Harrah’s New Orleans Hotel & Casino - Caesars Entertainment

I know, everyone is tired of hearing about Gamestop, but this was something I came across that I thought was actually quite well written and pretty spot on with most of the anger driven rhetoric I've seen on Reddit.
I've copy/pasted because I know most of y'all don't have Bloomberg subscriptions.

Traders putting on the short squeeze aren’t motivated by greed. They’re engaged in an anger-driven uprising against the establishment.
Anger Is an Energy
The saga of GameStop Corp. continues. By the end of another frenetic day of trading Tuesday, the stock had just topped its high from Monday. Between those peaks, it staged a fall of more than 50% on Monday afternoon. Colleagues have followed these extraordinary developments as they happened. I will try for now simply to process the single most important question: Is this just a weird technical situation, of the kind that comes along every few years, that can otherwise be safely ignored? Or does it tell us something important about market conditions as a whole?
GameStop's share price surged back to set a new high Purely qualitatively, based on what I have witnessed, I think it does matter. The signal it sends is disquieting, if not surprising. It also introduces us to a new variant on an ancient market phenomenon.
The cliche is that market capitalism works on the balance between greed and fear. The standard defense is as follows: If the greed to make money by beating the competition is matched by a fear of failure through making too many mistakes or cutting corners, then capitalism works. Nothing else yet discovered gives people such an incentive to work and create growth. Speculative bubbles happen when greed becomes excessive, or when fear diminishes too much. Easy money and easier trading with derivatives oil these emotions and allow them to run riot. The financial crisis of 2008 happened in large part because years of policy had convinced investors that there would be a bailout if they failed; they lost their fear, and greed took over.
This feeds into the debate over whether we have a speculative bubble at present. Markets are pervaded by gloom and worry, so there is no lack of fear — even if confidence that interest rates will never rise is growing excessive. Meanwhile, there is little in the way of greed. Cryptocurrency has generated excitement, as has Tesla Inc., but in the main the frenzy over a historic opportunity to get rich, of the kind that was everywhere in 1999, is lacking. This is a different, worried world. The last two decades have stripped it of its positivity. The mood is nothing like the great bubbles of the past.
Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it.
On Monday, I argued that it was misplaced to take pleasure at the pain for the short-sellers who had attacked GameStop stock, and then been subjected to a “short squeeze” for the ages by traders coordinating on Reddit. I received a bumper crop of feedback. Here are some representative samples (leaving out many with unprintable expletives):

“You kind of miss the point of what is going on with GameStop. How much did Melvin pay you to write this garbage? shill. Literally trying to protect an industry trying to fleece jobs from low income workers. Sleep well chump.”
“Watching entitled institutional shorts whine on TV and OP EDs that millennials equipped with margin accounts & zero fees are collaborating on Reddit to target them is my new favorite sport. Looks perfectly healthy from where I'm sitting, which is on bull side :) plus 1 for the little guys.”
“Normal isn't putting the retail trader down for being independent while organized hedge funds force you to take their way or suffer in fear. Normal is the American dream and being able to make your own way. This isn't a casino. This is a riot.”

One respondent warned that the people squeezing the shorts aren’t “a herd of impressionable youngsters with Robinhood accounts. No. They are an experienced & ruthless army of insomniacs followed by a silent legion of rapidly learning new traders. This is a new paradigm that won’t go away.”
Another told me I was a “dumb boomer” amid a screed of unprintable epithets. (Point of information: I’m just too young to be a boomer. I’m in Generation X, but it’s the intergenerational antagonism that’s noteworthy.) Another said that the short squeeze was just a way for millennials to recoup the money they had been forced to pay to bankers during the TARP rescue 12 years ago, and to put coronavirus relief checks to work:

“In other words, poor people have too much money and are now controlling the narrative. Damn those $1200 stimulus checks and $600 unemployment supplements. Too much liquidity, let's get these folks back to living paycheck to paycheck.”
“I know. Democratisation of the market is so damned inconvenient for those of us with money.”
“nobody cares about your hedge fund cronies!”
“Bloomberg defending the suits. Not surprised. They’re just mad the rubes are in on the joke now. Might this force the Fed’s hand? Too many regular people in on the game.”

This is all fascinating. In the space of 12 years, the role of the short-seller has turned on its head. Back in 2008, it was the shorts who upset the status quo, revealed what was rotten in the state of Wall Street, and brought down the big shots. They were even the heroes of a big movie. It was the Wall Streeters who attacked them.
Alienation has deepened since then. Short-selling hedge funds are now seen as part of a corrupt establishment, as is the media. The motives of anyone defending the shorts, or anyone wearing a suit, must be suspect. And there is a deep generational divide; those unable to own their own home and forced to rely on defined contribution pensions have a stunningly unfair deal compared to those a generation older, living in mortgage-free homes with guaranteed pensions. That percolates into anger, and a determination to right the scales by making money at the expense of corrupt short-sellers.
We lack precedents for an angry bubble, so predictions are even harder than usual. But there are enough similarities with past incidents to raise serious cause for concern.
First, the little guys have had their success so far with the aid of margin accounts, and by using derivatives. We know what happens when these things are used to excess; even the Dutch tulipmania relied on margin debt and derivatives. Little guys (and everyone else) deserve safer tools with which to build wealth.
Second, “democratization of finance” isn’t new, and in itself is nothing that anyone can object to. The problem is that investment and financial planning are difficult, and require time. Regulate these things, and you no longer have true democratization. Leave people free to take chances, and you get disasters like the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. That also followed plenty of hype about the success of the “little guy,” and the first great explosion of online discount trading succeeded in sucking an army of new retail investors into the bubble’s final climax. Unregulated “democratization” led to the little guy bearing the brunt of the losses.
“Democratizing” finance also leaves newly enfranchised financial citizens prey to spivs and frauds. I started my career covering the disastrous repercussions of one of Margaret Thatcher’s last reforms in the U.K. — giving people the right to leave their defined-benefit pensions, offered by employers, and take on defined-contribution “personal pensions.” Unscrupulous salesmen persuaded miners, firefighters and police officers to abandon copper-bottomed index-linked pensions for plans that came burdened with excessive charges. It was a repellent spectacle, and the bill for compensation was in the billions.
These points doubtless make me appear to be a complacent shill for the financial industry, talking down to the rubes. For the record, I’m still angry about the way workers were ripped off in Britain more than three decades ago, and about the way the little guy ended up bearing the brunt for the financial implosions of 2000 and 2008. But it looks horribly to me as though the same thing is going to happen again — and I don’t think the answer to today’s many ills is to empower poor people to bankrupt themselves with margin accounts and derivatives.
Anger, even more than greed, has the capacity to make us throw caution to the winds. Many of us have a lot to be angry about. If this carries on, and spreads beyond targets like a video-game retailer, I don’t want to see the consequences when history’s first angry bubble bursts.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-27/gamestop-short-squeeze-is-rage-against-the-financial-machine
Anyway, I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing about Gamestop, but hopefully this is a decent departure from the memes, hype, and completely unfounded bullshit that's been surrounding that conversation so far.

Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard's own SON is helping police investigate his alleged sex crimes By Guy Adams Investigates For The Daily Mail
15 Jan 2021
Link to article
'He has become my arch-nemesis. I no longer regard him as my father . . . He is a monster. I am now here to serve in any way I can, to support survivors and the justice process and also to help expose the people who covered up his crimes.'
Kai Bickle's world came tumbling down one night in May 2019, when he attended a dinner party at a lavishly decorated mansion overlooking the golden sands of Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
The host was his father, Peter Nygard, a Canadian fashion tycoon famed for the hedonistic lifestyle he pursued at a global portfolio of high-end properties, including vast residences in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal, as well as New York, and, most notoriously, a Mayan-themed 'private luxury resort' in the Bahamas.
Modelling himself on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the flamboyant Nygard, now 79, kept a revolving harem of girlfriends. Those caught up (often completely unwittingly) in this web had included actresses Susan Anton and Jennifer O'Neill, stripper-turned-reality star Anna Nicole Smith, and a former Wheel Of Fortune card turner by the name of Vanna White.
His Caribbean parties, meanwhile, tended to attract a better class of A-lister. Past visitors to the island property had ranged from Jane Seymour and Bo Derek to Robert De Niro, , Michael Jackson and Joan Collins, not to mention and , who were photographed there in the early 2000s on an innocuous family holiday.
The 2019 bash, during one of Peter's occasional business trips to LA, was to be a more down-to-earth affair. Roughly 20 guests, including Kai, 38, and his younger brother Jessar (one of roughly ten offspring Nygard has fathered via more than seven women) had been invited for food and drinks, followed by a late-night poker game.
That was the plan, at least. But Kai never made it to the card- table. Instead, he fled the lavish premises in a state of distress, shortly after dinner, believing that he had just witnessed his father attempting to sexually assault an eight-year-old girl.
Details of this ugly development are (it should be stressed) strongly disputed, and we shall examine them later. But the incident would kick-start an extraordinary chain of events that culminated just before Christmas, with the arrest of Peter Nygard on nine charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Currently behind bars, with his $900 million (£660 million) business empire in tatters and the FBI poring over his computer hard-drives, the fallen tycoon has now been accused of rape or sexual assault by at least 57 women. Several of Nygard's accusers were children when the alleged crimes took place, and many claim they were drugged.
At least 57 women have accused him.
He will appear in court in Canada next week, seeking bail as he fights extradition to the USA.
It is, perhaps, the most high-profile and shocking sex case since handcuffs were slapped on Jeffrey Epstein. And in a remarkable twist, it turns out that a leading figure in the increasingly public campaign to prosecute Mr Nygard is his aforementioned son, Kai.
Upcoming documentary: ‘Unseamly’ Canadian Designer Peter Nygård True Crime Documentary
Behind the scenes, I can reveal that Kai has spent the past 18 months secretly helping both the U.S. and Canadian authorities investigate his own father's alleged crimes. Keeping his role hidden from Nygard and his associates for several months, he has worked tirelessly to assist victims, and their legal teams.
On the personal front, he has changed his name (taking up his mother's surname to become Kai Zen Bickle) and used his influence over various Nygard companies to block efforts to move his assets offshore, fearing that would allow him to flee. 'We have been engaged in a brutal battle against my father and his enablers,' is how Kai summed things up when we spoke this week.
'He has become my arch-nemesis. I no longer regard him as my father . . . He is a monster. I am now here to serve in any way I can, to support survivors and the justice process and also to help expose the people who covered up his crimes.'
Perhaps most remarkably of all, Kai recently helped two of his younger siblings, one of whom remains a minor, to sue Peter Nygard over claims he 'engineered' the rape of his own sons. In an extraordinary lawsuit filed in August, the boys claimed that their leathery, multi-millionaire father instructed one of his long-standing girlfriends (who was also a sex worker) to 'make a man' out of them.
The first of these alleged attacks (which, again, are vehemently denied by Nygard) took place in the Bahamas 2004, when the son was 15 and the woman was in her mid-20s. The second occurred in Winnipeg in 2018, when the younger child was 14 and the woman was in her 40s. Court papers filed by the boys stated that the unnamed girlfriend was instructed to seduce Nygard's son by showering in his bathroom so that he 'could see her naked'. Then she raped him.
Afterwards, she allegedly told the boy he 'wasn't bad' for a 'baby.' The next morning, Nygard's girlfriend brought him breakfast in bed, kissing him on the lips and announcing: 'Mommy's got you.' Kai says he first became aware of this appalling incident last spring, and was 'sickened' to hear his brothers' claims.
He would often yell and scream at his staff.
'We all spoke and decided the best course of action was to file a lawsuit publicly in the hope that other survivors would feel safe to come forward and also file criminally against Nygard,' he says. 'We were originally going to have me in the suit as my young brother's guardian, but in the end decided not to because it would reveal to Nygard that I was working against him . . . At the time I was [secretly] doing everything I could to improve the odds that he would get arrested.'
To appreciate the extraordinary journey taken by Kai, we must wind the clock back to the mid-1980s, when his father was one of Canada's most talked-about self-made millionaires.
The son of penniless immigrants from Finland, Peter Nygard had launched his empire in the late 1960s, with an $8,000 (£6,000) investment in a struggling fashion firm. By the time he was 30, the company had become one of North America's most successful suppliers of leisure and sportswear, while his flamboyant eccentricities, which included keeping parrots in his office and filling the lobby of Nygard HQ with bronze busts of himself, turned him into an object of public fascination.
In 1987, the party-loving entrepreneur purchased a 4.5-acre patch of the island of New Providence in the Bahamas and set about turning it into a 'dream home' where he could indulge his champagne lifestyle. Over the ensuing years, he built 150,000 sq ft of Mayan-themed buildings, stretching over a dozen 'cabana-style' residences. The buildings at Nygard Cay eventually included a casino, a disco hut (with cameras beneath the dance floor, reportedly to shoot images of revellers from below), and the world's largest sauna, a 6,000 sq ft lodge made from 2ft-thick Canadian pine logs.
In the grounds were fake volcanoes that belched dry ice, a flock of peacocks, stone cobras which hissed steam at sunset, 60 ft towers festooned with hundreds of flaming torches (lit nightly by staff) and giant statues of nude women, purportedly modelled on some of Nygard's favourite girlfriends.
At weekends, he would host lavish parties, which appeared on various TV documentaries, including Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous.
The place became a magnet for freeloading celebrities and, while Kai believes they generally had the most fleeting and brief relationship with Nygard, photos of their visits were then plastered across company literature and websites.
Prince Andrew, to cite one example, was recorded for posterity wandering with the long-haired fashion magnate on the beach, wearing blue shorts and boat shoes.
Born in the 1980s, Kai spent the first three years of his life in the Bahamas until his mother, Patricia, left Nygard, with whom she'd had three children but never married.
They moved first to California and then to the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. Over subsequent years, he had almost no regular contact with the fashion tycoon aside from occasional visits during school holidays, where he met various half-siblings.
'He would have one family weekend per year at his lake cottage, and a few days set aside for Christmas,' says Kai of the somewhat unorthodox arrangement. 'During those times, the days were filled with activities like horseback riding or mini golf.
'He could be a very charismatic person when he wanted to be and the family weekends were very light and brief.'
In the very limited time he spent with his father during childhood, Kai saw nothing that gave him reason to suspect that Peter Nygard was guilty of criminality, though he did have a highly volatile personality.
'He would yell and scream at his staff often, and that always was upsetting to everyone around it, but he would describe his yelling as 'passion' because of his 'high standards',' Kai says.
Nygard's children were further told that he 'lived a consensual, non-monogamous lifestyle,' Kai says. 'He made speeches at dinner to family when we were together to talk about how he hoped everyone got a wonderful partner and wished that he could find that special someone, but that it wasn't the life for him.
'He also had girlfriends that were persistently with him, always two or three, and often they were around for years. He wasn't embarrassed about it. He flaunted it on TV, it was part of his brand, something he showed the whole world. He was proud of it.'
Be that as it may, rumours of predatory behaviour by Nygard —and worse — had occasionally reared their ugly head, only to be quickly suppressed: a relatively easy task before the internet.
In 1980, for example, he was charged with the rape of an 18-year-old, but the charge was dropped when the complainant refused to testify. In 1996, three female employees meanwhile filed sexual harassment complaints in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
It looked like his hand was on her thigh, rubbing.
One, a 39-year-old communications manager, said that, when called into Nygard's office, she would 'find him in a state of undress . . . with his hands down the front of his pants, fondling himself.' He settled by giving the women $18,500 (£13,600) and denied any wrongdoing.
Then, in 2010, a Canadian TV network put out a Panorama-style documentary about Nygard, focusing on alleged sex abuse and harassment of former employees.
It quoted a former stewardess on his private plane who alleged that on one journey — during which Nygard was accompanied by a troupe of topless women — he lost his temper with staff, shouting: 'You are nothing! You are garbage! I am God!'
The programme also alleged that Nygard had engaged in 'inappropriate sexual contact' with a young woman who had been brought to his home in 2003 from the Dominican Republic. Nygard denied that either incident had happened, and sued to stop the documentary being broadcast.
Fast forward to May 2019, however, and those ugly incidents were largely forgotten. Kai, who was by then in his late 30s, had worked for his father's companies for just over two years after leaving college, but quit to pursue a career in activism and health science.
Nygard's trip to Los Angeles afforded them a rare opportunity to catch up, so he attended the aforementioned dinner party in Venice Beach.
As the night wore on, he recalls becoming uncomfortable about his father's behaviour towards an eight-year-old girl, who was attending with her mother, one of Nygard's old girlfriends.
'He's got her sitting right next to him at dinner, which is usually his girlfriend chair. And he's a creature of routine. So I'm already thinking this is weird.
'He's trying to act like the Papa. It was just weird . . . I'm noticing things. I'm noticing that he's telling her little secrets at dinner. Putting his hand close to her ear and going all hush-hush.' At the end of dinner, most of the other 20-odd guests got up to adjourn to the card table. However, Kai adds: 'I'm still watching him. Her chair gets pushed back. He brings her round to him.
'She was on his right side. He brings her to his left side, with his arm around her waist, and I see his elbow change and start moving as if — it looked to me, I couldn't see, but it looked like his hand was on her upper thigh, and rubbing. That's what it looked like to me . . . Everything in my body told me he was doing something terrible.'
'I had a huge adrenaline rush and I immediately told the mother to get her daughter away from him,' he adds. 'I stood up next to him and looked in his eyes. At that moment, for me, it was like all the walls were crashing down around him . . . And I realised that, yeah, he's probably trying to groom that girl.'
Nygard vigorously denied wrongdoing, and even called Kai 'sick' for thinking as much. But Kai was unconvinced.
Then, in February last year, ten women filed a bombshell lawsuit in New York claiming that the fashion magnate had used wealth and status to 'entice underage girls' from 'young, impressionable and often impoverished backgrounds' into his home, where they would be 'plied with alcohol' and (some allege) date-rape drugs, before being taken to Nygard's private quarters, where he would 'assault, rape and sodomise' them. Court papers claimed they were then coerced into joining a globe-trotting harem of sex workers paid thousands of dollars from Nygard's company funds and trafficked around the world on his company's private jet, which reportedly boasts a stripper pole.
One alleged victim, who was just 14 at the time, claimed Nygard raped her and paid her $5,000 (£3,700).
Another said her encounter with Nygard began with him showing her pornography after which he raped her, 'causing her extraordinary trauma and pain', the suit states.
Three of his existing ten accusers were 14 at the time. Three more were 15.
Within days, dozens more alleged victims had come forward. By the summer, some 57 survivors were pursuing legal action — and the number of alleged victims had reached 100.
Kai again confronted his father, only to be told it was all 'lies' and asked to speak out publicly in his father's support. But days later a friend texted Kai to complain about a recent visit to Nygard's house in Los Angeles.
'He said he'd brought a female friend with him, who had one or two drinks and had started to feel very high. Nygard took her up to his room and aggressively had sex with her, not using a condom.
'When I heard that, I knew he was not only as bad as people said he was, but was a dangerous criminal and had to be stopped.' He duly alerted the authorities about the friend's message. In a podcast called Live To Walk Again, released this week, he revealed that he began helping both the police and the alleged victims' lawyers, who he regards as 'heroes'.
Over the summer, Kai also used official positions held in Nygard firms to block two apparent efforts to move assets overseas, amid concerns that the tycoon might flee to evade justice.
PODCAST EPISODE: Peter Nygard Discusses His Father
'Through the course of ten months I also helped several survivors to file criminally against him, and spent countless hours on the phone with survivors, lawyers and authorities,' he says. Last month Nygard was arrested on U.S. charges at a home in the Royalwood area of Winnipeg. He spent Christmas behind bars and has consistently denied any wrongdoing, saying he 'expects to be vindicated' in court.
Kai has renounced his inheritance and is working on 'making the world a better place' by campaigning to close legal loopholes exploited by sex offenders.
'I'm very happy earning my own money, as I have all my life. We've never had a trust fund or an allowance, and since his money has been made through pain and suffering, I won't accept a potential inheritance,' he says.
His father's cash, he says, should instead go towards compensating victims. 'My focus now is to help the healing process.'

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

Over the years I have thoroughly enjoyed throwing together playlists for different occasions (making coffee, working out, weddings, seasons, etc.) and thought I'd share! Please let me know your thoughts, favourite mixes, as well as recommendations for future playlists. All feedback is welcome! Hope you enjoy them:
That Weekend Feeling
Skip to the good bit; weekend grooves to wave away any weekday blues.
Awesome Mix: Ultimate Edition (Mixtape)
A great hero, named Kevin Bacon, once taught an entire city full of people with sticks up their butts that, dancing, well, is the greatest thing there is. The legend of Footloose comes alive with Awesome Mix: Ultimate Edition - Songs from and inspired by the Guardians of the Galaxy series.
Morning Motivation: Steal Some Sunshine
Soak up the sun with energetic jams and breezy classics!
I'd Drink To That: Party Playlist
Mix it up with a party playlist to keep the night buzzing.
I'd Sing To That: Carpool Karaoke
Pack up and take those pipes on a roadtrip! The catchy. The memorable.
Just Jams 🎧
Nothing but jams to fill a pair of headphones or stadium.
Brendan's Listen Local
Funky & Thumpy! Some of my favourite energetic jams, classics, and BBQ party starters from our local Australian & New Zealand artists.
Friday Fire
It's Friday! Friends. Family. Fun.
Groovin' The Brew
Nothing but rockin' party grooves on tap.
Diverse Pop Sounds
It's pop, but not as you know it.
Break Thru
Ear Candy.
Sunday Sesh
Beers & bangers on a weekend!
Run To Paradise
Set up goals, and knock them down with an energetic running playlist.
Summer Daze
The heat is on with a playlist of crisp summer tunes.
Autumn Mix: Volume 1
A breezy & brilliant playlist for the ever-changing Autumn seasons.
Chilled Pop
Soft, chilled winter pop songs.
Warm Tunes
Warm songs of Spring, like a comforting embrace.
A Mid-Summer Night's Drink 🍻
Lord, what fun these mortals be!
Wind Down 🌚
When the night winds down, so does some great music.
90's Baby! 📼
It is the sound of the roller disco, BMX bike track and arcade!
The Hip Hip Hop
Only the hippest of the hip. My modern and classic hip hop favourites.
Indie Bops: It's ALT Good
Get your alternative bounce on.
Not Your Final Form: A Workout Playlist
All the other licks with the pumped up kicks to keep you going during a workout. My favourites and a few other choice tunes for pushing harder, faster, stronger.
Easy On The Ears
Easy, Easy, Easybeats.
Life Is Good ☀️
Today is gonna be a good day.
Dial M For Music
Deep, cathartic music.
JOY
Smile.
Vibe Hard
Get into the zone, and vibe-out to infectious tunes!
Rock & Roll Never Dies
Who says rock & roll is dead? Commercial radio? It's always been around; you've just got to roll with it and look harder. Get your kicks!
Brainfood
Introspective acoustic, calming strings, uplifting anthems, and a touch of nature. Food for the brain, and perfect background noise for studies.
Game Night 🎲
For every occasion... casino, tabletop, videogames; a soundtrack to a brilliant game night!
Sizzlers: BBQ Playlist 🍔
Fire up the burner and the anthems with a barbeque playlist hotter than the bright ball in the sky.
Kickstart My Heart: Classic Rock Radio
Rocking all over the world.
Rush Hour
Grinding Gears.
Riff Raff: Party Rock
Some rowdy rock to turn up the night.
RE : FRESH 🍹
SUPERDOPE. Piña colada's and Caribbean Rum.
The Driver
There's a voice in my head that drives my heel.
Country Road
Might as well cruise. Might as well banjo.
Born to be Wild
Life's an adventure; you can't be tamed.
Night Moves: Dancing In The Moonlight
Unwind with the moonbeams. Night drives & night lives.
Funk Right Off
Get Funk'd.
Rambling Roses 💐
Beauty and Love are as body and soul. Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
Sweat. Reset.
Whatever it takes. 'Cause you love the adrenaline in your veins.
Power Pop: Marathon
Power pop to push and electrify a workout.
Cool Beans: Coffee Playlist
Recharge with some warm tunes.
Kitchen Crooners 🎀
Now we're cooking!
Now We're Cooking!
Tasty tunes for the Kitchen.
Pool Party
Dive in to great poolside swing.
Inspiration 💡 Takes Flight
Reach for the Sky!
Going Places
Always push forward.
First 💍
Songs for special days.
DisNeat - Taking The Mickey
Nothing but Disney favourites.
Road Trip: Spinning Wheels
Hear the call for adventure and hit the road.
Guilty Pleasures 🍨
You like the Grease soundtrack? Word.
Catchy AF POP
Pop that bops. Essentials and the catchiest of the catchy.
Acoustica
Stripped Back.
Playlist + Chill
Cool off with some chilled beats and sweet acoustic.
Making Waves
Unwind with breathy, breezy songs perfect for a walk on the beach.
The Playlist Of The Decade (New Years Eve)
We welcomed 2020 with the ultimate party playlist jam-packed with familiar throwbacks and modern favourites from the 2010's! Good times!
Rhythm Heaven
Step up and dance.
Sax on the Beach 🎷
Gratuitous? Nah! An instrument to elevate a song from good to great!
BedroX 🔥
Sparks.
Pump It Up: The Playlist of Champions 🏆
Winner winner, chicken dinner.
Retro Rewind
Twist & shout to killer Jukebox Classics.
Classic Se7ens
Nothing but 70's favourites.
Great Eight's
Nothing but 80's Favourites.
Noughty & Nice
Nothing but great 00's Throwbacks.
The Best Playlist Never Heard
It's unheard of!
Best Songs You Might Have Missed
Potentially slipped under the radar.
Songs for Soundtracks 🎬
Royale with cheese.
The Grand European Playlist
About to take off!
EPIC 🗡
Fortune & Glory!
SUPERHOT VR : ROCK
The champ is coming.
SUPERHOT VR : HIP-HOP
Kings never die.
SUPERHOT VR : ACTION
John Wick Schtick.
Cowboy Bebop : Spike Spiegel
Spike Spiegel is an ex-Syndicate goon and a bounty hunter aboard the Bebop. He is proficient in martial arts, zipcraft flying, and gunfights, but he also has comical and aloof sides of his personality. If there's three things he can't stand, it's kids, pets, and women with attitudes.
Cowboy Bebop : Faye Valentine
Faye Valentine is a coma survivor of over 50 years and she is trying to regain her memory. She got into a lot of debt upon entering this futuristic world, and she had to resort to a life of crime and hustling to survive... that is, until she decided to live on the Bebop and become a bounty hunter.
Cowboy Bebop : Jet Black
Jet Black is an ex-ISSP Special Forces Officer and the Captain of the Bebop. He is a bounty hunter and is called the "Black Dog" because once he sinks his teeth in he never lets go. Jet enjoys American Jazz music, taking care of Bonsai trees, and has a knack for investigative work.
Cowboy Bebop : Radical Edward
Edward is a net diver from Earth. Edward is a child prodigy for hacking and has an aptitude for anything mechanical, even though Edward has some eccentricities in other parts of her personality. For instance, Edward speaks in third person and sometimes behaves like a wild animal.
At The Movies 🎟
Lights, camera, playlist.
James Bond Classics 🍸
A martini, shaken, not stirred.
The Word Is Bond 🍸
The world is not enough; but this playlist comes pretty close.
Live Love LIVE
Blistering live performances.
Future Nostalgia
Neo-swing, retro swagger; it's future nostalgia.
B-Side Yourself
Hidden Gems, Deep Cuts & Rarities.
Punk'd
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid.
Building Houses: Hit By Hit
Baby let's play house.
Far ALT
A playlist rocking that weird shit.
Stay Home: The Safety Dance
Stay safe out there.
Day Tripper
A playlist for a long drive - a day trip.
In Tents
Music For Camping.
Roots
Bluesy classics to strut to.
All That Jazz
Get jazzy on it.
Focus Features
Take a breather.
Australiana
Paradise.
Drive Time
Coast to coast. Songs for a spin.
Stone Cold Classicals
It's classically classic.
Hall of Fame 💎
Songs for the career climbers and L.A. dreamers. Glitz & glam; all that jazz.
This is Halloween
Everybody Scream!
It's Beginning to Sound A Lot Like Christmas!
Christmas Classics.
Just For Laughs 🎭
What a Joker!
Two Nights In Tao🎙
Karaoke? There's a first time for everything.
GAME
Take control.
Game On : Borderlands Psycho-delic
CHOO CHOO THE PAIN TRAIN'S COMIN'
Red Dead Redemption II
Songs For Bloody Duels, Whiskey-Fueled Gambles, and Rolling Desert Plains.
Energy Shot
Keep animated with an energetic dose of catchy music!
Party Fillers
A background mix for any event.
The Essential AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1973 by Scottish-born brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Although their music has been variously described as hard rock, blues rock, and heavy metal, the band themselves call it simply "rock and roll"
The Essential One Republic
OneRepublic is an American pop rock band formed in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2002. It consists of lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Tedder, guitarist Zach Filkins, guitarist Drew Brown, bassist and cellist Brent Kutzle, drummer Eddie Fisher and keyboardist Brian Willett.
The Essential Shinedown
Shinedown is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida, formed by singer Brent Smith in 2001. Shinedown has sold more than ten million records worldwide, and has had the most number one singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts out of any band, with 16.
The Essential Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa is an English singer and songwriter. After working as a model, she signed with Warner Music Group in 2015 and released her self-titled debut album in 2017. The success of the singles helped her self-titled album become one of the most-streamed albums on Spotify.
The Essential Preatures
The Preatures are an Australian band from Sydney. The band was formed in 2010 and features Isabella 'Izzi' Manfredi on vocals/keyboards, Jack Moffitt (guitar), Thomas Champion (bass) and Luke Davison (drums). The band won the Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition with their song Is This How You Feel.
The Essential Maroon 5
Maroon 5 is an American pop rock band from Los Angeles, California. It currently consists of lead vocalist Adam Levine, keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Jesse Carmichael, lead guitarist James Valentine, drummer Matt Flynn, keyboardist PJ Morton and multi-instrumentalist Sam Farrar.
The Essential INXS
INXS were an Australian rock band, formed in 1977 in Sydney. INXS was fronted by Hutchence, whose magnetic stage presence made him the focal point of the band. Initially known for their new wave/pop style, the band later developed a harder pub rock style that included funk and dance elements.
The Essential Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The group, whose best-known line-up comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, are regarded as the most influential band of all time. The Beatles are the best-selling music act of all time.
The Essential Volbeat
Volbeat are a Danish rock band formed in Copenhagen in 2001. They play a fusion of rock and roll, heavy metal and rockabilly. Their current line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Michael Poulsen, guitarist Rob Caggiano, drummer Jon Larsen and bassist Kaspar Boye Larsen.
The Essential Chromeo
Chromeo is a Canadian electro-funk duo from Montreal, formed in 2002 by musicians David "Dave 1" Macklovitch and Patrick "P-Thugg" Gemayel. Their sound draws from blue-eyed soul, dance music, rock, synth-pop, disco and funk. As of 2018, the band has released five studio albums.
The Essential Queen
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1970. Their classic line-up was Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals) and John Deacon (bass). With estimated record sales ranging from 170 million to 300 million, they are one of the biggest.
The Essential Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, and dancer. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.
The Essential Brian Setzer
Brian Robert Setzer (born April 10, 1959) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly group Stray Cats, and revitalized his career in the early 1990s with his swing revival band, the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
The Essential Florida Georgia Line
Florida Georgia Line are an American country music duo consisting of vocalists Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley. Their 2012 debut single "Cruise" broke two major sales records: it was downloaded over seven million times, making it the first country song ever to receive the Diamond certification.
The Essential KISS
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973 by Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, and Ace Frehley. Well known for its members' face paint and stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 1970s with its elaborate live performances.
The Essential Sheppard
Sheppard is an Australian indie pop band from Brisbane, formed in 2009. At the 2014 ARIA's ceremony, they were nominated for Album of the Year, Best Group, Best Independent Release, Best Pop Release, Song of the Year, Producer of the Year, and Best Video.
The Essential Matchbox 20
Matchbox Twenty is an American rock band, formed in Orlando, Florida, in 1995. The group currently consists of Rob Thomas (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Brian Yale (bass guitar), Paul Doucette (drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), and Kyle Cook (lead guitar, vocals).
The Essential Coldplay
Coldplay are a British rock band that were formed in London in 1996 consisting of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion. Coldplay have sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling.
The Essential Daughtry
Daughtry is an American rock band formed and fronted by namesake Chris Daughtry, who was a finalist on the fifth season of American Idol. Their self-titled debut album was released in November 2006 and reached number one on the Billboard 200. To date, Daughtry has sold over 9 million albums.
The Essential Black Eyed Peas
The Black Eyed Peas are an American musical group, consisting of rappers will.i.am*, apl.de.ap, Taboo, J. Rey Soul and singer Fergie. Originally an alternative hip hop group, they subsequently refashioned themselves as a more marketable pop-rap act and have become best-selling artists.*

This interview was shot in November 2016, if you're curious. These two guys have some camaraderie established from their days together in 1PW, which is where they say they first met. There's some comedic overlays added by the editor at times in this interview, so that lightens the mood even more so than it already is with these two wacky characters featured. Meanie speaks more here, but that makes sense, given that he's the guest of the show, and they do a decent job overall of balancing their talk time with one another.
At the start, there was some bathroom talk, and that's probably the main flaw of this interview. I was afraid at that point that I had gotten myself into watching a "Best Friends - Poppin' Dogs & Talkin' Hogs" type of shoot interview full of that sort of chatter, so I was relieved when they fairly quickly moved onto wrestling and only really went back to the bathroom topics one other time later in the interview. That said, the fact that there was any toilet topics made me zone out at times.
I've seen a few Meanie shoots before and never heard some of the stories here, such as those about Buddy Rogers and "The RAW Boy," while other stories such as Meanie's fondness for Al Snow and Emilio Estevez are recycled from other interviews he's done. I popped for Meanie's stories about doing moonsaults into pools because I've certainly done that at hotels on many occasions, too. This interview comes full circle at the end, as Meanie had discussed the early days of The Monster Factory training school at the beginning and finishes off by touching on his current training duties there over 20 years later.
Meanie's passion for wrestling really oozes through in this interview, and it's refreshing. His silly pop culture references are goofy and charming, and ultimately one of the highlights. He self-deprecates at times and then at other times makes innocent jabs at other people, but all the while being humble. So, his sense of humor really shines in an informally formatted shoot interview like this, and you get an idea from his wit here why he was so successful as a comedy character during wrestling's heyday. If you can tolerate the toilet humor, this is a decent shoot, but there are definitely superior ones, including better shoots specifically with Meanie.
WATCH: physical DVD – highspots.com/p/spud-meanie.html; digital – highspots.com/p/VD_imwspud_meanie.html, highspotswrestlingnetwork.com/media/im-with-spudblue-meanie/58673/feature
GRADE: C+
INDEX OF TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• penises
• The Monster Factory back in the day
• Hogan vs. Flair
• training at Al Snow's wrestling school
• car rides
• growing up
• working at a casino
• Donald Trump
• other celebrities (Pete Rose, Mr. T., & Gene Hackman)
• "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers
• Tri-State Wrestling Alliance (TWA)/Eastern Championship Wrestling
• Christopher Daniels
• Philly crowds
• Emilio Estevez
• ECW's unsung heroes
• wrestling money
• his grandma
• the idea for him to play "The RAW Boy" (in response to The Nitro Girls)
• Meanie's penis slipping out on RAW
• porn
• 1PW stories
• Raven
• the Meaniesault
• the creation of the "Blue Meanie" character
• the bWo
• Tracy Smothers
• blading & blood
• taste tests
• Balls Mahoney
• today's The Monster Factory trainers
• career reflections

RUN TIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
More reviews at jonbarber.weebly.com/reviews.html

​

Title	Price	Ends Date	Metacritic
64	$1.49	9/23	-
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Where Angels Cry	$4.99	9/24	-
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Best run in terms of anything
Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Reservoir Dogs.
Martin Scorsese: Goodfellas, Casino, Kundun, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, and Bringing Out the Dead.
Robert Altman: The Player, Short Cuts, Prêt-à-Porter, Kansas City, The Gingerbread Man, Cookie's Fortune, and Vincent & Theo.
Robert Redford: Quiz Show, The Horse Whisperer, and A River Runs Through It.
The Coen Brothers: Fargo, Miller's Crossing, The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, and The Hudsucker Proxy.
Wong Kar Wai: Chungking Express, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together.
Paul Thomas Anderson: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia.
David Fincher: Alien 3, Se7en, Fight Club, and The Game.
Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather 3, The Rainmaker, Jack, and Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Steven Spielberg: Hook, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Amistad, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan.
Claire Dennis: Beau Travail, No Fear, No Die, I Can't Sleep, and Nénette and Boni.
Richard Linklater: Before Sunrise, Slacker, Dazed and Confused, The Newton Boys, and SubUrbia.
Abbas Kiarostami: Close Up, Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us, Life, and Nothing More..., and Through the Olive Trees.
Harold Ramis: Groundhog Day, Analyze This, Stuart Saves His Family, and Multiplicity.
Michael Mann: Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Insider.
Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.
Todd Haynes: Safe, Velvet Goldmine, and Poison.
The Wachowskis: The Matrix and Bound.
Emir Kusturica: Underground, Arizona Dream, and Black Cat, White Cat.
Krzysztof Kieślowski: Three Colours Trilogy and Double Life of Veronique
Steven Soderbergh: Out of Sight, Gray's Anatomy, Schizopolis, The Limey, Kafka, King of the Hill, and The Underneath.
Jonathan Demme: Philadelphia, The Silence of the Lambs, and Beloved.
Robert Zemeckis: Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her, Contact, and Back to the Future Part III.
Zhang Yimou: To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, Not One Less, The Story of Qiu Ju, Ju Dou, Keep Cool, Shanghai Triad, The Road Home, and Zhang Yimou.
Terence Davies: The Long Day Closes and The Neon Bible.
Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, True Crime, Absolute Power, The Rookie, White Hunter Black Heart, In the Line of Fire, and A Perfect World.
Lars Von Trier: Breaking the Waves, Europa, and The Idiots.
Hirokazu Kore-eda: After Life, However..., Lessons from a Calf, August without Him, and Maborosi.
Gus Van Sant: My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Psycho, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
David Lynch: Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.
Amy Heckerling: Clueless and Look Who's Talking Too.
Kathryn Bigelow: Point Blank, Strange Days, and Blue Steel.
Thomas Vinterberg: Festen, Last Round, The Boy Who Walked Backwards, and The Biggest Heroes.
Julie Dash: Daughters of the Dust, Funny Valentines, and Praise House.
Pedro Almodóvar: All About my Mother, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Live Flesh, High Heels, Kika, and The Flower of My Secret.
Jan De Bont: Speed 1 & 2, Twister, and The Haunting.
Oliver Stone: JFK, Nixon, Heaven & Earth, Natural Born Killers, The Doors, Any Given Sunday, and U Turn.
Rob Reiner: Misery, A Few Good Men, The American President, Ghosts of Mississippi, and The Story of Us.
Paul Verhoeven: Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers.
Danny Boyle: Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, and A Life Less Ordinary.
Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, Batman Returns, and Mars Attacks!.
Ang Lee: Pushing Hands, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet, and Ride with the Devil.
Jane Campion: The Piano, An Angel at My Table, The Portrait of a Lady, and Holy Smoke!.
Frank Darabont: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
Lasse Hallström: What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Once Around, The Cider House Rules, and Something to Talk About.
Jim Jarmusch: Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Night on Earth, and Year of the Horse.
M. Night Shyamalan: The Sixth Sense, Praying with Anger, and Wide Awake.
Luc Besson: La Femme Nikita, Atlantis, Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Alan Parker: The Commitments, Evita, Come See the Paradise, Angela's Ashes, and The Road to Wellville.
Terry Gilliam: The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and 12 Monkeys.
Mike Leigh: Naked, Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Life Is Sweet, and Career Girls.
Peter Jackson: Braindead, Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver, and The Frighteners.
Martin Brest: Scent of a Woman, Meet Joe Black, and Josh and S.A.M.
Woody Allen: Everyone Says I Love You, Alice, Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Mighty Aphrodite, Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown, and Deconstructing Harry.
Ridley Scott: Thelma & Louise, G.I. Jane, White Squall, and 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Bryan Singer: Apt Pupil, The Usual Suspects, and Public Access.
Kenneth Branagh: Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, In the Bleak Midwinter, Dead Again, and Peter's Friends.
Theodoros Angelopoulos: Eternity and a Day, Ulysses' Gaze, and The Suspended Step of the Stork.
Spike Lee: Crooklyn, Malcolm X, Girl 6, Summer of Sam, Get on the Bus, Clockers, He Got Game, Mo' Better Blues, and Jungle Fever.
Radu Mihaileanu: Trahir, Bonjour Antoine, and Train of Life.
Richard Attenborough: Grey Owl, In Love and War, Chaplin, and Shadowlands.
Tony Scott: The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, The Fan, Enemy of the State, Days of Thunder, and Revenge.
Eric Rohmer: L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque and Les Rendez-vous de Paris.
Jacques Rivette: Up, Down, Fragile, Secret Defense, La Belle Noiseuse, and Joan the Maid.
Edward Yang: A Brighter Summer Day, A Confucian Confusion, and Mahjong.
Michael Haneke: Benny's Video, Funny Games, and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance.
Farrelly brothers: Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, and There's Something About Mary.
David Cronenberg : Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Crash, and M. Butterfly.
Takeshi Kitano: Sonatine, Fireworks, Kikujiro and Kid's Return
Alex Cox: El Patrullero, Three Businessmen, The Winner, and Death and the Compass.
Atom Egoyan: Calendar, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia's Journey, and The Adjuster.
Manoel de Oliveira: The Divine Comedy, The Letter, Anxiety, Voyage to the Beginning of the World, Party, A Caixa, Abraham's Valley, The Convent, No, or the Vain Glory of Command, Day of Despair, and The Letter.
Dardenne brothers: Rosetta, Je pense à vous, and La Promesse
Jacques Rivette: La Belle Noiseuse, Top Secret, Up, Down, Fragile, and Joan the Maid.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Cure, Charisma, The Guard from Underground, Barren Illusions, and License to Live.
Jafar Panahi: The White Balloon and The Mirror.
Tsai Ming-liang: The River, Vive L'Amour, The Hole, and Rebels of the Neon God.
Hou Hsiao-hsien: The Puppetmaster, Flowers of Shanghai, Good Men, Good Women, and Goodbye South, Goodbye.
Leos Carax: Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Sans Titre, and Pola X.
John Woo: Hard Boiled, Bullet in the Head, Hard Target, Once a Thief, Face/Off, and Broken Arrow.
Olivier Assayas: Cold Water, A New Life, Irma Vep, Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge..., Paris Awakens, Cinéma, de notre temps, Alice and Martin, Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung, Late August, Early September, and Filha da Mãe.
Roman Polanski: Bitter Moon, Death and the Maiden, and The Ninth Gate.
Brian De Palma: Carlito’s Way, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Raising Cain, Snake Eyes, and Mission: Impossible.
Werner Herzog: Lessons of Darkness, My Best Fiend, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, and Scream of Stone.
Cameron Crowe: Singles and Jerry Maguire.
Alexander Sokurov: The Stone, Whispering Pages, Mother and Son, Moloch, and The Second Circle.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Hello Cinema, Gabbeh, The Silence, The School the Wind Blew Away, Tales of Kish, A Moment of Innocence, Time of Love, Images from the Qajar Period, The Nights of Zayande-rood, Once Upon a Time, Cinema, Actor, and Stone and Glass
Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, and On Your Mark.
Jean Luc Godard: Nouvelle Vague, JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December, New Wave, Hélas pour moi, For Ever Mozart, Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, Les Enfants jouent à la Russie, and Histoire(s) du Cinéma.
Alexander Payne: Election and Citizen Ruth.
James Foley: Glengarry Glen Ross, The Chamber, Two Bits, After Dark, My Sweet, The Corruptor, and Fear.
Whit Stillman: The Last Days of Disco, Metropolitan, and Barcelona.

Ah, the art of making a traditional Western film just for the sake of it. Honestly, given how irrelevant the traditional style has become, I'm not surprised people don't mention this all too much when looking back at 1994. (Then again, it’s usually at most two dozen movies anyone cares about from then. What, you mean to tell me this is in a different league than Pulp Fiction?) I’m pretty sure the selling point of Maverick was that it's cool to be a regular Western film and not something as revolutionary as, say, Unforgiven, but nowadays that's not particularly inviting. Especially when it overshadows other points like its appealing cast. Even if such a movie is well-liked (which it is), why bother to watch a new movie that tries to be charming in an old-fashioned way when there are already countless movies of its class? The most inviting time to watch this was when it came out, and with each passing year it gets less interesting to consider watching.
Perhaps that's why it's taken me so long to get around to watching Maverick. That, and the fact I don’t really like Richard Donner as a director. In his later years, anyway. That guy has talent to spare, but his best days were well behind him at this point and while he was always a fair choice for a visually striking but precisely broad scope for handling plenty different ranges of material, a lot of his later work seemed to see him lack a real grasp on the material he was given and turned the stuff he made ranging from middling to godawful. My hopes were that if he gave this material the right level of energy, we had something good here.
And wouldn't you know it, I was right. For the most part. But the fact that I can relax knowing Donner made an overall better movie than Radio Flyer in the 90s is good enough for me.
Sure, it's a pretty lightweight endeavour, meaning if you don't like anything here then all bets are off, but this TV adaptation (knew about the original 50s show but never watched it) is quite a fun, feel-good sort of entertainment. Of course, given its lavish $75M-and-it-sure-looks-like-it budget (correct me if I'm wrong, as I was wrong before I watched this movie since I thought the title went to the cheap looking $70M film Wolf, but isn't this the second most expensive film of 1994 behind True Lies?) the look of the film is splendid. Donner's reliably marvellous sense of cinematography and set design are all aces, as are the Academy-recognised costumes. Randy Newman's score adds a nice touch, pretty great in occasional scenes. But really, this movie wouldn't be even half as fun if it weren't for the cast. Especially Mel Gibson as the titular Bret "Bert" Maverick.
Gibson and Co bring a much needed sense of energy and humour to the script, keeping plenty of the colourful characterisations in check as we travel around the map. The cast are all game, from prime con men to bank robbers to Indians to people of all travels like the Russian leader. They're great, if a bit too lightweight and underutilised--potential implications of her character notwithstanding, I kept forgetting Jodie Foster was in the movie until she would make her reappearance. Thankfully, Gibson is plenty enough of a hero to anchor and carry the film; he's charming as all get-out, funny, and quite talented in plenty methods, especially in balancing out getting on top and being a nice guy. Sympathise with him as he goes from a coward to a brave man willing to sacrifice himself for those around him, relying on his father's quotes and quick wits to survive. And magic, apparently. All leading up to the big poker game on the river. Ah, the old days of looking forward to seeing a new Gibson film...
For a movie that lends itself to the legacy of being a Western by being one for the 90s, it's a good effort for the most part. Do wish it was a bit more...fun, to be honest. And a bit broader in establishing the aspects of a poker game. And not so aimless towards the end. (What, you thought this was Casino Royale before Casino Royale? At least Martin Campbell can claim to have a steady hand on his material in his movies on any point in his career.) Donner is a bit of a letdown in staging plenty of the big showdown scenes--they're fine, but you'd expect to let the film do some of the workmanship in providing entertainment value rather than being all showy and hoping the light material and cast did all the work. Scenes like Maverick taking over the reins on a horse-powered journey gone wrong tend to succeed more on the charms of its cast than the spectacle of seeing him try to hang on for dear life. Not to mention such an anticlimactic scene where Maverick has to escape his bedroom on the boat. Typical 90s Donner, but despite my quibbles, it's great the movie is already entertaining enough as it is. It’s just that those quibbles could be brushed aside to make this a pretty great blockbuster for rediscovering rather than sheer adequacy. Great that it’s pretty spectacular in its lavish look, too (hard to think of someone better than Donner to make this as broadly beautiful as it is). Also pretty hilarious.
Seriously, I didn't expect this to be so funny. Then again, it's a Gibson/Donner collaboration, and if they want to do Lethal Weapon any way they can, so be it. (Unless it’s Conspiracy Theory, in which case I’ll order the gravy and go back to watching JFK.) Hilarious Danny Glover cameo included. ("I'm getting too old for this...") Likely the film's greatest asset in maintaining a steady level of quality, and it goes far enough to be some good fluff. Sure, it’s not the best thing you could ask for, but it’s always nice to kick back and relax to such entertaining fluffy stuff, no? Especially for those more into Westerns than I am.
Sorry if I rambled quite a bit, but I found this pretty fun to write about the way everyone seemed while making this.
7/10
P.S. Anyone down for a Top Gun/Maverick hybrid? Just for the sake of it?

Best run in terms of anything
Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Reservoir Dogs.
Martin Scorsese: Goodfellas, Casino, Kundun, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, and Bringing Out the Dead.
Robert Altman: The Player, Short Cuts, Prêt-à-Porter, Kansas City, The Gingerbread Man, Cookie's Fortune, and Vincent & Theo.
Robert Redford: Quiz Show, The Horse Whisperer, and A River Runs Through It.
The Coen Brothers: Fargo, Miller's Crossing, The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, and The Hudsucker Proxy.
Wong Kar Wai: Chungking Express, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together.
Paul Thomas Anderson: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia.
David Fincher: Alien 3, Se7en, Fight Club, and The Game.
Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather 3, The Rainmaker, Jack, and Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Steven Spielberg: Hook, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Amistad, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan.
Claire Dennis: Beau Travail, No Fear, No Die, I Can't Sleep, and Nénette and Boni.
Richard Linklater: Before Sunrise, Slacker, Dazed and Confused, The Newton Boys, and SubUrbia.
Abbas Kiarostami: Close Up, Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us, Life, and Nothing More..., and Through the Olive Trees.
Harold Ramis: Groundhog Day, Analyze This, Stuart Saves His Family, and Multiplicity.
Michael Mann: Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Insider.
Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.
Todd Haynes: Safe, Velvet Goldmine, and Poison.
The Wachowskis: The Matrix and Bound.
Emir Kusturica: Underground, Arizona Dream, and Black Cat, White Cat.
Krzysztof Kieślowski: Three Colours Trilogy and Double Life of Veronique
Steven Soderbergh: Out of Sight, Gray's Anatomy, Schizopolis, The Limey, Kafka, King of the Hill, and The Underneath.
Jonathan Demme: Philadelphia, The Silence of the Lambs, and Beloved.
Robert Zemeckis: Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her, Contact, and Back to the Future Part III.
Zhang Yimou: To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, Not One Less, The Story of Qiu Ju, Ju Dou, Keep Cool, Shanghai Triad, The Road Home, and Zhang Yimou.
Terence Davies: The Long Day Closes and The Neon Bible.
Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, True Crime, Absolute Power, The Rookie, White Hunter Black Heart, In the Line of Fire, and A Perfect World.
Lars Von Trier: Breaking the Waves, Europa, and The Idiots.
Hirokazu Kore-eda: After Life, However..., Lessons from a Calf, August without Him, and Maborosi.
Gus Van Sant: My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Psycho, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
David Lynch: Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.
Amy Heckerling: Clueless and Look Who's Talking Too.
Kathryn Bigelow: Point Blank, Strange Days, and Blue Steel.
Thomas Vinterberg: Festen, Last Round, The Boy Who Walked Backwards, and The Biggest Heroes.
Julie Dash: Daughters of the Dust, Funny Valentines, and Praise House.
Pedro Almodóvar: All About my Mother, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Live Flesh, High Heels, Kika, and The Flower of My Secret.
Jan De Bont: Speed 1 & 2, Twister, and The Haunting.
Oliver Stone: JFK, Nixon, Heaven & Earth, Natural Born Killers, The Doors, Any Given Sunday, and U Turn.
Rob Reiner: Misery, A Few Good Men, The American President, Ghosts of Mississippi, and The Story of Us.
Paul Verhoeven: Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers.
Danny Boyle: Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, and A Life Less Ordinary.
Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, Batman Returns, and Mars Attacks!.
Ang Lee: Pushing Hands, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet, and Ride with the Devil.
Jane Campion: The Piano, An Angel at My Table, The Portrait of a Lady, and Holy Smoke!.
Frank Darabont: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
Lasse Hallström: What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Once Around, The Cider House Rules, and Something to Talk About.
Jim Jarmusch: Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Night on Earth, and Year of the Horse.
M. Night Shyamalan: The Sixth Sense, Praying with Anger, and Wide Awake.
Luc Besson: La Femme Nikita, Atlantis, Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Alan Parker: The Commitments, Evita, Come See the Paradise, Angela's Ashes, and The Road to Wellville.
Terry Gilliam: The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and 12 Monkeys.
Mike Leigh: Naked, Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Life Is Sweet, and Career Girls.
Peter Jackson: Braindead, Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver, and The Frighteners.
Martin Brest: Scent of a Woman, Meet Joe Black, and Josh and S.A.M.
Woody Allen: Everyone Says I Love You, Alice, Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Mighty Aphrodite, Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown, and Deconstructing Harry.
Ridley Scott: Thelma & Louise, G.I. Jane, White Squall, and 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Bryan Singer: Apt Pupil, The Usual Suspects, and Public Access.
Kenneth Branagh: Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, In the Bleak Midwinter, Dead Again, and Peter's Friends.
Theodoros Angelopoulos: Eternity and a Day, Ulysses' Gaze, and The Suspended Step of the Stork.
Spike Lee: Crooklyn, Malcolm X, Girl 6, Summer of Sam, Get on the Bus, Clockers, He Got Game, Mo' Better Blues, and Jungle Fever.
Radu Mihaileanu: Trahir, Bonjour Antoine, and Train of Life.
Richard Attenborough: Grey Owl, In Love and War, Chaplin, and Shadowlands.
Tony Scott: The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, The Fan, Enemy of the State, Days of Thunder, and Revenge.
Eric Rohmer: L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque and Les Rendez-vous de Paris.
Jacques Rivette: Up, Down, Fragile, Secret Defense, La Belle Noiseuse, and Joan the Maid.
Edward Yang: A Brighter Summer Day, A Confucian Confusion, and Mahjong.
Michael Haneke: Benny's Video, Funny Games, and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance.
Farrelly brothers: Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, and There's Something About Mary.
David Cronenberg : Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Crash, and M. Butterfly.
Takeshi Kitano: Sonatine, Fireworks, Kikujiro and Kid'sReturn
Alex Cox: El Patrullero, Three Businessmen, The Winner, and Death and the Compass.
Atom Egoyan: Calendar, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia's Journey, and The Adjuster.
Manoel de Oliveira: The Divine Comedy, The Letter, Anxiety, Voyage to the Beginning of the World, Party, A Caixa, Abraham's Valley, The Convent, No, or the Vain Glory of Command, Day of Despair, and The Letter.
Dardenne brothers: Rosetta, Je pense à vous, and La Promesse
Jacques Rivette: La Belle Noiseuse, Top Secret, Up, Down, Fragile, and Joan the Maid.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Cure, Charisma, The Guard from Underground, Barren Illusions, and License to Live.
Jafar Panahi: The White Balloon and The Mirror.
Tsai Ming-liang: The River, Vive L'Amour, The Hole, and Rebels of the Neon God.
Hou Hsiao-hsien: The Puppetmaster, Flowers of Shanghai, Good Men, Good Women, and Goodbye South, Goodbye.
Leos Carax: Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Sans Titre, and Pola X.
John Woo: Hard Boiled, Bullet in the Head, Hard Target, Once a Thief, Face/Off, and Broken Arrow.
Olivier Assayas: Cold Water, A New Life, Irma Vep, Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge..., Paris Awakens, Cinéma, de notre temps, Alice and Martin, Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung, Late August, Early September, and Filha da Mãe.
Roman Polanski: Bitter Moon, Death and the Maiden, and The Ninth Gate.
Brian De Palma: Carlito’s Way, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Raising Cain, Snake Eyes, and Mission: Impossible.
Werner Herzog: Lessons of Darkness, My Best Fiend, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, and Scream of Stone.
Cameron Crowe: Singles and Jerry Maguire.
Alexander Sokurov: The Stone, Whispering Pages, Mother and Son, Moloch, and The Second Circle.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Hello Cinema, Gabbeh, The Silence, The School the Wind Blew Away, Tales of Kish, A Moment of Innocence, Time of Love, Images from the Qajar Period, The Nights of Zayande-rood, Once Upon a Time, Cinema, Actor, and Stone and Glass
Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, and On Your Mark.
Jean Luc Godard: Nouvelle Vague, JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December, New Wave, Hélas pour moi, For Ever Mozart, Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, Les Enfants jouent à la Russie, and Histoire(s) du Cinéma.
Alexander Payne: Election and Citizen Ruth.
James Foley: Glengarry Glen Ross, The Chamber, The Corruptor, Two Bits, After Dark, My Sweet, and Fear.
James Mangold: Heavy, Cop Land, and Girl, Interrupted.
Whit Stillman: The Last Days of Disco, Metropolitan, and Barcelona.

Hello! Welcome or welcome back to Capy's Survivor! This season we are headed to Pompeii! We are once again playing the game of outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting your fellow castaways, whether that be by flirtatious behavior, backstabbing your opponents, or making plenty of allies. This is Capy's Survivor: Saints vs Sinners! I will not be doing write-ups with the posts because I don't have time. I will instead work on them while I can, and post a post with some of them once I'm done.
Meet the castaways:
Sanctus Tribe:

• Percy Cowles, 27, Police Officer (made by u/asiansurvivorfan)
  • Raised by a single mother alongside his older brother Nolan, Percy learned to be a lone wolf at a really young age. He always wanted to be a professional athlete and was set up to be a successful baseball player, until during one of his practices, he got the call that his brother had been killed in a tragic accident. He took it really hard due to how close they were and spent a lot of time away from baseball to think if this was the right path for him. He eventually decided to go back to studying law since its what he studied prior to baseball. That then led him to start his police training. He now works as an undercover cop and doesn’t plan on telling anybody his true profession.
• Blair Davis, 36, Air Force Officer (made by u/GeminiB)
  • Blair had an interesting childhood. Her mother was native American but died when she was only two, leaving her in the care of her father. She suffered minor bullying when she was in elementary school starting at grade 4. She was mocked for being quiet and not having a mother. It got so bad that she switched schools going into grade 6. She continued her education and was always studious. When she graduated high school, she decided to join the air force. She was a quick learner and became one of the best pilots in her force, quickly earning her the title of Officer. She was rarely on the front lines during her time and spent most of her time providing supplies for soldiers, but that didn’t stop her from learning about the atrocities of war. She had a yearlong relationship with a fellow pilot named Julie, but her romantic interest unfortunately died a little after a year of them meeting. That death really shook her to her core, and from then on, she tried to keep herself from growing close to anyone in the military with her, for risk of losing them. She finished her military service less than a year ago and currently works in a gardening center. She still has nightmares about all the friends she’s lost. Her past trauma makes it still challenging for her to open up and bond with others. She’s going on survivor to prove both to the world and herself that your trauma doesn’t define who you are. She knows she’s physically strong, but she wants to prove that she’s both mentally, and socially capable too.
• Anna-Ray 'Ray' Abbotson, 22, Lifeguard (made by u/swoldow)
  • Ray's life is a tragic one, but she has done nothing but give back to her community despite those hardships. When she was 13, and on a family vacation, she witnessed her father drowning at a beach, and got heavily diagnosed with depression when developing into the adult she is today. She got counseling to cope with it, and her counselor eventually told her to turn the bad thing that happened to her into a good thing for others, and that is exactly what Ray did. She now works as a lifeguard, and is among the best of the best, saving people so they don't end up like her dad. She is a very moral girl, but is naïve, and fairly easily manipulated by men drawn to her by her looks, but she knows that as long as there's a beach with her on it, she's in her element.
• Douglas Chance, 29, ER Nurse (made by u/TDSwaggyBoy)
  • Backstory: Ever since he was born, Douglas' family taught him how to be a ''gentleman''. Be the kind of person that people are proud to call their friend. Always help others when they need your help, always be there for people. He decided to become a nurse, wanting to help in the medical field as he always had a knack for it. Douglas has dedicated his life to helping others, and hopes to come on SURVIVOR and use this platform in order to shine a light on big and important matters. He doesn't necessarily care about winning, but he'll give it his all. Douglas has overcome a lot of challenges in his life, and he's ready to face this one head on.
• Randy 'The Randster' Collins, 38, Firefighter (made by u/UltDragon)
  • A firefighter for almost a decade, Randy as been in some tough situations before and will probably be in a couple more before he retires. Randy even has a burn scar on his right arm, however, you know what they say, "If you cannot handle the heat, get out of the station!" Randy plans on donating the money to help burn victims in both treatment and therapy.
• Evangelina 'Eva' Montes, 26, Children's Nurse (made by u/NahuelFire39)
  • Eva was born in Merida, Mexico City, but at that time she and her family were poor. When she was 8 years old, she had to help them in farming jobs to earn money that in the end they obtained the necessary money for their life and that of their parents and older brother. Eva's parents were not bad at all, but they did not try to have a closer bond between their daughter, causing her not to have a good childhood with zero friends due to her low capacity to socialize with new people; her brother only bothered her often for simply being older than her and doing more work than her parents. When she reached adolescence, Eva made money as a high school student thanks to her parents' money and at first she did poorly, being "the freak of the bunch" by her peers. But she met a girl from her school and told her about God and her religion. Eva became interested in religion and the history of God, becoming a believer. Years later, Eva decided to take the job of Children's Nurse, because she want them to have a healthier life than she had before.
• George Dilton, 55, FarmeAir Force Veteran (made by u/SilverOwl24)
  • George grew up in the country side on a farm, so he knew how to work hard at such a young age. However, instead of staying on the farm after graduating high school, he decided to enlist in the Air Force and make his country proud just as much as his family was of him. He flew planes and even took a bullet or two for some of his fellow soldiers. After being honorably discharged, he came back home and took over his family's farm where he raised his own family. He's a former soldier, a farmer, a father and grandfather. And now, he wants to add Sole Survivor to that list.
• Dolores 'Dolly' McNamara, 36, Broadway Star (made by u/Ilovedogs1100)
  • Ever since Dolly was a little girl, she has dreamed of being on the big stage. Her parents were very supportive of this and decided to help her follow her dreams. Dolly was the main character in every single high school musical and she felt like musical theatre is where she belonged. When she was 21 she got pregnant with her first child. After she gave birth to this child, she decided to audition for Wicked the musical and she only got Ensemble, but she was still happy about that. Dolly afterwards has had 4 more children and has had many roles in different musicals. She is now one of the most famous broadway stars and is extremely happy with her life. Dolly isn’t playing Survivor for the money, she just wants to try something new. PS - While she is gone she has no idea who is going to look after her kids because she has trust issue rip. And she is a single mother so... yeah :) Maybe her parents will look after them but idk :/
• Flora Sanchez, 23, Kindergarten Teacher (made by u/Pray_The_Gay_To_Come)
  • She comes from a loving family. She has a long lost sister who she saved from drowning. She has a kind fiancé who loves her very much. She has a love for plants and wants to study botany. (Definitely not Flora from Winx Club)
• Carson Brooke, 21, Pro Gamer (made by u/LordYeet777)
  • Carson's Mom died during childbirth, and his father went into depression, and eventually died in a drunk driving accident. Carson spent his 13 and up in foster care, and just escaped his everyday life by getting into roleplaying and stuff. He Hope's that with Survivor he can come out of his shell a little bit.

Pecalum Tribe:

• Jonathan 'King' Kingsly, 23, Rave Organizer (made by u/Ripecornball60)
  • King was the popular kid in high school. His awards include Prom King, Valedictorian, and Class President. After high school, King went to Harvard and swiftly left, wanting to pursue a career as an event coordinator. Along with his sister Mina, they created M&K Party Planning Co. After 2 years of planning events for offices, birthdays holidays Ect. King decides that it was time to explore an untouched section of his community. The rave business. Without Mina's knowledge, King bought an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town and created his community's first-ever rave park. Mina was furious and gave King an ultimatum. Get a million dollars to pay off what he stole from her, or lose the business. After this, King became more paranoid, also becoming slightly psychotic. paying gangs to beat up anyone who opposes him, and without his rock Mina, his party animal persona is nothing more than just a facade.
• Vito Luco, 49, Used Car Salesman (made by u/swoldow)
  • Vito is the last person you'd want to trust with anything. A true con-artist at heart, he now has a job selling used cars, but his past jobs would make you run away from him in fear. When he was younger, he was a part of a major drug-trafficking operation run by the mafia, and he later got a job selling illegal fireworks, both of which got him to do jail time for a decade. Newly released, he seems to be back to his old ways, as he scams people out of their money daily with his faulty cars. He was born constantly overshadowed by his perfect younger brother, who is a popular politician, while he just swindles from people. As a result, he hates people who play loyally, and wants to prove that evil is the best way to play. He isn't afraid to play hard, as that's what he did all his life, and he'll either win, or go out swinging.
• Chelsea "Sass" Virge, 21, Model (made by u/Rylandoesreddit)
  • Sass was the 3rd of 6 children, though you would never see her. She was always neglected compared to her extremely smart and athletic siblings. This all changed though when her father died in a car crash, and later her mother died of an overdose. After failing to be adopted, Sass walked out on her orphanage, becoming homeless. Later, she found her Aunt Jenny who is also a talent agent. Together, they have been using her looks to get jobs modeling for adult clothing. Now she sees that a lot of people having a great time in life, and sometimes she likes to take her anger out on those people. Whether she gets her agents to beat someone up or cheats on a relationship.
• Kim 'Juri' Juri, 35, Poker Dealer (made by u/Gemini_B)
  • Kim Juri grew up with a fairly poor family and at a young age secretly turned to gambling to support her family. She got very good and became a poker dealer at a casino. She wants to destroy this game because she knows how to lie, cheat and play dirty. She's here to win, and nothing will stop her.
• Bart Bartson, 25, Comic Book Store Worker (made by u/asiansurvivorfan)
  • A true nerd, Bart spends most of his time either reading comics or watching Marvel movies. He can go on for hours about how amazing Marvel is or how certain situations take place. He wants to use his knowledge of Marvel to win Capy’s Survivor. He’s always wanted to be a villain and sees this as the perfect opportunity to be a supervillain.
• Karen Manager, 50, Self-proclaimed Activist (made by u/Rylandoesreddit)
  • Karen literally got on this show by berating the executive producers until they cried. She has an entitlement to practically everything, the reasoning being she has kids, and if she doesn't get what she wants exactly when and how she wants it, she will call your manager, get you fired, and ruin your life.
• Randall Martin, 49, Real Estate Agent (made by u/TDSwaggyBoy)
  • Being a self proclaimed sleazeball, which is a very weird thing to be proud of, Randall's life was never too good. He didn't grow up with a lot of close friends. Sure, people liked him at first, but when they really got to know him they didn't appreciate him nor his antics very much. Randall had to make a name for himself. He quickly found a career in the world of real estate. Not even his co-workers enjoyed his company, but they appreciated his skills. Being a fast and smooth talker really pays off in his industry. And now, Randall wants to put his skills to use in SURVIVOR. How well will that pan out?
• Adrian Blair, 28, Casino Chain Owner (made by u/UltDragon)
  • Owning a business is never easy and to make it in this world you have to stab a few backs. This is what Adrian was told about owning a business growing up. Adrian will use every advantage to win and should not be trusted. Adrian has already gain a small fortune from his cutthroat business strategies, he is entering survivor purely for the competition.
• Kenzie Cortez, 48, Journalist (made by u/NahuelFire39)
  • Kenzie was born in Chicago, leading a wealthy money life with family, husband and friends. When she got her job as a reporter, Kenzie was eager for the opportunity to do Fake News, which the news accepted and contributed. This news was not minor, but major news about famous people or stories that never happened. As incredible as it sounds, people believed her, dropping the weight on the people Kenzie defamed and that people who didn't believe her later denounced her. But if that wasn't the last straw, Kenzie was paying the police and judges to clear her own name. She continues to work as a reporter and on the famous news show,
• Tracy Wilkins, 25, Social Media Influencer (made by u/SurvivorFan5890)
  • Early on, both of her parents were constantly fighting and cheating on each other. Since, she grew up with both of her parents liking so many people, she learned to do the same. Starting in Middle School, she would lead guys on every chance she had, She found hurting their hearts entertaining so she continued to do it until her Senior year in High School. She was called out by one guys so she ended up breaking his nose and four fingers. She was expelled. Because of this, she realized the reason she could lead guys on so easily was because of her looks and ability to lie. So she took that advantage and put it on social media. Now plenty of men try to talk to her and she has fun having them like dogs on a leash. Tracy wants to win so she can gain more fame and see if she can convince another Social Media Influencer to date her.

Season: https://brantsteele.net/survivocaramoan/r.php?c=58TIKzh1
​
20th: Tracy was just too far on the outside for this vote. With both alliances in the tribe gunning for her, there was no way she could escape this 7-3 vote. Eliminated: Tracy
19th: I think this vote was purely the wrong place at the wrong time. There are two main alliances in the Pecalum tribe, King, Jury, and Vito; and Adrian, Bart, and Randall. I believe the flips wanted to side more with the alliance voting out the other alliance rather than a fellow flip vote. Eliminated: Bart
18th: I think Vito was scared that Karen, Kenzie, and Sass (a.k.a the flip votes) were going to flip back to Randall and Adrain's side and vote out Juri, as her name was thrown around. But alas, that did not happen, and their intended target of Randall went out after only Kenzie voted with Randall and Adrian, Sass throwing her vote to Karen, and Karen siding with Juri, Vito, and now-flip vote King. Eliminated: Randall
17th: The Sanctus tribe, much like their rival tribe, was divided by 2 alliances of 3. Carson-Randster-Flora and Blair-Dolly-Percy. But being the heroes that they are at heart, that didn't matter much, as Eva's fight with George from Episode 2 caught up with her and made her the boot 9-1. Eliminated: Eva
16th: Sanctus loses their second immunity in a row. I think the alliances are trying to rid of the flip votes early, as they could be dangerous come to the merge. Carson-Flora-Randster manages to pull in Ray for their Douglas vote, but that is solely because Blair-Dolly-Percy managed to get all the other flip votes to vote Ray, booting her 5-4. Eliminated: Ray
15th: After a huge fight at camp, and them both being in the middle, George and Douglas have made themselves the main targets of this week. Carson-Flora-Randster decides to stick to their target of Douglas, while Blair-Dolly-Percy decides to tie hoping for someone to flip, so they vote George. Instead of this, Blair ultimately decides to flip on her alliance, voting Douglas out 4-4; 4-2. Eliminated: Douglas
14th: A swap occurs at the Final 14, sending Sass, Dolly, Flora, King, Karen, Kenzie, and Percy to Sanctus. And sending Adrian, Blair, Carson, George, Juri, Randster, and Vito to Pecalum. All old alliances stand strong, while new alliances of former tribemates form. Sanctus loses the immunity challenge. The Sinners decide that Flora is their main target. But, Dolly and Percy approach Sass and offer her to flip, because of Dolly's reasons that her fellow Sinners are untrustworthy. Sass says in her confessional that she is the most untrustworthy of the bunch. In a stupid move, Dolly decides not to play her idol. Flora knows her fate, and decides to vote Sass as a last "F**k you". Eliminated: Flora
13th: Pecalum are the ones heading to Tribal Council tonight. Randster and Carson end up fighting after Flora goes home, as they know they are probably doomed. Randster recognizes that Carson is a huge threat to the game, and he decides he doesn't need him sticking around, the Sinners also take advantage of this crack in the Saints, as they are down in numbers, and need to form some trust. Carson goes in a 6-1. Eliminated: Carson
12th: The merge occurs, with everyone shocked that it's so early, with 12 people still remaining. Because of Carson's elimination, the original Saints are down in number 7-5. Karen manages to win immunity. Being the villains they are, the Sinners immediately turn on each other, and the biggest targets at the end of it all are King and Sass, who are mistakenly thought of as running the game, even though Juri and Vito know their alliance has most of the votes, they don't speak up. Sass manages to gain Blair and George's trust enough to get them on her side and attempt to convince the other former Saints. But King-Vito-Juri gets every other vote off of King, as he is an ally. Eliminated: Sass
11th: The Randster wins immunity. The Sinners continue to turn on each other, with King once again being a target along with Kenzie for constantly flipping back and forth between votes. The Randster, knowing he is safe, decides to vote with Blair and George (and Kenzie) to vote out King, as he sees King is a threat. They attempt to convince Dolly-Percy, but when Blair was flipped on the other tribe, they grew close. They decide to stay on the Sinner's good side and vote for Kenzie. Kenzie goes home on a 7-4. Eliminated: Kenzie.
10th: Vito wins immunity. Even in their last ditch efforts to flip Dolly-Percy to their side, Blair-George-Randster could not get people to flip and vote out King, even though he was one of the people obviously running the vote, and they are beginning to get picked off. George leaves in a 7-3 vote. Eliminated: George.
9th: Adrian win immunity. Blair and Randster still attempt to flip Dolly-Percy, and even the last Volcaneous flip left, Adrian. They try to reason that they are not top priority to get to Final Tribal Council, and they need to hurt the alliance of Juri-Vito-King, but Dolly-Percy and Adrian want to stick on their good side, even if it means they only last one more vote. They decide Blair is easily a bigger threat than Randster, and send her packing on a 7-2. Eliminated: Blair.
8th: Vito wins another immunity, and Randster is crushed as he was also close to winning. Randster is shocked when Dolly-Percy, Adrian, and Karen approach him and say that they are giving King the boot. Randster asks why they didn't do it earlier, and they confess it's because they wanted to be on the top of one side, and with the other 3 person alliance they couldn't do that, and that they needed to gain trust with King-Juri-Vito. Juri knows about this vote, but she decides to save her idols for when SHE needs them. Eliminated: King
7th: Adrian wins immunity. They decide the vote is Vito, as they are more uncomfortable with him than Juri. But, Adrian decides that flipping back to the Juri-Vito side would be his best bet right now. He decides not to tell Karen, as his plan is to bring Randster and her to the end as goats and boot Juri and Vito at the Final 5. He knows that Randster is open to flipping though, so he baits him in, but is unsuccessful. Juri knows about these attempts, and she shows Randster one of her idols and says she will keep him safe because he can't keep himself safe in the middle. By a vote of 4-3 Percy goes home. Eliminated: Percy
6th: The Randster wins immunity. Adrian finally decides to tell Karen about the flipping. But then regrets it as soon as he realizes he might be the target, as Dolly might be a goat for them. Him and Randster flip back to Dolly's side, with Adrian trying to save his goats. But he was too messy, and couldn't get Karen to flip back. It's a 3-3 tie, with Juri-Vito-Karen voting Dolly, and Adrian-Randster-Dolly voting Karen, trying to cause a rock draw with Adrian, Juri, and Vito. But, knowing she doesn't want a rock draw, and that she could bring anyone with her and potentially win, Juri decides to shockingly flip to a Karen vote, sending her packing. Eliminated: Karen
5th: Juri wins the immunity challenge. She knows they are going to vote for Vito, but she also knows that they know there is nothing they can do because she has an idol. So they all decide to stick with Vito, as they think she might boot him for being a jury vote threat. Their prediction turns out to be right, but she still votes against them to try to attempt some Juri Management (sorry for the bad pun). Eliminated: Vito
4th: The Randster secures his stop in the Final 3, by winning immunity. Juri uses her talking skill in attempts to flip Adrian because she knows that she is doomed if she doesn't try, and she tells him he should be sitting next to a Sinner at FTC and that she might not even win the Fire-Making, he does the math and decides that a potentially bitter jury is better than sitting next to the social player, Dolly, at FTC. Dolly and Juri are sent to a Fire-Making Challenge, where Juri wins. Eliminated: Dolly
Final Tribal Council:>! By a jury vote of 4-3-1.... congratulations Kim Juri! You are the winner of Capy's Survivor: Saint vs Sinners!!<
Tell me what you guys think. Also tell me who you would like to see the return of for future seasons, and who you liked the most!