The cloud bank --- This Is Heaven --- teaser (26)

A few more weeks, and This Is Heaven is available on pre-order. At that point, we're going to consolidate all teasers into a separate page, so enjoy this one---one of the last teasers we're posting. John, forsaken John, has spent the night stumbling through the lonely streets of  his hometown, and now he's returning home.


Dunno what happened to my house keys. I’ll have to ring and hope somebody will buzz me in. Maurice will buzz me in and say nothing and plop down on a kitchen chair and refocus on his cornflakes and a cup of tea.
This is Day Four of the festival but the first without palaver on my bed. “Where’s everybody?” I ask. “What happened to Alex?”
“What happened to you?” Maurice replies. He arches his eyebrows.
I arch mine.
He raises the teapot. “Tea?” he asks.
I shake my head and proceed to make coffee. Somebody has operated the dish washer and there’s a clean mug inside. “What time is it?” I ask. His eyes travel to the clock above the kitchen cabinet that shows the correct time twice per day. “You’re up early,” I say.
“Indeed.”

___________________

"Why did you run away? Can't you handle a little neighborhood orgy?"

___________________

I sip my coffee and peer at the water tower outside. I’ve been fairly downbeat on the thing throughout this soap, but it keeps you busy in its quiet way—-like trees keep you busy, or nervous flies, or the thought of an afterlife.
“Day Four,” I say, “day four.”
Maurice tries his campy laugh: “Why did you run away? Can’t you handle a little neighborhood orgy?
“I’m less experienced than you are,” I say.
“Taylor will have brought you up to speed, shouldn’t he?”
“Taylor, Taylor,” I say.
“Not to speak of Ben. Or the master himself.”
“Master?”
“Alex. Yes.”
Maurice beholds me with a mix of annoyance and reticence: “Are we jealous?”
“Alex ditched me.” I say (croak). "Sort-of."
“Yes, his remark yesterday. I thought he was joking.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“We shan’t blame him, or shall we?”
“No.”
“And you, whom did you ditch? Sort-of? You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep.”
“You didn’t sleep, darling. Alone, or with somebody else?”

I close the door. I close it softly.

There are two types of billionaires --- Florence (5)

Michael is working on a new soap consisting of a series of flash stories featuring Jamie and Dex, the heroes of his flash Jamie 1.0. The whole thing is set in Florence, Italy, which we visited recently. Here's a brief fragment of the second part...hold on, let's start with an illustration again:

There are two types of billionaires

And now the fragment:

There are two types of billionaires: (1) unhappy billionaires, who are each unhappy in their own way, and (2) happy billionaires, who answer “whatever” when their valet inquires as to today’s attire and are then served with a bespoke Bond Street summer costume in understated grey. Our man belongs to the second category. What’s special about him: he’s faceless. You couldn’t even say he looks like a choir boy (hedge funds), or Osama bin Laden (family money), or Donald Trump (family money). He looks like somebody who refuses to look like anything.

“Huh?” I said.

“They’ll look anonymous. Totally. They could be caught on CCTV robbing a bank and broadcasted on cable networks and nobody would recognize their face on the bus or on the buffet of the Mar al Lago. They’ve had a face job. An expensive face job.”)

We don’t always get it right, but this time we do. Mr. Bond Street finishes his phone conversation, makes a beeline for yours truly, and introduces himself as “John.” He asks whether I like art. “Real art. Botticelli. Da Vinci. Warhol.” He chuckles. Of course we like art...

You find more of this on the pages of LustSpiel, here.

Today...

...the view from the Pic de l'Ours across the bay of Cannes, with the city of Cannes on the shoreline and the city of Nice (next bay, in the background) on the shoreline of La Baie des Anges. The back-background is provided by the Alps. From here (500 m elevation), you get a view of the entire Cote d'Azur.

He's clad in widely-cut pants --- Florence (4)

Michael is working on a new soap consisting of a series of flash stories featuring Jamie and Dex, the heroes of his flash Jamie 1.0. The whole thing is set in Florence, Italy, which we visited recently. Here's a brief fragment...hold on, let's start with an illustration:

"He's clad in widely-cut pants."

That's actually Savonarola being burnt on the stake there, in the background, but never mind. And now the fragment:

A black guy has materialised next to the fountain and is taking pictures of the Loggia, meaning he’s taking pictures of me taking pictures of him taking pictures of me and so on. It would be a new come-on for me, and the fun part is in the wuzzy reciprocity—who is to say who is coming on to whom? Whether the guy is actually aware of my presence remains to be seen (the Loggia holds a dozen statues and six dozen sightseers as we speak), but I am becoming increasingly aware of him, unmistakably. I’m a natural.

He’s the Kenyan type, long and stalky, ebony-black, clad in a half-open Hawaii shirt that leaves nothing to the imagination, wide strong shoulders, shiny tapered pecs, the torso funneling down to the small of his back along effortless abs. Obama has a beautiful, round crane, infinite lips, infinite teeth, and wears stylish grey flannel pants, widely cut, much wider than the fashion on the Via Tornabuoni. I know about these pants: guys wear them to hide their third leg. He’s also wearing elaborate sandals about which more later...

Back in Bürchen for a week

This evening...

...at the nearby restaurant Le Mizuna in Mandelieu.

This afternoon in the Esterel

On Sunday in St. Raphael

Too late

This is real --- Eric Clapton --- Double trouble (1994)

This is how we feel

(Glenn sends this:)

It's not funny

This morning

Sunday afternoon

On the beach in St. Raphael

Don't try to explain this to us --- why can't he just go away?

German for beginners

(Glenn sends this:)

Pentatonix --- Imagine (John Lennon)

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today... Aha-ah...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one 

"Mr Lee" --- This is heaven --- Teaser (22)

We're really progressing with This Is Heaven, so we're in a bit of a hurry. John got himself into another flagrante with Taylor, and this time the flagrantist---(neo? neo?)---the flagrantist was Inspector LaStrada himself, so we re-find ourselves in jail. And then there's Ray of course, John's old friend, who's still held by the authorities in connection with Neill Palmer's death. This is the beginning of Chapter 25, and we'll take you up to one of the stepping stones for the overdrawn happy ending. Enjoy:

The police station of Georgia Beach sports two jail cells off the main office. It’s old-fashioned, homely almost, a film noir of sturdy iron bars to which jail birds are supposed to cling in silent desperation.

They’ve separated me and Taylor in a transparent attempt to prevent more lewd interaction between John Lee, age 29, sex-male, race-Caucasian (I had to provide my personal details yet again), and Taylor Stanford Hart, sex-male, race-Caucasian, age-perhaps-illegal—Taylor had failed to convince them of his 18th birthday, he doesn’t look the birthday boy at all. Your Social Security Number? That would be 067-70-9756. Say that again: “067-07-9765.” It won’t take it. The computer. The number. Sorry. “You have no driver’s license?” No, he don’t, because he’s a nerd (Taylor put it differently). Sorry.

“067-07-9765”

I’m alone in Cell No.1, Taylor is with Ray in Cell No.2. Ray couldn’t possibly have followed the conversation about “carnal knowledge” going on in the main office, a topic to which Taylor and I contributed very little-—letting LaStrada dictate his observations to a desk officer behind an unwilling computer while the goldfish in its bowl was looking on-—us not questioning whether Mr. Lee’s “hold” on Mr. Hart’s “member” was intentional or perhaps the result of a regrettable slip-up due to substandard illumination inside the Green Room-—except that Mr. Hart, at a critical juncture, namely when LaStrada had run out of things to say about “members” and poised to switch to the transgressive part of the arrestees’ malfeasance (the yellow crime tape, the perimeter violation)-—that Mr. Hart, whose mother runs a Baltimore law firm (we will learn soon)-—that Taylor asked several nerdy questions about the goldfish, questions which engaged the desk officer in lengthy answers, so lengthily that Strada’s cell began to ring and the detective was called away. I lost my train of thought. Yes, Ray could not have followed the conversation, but he’s sensitive, very sensitive, and now he’s gazing expectantly at his cell mate.

_________________________________

...us not questioning whether Mr. Lee’s “hold” on Mr. Hart’s “member” was intentional or perhaps the result of a regrettable slip-up...

_________________________________

Ray could easily handle the truth-—he must have spent a quarter of his life in darkrooms-—but we’ve somehow skirted the subject and blamed everything on the police tape and regrettable misunderstandings.

This is the future that Liberals want

You've possibly seen this already on the interwebs...

...which some Trumpistas ("/pol/ News Network") posted yesterday on Twitter under the heading "This is the future that liberals want."

Now, let's get serious for just one paragraph---in particular because we've never seen this point being made before: reactionary argumentation, since years, depends almost uniquely on insinuations, i.e., on making suppositions NOT regarding what liberals do, or say, but on what they allegedly intend---without any further proof of evidence. "Obama wants to turn the US into a Muslim State" would be a typical example. Put differently: since years (15, we'd say), the opposition to liberal positions is based on ABSURDITIES.

In this case, however, there's some involuntary truth to this. Yes, that's what we want, among other things: public transport, religious freedom, and freedom of expression.

Okay, and now to the fun part. Here are a few pictures in reply to the Twitter post (all captioned "This is the future that liberals want"):

You can't make this up (enjoy)

Trump Aides Keep Leaking Embarrassing Stories About How He Can’t Handle Embarrassment By Eric Levitz (reprinted from the NY Mag)

No, you’re the baby. 

Trump’s Presidency Is the Twilight Zone Episode About a Terrifying 6-Year-OldTrump Repeats Lie That Millions Voted Illegally in Meeting With Lawmakers


The president is a 70-year-old child whose TV time must be closely monitored — because any news story that upsets his ego will trigger a temper tantrum followed by irrational demands that his indulgent, overwhelmed guardians will be helpless to refuse.

Or so Donald Trump’s aides keep confiding to the nearest available reporter.

On Sunday, one of the president’s confidantes told Politico that his staffers have to “control information that may infuriate him,” a task made difficult by the fact that the leader of the free world “gets bored and likes to watch TV.”

That same day, some Trump aides provided the New York Times with a portrait of the president as a moody adolescent.

Mr. Trump grew increasingly angry on Inauguration Day after reading a series of Twitter messages pointing out that the size of his inaugural crowd did not rival that of Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation. When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the Executive Mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.

“The lack of discipline troubled even senior members of Mr. Trump’s circle,” the paper wrote, “some of whom had urged him not to indulge his simmering resentment at what he saw as unfair news coverage.”

And then, on Monday night, Trump’s staffers whispered an even more vivid account of his rough weekend to the Washington Post.

President Trump had just returned to the White House on Saturday from his final inauguration event, a tranquil interfaith prayer service, when the flashes of anger began to build.

Trump turned on the television to see a jarring juxtaposition — massive demonstrations around the globe protesting his day-old presidency and footage of the sparser crowd at his inauguration, with large patches of white empty space on the Mall. As his press secretary, Sean Spicer, was still unpacking boxes in his spacious new West Wing office, Trump grew increasingly and visibly enraged…Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

The Post’s story is chock-full of remarkable details. To list just a few:

1. After forcing Spicer to baldly lie to the White House press corps about the size of his inauguration crowd, the president fumed that his press secretary’s performance was “not forceful enough.” According to Axios, Trump was also incensed by Spicer’s poor taste in suits, and is already considering treating the former RNC staffer to his signature catchphrase.

2. Trump already “feels demoralized that the public’s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.”

3. Some Trump aides think Kellyanne Conway is trying to undermine Spicer so as to steal his job.

4. Jared Kushner tried to prevent Conway from being invited into the White House at all, because he viewed her “as a possible threat to his role as Trump’s chief consigliere.”

5. Ultimately, though, the most astounding sentence in the Post’s write-up might be the following:

This account of Trump’s tumultuous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House officials and other Trump advisers and confidants, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and moments.

Nearly a dozen of Trump’s closest confidantes helped plant an embarrassing news story about how their boss can’t handle embarrassing news stories. Which is to say: A president who prizes loyalty in his subordinates has already been betrayed by a huge swath of his inner circle.

It isn’t hard to understand why Trump’s aides would want to distance themselves from the mogul’s decision to begin his presidency by shouting self-aggrandizing delusions at CIA employees, congressional leaders, and the Fourth Estate. But we aren’t in the late days of a losing campaign, when it’s normal for advisers to start leaking dirt on the boss to save their reputations. We’re less than four full days into the Trump presidency, with (barring death, impeachment, resignation, or coup) at least 1,461 to go.