Haven’t had a car in years but will be moving back to a city that requires having a car later this year. Car searching gives me a headache 😂
Would like a compact or small AWD SUV, and would likely be buying used. Price would be $35k max. Not looking for this to be a car I have for years and years to come, but need something reliable for the next few years or so.
Looking at a CRV or RAV-4 seems like a logical option, so I’m doing that. Not opposed to going luxury though (also looking into BMW x1, Acura RDX, Volvo xc40). Family has had CRVs for years, so that’s comfortable to me, but not a requirement.
Looking to poll the hive to see if I’m on the right track, or if I should be shifting my focus somewhere else. Haven’t done this in years and it seems like lots has changed out there!

I would like to keep track of how much I spend a year on cat food, treats, litter, toys. Unfortunately where I buy these items is the same place where I buy my food so it all goes through the same bill.
This is more of a nice-to-have and I am curios to hear how do you all track those expenses if at all.
I would not like to do two transactions during check out but I may have to try it, this also will help me figure out how to break down items purchased at stores that are able to sell multiple items there. For example at Walmart (grocery store for those outside the US) you can buy from car oil to milk or even toys.

I have a question about hybrid sport car lap times that I can’t find a good answer to:
How repeatable are max effort lap times given the hybrid drivetrain? I assume the regenerative braking and power generated under partial throttle cannot compensate to regain all of the energy lost in deployment so wouldn’t the ECU need to either deploy less electric energy or need to increase ICE engine load to generate power (essentially robbing performance)?
Perhaps the electric deployment is balanced enough that the equation ensures the odds of sufficient regen are likely to maintain max performance?
I ask this because with a non-hybrid sports car, the best lap time is relatively repeatable until you start having tire degradation or heat soak (in a perfect scenario), but with a hybrid, I was wondering if manufactures care at all about lap delta or do they prioritize all out lap times for the spec sheet?
Thanks!

I’m feeling quite helpless and am hoping for some advice on how to navigate these family problems.
TL;DR: My sister Emily, who has a history of lying, claimed our stepmom Christie was accusing her of dropping out of college and other things, which led to a lot of family stress. Christie recently committed suicide, and it turns out she was right about Emily not being in school. Now, I’m worried about my dad’s emotional state, and my sister’s ongoing lies are making family life toxic. I can’t even stay in the same house as her because I fear for my safety.
___
For perspective, my immediate family overview:
My mom and dad divorced when my mom was pregnant with me. My dad left her for my two older brothers' babysitter. I grew up with her as my step mom. There was always some tension between my brothers and her growing up, while I was more of a neutral observer. To be honest, she wasn't the best person but I did come to love her in the end. My dad and stepmom, Christie had one child together, Emily. When I was in high school my older brother passed away in a car accident, which was needless to say devasting for my parents. My oldest brother struggle with extreme drug addiction after that, going to rehab twice. He's doing very well now, with two kids and a wife in Florida. I'm in Chicago with my partner; gay, came out in high school.
____
Emily’s always been the golden child, spinning tales that often cast her as the victim or star. Last year, she started telling me these intense stories about her mom / my stepmom Christie, who was truly going through a rough depressive patch mentally. Emily used this depression and painted her as delusional and abusive. Then, Christie tragically took her own life, a decision we believe was heavily influenced by the stress of Emily’s lies about attending college—lies that we only recently discovered were actually true.
At Christie’s funeral, Emily’s behavior was off. She looked like she was dressed for a TV show rather than a funeral, and her emotional breakdown during a speech she barely prepared for felt staged. It was like she enjoyed the drama.
Her past is a complex web of claimed abuses and sexual assaults, many of which have been proven untrue. She’s excellent at manipulating narratives and even now boasts about becoming a CEO from a supposed buy-out of her PR firm (really she's just a freelancer), dropping names like Pauly D and Blake Lively as if they’re everyday business contacts.
The lies escalated in the days following her mother’s death. She claimed she was graduating a year early, was getting her diploma overnighted, that she had been named valedictorian, and that she was supposed to speak at the graduation ceremony. After her diploma didn't show up after a few days and she had excuse after excuse, had us drive 45 minutes to a friend’s house to pick up her 'diploma', only to receive a last-minute call from a random girl claiming it wasn't there after all. Random lie anyway, because why would a friend have her new diploma!?
This pattern of deceit was further confirmed when my brother and I checked with the National Student Clearinghouse and found out she wasn’t enrolled since last year and has no diploma from her university, contrary to her claims. Rather than coming clean, Emily’s response was to weave even more complex lies.
On top of all this, she’s lying about big financial moves involving my dad’s friends, like apartments in NYC and buying new houses, which just isolates us more when we can’t follow up on these claims without risking embarrassment.
Our dad is devastated. He’s always been private and protective, and these events have hit him hard. He’s still defending Emily and seems in denial, despite everything. It feels like everything’s falling apart because of Emily’s fabrications. My brother and I aren't speaking with my sister right now, and not speaking to my dad much, after we gave them ultimatums that they ignored.
I suggested family therapy, but that got shut down. I’m at a loss. I want to help my dad and find some way to bridge the gap, but Emily’s presence makes it impossible to even think about staying at his house. I’m genuinely scared of what she might do next given her track record and intensity.
So, what should I do? Is there a way to get through to my dad or to arrange some kind of intervention for Emily without making things worse? How do I find someone who can help us navigate this incredibly tough situation? I'm also open to some questions and perspectives on her outrageous lies.
And before you ask, yes, I know about What Jennifer Did, let's not bring that up!
Thanks for letting me vent. I just want to find some way to bring honesty and peace back to our family.

TLDR:
Turkish Airlines dicked me around for four years to get a $390 refund from a cancelled flight, and has finally closed that door, telling me the voucher has expired. Can I do anything, or should I just give up?
Turkish Airlines cancelled my Lahore - Berlin flight in April 2020 because of the pandemic, and offered a refund. I immediately tried to fill out the online paperwork to get the refund, but received the message that refunds were on hold for a few months. When I tried again a few months later, I was told that since my credit card had expired in the process, I'd need a letter from my bank stating that this was indeed my account, and stating my new account information.
At this point, I was overwhelmed and low key traumatized (I'd gotten stuck in Lahore, had to take a $3000 evacuation flight and move back to Canada where I have citizenship, rather than returning to Berlin where I was living). I tried to produce this letter but it was absurd because obviously my Canadian bank is not going to print a document stating my full credit card number alongside my name. Finally Turkish Airlines told me that I needed to go to an in person office. I tried, but everything seemed closed, or they didn't answer their phone, and I didn't have access to a car. Fast forward to 2022, I finally tracked down an open office when passing through Berlin airport, and brought all the documentation. They tell me they can't help me. After numerous emails, Turkish Airlines issues me an EMD voucher, valid for 2 years up till April 20th 2024. I try to get it refunded but each query through their online feedback form takes months. I no longer have a EUR account, and they finally tell me that yes I can use my USD account. I've moved between 4 countries during this period, so it takes me a while to deal with the asinine customer service and figure out what I need to give them to get a refund (this has included multiple long phone conversations with customer service). It takes me so long that now we are at December 2023. Finally I submit all the documentation. But no, turns out I need to have a wet signature on my form. I am travelling for work and am not able to submit this information until March 2024. One month later, I receive a cookie cutter response, again telling me everything I need to do (which I've already submitted). I write an email half in capslock, extremely angry, but ALSO RE-ATTACH ALL THE PAPERWORK (because I notice one form I had previously submitted, I had forgotten in my most recent submission). One month later I get a response saying that since I didn't reply, they have closed the case (I have proof in my email that I replied with all the forms they asked for). I repeat the entire submission process again, and call the call center multiple times. I receive a response one month later saying my voucher has expired (it expired during the time they took to respond, not when I filed the claim), too bad, no refund for me.
I feel really stupid after all of this... feels like the joke was on me? How did I spend this much time trying to get this refund when maybe they never intended to refund me? Do I have any recourse, since the cancelled flight was 4 years ago?

Hey all! Looking at getting a Ute for towing my track car. The Car in question along with the trailer will probably come out to 1.8t I have always had smallish cars and don’t personally like driving larger 4WD’s especially because this will turn into my new daily driver.
I’ve had XR6’s and XR6T’s in the past and like them, however I never towed with them.
I have a budget of around $6,000 but can extend for the right car. And would like to get an XR6 Ute, my question is, would a NA Auto XR6 be enough to tow around 2t, even though the towing capacity allows. I’ve heard they have transmission issues when towing with NA’s (being the 4 speed auto, 5 speed and 6 speed) Would I be better off buying a ZF6 Turbo? Or is there some hidden gem towing machine that I should consider 😂
Cheers guys!

I've got a 2016 STI with the OEM Brembos that, correct me if I'm wrong, are 4 piston. I've been wanting to get aftermarket wheels on my car but because of the Brembos, I can't fit anything without spacers which I would prefer to avoid using if possible. On top of this, I've been quoted $3500 for replacement rotors for the Brembos, which I burned through surprisingly quick.
So I got into thinking if maybe I can get better performance, price and wheel options if I switch kits?
I see there are kits like these Wilwoods, which not only have 6 pistons to my STI's 4's, but this entire kit + a rear kit costs about as much as just the Brembo rotors would.
However, I have no idea how the performance of these compares. Is this even considered an upgrade?
Additionally, any idea how this might affect wheel options? I would imagine it would end up being worse since it's looks like it's a larger caliper.
Any input would be appreciated.

Schengen Country: The Netherlands Applied from: VFS New York City, USA Nationality: Indian Visa Result: Received a 1-Year Short-Stay Mulitiple Entry Visa Bio: 26 M (Single/Unmarried)
Hi All, I thought I should share my experience and profile as it might be helpful for people applying to The Netherlands in USA.
Some more background (For OPT/STEM OPT Students): I am an Indian National on F1 Visa, and I am currently under OPT working for an employer in NYC, with a pending STEM OPT Application. My current OPT work auth expires in the first week of July and my travel date is from 17th July - 28th July. While submitting the application my STEM Work Auth was not approved and was pending.
Planned Trips: I have two trips planned this year. The first being the Tomorrowland Music festival, where I would visit Belgium and The Netherlands from 17th July - 28th July as mentioned above. Second trip would be in December to Norway for approx a week.
Main Destination: After going through this sub, I figured that I should show Netherlands as my main destination as they are the only country that has been handing out 1-year multi entry visa. This would cover both my trips and I would not need to apply again for my second trip. I even called the consulate and told them about both my trip and they said that they would consider to provide me 1-year visa as long as I have my second trip listed on my cover letter.
Application Documents: I prepared all the documets that were listed on the VFS Website.

• The Application form was filled on the Netherlands website and it generated the complete application form.
• Passport: I took photocopy of all pages of my current passport, even though it is completely empty (I got it renewed last month). Apart from that I took photocopy of all Visas and entry exit stamps, on all of my previously expired passports (I have 3 expired passports)
• I took my I-20 and F1 Visa as evidence of legal status. Here I did not attach my EAD Card as it was expiring before my travel date. I did not want them to think that I am going to EU because my current work auth is expiring. They might not be aware of the STEM OPT extension rules, so I did not want them to get confused and took a little risk here, by not providing the EAD at all. It paid off!!
• I took photographs as per schengen requirements, but the VFS did take those. In fact, they clicked a picture there itself while taking my finger-print and used it for the visa (It was free and its mandatory).
• Proof of Travel: This is where things get interesting. Even though my plan is from 17-28, I provided an itinerary for 17-31st July. I booked fully refundable flight tickets, hotel tickets, train tickets (to and from belgium). A very very detailed itinerary (as in what I am doing each day to the last detail). I even booked all my flights, hotels, activities for my Trip to Norway along with a detailed itinerary for the same. I did my best to make sure that they know that i am going only for tourism and I have put in the extra extra extra effort as to do my research and plan my itinerary for both trips.
• Finance: I showed my bank account statement for last four months. I also, showed my robinhood investments, Fidelity investments and my 401k investment. (As far as I know they only care about liquid cash in your account, but I still wanted to show my commitment to USA by showing my investments especially 401k)
• Employer: I took a letter from my employer confirming my employement and travel dates. I also attached paystubs for last three months.
• Health Insurance: AXA Travel Insurance (Cost be approx 40 euros)

Cover Letter: This is a very very crucial part of my application. I listed my travel plans, my previous travel history (I have been to 6 countries), intention of coming back and strong finances. The consulate told me to mention both trips in the cover letter and I did that. kept everything in under a page.
Yes I know I have showed way more than what is needed and required. its usually very easy to get a visa from USA, but here are the two reason why I went the extra mile:

• I wanted a 1-year mult entry visa, so I wanted to show both my trips to the last detail. Flights, hotel, trains, internal flights. Each and every things was booked and fully refundable. This showcased my genuine intent for turism and showed me as someone who is less likly to overstay. I just wanted to avoid going through the hassel of applying for a seperate visa for Norway.
• My work auth was expiring in the first week of July, with a pending application with USCIS to extend my employemnt till 2026. I did not want them to think that I am going to overstay and provided as many details and finances as I could to not get flagged.

VFS Process and Timeline: VFS is a fucking horrible. Just wanted to put it out here. Finding a slot was a little messed up. The VFS website goes down almost every eveing and you don't see any slots at all, even though they have slots available. I booked a slot for May 10th in the last week of April. They had plenty of slots, so finding one based on your preference was not an issue.

• May 10th: Visa Appointment at 8:30 AM. I was let in at 9:30 AM. Fucking joke of an org. They were just letting France and UK people in, even tough most of them had a later appontment. FYI: All schengen visa are processed at the same place. They dont have seperate offices for each consulate. Its a single office that sends application to each consulate based on where you are applying. I was also forced to use their courrier service to get my passport delivered, even though I was told on phone that I could pick up my passport! At the center I was told that "Especially for Netherlands, we do not allow passport pickup"
• May 10th: In the evening I got this email "Your application has been submitted to the Embassy and is currently under process.Please continue to track the status online for further updates."
• Radio silence after that.
• Also to those who are curious, The consulate/embassy (I am not sure who processes the visa), send the passport to VFS and then they send it to you. It doesn't come directly from the Consulate/Embassy. (I got to know this when I called VFS about my application status).
• May 27th: I received a message from FedEx, stating that a package would be delivered to me on May 28th, along with the tracking details. Based on shipment date and location, it was obviously my passport coming from VFS. The amazing part is that, there was no email/SMS update from VFS that my application was processed. Infact even after getting my passport their website tracking shows, application under process at embassy.
• May 28th: Received my passport with a stamped 1-year multiple entry Schengen Visa from the Netherlands.

Anyone has any question, feel free to ask me anything! I hope everyone applying gets their visa!! All the best!

Hi advice,
I’m feeling quite helpless and am hoping for some advice on how to navigate these family problems.
TL;DR: My sister Emily, who has a history of lying, claimed our stepmom Christie was accusing her of dropping out of college and other things, which led to a lot of family stress. Christie recently committed suicide, and it turns out she was right about Emily not being in school. Now, I’m worried about my dad’s emotional state, and my sister’s ongoing lies are making family life toxic. I can’t even stay in the same house as her because I fear for my safety.
___
For perspective, my immediate family overview:
My mom and dad divorced when my mom was pregnant with me. My dad left her for my two older brothers' babysitter. I grew up with her as my step mom. There was always some tension between my brothers and her growing up, while I was more of a neutral observer. To be honest, she wasn't the best person but I did come to love her in the end. My dad and stepmom, Christie had one child together, Emily. When I was in high school my older brother passed away in a car accident, which was needless to say devasting for my parents. My oldest brother struggle with extreme drug addiction after that, going to rehab twice. He's doing very well now, with two kids and a wife in Florida. I'm in Chicago with my partner; gay, came out in high school.
____
Emily’s always been the golden child, spinning tales that often cast her as the victim or star. Last year, she started telling me these intense stories about her mom / my stepmom Christie, who was truly going through a rough depressive patch mentally. Emily used this depression and painted her as delusional and abusive. Then, Christie tragically took her own life, a decision we believe was heavily influenced by the stress of Emily’s lies about attending college—lies that we only recently discovered were actually true.
At Christie’s funeral, Emily’s behavior was off. She looked like she was dressed for a TV show rather than a funeral, and her emotional breakdown during a speech she barely prepared for felt staged. It was like she enjoyed the drama.
Her past is a complex web of claimed abuses and sexual assaults, many of which have been proven untrue. She’s excellent at manipulating narratives and even now boasts about becoming a CEO from a supposed buy-out of her PR firm (really she's just a freelancer), dropping names like Pauly D and Blake Lively as if they’re everyday business contacts.
The lies escalated in the days following her mother’s death. She claimed she was graduating a year early, was getting her diploma overnighted, that she had been named valedictorian, and that she was supposed to speak at the graduation ceremony. After her diploma didn't show up after a few days and she had excuse after excuse, had us drive 45 minutes to a friend’s house to pick up her 'diploma', only to receive a last-minute call from a random girl claiming it wasn't there after all. Random lie anyway, because why would a friend have her new diploma!?
This pattern of deceit was further confirmed when my brother and I checked with the National Student Clearinghouse and found out she wasn’t enrolled since last year and has no diploma from her university, contrary to her claims. Rather than coming clean, Emily’s response was to weave even more complex lies.
On top of all this, she’s lying about big financial moves involving my dad’s friends, like apartments in NYC and buying new houses, which just isolates us more when we can’t follow up on these claims without risking embarrassment.
Our dad is devastated. He’s always been private and protective, and these events have hit him hard. He’s still defending Emily and seems in denial, despite everything. It feels like everything’s falling apart because of Emily’s fabrications. My brother and I aren't speaking with my sister right now, and not speaking to my dad much, after we gave them ultimatums that they ignored.
I suggested family therapy, but that got shut down. I’m at a loss. I want to help my dad and find some way to bridge the gap, but Emily’s presence makes it impossible to even think about staying at his house. I’m genuinely scared of what she might do next given her track record and intensity.
So, what should I do? Is there a way to get through to my dad or to arrange some kind of intervention for Emily without making things worse? How do I find someone who can help us navigate this incredibly tough situation? I'm also open to some questions and perspectives on her outrageous lies.
And before you ask, yes, I know about What Jennifer Did, let's not bring that up!
Thanks for letting me vent. I just want to find some way to bring honesty and peace back to our family.

I am really torn between two cars:

1. 2018 cayman GTS (982); premium package; Bose PDK; SPASM; 18 way seat; non CPO though; 24K miles for $71K
2. 2018 911 4 (991.2)- premium package ; sports chrono; 14 way seat: CPO; no Bose system though; 18K miles for $90 K

Both have good service history and 3 owners.
This would be my first porche. I like the drive of both- slightly prefer the mid-engine driving but have always dreamed of a 911.
My requirements - daily driver plus weekend. I want to try out the track. I don’t care about the backseats as we have an SUV. We live in Washington with all the rains.
I almost pulled the plug on 1 but then the 2nd came into the market and I went back to the drawing board. Obviously 1 is 20K cheaper but I can make it work. I imagine both will depreciate a similar amount in 5 years so I should not let the sticker price make the decision for me.
I have never owned a car that costs more than $35K so it is a scary decision. Any thoughts on what else should I be consider to make the decision?
Thank you all! Learned so much from this community.

"You ARE a hero, even if you can’t 'go hero'."

Benjamin Kirby Tennyson was a rather unremarkable kid about to go on what could be the most boring summer road trip ever, with a cousin he could barely get along with. However, due to certain shenanigans that would be revealed much later, one of the most powerful devices in the Universe crash landed to earth - physically bonding with him and giving him the ability to transform into 10 different alien forms.
This feature isn't about Ben Tennyson, though. His cousin, Gwen Tennyson, accompanied him on all his childhood adventures without the aid of a watch from the sky, using her quick wits and arcane abilities in the place of brute alien strength. It'd turn out that Gwen herself could use magic due to her alien heritage as an Anodite, cosmic beings made of pure energy that can utilize the universe's mana around them for sustenance and combat.

Featuring... Gwen Tennyson!

This is just a general overview of Gwen's capabilities. Her full respect thread can be found here.

Physical Ability

Gwen starts off the series as someone incredibly strong for her age, and later matures into having generally superhuman physical durability and quick reflexes. I'll be seperating out noteworthy feats of her as a kid, and her as a teen.

Kid Gwen

• [Strength] Destroys one of Vilgax's drones with a shovel
• [Strength] Lifts and swings one of Charmcaster's golems into another one, destroying them both
• [Speed] While Ben was in her body, instinctively backflipped over a set of cannonballs Charmcaster fired at her
• [Durability] Survives a blast from the Werewolf's sonic howl, this is something that can shatter concrete

Teen Gwen

• [Strength] While using martial arts, takes out a number of DNAliens without any use from her magic
• [Strength] Judo-flips a large, overweight tetramand with one hand
• [Speed] Reacts to a blast from a Techadon blaster at point-blank right before it could hit Ben
• [Speed] While possessed by Dagon, outruns a car
• [Durability] Gets back up right after being thrown through a wall

Magic

Gwen began learning magic through Charmcaster's spellbook, which required incantations to utilize its magic. This was used much more frequently as a kid, although in Omniverse she embraces this in combat fairly often once again.

• Gwen has many spells for clairvoyance and tracking down targets. This lets her locate targets of interest she knows, or use items associated with a target to find them.
• Gwen can telekinetically manipulate objects with magic. These can be as small as bumper cars, or as large as semitrucks.
• Gwen's last major choice of spell for combat are those that control the elements, such as water or air tornados

Obviously Gwen has a massive toolbox beyond this, but these are generally the spells she uses the most outside of her mana constructs.

Mana Constructs - Shields

As a teen, Gwen used constructs of pure mana as her bread and butter. The primary use of this was as shields. Below are a list of her best feats - if you visit her respect thread you'll notice there's a lot of variation in terms of what breaks them, so take these with a grain of salt.

• Protects herself, and her allies from the detonation of a Null Void Projector that leveled the factory they were in and was stated to be able to destroy everything in a half-mile
• Shielded herself and several allies from the explosion of Aggregor's ship, which was large enough to emerge from behind a mountain peak
• Blocks hits from Sunder's axe while breaking, which can shatter sections of a building and pierce through metal
• Unbroken by a kick from Atomix that sends it clear out of a building, high enough into the atmosphere where she almost passed out from the altitude
• Stops a laundry list of esoteric effects, such as electricity, extreme heat, some forms of teleportation, and psionics that cover a planet

Mana Constructs - Blasts/Offensive Constructs

Mana could also take the form of weaponry and powerful blasts of energy, when Gwen wanted to return fire to an enemy after blocking a hit.

• [Force] A mana blast of hers redirected by Four Arms goes straight through a metal pillar
• [Force] Flips a loaded truck, then blasts apart an entire row of them
• [Piercing] Shears through the corner of a building, collapsing it on a Highbreed**
• [Force/Piercing] Destroys several of Inspector 13's stone-like machines
• [Grappling] Pulls back a punch from an enraged Humungousaur
• [Grappling] Rams Kevin through a crystal growth of Diamondhead's and then pins him to a tree

Anodite Form

As an Anodite, Gwen can shed her physical form to transform into a being made of pure energy. She generally avoids doing this for parts of the show as it risks leaving her without her human body forever, but it grants her significantly improved abilities.

• After entering her energy-form, hits a Highbreed hard enough to send them clear out of Los Solidad
• Says she could destroy Ultimate Humungosaur, Ultimate Echo Echo, Ultimate Cannonbolt, Ultimate Spidermonkey, Ultimate Big Chill, and Ultimate Swampfire
• Dagon calls Gwen the strongest being in the world
• While possessed by Dagon, casually blasts Humungosaur into the wall and throws a car into the air with telekinesis, then causes him to revert back to Ben by causing him pain

Using Gwen on whowouldwin

Gwen as a teenageyoung adult is probably what people are most familiar with and most likely to use, as Kid Gwen is less fit for a straightforward fight. This version of Gwen fits into an archetype you see a lot in superhero/comic book media, characters with energy constructs such as members of the Lantern Corps from DC Comics and Atom Eve from Image Comics are popular opponents for her.
Some magical characters with more diverse abilities can also make for fun opponents, as Gwen has plenty of defenses to esoteric attacks (or "hax"), and will typically use some of her more one-off-y powers when fighting sorcerers like Charmcaster or Hex.

It happened. He didn't deny that. Not like he was a suspect or anything—not yet—but he never denied it to himself. At the same time, this all happened over a decade ago—twelve years to be exact.
He didn't think of it every day; in fact, sometimes an entire month would go by where it barely crossed his mind.
In a way, that whole experience—he thought of all the abductions and murders as a singular event—now felt as if it belonged to somebody else.
It was a time in his life when he was confused, mixed-up, searching; a dark time, you know, like a phase. Who didn't have one of those in their past?
Plus, he was married now. His wife, Dee, obviously didn't know about it and he felt no obligation to tell her. Did he ask about her former lovers?
Sometimes there are things in the past and you just let them be. Whether it was Dee losing her virginity to the quarterback of the football team in the backseat at a drive-in or him using multiple black garbage bags and masking tape on that thing he didn't have time to bury in rural Tennessee, everyone has things they would rather forget about. Sometimes you just leave things where they lie.
So that's what Ned Doyle did.
Until that Sunday morning, November 6th, 1988.
He was a having a glass of Dee's pulpy homemade orange juice, waiting for his coffee to percolate, when he opened his heavy weekend edition of the New York Times (probably Ned's greatest extravagance—he liked its heft; and how the Arts & Leisure section made him feel culturally superior to his Ohio townsfolk, “the Philistines of Findlay,” he called them) when he saw the article buried in the back.
The country was two days from heading to the polls for the General Election—Bush v. Dukakis—so most everything else that week had been relegated to the back.
He read the article twice before he could even begin to make sense of it. It seemed to be a story about something called "DNA fingerprinting" and a 27-year-old baker in Great Britain named Colin Pitchfork who had confessed to raping and murdering two 15-year-old girls, in separate incidents a few years apart, after a new scientific process had been used to extract information from semen which he, Colin Pitchfork, had left at the crime scenes (likely inside the victims) some five years earlier.
Now if they could do all that after five years, why not ten years—or maybe even… twelve?
"Interesting story here," he said to Dee. It wasn't uncommon for Ned to read a news story twice—once for himself and a second time aloud to Dee while she brewed his coffee and burnt her toast. But this was his third reading and Ned acted as if it were his first.
"What do you make of that?" he asked. It somehow got worse each time he read it. After the third time, he felt as if he had been sucker punched in the stomach.
"Science Fiction is what it sounds like," Dee said matter-of-factly, pouring Ned his coffee in a mug that bore the Marathon Oil insignia. Findlay, Ohio was Marathon’s headquarters although there had been rumors circulating about a move to Texas.
"And unconstitutional," he said. "Cops running a dragnet like that, taking blood samples from 5,000 townspeople. Thankfully, that would never pass the muster here."
"They did catch the killer so maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea," she said, buttering her burnt toast. "Otherwise, who knows? They could have convicted the wrong man.”
Ned had already gotten lucky once – astonishingly so. Griffin Gerald Jones, the famed “I-75 Corridor Child Killer,” had claimed responsibility for all but one of Ned’s victims before dying in Florida’s electric chair.
"You can't have police in this country running around, sticking everyone with needles, drawing blood for some sort of science experiment,” he said. “Nevermind the Constitution, what about AIDS?”
“What about it?” she asked.
“There's been hundreds, thousands of cases now where people have been infected by giving blood,” he said. “That's a medical fact. Get accused of a crime and AIDS too?"
"It doesn't sound like any of the townspeople there in England got AIDS, darling. Unless there's more to the story, besides what you read to me."
He watched her spread orange marmalade over her burnt toast and take a bite. She had a dead tooth and he saw it every time she opened her mouth. He loved Dee but had never been sexually attracted to her. Not in the way he had been attracted to others.
"It really is just a matter of time before that stuff makes it over here," she said with her mouth full. "To this side of the pond, as they say." She took a sip of his orange juice. "Isn’t that how it always works? Things start over there in England, or in California, and then phht, before you know it, it makes its way to Findlay."
He held his hand over his stomach. She saw him wince.
"Was it my orange juice again? Was it still pulpy? I squeezed it by hand and even strained it twice this time."
"It’s not your fault,” he said. “I think it’s me. Orange juice is getting too… acidic for me." He looked at the clock on the coffee maker. "I'm going to be late."
He turned the page.
He played the 8 o'clock Mass by rote as he had many a bleary-eyed Sunday morning. It was pure muscle memory at this point. He made a few mistakes here and there, missed a key or two, but it was nothing the organ's sustain pedal couldn't mask – not that anyone would complain (not at the 8 o'clock anyway).
On Sundays Ned had four Masses: the 8, the 9:30, the big one at 11, and the 12:30 for the dilettantes who couldn't get their acts together for the 11.
He turned the page.
Today he was using Glory and Praise, AKA "the blue hymnal" for songs he knew by heart.
Turning the pages of his sheet music, reading each note, he was able to keep his mind off it.
Ned abhorred cliches (especially those involving sports) but he made an exception for “Out of sight, out of mind.” For Ned, that wasn’t a cliché; it was a way of life. He was a man who preferred to be heard, not seen, which made St. Bartholomew (or St. Bart’s) the perfect home for him.
In a spectacular architectural oversight, the church's pipe organ was situated so the organist's back was to the altar and pews. The organist of course needs to see what's going on in the Mass to read certain non-verbal cues but the arrangement suited Ned just fine. The congregation was comprised of many young families who had many young children—boys in particular—and it wasn't so much that he couldn't control himself because he was now firmly in control of all that; it was more that he didn't need any reminders of that time when he couldn't.
Especially during church.
So to see the altar behind him, Ned had installed an actual rearview mirror, the type you'd find on an old Buick, and he used a special type of putty to affix it to the mantle of the pipe organ. Having been the church organist at St. Bart's for nine years, he seldom needed it anymore—he could do it in his sleep—but it came in handy today as he found his attention drifting and he nearly missed the oratory refrain at the 9:30 Mass.
His real problems didn't start until the 35-minute break between the 8 and 9:30.
He was reorganizing his sheet music after the first wave of churchgoers had cleared out, when he began thinking about Colin Pitchfork again. The article said he was a baker in England somewhere—did it say he baked cakes or was that Ned's invention?
Even though no picture was provided in the Times article, Ned spent the balance of the 9:30 service picturing the 27- year-old ex-rapist/murderer working in his small English bakery, quietly going about his business, baking his cakes, when the police (Bobbies?) came.
Was he expecting them?
He played the offertory hymn, "On Eagle's Wings," as the ushers began taking up the collections and a family of parishioners he’d never seen before brought the gifts up.
And what was going through Pitchfork's head when he saw the Bobbies there? When they began asking him about rapes and murders that happened almost five years ago? The article said that he had initially given investigators someone else's blood when “the enquiry” began. Had he somehow caught wind of this “DNA Fingerprinting?”
There was a new usher, Ned noticed, in his makeshift rearview mirror.
The Times article said that one of Pitchfork's co-workers at the bakery had taken the blood test masquerading as Pitchfork because Pitchfork had told the co-worker that ‘he could not give blood under his own name because he had already given blood while pretending to be a friend of his who had wanted to avoid being harassed by police because of a youthful conviction for burglary.’ This story was later overheard by a woman in a pub who immediately went to the police.
Ned realized he had missed the homily twice now. Not that it mattered. Heard one you've heard them all and Ned was pretty sure there would be no surprises. Plus, he'd have two more chances to catch it. He knew he would have to really focus for the 11 o'clock. That was always the main event. He was going to play "I Will Raise Him Up," a complex hymn, which required his full attention. He would scratch that one now if he hadn’t read that article and if the Sunday programs hadn't already been printed. People liked that one –it was a real barn burner, as they say—and if he skipped it, there might be questions.
The last thing Ned needed right now were fucking questions.
Who was this new usher, by the way?

By the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, Ned wondered whether anyone would even show for the 12:30, seeing that it was already standing room only. The 11 was always the most popular Mass, but today felt different; it was packed like Christmas Eve. What was the occasion? Was the predominantly conservative town that afraid of Dukakis winning the presidency? Ohio was a swing state after all and that image of the little Greek man in the tank was unnerving, sure, but was it enough to warrant this sort of turnout for the 11 AM Mass at St. Bart's in Findlay?
Or was something else going on?
Ned didn’t believe they had come to hear his rendition of "I Will Raise Him Up."
Or could there be another reason? Maybe they had all read the same Times article. Maybe there had long been simmering suspicion of Ned in the community and maybe the article finally prompted the townspeople to join together and take arms. With pitchforks.
On March 31, 1892, the only known lynching in the history of Hancock County occurred when a mob of 1,000 men, many "respectable citizens," broke into the county jail in Findlay. They lynched Mr. Lytle, a man who had killed his wife and two daughters with a hatchet the day before. The townsfolk hanged the man twice (first from the bridge, then a telegraph pole) and then, in a classic case of overkill, shot his body over a dozen times. The authorities had intended to transfer the prisoner out of town at 1 o'clock in secret, where a train was scheduled to transport him to Lima, but someone talked.
Ned had only confessed what he had done to one person – a priest eight years prior. The priest was set to retire as he was dying of pancreatic cancer and visiting from a nearby parish. For years Ned had heard this priest was “of the old school” – i.e., your word to God’s ear, and it went no further. He was as safe as they come. Still, even then, Ned used the screened side of the Confessional, lowered his voice a full octave, and spoke of what he had done obliquely and in generalities. They were mortal sins. His penance severe: to repent and refrain from repeating the act again. The priest was now long dead. There’s no way he could have tracked Ned down and told anyone. Was there?
The last one was named Derek. That was the only one left unsolved.
He would play "I Will Raise Him Up" during Communion. Because of the crowds, he knew the communion lines would be longer and would thus require him to stretch the already difficult song a few minutes longer. If he was going to supply the masses, he was going to need a bigger yield. In a way it was like baking a cake, wasn't it?
He met Derek at a Dairy Queen in Paducah, Kentucky. It was Labor Day 1976. It must have been 100 degrees out, but it felt even hotter with the humidity. It was a real scorcher.
Derek had a bicycle with an American flag banana seat. It was the summer of Bicentennial Fever. The Dairy Queen was in an area known as Noble Park. It had a tin canopy that kept cars cool in the shade.
Ned missed a note as he turned the page. He stepped on the sustain pedal and his mistake sounded deliberate and beautiful even.
It was early evening; fireflies were out in full force and Ned was blotto. He had been drinking beer—cans of Schlitz—all day at the picnic of a friend (technically, the friend of an acquaintance so basically a stranger). A born introvert who still lived alone (this was pre-Dee), Ned was very drunk and primed for small talk. You must also remember this was a very different time. This was back when you still opened cans with an opener; drunk driving was frowned upon but not the cardinal sin it is today; and a grown man could still park outside a Dairy Queen and strike up an innocent conversation with a prepubescent boy on a bike.
"What da ya' got there?" Ned asked.
"Butterscotch Sundae," the boy said. The boy was blonde with brown eyes.
"Butterscotch, eh?"
The boy licked his plastic spoon and stared somewhere beyond the pea-green 1974 Buick Riviera Ned had inherited from his old man after he had kicked the bucket.
"For the life of me, I can't remember if I like butterscotch or not," Ned said. "That probably sounds pretty screwy, I bet."
"Get a free sample at the window,” the kid said. “They're free."
"Looks awfully busy over there. Mind if I have a taste of yours? I don't have any cooties, I promise."
The kid dragged his spoon over his ice cream as he mulled it over. Maybe seeing that he was almost done with it anyway, he figured what's the harm. He handed Ned the Styrofoam cup.
Ned looked at the boy as he stirred it a little and then placed the curved side of the spoon on his tongue and kept it there.
"I do like butterscotch," Ned said, giving it back. "Thank you for sharing that with me, that was awfully kind of you—say, what is your name?"
"Derek," the boy said.
"Derek. What a nice boy you are. Do you like dogs, Derek?"
"Sure," Derek said.
"Do you have a dog?"
"Not anymore. Used to. We had a beagle named Eleanor but she went blind and then lame and then..."
"What kind of dog was she?" Ned asked.
"A beagle," the boy said.
"A beagle, yes you said that. You like Golden Retrievers?"
"Sure," the boy said.
"Cause I have a Golden Retriever. It's a girl too. A bitch."
Derek smiled.
"She's pregnant. I mean she was. But… she just gave birth."
"To puppies?"
"You betcha. It was just a few weeks ago. She had a whole litter of 'em. Boys, girls. Cutest little pups you've ever seen. The thing is, Derek, I don't know what to do with them all. You're a nice boy. You just shared your Butterscotch Sundae with me and I'd care to return the favor. Would you… like a puppy?"
"How much?"
"For nothing,” Ned said. “For free.”
"You'll give me a puppy for nothing? And I can pick the one I want?"
"Sure can. They're at my place just down the road. Thing is, it's probably too far to bike there. And you're going to need both hands to hold on to the puppy. Hop in, I’ll give you a lift."
"What about my bike?"
"We could put it in the trunk but we're not going to be long. We'll be right back. It'll be safe here. People don't take things that aren’t theirs around here – especially when there's a lot of people around."
He remembered waking up on the floor of his apartment disoriented. He was late for work. He was still working as a salesman at the piano store. There was a big Labor Day sale still going on. Labor Day was always a big day for retail. The owner was a nice man and Ned wanted to call him and apologize but he wasn't sure what to say yet.
He hadn't planned on sleeping in. Forgetting work on Labor Day. The irony.
He saw the boy's underwear on his floor. They were tighty-whities from Fruit of the Loom. He thought of that every time he saw an ad for that company afterward.
They weren’t bloody but they were torn.
He remembered the sound of the filter on the aquarium he used to keep in his apartment. It was noisy but sometimes that was a good thing. He was very into Japanese Fighting Fish for a while until it became too expensive as they always killed each other.
There were no puppies obviously.
His apartment did not allow dogs.
His sense of disorientation and the ensuing panic prevented him from experiencing any of the usual remorse he felt afterward.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
The boy's body was in the bathroom just off the bedroom and he needed to get rid of it. He needed to get out of town. Out of Paducah. Out of Kentucky.
He placed the boy in a hardshell Samsonite suitcase, carried it out of his apartment, walked down the one flight of steps. He saw no one and he was confident no one had seen him. The suitcase was lighter than it should have been—a detail he never forgot—and he walked out to the carport where he saw his Riviera parked sloppily between the lines. He felt a wave of nausea come over him but he suppressed it. He opened his trunk, placed the suitcase in the back, and then looked around the apartment complex before walking back inside. He cleaned up with bleach. Showered. Hit the road.
There were no police gathered outside the Dairy Queen. It wasn’t a crime scene. He didn't look to see if the boy’s bike was still there; he didn’t want to appear suspicious.
He needed to get out of Paducah so he headed toward the freeway.
For a moment he briefly considered the Shawnee National Forest, which was to the north, but he stuck to his gut and took the newly-constructed Interstate 24 East toward Tennessee. Aside from getting out of Kentucky, he didn't have a plan. The asphalt was brand new and at times he felt as though he were floating across the highway. It took about two hours to get to the state line and once he was over, he filled up at a 76 Station in Clarksville, Tennessee. Only when he was filling his tank and had a moment to reflect, did he think about what was in the trunk. He imagined he had Superman's X-Ray vision and pictured the suitcase in the back, the boy's tiny body folded like a pretzel inside.
He missed both the readings, the Gospel, and the homily again. Then came the Consecration which was over before he knew it. It was time. He began to play "I Will Raise Him Up." In his rearview, he saw the communion lines forming and he thought he caught a glimpse of the new usher staring at him, but he couldn't be sure. He needed to concentrate on the song. People knew this one; people wanted to hear it exactly as they remembered it, and it was a full house, so the sustain pedal wouldn't save him this time.
Once he made it through the chorus, he knew he could relax a little.
The "DNA fingerprinting" in Pitchfork's case came from semen that was left inside of the victims.
Ned had made it to the outskirts of Nashville faster than he expected. He still hadn't checked in with Mr. Cory, the owner of the piano store. He desperately needed an alibi. Old Mr. Cory could probably send Ned to the electric chair if he wasn't careful.
He got on Highway 386 and headed north. After 20 minutes, he exited in Gallatin and drove around until he found an area he thought was remote. There was a road called Cages Bend.
He liked the sound of that.
It sounded hopeful.
He took that until he came to a gravel road, which looked as if it led to an even more secluded wooded area.
In the rearview, he remembered the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires of the Riviera he had inherited from his father, the drunk, who had done to him what he had gone on to do to others.
In the rearview, the communion lines were still going strong. No sign of that new usher.
He came upon a bend in the road that looked totally secluded, as if no one had been there in years. He cut the engine and listened for a moment. The invisible cicadas high up in the trees made it sound as if a giant rattle snake was slithering around him, preparing to strike. He got out of the car.
He didn't know if it was the trees or the fields of tall grass, but something smelled like semen.
He opened the trunk with his keys and pulled out the hardshell suitcase. When he closed the trunk there was a rustling in the tall grass but when he looked, he saw only a herd of white tail deer scattering.
Initially he had planned on dumping the body and taking the suitcase home with him. He didn't think to bring a shovel. Then he heard the sound of a bush hog—a piece of farm equipment with spinning blades that cut vegetation and cleared the land. He couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. He checked to make sure his suitcase didn't have any labels on it or name tags. He then two black trash bags in his back seat and wrapped the suitcase – one bag around the top, the other on the bottom, and secured it with masking tape. Then he carried it into the woods and set it down in some brush. He began snapping tree branches off to make cover but as the bush hog got louder and closer he panicked, leaving it only partially covered.
The communion lines had dissipated. Everyone was sitting now, even the priest.
Everyone always knelt until the priest sat and Ned should never be playing if the priest was sitting but somehow, Ned had missed his cue.
He concluded "I Will Raise Him Up" softly, using the sustain to ease himself out.
He looked in the rearview and saw the priest staring at him.
As was the rest of the congregation.
They would all be coming for him soon enough.
Unless he could make it back down to Tennessee and get rid of that thing once and for all – assuming it hadn’t been found yet.
Somehow, deep down, Ned always knew it was going to happen.
He was raised up, alright.
Now it was just a matter of time.

I love the fantasy maps as much as everyone else but let’s be honest. Congestion pricing will be here in a month and that’s the end of our subway expansion dreams.
Sure we might get a 2nd ave extension to west 125th (the fairway Dino bbq extension we’ve all dreamed of) but with those congestion $$$ rolling in it’s going to be impossible to get fed funds for mta only stuff - you got two NJ senators who will be a sure no, 80% of the ny delegation is going to ixnay stuff. And no matter how much conge$tion dollars we roll, no way we are extending w/o fed help.
That’s why WE need to get behind some kind of RER plan for the area. Let’s not talk of infills or subway extensions or deinterlining. no more. No. We can’t even get our parents and siblings and imaginary significant others to get enthused about rethinking the trunk lines in queens.
RER style transit makes the most sense in a post covid / post congestion pricing world. Want to go from Long Island to the Bronx? Done! We got a train over the hellgate for you! Live in an underserved area of queens that just happens to have an LIRR train line nearby - fixed!
Want to link SIR with nj transit! Yeah!! Thru trains from Newark to garden city!! Yup. Want train service from scarsdale to Barclay center see Caitlin Clark play? Yes!!
I don’t care that there are better options. I don’t care that lex ave is overcrowded (though wouldn’t RER style trains on lex / park solve that better than extending the 2nd ave subway south)?
Yes I know that unifying 3 (or more - heck we could include the PATH) into a single agency seems asinine. I know that there are like 37 different train car systems used and 14 track voltages and 35 unions. So what.
Everyone is going to want some congestion pricing $$$. Even if they don’t really get the $$$ direct, they gotta sell stuff to their constituents.
Now I know what you are thinking- these bozos aren’t going to build squat - there just going to use the $$$ to fix their aging and decrepit infra. So. Isn’t that what the MTA does?
Congestion pricing is really going to mess with the MTA time for us to be proactive

PLAYBOY Interview With Conan O'Brien Interview by Kevin Cook For Playboy Magazine February 1998
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview