“The Canadian Epstein” — Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard's own SON is helping police investigate his alleged sex crimes
Disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygard's own SON is helping police investigate his alleged sex crimes By Guy Adams Investigates For The Daily Mail 15 Jan 2021 Link to article 'He has become my arch-nemesis. I no longer regard him as my father . . . He is a monster. I am now here to serve in any way I can, to support survivors and the justice process and also to help expose the people who covered up his crimes.' Kai Bickle's world came tumbling down one night in May 2019, when he attended a dinner party at a lavishly decorated mansion overlooking the golden sands of Venice Beach in Los Angeles. The host was his father, Peter Nygard, a Canadian fashion tycoon famed for the hedonistic lifestyle he pursued at a global portfolio of high-end properties, including vast residences in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal, as well as New York, and, most notoriously, a Mayan-themed 'private luxury resort' in the Bahamas. Modelling himself on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the flamboyant Nygard, now 79, kept a revolving harem of girlfriends. Those caught up (often completely unwittingly) in this web had included actresses Susan Anton and Jennifer O'Neill, stripper-turned-reality star Anna Nicole Smith, and a former Wheel Of Fortune card turner by the name of Vanna White. His Caribbean parties, meanwhile, tended to attract a better class of A-lister. Past visitors to the island property had ranged from Jane Seymour and Bo Derek to Robert De Niro, , Michael Jackson and Joan Collins, not to mention and , who were photographed there in the early 2000s on an innocuous family holiday. The 2019 bash, during one of Peter's occasional business trips to LA, was to be a more down-to-earth affair. Roughly 20 guests, including Kai, 38, and his younger brother Jessar (one of roughly ten offspring Nygard has fathered via more than seven women) had been invited for food and drinks, followed by a late-night poker game. That was the plan, at least. But Kai never made it to the card- table. Instead, he fled the lavish premises in a state of distress, shortly after dinner, believing that he had just witnessed his father attempting to sexually assault an eight-year-old girl. Details of this ugly development are (it should be stressed) strongly disputed, and we shall examine them later. But the incident would kick-start an extraordinary chain of events that culminated just before Christmas, with the arrest of Peter Nygard on nine charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. Currently behind bars, with his $900 million (£660 million) business empire in tatters and the FBI poring over his computer hard-drives, the fallen tycoon has now been accused of rape or sexual assault by at least 57 women. Several of Nygard's accusers were children when the alleged crimes took place, and many claim they were drugged. At least 57 women have accused him. He will appear in court in Canada next week, seeking bail as he fights extradition to the USA. It is, perhaps, the most high-profile and shocking sex case since handcuffs were slapped on Jeffrey Epstein. And in a remarkable twist, it turns out that a leading figure in the increasingly public campaign to prosecute Mr Nygard is his aforementioned son, Kai. Upcoming documentary: ‘Unseamly’ Canadian Designer Peter Nygård True Crime Documentary Behind the scenes, I can reveal that Kai has spent the past 18 months secretly helping both the U.S. and Canadian authorities investigate his own father's alleged crimes. Keeping his role hidden from Nygard and his associates for several months, he has worked tirelessly to assist victims, and their legal teams. On the personal front, he has changed his name (taking up his mother's surname to become Kai Zen Bickle) and used his influence over various Nygard companies to block efforts to move his assets offshore, fearing that would allow him to flee. 'We have been engaged in a brutal battle against my father and his enablers,' is how Kai summed things up when we spoke this week. 'He has become my arch-nemesis. I no longer regard him as my father . . . He is a monster. I am now here to serve in any way I can, to support survivors and the justice process and also to help expose the people who covered up his crimes.' Perhaps most remarkably of all, Kai recently helped two of his younger siblings, one of whom remains a minor, to sue Peter Nygard over claims he 'engineered' the rape of his own sons. In an extraordinary lawsuit filed in August, the boys claimed that their leathery, multi-millionaire father instructed one of his long-standing girlfriends (who was also a sex worker) to 'make a man' out of them. The first of these alleged attacks (which, again, are vehemently denied by Nygard) took place in the Bahamas 2004, when the son was 15 and the woman was in her mid-20s. The second occurred in Winnipeg in 2018, when the younger child was 14 and the woman was in her 40s. Court papers filed by the boys stated that the unnamed girlfriend was instructed to seduce Nygard's son by showering in his bathroom so that he 'could see her naked'. Then she raped him. Afterwards, she allegedly told the boy he 'wasn't bad' for a 'baby.' The next morning, Nygard's girlfriend brought him breakfast in bed, kissing him on the lips and announcing: 'Mommy's got you.' Kai says he first became aware of this appalling incident last spring, and was 'sickened' to hear his brothers' claims. He would often yell and scream at his staff. 'We all spoke and decided the best course of action was to file a lawsuit publicly in the hope that other survivors would feel safe to come forward and also file criminally against Nygard,' he says. 'We were originally going to have me in the suit as my young brother's guardian, but in the end decided not to because it would reveal to Nygard that I was working against him . . . At the time I was [secretly] doing everything I could to improve the odds that he would get arrested.' To appreciate the extraordinary journey taken by Kai, we must wind the clock back to the mid-1980s, when his father was one of Canada's most talked-about self-made millionaires. The son of penniless immigrants from Finland, Peter Nygard had launched his empire in the late 1960s, with an $8,000 (£6,000) investment in a struggling fashion firm. By the time he was 30, the company had become one of North America's most successful suppliers of leisure and sportswear, while his flamboyant eccentricities, which included keeping parrots in his office and filling the lobby of Nygard HQ with bronze busts of himself, turned him into an object of public fascination. In 1987, the party-loving entrepreneur purchased a 4.5-acre patch of the island of New Providence in the Bahamas and set about turning it into a 'dream home' where he could indulge his champagne lifestyle. Over the ensuing years, he built 150,000 sq ft of Mayan-themed buildings, stretching over a dozen 'cabana-style' residences. The buildings at Nygard Cay eventually included a casino, a disco hut (with cameras beneath the dance floor, reportedly to shoot images of revellers from below), and the world's largest sauna, a 6,000 sq ft lodge made from 2ft-thick Canadian pine logs. In the grounds were fake volcanoes that belched dry ice, a flock of peacocks, stone cobras which hissed steam at sunset, 60 ft towers festooned with hundreds of flaming torches (lit nightly by staff) and giant statues of nude women, purportedly modelled on some of Nygard's favourite girlfriends. At weekends, he would host lavish parties, which appeared on various TV documentaries, including Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous. The place became a magnet for freeloading celebrities and, while Kai believes they generally had the most fleeting and brief relationship with Nygard, photos of their visits were then plastered across company literature and websites. Prince Andrew, to cite one example, was recorded for posterity wandering with the long-haired fashion magnate on the beach, wearing blue shorts and boat shoes. Born in the 1980s, Kai spent the first three years of his life in the Bahamas until his mother, Patricia, left Nygard, with whom she'd had three children but never married. They moved first to California and then to the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. Over subsequent years, he had almost no regular contact with the fashion tycoon aside from occasional visits during school holidays, where he met various half-siblings. 'He would have one family weekend per year at his lake cottage, and a few days set aside for Christmas,' says Kai of the somewhat unorthodox arrangement. 'During those times, the days were filled with activities like horseback riding or mini golf. 'He could be a very charismatic person when he wanted to be and the family weekends were very light and brief.' In the very limited time he spent with his father during childhood, Kai saw nothing that gave him reason to suspect that Peter Nygard was guilty of criminality, though he did have a highly volatile personality. 'He would yell and scream at his staff often, and that always was upsetting to everyone around it, but he would describe his yelling as 'passion' because of his 'high standards',' Kai says. Nygard's children were further told that he 'lived a consensual, non-monogamous lifestyle,' Kai says. 'He made speeches at dinner to family when we were together to talk about how he hoped everyone got a wonderful partner and wished that he could find that special someone, but that it wasn't the life for him. 'He also had girlfriends that were persistently with him, always two or three, and often they were around for years. He wasn't embarrassed about it. He flaunted it on TV, it was part of his brand, something he showed the whole world. He was proud of it.' Be that as it may, rumours of predatory behaviour by Nygard —and worse — had occasionally reared their ugly head, only to be quickly suppressed: a relatively easy task before the internet. In 1980, for example, he was charged with the rape of an 18-year-old, but the charge was dropped when the complainant refused to testify. In 1996, three female employees meanwhile filed sexual harassment complaints in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It looked like his hand was on her thigh, rubbing. One, a 39-year-old communications manager, said that, when called into Nygard's office, she would 'find him in a state of undress . . . with his hands down the front of his pants, fondling himself.' He settled by giving the women $18,500 (£13,600) and denied any wrongdoing. Then, in 2010, a Canadian TV network put out a Panorama-style documentary about Nygard, focusing on alleged sex abuse and harassment of former employees. It quoted a former stewardess on his private plane who alleged that on one journey — during which Nygard was accompanied by a troupe of topless women — he lost his temper with staff, shouting: 'You are nothing! You are garbage! I am God!' The programme also alleged that Nygard had engaged in 'inappropriate sexual contact' with a young woman who had been brought to his home in 2003 from the Dominican Republic. Nygard denied that either incident had happened, and sued to stop the documentary being broadcast. Fast forward to May 2019, however, and those ugly incidents were largely forgotten. Kai, who was by then in his late 30s, had worked for his father's companies for just over two years after leaving college, but quit to pursue a career in activism and health science. Nygard's trip to Los Angeles afforded them a rare opportunity to catch up, so he attended the aforementioned dinner party in Venice Beach. As the night wore on, he recalls becoming uncomfortable about his father's behaviour towards an eight-year-old girl, who was attending with her mother, one of Nygard's old girlfriends. 'He's got her sitting right next to him at dinner, which is usually his girlfriend chair. And he's a creature of routine. So I'm already thinking this is weird. 'He's trying to act like the Papa. It was just weird . . . I'm noticing things. I'm noticing that he's telling her little secrets at dinner. Putting his hand close to her ear and going all hush-hush.' At the end of dinner, most of the other 20-odd guests got up to adjourn to the card table. However, Kai adds: 'I'm still watching him. Her chair gets pushed back. He brings her round to him. 'She was on his right side. He brings her to his left side, with his arm around her waist, and I see his elbow change and start moving as if — it looked to me, I couldn't see, but it looked like his hand was on her upper thigh, and rubbing. That's what it looked like to me . . . Everything in my body told me he was doing something terrible.' 'I had a huge adrenaline rush and I immediately told the mother to get her daughter away from him,' he adds. 'I stood up next to him and looked in his eyes. At that moment, for me, it was like all the walls were crashing down around him . . . And I realised that, yeah, he's probably trying to groom that girl.' Nygard vigorously denied wrongdoing, and even called Kai 'sick' for thinking as much. But Kai was unconvinced. Then, in February last year, ten women filed a bombshell lawsuit in New York claiming that the fashion magnate had used wealth and status to 'entice underage girls' from 'young, impressionable and often impoverished backgrounds' into his home, where they would be 'plied with alcohol' and (some allege) date-rape drugs, before being taken to Nygard's private quarters, where he would 'assault, rape and sodomise' them. Court papers claimed they were then coerced into joining a globe-trotting harem of sex workers paid thousands of dollars from Nygard's company funds and trafficked around the world on his company's private jet, which reportedly boasts a stripper pole. One alleged victim, who was just 14 at the time, claimed Nygard raped her and paid her $5,000 (£3,700). Another said her encounter with Nygard began with him showing her pornography after which he raped her, 'causing her extraordinary trauma and pain', the suit states. Three of his existing ten accusers were 14 at the time. Three more were 15. Within days, dozens more alleged victims had come forward. By the summer, some 57 survivors were pursuing legal action — and the number of alleged victims had reached 100. Kai again confronted his father, only to be told it was all 'lies' and asked to speak out publicly in his father's support. But days later a friend texted Kai to complain about a recent visit to Nygard's house in Los Angeles. 'He said he'd brought a female friend with him, who had one or two drinks and had started to feel very high. Nygard took her up to his room and aggressively had sex with her, not using a condom. 'When I heard that, I knew he was not only as bad as people said he was, but was a dangerous criminal and had to be stopped.' He duly alerted the authorities about the friend's message. In a podcast called Live To Walk Again, released this week, he revealed that he began helping both the police and the alleged victims' lawyers, who he regards as 'heroes'. Over the summer, Kai also used official positions held in Nygard firms to block two apparent efforts to move assets overseas, amid concerns that the tycoon might flee to evade justice. PODCAST EPISODE: Peter Nygard Discusses His Father 'Through the course of ten months I also helped several survivors to file criminally against him, and spent countless hours on the phone with survivors, lawyers and authorities,' he says. Last month Nygard was arrested on U.S. charges at a home in the Royalwood area of Winnipeg. He spent Christmas behind bars and has consistently denied any wrongdoing, saying he 'expects to be vindicated' in court. Kai has renounced his inheritance and is working on 'making the world a better place' by campaigning to close legal loopholes exploited by sex offenders. 'I'm very happy earning my own money, as I have all my life. We've never had a trust fund or an allowance, and since his money has been made through pain and suffering, I won't accept a potential inheritance,' he says. His father's cash, he says, should instead go towards compensating victims. 'My focus now is to help the healing process.'
This is what I saw on a reddit post is this list true ? List Of Things Muslims Consider Forbidden (Haram) I grew up in a very conservative Islamic environment. 10 years earlier I left the religion. Here is the things that are forbidden by Islam For both genders
Music with Instruments.
Un-Islamic decor (Statues)
Toys (anything resembling a living thing)
Drawing and Art for anything that resembles a human.
Eating pork and monkeys (because they're related to Jews)
Drinking Alcohol
Gambling
Adoption in any form
Playing dice or anything that depends on luck as it goes against Allah's predetermined fate.
Playing anything that results in winning a cash prize.
Interest in debt (only interest free is allowed)
Reading and Writing anything that goes outside the realm of Islam (no high fantasy where they pray to gods other than Allah, for example)
Poetry.
Owning pets other than Cats. (this is because one of Muhammad's friends had cats he was called Abu Hurayra , Father of kittens)
Dancing.
Non Islamic culture (Wearing jeans and t-shirts; Casual stuff)
Imitating Non Muslims (Plucking eyebrows and 'beautifying' self)
Working with non Muslims in restaurants, casinos, temples, banks, courts, bars, and music venues.
Befriending Non Muslims and calling them "Brothers" and "Sisters" all companionship with Non Muslims should be professional only
Premarital relationships.
Making friends with the other gender.
Gender Equality
Talking to other genders before marriage.
Showing affection in public.
Staring or looking directly at the opposite gender.
Masturbating
Not praying five times a day.
Not washing self (Wu'Du) before praying or reading the quran
Homosexuality, or talking with people who are homosexual.
Leaving the religion, or talking with people who left it.
Talking with people outside of the Abrahamic religions
Marrying a slave man/woman that you own.
Marrying your step sistebrother if she/he breast feed from the same mother --If she/he didn't it is okay to marry your step sistebrother--
Slaughtering an animal without saying 'Bismillah'
Stunning the Animal before slitting it's throat
Eating said animal (non halal food)
For Men
(Men) Wearing Gold jewelry
(Men) Piercings
(Men) Marrying more than four wives
(Men) Marrying your birth mother, your grandmother, your daughter, and your granddaughter. (Everyone else is okay, EX Marrying your cousin, your step mother after father died, your mother in law and your grand-grand daughter is okay)
(Men) Wearing shorts that show the knees.
(Men) Shaving body hair
(Men) Wearing perfume (they use something called Oud/Agarwood, it is incense)
(Men) Shaving beard lower than 1/2 cm.
(Men) Having a long Mustache.
For Women
(Women) Showing hair or skin in public.
(Women) Talking louder than a man.
(Women) Talking to another man, other than husband.
(Women) Refusing sex when asked to by her husband.
(Women) Going outside without the consent of her husband.
(Women) Wearing Jewelry in public.
(Women) Wearing Makeup in public.
(Women) Wearing Perfume in public.
(Women) Arguing with your husband.
(Women) Arguing with your husband's other wives.
(Women) Denying to marry a man, if you're not a widow or ex wife.
(Women) Marrying another man other than husband.
(Women) Marrying a man 6 months after breakup with ex husband.
(Women) Divorcing a man. (only he's the one who's allowed to do that)
(Women) Accuse a man of rape without 4 male witnesses or 8 female witnesses of the actual rape.
(Women) Marrying a Non Muslim man
(Women) Having body hair and imitating men
(Women) Lifting her hand against her husband --Even if he's beating her senseless--
(Women) Make wedding arrangements.
(Women) Praying with men.
(Women) Being in the company of other men.
(Women) Sitting in the living room with the husband and his friends.
(Women) Eating with the husband and his friends.
(Women) Refuse to cook food.
(Women) Work outside the house without a guardian.
(Women) Be working in a company of other men outside the house.
(Women) Leave the room without permission.
(Women) Question the husband critically.
(Women) Becoming the "woman of the house" after her husband passed away
(Women) Becoming a father-figure of a fatherless son (he becomes like her husband, he makes the rules)
And most importantly writing something like this post. Blasphemy is death.
OBLIGATORY FILLER MATERIAL – Giving thanks edition: Kickin’ around Caracas, Pt. 5
Continuing… (It's Part 6 in the saga, I fucked up. Sorry.) So, after a few re-fueling and impromptu cigar-purchasing stops in South and Central America, we wheel up to the deserted jetway at LAX. “Thought we were going to Elmendorf?” I asked. “This isn’t it?” the pilot replied, feigning worry. “No.”, I replied, “Looks like California. Fruits and nuts. All around. What’s going on? One minute we’re off to Texas, then Cali, then Texas again, now we end up here at the California airport of the iconic tower.” “Yeah, it’s confusing enough haulin’ civilians around. But when we get a call from Virginia, we tend to comply without any questions,” the pilot explains. “Aw, shit!”, I sort of exclaim, “Rack and Ruin called?” “Yeah”, the pilot replies, “Figures you’d know these guys. They said they were closer to LAX rather than Texas and had us divert here. In fact, you look over there, see that dark blue Chevy? That’s them; and evidently, your ride.” I tipped the airman from earlier a couple of cigars as he helped me with my gear off the plane and into the trunk of Rack and Ruin’s plain-Jane blue late modeled Chevy. Had to move the Sidewinder Missiles off to one side, though. “Most honorable Agents Lack and Luin!” I quipped in my faux-racist greeting. “What the hell, guys? I’ve got to get to Japan and get some newly rigidified digits.” “Let’s see your hand”, Agent Rack asks. “Nasty.” “Yeah”, I sigh “And with the medicos in South America and their penchant for plaster, I don’t so much have a left hand as more of an ankylosaur tail.” “Or Thagomizer”, Agent Ruin tittered. “Anyone gives you grief, and one upside the head should set them right. Or dead.” “You’re a riot, Ruin.” I replied, “But not entirely incorrect.” We all agreed that I really didn’t need any extra accouterments to make myself look more dangerous. I mean with my severe haircut, stern beard clip, and perpetual ‘Go fuck yourself’ scowl. “Yeah”, I replied, stroking the aforementioned beard, “I just can’t get that. I’m such a people person.” After Agents Rack and Ruin finished drying their eyes from laughing what I thought was en extremis, we finally got down to business. “So, what’s the skinny, guys”, I asked. “New marching orders?” “No. Not as such”, Agent Ruin said, still sniggering over my ‘people person’ comment. I see we’re moving. Agent Rack is just driving casually, like Chewbacca when they were waiting to see if the Empire went for that expensive Bothan code. “Then, what?” I asked, getting a slight bit piqued. “Well”, Agent Ruin noted, “When you went to South America, you took some of your artillery collection with, correct?” “You know I did. You even made some snide comments about my personal choice of sidearms and their ‘excessive’ calibers, if memory serves”, I reiterated. “And if you are proceeding normally, as you always do, they’re all nestled in the trunk of this very car. All cleaned, quiet, unloaded, and smelling sweetly of Hoppe’s Number 9 and WD 40, correct?” Rack inquired. “Yes?” I cautiously venture. “Well, ya’ big dummy, do you think they’re going to let you saunter into Tokyo armed like the Third Fleet?” Agent Ruin chuckled. “Um…well…I do have a Diplomatic Passport.” I ventured. “That’s not going to work this time.”, Agent Ruin said, shaking his head. “They’re tighter than Dick’s Hatband about sidearms. Want to bring in your Rigby SXS .500 Nitro Express double rifle? Not a problem. Sidearms, especially in your alien hunting calibers, nope.” Well, that’s just….*dandy!”, I reply, semi-put out. “Now what the hell am I going to do?” “Ever think that’s why Ruin and I are here, now?”, Rack asks. “And here I thought it was just so you could bask in the warm glow of my fucking wonderful personality. Or that you actually cared about me as a real goddamn human”, I joshed. “Ummm…yeah”, Rack replies, “There’s no way we can answer that without going on some Deadpool list. “ I agreed. “OK, here’s the deal: you get your sidearms, ammunition, speed loaders, brass knuckles, Asp, laser range finders, Sap, Zeiss scopes, Kukri, Wisconsin Cheese Whittler, Buck folding skinner, Marine K-Bar, those two ultra-illegal Cheburkov Cobra titanium switchblades...” “Three. Olga the KGB lady sent me one for Geologist’s Day.” “Ahem. Those threeultra-illegal Cheburkov switchblades, that Wyoming Speedholer, your MASER Time-Distance Computer, garrote, pocket rail gun and whatever else lethal you carry and deposit it in the iron box in the trunk. We’ll ensure that it’s delivered to Esme post-haste. And by post-haste I mean one of our guys will deliver it personally.” “Well…I suppose”, I conceded, “But best send someone who’s been to the house recently. I don’t know how much bigger Khan has grown since I left on this little fantasy trip. Wouldn’t want a star on the wall in Langley for someone eaten by a mastiff. Want to see a picture….Oh, bother. That’s right. My phone’s at the bottom of fucking Lake Maracaibo.” “Good point”, Ruin interjects, “Guess we’ll do a little road trip and deliver it ourselves. Best call Esme and let her know what’s going on.” “I have no objections to your proposals. Please give Esme this when you see her. I had some luck in the Calaveras Casino and if I don’t send her some mad money. Ouch. She’ll never forgive me for not taking her along to Japan.” I asked. “But I thought Esme hated Japan? Too crowded and too ‘fussy’, I believe was her estimation.” Ruin asked. “Yes, but once she saw the Ginza, all bets were off. Shopping the likes of which even Allah himself hasn’t seen.” I replied, slowly shaking my head. “I see”, Ruin said, “Well, since you’re off to Sapporo, perhaps you can do a recon for Esme on the shopping there.” “Not bad. Not bad at all.”, I smiled, “Now I know why I let you guys hang around with me.” So, as advertised, I am now standing on the tarmac at LAX, basically feeling naked. “Can’t I keep just one switchblade?” I moaned to Agent Rack. “Go ahead, if you’re really keen on donating it to Japanese customs”, he replied. “Fuckbuckets.” I groused. “There, there now. That’s the usual Dr. Rocknocker of which we’re all so fond.” Agent Ruin chuckled. “Remember, you do have that wallet-sized credit card gizmo from the Company. So you’re not entirely ‘naked’. Think of it as an emergency breechcloth.” He smiled. “I’d like a larger model if you don’t mind. It’s chilly out here.” I joshed. After Agents Rack and Ruin stripped me metaphorically naked as they de-weaponized me, they handed me a Business Class ticket to Tokyo, and a pass to the Japan Airlines Hospitality Suite and Lounge. “So sorry you guys can’t hang around and have a few farewell snorts”, I chided, “But you’ve got a bit of a drive, so best be off before the weather turns to shit.” “Who says we’re driving?” Agent Rack asked as he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the ready and waiting C-130 cargo plane currently taxiing slowly in our direction. “Well, in that case”, I smiled even more broadly, “Let’s invite the flight crew to join us. That’ll make the flight home all that much more interesting.” After near tear-jerking farewell sentimentalities, i.e., “Piss on you”, “Get stuffed” and “Take a fuckin’ hike”; Agents Rack and Ruin, my weapons and the Agency’s plain-Jane Blue Chevy were all nestled snugger than buggers in ruggers in the belly of the thundering C-130. Now truly on my own, I trudge the hundred thousand or so centisteps to my departure terminal, make a quick recon that my flight’s still slated to go in a generally westward direction, and hightail it to the nearest courtesy desk to ask for a motorized cart to take me and my remaining luggage to the JAL Hospitality Suite. Hey. I’m old, infirm, and currently among the walking wounded. Anyone that disagrees risks an Ankylosaur tail club swat or Thagomizer to the skull. Finally ensconced in the JAL Hospitality Suite, Polo Lounge of course; I was drinking Tokyo Teas (3 oz. vodka, 2 oz. gin, 2 oz. rum, 1 oz. triple sec, 1 oz. Midori, good splash of lime juice, a slight splash of 7-Up (diet, of course), over ice with a lime wheel) with Pabst Blue Ribbon Extra 1844 chasers and Hangar One’s “Fog Point” vodka on the side, hiding from the brutish realities of this foul year of two thousand and twenty-something, Common Era… I’ve already called Esme and we’ve had a good, long chat. She still managed to give me her shopping list for whenever I find myself bored on the Ginza. She’ll be shocked when she learns that I’m not going to be in Tokyo long, but have 1st class tickets on the Bullet Train to Sapporo. Still, I’ll probably find myself in Pole Town or the Stellar Place there, trading piles of US greenbacks for locally produced Japanese curios and clothing. I can hardly wait. I order another round of drinks, as the wonderful attendants in the Hospitality Suite were bored out of their skulls because of the COVID-induced drop-in customers flying anywhere that requires a hospitality room stay, and I was virtually the only one around. They tried their level best to outdo each other when it comes to Japanese efficiency and friendliness. After a couple of hours, they ask if I would like something from the grill, as the day chef had “the COVID” and the night chef just arrived. A quick perusal of the menu and I chose a 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse and another round of drinks. I usually don’t like to eat too much before I fly, but JAL tells me the flight is going to be virtually empty, something like <121 pax, all told, so restroom availability shouldn’t be too much of a concern. Plus, who am I to say no to a free, blue 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse? There was a bit of difficulty conveying to the chef through the intermediaries of the hospitality just how I wanted my steak. “Blue,” I said. “Brue?” was the reply. “Rare. Very, very rare.” I continued. Look of total bewilderment. I drag out my Personal Language Pro, speak “Steak, very, very rate” into the infernal gizmo, and hand the contraption to the attendant. “珍しい、非常に珍しいステーキ?”[ Mezurashī, hijō ni mezurashī sutēki?] “Raw! Nama!” I say, louder than need be. They toddle off to find the chef. “How is it sir, that you would like your steak cooked?” he asks. “Very rare. Just a minute or two per side. Inside still cold.” I instructed. All I got for the trouble was a puzzled smile. “Give me the language gizmo…” I type in a few words… “お尻を洗い、角をノックオフして、ここから出してください” [O shiri o arai,-kaku o nokkuofu shite, koko kara dashite kudasai.] “Wash its ass, knock its horns off, and walk it out here.” “OH!” as the lightbulb pops. “Rare. Got it! Excellent!” the chef laughs and zips back to the kitchen. Like I always say, I’m nothing if not the international ambassador of amity and goodwill. “Crack tubes!” Dinner was fantastic. I do wish I could have somehow mailed the Porterhouse bone back home for Khan. After that hambone incident, he might even taste it. Finally on the plane, in an almost empty Business Class, the flight captain informs us that we’re headed to Haneda Airport Tokyo and anyone not headed in that direction better ‘haul ass off’ the flight or forever hold their peace. Late-night international flights tend to be a bit more wooly than your average Chicago to Omaha gig. Especially when the flight’s damn near empty and we have the next 12 hours or so to be best friends. We taxi, turn and head into the wind. I’m doctoring up a couple of dossiers and keeping my personal cabin attendant, Luna since there were two of us in Business and two business flight attendants, busy with her trying to play ‘Stump the Geologist’. “I’ll bet you never had this before.” She beamed and handed me a tumbler of very dangerous-looking brown liquor. I cautiously sniff, take a modest gulp, swirl and glug the rest down. “Ohishi Single Sherry Cask”, I say with a muffled belch. “Light. Fruity. An Englishman’s drink.” “Oh. You knew. Let me try again.” She smiles beatifically. “I have no objections to your proposal.” I smile as nicely as this crotchety old Komodo Dragon could. She returns with another flagon of spirits; it smells of obsidian, leather, and earth. I just had some of this back in LAX. I take a snort, smile, and shotgun the rest. “Hibiki Japanese Harmony…lovely stuff.” I smile. “A little light for my jaded palate, but I’d never turn it down if it were free.” “Oh, you win again. Wait. One more.” She smiles and skitters off to the galley. She returns with another soupçon of some more dangerous brown liquor. “Here, try this. It will make you very popular at social gatherings”. She smiles. Sniff. “Splendid.” Snort. Swirl. Smile. Shotgun. “Kanosuke New Born, if I’m not mistaken.” I smile back. “Very nice. I really do like this one.” “You too good at this. One more!” she stands and stomps off defiantly. She returns in a trice and hands me the glass. “Hmm…brown. Light notes of earth, leather, dating your daughter, and Kentucky… “Beam Suntory, right?” “You know them all!” she says, feigning irritation. “And I thank you. Those were all excellent. Now, anything in the dangerous clear liquor category? I asked. Luna smiled as I palmed off a 20k yen tip. “Oh, no sir. Wait until we land.” She demurred, referring to the gratuity; which is know is not de rigueur in the Orient, but she didn’t seem to mind. “Just in case we never make it to Tokyo”, I laughed, unknowingly presciently. We both chuckled about that last line as she tried out various sakes and shōchūs and an actual Japanese ‘White Liquor’ (ホワイトリカー), which were all excellent as was the company. I tell her that I need to get some work done and could she bring me a tall Rocknocker. After explain the origins and construction of the eponymous drink, she brings me one that must tip the scales at 1 or so liters. She settles down to an empty seat and I get after the work that I need to finish before we land. I’m about ½ way through my drink when it felt as if the plane hit a brick wall. She quivered and quaked and clutched at herself while I made some comments about the pilot’s mental health. We dropped like a paralyzed falcon, then just as suddenly, felt like it was an express elevator to Angel’s 11. The plane bucked and shimmied, wickedly. Then we slam-danced right and fell a few more stories. It was like we were in a Mixmaster and the owner was trying out every speed. The emergency lights in the 777-300ER popped on, and the fasten seat belt sign barked loudly so even sleeping travelers could enjoy the show. Rinse. Spin. Shudder. Repeat. Finally, the ride smooths out and we hear the captain on the blower. “This is your captain speaking…ah, we seem to have hit some uncharted turbulence back there.” “Thanks, Captain Obvious”, I muttered. “Everything’s A-OK. “ he reports. “That’s good”, I note. “But…” “There’s always the but…” I groan. “…we have a couple of warning lights for which we can’t quite account. So to just be safe and certain, we’re going to divert to Hawaii, get a clean bill of health and resume this flight once we make sure everything here is hunky-dory.” There were scattered groans and applause. Add them together and divide by two and the average response on the flight was “Meh. Whatever.” Except for the other guy in Business, with whom I hadn’t shared two words. He began to absolutely lose his shit. “Oh, man! We’re so screwed! Mechanical malfunction? What does that mean?” he positively fizzed with fear. The flight attendants tried to calm him down, to no avail. They basically gave up and said they’d report his misgivings to the Captain. I motioned over to my personal flight attendant, Luna, and asked if I could be of service. “Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled at me, “If you could speak with him. You are so calm, and he is…” “Losing his bloody mind”, I chuckled as I finished her sentence for her. “Of course, I’ll take a stab at it.” So, I grab my drink and ease over to my Business Class partner and introduce myself. “Hey, pal. How’s it going? I’m Dr. Rock, gentleman, scholar, and connoisseur of cigars and things alcoholic. You doing OK?” He looks at me with an ashen face and his eyes the size of bloodshot dinner plates. “Yeah. I’m Todd Schotts. I’m flying to Japan for business.” He mumbles “No surprise there,” I reply calmly and take a slug of my drink. “But now we’re all going to die. The plane is busted and we’ll crash…” he started off again. “So, Todd is it? Good. You drink?” I asked. “Yeah?”, he stammered back. I asked Luna to make us a fresh batch of my eponymous cocktails. “OK, Todd, listen up”, I began after the drinks were served, “I have flown literally millions of miles over the last 4 decades. On Aeroflot when it was still the USSR. On TACA (Take A Chance Airways), on Chalk’s in the Caribbean, on Bob’s Verrifast Plane Company in Rhodesia, on regional carriers that don’t even exist anymore. All over the world. Had some bad experiences flying, and me ol’ mugger, this ain’t one of them. This is nothing more than the glitch for this mission.” I chuckled lightly and complimented Luna on a fantastic drink. “Yeah…yeah…yeah…but we have to land and check out some lights…” Todd squealed. “Well now, Todd. It would be rather difficult to do any external assessment while in flight, don’t you agree?” I asked. “But we’re diverting. We have to land and that adds more risk. We’re going to crash and die!” he was coming more and more unglued. “I will bet you every cent you have on your person and home bank accounts that that will not happen”, I chuckled. That took him by surprise. At least it shut him up for a while. “Look, Todd. This is Boeing’s latest model. They have the most incredible safety record. And if a little clear air turbulence were to be knocking planes out of the sky, don’t you think we’d hear about it as the press went berserk?” I asked. “But they don’t know what the lights mean! What if one of the engines’s out? How far can we fly on one engine?” Todd stuttered. Having my fill of a supposedly grown man with inane childlike fears, I calmly replied, “All the way to the crash site.” He went white. “...hope we hit something hard. I don’t want to limp away from this.” He went limp. Then I went to my seat and motioned for Luna to prepare a reload. Of course, 45 minutes later, we land without incident at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, Honolulu Hawaii. We were told to just wait around until they figure out what the problem if any, was. They had officials waiting at the end of the jetway to check our COVID status and passports before they let us loose in the terminal. I asked Luna if she knew this airport. She noted that she did. “Is there a JAL hospitality room here at this airport? I asked. “Yes, Doctor. It’s the Sakura Lounge. It is located on the third level above The Local, Terminal 2.” She replied. “Please notify whoever needs to know that that’s where I’ll be for the duration”, I smiled and handed her my business card. “See you soon, I hope.” “Oh, Dr. Rock”, she replied, “I am sure it is nothing much. We’ll be back in the air within mere hours.” “Well then”, I smiled, “Guess I’d better get ready to hoof it to the lounge.” “Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled, “No rush. I will call for you a courtesy cart. You are injured, you are Business, you are priority.” “I love that Asian efficiency.” I smiled back and toddled down the jetway. At the terminus of the jetway, I show my COVID-clear papers, dates and times of my Anti-Virus vaccine administrations, the letter from Virginia clearing me of all detention, and my red Russian diplomatic passport. While in the cart, whizzing our way to the JAL lounge, the driver said “Man! You must be some kind of VIP. You were through that welcoming committee in less than two minutes!” “Me? Nah!”, I chuckled, “Just an old phart of a geologist that they didn’t want to mess with. Not on such a bright, sunny day as this.” “I see you’re not wearing a mask.” The driver quipped. “Very observant. There are reasons for that.” I replied. He careens around a corner and if this were a normal pre-Covid day, I’m certain we’d have killed hundreds. However, the airport, as I’ve come to grow accustomed to, was virtually deserted. “Yeah? Like what?” he asks. “Well, Scooter, 1. I have an active and hardworking immune system that I let off the chain every once in a while for exercise. Got to let it know what it’s up against, right? 2. I’ve had all my shots and some that were experimental. They seem to have worked. And 3. I find it difficult to drink and smoke cigars while wearing a mask. However, if you’d prefer, I will mask up. No problem, though it still is optional.” “Nah, man”, he said, “I was just wondering if you were one of those religious idiots or conspiracy nuts.” Nope”, I smiled back, “Just another geologist out in the world plying his trade for cash. Y’know, whorin’ around for money.” He laughs aloud as we skid to a stop right in front of Lounge. I slip the guy a $20 and ask if he’d listen for the JAL flight I was just on. If we’re going on ahead today, I’d need him to scoot by and putt-putt me back to the plane. He laughs and pockets the $20 as quick as a mink ruts. “No worries. I’ll just hang around this area. I hear anything about the flight, I’ll come and let you know.” He grins. “Good man”, I say, as I hand him my card. “I’m Dr. Rocknocker. Call me Rock”. “And I’m Kapula Mano, call me Kap” he replies. “Good man”, I say again, “Hope to see you in a while.” He grins, floors his electric cart, and peels out at speeds approaching 4.5 MPH. I wander into the lounge, show my credentials, and am escorted to a post up on Mahogany Ridge. The bar is very quiet. Besides the bartender, I can’t see anyone else in the darkened and Smooth Jazz-infused drinking emporium. I order a local drink, a Mai Tai, just for the experience and something a bit different. It’s served in a goldfish bowl on a stem, bedecked with a slice of lime, a sprig of mint, a stick of sugar cane, a polychromatic orchid, and the obligate paper umbrella. “Ah. Mai Tai. I will enjoy it.” I said to no one in particular. One was enough, and I decided to go back to the old standard. Once I explained to the bartender what that was, he made them heroic and enthusiastically. I’m reading up on a random dossier, making notes in a new file, and puffing away on a Fuentes Onyx double Maduro Churchill cigar. I hear a slight cough coming from my right, and this here lovely lady, she sat to my immediate starboard and looked at me semi-quizzically. Not in the mood for shenanigans of any stripe, I give her the obligate Baja Canada nod and tilt of the drink. I return to my dossiers and continue to read and take notes. “Excuse me!” I hear. Fearing the worst, either the woman is Karen-oid anti-smoking or a religious fruit-and-nutburger, I slowly turn to face her and reply, somewhat glacially, I have to admit. “What?” “That cigar…” “Here we go…” I mutter, eyes rolling northward. “Smells exquisite. Could you tell me the brand? My husband would enjoy some like that.” She notes. Instantly my demeanor switches 1800. “Yes, ma’am. It’s an Arturo Fuentes Onyx. Churchill size, or 60 ring x 7” length, double Maduro. Here, take one for your husband. I have an ample supply.” I smile. “Oh, no. I couldn’t. Could I?” she asks. “Please. I insist.” I smile the best I could given the circumstances. “Thank you. You’re too kind…umm…Mr….?” “Doctor. Doctor Rocknocker. World traveler, oilman, and international ambassador of amity, good drinks, and fine cigars. Call me Rock” I said. “Oh! A Doctor?” she brightens. “Yes, of Petroleum Geology and Engineering. Not medicine.” I chuckle. She chuckles back. “And I am Hella Aaberg”, as she offers her hand for a quick shake. “Interesting name, Hella. Scandinavian or Old German heritage?” I ask. “On my father’s side. He’s Finnish.” She replies. “But I’ll wager your mother is not Scandinavian, correct?” I ask. “She was from Truk, an island…” “In the South Pacific, Micronesia. Was she from Weno city?” I asked. “Why yes. How could you possibly know that?” she asked. “Oh, I’ve been there. Great diving amongst the WWII wrecks. I think it’s actually called ‘Chuuk Lagoon’ or something like that now.” I said. “That’s right! Amazing. Where else have you been?” she asked. “Anywhere there’s oil, strife, booze, cigars, heavy explosives and typically long distances from whatever most normal people call civilization,” I replied with a chuckle. Suddenly, I hear a voice booming out behind me. “Why don’t you save that rapier-like wit for those musky-fuckers back home, Rocko?” My expression changes. My eyes pop fully wide open. “Hella?” I asked. “Yes?” “May I ask you a favor?” “You can ask…” “Thank you. Now, looking over my shoulder, is there a hulking goon of a person, thin up top, paunchy halfway down with the most ridiculously tiny sized shoes you’ve ever seen for a so-called grown man?” I ask. “Yes. Yes, there is.” She replies. “I thought so. Many thanks.” I spin and launch off my barstool and grab Toivo by the hand. He hadn’t seen my left-hand Thagomizer yet. “Toivo! You old sumbitch. What the flying fennec fox fuck are you, of all people, doing in Hawaii?” I laughed. “Just keeping an eye on you, Rock!” he laughed equally as loud. “No, fucking-A, seriously. What the actual fuck? What are you doing in this actual nice place?” I asked. “Just headed to Tokyo to conduct a bit of service company business. I walked into the lounge and smelled a foul cigar. I figured it can’t be the venerable Dr. Rocknocker. He’s back at some school up north terrorizing geology and engineering grads and undergrads.” Toivo laughed. “But there I was. Surprise!”, I laughed and pumped his hand. “What the fuck, Rock. Now what did you do?” he asks, referring to my Ankylosaur tail club left hand. “Ah, fuck. Long story. Oh, pardon me. Toivo, this is Hella. We were just talking about the South Seas Islands.” I said. “Planning on running off together?” Toivo laughs, to the amusement of neither party. “Oh, and this idiot is Toivo, a man with a congenital foot-in-mouth disorder. He’s mostly harmless.” I noted to Hella. Greetings were shared all around. Hella made some small excuses and said she needed to depart. I gave her another cigar for her husband, shook her hand, and wished her well. “Here’s my business card. If your husband has any questions, have him drop me a line.” I noted. Hella smiled beautifully. She said she would. Then she thanked me shook our hands, and like that, there she was, gone. “Well Toivo, you old bastard. Don't just stand there in the doorway like some lonesome goddamn mouse shit sheepherder, get your ass over here and have a drink.” I motioned over to my perch on Mahogany Ridge. “Don’t mind if I do”, he says as he deftly winds his way to a seat to my left, snagging a cigar out of my pocket on the way over. “You might want these”, I say in an exasperated tone, and hand him my gold Dunhill Hobnail lighter and V-cutter gizmo. He cuts and fires up his heater. “What you drinkin’, Rock”, he asks. “Anything with alcohol, as usual. You know that Toiv.” I reply. “No. I mean right now.” He clarifies. “Well, I had a Mai Tai. Very nice if you like fruity, flowery drinks. It’s the locals’ favorite.” I reply. “Sounds good. I’ll have several. And you?” Toivo asks. “My usual. The bartender is already apprised of the situation.” I reply. Toivo smiles the smile of one knowing his sobriety is going to be taken out for a swim. Hell, taken out and tossed into the deep end. Toivo and I sit there, swapping lies, smoking cigars and sipping at our toddies. Hell, Toivo was slurping them like a sump-pump during an extra-wet summer. We chattered about family, work, whether or not Tokyo was going to host the Olympics or if the COVID-boogie man scared everyone off. Toivo, always one afflicted with TB (“Tiny Bladder”) got up to go to the loo for the third time that hour. He left his pocket organizer on the bar and I swear on a stack of Origins of Species, I didn’t touch it. I reached over to his vacated seat to retrieve my cigar lighter when I looked down and saw in his organizer a tab that reads “Rack & Ruin”. “Oh. No. Fucking. Way.” I recoiled as I’d just reached out and petted a 6-foot hungover scorpion. “One of my best friends? Secretly allied with the Agency? No. Not possible.” I drained my drink and called for another. “No. No. No. It can’t be. No. No fucking way…” as doubt began to dissolve when I thought back to all those times I had just ‘run into’ Toivo. “But he’s oil patch as well. That could be chalked up to coincidence.” I ruminated quizzically in my brain. I quickly reflected back on J.M. Darhower: “Yes, you see, there’s no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents in life. Everything that happens is the result of a calculated move that leads us to where we are.” She may be the author of the execrable New Adult Sempre series, which Esme likes and I loathe, but she might just be right on this occasion. Toivo return, lighter in the bladder and good sense. He never even noticed he’d left his organizer out in broad bar light for all to see. “So, Toivo, when’s your flight?” I ask. “Oh, man. Was I lucky. The JAL flight to Tokyo from Los Angeles had mechanical trouble and had to divert here. I got a ticket on the plane for that flight, when it continues. “You mean ‘if it continues’,” I replied. “Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Hey! Was that your flight?” he asks innocently. He’s really innocent of fieldcraft. I decide to have some fun at my old friend’s expense. “Yep. Hit some CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) and the JAL pilots reported some lighting problem. No apparent ruin to any of the systems. They relay racked their brains to figure it out, but they couldn’t that’s why I here.” I said, waiting for the words to swim upstream in Toivo’s coconut and make some sort of connection. “Yeah. Double lucky. No problem with the plane and I get to go to Japan early.” Toivo crookedly grins. “So, no trouble with the plane? Then why haven’t I heard that the flight’s going to resume?” I asked as I pushed a fresh, seriously strong drink to Toivo. “Oh, must have heard it in the john.” Toivo countered and tried to cover his tracks by taking a huge gulp of his drink and damn near dying coughing. I pound on Toivo’s back. “Heimlich time?” I ask. Toivo signals ‘no’. “Jesus Christ, Rock. What was that?” he asks. “Just my usual”, I innocently replied. “Holy fuck. No wonder you have the reputation of…” Toivo realizes too late that he’s said too much. “Yeah. They can rack you out. Really ruin a person if they’re not careful.” I reply icily. “Why, Rock. Whatever do you mean?” Toivo slurred as he realized he’s been caught out. “The jig is up, you turncoat. You know Agents Rack and Ruin from the agency. Right? You keeping tabs on me for them? You Quisling! You Benedict Arnold!” I almost was on the verge of losing my cool. “It was nothing. They approached me years ago as I kept being mentioned in your reports. They asked me for some information. One thing leads to another…” Toivo was ready for an Ankylosaur tail club swat to the bean. “Oh, put your fucking hands down, you asshole.” I smiled and chuckled. “You’re not mad?” Toivo slurred badly. I had the bartender make him another special drink. “No, Toivo. Not mad. Just disappointed.” I said, smiling like a Komodo Dragon just finishing up a fortnight-old wildebeest. Toivo sat there and puzzled and puzzled until his puzzler was sore. “You’re not going to kill me or anything rude like that?” Toivo asked, half-assedly trying to inject humor into the proceedings. “Nah. The paperwork’s too ridiculous for me to do another liberation. But, Jesus Fucking Christwagons, Toivo; you could have mentioned it to me. Fuck, I thought we were friends to the end?” I said, dejectedly. I was really getting through to Toivo. I could tell he was loaded; feeling like shit and massively deplorable. Great fieldcraft, indeed. I told him things “are what they are” and that I won’t blow his cover nor his honorarium. He began to feel better. I often wonder if he was serious about the sanctioning thing. Then I delivered the strategic missile strike. “Just remember, Toivo. I wrote your dossier for the Company…” He swivels to look at me. “And one for the KGB. Olga says ‘howdy’.” I grin evilly. Toivo short-circuited at that. Russia is his company’s bread and butter. Now he has the KGB as well as his best buddy looking over his shoulder at every move. I bought him a few more drinks and continued to needle him about his ’leading a double life’. He was well and truly fuckered when the electric tap-tap driver from before came looking for me to whisk me back to the plane. Seems it was simply some knocked-out wires on the plane, or slammed bulbs that were generating a false positive, indicating something other than the system that alerts one to something haywire went haywire. Toivo was pretty much down for the count. I got him sober enough to hand them his ticket and ensure that he was really supposed to be on this flight. Thing was; h e was in Economy, and I was, as always, in Business. I spoke to Luna, and the plane was going to be even less crowded than previously because some folks could or wouldn’t wait, or didn’t want to go on with the rest of the trip on a ‘damaged’ aircraft, or were just stupid and superstitious. “Luna, could I pay for the difference between Business and Economy for my less than 100% conscious friend here? He’s had a rough day.” I asked. “Dr. Rock. Just put him into Business. No one will be the wiser. Luna says so.” As she gave us a grand smile. “Luna, I owe you. Thanks so much.” I said. “Now get on board. Your friend looks like he needs all the downtime he can get.” “Yes, ma’am!” I said and saluted here be best I could which dragging a schnozzled Toivo down the jetway. I dumped Toivo in a window seat well away from my seat. I know Toivo. He snores like a semi-load of live hogs rocketing downhill locking up the brakes at 88 MPH. Surprise! There was no one else in Business. Luna looked at me, at Toivo, and gave me a thumbs up. Whatever I can write to further her career at JAL, she’ll have it before I deplane. We finally get everyone settled, and with Captain Kangaroo at the helm, we bounced gracelessly off the tarmac, into the warm, tropical Hawaiian air, finally headed for the Land of the Rising Sun. Toivo was snoring like a chainsaw hitting rusty nails as I worked on the various letters, communiques, and dossiers which needed updating before we reached touchdown. I gave Luna a thick letter with instructions not to open it until we were on the ground and Toivo and I were well off and away into the terminal. We left Hawaii at 1300 hours, so we should arrive at Tokyo Nareda around 4:00 pm, the previous day. I was so bereft of time and time zones, I couldn’t figure out what time it really was, as judged by my biometric rhythms, so I asked Luna for a stiff drink as I was kicking off my boots and going to attempt to get some kip. She brought me another liter or so eponymous drink. I was sawing logs by the time I slurped the last swig of that nifty drink. Suddenly, or later, I have no idea really, some loudmouth drunk asshole from way-the-fuck-back in economy-land toward the ass end of the plane staggered into Business demanding free drinks. Luna was nothing but civil, and asked him to both shut up and return to his seat. His air cabin hostess, or whatever the fuck they’re calling them these days, will attend to his needs. “Naw they won’t! They want me to pay for more drinks! I’m broke but I demand more booze! You fucking owe me.” railed the asshole. “I sat at the bar in Hawaii for four hours. Them fuckers charged me an arm and a leg!” “No, they don’t owe you shit”, I said in a voice that unmistakably loud and clear. “Fuck you, old man! You stay the fuck out of this!” he bellowed. “Shut up or I’ll do ya’!” “’Old man’? ‘Do me’? Excuse me. Luna, may I have a word alone with this individual?” I asked sweetly. Luna shook her head in the affirmative, and I stood up to confront this flagrant asshole. “Now look, Scooter. You have gone way, way over the fucking line. You are loud. You are abusive. You are obnoxious. And you stink. Plus you insulted a person who is just barely containing his righteous wrath right now. So, I’m giving you one and one only chance to shut up, sit back down before your body spontaneously develops all sort of bruises, contusions, broken bones, and unconsciousness.” I said calmly, evenly, and threateningly. “What da’ fuck you think you’re going to do…old man?” he screeched, trying to inflate himself into full mammalian threat posture, all 5’ 9” of it. He didn’t notice Toivo walking up quietly behind him, as Toivo was returning from the head, quiet as a moose. “Well, Scooter, I am an Air Marshall. Duly appointed, fully trained, and properly pissed off. Right now, I can arrest you, physically detain you, turn this flight around and take you to the Hawaiian police, at your cost for the inconvenience of the entire flight. Or I could arrest you, physically detain you, and turn you over to the Japanese authorities when we land. It’s really your choice. Choose wisely.” To be continued…⇝
Stokes's Bristol Nightclub incident in detail (From: The Comeback Summer by Geoff Lemon)
IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early. The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster. In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly. The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged. Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms. The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist. The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale. ‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing. It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment. Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge. That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted. The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions. Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge. Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it. Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales. Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others. This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse. Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away. These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk. If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced. If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober. The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs. The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them. This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame. Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier. There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language. What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand. That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough. If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses. As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial. The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt. Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame. This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’ So Stokes punches him. It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road. Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks. Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him. Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended. Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop. Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance. ‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’ The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’. The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back. After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed. If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence. Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued. ‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass. A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’. The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now. Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa. It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’. The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.
[December 15, 2020] – New Content in Grand Theft Auto Online
The Cayo Perico Heist has been added to GTA Online. In this update, players are contacted by Miguel Madrazo who will task them with infiltrating one of the most secure private islands in the entire world, evading or neutralizing the heavily armed security forces stationed there, and escaping with valuable evidence along with as much art, gold and drug money as they can carry. Players must scope, prep, and execute the Heist either solo or with up to three other players and will have the opportunity to access several new weapons and vehicles along the way.
The Cayo Perico Island has been added to GTA Online. The Island consists of several different key locations that players can explore while scoping for the Heist, including a beach party where new DJ collective Keinemusik performs an exclusive set. Upon completing the Heist as leader, players can return to the Cayo Perico beach party at their convenience and invite others along for the journey.
The Kosatka has been added to GTA Online. The Kosatka is a new driveable Submarine property that acts as a base of operations for planning The Cayo Perico Heist. The Kosatka can be customized with Guided Missiles, a Sonar Station, and a Weapon Workshop. The Kosatka also comes with a Moon Pool where players can store the new Sparrow, Kraken Avisa and Pegassi Toreador vehicles.
The Music Locker has been added to GTA Online. The Music Locker is a new Nightclub located underground below The Diamond Casino & Resort, which acts as a social hub and is where players can first meet Miguel Madrazo to learn about The Cayo Perico Heist. The Music Locker is also the venue that showcases new DJs added with this update.
One new DJ has been added to GTA Online. Players can see this new DJ perform at The Music Locker:
Moodymann
A new feature to toggle strobe lights in The Music Locker has been added. In the Style section of the Interaction Menu, the strobe light toggle can be found, listed as “Music Locker Strobes” and can be toggled on or off.
New DJ Request Missions have been added to GTA Online for owners of the Casino Penthouse who have completed The Cayo Perico Heist. Players will earn special rewards for completing these requests.
Two new Radio Stations have been added:
K.U.L.T 99.1 FM
Still Slipping Los Santos
Two existing Radio Stations have been updated with all-new mixes and tracks:
Worldwide FM
FlyLo FM
New Hidden Cache collectibles have been added to GTA Online. Players can find up to 10 Hidden Caches on the ocean floor around San Andreas each day. Players who own the Kosatka Sonar Station can blip the Caches on their radar. Players are rewarded with GTA$ and RP for finding these Hidden Caches.
Nine new vehicles have been added to GTA Online:
Kosatka
Sparrow
Kurtz 31 Patrol Boat
Vapid Winky
Shitzu Longfin
Kraken Avisa
Annihilator Stealth
RO-86 Alkonost
Pegassi Toreador
One new weapon, the Military Rifle, has been added to GTA Online and can be purchased from Ammu-Nation stores.
Additional new weapons have been added to GTA Online and can be unlocked on Cayo Perico.
Over 180+ items of clothing have been added for both Male and Female characters in GTA Online.
Over 30+ Tattoos have been added to GTA Online.
Nine new Face Paints have been added to GTA Online.
Six new celebration emotes have been added to GTA Online, which can be used while dancing:
Crowd Invitation
Driver
Runner
Shooting
Suck It
Take Selfie
Several new Awards related to The Cayo Perico Heist have been added to GTA Online, including the opportunity for players to earn up to 1.4 million in bonus GTA$ for various Heist challenges.
Five new styles of Blackjack tables and four new styles of Three Card Poker tables are available for purchase for players who own a Casino Penthouse and the Private Dealer. They can be purchase from the Casino Shop using Chips and equipped using the Interaction Menu.
GTA Online Fixes
Game Stability and Performance
Fixed several issues that caused game crashes, freezes and other stability problems
Fixed a stability issue that caused high memory usage for PC players, which could have led to pausing/stuttering on low specification hardware
Fixed an issue that may have caused players to get stuck on a black screen during transitions between GTA Online content
Matchmaking & Networking
Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on the sky camera after attempting to use the ‘Quick Job’ option to enter a Casino Heist lobby
Fixed an issue that resulted in players remaining in the same session after using the 'Find New Session’ option
Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on a loading screen when accepting a Job invite while inside the Arcade
Fixed an issue that may have caused network errors during the race portion of the GTA Online Tutorial
Fixed position sync issues with the Rune Zhaba vehicle when some players in a GTA Online session are running at a high framerate
Content
Fixed an issue that resulted in the news van getting stuck on a sign stopping Mission progression during the Casino Work Mission – Fake News
Fixed an issue that caused the Casino Heist Prep Mission – Duggan Shipments to end unexpectedly after launching
Fixed an issue that caused the Police Van from the Casino Heist Random Encounter – Patrick McReary to appear during an Open Wheel Race
Fixed an issue that resulted in the Mission starting with 3 seconds on the timer in the Casino Heist Random Encounter – Patrick McReary
Fixed multiple instances of incorrect button prompts that were present in several Arcade Games on the Japanese version of the game
Fixed overlapping text that was present in the Arcade Game – QUB3D
Fixed an issue that resulted in players with restricted accounts being able to see the custom initials of players on the high score screen of Arcade Games
Fixed an issue that caused the Movie Props Hidden Collectibles to be missing from their intended location
Fixed an issue that caused Lester’s car to not be drivable in the Heist Mission: Fleeca Job – Scope Out
Fixed an issue that caused players to be stuck with no functionality in the Heist Mission: Fleeca Job – Scope Out
Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck after trying to launch the Heist Mission: Fleeca Job – Scope Out
Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to use the skip trip functionality in the in the Heist Mission: Prison Break – Plane
Fixed incorrect objective text that was present in the Heist Mission: Prison Break – Station
Fixed an issue that caused players to fall through the map during the Casino Heist – Finale
Fixed an issue that caused players to be taken into a Casino Heist Mission after not choosing an option on the Next Job Voting Screen, despite having made no Casino Heist progress
Fixed visual issues that were present after quitting spectator mode during the Adversary Mode – Every Bullet Counts
Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to re-equip rebreathers during the A Superyacht Life Mission – Salvage
Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to use their weapon wheel during the A Superyacht Life Mission – Salvage
Fixed an issue that resulted in players losing camera functionality in the Gerald’s Last Play Mission – Make Ends Meat
Fixed a button conflict that was present in the Arena War – Game Masters
Fixed an issue that resulted in players falling under the map after modding a vehicle in the Arena Workshop Property
Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to deliver Cargo during the Business Battle – Assassination
Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on the objective ‘Hack the Security Panel' in the Business Battle – Factory Raid
Fixed an issue that caused the Mission to instantly fail after launching a Sell Mission
Awards and Daily Objectives
Fixed an issue that caused the Daily Challenge – 'Participate in the Featured Series' to not register correctly
Properties
Fixed issues that resulted in players’ Arcade set up progress getting reset
Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck after drinking at the Arcade bar
Fixed camera issues that were present when entering the Arcade
Fixed an issue that resulted in players losing movement functionality after storing the Enus Paragon R (Armored) in their Office Garage
Fixed helicopter spawning issues on the Yacht
Fixed visual issues that were present with the Office Garage cutscene
Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to exit their Arcade after accepting an invite
Fixed an issue that resulted in players getting stuck on a loading screen after driving into the Arena Garage
Vehicles
Fixed an issue that prevented several variations of vehicle cinematic cameras from appearing for all vehicles
Fixed an issue that caused the Bravado Gauntlet Classic’s trade price to be displayed incorrectly on the Benny's Original Motorworks site
Fixed an issue that prevented Cargobob helicopters from being able to pick up the Vapid Peyote Custom using the hook
Fixed several miscellaneous model and texture issues for the following vehicles:
Invetero Coquette D10
Bravado Gauntlet Classic Custom
Albany Manana Custom
Vapid Peyote Custom
Bravado Youga Classic 4x4
Clothing
Fixed clipping issues that were present with several of the ‘Open Shirts’ and ‘Open Party Shirts’
Fixed several miscellaneous clipping and texture issues for the following clothing items:
Animal masks (and other larger mask options)
Tucked Short Shirt variants
Untucked Short Shirt variants
Sport Shorts
Yacht Captain outfit
Miscellaneous
Reduced the frequency that the player will receive call, text and email notifications regarding content from previous GTA Online content updates
Fixed an issue that resulted in vehicles not arriving after being requested from Ms. Baker
Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to interact with certain activities in the Casino
Fixed an issue that caused the Avenger’s entrance trigger to not be visible to players
Fixed an issue that resulted in spectators being unable to swap filters
Fixed an issue where PlayStation 4 players without a PS Plus subscription would not be directed to the correct menu when attempting to access GTA Online
Story Mode
Fixed an issue that caused some weapon magazines and attachments to be missing during cutscenes
Gov. Wolf, Sec. of Health Announce New Protective Mitigation Efforts to Put Pennsylvania on Pause through Early January
https://www.governor.pa.gov/newsroom/gov-wolf-sec-of-health-announce-new-protective-mitigation-efforts-to-put-pennsylvania-on-pause-through-early-january/ As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine today implored Pennsylvanians to take the next three weeks and stand united against the virus by adhering to existing mitigation orders and stricter efforts announced today. “Today I am announcing additional, temporary COVID-19 protective mitigation measures in the commonwealth,” said Gov. Wolf. “With these measures in place, we hope to accomplish three goals: First, stop the devastating spread of COVID-19 in the commonwealth. Second, keep our hospitals and health care workers from becoming overwhelmed. And third, help Pennsylvanians get through the holiday season – and closer to a widely available vaccine – as safely as possible. This is a bridge to a better future in Pennsylvania.” The new, limited-time mitigation orders take effect at 12:01 a.m. on December 12, and remain in effect until 8 a.m. on January 4, 2021. “Each of the last two days we have reported the highest number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic,” Dr. Rachel Levine said. “In the past week, we have reported close to 1,100 new deaths from COVID-19 across Pennsylvania. The virus continues to strain our health care systems and the dramatic rise in cases among all age groups, including among school-age children, is alarming. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been more than 37,500 cases among children age 5 to 18, yet 9,500 of those cases occurred in the past two weeks.” The Order provisions outlined here are accompanied by supportive data used in part to make these decisions. The data provides a sampling of research that supports why limiting gatherings, reducing occupancy, and temporarily suspending some activities, among other efforts, are considered vital to stopping the spread of COVID-19. Two recent studies, one by Yale University and one by Stanford University, substantiate more than one of these mitigation efforts. Links to the full studies and additional data and research can be found on the Department of Health’s data page, here. Limited-Time Mitigation efforts announced today include: In-Person Dining and Alcohol Sales
All in-person indoor dining at businesses in the retail food services industry, including, but not limited to, bars, restaurants, breweries, wineries, distilleries, social clubs, and private catered events is prohibited.
Outdoor dining, take-out food service, and take-out alcohol sales are permitted and may continue, subject to any limitations or restrictions imposed by Pennsylvania law, or this or any other Order issued by the Sec. of Health or by the governor.
Multiple studies have found indoor dining to drive case increases and fatalities. A study by JP Morgan analyzed credit card spending of more than 30 million Chase cardholders and Johns Hopkins University’s case tracker and found that higher restaurant spending in a state predicted a rise in new infections there three weeks later. Additionally, research from Stanford University found that restaurants accounted for a significant amount of new infections while research from Yale University found that closing restaurants reduced fatality rates. Indoor Gatherings and Events
Indoor gatherings and events of more than 10 persons are prohibited.
Churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and other places of congregate worship are specifically excluded from the limitations set forth above during religious services, these institutions are strongly encouraged to find alternative methods for worship, as in person gatherings pose a significant risk to participants at this time. While this an incredibly difficult recommendation to make, particularly at this time of year, faith leaders must carefully weigh the health risks to their congregants given the immense amount of community spread of COVID-19.
A new study from Stanford University and published in the journal, nature, used cellphone data collected from 10 U.S. cities from March to May to demonstrate that restaurants, gyms, cafes, churches and other crowded indoor venues accounted for some 8 in 10 new infections in the early months of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic. Outdoor Gatherings and Events
Outdoor gatherings and events of more than 50 persons are prohibited.
According to a Yale University study, limiting outdoor gatherings was among consistent policies found to reduce fatality rates. The CDC states that medium-sized outdoor gatherings carry a higher risk of COVID-19 spread, even with social distancing. CDC notes that the more people an individual interacts with at a gathering and the longer that interaction lasts, the higher the potential risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and COVID-19 spreading, and that the higher the level of community transmission in the area that the gathering is being held, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spreading during a gathering. Capacity Limits for Businesses
All in-person businesses serving the public may only operate at up to 50% of the maximum capacity stated on the applicable certificate of occupancy, except as limited by existing orders to a smaller capacity limit.
The same Stanford University study that collected cellphone data also noted that limiting indoor capacity can reduce COVID-19 transmissions. Gyms and Fitness Facilities
Indoor operations at gyms and fitness facilities are prohibited.
Outdoor facilities and outdoor classes can continue, but all participants must wear face coverings in accordance with the Sec. of Health’s Updated Order Requiring Universal Face Coverings, including any subsequent amendments, and practice physical distancing requirements.
According to a Yale University study, closing businesses like gyms was among consistent policies found to reduce fatality rates. Entertainment Industry
All in-person businesses in the entertainment industry serving the public within a building or indoor defined area, including, but not limited to, theaters, concert venues, museums, movie theaters, arcades, casinos, bowling alleys, private clubs, and all other similar entertainment, recreational or social facilities, are prohibited from operation.
The CDC puts movie theaters and other indoor settings on its list of higher-risk activities for contracting COVID-19. In-Person Extracurricular School Activities
Voluntary activities sponsored or approved by a school entity’s governing body or administration are suspended, but these extracurricular activities may be held virtually. This includes, but is not limited to, attendance at or participation in activities such musical ensembles, school plays, student council, clubs, and school dances.
Our top priority is stopping the spread of this virus so students and teachers can return to their classrooms as soon as possible. Data from the Department of Health notes that one-quarter of the cases of COVID among school-age children have occurred within the past two weeks, increasing the need to keep children safe outside of school so that they can return to classrooms. K-12 School Sports and Youth Sports
All sports at K-12 public schools, nonpublic schools, private schools and club, travel, recreational, intermural, and intramural sports are paused.
The Pennsylvania Principals Association is recommending a delay to the start of the winter sports season. The surge in cases among school-age children increases the risk that asymptomatic participants will spread the virus at a game or practice, in the locker room, while traveling to and from events, or at team meals, parties or other gatherings. Professional and Collegiate Sports
Professional or collegiate sports activities may continue in accordance with guidance from the CDC and the Department of Health.
Spectators may not attend such sports activities in person.
The CDC warns large gatherings create a high risk of COVID-19 spreading. “We know that COVID-19 thrives in places where people gather together,” Gov. Wolf said. “Therefore, these mitigation measures target high-risk environments and activities and aim to reduce the spread of this devastating virus.” According to Yale University research, mitigation measures such as mandatory mask requirements, and gym and restaurant closures are policies that most consistently predict lower four- to six-week-ahead fatality growth. “The work we do now to slow the spread of COVID-19 is not only crucial to keeping our fellow Pennsylvanians safe and healthy,” Gov. Wolf said. “It will help all of us get back to normal, and back to all of the things we’ve missed, faster. And it means more Pennsylvanians will be alive to celebrate that brighter future. This year, we show our love for our families and friends by celebrating safely and protecting one another.” Gov. Wolf Limited-Time Mitigation OrderSec. Levine Limited-Time Mitigation Order Frequently Asked Questions Gov. Wolf Amended Mitigation, Enforcement, and Immunity Order edited to add a TL;DR visual: https://preview.redd.it/szqfy8kmxf461.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d140dfd06ce3bc91e14528c86eb100ec139bd698
13 of 17 counties flagged for elevated transmission.
State positivity rate record 16.5%.
Surpassed 2000 deaths and 2,416 cases in one day, new record.
Case rate growth at “wild fire level”.
All available models indicate Nevada is still a RED ZONE.
10% of all cases reported in the last seven days. 1 Nevadan per minute. Hospitals having record numbers of patients.
Patients being treated in parking lots, staffing shortages in hospitals due to workers in quarantine.
Community spread is resulting in outbreaks.
Main goal is to protect the public health system.
COVID is filling up hospital beds which threaten Nevadans resulting in poor access to non COVID related issues.
One inescapable conclusion, we are in a rapid upward curve. Time to act.
Balancing economy and health of Nevadans especially with the lack of diversity within our economy.
We are in a no win situation.
NOT issuing a shutdown, only restrictions.
Effective Tuesday at 12:01am. Statewide pause.
Three weeks.
Strengthening mask mandate. Requiring masks during private gatherings, especially with different households.
Reduce capacity in high risk areas.
Restaurants and bars: 25% capacity, indoor and outdoor. No more than 4 people per table. Reservations are required, no walkins allowed.
Bartops continue to be open.
Gyms, fitness, dance studios are now reduced to 25% capacity. Mask mandated inside at ALL times unless actively drinking. Intense workout exemption included. No mask, no workout.
Museums, art galleries, arcades, bowling alleys, amusement parks, etc 25%.
Gaming occupancy reduced to 25%.
Restaurants and bars inside casinos reduced to 25% capacity.
Public gatherings reduced to 50 people or firecode capacity to 25% whichever is less. Includes theaters, worship, casino showrooms, weddings, funerals, celebrations.
No large gathering plans are approved at this time. All large gatherings over these limitations must be cancelled.
Private gatherings restriction to 10 people or fewer from no more than two households, indoors OR outdoors. Face coverings now required in public AND private settings even with social distancing.
Thanksgiving to be spent only with household members.
Pause on adults and youth sports tournaments cancelled.
Retail stores are not effected by the pause capacity, can still operate at 50%.
Retail employees required to be outside to count patrons.
Every business venue is required to post new capacity limits. 25%.
What won’t change: brothels, strip clubs, night clubs remain CLOSED.
Hair and nail salons, spas, tattoo parlors, piercing establishments not affected by new pause.
Our casinos, hotels, restaurants and bars are restricted but remain open to protect our economy. Admitted schools are struggling. Schools closed and economy closed are not mutually exclusive. Both work hand in hand.
Protect vulnerable populations.
Children need our support, despite not being as prone to COVID, still are suffering the negative effects. Many students are lacking food, shelter, etc.
Asking us to stay strong and follow through restrictions, especially for our students and children. Citing student and child suicide due to pandemic.
Getting children back to school key for education, support, etc.
Nevada 3 week pause to assist with getting kids back to school sooner.
Remind local governments to implement stronger measures. Take action.
Statewide pause in effect for three weeks. During the pause they will monitor cases, transmission rates, and positivity rates.
If we slow the spread and plateau, they will evaluate if we need more time to pause or not. If numbers get better, they will consider loosening restrictions.
If the situation worsens, he will take stronger actions, more shutdowns such as indoor dining and gyms.
Doing all he can to avoid restrictions, but now it’s time to act.
We are too close to a vaccine to give up now. We do not have a vaccine yet, we just adhere to restrictions and do what we can to fix our own state.
Asking all Nevada leaders, to intensify efforts to educate everyone until vaccine happens until we fully reopen.
Citing Nevada’s independence and ability to make good decisions on our own. To protect each other.
13 of 17 counties flagged for elevated transmission.
State positivity rate record 16.5%.
Surpassed 2000 deaths and 2,416 cases in one day, new record.
Case rate growth at “wild fire level”.
All available models indicate Nevada is still a RED ZONE.
10% of all cases reported in the last seven days. 1 Nevadan per minute. Hospitals having record numbers of patients.
Patients being treated in parking lots, staffing shortages in hospitals due to workers in quarantine.
Community spread is resulting in outbreaks.
Main goal is to protect the public health system.
COVID is filling up hospital beds which threaten Nevadans resulting in poor access to non COVID related issues.
One inescapable conclusion, we are in a rapid upward curve. Time to act.
Balancing economy and health of Nevadans especially with the lack of diversity within our economy.
We are in a no win situation.
NOT issuing a shutdown, only restrictions.
Effective Tuesday at 12:01am. Statewide pause.
Three weeks.
Strengthening mask mandate. Requiring masks during private gatherings, especially with different households.
Reduce capacity in high risk areas.
Restaurants and bars: 25% capacity, indoor and outdoor. No more than 4 people per table. Reservations are required, no walkins allowed.
Bartops continue to be open.
Gyms, fitness, dance studios are now reduced to 25% capacity. Mask mandated inside at ALL times unless actively drinking. Intense workout exemption included. No mask, no workout.
Museums, art galleries, arcades, bowling alleys, amusement parks, etc 25%.
Gaming occupancy reduced to 25%.
Restaurants and bars inside casinos reduced to 25% capacity.
Public gatherings reduced to 50 people or firecode capacity to 25% whichever is less. Includes theaters, worship, casino showrooms, weddings, funerals, celebrations.
No large gathering plans are approved at this time. All large gatherings over these limitations must be cancelled.
Private gatherings restriction to 10 people or fewer from no more than two households, indoors OR outdoors. Face coverings now required in public AND private settings even with social distancing.
Thanksgiving to be spent only with household members.
Pause on adults and youth sports tournaments cancelled.
Retail stores are not effected by the pause capacity, can still operate at 50%.
Retail employees required to be outside to count patrons.
Every business venue is required to post new capacity limits. 25%.
What won’t change: brothels, strip clubs, night clubs remain CLOSED.
Hair and nail salons, spas, tattoo parlors, piercing establishments not affected by new pause.
Our casinos, hotels, restaurants and bars are restricted but remain open to protect our economy. Admitted schools are struggling. Schools closed and economy closed are not mutually exclusive. Both work hand in hand.
Protect vulnerable populations.
Children need our support, despite not being as prone to COVID, still are suffering the negative effects. Many students are lacking food, shelter, etc.
Asking us to stay strong and follow through restrictions, especially for our students and children. Citing student and child suicide due to pandemic.
Getting children back to school key for education, support, etc.
Nevada 3 week pause to assist with getting kids back to school sooner.
Remind local governments to implement stronger measures. Take action.
Statewide pause in effect for three weeks. During the pause they will monitor cases, transmission rates, and positivity rates.
If we slow the spread and plateau, they will evaluate if we need more time to pause or not. If numbers get better, they will consider loosening restrictions.
If the situation worsens, he will take stronger actions, more shutdowns such as indoor dining and gyms.
Doing all he can to avoid restrictions, but now it’s time to act.
We are too close to a vaccine to give up now. We do not have a vaccine yet, we just adhere to restrictions and do what we can to fix our own state.
Asking all Nevada leaders, to intensify efforts to educate everyone until vaccine happens until we fully reopen.
Citing Nevada’s independence and ability to make good decisions on our own. To protect each other.
What I expected vs what I got. (Rant/My personal thoughts & feelings.)
What I wanted: A fucking solid RPG. In the vein of mass effect in terms of decisions, with heavy rpg elements, a interactive world where I had actual side activities to do instead of a one off side stories. I wanted to immerse feel like V was me in this cyberpunk universe, where I'm a mercenary who started from humble beginnings and built myself up into a legend of night city. I wanted the world to be interactive where I could go to a restaurant order some food, then hit up a bar order a drink. I wanted to visit the various shops, trying on clothes, previewing then buying testing out new weapons, and spending some time just chilling out in the shopping areas maybe a mall or two. I wanted deep character engagements. I wanted the characters that met on my way up could be a ally or a potential foe, depending on their motives and personal beliefs. I expected these characters I met to not trust me initially as I was a outsider and that I had to earn their trust and loyalty by doing jobs for them, calling them, spending time with them by going to the bar and getting a drink with them or to a nightclub for some dancing and fun. I was hopeful about getting to know the gangs and build up a rapport with them, outside of just the stereotypical "Gangs are bad now shoot them!" Mentality. Where each gang had a ally/romance option (One for males and females) exclusive to that gang. A special shop were you could buy gang attire, a cosmetic station where you could buy gang haircuts, tattoos, ect. A gang ripper doc who would argument your cybernetics with the visual ascetic of that gang. And finally a gang gunsmith where you could buy guns with that gangs specific visual skins on that weapon and special mods exclusive to that gang. I wanted actually deep romances were I met this character, and sure we might or started out on less than good terms. Though by doing missions, calling them to chat, hanging out with them outside of missions, inviting them on nights out on the town, bringing them along on jobs with me and dealing with their reactions to my actions while on the job that I'd get to know them and they me. After a couple of flings together we'd start to realize that it's something more than a one off fling as we grow closer and in naturally develops into a relationship. They would call me asking how I'm doing, text me cute little messages with the occasional picture attached to it. You know the little things. And when I go into battle they come with me as a loyal and trusted ally. Not only do they give you a key to their place, they let you drive their car, and unlock a bonus or two to help you while you are on jobs. Then they have dynamic missions that pop up, maybe they want to you to participate in a race with them, go dancing at a nightclub, help someone they grew up with, perhaps they get kidnapped and need to be rescued, maybe they want to kidnap someone and hold them for random, or something from video from there past relationship with a ex is about to be leaked online and they ask you to help stop it. What I got: A action games that feels like a cod campaign in a open world with a meh story were I'm essentially the opposite of a ghost in a shell, I'm the shell for a ghost, granted a decent looking shell, but still a shell. To add to that some extra bit of meat to this stew: I do not feel immersed in the role of V, because V is nothing like the character I wanted to be or play as. V or Vincent (Which you really could of left it as just the mysterious sounding and unique in its own way...V) doesn't feel like a character I would deem worthy of immersing into the role of, he (I played as a male) flips from being nice to people to a complete asshat on the flip of a dime. The game acts like you are given a choice to chose between your responses, but you can't, sometimes just trying to do some of the optional dialog v flips the emotion switch so fast that I find myself rolling my eyes thinking "V, did you really have to say things like that, why just why?" And it's not like you can do anything about it as you are just along for the ride on this on rails story. There are times where a character is upset and you want to be a caring choom and be there for them. Vincent either won't say anything or will have a option that sounds like something I would say but surprise nope! V says something that sounds like he's being a dick about it. In summary I don't like V/Vincent. Moving on. The game looks pretty, like really pretty (l'm on the ps5, so even though it's the ps4 pro version it still looks amazing) the textures look good and the character models do too. However, I don't like how the characters walking around night city have clothes that we can't buy and wear ourselves, like there are these cool neon transparent jackets that we can wear, there are full metallic tape outfits, and many more. The vehicles look great. But there are variations and color schemes that we just don't get to use and it's a let down. Also the vehicles handle weirdly like most of them handle like the roads are always slick with rain or sleet on the street. There's very little in terms of dynamic weather, the occasional rain doesn't cut it. Gone are the dust storms and acid rain in the bad lands. I honestly can't tell what season it is in night city, is it summer or spring? Maybe it's winter in night city and we just don't know it. Perhaps that militec crate we receive in our apartment is secretly a Christmas gift. The game has some good moments, like in the early missions with jackie. But then instead of playing six months with him, a building ourself up with the money, earning the reputation needed to attract the attention of Dexter deshawn, we just skip ahead and it's stolen from my hands. They basically skipped the story we were promised in those early trailers and that's disappointing. Then jackie gets the big are for another J named character who gets forcefully injected into our head, Johnny silverhand. Why the heck is this relic of a dude who died in 2020 stuck in our heads? Let me just say, I like Keanu, but I don't like silverhand much. The guy is meant to be a "Second Protagonist" (I thought I was the Protagonist of this story and that this was my story?) Instead it's more like Johnny silverhand's raid on V's (Vincent's......uhg still hate that name) story. At the best of times Johnny's funny and witty, adding light hearted tension breaking additions to the bleak story.. At the worst of times (More often than the former) he's annoying, he chimes in with his sabotaging dialog to ruin a good moment with his suggestions, exclamations, rants, and pestering. It's like they just are force feeding this cancer of a charcter into my bloodstream. He's like a child that constantly does whatever they can do to get attention. Or like the Mr.Meeseeks from rick & morty, always popping up going "I'm Johnny! Look at me!", I have to break out the flyswatter and tell him to buzz off. I feel like his inclusion as a main focal point of the story, has robbed me of my own story. Like yes there's a reputation system in the game but it doesn't effect much besides unlocks a very small mentions. Even when you hit the highest reputation, you aren't a "Legend of Night City!" You are still a two-bit terminally ill excuse of a mercenary, with a botched reputation, and semi antagonistic ghost stuck in your head. No one really knows who you are or cares, save for a small band of characters who know you personally. I'm sure jackie would be turning over in his grave to see that his sacrifice to help his choom make it to the top was for nothing. There's nothing to do in terms of side activities in night city. Not side jobs, not side rent a cop distractions. I mean actual activities that aren't tied to a side mission. Fight clubs that aren't just a side, aren't here. Night clubs that you meet flirt with npcs, pickup one night stands, hell grab a drink and visibly drink it, dance in third person, in some club there's not even a dj, nope not in the game. Gambling? Nope sorry choom it's not here either, there's a casino in the game and you can't play anything in it, the pachinko machines have a arrow like the vending machines to show where you can interact with them but nope. Dynamic, non scripted, and non story related street races? Forget about it. You want gun range competitions? There's one and it's scripted. The missing features and fact that the game was promoted to have these only to have them cut sucks because these were things that made the game stand out besides the cyberpunk skin thrown over a city. I'm not going over all of them since there's plenty of videos plastered over YouTube about them. I will however mention two. The train system would've been a excellent edition to the game to give us a leisurely tour through night city. Especially if fast travel wasn't a thing and the train was fast but not instant, with dynamic events on it, like conversations with npcs, gang members getting on and hassling people, live concerts, and talents being shown off to help organically past the time. The second is third person cutscenes. These would've given us a chance to see our Vs in their custom outfits. Not only that but it would've given more emotion to the situations because we could see the emotion on v's face, instead of the disconnect we currently have. Also it would've given the devs third person animations of v to use in the optional third person camera angle for walking through night city, instead of the absolute mess we have for animations when the game is modded to third person or just clips to third person. On the topic of animations, the animations in general need work, they all look really weird in the shadows and other times when you notice them, I know the game was rushed but that should've been in the baseline of developing v's movement. The results: A mediocre gumbo of a game. It looks pretty but tastes bland and leaves you feeling hungry a hour after you eat it. The skeleton of the game needs work before they add to it, but I knew that. Though there's so much lacking from the core of the game, that even if the game ran perfectly well the story is subpar. The characters all feel like one off stories in they aren't in the main story. And even then sometimes even they do to. The city looks pretty but is hallow side from artwork and visuals. And I do not feel like im a character in this universe at all, rather I'm on the outside of the game, looking into the game, from above and from there, then looking down at the V's poor excuse for a buddy adventure with Johnny silverhand. However I would consider this game a action open world game with some lite rpg elements. Not a full on next gen rpg. In closing. I do like the game, but I'm not afraid to critique it. I'm not blinded in my opinion by Keanu inclusion, dry pr speak or apologies, or the even the youtubers. This is my opinion. Someone else's might differ and that is okay. But I critique my own creations and still love them, and I will do the same for something that I bought with my hard earned money through working my job. If I buy your game I have the right to critique and analyze it. There's no nda on the fans lol.
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