could be some kind of long con.”

He could see in her face it had occurred to her, too. She was shaking her head, though.

“I stuck around for a while, making sure. Then I left and stood outside the door. Wendy says she’s seen that look in his eyes, though. His pupils are too small, and not moving. Wendy says that means opioids. They’ve been dosing him, probably. But there’s something else. Back here.”

Birdie gestured to the back of her head. Then she reached for the bottle again and this time poured her and John another glass.

“Wendy found it, looking for lice. No lice. Big scar. I think…Christ, I think it’s even a little dented.”

John blinked at her over his glass. “Dented?”

“Like someone brained him from behind.”

Birdie sipped on her scotch, savoring it, maybe hoping it would burn something out. Before, Big John and Roberta would never have been friends. She was almost thirty years younger. She’d graduated high school and disappeared from town, only coming back a few months before The Blues swept through. No idea what she had been doing. If anyone had asked Robert or Carley Wicky they would make a face and talk about their son instead. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed to find the only other person alive in Broken Hearts had been Roberta Wicky. Now, he couldn’t think of a single other person in the Biddies he trusted more.

“We’re going to run out of room around here, eventually, you know,” he said.

“Eventually,” she said, pushing her empty glass away from her. “Not today.”

Previous Next

Music Videos in the Twenty-Tens

The Mayans did not predict the end of the world in 2012. Their calendar system was cyclical, so the date 12/21/12 was not meant to be the end, but a transition into the next cycle. Not the end of days, but a new era. And fuck me if the past decade hasn’t felt like a completely different world from all the years that came before it. Mayans, the Large Hadron Collider, or just every bad decision humanity has ever made finally culminating in some ultimate consequences, the past decade has been defined by three letters: WTF.

“Turn Down For What” by DJ Snake

As I mentioned in my list of music videos from the 2000s, I am not writing about what’s widely considered to be the best music videos as I am in no position to present myself as someone with the knowledge or understanding of the medium or the industry to say anything of the sort with any kind of authority. I’m merely making short lists of the music videos I enjoy and why I enjoy them, attempting some sort of humor in the meantime.

Which is why it feels like cheating to include the video for “Turn Down for What,” which clearly is not only the best music video ever made but the best piece of art ever produced by a human being. Humanity has reached its dizzying pinnacle and while art can still be produced as what the fuck else are we going to do with our time, all of it must now be held up to these three minutes and thirty-six seconds.

“Shia LaBeouf” by Rob Cantor

Strictly speaking, this one shouldn’t count. It wasn’t made by a popular artist, never featured on MTV or other music stations, and exists only in that dark, terrifying back alley called All of the Internet (seriously, all of it is a terrordome and if you don’t understand that someone is eventually going to steal your identity/kidney). But this is the new world, baby, one where if there are rules no one understands them yet so fuck it. We’re all going to do what we want until the seas boil.

The best part about this video is how it gets bigger and bigger until you can’t keep track of what’s going on. I’ve probably watched this thing three dozen times since 2015 and I am just now noticing the guys with the red Mohawks toward the end. And if you really think about it, Shia LaBeouf as a person is kind of a perfect representation of millennials in the 21st century. We all thought we were going to be normal, happy dudes, then at about the same time we collectively realized that we’re all kinds of weird and fucked up and it might just be better to lean into that than keep showing up in Michael Bay movies.

 “Nobody Speak” by DJ Shadow Featuring Run the Jewels

Okay, so maybe it’s not exactly thinking out of the box to make a duet diss track into a scene representing American politics (CSPAN would have a lot more viewers if there were more diss tracks, though) but this is just so well done. The panoramic and movie-style cinematography just make it so much funnier when hell breaks loose and everyone starts trying to kill each other.

“I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers

I don’t even really have anything to say about this one. I just love it.

“Timber” by Pitbull

I didn’t used to like Pitbull. I didn’t listen to his music, either, but I just knew I wouldn’t like it. Look at him. He’s some kind of joke, right? Like, a joke artist? On purpose?

This video is what made me get over myself, specifically the moment starting at 1:50. He’s in a boat and he’s feeding sharks. But not like you might expect a rapper who thinks he’s a badass would show himself feeding sharks, upright, glaring at the camera, throwing the chum like its dollar bills (I also don’t know how to act like a bad ass rapper). No, he’s kneeling at the back of the boat. There are sharks. He tosses some chum in. The sharks eat it. Pitbull then proceeds to look at the camera with the exact same face a ten year old boy doing the same thing would. That’s when I realized that I was hating on a dude that’s just out here living his best life. It’s basically the same realization we all had about Guy Fieri a few years back. Pitbull just wants to make his music and dance around with sexy ladies. And he gets to do that, and he’s obviously extremely happy about it, and I just can’t stay mad at someone who’s living his dream.

Unravel II

Part One

“Tell me again,” Corter said.

“Wasted breath.” Eres tossed it over her shoulder as she kept powering forward. Moving too fast, Corter thought. He had been sure she would wear herself out before they ever reached the little building, but she hadn’t slowed once, forcing Corter and Mack to keep up. He caught up to her at the line where dirt met pavement and grabbed her arm, forcing her to look at him.

“Tell me again,” Corter repeated.

“I saw his face. He smiled, just before we were dragged through. And…and it makes sense. How else would they have known we were coming? They were waiting for us, Corter. Because he’s in on it. Hell, he could be the mastermind of this whole conspiracy, and we never saw it.”

Corter stared at her, looking for the moment when she would crack. Laugh because she was making a terrible joke, or just realize what she was saying was insane. But it didn’t come. He looked to Mack, knowing he would have the same watery feeling about this.

Mack’s face was clouded with rage, the lines in his forehead deep and his teeth clenching.

“She’s right,” he said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. We were careful. That…that…BUCKLEFUCK.”

The way Mack stomped toward the little building could make you think he’d seen Doved through the window. Corter knew he wasn’t in there. Doved was back on Number 0, laughing at them, and completing whatever plan he had. If they both believed, it was hard for Corter not to. Doved had betrayed them, got them caught and exiled. He wasn’t in that little building. Lots of stuff for Mack to break was. Mack flung the door open, cracking the glass, and with a roar marched inside and began knocking stuff off the shelves. A couple of people ran out, yelling, falling over themselves to get to a transport. Not a dead planet. And the people here…they just looked like people. Ran like people. Screamed like people.

“Eres, is any of this starting to feel hinky to you?”

Eres gave him a flat look, and Corter gestured at the world.

“Hinkier than it should, I mean. In training, how far out did they say we could safely go?”

“Nine hundred and ninety-eight are completely safe,” she answered automatically, her words peppered with crashes from the little building. “The next three to four hundred numbers can be traveled to only with proper training and preparation. After that…”

“Completely uninhabitable,” Corter finished. “So fundamentally different from ours we’d die within seconds from incompatibility.”

The crashes from inside stopped and turned to screams and grunts from Mack as he tried to pry something off the wall.

“And yet, here we are,” Eres said.

“More than that, here they are,” Corter said, gesturing to the one person who had stayed behind. He must have owned the building the way he gawked at Mack and the damage he was creating. “People live on this number. Human from the look of it. A little primitive, maybe, but human.”

“The actual planet is a wasteland.”

Corter shook his head. “Maybe it’s not. Maybe they just don’t have terraforming on this number. Do you remember little school geography? Before they made the western jungle-”

“It was a desert,” Eres finished. “They lied. They’ve lied to all of us. This number is different, but it’s not that different. It’s not killer different. Humans live on it, for fuck’s sake.”

“I think,” he stopped and swallowed. Once he said it out loud, there was no taking it back. “Whatever it was we were chasing? I think it goes much higher than we originally thought. Eres, if they lied about this…I think it goes all the way to the top.”

She didn’t scold him. She didn’t even look angry at his admittedly small act of sedition. She just looked tired.

“Fuck.”

“Do you think Doved knew?” he asked, angry at how hopeful he sounded.

Eres shook her head. “You didn’t see his face. He thought he was killing us. We need to get back.”

Corter felt whatever tenuous grip he had on his sanity loosen and tried very hard to keep the screeching edge of hysteria out of his voice.

“And how are we supposed to do that? I don’t have a RIP. Do you? Or do you think they just sell them somewhere? Probably don’t even know what an Eisen Tear is, let alone a RIP.”

The door to the little building blew open again, bouncing against the wall. Neither of them had even realized that the smashing sounds from Mack had died off a couple minutes earlier. He walked to them calmly, wearing a bright yellow pair of sunglasses. In one hand was a see through cup filled with something thick and bright green. In the other was a flimsy cardboard square. He sucked on the straw, drinking whatever the bright green liquid was, and handed the cardboard square to Corter.

“Your reader must be broken. If we’re really so far out, how do they have Main Constabulary?”

Eres and Corter gave each other a glance before looking back at the cardboard square. The picture was, indeed, of the Main Constabulary. But words at the bottom of the picture – in English, no less – called it something else.

“Greetings from Fabulous Las Vegas!”

Unravel

At the last second, and for only a second, Eres saw the corner of Doved’s mouth turn up, to what amounted to the smallest shit-eating grin. She began to reach out. She may have even managed to get the ‘n’ sound out from the ‘no’ she was trying to scream. And then Doved’s hand slammed hard on the button, hard enough to break something, and the Eisen Tear began around them.

Whatever good feelings she had developed over the years about Eisen Tears were erased in three seconds. All that mental preparation the nerds down in the Health Department were always going on about wasn’t just bunk after all. As the world around her broke down into atoms and darkness, the threads of reality unraveling in front of her in ways she could follow with her eyes, she felt her sanity try to do the same and finally understood why the helmets they usually wore came with a blinder. The threads unraveled in every direction, eating away at the floor beneath her. Falling or floating? Both? Neither? Who knew? Not her. Whatever she had known was unraveling. She was sure if she looked down at her hands, she’d see her fingers unspooling into the static and nothing.

“NO!”

Physical reality snapped back into place, and then she was without a doubt falling. They had been on the second floor of the Constabulary, but wherever they had been sent didn’t have a second floor or even a Constabulary. Her training took over and she went limp, hitting the ground and rolling. At least they hadn’t been up in Roshen’s office.

Dirt flew everywhere and got into her mouth and nose. On her second roll she hit something sizeable at just the right angle and all the breath was knocked out of her. The world flipped around her a few more times, and then she was lying flat, staring up at a sharply blue sky.

“Corter?” she heard Mack call.

“Ten-Ten,” Corter called back, although he didn’t sound it.

“Eres?”

Her lungs were still stunned, so she raised her arm with a thumbs up. From behind her she heard the scratchy sounds of Corter and Mack slowly getting to their feet. Eres stayed on the ground, waiting for her lungs to decide to work again and watching the blue sky as though it might reach down and suck her back up. Then Corter and Mack were blocking her view with their faces and hands reached out.

“That was a hell of a thing,” she got out as they pulled her to standing.

“Have you ever done that without a helmet before?” Mack asked.

“No one has,” Corter said. “Eggheads always said that was a bad idea.”

“They were right,” Eres said. The other two didn’t argue.

They should have been standing in the middle of the Constabulary lobby. If not the lobby, they should have been standing in the middle of Grace. And if not Grace, they should have been standing in the middle of a wide expanse of green grass and tropical forest and the song of birds.

They were not. It looked like they were standing in the middle of death. Dead planet, anyway. There was no grass, only dirt and dust and the occasional dried out bush. There were no forests, not even the occasional tree. Jagged mountains poked at the sky listlessly. Heat dropped from the sun below and then just soaked in around them, not a single breeze to push anything around. Silence smothered them.

“How far did he send us?” Eres asked, looking around. When she didn’t get an answer she snapped around. Corter and Mack were slack jawed, looking like she had. “Corter. How far did he send us?”

Corter shook his head and lifted his wrist, working the tap screen.

“Location…well, it doesn’t even have a town listed.”

Mack huffed. “He sent us to a dead world.”

“No, I don’t think so. No town name, but it says ‘Nevada, United States.’”

“The fuck is that?”

“Knock off the suspense shit, Corter. What’s the number?”

Corter took a breath. Not a good a breath. Not a relieved, ‘we’re in the double or perhaps low triple digits’ breath. Eres didn’t like that breath.

“Nine hundred and fifty-six thousand, six hundred and two.”

Eres felt the world slipping away again. Breaking off into thousands of tiny strands, eating at the dirt and the sky and the sun. At the last possible second she realized she wasn’t in another Tear. She was just slowly passing out. She dropped into a low squat, hugging her knees and forcing the blood into her brain. There was barely any time to feel embarrassed for looking so weak in front of her men before she realized that Corter had sat down hard next to her and Mack had wandered a few feet away to upchuck everything he had ever eaten.

“I’ve never been this far out,” Corter said.

Mack spit, still bent and leaning on his knees. “Has anybody?”

No. No one had. That was the answer and they all knew it. They’d all been through the same training, and the training had made that very clear. None of them wanted to speak it aloud, though, so they just continued to sit or squat or bend in hot, dusty silence.

A sound came from the edge of Eres hearing, and she turned as quick as she could without making herself dizzy. Something was moving. Far away. Big. Boxy. Shiny at the front. It kind of looked like a transport, if you squinted at it. Guess this number wasn’t totally dead after all. Eres followed it with her eyes until it passed behind something else. Square and squat. Definitely not natural.

“Building,” she grunted. She twisted as she stood, trying to keep her eyes on it. It was so small, so far, if she lost it she might not find it again. The others whipped their heads up, following her gaze.

“That little thing?” Corter said, pointing at it. “There should be a city here.”

“There isn’t. And whatever that is might be the only thing that keeps us from dying from exposure.”

“What’s it matter?” Mack asked. “We can’t get back. We’re going to die on this number, might as well make it quick.”

“You don’t know that. We have to get back.”

“Doved,” Corter said. “He’s still there. He’ll fight for us.”

Eres swallowed, her throat already dry enough to make a click. “No. He won’t. Doved betrayed us.”

Part Two

Music Videos in the Two Thousands

Good lord, I’m never going to know what to call this fucking decade.

In the last decade, most of the videos I listed were the simple ones, with just a single sentence idea, a small cast, and a small budget (or what looks like a small budget, anyway). But this is the 2000’s! New millennium, baby! In this decade, most of the videos on the list are BIG! Large cast! Big concepts! Lots of colors to distract from how pear-shaped the decade went almost immediately after take off!

“Weapon of Choice,” by Fatboy Slim

This one barely made the decade as it is, so this is the exception. Another decade, another Fatboy Slim, another Spike Jonze. This time featuring Christopher Walken, living enigma, dancing around a completely empty hotel in what might be purgatory. There isn’t much to even say about this one. Christopher Walken is a delight and close to four minutes of him dancing is a blessing.

“I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” By Panic! at the Disco

I’ve never seen a band declare in such a loud voice exactly what’s going to be happening for the next few years. “Hi, we’re Panic. Shit is about to get WEIRD. We mean, like, band camp levels of fucked up. You know all those theater and tech kids in high school who were all fucking each other like rabbits? Maybe a band kid or two got in there? Well, we are ALL OF THEM. We are LEGION. We are going to PUT HOT TOPIC ON THE MAP.”

These guys were all still teenagers when this band got started, so predictably after this first album they started fracturing faster than a cheap bed frame at a whorehouse, but for a few years, this is what they were.

“A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me,” by Fall Out Boy.

Christ, what a mouthful. So glad these long titles didn’t catch on.

Anyway, I love vampires. I write about vampires. I read vampire books, and I watch vampire movies and TV shows. I am also VERY PICKY ABOUT MY VAMPIRES. No, I don’t like Twilight, mostly because that’s not how I like my vampires. I like vampires deadly. I like them to be the fucking villains. Sexy, fine, as long as they’re also killing people. This…doesn’t quite pass muster, but honestly not a whole lot does so I’ll take what I can get. I’ve definitely watched far worse multiple times just because it has vampires, and at least this comes with a bop.

Big concept, big cast, lots of cameos, and fucking NO one looks comfortable in those false fangs. Not a single person for a single second.

“Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani/” “Hey Ya!” by Outkast

I have a feeling these are two of my favorite videos of the 2000s in the same way “1979” qualified for the nineties. These videos are fucking iconic. They are so 2004 I just broke my flip phone. They bring me back to the summer I was learning to drive. They bring me back to the back half of high school, when I realized while I didn’t hate it there, I was definitely over it and no longer gave a shit about it and was just biding my time until college. I mean, call it senioritis but that shit started junior year. My greatest achievement to date is that no one I went to high school with has any idea where I am, so any miserable high school kids out there just know that someday you, too, can move halfway across the country and never speak to those people again. It’s fucking great.

“1234” by Feist

Indie music got big in the back half of the decade. Or maybe it was always growing? I don’t know, I really need to keep myself from making this big sweeping statements about music because I honestly have no fucking idea. I know what I like, and that’s why I keep writing these articles as videos I like and not the best videos because, honestly, is anyone else going to pick that Fall Out Boy video besides me? No.

Anyway, I love this one because colors. And because there’s a lot of people but it still looks cheap. Like, it’s obvious all the dancers were just assigned a color and told to bring in whatever they had from home, right? And it looks like it was choreographed in an afternoon. Simple, but still big. I love it.

“Knights of Cydonia” by Muse

I feel like, if you’re not already familiar with “Knights of Cydonia” or even Muse, you should listen to this song without the video first. Then watch the video. Then tell me if you’re surprised even a little bit. Because I bet you’re not. I bet this is exactly what you were expecting. This is just what Muse is. They are effortlessly this. This is their essence, their entire beings. If it was revealed they were interdimensional travelers (like David Bowie) I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. There’s cowboys. There’s robots. There’s intrigue. There’s synth. It’s great.

“Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga

Speaking of explaining your entire existence in a five minute clip…I mean, I think a lot of Lady Gaga’s videos are pretty close to expressing the most essential facts at the center of her being, but this one gets the closest. There’s dancing. There’s weird outfits. She’s distorted for a few shots for some fucking reason. There’s a plot, kind of, and it’s weird. That freeze-frame shot starting at 3:06 is completely divine. And the whole thing is a gateway to how truly fucked up everything would get in the next decade.

The First Party: A Body of Thieves

A Body of Thieves

Vinnie glanced at the gold and silver clock face hanging above the doors to the ballroom. It had been exactly an hour and twenty-three minutes since he had found Joey on the upper floor of that shut-down factory. Give or take a few seconds. And now, eighty-three minutes later, here he was in a nice suit and a touch of cologne, Smile draped on his arm like they had known each other for years, walking into the ballroom and trying to seem like it was a normal event for him. Not the first time he’d ever worn a suit off stage. Not the first time he’d ever been in any kind of room this nice, with people dressed in such furs and jewelry. You could just about smell the diamonds.

They weren’t here for those, though. This was not, as Eyes had put it, a ‘ballroom blitz.’ They had a singular objective, and that objective had been about all the information Vinnie had received before being told to change. Somewhere in this hotel was a safe. And in that safe was all of the things the people at this party didn’t want to show off.

Vinnie stared at the necklace the woman passing him was wearing, gold chains with a splash of what look liked real sapphires, and wondered, if that’s what she’s comfortable wearing, what is she hiding away?

“Stop staring,” Smile said in his ear, right through her eponymous grin.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I-I wasn’t looking at her chest.”

“I don’t care what you were looking at just stop staring. You look like a rube. And get rid of that blush, that’s not helping either.”

It only made him blush harder. And Smile rolled her eyes. As though it were something he could control.

“Let’s split up. I’ll take this half of the room, you take that half.”

“But-”

“Work the room. Talk to people. Ask the right question to the right person and you’ll get the right answer.”

“Wait, I-”

“Remember the signal?”

“Yes, but-”

“Good.”

She kissed his cheek and then she was gone, expertly weaving through the crowd. Looking for her first mark.

What little Vinnie understood he had pieced together himself. He was the Face and she was the Smile. Both con artists, working information out of people. Eyes seemed to be on top of information. She knew how the entire building was set up, their exits, and the most likely place for the safe. And if they found the safe, she’d know how to open it. Fist was…well, his role was self-explanatory. He still hadn’t figured out what Spirit was going to do. When everyone else had been getting dressed she had taken off. She must be here somewhere, the plan was to get her the goods from the safe so she could get it out of the building. But he didn’t see her.

He did see Joey, leaning against the bar and drinking something that looked like water but probably wasn’t. Ugly relief washed through him and he crossed through the people, trying to avoid their searching looks. Did they know he didn’t belong? Why he was here? He hadn’t done anything but stare and he’d already been caught. He needed to leave. The big room was beginning to feel hot and cramped.

“Hey, I-”

“Corbin, is that you?” Joey asked, too loudly, slinging an arm over his shoulder. “Corbin I haven’t seen you in months, how has it been?”

Joey pulled him closer, leaning them both over the bar. With his nose over Joey’s glass Vinnie could confirm he was not drinking water.

“What the hell are you doing? You’re not supposed to know me,” Joey said.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“What? Of course you can. It’s easy. Especially for someone of your…talents.”

Vinnie looked down at his hands, still in black gloves. “I didn’t think you wanted me-”

“This is why I hired you.”

“Then why-”

“Kid, we can talk when this is over. Now get out there and get the information.”

And with that Joey and his vodka-breath were gone, back turned and already deep in another conversation with the woman on his right, somehow. Back at the factory Joey hadn’t let him mention his…talents. Hadn’t even let Vinnie mention them. Maybe Joey had changed his mind, he thought, or Vinnie had misunderstood. Yes, that was what Vinnie had decided. That, despite the promises, he had misunderstood, and that Joey didn’t actually know what Vinnie could do. Everyone wants to be accepted, right? Not just the freaks?

Vinnie took a breath. And another. Finger by finger he pulled the black gloves off and tucked them neatly into his pant pocket.

You are Corbin Lecoeur. You inexplicably have a lot of money and you are mingling. You’ve played harder characters. Now, go.

Of course, with stage acting he always had lines. Direction. And what he didn’t have was a sensory overload. If he wasn’t careful he could seize. Actually, the more he thought about this…yes, this was a terrible idea. If he was smart, he would turn around and just walk out. Out of the party and down the street and to the train station and just leave it behind.

That wasn’t going to happen. Joey hired him for what he could do. Maybe it was supposed to be a surprise. Gee, Vinnie, how did you know where the safe was kept? Well, Smile, let me show you. And then they would accept him. They would all have abilities of their own. Yes, that must be what Joey was planning.

It had to be.

Vinnie took one last breath and started into the crowd.

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Bad Trip

Rafi threw himself behind the car and squatted down behind the trunk. He adjusted his grip on the baseball bat he stole from the bouncer. Breathing heavily, he squinted his eyes then opened them wide. Over and over. One of his pupils had blown out.

This isn’t real, this isn’t real, it’s the drugs, it’s the drugs, it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s the drugs, it’s not real!”

He threw a hand over his mouth. He hadn’t been thinking, he’d been speaking. Practically yelling, really. But that was okay, right? Yeah, right, right, it has to be the drugs, this isn’t real. I’m going to look over this car and everything is going to be fine.

Slowly, only hitting his knees and elbow three times, Rafi turned around. He lifted himself until his eyes and nose were just over the trunk of the car.

The street was mayhem. People were running. Screaming. Running and screaming. Or worse, running and not. A screaming woman in a slim red dress was trying to run on pointy heels. Another woman in chunky heels tackled her like a pro and tore into her neck. She was already covered in blood. Two men were running across the street a block down. A truck came careening around the corner. It slammed into the one lagging, knocking him back to the sidewalk. The truck didn’t stop. The other man didn’t stop either. There were fires. Garbage cans. A parked meter maid cart. A fire hydrant. The air was filled with smoke and screams.

“It’s the drugs,” Rafi muttered. “It’s just the drugs. It’s a bad trip.”

Behind him came a fresh sound. Heavy footsteps, aimed at him. Rafi turned and screamed. It was the coat check girl from the club. Her shirt was ripped in the middle. Her short black hair was standing in different directions. Blood caked her mouth and dripped off her chin. As she ran at him her arms were out, fingers curled into the claws. She squawked at him, sounding like a pterodactyl.

“Oh, shit!”

In a single motion Rafi stood up and swung the bat to the sky. It caught the coat check girl under the chin. With an audible crunch her head went back at an unlivable angle. Dead eyes stared at the sky as she fell into a heap on the sidewalk.

Rafi panted, the bat behind him and ready again. He glanced around. People were screaming around the corner. Somewhere behind him a car crashed. No one was on this end of the block though. He looked down at the broken woman and peed himself a little.

“Please don’t be the drugs, please don’t be the drugs.”

It couldn’t be the drugs, right? Right? Fuck, it was just molly, for chrissakes. He’d never had hallucinations before. Well, there was that one time with that cat that was actually an opossum, but that was years ago. And there was a big difference between seeing an opossum as a cat and thinking the club had been overrun with motherfucking zombies.

He took a step forward and kicked the woman. Yep. Definitely dead. Her head was bent back at a ninety degree angle and there was blood. He kept staring at her, bat still behind him. He was becoming more sure the blood was in his head. Everything, all of this was in his head. He just killed an innocent coat check girl, probably running at him because he forgot his coat.

From around the corner he heard screaming and snarling. He looked up in time to see his dealer Mozzie run around the corner. Close behind were three others. All dead behind the eyes. All bloody. All reaching for Mozzie with fingers turned to claws.

“FUCK YES,” Rafi screamed, pumping the bat in the air.

The zombies fell on Mozzie a few feet away.

“Oh, yeah. Oh, fuck.”

Music Videos in the Nineties

“I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” by Meat Loaf

Yeah, I’m pretty sure Meat Loaf is the human equivalent of a community theater production of Phantom of the Opera. The story of the video is vaguely ‘beauty and the beast,’ just with a lot more motorcycles and helicopters and power chords. Also, is he really that much uglier than he usually is? Wow, that was super bitchy, even for me. Anyway, power ballads were this whole thing in the late eighties/early nineties, and while my sister suggested I go with Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” this video came into my apartment, tore everything I owned in tiny little fluffy pieces, and stole all of my pants.

Why does history think everyone in the nineties switched to heroin? Do you think a junkie would have the energy for even five seconds of this? This was old school cocaine, baby, and potentially a little bit of meth.

“I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred

Just in case anyone heard this song on the radio and somehow thought this was a self-serious song about a guy who honestly thinks he’s just hot shit, here’s the video to show you how incredibly dense you are. Our hero is various degrees of shirtless and greased up from the top of his shaved head to the waistband of pleather pants, and within the first thirty seconds of the song some guy just casually walks by and rips off what remains of the shirt without anyone stopping to give a crap. Freeze the video on any given frame of his face, and you’ll find a man who has learned the subtle art of giving you the finger through his smile.

“Freedom! 90” by George Michael

This one takes the ‘pretty people dancing’ concept for music videos to its logical extreme: what if we hired the prettiest people? Literal fucking supermodels. And they won’t even have to dance with choreography. They can just kind of bop around and lip sync to the song in this terribly lit loft apartment they apparently all share?

Yeah, it sounds half-assed in concept, but it works, and almost entirely because it’s directed by David Fincher. You may recognize this name as the source of a handful of your nightmares, but he’s also got a long catalogue of music videos under his belt (over fifty!), and this one regularly comes up as one of his best.

“Virtual Insanity” by Jamiroquai

Another one that I think works despite being so fucking simple. It’s just…this dude…Jamiroquai? I assume that’s a name and not just a bad scrabble hand. He’s just dancing around this room while it all moves around him, and the best part is despite the song name, most of it isn’t computer special effects, it’s an actual room connected to the camera but entirely separate from the floor. A fact I distinctly remember learning on Pop Up Video.

Also, please note the fact that if not for that hat on his head this music video would be timeless. There is nothing to date this video, except perhaps the aspect ratio, but people only wore that hat un-ironically between 1995 and 1997 so archeologists will always know exactly when this video was made.

“1979” by Smashing Pumpkins

Everything about this song and this video just feels like the nineties to me. The first time I heard the song after the nineties were over, probably around 2008-2009, it…it was just the hardest I’d ever felt nostalgia in my entire life, and that’s probably still true. I was teleported to the summers of ’96 and ’97, and for the first time I felt that utterly human pain of realizing that time will not stop moving forward, and every day is only destined to turn into a hazy sense memory. You can never go back, because that place doesn’t exist anymore except inside you.

“Praise You,” by Fatboy Slim

Honestly just one of the greatest music vidoes ever made, and that’s not just me saying that. Director Spike Jonze (yes, that Spike Jonze, you should be realizing now that a lot of major directors also love doing music videos, if you didn’t already know) stars as Richard Koufey, leader of the dance group The Torrance Community Dance Group, just absolutely tearing shit up in front of an LA movie theater in what technically counts as one of the first flash mobs? I guess? None of these people standing in line were in on the joke, and that’s a real movie theater manager turning off the boom box and, I’m guessing, going to call the cops. Zero chill.

I guess I’m learning that the videos I liked best from the nineties were the simple ones. Simple videos in the eighties feel like they’re simple because the people involved just didn’t know what to do (see: “Gloria” by Laura Branigan). By the end of the nineties I feel like folks in the music industry (and movie industry, apparently) had a good idea of what they could do with these mini-movies, and if a music video was simple, it was because someone knew that was all the song needed.

Lacy After Graduation

Billy on his Eighteenth Birthday

Lacy was reading her book and trying very hard to not think of all of her friends driving up to the lake at that exact moment and failing at both.

The lake wasn’t included in her parent’s plan for her. Most of the things she wanted weren’t in that plan, actually. Like the magazine she had brought with her this morning to the office. Oh, Mother had been quick to take that away, and replace it with this book. Text book. Bad enough she had to work reception at her parents’ office the week after graduation, she also was expected to keep studying. She’d already gotten into the college they wanted, their alma mater, of course, she should have been able to take it easy for a couple months, at least. No. Of course no. Why would she even think that?

Her future was laid out in front of her, almost as solid and unbreakable as the waiting room before her. She’d go to college, then med school, then come back to the family practice and work right next to her mother and father. Somewhere in there she’d get married and have kids and learn the joys of balancing two impossible tasks at once. Her parents would have some kind of say in it all. The kind of doctor she would become. The kind of man she would marry. The way she would parent her kids. And if she just let her mind go blank and her heart numb, it sounded sort of okay.

The phone on the desk in front of her rang and made her jump and yelp. Mrs. Burns looked up from her knitting magazine and gave her a look. Every patient who saw her parents thought they had the right to be her parents, too, and that was most of the town. Probably they all had a meeting together and decided poor Lacy didn’t know enough to control her own life, so everyone else had to do it.

“Family Practice, how can I help you?”

“What are you wearing?”

The voice was low and gruff but she’d recognize Billy anywhere. A flush creeped up her face and she glanced up, relieved to find Mrs. Burns back behind her magazine.

“Yes, sir, I can book you an appointment.”

“I got you blushing, huh? I’m at the payphone down at the corner. Come meet me.”

“Hmm, no, that time won’t work. What about-”

“No, Lacy. Now. Bring your purse.”

Billy hung up and Lacy stared straight ahead. He hadn’t quite sounded like himself, at the end. He had sounded like someone new. Nurse Jackie would come for Mrs. Burns any time now, and no one else was scheduled to arrive for fifteen minutes. And, well, her parents were going to be mad at her for one thing or another by the end of the day. Might as well be this. Lacy scooped up her purse from under the desk and walked to the front door, carefully not looking at Mrs. Burns as she passed.

Billy was at the corner, leaning against his truck. Her parents liked Billy. Thought he was a good kid with a sound head on his shoulders. But Billy was never going to be a professional, so whatever they had needed to end before she went to college. Doctors don’t date blue collar, everyone knows that.

Billy saw her and smiled and every thought about her parents washed away. He never saw her as what she might be. Just as what she was.

“Happy birthday,” she said as she hugged him. “I don’t have your gift, I was going to give it to you tonight.”

“That’s okay, that’s fine,” Billy said, his arms still around her. “Lacy, I’m going to lay it flat. I’m leaving this town and I want you to come with me.”

Lacy frowned. “What…like, a vacation?”

“No, not a vacation. A life. I’m leaving for my life, Lace. And you should, too.”

“Okay.”

“I know it’s scary, and I know…wait, what?”

Billy was looking at her like there was a fish on her head, and Lacy stifled a laugh.

“What did you think I was going to say? ‘I can’t leave my parents, my job, I’m going to college in the fall.’ Fat chance. I’m tired of this town, too, Billy. I’m tired of everyone thinking they know better, and I’m tired of being bullied in a single direction. I’m tired of my life and I haven’t even started it yet.”

It was clear Billy was expecting a fight from her, but it was true. Any life where she wasn’t staring down the barrel of seven years of school seemed like a relief. She didn’t even like science.

“I don’t know how I’m going to support us,” Billy said.

“We will figure it out together.”

“I don’t know where we’ll go.”

“California. Los Angeles. Isn’t that where all the runaways in the songs go?”

“What about college?”

“Oh, screw that college, I didn’t even want to go there.”

“You just have all the answers, don’t you?”

Lacy pulled back just enough to look into Billy’s eyes, still keeping her arms around him.

“No. I don’t. If we do this I won’t know what comes next for years. I don’t understand why we’re still talking about this and not already in the truck. The only thing I’m afraid of right now is my parents stopping us.”

The look he gave her told her everything. He was serious about running. And he was afraid of getting stopped, too. They were in the truck and speeding down the street without another word, and were ten minutes west of town before Nurse Jackie even noticed Lacy was gone.

“I love you,” Billy said.

Lacy wiggled her toes, her feet out the window and in the breeze. “I love you, Billy.”

“You want to get married?”

Lacy thought about it and shrugged. “Let’s get to Las Vegas and see how we feel.”

Inspiration?

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