The cannery casino shirts

We've been low contact with MIL since I was pregnant with D for a number of reasons. She always plays the victim, and if you challenge her on anything, she acts like she doesn't understand, cries, or lashes out. There’s a history of this type of behavior with MIL where it feels like she is being covertly aggressive but always acts innocent and confused. We are in our hometown visiting for the weekend and are staying with my family which is always an issues with MIL, and she says we favor them, but we don't enjoy being in their house and feel uncomfortable. MIL invited us for dinner at 5 o'clock, the kids had loads of energy so we decided to go to the park first to let the kids run around and get their energy out. I texted MIL around 3:50 to let her know our plan. She immediately replied, asking when we would be there because BIL was anxious to see the kids.
When we arrived, things were okay. MIL was acting weird, wanting to show me various things and all the prizes she won from the casino and offering them as gifts.(she goes the casino every week and people who bet money get prizes for being a gold memory base on how much they spend) She barely tries to talk to her son my HB and instead after I have said, I need to sit down my allergies are really bothering me and I need to close my eyes. She insists on me following her around the house to show me all the things they have. We had supper, and then they MIL asks if she can give our D her gift since they won't be coming for her birthday. Even though we have invited them she says they won't be coming since my mother is going up. So they gave our D her birthday present: a hat, sunglasses, and a t-shirt size 7/8-year-old. We don't expect much from them anymore, they have stopped asking for gift ideas and now just get junky gifts like plastic toys that break shortly after or have nothing to do with the kids interest. I thought it was not a scant for a birthday present for your only granddaughter on her 5th birthday. But what really upset my HB and I is after they started taking all of BIL's toys out of his room and showing them to her. All of a sudden, you could see D look at her gift bag, and sadness washed over her. She said, not in a demanding way but confused, "I want another gift." MIL, clearly not understanding, offered her a cup you put boiled eggs in and then proceeded to walk D around the house, offering her random things. D started crying, and MIL came downstairs while FIL went to check on her. D said, "NO, I WANT MY MOM!" So I went up, and D could barely get the words out before bursting into tears, saying she wanted to go home and she was trembling. I picked her up and motioned to HB, who already felt off and not into the situation, and started taking D to get her shoes on. She just kept crying heavily, saying she wanted to go home. MIL came up to us, asking, "What's wrong, D? I am so sorry I don't have anything else for you." She kept going on, and I put my hand up and said, "MIL, it's not about a gift. It's about realizing someone hasn't thought of you beforehand. Your gift was okay, but then parading a bunch of toys around after you gave her a shirt and hat is insensitive." Then MIL disappeared and came out with a full art set. ( and our D loves painting and doing art) D was still in tears, pleading to leave. She took it in shock, and then MIL gave her a hug. I was standing there, completely confused. So now I am left feeling like a psychopath for wondering if they got her the art set and took it away out of spite because we didn't come to dinner early enough. When I mentioned this to HB, his immediate response was, "Well, at his birthday they said they didn't have money, didn’t give him a gift, and then got one for his brother and went on a trip right after." To add to the confusion, MIL had taken me upstairs earlier and showed me all the extra stuff she has—pillows, water bottles, mug sets. The art set was not there. So now I am wondering if I am overreacting to the situation.

In the comments of the recent 2024 mid-year catch-up.
comment 1:
"Sorry about the out of focus two shot. Both of them thought the other had checked the shot. Mike was drunk and Jay was HAF. They focused each others' shots IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. And that is NOT Mike in Lousy Carter. The movie Mike is in is called Lousy Farter. He's also in a movie called "Mike thinks he looks less fat when the shot is out of focus". Jay is also in a movie called "Pig was my favorite movie of the last ten years cause I'm a fucking weirdo". So again, Mike and Jay do not have a crew or a budget or anything else worthwhile in life. They do fail upwards constantly. Or rather, fail sideways. Mike continues failing sideways if you know what I mean. Or he like's to call it "Horizontal Expansion". Mike has just purchased stock in a company that makes belts for overweight bovine. They are looking to expand (pun intended) into the human market by selling their leather belts to portly gentlemen. You may wonder why a cow would need a belt? Or why a cow would wear a leather belt in the first place. The answer: Don't ask you scum. It's none of your business. Mike is gonna have over $5,000 dollars in his bank account when this stock goes public rest assured you fucks. Then he's gonna retire and live the good life on a cattle ranch wearing belts made of his friends."
comment 2, in a reply to the 1st:
"For those of you (scum) who wish to know who has written this response. It is I, Krebs Gorlon long time RLM pubic relations manager and master of the art of dealing with the pubic. I share Mike's thoughts on these matters. I must admit, I made up the story about Mike investing in cow belts for people. Mike would never invest in such a foolhardy folly after his disaster with Enron. Mike is doing just fine at the moment. That story was what we call "deflection" in the PR biz. It's to get you thinking about Mike wearing a cow belt (a belt made for cows and not a belt made from a cow (although some are) to keep your eyes away from the latest story in the news about Jay. Jay went to Walt's Disney world and was denied entry on the teacup ride. You think the joke might be was that he was too short, but the truth is he was high on cracked-cocaine. Jay was yelling and wearing a tee shirt that read: "Party's Over Fucko". The staff at Walt's Disney world also noticed the track marks on Jay's arms and the fact he was sipping from a flask. That along with the teeshirt gave the staff pause and they made the call to not allow Jay on the ride. Jay threw a tantrum and leapt onto the ride while it was in motion, shattering his pelvis and causing delays in the line up to 3 hours. The incident was captured on cell phone video and can be found on YouTube by searching "Small man breaks pelvis on big teacup ride" however, I urge you not to search for this. Jay is in hospital at the moment and will return to work soon. Mike has told Jay that his "rock star" lifestyle is embarrassing. In an attempt to bring him down to reality Mike has informed Jay that RLM is only the 17,948th most subscribed to channel on YouTube and that he's not so famous he can show up at Walt's Disney World blazing on cracks and causing a pubic scene. This is NOT part of our brand. Stick to belts made for cows or the newest craze, Smart phone necklaces. You know what a lanyard is? You know how elderly people have their casino rewards cards around their neck. I think instead of people keeping their phones in their back or front pockets or even in their purses, all people should wear them around their neck for easy access. I call it a Cell Phone Krebs. I've named this product after myself. Search for it on YouTube by entering in "Small man breaks pelvis on big teacup ride"."

Does anyone know how to get the Duggan security, red or black T-shirt from the casino heist?

Manchester United legend Dwight Yorke claims Casemiro “looks like he’s had enough”.
Yorke told Crypto Casino:

It’s hard to criticise Casemiro because of what he’s achieved in the game, but people should expect better from him in a Manchester United shirt.
It really hasn’t worked out for him this season after such a good first year with the club and he isn’t getting any younger – he looks like he’s had enough and he wants a new start at another club next season.
Jason Wilcox and the other directors at Old Trafford are going to have to have harsh conversations with these players, including Casemiro, and find out whether they really want to be here or not, or whether or not they want the manager [Erik ten Hag] here, so it’s a tough one.
Casemiro’s a legend of the game and it’s a difficult one, but his name has very much been in the focal point of conversation over the past few months, so it’s certainly something the club need to address this summer. A decision needs to be made.

Hi, I know some of you have been interested in Joost’s written stuff, so this is one of them. It’s a short story that Joost wrote for Boekenweek voor Jongeren (Book Week for Young People) in 2019. There’s more info about it here (in Dutch) https://www.vice.com/nl/article/qvgzpv/joost-klein-schreef-een-kort-verhaal-over-een-wilde-nacht-in-berlijn and there was also this promo video for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx7wxnpxps0. It's been translated from Dutch - maybe not the most perfect translation but it's readable. Original in Dutch here. Enjoy

"How come he suddenly has cash?" I looked at Gurb, but he avoided my gaze. Louis never had money and yet he was buying another round. Meanwhile, a Moby song was playing and nothing made sense. "If he has money for drinks, he can surely pay me back, right?"
Just a few hours ago, I was alone in Berlin. Now, ten hours later, I'm standing in some obscure techno club with my best friends. Loud rock music with drunken shouting. "Hey, Miss Murder, can I make beauty stay if I take my life?" I woke up that day with a mild hangover from the lonely yet people-filled night before. Perfect conditions for a 20-year-old dropout.
The Hard Rock Café was the most beautifully ugly place in Berlin. Gurb had driven for seven hours straight in his mother's car, but we didn't notice. An iconic black Mini Cooper. Your body leads your mind, the beat never stops, and you can conquer the world. Louis threw in another crazy dance move. We were happy.
"Do you want another drink, brother?" Gurb asked me, half shouting. An evening filled with rhetorical questions. He saw me dancing and already knew the answer.
Gurb always had money. Louis, on the other hand, never did. Louis was also the youngest of us three. He had just turned 18. I wouldn't call him a cunning fox. More like a jack-of-all-trades. Like the time he made a lot of money on a Wadden Island with a group of boys. They sold large blocks of hash.
"Crazy dude!" I shouted at him. He yelled something back.
"Do you remember back then?" Louis said.
"Back then? Back then? Yeah man, of course!" I had no idea what he meant. "Do you mean the party?"
"Do you mean the party, he says! This guy. When I look at you like this, it makes me happy. The exact same kid is here letting loose just like back in high school!"
We knew each other from secondary school. He joined when I was in the second grade. He was very intelligent. Too young, too much knowledge of the world. His mother is from Brazil. We often went to his mother's place to play on the Playstation Louis and I had bought together.
I lived everywhere at that time. In the crisis shelter where I stayed for a while, for example, I wasn't allowed to have a Playstation. So we set it up in an accessible place, near school. It was always fun with Louis. Going together to the Apple Store. Taking all kinds of photos with all the webcams, posting them on Hyves, and then leaving. Louis always knew how to cheer me up.
"Aaaaaaaaaa!" There was Gurb with five drinks in his hands. Gurb was wearing a blue checkered shirt. Two buttons undone. Hair slicked back. "You look good, brother!"
"You look fresh too! We all look fresh!" Gurb said enthusiastically. Louis was wearing a completely white outfit. We quickly bought this before going out. He also bleached his hair.
"You look like the Brazilian cousin of James Dean in these clothes," I said. Louis laughed. "Let me take a picture."
Suddenly, the DJ switched to some kind of techno. "Ah, here Berlin briefly takes off its mask." I was fine with it all. Louis was talking to a lady.
Voluptuous breasts, I thought to myself. He gave her one of his two drinks.
"He's with a girl and he's thinking with his dick," I said to Gurb. "Let him be, tonight Berlin is ours!"
The bass kept pounding. "I simply don't have the patience for the club," I said to Gurb. He looked surprised. Like a sweet dog, tilting his head. "I'm just waiting for tomorrow. Can't do my thing here. Don't have patience for the already known. I want adventure and I want it now!"
Gurb started laughing. "Patience is a virtue." Yes. Patience is all well and good, but I think it's a waste of my time. Gurb grabbed my shoulder.
"I think it's time for another beer."
Louis and I were walking through Leeuwarden a year ago when suddenly a red Ford Ka stopped in front of us. It was Gurb, casually driving around the city. He invited us into his car. We hopped in. Since that afternoon, the three of us were together. A few months later, Louis got a tattoo on his ribs in honor of our friendship. It was the name of our group chat. Braddar Force Indigo.
There were also days when Gurb would take me for a drive around Friesland. He reminded me how beautiful Friesland is. The world doesn't spin there. The newspapers I threw away in the Stiens forest in 2011 could still be lying in the same spot, so to speak.
Just before midnight, I found myself in line for the restroom. My eyes fell on a pair of striking shoes. Cigarette smoke invaded my nose for the fourth time. "Müssen Sie eine Zigarette haben?" a female voice spoke to me. I felt like Tom Hanks in the final scene of Angels & Demons, where the new pope first steps onto the balcony. The curtains opened. There I was, witnessing an important moment in history. I was just told how I was sent by God, but my ears didn't want to hear any of it. At least that's how I felt. My mouth was empty. I had no words left. That's when I knew for sure. Berlin might really be as crazy as literally everyone says.
Dark blond, silky hair. Was this real beauty then? She wouldn't look 40, but I think she was. A true woman. Beautiful in all her elegance. I always joked about being interested in older women, but tonight one stood in front of me. "I don't smoke," I said to her.
Someone tapped me. "Please, just go to the toilet!" He was right. I hadn't peed in a while either. My urine was cloudy. "Glomerulonephritis," I said to myself on the toilet. This is an unusual condition. It's an inflammation in the kidneys, I thought I remembered. They should never have given me access to Google.
The evening progressed, and Louis kept buying rounds. "But seriously now. How does Louis suddenly have all that money for drinks?" I asked Gurb. He was outside smoking with a group of Swiss girls. I had strategically positioned myself so that I could always leave the crime scene if necessary.
"You shouldn't ask me," said Gurb. He was laughing with the temporary girlfriend group of Louis. Gurb has a beard. A lot of chicks like that. I get it too.
As much as I enjoyed Louis and Gurb being here for me, something didn't sit right with me. It couldn't just be about the money. "What's up with him?" I heard one of the Swiss girls say to Gurb.
Those kinds of questions really tire me out. "Not much, with you?" I replied.
They all started laughing. "That's not what she meant, brother," said Gurb.
"I couldn't care less whether she meant it or not. Send that brace-face back to Switzerland. Don't drive me crazy, alright!"
Actually, I hadn't drunk that much that evening. "Two vodka Sprites, please!" It's rare for me to get just one drink. "I always get two drinks, then you have to wait shorter for the third one!" Maybe the alcohol was affecting me more than I wanted to admit. Oh well, it was still the three of us against the world.
"Nice shoes, are those Prada?" I asked a random girl at the bar.
"No, these are fake. Why would I buy real ones for 600 dollars if I could just buy these for 20?"
"..."
I'm not very good at that. Talking. To women.
Louis and Gurb were in the smoking area now. It was less blue than the dance floor itself. My clothes already stank, so a visit to the smoking area couldn't hurt. "These people are so underground!" Gurb shouted. Louis was filming him with his phone. "These people..." There was a brief pause. As if Gurb forgot the only line he had. "...so underground!" All three of us burst into laughter. The alcohol flowed through our veins as if it came from the purest mountains. People seemed doubled and the room was full. We had been in the same club in Berlin for several hours.
"Leonardo! What are you hiding from the big boss?" I sometimes called Louis ‘DiCaprio.’ "You a rich guy, now?" I said, with an accent as if I were from the Bronx.
Louis started laughing. "Eh, you know nothing. Bullshit talk."
I had to laugh too. What was I even worried about? Friends are friends, with or without money. That shouldn't matter. Louis probably just worked for that money. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe he just had enough to buy rounds. But what if my gut feeling was right? That feeling was never wrong. Except for that one time at the Holland Casino in Groningen. Even the best of us have slip-ups. I was just getting worked up again. When it comes down to it, Louis is one of the sweetest guys I know. I had to let it go. After all, it's still Louis.
"I think I'm going to have sex soon, man," Louis said.
"With who?" I asked immediately.
"That one girl."
"Which one?"
"The one with the boobs."
"Oh, her. Just be careful."
"What kind of reaction is that?" Louis asked indignantly.
I'd only had four drinks, but I was acting like a mess. Louis was right. I didn't understand myself. Where was my head at? I'm here in Berlin, supposed to be having the time of my life, but here I am feeling lonely and sad again. Joost once again couldn't control his emotions.
"Sorry," I suddenly said to Louis. "Sorry for my behavior. Been acting dumb towards you all night. It's unnecessary." Sometimes I have that. Mood swings. "Know that crime is never the solution. We've talked about this so many times. Yes, it's tempting and sometimes easy money. I sometimes find it amusing too, but it's always hypothetical. Ask me for help. I can help you, even with illegal things. I'll always have your back." The dancing was kind of over.
The words I had just placed on Louis's plate came from my heart. My Frisian, irregular boys' heart.
Crying in the club. I had never seen myself like that. Crying, yes. In the club, no. I never understood the taboo around crying. Or emotions in general. I saw myself in the mirror. They weren't tears of joy. They weren't tears of sadness either. It was me letting everything go. All the emotions I had ever felt. The emotions I felt between my brother and sister and myself because they wanted to take on a parental role over me, but I was in puberty, so I pushed them away. The emotions I felt when my old neighbors were supposed to take care of my dog, but didn't tell me that he was bitten by one of their dogs. They didn't have money for the surgery, they later told me. They were ashamed of their lack of money. My dog died from this injury. Even the emotions that were all jumping at once during the retake for my swimming diploma A, I let go of.
No emotions. Just for a moment, not feeling anything. Is that too much to ask for?
"You still don’t smoke?"
It had to be the voice of the woman with the cigarettes. I looked over my shoulder through the mirror. It was her. The one with dark blond, silky hair.
"Not to be rude, but this is the men’s room," I said. She took a step closer and kissed me on my lips. It tasted like more. We started kissing. It had been a while since I had had female contact at this level. It probably didn't look good and it didn't feel good either. She started kissing my neck. Slowly, I noticed the pressure in the erectile tissues of my penis starting to increase. "I really don't have time for this!" I thought to myself. The woman with the cigarettes started to slowly sink down until she was on her knees. I didn't want this. Not now, not like this. She unraveled my penis from my Polo Ralph Lauren underwear. Her tongue was blue. It was probably from cheap shots of alcohol.
Was this real beauty then? Was this the beginning or the end of her story? And had I become the boy my parents hoped I would be? I thought about the fact that this was once someone's little daughter. Somewhere in the world, an old man might be wondering what his daughter is doing. Am I really putting pleasure above my own morals and values?
With my semi-erect circumcised penis still exposed, I lifted her up. After giving her a kiss on her forehead, I pulled up my pants and left the toilets.
It was the usual last hour in any club ever. I met Louis and Gurb at the bar. "Should we have another drink?" I asked Gurb. "I feel like having a cocktail. Something sweet. Lots of sugar. What about you?"
Gurb looked at the menu. "A cognac would go down well right now."
"A cognac? You're only nineteen!" Gurb and Louis laughed. "Two Tequila Sunrises please!" I called to the bartender. "Also, two beers! Thanks!" I also got a beer for Louis. At first, I didn't want to, but I didn't want to spoil the mood either. Besides, I didn't want to show too much that it bothered me so much.
We danced away the last minutes. The club closed, and we decided to walk with the group of Swiss girls. Apparently, they were staying nearby.
As I lagged behind the group, one of them tried to start a conversation with me. "Are you okay?" she asked kindly.
"I'm fine. Just had too much beer. Makes me sleepy." Not true at all, but I've heard people say that.
"You’re tired? The fun has only just began!" And as she said this, she pulled something out of her inner pocket. Her clenched fist, shielded by a half jacket. Who is this girl, anyway? I thought to myself. She opened her hand flat, and right in the center of her palm lay two small pills with a smiley face on them. At least, they looked like it.
"Oh, I don’t do drugs. Sorry."
"Me neither!" And she swallowed a pill. "Now it’s your turn... Or are you scared?"
Scared? Who did this crazy Swiss witch (with really beautiful eyes) think she was. With her "are you scared". I'll show her who's scared.
"Scared? I’m not scared." I picked up the remaining pill and swallowed it.
Everything went in slow motion. Was this who I had become? Was this the same boy from high school? And just before I could swallow, I spat out the pill. She was shocked. I picked up the pill again, dried it with my jacket, and put it back in her fist. "Maybe later!" I shouted, running back to the group, over my shoulder.
I have nothing to say to 9 out of 10 peers I come across. Of course, I can be social. I can also have fun with random people in random situations, but that night, it just tired me out. I also didn't understand what we were doing there. Those girls found me strange anyway. Suddenly, I was the fifth wheel.
"We know this place where they go until 7 in the morning!" The girl leader of the group spoke. I wanted to go home. "If you guys want, you can go. Don't worry about me," I said to Gurb and Louis. The boys had a brief discussion. We agreed to stay for just a little while longer for some drinks. I consented. I was thirsty. "I'll have a Fanta, Louis."
Gurb had reached the last cigarette in his pack. Louis and a girl from the group were nowhere to be found. It didn't even bother me. This guy just walks around with some cash in his pocket and all hell breaks loose. After a night full of stimuli, I understood Louis. Of course, I understood Louis. He's a young god. Handsome, smart guy. But that didn't make me any less angry. It was purely about trust for me. Something inside me said I should stop subconsciously expecting things from people too. It prevents disappointment.
"Hotel please!" I jokingly suggested to Gurb. "Should you call Louis or should I?" I added. Gurb immediately grabbed his Android smartphone and called Louis. He put the call on speaker.
"Are you ready?" Gurb asked.
"Yeah. Sort of."
"What do you mean?"
"We didn't have sex."
"That's fine, right? Tomorrow's a new day!"
"I think I'm in love, man," Louis said.
"...," Gurb said, chuckling as he let out a sigh.
Once we arrived at the girls' hostel, it was already getting light. Louis was thankfully back. There were stains on his pants, around his knees. My focus was solely on arranging a taxi. Although the boys were still flirting, I was really done now. "How are we going to pay for this taxi?" I said a bit too loudly.
There was a silence. "Don't worry. I still have cash," Gurb said.
"Yeah, I knew you would," I replied.
My words clearly hit Louis. "What do you mean by that?" he said.
It was as if time stood still for a few seconds. "Exactly what I said. Better listen." Louis pulled out a small wad of green bills from his pocket. At least 400 euros. "I don't even want to see that money," I reacted. I walked away.
I'll just order a taxi myself.
"Why are you walking away now?" Gurb said.
"Twelve hours ago, I was alone too, and I had a lot more fun then."
"Do you really want to know how I got this money?" Louis said.
Yes, I did want to know. My whole evening revolved around that damn money.
He took a second of pause before he began speaking. "The answer lies in the Mini."
What on earth could be in Gurb's mother's car? Louis was trying to get into my head. "Taxi!"
Once in the taxi, the division was clear. Gurb was upfront, chatting animatedly with the driver. All adventures ever were recounted. Louis and I in the back. One of my best friends since I was thirteen. Funny how things turn out. It was quiet between us. I was in my head, rehearsing how I would bring up the money again. It didn't add up, and he knew it himself. "I don't care, you know," I said, hoping he'd break.
"What don't you care about?"
"About that money."
"What money? You're really a crazy woozy man." Louis burst out laughing again.
On the other hand, it was silent. Gurb had started talking about the driver's family. The driver didn't appreciate it. Gurb meant well. The driver smelled of alcohol. Or was it me? His nails were polished. Maybe his wife was a specialist. I bite my nails myself. Like now.
"In the Mini, oh yeah."
"Shut up. Illegal man."
"You'll never know."
"Stop playing. Just say it!"
Louis grabbed my head, pulled himself towards me, and brought his mouth to my right ear. "Why so serious?" he whispered. He didn't want to tell me.
"But always with this damn money, huh?" I almost shouted at Louis. I broke every silence within a radius of 10 kilometers.
"I'm trying my best, bro. It is what it is. I can't make it any different," he replied. It was clearly bothering him deeply. He ran his hands through his hair. "Sometimes people have to do things. And you know that better than anyone. Sometimes they have to do things they don't really want to or aren't supposed to do."
I knew this spiel all too well. Through all the drunken haziness, I suddenly saw a small glimmer of light. A tiny spark of sincerity. Louis was serious this time.
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to involve you in this. I'm sorry," sweat dripped from his forehead.
"You're serious, huh? Damn, man. What mess have you gotten yourself into now? Worse than Terschelling?" Worse than Terschelling would mean stolen goods. Maybe even violence.
"It's not what you think."
"The Adlon Hotel, right?" the driver chimed in. Always saved by the bell, that Louis.
Suddenly I hit my head against the seat in front of me. Of course, I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. The last thing I saw was Gurb waking up in panic from his drunken stupor. One by one, I started losing my senses. It started with the feeling in my fingers. For a brief moment, everything wasn't quite black, and I could only see a vague pattern of colors repeating inside my eyelids. You could compare it to the brief moment after the commercial break before the movie starts in the cinema. The movie was about to begin.
I knew I wasn't dying. At least not yet. Not like this. Not after an overall mediocre night out in Berlin. I found comfort in the image I forced myself to see. It was all in my head. There I was, unconscious.
I saw myself in a third-person point of view. It wasn't like I was actually leaving my body. More like there was a webcam hanging in one of the upper corners of the taxi.
As a child, I used to dream a lot about death. Nights spent awake.
At some point, I developed a kind of compulsive behavior. I kept swaying my torso from left to right with my hands under my head. It became almost like a workout before bedtime. Every night.
I called it dream shuffling. Just like I had learned to shuffle puzzle pieces or playing cards. Making things a little exciting for yourself. But what I almost never told anyone was that I was scared. I was afraid of burglars, who were very agile and muscular.
Especially afraid that they would murder me. I really wanted to know what death was like. It scared me.
These fear visions originated during an all-inclusive vacation in Turkey. I was 6 years old and already in bed. There was a big old TV in our hotel room, so I could secretly watch TV from bed. Every evening, my parents sat on the balcony. Here they discussed their day while enjoying a glass of alcohol. There was a Japanese animated series on TV. In the few seconds that I watched, I saw a scary creature climbing a sort of apartment complex via the balconies. The creature had hundreds of teeth and blond hair. It quickly entered to decapitate the people, then drained them and, as a final insult, robbed them. Dozens of carcasses of dead people were scattered around the apartment complex. The complex on TV resembled the resort where we were in reality, and the TV world merged with my surroundings. I became part of it. I saw people watching. No matter how loudly I screamed for help, they didn't react. The sun became very bright, and the people turned into nothing more than shadows. As the intensity of the sun increased, something became clear to me. These were not people. They had a sort of orange skin. Where I had previously thought it was their nose and mouth, it turned out that these shadowy figures did not have such physical features. They simply had three holes in their heads. The police tried to do something, but in vain. Since then, we always kept the light on in the hallway outside my bedroom. By rocking back and forth, from left to right, I could glance fleetingly at the beam of light under the door. That bit of light, escaping from the hallway into my room, gave me an advantage. It allowed me to stay one step ahead of the burglars. Pretty smart, right?
"From Jamaica to the world!
It’s just love. Why must the children play in the street?"
It was Bob Sinclar with "Love Generation" speaking to us through the taxi's speakers. We were stationary. I was conscious again, but I didn't feel alive at all. "How long was I out?" I asked Louis.
I could tell by his expression that he was relieved. Relieved that I was back. "One minute," he almost apologized. Louis gave me a pat on the shoulder. Gurb, on the other hand, was sleeping. He slept like a baby cub.
I put my right index finger on my forehead. It felt wet, but it wasn't blood. Blood feels different. Meanwhile, I kept hearing whistling.
"Be the love generation! Oh yeah!" It was still that same song by Bob Sinclar.
The earlier scent of alcohol had now been replaced by the smell of incense. It smelled like the same incense I had in my room. Sold to me as Tibetan 39 incense. I had bought it at a coffee shop in Rotterdam. I pulled up my notes on my phone. "Who lights incense in a CAR????" I let Louis read from my screen. He took the phone from my hands and started typing as well.
"Look at Gurb >>>" Gurb was so deeply asleep that his head drooped. His seatbelt held his torso in place, but his head ended up on the driver's shoulder. The man didn't mind. He didn't move. I made eye contact with the driver through the rearview mirror, and soon I found him. He winked at me.
We arrived at the hotel. Gurb awakened from his alcoholic hibernation. "Who's going to pay for the taxi?" I asked. Clearly rhetorical. I already knew I would take this one for the team, as usual. I refused to use Louis's money. It was uncomfortably quiet. "By card please," I said.
"I'll always protect you, Louis. You really need to know that. I care about you like my own little brother. I'll always try to help you. But you have to be honest with me. Can you do that?" Louis didn't hesitate.
"Yes. Yes, I can. I'll show you. It's really in the Mini." Meanwhile, the taxi driver's card machine indicated that I had insufficient funds. That couldn't be right. Maybe I had withdrawn too much that evening.
"I have cash in the hotel room," Gurb said to me. Gurb informed the driver in broken English that he would go get his cash. The driver agreed. Money is money, whether it comes now or later. As long as it feels good in your hands.
Louis and I got out of the taxi. "You're not going to light a cigarette now, are you?" Louis wanted to smoke. "Especially for stress. That's really for people who can't handle pain. You need to feel pain. Pain needs to brand you for the rest of your life so you finally learn not to do such stupid things." It fell silent again. My blood boiled. All pots were on the stove. I felt like Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen. "Show me then. Do it."
Louis remained silent and walked around the corner of the hotel. Towards the parking lot. I followed him. "You're not going to find much," said Louis.
"Why not? Are you a magician?"
"No. Just. Not much."
"So there's suddenly magically nothing in Gurb's car?"
"Stop. Get out. Get out of my head!" Louis shouted. Louis had had enough. He was done with the parade. Normally we dealt with hypothetical stories. Only this time it wasn't a joke. I was sure now. Louis had dropped his mask. The revolution had begun. The government had fallen and the dikes had broken. The people were in charge. "You shouldn't freak out like this. Always wanting more. Sweet boy, think about yourself."
After Gurb gave the money to the driver, he came to us. He had a smile on his face, lit a cigarette, and exclaimed, "Brothers!" Once with us, he hugged me. He started laughing. "Maybe I haven't been entirely honest either." Sometimes Gurb seemed like a 38-year-old man. In a positive way. He exuded confidence in a way I didn't often see. Affectionate, with a hint of authority.
We stood in the middle of a large parking lot. "Look. We've reached a point where I might not even care anymore. You guys are teasing me." It did matter to me. Maybe more than ever. I was supposed to be two steps ahead of them, but I couldn't figure it out. "I give up."
The delightful silence returned. Louis and Gurb looked at each other. "You guys win. Apparently, I'm not to be trusted as a friend."
From Louis's expression, I could tell he disagreed with this. "Not true. Come to the car."
We arrived at the car. Louis unlocked it and searched for the trunk button. Gurb had started his third cigarette. "It's a corpse, isn't it? Say it now. I can still help you. I can still help us. I can book a ticket for you. We can get you out of here," I said to Louis.
"Just wait. Nutcase."
"Why won't you accept my help?"
Louis started laughing nervously. Or at least it seemed that way. Perhaps a sly laugh too. Had Louis killed someone? "It's not a corpse. That can't be. You wouldn't be stupid enough to use their ID. You're smarter than that. So it must be something stolen. Haven't you found that button yet?"
Suddenly, we heard a click. Louis had found the button. Somewhere, I didn't want to know. Shouldn't I just trust Louis? Wasn't that the whole point of friendship?
Finally, the moment had arrived. I placed my right hand in the slot of the rear hatch. Something in me doubted. Still. I still doubted. Louis looked dead serious. "You wanted to know, didn't you? Then you also have to be man enough to accept it." Louis was clearly not joking. Or was he acting again? "Pussy," Louis said. I looked away. "You're afraid of what's inside, huh? You're afraid of the real Louis." He began to laugh manically. "Open that thing, man. Nutcase!"
I started laughing too. Why did I make such a big deal out of it? Sweat broke out from every pore in my body. It was even a bit damp in the no man's land between my scrotum and my anus. A tropical climate. It had been quite an adventure the whole evening. I took my hand off the rear hatch and first gave Louis a hug. Not some half-hearted birthday wish. No, a real hug.
"It's okay, buddy," Louis said to me. I had no idea what he meant by that. It fit the moment though.
It was really time now. I opened the rear hatch.
"Where is it?"
"In front of you," said Louis.
"In some secret compartment?"
There was nothing in the trunk. Absolutely nothing. An empty trunk. For an empty evening, in an empty Berlin, with an empty group of guys. I didn't get it.
"You won, man," I whispered. "You finally fucking done did it."
I couldn't believe my eyes. Empty? There was still nothing in the car. Louis just stood there. Emotionally, I was a wreck. I had felt every emotion this evening. Seen every color and smelled every scent. I was done. My body was ready. No longer needed. My mission was complete.
"But why did you do this?" I asked Louis, laughing.
He scratched his chin. It felt like the end of a bad movie.
"I sold our Playstation. Wanted to tell you only after I had sorted everything out again. I terminated my lease. Had some debts, and I also wanted to have some money for once. Once not empty-handed in the club. Once not dependent on my best friends. This is not who I am... I know how much that Playstation meant to you. It was ours together. I should have just told you."
"… and how does Gurb actually make his money?"

Manchester United legend Dwight Yorke claims Casemiro "looks like he’s had enough" at Old Trafford.
Yorke told Crypto Casino:

It's hard to criticise Casemiro because of what he’s achieved in the game, but people should expect better from him in a Manchester United shirt.
It really hasn’t worked out for him this season after such a good first year with the club and he isn’t getting any younger – he looks like he’s had enough and he wants a new start at another club next season.
Jason Wilcox and the other directors at Old Trafford are going to have to have harsh conversations with these players, including Casemiro, and find out whether they really want to be here or not, or whether or not they want the manager [Erik ten Hag] here, so it’s a tough one.
Casemiro’s a legend of the game and it’s a difficult one, but his name has very much been in the focal point of conversation over the past few months, so it’s certainly something the club need to address this summer. A decision needs to be made.

The problem is I also like staying out late when in Vegas, haha. But I love the feeling of rolling out of bed at 6 in the morning, pulling on a shirt and shoes, and heading downstairs, giving a groggy smile or two to the early morning housekeeping or maintenance staff.
I head straight for the nearest coffee place, and grab a large one to go. I walk through the nearly-empty casino. Most of the machines and tables are deserted. Sometimes there’s a table of craps players still in their jackets and slacks from last night, still yelling and cheering drunkly, riding their luck on into the morning hours.
I head outside, and the sun is just beginning to rise over the towering hotel behemoths. The warmth is delicious after the freezing, empty casino I just walked through, and it’s not hot enough yet to be miserable outside.
As I sip my coffee, I head south down the Strip and walk with a little more pep in my step. I pass a handful of workers making their deliveries or sweeping the entrances of the buildings. Sometimes a jogger or two runs by, getting in their miles before it becomes too crowded to do so. Occasionally there will be someone passed out drunk in the bushes, not having yet been discovered and asked to leave or arrested. What a beautiful morning!
Anyone else like this?

I want to visit the Casino on Friday next weeks, is it still open for anyone that pays the 19EUR fee? Also about the dress code, do you guys think I can go with my Polo shirt and long trousers? Is there a wardrobe for my small backpack?

Cigarettes and rebellion have always gone hand-in-hand, and in an age of cigarette packet-sized health warnings, now more than ever, smoking a fag says: 'I do not give a fuck.' But if Brandon Flowers is hoping to strike a seditious pose by sparking up at the start of the interview, it's not going according to plan. The Killers' frontman is on all fours rooting through the junk that carpets the anteroom at the band's rehearsal space. "Has anyone seen my lighter?" he asks, rocking back on his heels. The question hangs in the air while Brandon cocks his head, waiting for an answer like a meerkat listening for a predator. Twenty-five years old and with a delicate bone structure, there's something almost dainty about him. Receiving no response, he returns to his search. "Oh, Jeez," he sighs. "I had it just a minute ago."
It's a scene that emphatically does not suggest a rebel without a cause. The mess isn't helping. The Killers' HQ - an industrial unit sandwiched between a construction supplier and the offices of a housing development just off Dean Martin Drive in West Las Vegas - is ankle-deep in designer clothing. A Dior Homme suit lies crumpled by the door; there's a pile of shoes topped like a sundae by a pair of Marc Jacobs trainers; and anyone wishing to enter the shoebox room the band use as an office must negotiate a mountain of discarded jeans. Many items are identifiable as coming from the wardrobe of Hot Fuss, The Killers' hugely successful 2004 debut album - triple platinum in the UK with two weeks at Number One and five million sold worldwide. Look! There are the shirts, ties and suit jackets they wore when they thrilled Glastonbury 2005 with indie rock anthems Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me. That was the crowning moment of a two-and-a-half year tour that finally concluded in October of last year. It seems that after playing that final date in Miami, they returned to Vegas and shrugged off their image onto the floor of this bland white box.
Now a fine layer of dust covers the dead clothes. The Killers have no further use for white tuxedos on their second album, Sam's Town. Today, Brandon wears a black polo shirt, black pin-stripe waistcoat, black jeans and black boots. Where there used to be a layer of foundation, there is now a beard - an untrimmed beard at that. Dave Keuning (30, guitar), Mark Stoermer (29, bass) and Ronnie Vannucci (29, drums) all echo Brandon's black ensemble. Ronnie has added Aviator shades and a handlebar moustache for a dash of motorcycle cop, Dave's frizzy bubble of hair gives him a Marc Bolan-ish air, and there's something very teenage about Mark's scuffed Vans.
Short of walking around wearing sandwich boards saying, "Our new record is a bit heavier than the last one," The Killers couldn't hope to communicate that message more effectively. And they have gained some musical girth on Sam's Town. The pop hooks that made Hot Fuss so irresistible survive intact - see the ringing guitar riffs on first single When You Were Young - but there's a newfound punchiness, coupled with an epic sweep. The minor-to-major uplifts on Bones are fabulously dramatic, the coda to Why Do I Keep Counting? thrillingly intense. Comparisons to Bruce Springsteen have been made. If they overstate the case a little, they are at leaset qualitatively accurate. The Killers are back and this time it's serious - they've got the bootlace ties to prove it.
"Hey, it says here that Springsteen's headlining Glastonbury next year," shouts Ronnie, who's flicking through the NME. He nods sagely at the page without looking up.
"Really?" asks Dave, nicknamed Crazy Dave on account of his alledgedly volatile nature.
"The Boss is headlining one night, we're playing second on the bill the next night and Kylie's headlining the Sunday," says Brandon, charging like a bull through Michael Eavis' as-yet-unannounced line-up with what subsequently proves to be a characteristic gaucheness.
But that lighter is proving elusive. This being America, none of the people hurrying to-and-fro prepping the world for the release of Sam's Town smokes. Manager Robert Reynolds - Bobby Rey to the band - barks into his mobile, booking his band onto eye-wateringly demanding tours. "We're going to make a lot of money," he cackles to himself before switching calls to make a series of stern pronouncements on legal matters. Dave, Mark and Ronnie disappear for a jam session. Artwork is approved, B-sides are decided on and schedules are hammered out.
"I can't find it," Brandon says, finally. But he's not going to be denied the opportunity to underline The Killers reinvention with a puff of smoke. "Let's go to the gas station. I'll have to buy one. It's too busy to talk here anyway."
+
Brandon's black (of course) Volkswagen Touraeg four-wheel drive is barrelling down West Flamingo Road into town. "I was a bell boy there," he says, pointing out of the driver's window at the stucco facade of the Gold Coast casino. "I was working there when we were signed."
Coming from Las Vegas, it is perhaps inevitable that casinos play a big part in The Killers' story; not only is Sam's Town named after one, it was recorded in one, too.
The band began writing songs while on the road with Hot Fuss, turning up early for soundchecks to run through new ideas. On a trip home to Vegas, George Maloof, a hotelier known for cultivating famous friends, invited them to record the album in the new studio he'd built at The Palms, his flagship hotel-cum-gambling den. When the tour finished in October 2005, they returned to Vegas and spent five month finessing the songs they'd sketched out on the road. Then, in February, they decampled to the third floor studio at The Palms and recorded Sam's Town over 11 weeks.
Producer Flood (U2, Depeche Mode) encouraged them to experiment. They overdubbed, fiddled with synthesizers and played with new equipment. It took them five weeks to get the backing vocals right. The band sang the harmonies, then double-tracked them four times. The end result recalls Queen wondering, "Is this is the real life? Is this just fantasy?" When Ronnie, a trained classical percussionist, brought some kettledrums down, eyebrows were raised; but the fabulously bombastic coda on Why Do I Keep Counting? vindicates his indulgence.
"That's kind of the Ben Hur of the album," he says. He's not wrong. Sam's Town is a record on an epic scale. "Yeah, it has drama," he continues. "But, at the same time, I think it's a little more exposed than Hot Fuss. It's a little more naked. Last time it was about a lot of fictional things." By "fictional", Ronnie means that Hot Fuss wore its predominantly British influences for all to see. Brandon's taste in music is rabidly Anglophile - he constantly references The Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division - and it showed. By contrast, Sam's Town is an unequivocally American record. The lyrical imagery is pure American dream - cars, girls, wide-open spaces and escaping to a better life. "We're burning down the highway skyline/On the back of a hurricane that started turning/When you were young," sings Brandon on When You Were Young. That's the basis of the Springsteen comparisons then, though the lack of pathos more closely recalls another blue-collar rocker from New Jersey - Jon Bon Jovi.
The phrase "this town" recurs throughout the album, and it's always receding into the distance as The Killers escape to a new life. "This town was made for passing through/I never did get along with everybody else," sings Brandon on This River Is Wild. On Read My Mind he "never really gave up on breaking out of this two-star town", while on the title track he offers something of an explanation: "Nobody ever had a dream round here."
"With the first record, there was this feeling that there was this world out there that we didn't know," says Mark later in the day. Before The Killers, he studied philosophy: now he's their quiet one. "We wanted to get out and away from this and be somewhere else. We hadn't had a lot of experience - hadn't travelled much - then we were gone for three years. We didn't sit down and say that we wanted to make a record about how we're glad to be home, but that's what happened naturally."
It's not an angsty record. The Killers have already escaped with Hot Fuss, and, having done so, they view the experience fondly now they're back. There's a mistiness to Brandon's eyes as he explains how the album got it's name.
"Sam's Town is a casino on the edge of Vegas," he says. "I grew up in Henderson, which is out on the way to the Hoover Dam. My mom and dad lived in a trailer park, and my dad used to hitchhike up and down Boulder Highway, which is the only way you could get to Vegas. Sam's Town was the first thing you saw on your way in to town. So, when you're driving down Boulder Highway from Henderson, I always thought you finally knew you were getting somewhere when you saw Sam's Town. It was kind of like a beacon."
"It's not a completely American album," contines Brandon. "We still have our English influence, but we're also from the Wild West. Somehow we've managed to unify all that on this album. it's just such a perfect resemblence of what we are."
At the petrol station, Brandon rummages through the glove box looking for change to buy a lighter. "This is a great album," he says, pointing at Highway Companion, the latest from iconic American rocker Tom Petty. "I've always been a big fan of his. He's such a great American artist."
Yes, Brandon: we get the point.
+
When Brandon finally lights his cigarette, he smokes it awkwardly, like a child mimicking something he's seen the grown-ups doing. However, when he cheerfully admits that, "I feel the same mentally as I did when I was 12," it's not a knowing nod to the fact that he sometimes behaves like a loveably precocious child, but a reference to an unusually comprehensive grounding in pop music at an early age.
When Brandon sings about "this town", he doesn't mean Las Vegas. He means Nephi, Utah or Henderson, Nevada, where he spent his childhood. His parents are Mormon and he is the youngest of six children. "I was a surprise," he says. "I've got a 42-year-old sister." If he was issues about his "surprise" status, he chooses to gloss over them. "It turned out perfect because my brother was a teenager when I was a kid," he says. "He would bring home things like Rattle And Hum by U2 and I would watch it. I remember he bought Live In Dallas by Morrissey. It was always him watching these things, or his door was shut and you'd hear The Head On The Door by The Cure blasting through the house and rattling the walls."
The Killers were formed when Brandon answered an advert Dave had placed in a local paper in late 2002. Dave cited Oasis as a big influence; Brandon had seen them play recently and responded; and, as Dave has said in previous interviews: "He was the only person to reply to my ad who wasn't a complete freak." However, the band was born in Brandon's brothers bedroom.
"His room was like a shrine," enthuses Brandon. "It was a holy place. I wish I could show you a picture of it. It was covered in posters. There'd be a big picture of Elvis wearing a bow tie that just said 'The Smiths' [the artwork for The Smiths 1987 single Shoplifters Of The World Unite]. You had The Cure wearing face paint [the artwork to The Cure's 1985 single In Between Days] - all that kind of stuff. I remember Morrissey being on the cover of the NME, with the halo [from 1985] - stuff like that. You just wanted to know about these people 'cause they were so cool. My brother seemed like such a cool person. But he was a teenager, so he wasn't going to be that nice to me, a kid."
Brandon was fascinated by his brother's collection of music, magazines and posters, but he was denied access to them - officially, at least. "I would sneak in," he says. "I knew he'd be angry if he found out, but I would go in as soon as he left the house." For a long time Brandon was too scared to actually play anything. "That didn't come 'til later. I just used to go in there because I liked it. Then I got to the point where I'd actually take a tape out and put it in. It took more guts to do that."
It was a life-changing moment. "I was ten and the first song I played was Sing Your Life by Morrissey. I remember dancing about to it."
The lyrics to Sing Your Life include the lines, "Sing your life/Just walk right up to the microphone/And name all the things that you love/All the things that you loathe." It's intriguing to wonder what Morrissey makes of the neophyte he inspired with these lines.
Eventually, Brandon inherited his brother's tape collection. "It was around the same time CDs started coming out in a big way. He started buying CDs and gave me his tapes. And that was it: it took off from there. I got a hundred of the best albums - all the New Order, all the Morrissey, all The Smiths, The Beatles. I started buying posters. I went to see The Cure in concert. It was just kind of a continuation of my brother. And it was nice because, though my parents were strict, they were already used to it from him. There was no, 'My dad doesn't understand me,' or any of that kind of stuff. My mum likes The Smiths."
Brandon was 13 and his favourite band was late-'70s/early-'80s American new wavers The Cars, and particularly their jaw-droppingly catchy 1979 single Just What I Needed.
"I wouldn't exist without that song," he says. "That was the one. I remember driving around with my mum when I was 13, and we're living in Nephi - a really small town - and I felt so cool when I put that song on. Like: 'I have something that none of these kids I'm going to middle school with tomorrow have.' That excitement is what music's about, isn't it? That's why I understand the mentality of people that don't like us because we've sold so many records. I used to like it when no one else knew about a band. So I get that - I do."
+
Brandon's first band was called Blush Response. It was never going to work out. Not because he refused to move to Los Angeles with them, but because he is utterly - comically - shameless. He's given to making outrageously boastful statements like: "It's not like the '60s, '70s and '80s now. There are only a few bands around that are really good, that just do it. I mean, there's what, five or six of us?"
For the record, in Brandon's estimation, those bands are Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, of course, The Killers.
"I don't want people to think I'm lumping myself with other people just to make us sound cool," he says. Really? It sort of sounds like you are. But he just steamrolls through it. "Yeah, but you know what I mean," he says, grinning at his own cheekiness. He's so disgracefully forward you can't help but laugh along with him - Oh you are awful, Brandon! But joking aside, The Killers are the most commercially successful of all the bands he mentions.
Later, back at the rehearsal space, the band run through Sam's Town at deafening volume in preparation for the forthcoming tour - first the US, then the world. The infectious, almost contagious, chorus of When You Were Young sounds fabulous, as do the U2-like guitars and Twin Peaks synths of Read My Mind. Meanwhile, Smile Like You Mean It and Somebody Told Me benefit from the newfound harder edge.
They somewhat heavy-handedly underline the new direction by playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Get It On by T Rex. That's the thing: The Killers are not a subtle band. Their songs are like a wet kiss from a girl who's a bit too drunk. They are big and brash, and not everyone loves them for it. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me might go down as well at hip nightclubs as they do on the festival circuit, but the DJs play them with the same guilty look they wear when playing a pop record.
"I hate that," says Brandon. "Like writing a song you can hum somehow cheapens it? It makes me think of this quote by Morrissey. Everybody knows how he read Oscar Wilde, Keats and Yates when he was growing up and that he wanted to be a writer. He was talking to this journalist who asked why he hadn't become a writer, and Morrissey said: 'What I do is more powerful than what you do because I can write down these words and you get it to a melody. How can you beat that?' I'm of the same opinion. I don't understand why a good melody that's memorable is a bad thing."
Being dismissed as pop particular aggrieves Ronnie. "When we first came out we got compared to Duran Duran all the time. Jesus Christ! We got a keyboard player now all of a sudden he's Nick Rhodes! Come on!"
"The people who criticise us for being too poppy don't get it," agrees Mark. "I think that's the problem with a lot of rock music. People are afraid to write a song any more. Either that or they can't. And that attitude hurts music in general. The best bands ever have all written great songs. You can still do it and do it intelligently and it can be original. This isn't a studio creation with a producer writing these songs for us. We're not Avril Lavigne, or something like that. We're a real band writing real songs, just like a punk band would do, except that we write pop songs."
You get the impression that The Killers knack for showboating pop hooks that border on vulgar is inextricably tied up with the brazen side of Brandon's personality. But while his ebullient charisma, not to mention the songs themselves, mitigates his outrageousness, there is a less attractive side to his ego. He has a combative streak. He can't resist taking pot shots at emo bands, notably Fall Out Boy, whith whom The Killers share an A&R man.
Has he heard how many emo kids it takes to change a light bulb? "No." None. They just sit in the dark and cry. It's a full 30 seconds before he stops laughing. When he does he admits: "Yeah, we've had problems with other bands. You know, when you walk in the room it's like..." He whistles the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. "We're like gangs."
And while the other members of the band are diplomatic on the subject of Brandon, you don't have to read too deeply between the lines to conclude that there have been internal issues, too.
"Some people will think Brandon's the big genius," says Dave, visibly bridling. "There are songs, such as Why Do I Keep Counting?, where he's written every note. But there are others, like When You Were Young, that were more of a collaboration - like Mr Brightside, where I had some of the music and Brandon came up with the lyrics. We always have arguments about who wrote what. The truth is that we all help in that process."
When asked how success affected them, Ronnie says: "There were certain things that needed adjusting. When you're on tour for two years, people can get a little needy. It doesn't help that you're surrounded by yes men and everybody's working for you. At times we've had to say, 'Who do you think you are?' to people. No one wears the trousers, but some people would like to. I think if it wasn't for the people in the band kicking each other in the ass... Let's just say there was some ass-kickin'."
It doesn't take a genius to work out whose ass needed kicking most often.
+
It's the following day and The Killers are back at their rehearsal space. The topic of discussion is what to wear in the video for Bones, the second single. It's a big deal: the director is Tim Burton. "I feel like Frank Sinatra when I sing it," announces Brandon. "With maybe a little bit of Morrissey and a little bit of Elvis, too."
Of course he does. But if securing the services of Tim Burton tells you one thing, it's that The Killers are about to get even bigger, perhaps even make the leap to the same level as Coldplay et al. Already stars, they are about to become superstars. Brandon can hardly wait.
"Do you know that Rolling Stone didn't want to put us on the cover last time," he says indignantly. "They didn't think we were stars. We sold five million albums! What more do they want from a band?"
Whatever was required, Brandon would be happy to do most things. "I'll do stuff that some people don't want to do, 'cause I want people to hear the music," he says. However, even he has limits. "The Rolling Stone thing made the record label think: 'What can we do to make them stars?' If I go on vacation with my wife, do they have to send somebody to be there to take pictures of me? Is that how you become a star? I don't want that. I walked down the red carpet one time and I realised I don't like it. But you don't have to walk down the red carpet for people to hear your music. We do still have some of that indie blood running through our veins."
He heads off at a tangent: "When you walk around Liverpool, you think of The Beatles, or you go to Manchester and you think of The Smiths or Oasis. I want you to come to Las Vegas and think of Sam's Town. And I think we've started to capture that, which is a truer version of The Killers, 'cause that's where we're from."
He pauses.
"I used to live across the street from Sam's Town. Maybe it'll be like our Abbey Road where people go to take pictures."
Is that what he'd like?
"I wouldn't mind it," he says, desperately hoping it will come true.
He puts a cigarette between his lips, looks down at his trouser pockets and pats them in search of the lighter he bought yesterday.
"Hey, I don't suppose you've got one?"

Where to start. It's going to get long so the people who do read it all fully, I truly appreciate you and thank you for reading my hurt.
I met this girl at work back in December and things were not good from the start. She said she didn't want to be in a relationship cause she had just got out of one 3 months prior to me talking to her. The very 1st day I meet her at work I ended up coming to her house. We didn't do nothing but smoked, drinked. talked and watched Rick and morty, it was awesome and I knew then that I really wanted to pursue this women since I only desired to know her as a person. Things went good after that we talked more and hung out more times. It was building into something.
Move forward a month she starts to get cold feet tells me that she wqsmt ready for a relationship and ended things. Well to my surprise a week later she wanted to work it out and told me that she's never been with a real caring man before and she was scared it was too good too be true and ran away from me and our relationship. We talked about it and I told her to not give up on me cause I would never give up on her. Things went good after that. Until I started to see some changes in her behavior.
A couple months passed and during those months she would hangout with a friend who was a bad influence on her. Her friend always wanted to go out to the club and would put her in some fucked up situations where then she would call me to come fix or just come pick her up. This happened more times then I could remember. One time I was getting shit faced with some buddies and she called me at 2 am to come pick her up since she was too drunk with her friend. It was a 3 hour drive and I went to help her knowing it was a horrible choice due to me being drunk but I loved her and cared about her way too much so the answer was quite easy to go and help her. Another time she was with her same friend and I caught her going live on tiktoc with her friend and she was in bathtub in her bikini with hwr friend and in the mirror I could see another man standing there mid 40s close to 50 without a shirt on asking them if they needed more drink and towels. I commented on the live and she immediately took it down and blocked me. Th3 next day she said she didn't know who that guy was and proceeded to make excuse after excuse. She told me she was sorry and that it won't ever happen again that she wanted to be with me and only me. we dont talk for about a week after this cause i couldnt believe she would do such a thing to me. That was betrayal to me, trying to be sneaky behind my back getting caught then lying to me about it. She came to my house unexpectedly and gave me a letter professing her love and commitment to me something she's never done before. It showed me change and effort, so I took her back (stupid I know but I really wanted her and gave her every chance to change into a better person) a couple weeks if not a month after that incident, she goes to a casino with that same friend. At this point I told her that it wasn't a good idea to keep contact with this friend cause she doesn't care about our relationship and puts her in some fucked up situations all the time. But it was hard for her since this friend was someone she knew since they were 10 it was hard for her to hear my words. So she calls me at 5 am the night she went with the casino with her friend and tells me that she absolutely needs me that she was kidnapped and needed me to come save her. Sp that's what I did. Drove over an hour and 30 min to get to her. She was walking with her friend when I found her and she couldn't remember where she parked her car she said it had to be in the casino parking lot but we couldn't find it. Where was her car? Just a block away from the people who "kidnapped her" at this point I was done. She done lied to me so many times and took advantage of my heart. I told her that after I help her that we are done. She goes to an extreme and says she's going to kill herself and to just drop her off wherever. I lost a friend due to suicide so this one hit at home and I couldn't let her go thru with it, also cause I loved her and still cared for her, of course. We end up taking a trip the day after for 3 days to get away and help her balance her life again. It seemed to work fine. She was so into me and said she wanted to marry me and have kids and start a family. I was excited yet felt it was too much of a rush. So we waited.
Just last month in April she really wanted a kid and by this time things have gotten much better she wasn't hanging out with that bad friend anymore and she would always come over to stay the night or I would go to her place. It was perfect and everything I ever dreamed off to be honest. So we try to have a kid. To complete us and our relationship. She missed her period in the beginning of May and she was pregnant. Something she thought she couldn't become cause she said she tried many times before with her past partners and it never worked. We were both excited. Just last week she told me she wasn't ready for a kid and wanted an abortion. I asked her why since this was the very thing we had hoped for for some time and she simply said it was due to money and not having insurance the bills would be crazy expensive and that she wasnt ready. I supported her decision since we could always have another baby down the line if she wasn't ready then she wasn't ready. I can respect that. A couple days after that she tells me that she doesnt see herself with me and that she doesnt love me anymore. Just out the blue. After everything we have been through. All the times I forgave her and took her back just to be left out in the cold without her giving me a chance to fix whatever the problem may have been. When she told me she didn't love me anymore and that she lost feelings it made me very confused and lost. Why try to have a baby then just a week ago? Why come back to me asking for forgiveness all those times if you were just gonna play me in the end? I asked her these things and she could only say sorry. That's it. That's all I got. I kept asking why how could you do that out of nowhere was it the baby? She just said she lost feelings a long time ago and doesn't love me anymore. Okay then why try to have a baby with me if that was true? why did she make me believe that she was really down for me and committed to me. These answers I'll never know. Since she just tells me sorry and to move on. But real love doesn't work that way. I'm finding it hard to cope with. Last thing she asked me was if I was going to help with the abortion cost. I told her yes cause it was also my responsibility and not just hers. The abortion is the 21st of this month and I dread each day closer to that date.
Thanks for reading.

2296, The scene is set in a post apocalyptic Mojave desert, 15 years after a joint effort of the New California Republic, the Rangers, and the mysterious benefactor of the New Vegas Strip, Mr. House pushed back an attempted invasion of the Mojave and a final battle was waved for control of the hydroelectric powerhouse, Hoover Damm.
In the aftermath, Mr. House was removed from power discreetly, due to the actions of a wasteland wanderer on a mission for revenge, known only as the Courier. Mr. House's iconic Lucky 38 casino opened its doors, for the first time, offering a single floor casino and bar, it's upstairs remained an exclusive and mysterious meeting place for the New Vegas Strip's elite. The Lucky 38 represented one of the cleanest, most secure facilities, protected, like the rest of the strip, by the Securitron Mk 2, predominantly. Their presence ensured visitors on the Strip behaved themselves, though the other casinos maintained their own security and 'house rules' internally.
The Strip defined and maintained its status as an independent entity, determining through the Courier's observations that the NCR was stretching it's military might too thin, and couldn't realistically manage over the Strip and Mojave, so a new deal was struck, similar to the prior, but with The Strip extending it's Securitron security to enforce the immediately surrounding communities and a few outlying satelites. Trade to the surrounding areas increased, the Mojave benefitting from the prewar tech, pre-programmed security forces. The drug addicted fiends and other Raider groups would never be any match for their advanced weaponry, and ultimately were cleared out of existence.
The King's continued to watch over Freeside, making alliances with the Follower's of the Apocalypse... their desire to service the needs of the belittled, disadvantaged and destitute lined up, and this is where Mr. Wolf found his place in the story... the Courier and a Follower's doctor found love in the wasteland.... and raised a child together under a Ranger's flag... 23 years later? This is New Vegas...
A handsome man in a leather jacket sat in a dusty leather booth watching one of the girls dance on a pole, shaking her ass as bottle caps clinked on the stage in front of her. It was a swanky post apocalyptic casino strip club. A man in a leather jacket stood nearby, his hands crossed in front of his chest, "Kings" embroidered across the back in silver letters. A waitress approached him carrying a glass of some amber colored liquor, and sat it down at the half moon table. She lingered a moment in her lacey body suit, following his gaze up to the girl rubbing her tits in some older cowboys face.
"You don't get jealous seeing her like that, Mr. Wolf." The girl bit her lip and met his eyes as he picked up his glass and swirled it before giving it a smell and taking a slow swig. He tilted his head looking her over. She couldn't possibly be older then 19. Tight, perky little thing.
Mr. Wolf smirked and shook his head. "I like her... nice and wet when she comes to my bed."
The girl blushed and bit her lip. "So you like to watch?" She surmised.
"I don't mind, but why do you ask?" Wolf had these intense eyes that shot arrows into your very soul. It made her incredibly nervous... but she found it deeply exciting at the same time.
"Well... I'm living in 206 now... maybe... you might stop by sometime and I could dance for you? I know I don't have her body but... if you wanted something that was a little fresher... something... just yours?" She figeted her fingers against the table.
Jason looked her over once more and smirked.
"Two-Oh-six, huh?" He tilted his head, considering.
She nodded.
"Leave your cum soaked panties on my doorknob one of these nights if you really need it and maybe I'll come see if you got the moves." His Texan accent was subdued, but enthrallingly charming with his confident, somewhat bored with reality overtones.
"M-my panties?" She stammered turning bright red. "On your doorknob?" Alexa couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"If you're gunna shoot your shot with a dom... with an alpha... you need to be willing to submit. If you can't do that... I'm not interested." Wolf shrugged, completely unphased.
"But what about... what if..." Alexa glanced at Laura, the clubs most iconic stripper in the club, perhaps even the whole Strip.
She was taking some NCR soldier to the VIP lounge for a private dance.
Alexa had been bold enough to offer herself but now she was feeling nervous. If Laura wanted her out, she could lose her job... her home.
"Oh she won't mind... if anything she'll want to watch." Wolf shook his head, sensing her anxiety.
"Assuming of course... she likes the way you smell... she's funny like that." Wolf let the conversation end and Alexa nervously retreated.
Wolf sat drinking by himself, but got bored.
"Jakey, go get yourself a drink and sit down, I'm bored." Wolf called to his body guard.
Jacob looked over and nodded, giving the lounge one last look around before approaching the bar and getting himself a mug of beer, from the tuxedo shirt and boytie bartender Gerald, and returning to the table.
"What's on your mind boss?" Jacob had his hair slicked back in the usual King's gang hairstyle.
"Heard any rumors lately?" Wold looked at him, taking a drag from his cigarette and flicking the pack over to him.
"Honestly, boss, aside from the occasional drunkard or fiend rolling through freeside, nothing out of the ordinary... well, except... a way's out.. the crazy lady... Gloria was swearing up and down she found a headless metal suit of armor.. said the Enclave would burn down New Vegas. God's wraith and all that, you know how she gets."
"Enclave?" Jason's attention was piqued.
"Yeah, I don't know, she was probably just in withdrawal from the Jet... said she found it in the hollowed out shell of the Super Duper, out by the old highway." Jacob shrugged and drank from his beer and pulled a cigarette from the pack.
Wolf finished the last drag of his own cigarette. "Has anyone validated her claims?"
"Well... no... but... I mean... you've met her, she sees things that aren't there, all the time." Jacob shrugged and lit a cigarette.
Jason squinted, considering the resident crazy ladies most recent half coherent ramblings.
"That's an oddly specific hallucination though....take a group of guys out there tonight... humor me, and make sure she's not right." Wolf lifted his glass.
"Sir?" Jacob raised an eyebrow, thinking surely this could wait until tomorrow.
"Hypothetically" Wolf pondered aloud, "If there was... for some reason, there in-fact was... a pre-war, piece of military tech out there....a T-45, let's say, or T-60, best case scenario? We want it. Even if it's not at 100% capacity? It's fusion core alone... could change up the game for Freeside, something like that could make our tiny little city independent. We wouldn't have to be reliant on the scraps of New Vegas, and forget about the Hoover Dam completely."
Jacob caught Mr. Wolf's drift.. a fusion core could mean producing its own, radiation-free water, it's own electricity.. not just a little, a lot. Powering long dead machines, not to mention the agricultural benefits... producing healthier, higher yield tobacco... expanding their income ten fold.
Jacob suddenly felt like he understood Mr. Wolf's vision for the future.
"I should... go and deploy the King's to investigate." Jacob concluded.
"I think that would be for the best, I can take care of myself here." Wolf waved Jacob off.
Jacob downed his beer and excused himself.
Wolf drank the rest of his whiskey, extinguishing his cigarette.
Laura, the dancer came up to the table, and Wolf motioned to the blushing new waitress for a round, who felt a twinge of jealousy seeing her crush with the most popular stage act in town. She bit her tongue though, bringing over two more heavy pours of whiskey.
Laura eyed the girl as she came and went.
"She likes you." Laura concluded as the waitress walked away.
"Yeah.. I think she does." Mr. Wolf shrugged, flicking her a cigarette.
"The NCR boy liked me." She giggled wiping a little bit of cum from her lips and used half her shot like mouthwash.
"Get anything out of him.. other then.. his seed?" Wolf sighed.
"Of course," She grinned mischievously, "Apparently there's been trouble out West with the Brotherhood. They had some type of skirmish? Apparently NCR lost? NCR was apparently holding some old world tech, I don't know, but apparently it lit up the west coast power grid, like... in it's entirely?" Laura tilted her head to look at him.
"The entire western power grid was lit up by a single piece of tech??" Wolf shook his head at the topless girl beside him.
"Yeah, I had to make him cum twice for more details, but apparently it's the size of a grain of rice, with quote, unlimited energy potential." Laura relayed the information. It seemed more important then a suit of power armor or its fusion core.
"Who else knows about this?" Wolf demanded with his eyebrows squinted against his eyes.
"Anyone with a functional light bulb for... like... three hundred miles?" Laura guessed with a shrug.
"You said... it was the Brotherhood that took the win on the skirmish?" Wolf clarified some details.
"Yeah... rumor has it they have a new up and coming knight that's making waves." Laura shrugged.
"Stay on the rumors... I need details." Mr. Wolf nodded at her, drank his whiskey and stood up, downing his drink.
An energy source that powerful would have a big effect on the balance of power in the Mojave. It could mean a resurrection of the New California Republic to it's former glory and then some, and potentially... might mean a renewed effort to reclaim the western part of the former United States, in time.

You have lost a lot of money. You keep wasting your paycheck and struggle for the rest of the month. This has been going on for some time and you really want to stop but you can't help yourself.
Now imagine yourself handing over a large briefcase of your hard earned money to a sleezeball bankecasino owner and him laughing at you. Remember his grin and his disgusting fat, greasy face.
Now imagine that he expects that briefcase each day and he sits at his desk and rolling his fingers all nervous wondering were you are and why you haven't come back with a new briefcase full of your hard earned money.
Each day that you don't show up, that grin he had gets smaller.
After a few months he is really worried and anxious about you not coming back. His suit now looks bad, shoes worn off and he looks really stressed.
After a year, he looks like shit.
After two years, he's lost his suit, his shirt and is bare feet. That's you winning over the sleezeball bankecasino owner while your savings grow and you're grinning and smiling at him.
Year 3, you are back on track and remember how strong you were to move on with your life. How much happier you are and that you're financially strong.
The only way to win is to stop feeding these sleezeballs with your hard earned money!!
You got this!!!!

I write a lot about how the Biden-Harris administration is working to restore the principles of the period between 1933 and 1981, when members of both political parties widely shared the belief that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. And I write about how that so-called liberal consensus broke down as extremists used the Reconstruction-era image of the American cowboy—who, according to myth, wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone—to stand against what they insisted was creeping socialism that stole tax dollars from hardworking white men in order to give handouts to lazy minorities and women.
But five major stories over the past several days made me realize that I’ve never written about how Trump and his loyalists have distorted the cowboy image until it has become a poisonous caricature of the values its recent defenders have claimed to champion.
The cowboy myth originated during the Reconstruction era as a response to the idea that a government that defended Black rights was “socialist” and that the tax dollars required to pay bureaucrats and army officers would break hardworking white men.
This weekend, on Saturday, May 11, Paul Kiel of ProPublica and Russ Buettner of the New York Times teamed up to deliver a deep investigation into what Trump was talking about when he insisted that he must break tradition and refuse to release his tax returns when he ran for office in 2016 and 2020, citing an audit.
The New York Times had already reported that one of the reasons the Internal Revenue Service was auditing Trump’s taxes was that, beginning in 2010, he began to claim a $72.9 million tax refund because of huge losses from his failing casinos.
Kiel and Buettner followed the convoluted web of Trump’s finances to find another issue with his tax history. They concluded that Trump’s Chicago skyscraper, his last major construction project, was “a vast money loser.” He claimed losses as high as $651 million on it in 2008. But then he appears to have moved ownership of the building in 2010 from one entity to a new one—the authors describe it as “like moving coins from one pocket to another”—and used that move to claim another $168 million in losses, thereby double-dipping.
The experts the authors consulted said that if he loses the audit battle, Trump could owe the IRS more than $100 million. University of Baltimore law professor Walter Schwidetzky, who is an expert on partnership taxation, told the authors: “I think he ripped off the tax system.”
The cowboy myth emphasized dominance over the Indigenous Americans and Mexicans allegedly attacking white settlers from the East. On Friday an impressive piece of reporting from Jude Joffe-Block at NPR untangled the origins of a story pushed by Republicans that Democrats were encouraging asylum seekers to vote illegally for President Joe Biden in 2024, revealing that the story was entirely made up.
The story broke on X, formerly Twitter, on April 15, when the investigative arm of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which promises to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration, posted photos of what it claimed were flyers from inside portable toilets at a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, that said in broken Spanish: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The tweet thread got more than 9 million views and was boosted by Elon Musk, X’s owner.
But the story was fabricated. The flyer used the name of a small organization that helps asylum seekers, along with the name of the woman who runs the organization. She is a U.S. citizen and told Joffe-Block that her organization has “never encouraged people to vote for anyone.” Indeed, it has never come up because everyone knows noncitizens are not eligible to vote. The flyer had outdated phone numbers and addresses, and its Spanish was full of errors. Migrants who are staying at the encampment as they wait for their appointments to enter the U.S. say they have never seen such flyers, and no one has urged them to vote for Biden.
Digging showed that the flyer was “discovered” by the right-wing video site Muckraker, which specializes in “undercover” escapades. The founder of Muckraker, Anthony Rubin, and his brother, Joshua Rubin, had shown up at the organization’s headquarters in Matamoros asking to become volunteers for the organization; they and their conversation were captured on video, and signs point to the conclusion that they planted the flyers.
Nonetheless, Republicans ran with the story. Within 12 hours after the fake flyer appeared on X, Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Dan Bishop (R-NC) brought posters of it to Congress, and Republicans made it a centerpiece of their insistence that Congress must pass a new law against noncitizen voting. Rather than being protected by modern-day cowboys, the woman who ran the organization that helps asylum seekers got death threats.
The cowboy image emphasized the masculinity of the independent men it championed, but the testimony of Stephanie Clifford, the adult film actress also known as Stormy Daniels, in Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records to cover up his payments to Clifford to keep her story of their sexual encounter secret before the 2016 election, turns Trump’s aggressive dominance into sad weakness. Covering Clifford’s testimony, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times yesterday wrote that “Trump came across as a loser in her account—a narcissist, cheater, sad Hugh Hefner wannabe, trading his satin pajamas for a dress shirt and trousers (and, later, boxers) as soon as Stormy mocked him.”
In the literature of the cowboy myth, the young champion of the underdog is eventually supposed to settle down and take care of his family, who adore him. But the news of the past week has caricatured that shift, too. On Wednesday, May 8, the Republican Party of Florida announced that it had picked Trump’s youngest son, 18-year-old Barron, as one of the state’s at-large delegates to the Republican National Convention, along with Trump’s other sons, Eric and Donald Jr.; Don Jr.’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle; and Trump’s second daughter, Tiffany, and her husband.
On Friday, May 10, Trump’s current wife and Barron’s mother, former first lady Melania Trump, issued a statement saying: “While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments.” It is hard not to interpret this extraordinary snub from his own wife and son as a chilly response to the past month of testimony about his extramarital escapades while Barron was an infant.
Finally, there was the eye-popping story broken by Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow in the Washington Post on Thursday, revealing that last month, at a private meeting with about two dozen top oil executives at Mar-a-Lago, Trump offered to reverse President Joe Biden’s environmental rules designed to combat climate change and to stop any new ones from being enacted in exchange for a $1 billion donation.
Trump has promised his supporters that he would be an outsider, using his knowledge of business to defend ordinary Americans against those elites who don’t care about them. Now he has been revealed as being willing to sell us out—to sell humanity out—for the bargain basement price of $1 billion (with about 8 billion people in the world, this would make us each worth about 12 and a half cents).
Chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration Richard Painter wrote: “This is called bribery. It’s a felony.” He followed up with “Even a candidate who loses can be prosecuted for bribery. That includes the former guy asking for a billion dollars in campaign cash from oil companies in exchange for rolling back environmental laws.”
The cowboy myth was always a political image, designed to undermine the idea of a government that worked for ordinary Americans. It was powerful after the Civil War but faded into the past in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s as Americans realized that their lives depended on government regulation and a basic social safety net. The American cowboy burst back into prominence with the advent of the Marlboro Man in 1954, the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the idea of an individual white man who worked hard, wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone, was a sex symbol, and protected his women became a central myth in the rise of politicians determined to overturn the liberal consensus.
Now it seems the myth has come full circle, with the party led by a man whose wife rejects him and whose lovers ridicule him, who makes up stories about dangerous “others,” cheats on his taxes, solicits bribes, and tries to sell out his followers for cash—the very caricature the mythological cowboy was invented to fight.
—
Notes:
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-irs-audit-chicago-hotel-taxes
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10
/1248599505/migrants-vote-biden-conspiracy-theory-social-media
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10/1250585392/takeaways-migration-biden-flyer-matamoros
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/opinion/trump-stormy-daniels-trial.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/barron-trump-florida-delegate-republican-national-convention-rcna151388
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/barron-trump-declines-invitation-delegate-republican-convention-rcna151761
Twitter (X):
rwpusa/status/1789632040054165516
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-12-2024

My previous experience was Harmony of the seas in 2018. Here we go with Icon:

• Quick Check in and out.
  
• Condescending staff most of the times.
  
• Almost every waiter and Room assistant seems so desperate for tips, even when we get charged daily per person, per day.
  
• At Promenade, salesmen seemed to rush their sales, pressing you to buy and even lying about prices and benefits that are already included (like the warranty for example).
  
• Every single pool was always filled to the maximum possible. Most chairs reserved by towels (people hiding the “don’t reserve” sign with their towels) pretty underwhelming overall.
  
• The main pool ended up closed at least 3 different days because of “incidents” and “contamination”. Same thing happened in other pools. Snack papers and napkins flying around Deck 15.
  
• We reserved Chops Grille. 200 bucks only to get the same cuts that we actually got next day at Windjammer (specially Filet Mignon). The premium cuts are not included, Wagyu doesn’t taste that good. We got nice attention but to actually be a 200 bucks premium restaurant, the ambience seemed like a mcdonalds filled with two birthday parties. Everyone yelling and not giving a single crap.
  
• We also got Izumi Ibachi. Pretty good experience overall and a great service from the staff. That’s what I mean with exclusive items for a premium restaurant. I’m not paying extra to get the same thing I get at the buffet with more screams and yelling from other people.
  
• Couldn’t really enjoy activities like mini golf or surf cause they were always full, I like to share but I don’t like to get interrupted by two other golf balls. Waterpark was great overall, quick rides and 45 min wait rides as well. Didn’t like to get my feet burned walking up the stairs of the purple ride.
  
• The events like parties and parades were fine. Staff did their best to light up a boring audience overall, and I really meant it, you are in a vacation, not in a job activity.
  
• Food was great overall, nice variety at every place. Went to main dining first night only to get fried chicken with corn, after that we decided to dine at Windjammer to get more variety and eat as much as we wanted without someone faking a smile to get a tip. We got two calls the next days asking why we didn’t come back.
  
• Shows were awesome. Top quality to every one of them. Aquadome got technical problems the two times we went, the first time was actually suspended and ruined our schedule. Didn’t have hopes for the stand up comedy and they killed it, specially roasting Royal Caribbean. Oz, Effectors and Ice Skating also great.
  
• The two islands ( Basseterre and Charlotte Amalie) were pretty boring if you didn’t get an activity. Locals seemed condescending and bored with an attitude of “buy our stuff and leave”. Got scammed by a guy that has monkeys, leaves them in your shoulder, you film with your phone or get a photo and get charged 10 bucks per person. Saw an incident seconds after with another group that didn’t want to pay, obviously police are sided with locals. They ended up returning to the ship right away.
  

Not to be evil but every single shirt and gift/ thing you could get from those stores are available online. Order them weeks prior to your travel and just when you return you already have your photos in the island and your cheaper items at your home.

• Pretty Lame at Coco Cay should be the actual name of the thing. If you don’t get Coco Beach Club pass, you probably will suffer the same crowd you were suffering the whole week. Oasis Lagoon is impressive, but the amount of people and kids make it stressing. Icon and another ship arrived that day.
  
• We got Coco Beach Club. The pool is great, Beach is great, lots of birds though. We could finally enjoy empty chairs. Food was bad, I got a lobster cut in half with no meat at all. Also got a lobster sandwich that was partially better with fries and that was it. Filet mignon was the other option and I already got 4 of those at windjammer. Rum cake was great, but please NEVER AGAIN TRY TO MAKE CEVICHE, THAT THING WAS NOT CEVICHE, THAT WAS A BAD JOKE.
  
• We also tried the famous now infamous Coco Loco, the local drink that is actually like fruit punch juice with a joke of alcohol for around 15 bucks? Their pina colada is also a pineapple juice with a hint of rum. I get it that you need to calm down with the alcohol but charge 15 bucks for fruit punch juice is crazy.
  
• Sad thing to say that the best clothes were found at Coco Cay since the ship didn’t have many options to get, specially talking about shirts that were like 3 different types in two or three colors. The Messi shirts were like 30% more expensive in the ship than in any other place in miami or probably the world. Don’t buy anything the first 2 days, since they will lower their costs eventually. The commemorative set was 80 bucks and the next day 50.
  

To conclude:

• Pools: 2/10. Closed for too many times, full to their max. Hideaway pool was a joke, same with every other pool except for Royal Bay that was empty at 6pm (when it was open). The kids pool at deck 7 felt like an only kids pool so we didn’t go there, even when it felt the right thing to do to enjoy the infinite view that was impossible to enjoy at hideaway.
  
• Shows 8/10. Great shows and great places as well.
  
• Food 6/10. Didn’t enjoy the forced and invasive smiles. Didn’t like to pay 200 bucks only for the restaurant to run to Windjammer and fill my plate with the same food. Nice dinner and lunch at windjammer, props to Aquadome market.
  
• Offers 6/10. Not many, not great or unique items.
  
• Ambience 3/10. Not Royal Caribbeans fault, but it shows how people changed after covid. Manners seem to be dead.
  
• Other places 8/10. Gym was great, the exterior was cool, promenade and halls were nice, the pearl seemed unnecessary but idk. Casino was okay. Bars were fine, Surfside and the park looked awesome.
  
• Stateroom 7/10. Good distribution of space. The couch is a couch, not a bed, I still ended up sleeping there (check alternatives when more than 2 people).
  
• Staff 6/10. Their eyes either said “I need your money” or “Go away”, for the first time I felt uncomfortable while dining and also felt a robotic treatment at times.
  

One builds the enjoyment in their vacations and that’s what we did, we had a good time despite all the situations and things that got in our way. I remember reading “a week at a cruise it’s better than a week at work” and I agree, but I also can’t let go the fact that this expensive experience didn’t fulfill the expectations I got. The biggest ship in the world ended up short.
Between Harmony 2018 and Icon 2024, I choose Harmony all the time. Better quality, less people (or at least it seemed like it was less) Main dinning actually seemed like a different option than windjammer. Better activities, better sales, better clothes, better service in general, daily parades and events.
I totally understand that covid affected this industry and somehow they have to make a return of that money, but I wasn’t expecting a huge mall designed to take selfies, I was expecting a cruise experience.

Hey all, this is my first time visiting the subreddit so apologies if this is a common question, nothing really came up when I searched it.
One of my best friends is getting married next year, and the bachelor party is going to be a trip to a pretty popular party city. All the groomsmen will be in attendance but not the bride nor the bridesmaids, as they’re doing the same thing but in a different city.
We already have some ideas picked out (going out obviously to drink/party, a sports game, comedy shows, the beach, etc.) but nothing rowdy like strippers or losing everything at the casinos. I think it would be fun to do an activity on one of our days that somehow incorporates the bride (despite her being absent) so her presence can be felt.
I thought of getting T-Shirts printed with her picture on them and we would all wear them out one night, but I’m sure there’s cooler ideas. Just wondering if anyone has any! Open to all ideas or feedback. The whole wedding court is cool and friendly with each other so anything from cordial to humorous would work.

Setting: In the fictional, beautiful, rustic, and all-around depressing city of Rongeford, there are two kinds of people: epithets and mundies. This isn't too different from most cities, but the isolation and wilderness of the Northern Forestlands make the economic and racial divide between these two sides... a bit more tense. That isn't to stay you can't live in Rongeford and any other community in the Great North, mundie or not, but the city of Rongeford is a city with small-town sentiments: you gotta work to earn local trust, not expect it to be given. This comes pre-packaged in what is known as the all-too infamous Free-Northern talk: overly friendly and hospitable manners compared to the outside world, but with a hint of aggression that honestly you can't really tell whether they're being kind, or there are several veiled threats beneath those sweet words.
This is where your party, either mundies or epithet users, will come together, as a series of wild-fires have began to pop up across the municipal district, threatening the nearby communities and getting closer to the city of Rongeford. It would seem that whatever is causing these fires is, for once, not from stupid teenagers playing with fire out in the woods; a reward of $65,000 is offered to whatever group or individual can capture the rumored epithet usegroup terrorizing the municipalities of Ronge.
These adventures will take you through the many communities of Ronge, and face being completely trapped (even in the air), and forced to travel on foot to travel from place to place, face off against the wild-life, poachers, secret government agents, and the forces of nature itself. Oh, and there's also a huge casino heist that happens somewhere inbetween with guns and fire, but we're keeping it at least 90s PG here...so there will be some blood and we'll definitely go deep on the mental and emotional route, but this is going to be played by both kids and adults so...yeah.
Now, onto my character! Who am I, you may ask?
Character Creation
Name: Noah LaScritché Epithet: Itchy
Stamina: ☆☆ Proficiency: ☆☆☆ Creativity: ☆☆☆☆
□ Abilities: Can trigger a person's inner compulsions or desires and force them to act them out for a period of time. Can activate multiple compulsions at a time, but limited by the will-power and resistance of the target, and how many "itches" Noah can hold his attention to with his proficiency.
□ The "itch" can be effected on different levels of cognition and sensation: an emotional "itch," a physical "itch," or even a mental "itch."
□Emotional itches cause the affected person to experience emotions that have either been repressed or have left a huge impression on the person's memory, causing the person to be flooded with them again and be stunned or have them affect their actions during combat or in-game. This can have bonuses, but also debuffs depending on the Emotional moment left behind or unresolved.
□Physical "itches" are sensations that the person has lingering on them, they've felt recently and left an impression, or are so small in sensation that they go unnoticed. Noah can amplify these sensations or diminish them, but the effects are temporary; for whatever reason, to diminish the sensations of the person affected, Noah must let whatever physical sensations the person feels flow into him. This includes pain, nausea, constipation, and anything from excruciating in feeling to uncomfortable.
□Mental "itches" are arguably the most unpredictable and dangerous of Noah's epithet level of abilities. Using his scratch ability, Noah can influence the cognition, memories, perception, and self-perception of the person affected. To an extent, mental "itches" would be considered hypnosis; however, the effects make the Mental "itches" not only dangerous to person affected, but also to others around them. With emotional and physical "itches," the epithet doesnt force the person affected to let these repressed/intense/unnoticed sensations be relieved; it uses persuasion, or rather the Creativity from within Noah, to convince the person that they subconsciously should have this itch scratched. Mental "itches" are entirely different; they are "itches" from within the mind itself and it's perception of the world, and thus have far more defenses and resistance to the Scratch ability.
This is for good reason, as messing with the way a person perceives the world mentally is something that doesn't have a temporary effect like physical or emotional "itches. Like brain surgery, without careful precision, scratching at some compulsion or hidden desire within the mental space of a person could permanently damage them. For example, if Noah were to draw out a memory from a person's inner conscience that has been left unresolved, the person and Noah would view it. However, Noah must ensure that he is not detected by the person within his conscience and complete the scratch ability on whatever he needs to do; otherwise, the person's mind will activate defenses within, and may even view the influence of Noah on the memory itself as a sort of mental virus, and thus decide to erase both Noah and the memory. There are many more dangers of bringing out mental "itches," but here is a warning to summarize: there are certain things within the mind, repressed and hidden things, that aren't meant to be seen. It is the most useful level of "itches" only because it can dominate a mind, but it can just as easy break Noah if he is not careful how he approaches things.
□Side-effect for Noah is he feels an itch as a result, which grows in discomfort as he draws out the compulsion of the person. Can lead to him actively scratching himself in irritation, even harming himself unintentionally. Depending on which level of itch he scratches, Noah can experience certain debilitating conditions unless he succeeds a fortitude save. Examples include: temporary loss of sight,
Background: Hello, I'm Noah LaScritché, and I'm a theatre performer in a city that doesn't normally put much money, if at all, into the performing arts. Yeah, it sucks, but it's a lot better than where I last lived...anyway, I'm also a professional clown; in fact, I take it pretty seriously, and wear it wherever I go. You'd think it would be hard and outright crazy dressing up as a clown daily, but the key is mainly just the face; my outfit is mostly interchangeable, though I'm partial to wearing emerald-green shirt/jacket, brown/tanned trousers/overalls, a pair of leather-boots, and a tanned sun-hat.
That's my side-job as a clown (mostly for birthdays), but my main job is as an addiction councilor; yes, I wear the costume, even though I've gotten complaints, I guess I just feel more comfortable as a clown councilor, but I do make sure not to wear it if people are really freaked out by it. Turns out my epithet and a Bachelour's Degree in Mental Health works hand-in-hand to being a really good addiction councilor; of course, my code as a mental-health professional only allows me to do this kind of stuff if they sign off on it with consent, or I determine that the person under my supervision is having a state of emergency and I need to give my full attention and resources to them. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about my epithet. By helping people open up their inner compulsions, some desires that even they have no idea that are hidden within them, it can actually help them have an apifany and recover, or it could end horribly. It's why I only do in extreme circumstances when no other option is available and the environment is safe and secure.
I'm getting off topic. Let's see...what else is there about me? I really like Weeros/Cockatiels, really any member of the parrot/cockatoo family; their mimicry of sounds is amazing. If I didn't go into theatre, I'd have probably become a professional hat-maker if the automated industry didn't destroy that profession locally; regular one-bill caps are boring, but a custom-made 19th century stove-pipe hat in any colour you choose paired with a fashionable jacket? Now that is eye-catching!

In P15, someone sounding like Phillip Jeffries showed up as an apparition in a motel room. The apparition consisted of a circle of light swimming in steam that came out of a dark pot.
The voice suggested that Mr C asked Judy herself if she wanted "something" from him. Coordinates started appearing in the steam, and Mr C wrote them down.
Earlier in P11, it was morning in the Mitchum's house, and Candie poured some hot coffee to Bradley's cup. If we tilted the shot about 90 degrees clockwise, the setup resembled the apparition in the motel room. The shiny, circular edge of the glass cup would have been there as the sphere of light, the coffee pot as the other pot and hot coffee as the steam connecting the two.
Filling up the cup of (coordinates to) George.
Indicating that we needed to make this connection was the vaulted ceiling above Jeffries's pot the shape of which was echoed in the similarly curved and very noticeably red lamp behind Rodney. When Candie was done pouring the coffee, she lifted the pot so that it was two-dimensionally right under the lamp's vault-like shape.
Tracing the twisty paths to find what these coordinates were for, they seem to have been the whereabouts of a certain character who also appeared as William Hastings's lawyer, George. This would then connect back to the cup of coffee that was originally known in colloquial speech as a "cup of George)" before it became a "cup of Joe". Fittingly, the coordinates to George floating in the steam would have had their counterpart in Candie pouring a cup of George.
When Bradley joined his brother, he took the cup of coffee and drank from it. Then he looked at it suspiciously and made some face as if we needed to understand something.
If that "cup of George" was linked to the coordinates that revealed where George was, it seems Bradley got marked as the George we needed to think about. It was his cup, after all, and he was where the cup was.
This would become another major twist as George appears to have been the same character as the Fireman. Thus then, in the Las Vegas storyline, the Fireman's character would have showed up as Bradley Mitchum who together with his brother Rodney ran a somewhat shady casino.
That would be another drastic twist, but there appears to be no shortage of those. Let's have a closer look how that holds.
In P8, the Fireman got an alarm and walked up to his theater where he studied on a big screen what looked like next-level magical surveillance footage. Then he floated up and dreamt, and a golden ball came out of his dreams.
By then, a mysterious woman credited as Senorita Dido had joined him in the theater. She caught the golden ball and brought it close to her face. Laura's smiling homecoming queen picture looked back at her. Perhaps Laura's head was inside the ball, or more likely, it reflected Senorita's own alternate existence back at her, as there was no trace of Laura in the ball from any other angle. She let the ball fly into a machine that inserted it on a route to somewhere in the US.
He's on his way up.
The first we saw of Bradley was earlier in P5. He appeared in Silver Mustang Casino's surveillance room, with the small golden ball of his tie pin shining brightly. If that was intended to be the same sparkling sphere that Senorita Dido had given a kiss before sending it through the silver screen, the Fireman may have dreamt himself into a different reality, travelling there as the golden ball that then turned into Bradley Mitchum. Based on Bradley appearing with his golden pin in another kind of surveillance room, apparently the Fireman was still in his theater, just in an alternate version of it, the casino version.
Not as big as advertised.
Next time we saw Bradley was in P10. The scene appeared to be another well abstract throwback to the Fireman. Candie was hunting a fly and accidentally hit Rodney in the face with a television remote control. Bradley rushed to the scene, wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a black bowtie.
In the opening episode, the Fireman - dressed similarly as Bradley - was having a meeting with a man who at least looked like Agent Cooper. The Fireman concluded the meeting cryptically.

The Fireman: "You are far away."

If someone is far away, he is remote. Another kind of remote is a television remote control. As Cooper flickered away, also he may have stayed where he was but travelled from one reality to another while everything changed in the process, not just his surroundings but also the man himself. That is, he would have turned into the remote in front of Rodney, with the Mitchum Brothers' living room now matching the 1930's sitting room inside the Fireman's tower. Soon afterwards, the Fireman himself would have got there as well, wearing his preferred bowtie again.
This job comes with a lot of fine print.
The Fireman also told Cooper to listen to the sounds. Later in P10, Rodney took the same remote control and turned the television sound back on.
When Cooper appeared in the newscast, Bradley recognized him. He may have forgotten who he was, as seems to be the risk when one went into these dreams, but he still connected some dots. He asked Rodney to freeze it there, first pointing at the remote control on the sofa and then at Cooper on television, smoothly implying there was a link between the two.
We didn't see the remote control in Mitchum's house again. It probably had business somewhere else. Now where would that have been?

My last post I talked about the "Five things you won't ride without."
Probably number one should be a CLEAR HEAD.
You don't want to be impatient, upset, angry, or mentally re-hashing an argument with the GF, Wife, co-worker, whatever when you're on a danger machine. You need 100% of your attention on the road, other drivers.
Not thinking about "What I shudda said!"
Yes, going for a ride CAN clear your head - on a lonely, fun, twisty road. But NOT In town traffic with cellphone-distracted drivers apparently aiming for you. Too easy to ride angry!
I just did two back to back 8 hour rides (out & back) on my Connie (2008 Kawasaki Concours). The second with a good attitude, the first with a "Hurry up gotta get there" attitude that left me suffering and wondering why I even ride. A car would have been a LOT more comfortable. And warm.
First ride, my hands are starting to get cold, so do I pull over and take 60 seconds put on my winter gloves as I'm heading into Flagstaff? Add a layer? (Much cooler than Phoenix 90 miles ago!)
Nope. Just keep riding until I'm chilled, hungry, and riding sloppy. And have to stop. Dennys in Tuba City.
I just keep pushing, pushing, and pushing all the way across the Rez instead of relaxing, taking breaks. Legs and knees absolutely killing me. Start thinking about selling the bike.
Never did hook up the tunes.
Froze my ass coming over Hesperus Pass (Cortez Colorado to Durango Colorado). Barely made it out to Ignacio.
By the time I got home I was worthless, could barely stand up. Askiing myself, "Why do I even do this?
All because I had a bad, "Gotta get there" attitude.
My ride home to Phoenix from Durango, Colorado, I dressed in layers. Underwear, tights, jeans, chaps. Long sleeve shirt, vest, windbreaker, another shirt, leather jacket, neck gator. Winter gloves.
And a good attitude. "It's gonna take as long as it takes, and I'm gonna take as many breaks as I need, and have a little fun en route."
It's cloudy and cold out! Let it warm up a bit. Probably 50 when I departed.
First stop (Farmington NM) its sunny and a lot warmer. I shed the winter gloves. Fuel up. Get a delicious lamb burrito from a roadside stand on the Rez near the Casino. Walk around a bit. Set up the helmet-mounted radar detector system - which saved my bacon a few miles south of Payson, later in the ride.
Second stop, Gallup, lose the gator and the windbreaker. Fuel up. Hit the Golden Corral and eat a healthier lunch than I usually do, lotsa vegetables, salad, .... Hook up the Plugphones / Ipod for some tunes while cruising boring I-40 and getting endlessly trapped behind "elephant races."
I like Plugphones way better than earbuds. They work as earplugs when you're not listening to tunes. Block almost all wind noise. And they're cheap. $17.
I'm makin' good time.
Third stop. Holbrook. Fuel up @ Maverick. Lose the vest. Visit a great pawn shop there. I really don't need a THIRD chainsaw, do I? Tempting! (Husquvarna Rancher -- cheap)
Fifth stop Heber-Overgaard. Get a Dr. Pepper, walk around a bit to loosen up. Shitload of construction ahead, one-lane traffic. Sucks. But I'm not tired or angry! And I rocket through the passing zones where, for unknown reasons, the drivers being passed all gotta speed way up.
Down the hill from HebeOg to Payson is a real rider's road. Fun fun fun.
Fifth stop, Payson Arizona. Lose the vest, go into a store bathroom and shed the longjohns (tights) in the restroom, fuel up, buy a whole bag of Apple (lightning) charging cords in Goodwill for $5. Score!
Ahead of me is the Beeline Highway from Payson to Phoenix, a great ride if there ever was one, and despite having already been on the bike six+ hours I have a helluva fun ride.
Get into a little bit of a speed contest comin' down the Beeline with a gray Dodge Charger. Now THIS is why I own this bike!
Lose the bad attitude! Get off the bike. Take a break. Take some pictures. Stay hydrated. Add or subtract layers BEFORE you lose core body temp.
No, you don't need to "get there." You need to arrive alive in good mental AND physical shape.
Take care of yourself before and during a ride.
Don't start a ride impatient, angry or distracted by earlier events.

Welcome to the March new chargers report, fellow Chadoomers!
Almost all of you are my fellow Leaf owners, hoping for just one new chargepoint on your favorite route, before the great dwarven CHAdeMO forges beneath the earth go cold for all time. Here's an update.
Here are all of the new US and Canadian CHAdeMO (Leaf fast-charging) stations that rolled out in April, according to the Alternative Fuels Data Center. You can fetch the data yourself here. Feel free to report inaccuracies to the AFDC.
For comparison's sake: in the US, there were 200 "new" (or updated) CHAdeMO stations added in March, with at least 200 chargepoints. To put it in perspective, there were 102 new or updated US stations in April of 2023. This month's report is surprisingly strong, given how late we are in CHAdeMO's lifecycle. It is unclear if this is due to a large number of refreshed stations, or a large rollout of new stations that happen to include at least one CHAdeMO chargepoint, but it may be the latter thanks to Inflation Reduction Act funding. In any case, it is good news for those of us with legacy vehicles.
Keep in mind that even EVGo has started to roll out stations where only some of the bays support CHAdeMO. This makes sense given that only Nissan still sells a CHAdeMO pure-battery-electric car in the US, and the newer Nissan Ariya model is CCS. The Mitsubishi Plug-In Hybrid Outlander PHEV also supports CHAdeMO.
Some of these chargepoints will be "refreshes," e.g. the provider replaced them with faster chargers etc. Some may be incorrect. This report is only as good as the Alternative Fuels Data Center data.
If you'd like to know about new chargers along your routes right away, or reading these monthly reports is just frustrating in your state, I've set up a free service that provides email notifications only when new stations actually open. You can sign up at evpov.com. I built it to help EV owners like myself (especially my fellow Leaf owners). You can pick other plug types as well.
To streamline this post, multi-chargepoint locations are listed with the number of chargepoints first. Some stations may actually have more CHAdeMO chargepoints than reported here, but most won't, because even EVGo has started to reduce the number of CHAdeMO chargepoints per station. So in the case of CHAdeMO I make a pessimistic assumption to avoid creating unrealistic expectations.
Even so, for actual trip planning I recommend using PlugShare. This report is mainly useful to understand trends.
If you get a chance, do check out reported new stations near you and add PlugShare reviews, which helps everyone.

➡ AB (1) MD SMOKY RIVER DCFC STATION 1 701 Main St SW Falher, AB T0H 1M0 ➡ AR (1) Evt 1425 ohlendorf rd Osceola, AR 72370 ➡ AZ (1) HYUNDAI PEORIA PUBLIC LEVEL 3 8425 W Bell Rd Peoria, AZ 85382 ➡ BC (1) 7Charge - Abbotsford 1915 McCallum Rd Abbotsford, BC V2S 3N1 (1) Honda Burnaby - DC 5723 Marine Way Burnaby, BC V5J 0A6 (1) Bill Howich Chrysler - Smart DC 2777 North Island Highway Campbell River, BC V9W 2H4 (1) Honda Surrey - Smart DC 15291 Fraser Highway Surrey, BC V3R 3P3 (1) QUADREAL CA STALL 128 658 Homer St Vancouver, BC V6B 2R4 (3) QUADREAL CA STALL 110 658 Homer Street Vancouver, BC V6B 2R4 ➡ CA (2) WC ACURA CPE250-2 8375 E La Palma Ave Anaheim, CA 92807 (1) Tony's Pizza 10701 CA-178 Bakersfield, CA 93306 (1) Banning Farm's House Restaurant 6261 Joshua, E Palmer Dr Banning, CA 92220 (1) Solar Express 2434 San Pablo ave Berkeley, CA 94707 (3) LOVES CA BORON DCFC 1 27201 Boron Frontage Rd N Boron, CA 93516 (1) Flitway - Gordon Ranch Marketplace 2545 Chino Hills Pkwy Chino Hills, CA 91709 (1) 99 Ranch Chino Hills 2959 Chino Ave Chino Hills, CA 91709 (1) Flitway - East Lake Village Center 2220 Otay Lakes Rd Chula Vista, CA 91915 (1) Hilton Concord 1970 Diamond Blvd Concord, CA 94520 (1) Flitway - Inter-Community Hospital 212 W San Bernardino Rd Covina, CA 91723 (1) CULVER HONDA CPE250 BL 9055 Washington Blvd Culver City, CA 90232 (1) Delhi Unified School District 16491 Schendel Avenue Delhi, CA 95315 (2) DOWNEYHYUNDAI CPE250 2 7550 Firestone Boulevard Downey, CA 90241 (1) Chevron Elk Grove Gas Station 9299 Bond Road Elk Grove, CA 95624 (1) Sierra Plaza 815 Kern St Fresno, CA 93706 (1) Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce - 1600 Fulton 1600 Fulton Street Fresno, CA 93721 (1) Wyndham Garden Fresno Airport 5090 East Clinton Way Fresno, CA 93727 (1) Ridgemark Gold Club & Resort 3800 Airline Hwy Hollister, CA 95023 (1) Flitway - Trabuco Community Center 5701 Trabuco Rd Irvine, CA 92620 (1) The Elysian 1115 Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90012 (1) Motel 6 North Hills 15711 Roscoe Blvd North Hills, CA 91343 (1) Pacoima Van Nuys Blvd 13520 Van Nuys Blvd Pacoima, CA 91331 (1) Palmdale City Hall 38250 Sierra Hwy. Palmdale, CA 90245 (1) Foodsco Northgate #355 3625 Northgate Blvd Sacramento, CA 95834 (4) LOVES CA CA SALINAS DC 4 1264 De la Torre St Salinas, CA 93905 (1) Sunny Plaza 529 E Valley Blvd San Gabriel, CA 91776 (1) Seven Trees Shopping Center 4060 Monterey Hwy San Jose, CA 95111 (1) FREEWAY HONDA DC FAST 01 1505 Auto Mall Dr Santa Ana, CA 92705 (1) SJCHA Sierra Vista Phase 1 1520 Eleventh Street Stockton, CA 95206 (1) SJCHA Sierra Vista Phase 2 2439 Volney Street Stockton, CA 95206 (1) HACSJ Tracy Homes 340 W 4th St Tracy, CA 95376 (1) Sheraton Universal Hotel DC 333 Universal Hollywood Dr Universal City, CA 91608 (1) Brian Allen 128 E Chestnut Ct Visalia, CA 93277 (1) City of Los Angeles Lot 696 835 N Avalon Blvd Wilmington, CA 90744 ➡ CO (1) SCVHISTSOC PIONEER TOWN 1 388 S Grand Mesa Dr Cedaredge, CO 81413 ➡ CT (2) 365 E MAIN ST CPE250 2 365 East Main Street Branford, CT 06405 (1) GURUKRUPA GI LLC EV-1 85a Hemingway Ave East Haven, CT 06512 (1) Pomfret Town Hall - SmartDC 5 Haven Rd Pomfret Center, CT 06259 ➡ FL (1) Orange County Health Department 12050 E Colonial Dr Orlando, FL 32826 (1) Evermore Orlando Resort 1570 Evermore Way Orlando, FL 32836 (1) Evermore - EVA 3 2420 North Beach Lane/Flats Orlando, FL 32836 (2) BMW SARASOTA FAST CHARGE 2 5151 Clark rd Sarasota, FL 34233 (2) C-HYUNDAI CPE1 3810 W Hillsborough Ave Tampa, FL 33614 (1) Hammock Landing 4311 Norfolk Pkwy West Melbourne, FL 32904 ➡ GA (2) GEORGIA POWER AMERICUS DC1 202b U.S. Hwy 19 Americus, GA 31719 (1) ABM Electrification Center 2715 Ronald Reagan Blvd Cumming, GA 30041 (2) GENESIS CUMMING STE1 750 Peachtree Parkway Cumming, GA 30041 (2) GEORGIA POWER DONALSON DC2 209 Cherry St Donalsonville, GA 39845 (2) GEORGIA POWER GEORGE DC1 1 Main St Georgetown, GA 39854 (2) GEORGIA POWER RICHLAND DC 2 26 Stewart St Richland, GA 31825 ➡ HI (1) Kapolei Commons provided by Hawaiian Electric Company 4470 Kapolei Parkway Kapolei, HI 96707 ➡ IA (1) Indian Creek Nature Center 5300 Otis Rd SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52403 (1) Storm Lake 1250 N Lake Ave Ste 2 Storm Lake, IA 50588 ➡ ID (1) BRONCO HYUNDAI FV L3 #2 9250 Fairview Ave Boise, ID 83704 (1) BRONCO HYUNDAI FV L3 #1 9250 Fairview Avenue Boise, ID 83704 ➡ IL (1) Jo-Carroll Energy - Elizabeth 311 East Myrtle Street Elizabeth, IL 61028 ➡ IN (2) ANDY MOHR HYUND SERVICE 1441 Liberty Dr Bloomington, IN 47403 (1) Madison 590 Ivy Tech Dr Madison, IN 47250 (1) STOOPSEV 480V EV CHARGER 4055 W Clara Ln Muncie, IN 47304 ➡ KS (1) EVERGY @PRSONCITY-437A 1600 Main St Parsons, KS 67357 ➡ MA (1) 400 SUMMER ST 400 SUMMEP1-1 4 W Service Rd Boston, MA 02210 (6) 400 SUMMER ST 400 SUMMERP2-3 400 Summer St Boston, MA 02210 (1) 400 SUMMER ST 400 SUMMEP2-2 410 Summer St Boston, MA 02210 (2) CAPE_ASSOCIATES MONOMOY 782 Main Street Chatham, MA 02633 (1) ALDEN BUICK GMC ALDEN LV3 #1 6 Whalers Way Fairhaven, MA 02719 (1) WFSU SCIENCE STATION 577 Western Avenue Westfield, MA 01085 ➡ MD (1) BGE - CCBC Essex 7201 Rossville Blvd Baltimore, MD 21237 (1) Skipjack Art Studios 329 Cannon Street Chestertown, MD 21620 ➡ MN (1) Cannon Falls 650 Main Street West Cannon Falls, MN 55009 (1) Chisholm 201 West Lake Street Chisholm, MN 55719 (1) City Of Crosby Library 101 1st Street Southeast Crosby, MN 56441 (1) WASC 425 Winnebago Avenue Fairmont, MN 56031 (1) City of Faribault 17 3rd Street Northeast Faribault, MN 55021 (1) Service Foods 321 West Lincoln Avenue Fergus Falls, MN 56537 (1) City of Fosston 220 1st Street East Fosston, MN 56542 (1) Burger King 2200 10th Street East Glencoe, MN 55336 (1) Grand Marais Public Utilities City Hall Parking Lot - South Side 15 Broadway Grand Marais, MN 55604 (1) City Of Little Falls NaN null Dewey Parkway Little Falls, MN 56345 (1) Mankato Area Foundation 115 South 2nd Street Mankato, MN 56001 (1) Schmelz Countryside Volkswagen 1180 Minnesota 36 Maplewood, MN 55109 (1) 36Lyn Refuel Station 3551 Lyndale Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55408 (2) Nelson Auto World 1625 Como Avenue Southeast Minneapolis, MN 55414 (1) Noodles & Company 922 Holiday Drive Moorhead, MN 56560 (1) Motley Motel 165 Riverfront Lane Motley, MN 56466 (1) City of New Ulm 541 2nd Street North New Ulm, MN 56073 (1) City Of Owatonna 215 Walnut Avenue South Owatonna, MN 55060 (1) Fresh Thyme Farmer's Market 1615 1st Street Southwest Rochester, MN 55901 (1) City Of Saint Peter 114 West Nassau Street Saint Peter, MN 56082 (1) Saint Peter Food Cooperative 228 West Mulberry Street Saint Peter, MN 56082 (1) City Of Springfield 601 East Rock Street Springfield, MN 56087 (1) City Of Saint Cloud 501 1st Street North St. Cloud, MN 56303 (1) Doc's Sports Bar and Grill 88801 Warbler Lane Sturgeon Lake, MN 55783 (1) Northern Lights Casino - Walker 6800 Y Frontage Road Northwest Walker, MN 56484 (1) Waseca Utilities NaN null 19th Avenue Northwest Waseca, MN 56093 (1) White Bear Lake Superstore 3880 U.S. 61 White Bear Lake, MN 55110 (1) WSU - Integrated Wellness Complex 118 West Mark Street Winona, MN 55987 ➡ MS (2) NECDC STATION 2 (R) 101 Dempsey Rd. Byhalia, MS 38611 (2) CLW 5TH ST 1 (L) 301 5th Street South Columbus, MS 39701 ➡ NB (1) St. Hubert Express 890 Saint Anne St Bathurst, NB E2A 6X2 (1) Irving 1735 Hanwell Rd Hanwell, NB E3C 2B8 (1) Tesla - 13995 - Miramichi 2485 King George Hwy Miramichi, NB E1V 6W7 (1) Gateway Plaza 2 Gateway Dr Oromocto, NB E2V 4S3 (1) Visitor Info Centre 34 Mallard Dr Sackville, NB E4L 4C3 ➡ NC (1) City of Asheboro Library 201 Worth St Ashboro, NC 27203 (1) Parkside Town Commons 7129 O’Kelly Chapel Road Cary, NC 27519 (1) Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians 946 Tsalagi Rd. Cherokee, NC 28719 (1) Town of Franklin 95 E Main 95 E Main St. Franklin, NC 28734 (1) DEP Pierce and Co 4229 Sam Potts Hwy Hallsboro, NC 28442 (1) Richmond Community College 1042 W Hamlet Ave Hamlet, NC 28345 (1) City of Hickory-DCFC 306 MAIN AV NW Hickory, NC 28601 (1) Pilot Travel Center 683 1800 Princeton-Kenly Road Kenly, NC 27542 (1) dba Piggly Wiggly 61 2715 Hwy 11/55 Kinston, NC 28504 (1) City of Lowell 519 Park Cir Lowell, NC 28098 (1) Catawba Vale Collaborative LLC 96 Commerce St. Old Fort, NC 28762 (1) Triangle Stop - Saluda 1484 Ozone Dr Saluda, NC 28773 (1) City of Sanford - 101 East Humber st 101 E Humber St. Sanford, NC 27330 (1) Haywood CC West Waynesville An 23 Hendrix St Waynesville, NC 28786 (1) 402 S Bridge St 402 S Bridge St Wilkesboro, NC 28697 (1) Blacks Tire Service 1407 Castle Hayne Rd A Wilmington, NC 28401 (1) Quality Oil Company 1980 Pecan Ln Winston Salem, NC 27284 (1) City of Clinton 110 Loop St clinton, NC 28328 (1) Quality Mart 62 - 1736 NC 67 1736 NC 67 jonesville, NC 28642 ➡ ND (1) Simonson Station Store Minot 1310 South Broadway Minot, ND 58701 ➡ NJ (2) LIBERTY TOYOTA STATION 2 4397 U.S. 130 Burlington, NJ 08016 (2) BOARDWALK HONDA CPE250 1 6807 Tilton Rd Egg Harbor Township, NJ 08234 (2) WALDWICK PUBLIC DCFC #2 15 E Prospect St Waldwick, NJ 07463 (1) QUICKCHEK CP- QC186-2 3483 U.S. 22 Whitehouse Station, NJ 08889 (1) QUICKCHEK CP-QC186-1 3483 U.S. 22 Whitehouse station, NJ 08889 ➡ NM (1) COLUMBUS EV PARK 1 216 Broadway Deming, NM 88030 (2) AVANYU AVANYU LEFT 618 N Riverside Dr Española, NM 87532 ➡ NY (1) NYC FLEET DPRWFMARNA_1_L3 1 Marina Road Queens, NY 11369 (4) KENNETH DR Q KENNETH DR 1 375 Kenneth Drive Rochester, NY 14623 ➡ ON (1) Crowe’s Car Wash 8461 County Road 45 Alderville, ON K0K 2X0 (1) CenterLine Corporate - DC 415 Morton Drive LaSalle, ON N9J 3T8 (1) OXFORD DODGE DODGE L3 S1 1249 Hyde Park Road London, ON N6H 5K6 (1) IDEAL HONDA FAST CHARGER 1700 Toyo Cir Mississauga, ON L4W 0E7 (1) Myers Barrhaven Subaru - Fast Charger 4151 Strandherd Drive Ottawa, ON 45.2653 (4) IKEA EV FLEET 2 1475 The Queensway Toronto, ON M8Z 1T3 (1) Winash Limited Partnership - SmartDC 5550 Baldwin Street South Whitby, ON L1M 0M5 ➡ OR (1) WCEH Banks 660 Main Street Banks, OR 97106 (1) WCEH Detroit 220 D St Detroit, OR 97342 (1) WCEH McMinnville 499 NE Davis St McMinnville, OR 97128 (1) ARCO - Market Street NE, Salem 2979 Market St NE Salem, OR 97301 (1) WCEH Woodburn 2900 Tom Tennant Dr Woodburn, OR 97071 ➡ PA (2) BENNETT HYUNDAI SALES 2101 Cumberland St Lebanon, PA 17042 ➡ QC (1) Canadian Tire - Jonquière 2290 Blvd René Lévesque Jonquière, QC G7S 5Y5 (1) DION CHEV EV CPE250C-625-CCS 2200 Rue Sherbrooke Magog, QC J1X 4Z6 (1) RECHARGECO ST-LEONARD 01 7150 Boul Langelier Montréal, QC H1S 2X6 (2) HARDY RINGUETTE #4 1842 3e Avenue Val-d'Or, QC J9P 7A9 ➡ SD (1) Northwestern 117 Mitchell Boulevard Mitchell, SD 57301 ➡ TN (2) SPRFLD ELECTRIC STATION 1 (L) 401 N Main St. Springfield, TN 37172 (2) MLEC STATION 2 (R) W 210 West Main St Waverly, TN 37185 ➡ TX (1) AZTEC EV AZTEC CHEVROLET 772 U.S. 181 Beeville, TX 78102 (1) GROUP1AUTO CPE250 2 10155 Southwest Fwy Houston, TX 77074 (1) GROUP1AUTO CPE250 ALONE-3 10455 Southwest Fwy Houston, TX 77074 (1) Gigahub - Katy Fwy, Westlake 14401 Katy Fwy Houston, TX 77079 (2) WHOUSTON 250 GENESIS 2 16803 Katy Fwy Houston, TX 77094 (1) KV MAIN CAMPUS KV RETAIL DC 2 145 Avery Rd Kerrville, TX 78028 (1) HONDAOFCLEARLAK EXPP PUBLIC 1 2205 Gulf Fwy S League City, TX 77573 (2) MESSER HYUNDAI CPE250-PAIR2 4025 West Loop 289 Access Road Lubbock, TX 79407 (1) WORLD AUTO CHEVYPECOS 181 South Interstate 20 Frontage Road Pecos, TX 79772 (1) Target San Antonio #T0771 2810 Southwest Military Drive San Antonio, TX 78224 ➡ UT (1) DAVIS COUNTY UT DCG EAST 61 South Main Street Farmington, UT 84025 ➡ VA (1) LYNX VENTURES STATION 14 DC 0 E 4th St Richmond, VA 23224 ➡ VT (1) Grace Cottage Hospital 185 Grafton Road Townsend, VT 05353 ➡ WA (1) KIA OF EVERETT KIA OF EVERETT 229 Southwest Everett Mall Way Everett, WA 98204 (1) WCEH City of Pateros 203 Pateros Mall Pateros, WA 98846 (1) ARCO 7091 - 104th Drive NW, Stanwood 26930 104th Drive NW Stanwood, WA 98292 (1) Sumner Cannery Way 13608 Cannery Wy Sumner, WA 98390 ➡ WI (1) TOB CHARGEPOINT SHOWROOM LOT 20655 W Capitol Dr Brookfield, WI 53045 (1) Cadott River Country Plaza 641 Wisconsin 27 Cadott, WI 54727 (1) City of Eau Claire 122 East Madison Street Eau Claire, WI 54703 (1) 29 Pines 5872 33rd Avenue Eau Claire, WI 54703 (1) Hampton Inn And Suites 2610 Pearson Drive Hudson, WI 54016 (1) HEISER TOYOTA 1 CPE250 11301 W Metro Auto Mall Milwaukee, WI 53224 (1) Prime Bar Family Dining null N7294 Service Road Trego, WI 54888 (1) Kwik Trip 1760 Temte Street Helmen, WI 54636