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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/7/2020

I missed THE GOLDEN GLOVE at Fantastic Fest last year. It was one of my only regrets of the whole experience, but it was basically mandatory since the available screenings were opposite the much-hyped PARASITE. As annoying as that sounds, it was actually a major compliment, since what could possibly serve as a consolation prize for the most hotly anticipated movie of the year? Needless to say, I heard great things, but I could never have imagined what it was actually like. I'm still wrapping my mind around it.

Between 1970 and 1975, an exceptionally depraved serial killer named Fritz Honka murdered at least four prostitutes in Hamburg's red light district. Today, we tend to think of the archetypal serial killer in terms of ironic contradictions: The public is attracted by Ted Bundy's dashing looks and suave manner, and John Wayne Gayce's dual careers as politician and party clown. Lacking anything so remarkable, we associate psychopathy with Norman Bates' boy-next-door charm, and repeat "It's always the quiet ones" with a smirk whenever a new Jeffrey Dahmer or Dennis Nilsen is exposed to the public. The popular conception of a bloodthirsty maniac is not the fairytale monster of yore, but a wolf in sheep's clothing, whose hygienic appearance and lifestyle belie his twisted desires. In our post-everything world, the ironic surprise has become the rule. In this light, THE GOLDEN GLOVE represents a refreshing return to naked truth.

To say that writer-director Fatih Akin's version of the Fritz Honka story is shocking, repulsive, and utterly degenerated would be a gross understatement. We first meet the killer frantically trying to dispose of a corpse in his filthy flat, wallpapered with porno pinups, strewn with broken toys, and virtually projecting smell lines off of the screen. One's sense of embodiment is oppressive, even claustrophobic, as the petite Honka tries and fails to collapse the full dead weight of a human corpse into a garbage bag, before giving up and dismembering it, with nearly equal difficulty. The scene is appalling, utterly debased, and yet nothing is as shocking as the killer's visage. When he finally turns to look into the camera, it's hard to believe he's even human: the rolling glass eye, the smashed and inflated nose, the tombstone teeth and cratered skin, are almost too extreme to bear. Actually, suffering from a touch of facial blindness, I had to stare intently at Honka's face for nearly half the movie before I could fully convince myself that I was, in fact, looking at an elaborate prosthetic operation used to transform 23 year old boy band candidate Jonas Dassler into the disfigured 35 year old serial murderer.

Though West Germany remained on a steady economic upturn beginning in the 1950s and throughout the 1970s, you wouldn't know it from THE GOLDEN GLOVE. If Honka's outsides match his insides, they are further matched by his stomping grounds in the Reeperbahn, a dirty, violent, booze-soaked repository for the dregs of humanity. Though its denizens may come from different walks of life, one thing is certain: Whoever winds up there, belongs there. Honka was the child of a communist and grew up in a concentration camp, yet he swills vodka side by side with an ex-SS officer, among other societal rejects, in a crumbling dive called The Golden Glove. The scene is an excellent source of hopeless prostitutes at the end of their career, who are Honka's prime victims, as he is too frightful-looking to ensnare an attractive young girl. These pitiful women all display a peculiarly hypnotic willingness to go along with Honka, no matter how sadistic he becomes; this seems to have less to do with money, which rarely comes up, and more to do with their shared awareness that for them, and for Honka too, it's been all over, for a long time.

Not to reduce someone’s performance to their physical appearance, but ???

To call Dassler's portrayal of Honka "sympathetic" would be a bridge too far, but it is undeniably compelling. He supports the startling impact of his facial prostheses with a performance of rare intensity, a full-body transformation into a person in so much pain that a normal life will never become an option. His physical vocabulary reminded me of the stage version of The Elephant Man, in which the lead actor wears no makeup, but conveys John Merrick's deformities using his body alone. Although there is an abundance of makeup in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, Dassler's silhouette and agonized movements would be recognizable from a mile away. In spite of his near-constant screaming rage, the actor manages to craft a rich and convincing persona. During a chapter in which Honka experiments with sobriety, we find a stunning image of him hunched in the corner of his ordinarily chaotic flat, now deathly still, his eyes gazing at nothing as cigarette smoke seeps from his pores, having no idea what to do with himself when he isn't in a rolling alcoholic rampage. The moment is brief but haunting in its contrast to the rest of the film, having everything to do with Dassler's quietly vibrating anxiety.

Performances are roundly excellent here, not that least of which are from Honka's victims. The cast of middle-aged actresses looking their most disastrous is hugely responsible for the film's impact. These are the kinds of performances people call "brave", which is a euphemism for making audiences uncomfortable with an uncompromising presentation of one's own self, unvarnished by any masturbatory solicitation. Among these women is Margarete Tiesel, herself no stranger to difficult cinema: She was the star of 2012's PARADISE: LOVE, a harrowing drama about a woman who copes with her midlife crisis by pursuing sex tourism in Kenya. Her brilliant, instinctive performance as one of Honka's only survivors--though she nearly meets a fate worse than death--makes her the leading lady of a movie that was never meant to have one.

So, what does all this unpleasantness add up to, you might be asking? It's hard to say. THE GOLDEN GLOVE is a film of enormous power, but it can be difficult to explain what the point of it is, in a world where most people feel that the purpose of art is to produce some form of pleasure. This is the challenge faced by difficult movies throughout history, like THE GOLDEN GLOVE's obvious ancestors, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, MANIAC and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Describing unremitting cruelty with relentless realism is not considered a worthy endeavor by many, even if there is real artistry in your execution; some people will even mistake you for advocating and enjoying violence and despair, as we live in a world where huge amount of movie and TV production is devoted to aspirational subjects. (The fact that people won't turn away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, no matter how monotonous and condescending they become, should tell you something) How do you justify to such people, that you want to make or see work that portrays ugliness and evil with as much commitment as other movies seek to portray love, beauty, and family values? Why isn't it enough to say that these things exist, and their existence alone makes them worth contemplation?

A rare, perhaps exclusive “beautiful image” in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, from Fritz Honka’s absurd fantasies.

You may detect that I have attempted to have this frustrating conversation with many people, strangers, enemies, and friends I love and respect. I find that for some, it is simply too hard to divorce themselves from the pleasure principle. I don't say this to demean them; some hold the philosophy that art be reserved for beauty, and others have a more literary feeling that it's ok to show characters in grim circumstances, as long as the ultimate goal is to uplift the human spirit. Even I draw the line somewhere; I appreciate the punk rebellion of Troma movies as a cultural force, but I do not enjoy watching them, because I dislike what I perceive as contempt for the audience and the aestheticization of laziness--making something shitty more or less on purpose. A step or three up from that, you land in Todd Solondz territory, where you find materially gorgeous movies whose explicit statement is that our collective reverence for a quality called "humanity" is based on nothing. I like some of those movies, and sometimes I even like them when I don't like them, because I'm entranced by Solondz's technical proficiency...and maybe, deep down, I'm not completely convinced about "humanity", either. However, I don't fight very hard in arguments about him; I understand the objections. Still, I've been surprised by peers who I think of as bright and tasteful, who absolutely hated movies I thought were unassailable, like OLDBOY and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. In both cases, the ultimate objection was that they accuse humans of being pretentious and self-deceptive, aspiring to heroism or bemoaning their victimhood while wallowing in their own cowardice and perversity. Ok, I get it...but, not really. Why isn't it ever wholly acceptable to discuss, honestly, what we do not like about ourselves?

The beguiling thing about THE GOLDEN GLOVE is that, although it is instantly horrifying, is it also an impeccable production. The director can't help showing you crime scene photos during the ending credits, and I can't really blame him, when his crew worked so hard to bring us a vision of Fritz Honka's world that approaches virtual reality. But it isn't just slavishly realistic; it is vivid, immersive, an experience of total sensory overload. Not a square inch of this movie has been left to chance, and the product of all this graceful control is totally spellbinding. I started to think to myself that, when you've achieved this level of artifice, what really differentiates a movie like THE GOLDEN GLOVE from something like THE RED SHOES? I mean, aside from their obvious narrative differences. Both films plunge the viewer into a world that is complete beyond imagination, crafted with a rigor and sincerity that is rarely paralleled. And, I will dare to say, both films penetrate to the depths of the human soul. What Fatih Akin finds there is not the same as what Powell and Pressburger found, of course, but I don't think that makes it any less real. Akin's film is adapted from a novel by Heinz Strunk, and apparently, some critics have accused Akin of leaving behind the depth and nuance of the book, to focus instead on all that is gruesome about it. This may be true, on some level; I wouldn't know. For now, I can only insist that on watching THE GOLDEN GLOVE, for all its grotesquerie, I still got the message.

#blogtober #2020 #the golden glove #fatih akın #heinz stronk #jonas dassler #margarete tiesel #difficult cinema #horror #slasher #serial killer #period piece #adaptation #historical #biopic #fritz honka #i may have been watching a lot of powell and pressburger movies recently #sorry...

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hearttstopper · 4 years

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“i have a lot of thoughts about this too especially with the whole watermelon sugar/nameless thing” pls miss britt share ur thoughts id love to hear them

This got so long. I’m really sorry. My thoughts about HS2/In Watermelon Sugar/a bunch of other random stuff under the cut.

These are all thoughts that are only vaguely connected, and stuff that I’m sure has been said a hundred times before mixed with a ton of my own personal conjecture, so please bear that in mind… This is just like total rambling from me.

But I have been fascinated with Harry’s connections to In Watermelon Sugar since we first heard the stupid rumors about the song. Especially the quote from the book about the narrator’s name. That quote got me thinking about how when it comes to Harry, tons of people only see what they want to see based on whatever ‘version’ of Harry is most appealing to them.

Read these quotes from the book with that in mind:

My Name

“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.

That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.

That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.

That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.

That is my name.”

and:

“My Name. I do not have a regular name. I am a mystery to you. I wished Margaret would leave me alone…”

— Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

The narrator of In Watermelon Sugar isn’t just a nameless figure, he actually invites the reader to give him whatever name they find most fitting for him. A positive connotation, a negative one, a nonsensical one… whatever you, the reader, decides. And that feels like a very apt description of Harry and the various ways fans have perceived him from the very beginning… by now, so many people have projected so many different images onto Harry that over time it has completely blurred all lines as to who Harry actually is.

Here’s a review I found of the book that summarizes the world within In Watermelon Sugar better than I can (as well as somehow still aligning perfectly with the concept of struggling with fame and identity, etc): “Much of the sense of disparity in [in Watermelon Sugar] results from the incongruity inherent in the person of the narrator, who insists that everything in iDEATH is exactly as it should be—the people gentle, pleasant, and tolerant. Despite the narrator’s insistence that iDEATH is a stable Utopia, however, many of the things that happen are fraught with pain and violence. Balancing the easygoing and vegetarian people with their light chores and flower-filled parades are the man-eating tigers, the burning of the mutilated corpses of inBOIL and his gang, Margaret’s suicide, and the emptiness felt by the narrator but never named.”

So essentially within In Watermelon Sugar, we’re shown that in the surrealist, post-apocalyptic setting of iDeath, things are only perfect on a surface level. Everyone in this world appears to be happy (or at least, they should be), but a closer look reveals the true nature of iDeath: it’s beyond grim. And so despite the happy, shiny surface, being a part of that happy, peaceful commune is unable to cure the narrator of the inexplicable emptiness he feels inside of him. (‘All the lights couldn’t put out the dark running through my heart.’ ‘Having sex and being sad.��)

The sadness that Harry has already admitted is very prevalent in HS2 has already been implied to be about a ‘breakup,’ but it’s clear to me that Lights Up is anything but a breakup song… (“[Lights Up is about] freedom, self-reflection, self-discovery, things that I had thought about and wrestled with…” + “For me, it’s a very uplifting song. In some places, it’s kind of dark, but to me, it’s like, very liberating. I think, you know, over the past couple of years… It’s about self-reflection, and freedom. It feels very free to me, which is I guess things that I’ve been trying to process… I guess, kinda wrestled with a little over the last couple of years. It’s kinda like, about accepting all of those things.”)

His sadness/whatever emotions and problems he’s been wrestling with have seemingly spanned the course of a few years, and are very personal to him… which is why I feel that releasing Lights Up as the first single sets the tone for the rest of his album centering around his own identity. The line “Lights up and they know who you are, know who you are… Do you know who you are?” poses the question - who is Harry? - and then, “Shine! Step into the light… Shine! So bright sometimes. Shine! I’m not ever going back.” shows us Harry having the strength and bravery to overcome his fears (stepping into the light, although it’s ‘so bright sometimes’ - overwhelming) and reclaim/express his own misunderstood identity.

A lot of people have been trying to tie the In Watermelon Sugar thing back to someone else, but at this point I completely disagree. Not only have we seen him make literary references in the past (the Charles Bukowski reference in Woman), but… given everything that he’s said about Lights Up so far – which was surprisingly a lot – I think that Harry genuinely just took a lot of inspiration from the book because it seemed to hit close to home with his own feelings about self-acceptance and living an authentic life within the public eye.

I think a lot about the scene we’ve yet to see from the directors cut - a room full of many different iterations of Harry.

“My name depends on you… Just call me whatever is in your mind.”

Which leads me back to more total conjecture on my end, but I think that when Harry initially set out on tour / kicked off his solo career, he seemed determined to continue performing within the safety of the walls that had been built around him, so to speak. In one of the interviews he did earlier, he talked about tackling his first album from the perspective of ‘bowling with the bumpers up’ - he wanted to play it safe. He didn’t want to veer too far out of his own comfort zone and fuck it all up… and in doing so, he seemed to hold himself back quite a lot. “I wanted to see if people would enjoy an album without knowing everything about me.”

I think that heading into writing with that mindset explains songs like ‘Complicated Freak’ and ‘Medicine’ being scrapped and excluded from being released on HS1. In retrospect, all of his tour - and especially Medicine - seem a lot like Harry dipping his toes in the water. Being totally presumptuous again, but I find it likely that Harry has had it ingrained in his mind for a long time that he needs to fit certain molds and keep certain narratives alive in order to continue to be successful. And I imagine that this idea is not his own, but instead something that has been hammered into his head over and over from a young age. And I would guess that a lot of anxiety and doubt has stemmed from that - go back and watch that shaky first performance of Medicine and tell me what you think he was likely feeling in that moment. But again, it circles right back to the strength and bravery of doing what he knows needs to be done to expel all of the darkness inside of him - stepping into the light. (“Never going back now / Be so sweet if things just stayed the same.” It’d be so sweet if he could live in that fantasyland forever.)

Anyway. I really don’t think Harry was at all prepared for just how many people would show up to support him in that sense… but his own community just rolled up in droves, bringing a total outpouring of love for him every single night. He had entire arenas lit up in rainbows, people bringing hilarious and heartfelt signs, flags after flags after flags after flags… all in celebration of him and the feelings of safety, strength, and bravery that he has continuously imparted back onto his fans. It was such a queer lovefest that even other artists likened his tour to “pride parades every night.” That’s so unbelievably powerful? I can’t think of any other artist who’s crowds do that for them… not even gay icons like Elton John? I still maintain that one of the most incredible things to have come out of HSLOT was the safe spaces he + his fans created for one another. It meant a lot to us, and it clearly meant a lot to him:

“The tour, that affected me deeply. It really changed me emotionally. Having people come to sing the songs… For me, the tour was the biggest thing in terms of being more accepting of myself, I think. I kept thinking, “Oh, wow. They really want me to be myself. And be out and do it.” That’s the thing I’m most thankful for, of touring. I feel like the fans in the room — it’s this environment where people come to feel like they can be themselves. There’s nothing that makes me feel more myself than to be in this whole room of people. It made me realize people want to see me experiment and have fun. Nobody wants to see you fake it.”

I think that going on tour, and seeing the reaction and the acceptance of his audience, definitely made him want to take the bumpers down… to ‘be out and do it’ because ‘nobody wants to see him fake it.’ It seemed to help him massively in terms of his own ‘self acceptance and the things he’s been wrestling with’ and to make an incredibly, incredibly long winded answer short, it’s why I STILL do not think that releasing Lights Up on National Coming Out Day was in any way incidental. I think that was a big part of what Harry meant when he said that no one wanted to see him ‘faking’ things.

And… that’s basically it, I think, for now. I’ve just been sitting here nodding along at everything he’s been showing us the last few weeks… Impressed by the direction that he seems to be heading. And taking notes. I’ll go ahead and shut up now because I KNOW it’s still too early to draw definite conclusions on his intent for this new ‘era’ (and this new song could be about choking on literal fucking watermelon seeds for all I know, nothing Harry does ever makes any kind of sense does it), but I can’t help but come to my own conclusions based on what I feel he is sharing with us.

#like if anyone actually thinks that it makes more sense for harry to be crying over borrowed slippers from an ex #and writing entire songs based off of his ex's supposed favorite book... be my guest or whatever #but it totally undermines how smart harry actually is. he used the word 'regalia' in a fucking interview the other day #like c'mon lmao #anyway #this is just me rambling for like... a solid 2k #sorry #when he makes me look like booboo i'll at least be a more educated booboo or whatever #:')#*

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Jeffrey Epstein Raped Me When I Was 15 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-jennifer-araoz.html

Jeffrey Epstein Raped Me When I Was 15

Now I’m suing his estate and accomplices.

By Jennifer Araoz, Ms. Araoz has filed a lawsuit against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. | Published August 14, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 14, 2019 12:58 PM ET |

The first time I stepped into Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side in the fall of 2001, I noticed his security cameras. They were hard to miss. Inside the front door, he had small TVs playing the footage in real time. I was a child, just 14 at the time. But the message was clear: I was in the house of someone important and I was being watched.

I can still remember watching myself on those screens as I walked into the house of the person I came to know as a predator, a pedophile, my rapist.

I’m filing a civil action against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate and accomplices today, under New York’s Child Victims Act. A key provision of the law goes into effect today and allows survivors to revive claims if the statute of limitations had expired.

Epstein was found dead, apparently by suicide, in his jail cell last week. I’m angry he won’t have to personally answer to me in the court of law. But my quest for justice is just getting started.

During my freshman year, one of Epstein’s recruiters, a stranger, approached me on the sidewalk outside my high school. Epstein never operated alone. He had a ring of enablers and surrounded himself with influential people. I was attending a performing arts school on the Upper East Side, studying musical theater. I wanted to be an actress and a singer.

The recruiter told me about a wealthy man she knew named Jeffrey Epstein. Meeting him would be beneficial, and he could introduce me to the right people for my career, she said. When I confided that I had recently lost my father and that my family was living on food stamps, she told me he was very caring and wanted to help us financially.

The trap was set.

The visits during the first month felt benign, at least at the time. On my second visit, Epstein also gave me a digital camera as a gift. The visits were about one to two hours long and we would spend the time talking. After each visit, he or his secretary would hand me $300 in cash, supposedly to help my family.

But within about a month, he started asking me for massages and instructed me to take my top off. He said he would need to see my body if he was going to help me break into modeling. I felt uncomfortable and intimidated, but I did as he said. The assault escalated when, during these massages, he would flip over and sexually gratify himself and touch me inappropriately. For a little over a year, I went to Epstein’s home once or twice a week.

The last day I went to his house was during the fall of my sophomore year. This time, when I was giving him the massage, he told me to take off my underwear and get on top of him. When I said no, he got more aggressive, held me tightly and raped me.

After that day, I never went back. I also quit the performing arts school — the one I had auditioned for and had wanted so badly to attend. It was too close to his house, the scene of so many crimes. I was too scared I would see him or his recruiter. So I transferred to another school in Queens close to my home. Since I was no longer able to pursue my dream of performing arts I eventually lost interest and dropped out.

It took me years to tell the people close to me what had happened. I was so intimidated by his insistence that I never speak a word of my visits to anyone. And like many survivors, I struggled with anxiety and shame for what I had experienced.

The power structure was stacked against me. His money, influence and connections to important people made me want to hide and stay silent. Those same powerful forces let him hide and evade justice.

That changes, starting now. I want my story to hold Epstein to account and also his recruiters, the workers on his payroll who knew what he was doing and the prominent people around him who helped conceal and perpetuate his sex-trafficking scheme. Their hideous actions victimized me and so many young girls like me.

For years I felt crushed by the power imbalance between Epstein, with his enablers, and me. The Child Victims Act finally offers a counterweight. Moving forward, victims will now have until age 55 to bring a civil case.

I hope more states pass similar laws so that more survivors who endured abuse, assault and rape as a child can know what wresting back their power feels like.

Standing up to the entrenched network of power and wealth that surrounded Epstein is scary, but I am no longer afraid. Reliving these experiences is tough, but I’ve learned to be tougher.

I used to feel alone, walking into his mansion with the cameras pointing at me, but now I have the power of the law on my side. I will be seen. I will be heard. I will demand justice.

Woman Who Says Epstein Groomed Her for Sex at 14 Sues His Estate

The lawsuit from Jennifer Araoz is one of many possible lawsuits his estate may face after his death by an apparent suicide.

By Amy Julia Harris | Published Aug. 14, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 14, 2019 1:05 PM ET |

A New York woman who said Jeffrey Epstein groomed her for sex starting when she was 14 and then raped her a year later sued his estate on Wednesday, one of many possible lawsuits that his estate may face after his death by an apparent suicide.

While Mr. Epstein’s death ended a federal criminal prosecution on child sex trafficking charges, his estate may still have to defend against civil suits. He was believed to have been worth at least $500 million.

Other women who have said they were victimized by Mr. Epstein said they planned to file lawsuits, and a new state law in New York that expands the amount of time that some sexual abuse victims can sue could open the door to more claims.

Mr. Epstein, 66, died Saturday after he hanged himself in a Manhattan federal jail where he had been held since his arrest in early July, authorities said.

In her lawsuit filed Wednesday, Jennifer Araoz said she was recruited by an unnamed woman outside her Manhattan high school in 2001 before meeting Mr. Epstein and giving him erotic massages once or twice a week in his Upper East Side townhouse.

In 2002, about a year after they met, Mr. Epstein pulled Ms. Araoz on top of him during a massage and raped her, according to the lawsuit. She did not visit his townhouse again, she said.

His lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ms. Araoz also sued the women she said helped Mr. Epstein, including Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime confidante and the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a British publishing magnate. They also include three unnamed household staffers, including Mr. Epstein’s secretary, his maid and a woman she called “the recruiter.”

Dan Kaiser, Ms. Araoz’s lawyer, said his client did not interact with Ms. Maxwell at the townhouse but included Ms. Maxwell in the suit because she was “one of the center spokes of this conspiracy.”

“It wasn’t just Jeffrey Epstein,” Kaiser said. Maxwell “helped maintain the ring and is responsible as a co-conspirator for the injuries that Jennifer suffered. There was a whole circuit of enablers around him, adults who permitted this to go on.”

Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment. She has emphatically denied past accusations that she participated in sex trafficking.

Ms. Araoz, who is now 32, first told her story to NBC News last month, after Mr. Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport on the federal charges. Her lawsuit could be one of many new claims that are filed against the Epstein estate in New York under the law passed this year.

The law, called the Child Victims Act, expands the amount of time that prosecutors can file sexual abuse charges and victims can sue for abuse that occurred when they were a minor.

Crucially, the law created a one-year “look-back window,” during which claims that had already passed the statute of limitations could be revived. That window opened on Wednesday.

Ms Araoz’s attorneys said they planned to target Mr. Epstein’s assets in this suit, which include his properties in New York, Florida and the United States Virgin Islands.

While it is possible that Mr. Epstein shielded his vast wealth in shell companies, Mr. Kaiser said, the real estate properties are “hard assets that are difficult to hide.”

In her lawsuit, Ms. Araoz said she was groomed by the unnamed “recruiter” — whom she described as a brunette — outside Talent Unlimited High School, where she was a freshman.

Ms. Araoz, who was raised in modest means by a single mother in Queens, said she confided in the woman about the recent death of her father from AIDS. She and the woman met for several weeks before meeting Mr. Epstein in his townhouse, located a few blocks from her school on the Upper East Side, the lawsuit said.

“Ms. Araoz was a prime target for grooming by a pedophile like Mr. Epstein,” the suit said.

Ms. Araoz returned to the townhouse alone, where Mr. Epstein gave her a tour of the palatial building, one of the largest private residences in New York.

The lawsuit contained remarkable details about the home: Many rooms had elaborate murals painted on the ceilings, and a trophy room was filled with exotic animals, including a stuffed giraffe.

In Mr. Epstein’s master bathroom, prosthetic breasts had been mounted on the wall so that he could “look at or play with while in the bathtub,” the lawsuit said.

Mr. Epstein led her to his “favorite room” in the house, a large massage room with a blue ceiling painted with clouds and angels on one of the upper floors.

Mr. Epstein then asked her to take off her top, began fondling her breasts and asked her to give him a massage. Soon, she was coerced into giving him massages once or twice a week, wearing only her underwear, the lawsuit said.

Mr. Epstein would masturbate and then flatter and reward Ms. Araoz with $300 in cash, saying he wanted to help her, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan.

In the fall of 2002, the lawsuit said, Mr. Epstein instructed her to take off her underwear and climb atop him to give him a massage. He then raped her, and told her “that she felt amazing, and that she did nothing wrong,” according to the lawsuit.

She did not go to police after the incident. In an opinion piece for The New York Times on Wednesday, she said that for years she did not tell anyone about abuses because she was intimidated by Mr. Epstein’s insistence that she stay silent.

She said she was wracked with shame, and eventually dropped out of high school.

On Wednesday, Ms. Araoz said Mr. Epstein and the people around him “robbed me of my youth, my identity, my innocence, my self-worth.”

Her lawyers said she had spoken to federal prosecutors who were preparing a case against Mr. Epstein.

#jeffrey epstein #sex trafficking #sex crimes #world news #news #u.s. news #u.s. department of justice #u.s. government

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todaysbiggesthits · 6 years

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The Exam

Best Music Moment of 2017:

Code: dancing out the entire wedding reception playlist with my best girl on an empty concrete slab on a breezy texas night

BC: -The absolute stellar dance party at Codemin’s Wedding; most notably:

“Carol” by The Rolling Stones

“Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode

“Crystal” by New Order

-OK Computer’s 20th Anniversary and the listening/reflection that came with it -My four year old, Emmett, learning “Maps” on the drums pretty much on his own

JD: February: Watching the “Emotional Rescue” scene in A Bigger Splash:

youtube

March: Seeing Stop Making Sense on the big screen at my favorite theater with m’gal and a David Byrne Q&A after the screening. April: The dance party of a lifetime at Code and Arden’s wedding. November: Watching Parquet Courts play “You’ve Got Me Wondering Now” for the first time in years.

C: "Born to Run" at a good friend's, Brian Ferguson's, wedding.

Nasty: This playing at the end of Leftovers Season 3, Ep 5 - "The Most Powerful Man in the World"

Bronco: Sitting on my back porch with Brenny, sipping down some delicious whiskey drinks and listening to the new Mastodon on a surprisingly unshitty Amazon bluetooth speaker. Watching his face on the breakdown in Jaguar God was quite entertaining. Also listening to the Squalus album (the metal interpretation of Jaws) with the kids, my oldest asking what it was, and him saying he wants to watch Jaws now. He was especially fascinated by the USS Indianapolis part of the story.

Laser: This

Chap: My 17 has been dominated by the two new ladies in my life. I made this mix for them:

and played it for them on random the morning they were born. This was the first song that came on:

and I finally broke down with emotion after the 36 hour experience while holding one of them while this song was playing:

Best Shows Seen in 2017:

BC: This first 60 seconds of this:

youtube

Nasty: Future Islands & Action Bronson

Larse: Future Islands with Maddie, Nasty, and Sam; Action Bronson at The Rave - pretty sure I got a contact high just from being in the show

C: War on Drugs

Bronco: Mastodon

Codem: lvl up - beat kitchen kitten forever - subterranean downstairs ovlov - beat kitchen pqc - the bottle girlpool - logan square auditorium moving units’ joy division cover set - the bottle PAWS - cobra lounge a. savage - the bottle pictureplane

JD: 1. William Basinski and Julianna Barwick at National Sawdust 2. No Age at Elsewhere 3. Parquet Courts and B-Boys at Elsewhere 4. Liars at Warsaw 5. Deerhunter and Eleanor Friedberger performing while Bradford Cox painted her portrait onstage at Warsaw 6. LCD Soundsystem at Brooklyn Steel 7. Yo La Tengo in Central Park 8. Andrew WK at Warsaw 9. Vince Staples at Panorama Fest 10. Wire at Baby’s All Right 11. Vagabon at Brooklyn Bazaar

Confession of 2017:

Bronco: I listened to the New Kids On The Block offering of 2017 "Thankful" (it was fucking terrible).

C: Still haven’t listened to LCD Soundsystem

Code: -knowing the backstory, the mount eerie album was probably the best album i heard this year, but it was too dang sad to listen to more than a handful of times. -i still loved that brand new song despite the lead cat being a creep. -i thought that this year was pretty rough for music, but my tune changed after looking back through my top tracks. maybe there were just so few full albums that i liked? -i fast fwd'd through every SNL musical guest this calendar year, but i did catch the tom petty tribute from the vegas countrymin.

BC: I don’t hate that objectively awful Chainsmokers/Coldplay song because it reminds me of this year’s BOB since Creevey played it every twenty minutes for 36 holes.

Larson: Listened to more rap this year than I think I have in past years; must be Nasty's Lincoln influence!

Nasty: I listened to more podcasts than music in 17.

Biggest Disappointment of 2017:

Laser: LCD Soundsystem

Codem: -no chromatics this year. -the two lcd shows that i saw this year.

Chap: The albums. I would not be shocked if I didn't listen to any of my top 15 all the way through after today.

Bin: DJT

JD: Mondanile

BC: Real Estate. I think they need to invite the perv back into the band.

Bronco: Bison, Monolord, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, And So I Watch You From Afar. They all put out albums this year, and I've like their stuff in the past, but they did little to nothing for me this time around.

Most Overrated of 2017:

Codem: slowdive, but also twod and japanese breakfast

Bin: Bodak Yellow / Cardi B

Larse: LCD Soundsystem

Bronco: -Pallbearer - just don't like the guy's voice, and though they're slow as shit, there's no good riffs or anything to connect with for me. -Code Orange - hardcore band that I just don't get. One of those 'motherfucker I'm the best!' type super close to being alt-right supremecy type bands even though they're probably completely against it. They're at the top of most metal lists this year. I've given them 4-5 spins, most in reaction to the praise they're getting, but I just don't get it. -Royal Thunder - just one big case of blue balls. All of their songs seemingly build toward a climax that never happens. It's just so blech.

JD: Did the music press even treat anything as a lasting work of art and not ephemeral content to get through a week or two of famous personality driven clicks? King Krule?

BC: Lorde, I think? I mean, that album’s gotten a lot of love this year and I thought the lead single – “Green Light” – was hot garbage. It spawned a conspiracy theory in my mind that Taylor Swift was proactively influencing and then purposefully sabotaging the work of her close friends (see Lorde, Haim, et al).

Make it Stop 2017

Bronco: Sex monsters. Can we just take all white dudes in powerful positions, assume they've sexually assaulted at least one person, imprison them, and move on? We could take everything they have, give it all to Native American tribes, then force them to walk their own trail of tears to live out their lives in the desserts of New Mexico, and force them to build the wall, but it would just be a wall around their sad sex monster reservation.

Also, Taylor Swift.

Nasty: I didn't have the luxury of expending any real hate on music this year... which I'm just now recognizing as a bad thing.

JD: -Unceasing sadness and anxiety about the present and future. -Jack Antonoff

BC: Life on this planet.

Code: any rap station that i hear in an uber. that cardi b song was playing every time i caught a cab at 5:30 a.m. to play golf.

Larson: U2

Biggest TBH Regret of 2017:

BC: Not seeing NIN at RiotFest

Larson: Skipping the Car Seat Headrest show at Summerfest because I could tell Maddie didn't want to leave Jonas' party (party was fun, so not a real loss, just wish I would have seen the show).

Nasty: Not even giving new artists a chance. I'll listen to an average album from The National 10x's before I give someone new a shot.

Codebreaker: not having an opportunity to karaoke badu's tyrone

JD: -Had the worst fever of my life during LCD and could only manage standing in the back shivering. -Forgetting to go see Dinner at Baby’s All Right. -Not enough time with Bjork, Miguel, and Blanck Mass.

Bronco: Fucked up the family calendar maintenance and ended up not being able to see the Toadies and Local H. I was pissed at my wife, but it wasn't the end of the world. I haven't listened to either in forever, and the listen I gave to the Toadies latest offering didn't knock my socks off. It was really just for nostalgic purposes. Still it sucked to have to miss it despite my best efforts to bring it to her attention multiple times.

Detective Murtaugh of 2017:

NACK: I had two separate opportunities to see LCD, and just didn't feel like putting in the effort. Was going to put this as a regret, but I don't regret it.

Code: i skipped 7 shows that i had tickets for and left 6 shows early. two shows i left early due to brightness of lights. mmmmmnhh

JD: Couldn’t hear for 18 hours after No Age. Needed two Tylenol for the headache I gave myself during “You’ve Got Me Wondering Now” at PQ Quartz.

BC: Having no idea who either the SNL host or the musical guest was for three straight weeks. Tiffany Haddish? Saoirse Ronan? SZA? I’m too old for this shit…

Nasty: Carson, Maddie, Sam and I went to watch the IU game this weekend with one of Carson's co-workers (an IU grad) who is 23.... I got rolling on a rant about how important it is to enjoy your 20s because after the impending onslaught of weddings and babies life basically isn't any fun anymore. Suspect it was a little too impassioned by the end.

Bronco: I was enrolled in a three month coding bootcamp to learn Web Development. Aside from the two older ladies (50+) and the weird Brazilian idiot (45+), I was the oldest person in the room by probably an average of 13 years. They are all for the most part life-pivoting in to the dev world and they all have all the time in the world to learn new shit, do whatever they want, whenever they want...goddamnit I miss that. So maybe this is my "too married and fathered for this shit" section of the exam.

C: Wife’s Pregnancy

Laser: Every time I wake up with a fucking hangover and tell myself that I’m not gonna drink like that again only to get back on the saddle the next available opportunity.

Resolution for 2017 Update:

BC: Put a goddamn band together. How it went:

C: Check out some jazz/blues in Chicago. How it went: FAILED

Larson: Focus on the shit I really care about instead of trying to listen to everything posted on the thread…I’m just going to have to be honest with myself and realize I ain’t got time for all this media! How it went: Terrible; found myself listening to Timeless Pop Rock hits playlist more than anything else.

Chap: Check out more of the recommendations on the TBH thread. Try to organize get-togethers around TWO shows. How it went: Actually not bad. I had a few solid period during nap times when I didn't feel like working. I think I was able to listen to every album I wanted to at least once.

Code: make concerted effort to listen to music that i liked in previous years in addition to music from the current year. How it went: i nailed my resolution, as i devoted four full months to the grateful dead and it was the best musical trimester of the year for me. it was really interesting to watch all of the new music pile up and never once feeling compelled to listen to something else. god damn did the '77 version of the band have it all figured out. i could listen to any uptown mississippi halfstep toodeloo from that year at any time.

Bronco: Learn the guitar. I’ve been fooling around with Rocksmith (guitar hero with real guitar) and I want to push myself to execute the more complex chords, not just stick to the powerchord simple songs like Blitzkrieg Bop, and start learning how to build and execute a solo. I also want to distill my own whiskey, build a garden shed from scratch, and learn to code. How it went: I haven't quite mastered the guitar, but I can play a few songs fairly well. I did not start working on my own whiskey or build a garden shed from scratch...yet. But I did learn to code. I am now at conversational levels of fluency with Javascript and at "donde es el bano" levels with Ruby and Python.

Nasty: See a show in NY with JD. How it went: Not great, Bob! I barely made it down the street to see Action Bronson with Laser

JD: Seeing more shows with you guys is an evergreen resolution. How it went: To quote BC,

Resolution for 2018:

BC: No more resolutions

C: Catch some jazz in Chicago

Laser: get my list in on time!

Chap: While I didn't have the occasion to catch shows this year, I anticipate doing so in '18 due to some changes afoot.

Codem: make more playlists for my wife

Bronco: Get in shape. I want to stick to a schedule of running all year round. I ran a 10K back in June, then needed to recover for a bit, been recovering ever since...Fat Dad needs to keep running all year round without excuse, especially given that we go skiing between Xmas and New Year's and I'm gonna be a floppy legged mess. During those runs, I'll try to listen to new material each time.

Bin: I'm just going to keep saying "get to NY for a show with JD" until I make it happen.

JD: See you gents more often with or without a show attached.

Most Anticipated of 2018:

C: MBV

JD: MBV, No Age, Panda Bear, something surprising

Code: chromatics (i think it's really coming this year), mbv, no age, DOM, CCFX full album

Bronco: Tool. Fourth year's the charm...fuck those guys. It better suck me off when it finally does come out. Also a new Sleep album and a new High on Fire album...still waitin' on those too.

BC: Simple Minds, Vampire Weekend, Kanye

Nasty: Kanye, ASAP Rocky, Rhye, Chromeo, Vampire Weekend

Chap: After a quick glance at the list... Vampire Weekend, Kanye, Chromatics

Larse: Honestly don't even know what is on the horizon, just hope I can listen to it with this net neutrality bullshit!

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