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foolscapper · 6 years

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Exploding Head Syndrome: A MCU Post-IW Fanfic | Ch. 4

(READ IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.)

What happens when you pile a bunch of doctors into a medical wing with a catatonic spider-kid? A hell of a lot of things going on at once, it turns out. Bruce can't complain about it, because it at least keeps him focused on anything other than himself; life has been one big roller-coaster he hasn't been able to get off of since Ultron (no, wait, way before that), and all he wants is to sit in a lab and work on anything that isn't his own self-worth and mental capsizing. Two years killing aliens for sport as a gladiator will do that to you. Yeah, he still hasn't figured out how to work with this, so he just went ahead and put all that in a way-too-small box in his brain. Hooray for compartmentalizing. Back to work. Cho has already gently pulled a sample of Parker's tissue from one of his arms to study his particularly complex cell structure, as is her particularly crucial talent, and Strange has returned from his own collection of ancient texts, Wong hovering at his side to offer whatever knowledge he can in the ways of the soul — to which Bruce knows Tony's grateful, but he also is well-aware that the man is running on fumes by the third day of diagnostics. The genius had been animated with the news of Peter's return, and that scene outside is still fresh in his mind as he eyes the reports that have come back from MRI scans of Peter's brain. There's no damage, no signs of anything that would cause this kind of dramatic loss of self, which Bruce semi-expected with the way Dr. Strange had gone on about the potential effects of the stones on a kid like Peter. There are variables. It's possible someone did this to him — that he was targeted, that maybe Thanos did something specific in the snap that left Peter completely vulnerable to complications. That doesn't too much sense in the grand scope of things, but it surely the madman had some range of control over who stayed and who went. The thing is, Thanos was dead. This shouldn't be a complication. Should it?

Perhaps it's someone outside of Thanos. Someone from his roster, maybe. But that would also be an odd way to handle payback, especially when the Guardians and Strange were also at their mercy. Bruce didn't rule out the possibility that something from the planet itself might have effected Parker, especially when Titan may very well effect every one of them differently. Strange collected some of the dirt and debris carried over onto the Benatar, and from Peter and Drax's boots, but the results of the study yielded very little. "He's not completely human, that much is certain," Cho says, not unkindly. "If you look at the way his DNA is structured, it is much different than any string I would pull from myself or any normal boy off the street. But if there's a correlation with the way he's reacted to resurrecting, I have not found it yet." Bruce glances at Tony, biting his lip. "His brain scans are clean, too. I've sent everything to Shuri, though, just in case they can find something we don't. Which, you know, is a... pattern... lately..." Tony was up at all hours after the kid had been put to bed, compiling all manner of documents highlighting medical complications and disorders of the mind, and at this point Bruce is tempted to lock him out of the lab (though he's also more than aware he may also be punched in the teeth for it, and the last thing anyone needs is for Hulk to finally decide to pop back in)... Three whole days, though. It's not healthy, and yes, he's not the pinnacle of good mental health himself, but... He twiddles with a pen in his hands, once the two of them are alone (well, Peter is here, too... so they're alone enough). "Hey, we've got this. You're not gonna be any good to this kid if you're passing out mid-conversation." "We've got a bigger problem than that," Tony mumbles, rubbing at the exhaustion all over his face. They're both sitting at a counter near the lounge chairs; why aren't they sitting on the lounge chairs? Bruce is seeing a missed opportunity for comfort here. Peter has the right idea.

Tony adds, "... He hasn't eaten anything."

And okay, that is a pretty important thing to bring up. He'd been putting it off in the hopes they'd find something sooner, to avoid what he figured might have to be done. But even with practically living in the lab with this unresponsive kid, they're no closer to closing in on what's making him tick — or not tick, in this case — and resources are waning. Bruce bites his lip, not happy with what he'll have to say. "He's going to need a temporary feeding tube of some kind, soon. Until we can get any kind of result." "Oh, god." And Bruce sees in his friend's eyes, the slow unraveling that comes with helplessness. He wishes there was something he could say that was any more calming, but the fact of the matter is that Peter is his patient for the meanwhile, and he has to say exactly what's in the kid's best interest, whether it's emotionally draining or not. He's tired, they're all tired, Peter's probably hungry, and nobody wins in this situation. "He's not a typical case, either. His metabolism is too high to do anything different, Tony, I'm sorry. He's already losing way too much weight for just being a few days back, and IV drips are only gonna get us so far. Even if he's not mentally there right now, it's not humane to—" Tony's fist is a sharp, echoing sound against the metal table under his arm. "I know, alright? I know!" A silence falls over them where they sit, and Peter — as always — only blinks and breathes where he sits nearby. It must be so much, to watch someone you love look like this for so long. Too long. Every glance in the boy's direction is a reminder of just how powerless they can all be, despite their collective minds, their hours and hours of best efforts. Bruce leans back, almost affronted by the simmering heat in Tony's rounded shoulders, tapping his pen to his teeth a few times before he says with a raised brow, "... Are you gonna hulk out on me? Do I need to get the armor out?" It works enough to tame the beast. And maybe even earn a hidden, miserable smile as Tony's face descends into shadow behind his fists. "Ha, ha. Very funny." More softly, Bruce replies, "... It won't be a big deal. It's an hour-long surgery at most, and it's extremely noninvasive and basic, and Cho can do it in her sleep. It's just a little button, practically — you won't even notice anything's any different, and he'll be all the more healthy for it, right? It's for Peter's well-being." Tony cards a hand through his hair, looking at Peter, who is sitting as compliantly as the day he'd been walked in. "... You're a fucking pain in the ass, Pete," he says. It's a strained response, and Bruce reaches out to cup one of Tony's shoulders. His doctoring isn't just limited to Peter, and he can see just how drained Tony is; he wears the bags under his eyes like a fashion accessory, and while that's usually all fine and good and expected of someone like him, enough is enough. He can't watch his friend self-combust in front of him."And you need to rest. I'm serious, man. Do you think he wants you to overwork yourself to death here?" "He doesn't want anything right now, because nobody's at the door, Bruce. And I don't know what to do." "Right now? Sleeping is what you do. You're no good to him if you're not at your best." A pause. "I'm getting Pepper." He stands, and Tony looks after him helplessly. "No, hey — goddammit."

Stephen has met few as stubborn as Tony Stark, but he supposes that's one reason the earth had ultimately been in the best of hands, against Thanos and his unruly power. It takes a few arguments and a hell of a lot of coaxing and an unfair advantage of using a two year old baby, but eventually Tony relents with Bruce and Stephen's promise that they won't do anything until Tony can decide how to approach May Parker about this (this poor woman doesn't even know, she has no clue, and how are they going to explain to this poor woman that her adoptive son is here but not here at all?). Tony also adds an addendum, that he has to be present for every goddamn moment of any surgery involved here no matter how small, 'so help me god'. It's a fair request, one that Stephen gives his word to honor. He consults with Cho and Bruce, and they're in agreement: a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy, however temporary it is, is imperative for their patient. It would have never been something he would have cared about, in his professional career. He would have not given Peter Parker a second glance in the hospital, would have passed him off to someone else like he had been the most minor of roadblocks. A thoughtful silence falls over them as Dr. Cho talks about their short-term gameplan. Strange admittedly has a lot he should be doing; the Time Stone is back in its rightful place, and the whole world is reeling from the events of the last few years. He'd only given himself enough time to comb through old records at the Sanctum and remind Christine, rather lamely, that he's back from the dead. She had nearly strangled him in her embrace, but it was a soft moment he wouldn't trade for anything. "... I'll oversee the surgery as well," he finally speaks, glancing back at Peter. He's been there for every step of the conversation, and part of him hopes that a teenager hearing the word 'surgery' applied to them will make them suddenly spring to life with anxiety, like a kid realizing he's on his way to a dentist. Nothing of the sort happens, but even Stephen is not allergic to hopeful optimism. "I can promise you, he'll be in safe hands," Cho says worriedly, but he shakes his head with a raised hand. "It's not that. I trust you to be knowledgeable; you're a credit to your field. I just want to know for myself as well, that everything goes exactly as expected." If he can't take an hour out of his day to look out for a teammate, then he doesn't deserve to wear the cloak. "We'd love to have you," Bruce says, then smiles a little. "Are you, uh. Close with Peter?" He considers it for a moment, and only a moment, fleeting. For some reason, most of that moment comprises of memories, of one Peter Parker excitedly rambling at him about magic and floating cloaks for an hour prior to crash landing. He huffs a breath, almost a laugh. "Not particularly, to be honest. I'd only met him on an alien spaceship a day before we all were killed. But — his involvement in our timeline can't be overstated. And... the kid did save my life. And helped me avoid a great deal of torment. So I suppose he's a temporary... ward, of sorts. I'm indebted to him. What about you?" "This is the first time I've met him, actually. But... he means a lot to Tony. And..." The doctor grows quiet for a moment with folded, contemplative arms, and Cho and Stephen give him a moment to continue. "And — I know what it's like." Strange cocks his head. Bruce sighs through his nose, eyes darkening with discontentment. A storm of ugly memories, all kept under lock and key; Stephen knows about the Hulk, of course, but he can hardly imagine the sorts of horror shows only Bruce banner is privy to. The man says, "I know what it's like, to be trapped in your own body. Maybe he's not, not exactly, and nothing like how I've been before, but... either way, he deserves to have it back." That's all that needs to be said. Stephen rises to leave after some time and a couple of warm drinks, hearing Bruce speaking effortlessly to Peter from around the corner before he fades further and further from earshot: "Hey kid, you're pretty good at this whole meditation thing; I'm a pro at it, myself. We should go out and get some air, maybe practice on the lawn. You could use some sunlight before you turn into a lab hermit like the rest of us old men." Wong hovers in the main corridor, newly arrived. A good sign. Stephen walks with him. "Anything from the Sanctum about the stones that might help this?" "Not very much," Wong relents. "What little can be found are based in texts that predate most everything we know as masters. However... I was able to look into what the Ancient One left behind in her many records and found something potentially helpful — and that is not necessarily something about the infinity stones, but about astral projection. I'll have to show you when we return, so you can help me decipher her chicken scratch." Stephen laughs softly, and they enjoy the sound of each other's footsteps. "... Do you have any theories, about what's actually wrong with the boy?" Strange purses his lips, and says at cautious length, "It's all just a theory, but... the woman, Mantis, she had been able to sense him within his body for a short time, even if it wasn't for long. I think more than anything else, it's possible that Peter returned to himself momentarily like the rest of us — and then panicked and let himself sink back into... wherever we all were." "Panicked?" Wong's brow furrows. "Over being alive again?" "... Over the pain of it. Stark had a hard time talking about it, but from what I can gather from his recollections, Peter's death was extraordinarily different from the rest of us. He felt that something was wrong before he'd passed, and it took him much longer than the rest of us to die. If I had to fathom a guess... I think maybe his composition was his own undoing. He's a scared child who couldn't cope with re-living that moment of suffering." "And what is the solution to that? Is there any?" Stephen looks to the side, where Bruce and Peter are resting in the sun, not too far from where the Benatar had landed — with them and bad news. For a moment Stephen worries about the safety of a mentally lost boy and a doctor sorely lacking in control over his green rage-monster, but then he notices the blot of red on the rooftops — Natasha Romanoff, accompanied by a suited-up Sam Wilson, watching with bird-like eyes over the resting figures. Stephen smiles faintly despite himself. "None that I can offer anyone right now. There may not be a solution. Even the Scarlet Witch couldn't find any foothold in the kid's mind... There's no link that we can find between him and the physical world. But if there's any hope at all, and if all else truly fails... my personal bet is on the Soul Stone." Though maybe — and this is a fluttering, unprofessional thought in the grand scheme of things — the extended hands of Peter Parker's worried team may be part of that solution, too. Stephen makes a mental note to compile as much as he can to give to Stark from the Ancient One's writings. And he gives silent thanks to her, that even after her passing, she's managed to help provide obnoxiously useful words of wisdom, be it in slowed thunder storms or old, time-stained scrolls.

#peter parker #tony stark #bruce banner #stephen strange #mcu #marvel #mcu fanfic #marvel fanfic #infinity war #mymcufanfic #hurt!peter parker #warning for medical talk #nothing graphic though #ehsfanfic

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getfuckedstayfucked · 3 years

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callout post for aineedhelp dumbposting majimaguro

@dumbposting @majimaguro since you've been harassing my friends I figured I'd lay this out for you in no uncertain terms. Kyle, if you read this, scroll down to the bottom where there's a screenshot of Charlie literally telling you to die.

Hi Charlie. I deadass had to make a tumblr for this bullshit because your lying has really gotten excessive. I mean really? Telling people you’re 23? Telling people that you were groomed by us? Telling people we forced you to ditch your friends when all you’d do is complain to us about how uncomfortable x person would make you with their requests for sexual roleplay, or their aggressive demeanor, or their shipping wants? Telling people you were abused by us when you clearly have done this more than twice to different friend groups and when one group falls apart you move on to the next and start your predatory cycle all over again???

I can see you do this for every friend group you make, no matter who it is, where they are. You know how I see this? Because you are saying that we did what you told us your old friends were doing - Jasper, Robin, and Merc. You’ve moved the narrative that THEY were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators over to us since your new group of friends doesn’t know about them outside of the parts those new friends (your dear friends who never hurt you ever even though you consistently complain about said new friends behind their backs!) play and now, suddenly, WE were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators because you milked the attention and pity you could get out of us over the awful things you said about Jasper, Robin, and Merc, and in the process you eventually abused the two people who had the patience to stick out that behaviour SO MUCH and for SO LONG that you alienated them. Once they were over how you treated them, then suddenly, they were the bad guys. And you wouldn’t stop rocking the boat because you needed to have your endless little baby tantrum. Now that you’ve pulled the trigger, you can’t unshoot that bullet.

Newsflash? When these people told you THEIR BOUNDARIES - something that amazingly seems to only be valid when you do it - you got pissed at them. When people told you THEY COULDN’T HANDLE SOMETHING - like, oh, you know, detailed descriptions of severe animal trauma/death, or being told repetitively and graphically that you were going to kill yourself/how you were going to do it, they were suddenly awful. Well, you know what? That is textbook manipulation, to use a phrase you seem so fond of. Guilting people for having boundaries and making them feel bad for drawing lines because they want to have a healthy relationship with their friends isn’t bad, you just don’t like it because it means you can no longer do what you want or treat people like crap without repercussions.

You are a cruel person. You don’t care about anybody but yourself. You are a self-serving, self-driven, emotionless asshole that knows how to twist situations to be in your favor because your favorite tactic is to divide people up from one another so they have less and less outside views of what your treatment is actually like. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do something like you do for so long and so aggressively so I imagine you’ve been doing this for years. You hook someone - or multiple someones - in by being nice and personable and funny and relatable, then you destroy your friend groups by pitting people against one another and when you’ve isolated the people you’re obsessing over, you flip the switch and start to abuse them in private.

And you know what? You are not the victim in this narrative. You are just another abusive jerk who knows you can get that attention from someone somewhere as long as you twist the narrative to fit your ‘I’ve been abused my friends all treat me horribly’ angle. And you know what? I’m sick of you. I’m sick of how you treat my friends, I’m sick of how you treat people in general. You make me sick and if you’re proud of that, that’s not a badge of honor or pride. That means that you are exactly like your father.

You don’t get to be out here and be like ‘oh no! it was me who was hurt by these people!’ when you're the one harassing them with your nasty, miserable anon hate even though they’ve blocked you time and time again.

Steven showed me the conversation where you exploded at him for saying he needed a moment, because apparently it’s fucked up to not be able to handle graphic depictions of an animal’s death, and somehow saying that he couldn’t handle that in that moment was a personal attack and he was betraying you by being an unsupportive friend? People have triggers, hunty, you aren’t god’s gift to this earth and you aren’t the only person to have those! HE tried to set his boundaries and what did you do? You shit all over them. You only care about boundaries if they’re your own and if anybody else has one they try to set with you they’re suddenly awful and someone to be tossed aside.

And you know what else? You forcing Sam to deal with your maladjusted stalking all the time because you’re out here harassing him via tumblr dot com isn't cute. You’re entirely, creepily obsessed with him and irrationally upset that he stood up for himself and got tired of you treating him like your own personal emotional punching-bag. You are a pathetic, vengeful little person who has no life and nothing to do but troll the internet for victims and people you can trick into giving you sympathy until you inevitably wring them dry too and then you abandon them because they won’t give you what you want anymore.

Go fuck yourself. Get fucked, stay fucked. You complained to us and cried to us about Merc and Jasper and Robin and how they either wouldn’t stop bothering you for sexual RP or wouldn’t stop guilting you or pushing you in that direction, or how Robin wouldn’t stop trying to force you to say what she wanted you to say, and now you’re LITERALLY saying that about Steve and Sam? You are not. The fucking. Victim. Here. You are the orchestrator to an amazingly convoluted drama that rotates around you and you alone and I’m sick of this and I’m sick of you and I’m sick of having to hear about the lies you’re posting about my friends.

By the way? You aren’t 23. You are 27 by now! De-aging yourself to seem younger and more vulnerable only works when people don’t know you’re actually older - which, by the way, is SUPER creepy of you to do because it gets you closer to a younger demographic and endears you to them because oh! wow! You’re young and abused just like them! Do you know how fucked up it is to position yourself closer to younger, less experienced, vulnerable people like that? Do you know how fucked up it is to try and net those poor kids with your sob stories and how these ‘bad oldew peopow abewsed yew uwu’ even though that wasn’t the case? It puts you in a position of power and it gives you the reigns in any interactions you have with anybody younger than you and that is creepy and disgusting and you are creepy and disgusting for doing it, especially since your tumblr is filled with a mixture of sfw and 18+ content with zero 18+ follower requirement.

And you know what-- in the same vein, you use your being autistic as a sob story point to make it sound like one more way that you’ve been taken advantage of, but in reality you’re actually the one out here taking advantage of those around you and you’re being ableist while you do it? Wow. Wowiee wow wow.

You infantilize autistic people and say in the process that, in a blanket statement, ALL autistic people can’t fend for themselves or see anything coming at them from a mile away. On top of that, you shit on other autistic people’s special interests? Do you have any idea how many autistic people are out there with special interests focused around kid’s shows, or cartoons in general, or anime, or fandoms? No? Well, here’s a clue: there’s a lot of us (and yes, I am autistic, and yes, I do have special interests involving anime and fandoms, and no, I’m not a predator and I am DEFINITELY not the one out here creepily de-aging themselves to endear themselves to younger people like you are) with special interests ranging from anything from MLP to mushrooms to My Hero Academia (which is, for the record, one of Steve’s special interests, which you shit on him for, you ableist fuck) to Stephen King’s IT and you don’t get to say it’s predatory to have special interests in these areas!!!!!

You are not only perpetuating stereotypes about autistic people but you’re encouraging them because these stereotypes suit you and your current narrative! You’re using the same exact arguments that neurotypicals use! And you know what ELSE? Way to suggest that autistic people who have special interests that aren’t ‘adult’ are predators, too, you nasty little weasel. That’s the kind of narrative that gets autistic people killed!!! How selfish ARE you?

But wait, we really, really aren’t done here. I would really like to address your obsession with accusing people of being groomers and/or predators.

YOU LITERALLY ROLEPLAYED EDDIE KASPBRACK. YOU ROLEPLAYED HIM AS AGE SIXTEEN AND YOU HAVE DONE SO IN A SEXUAL AND SEXUAL-ADJACENT MANNER. YOU SMUT ROLEPLAYED SEXUAL CONTENT ON A CHARACTER THAT WAS SIXTEEN. YOU ALSO ROLEPLAY AS SHERRY BIRKIN FROM RESIDENT EVIL. SHE IS TEN. YOU CAN’T SAY SHIT. YOU. CAN’T. SAY. SHIT. YOU WROTE SMUT AS UNDERAGE CHARACTERS WHILE USING REAL LIFE UNDERAGE FACECLAIMS AND NOW YOU’RE OUT HERE SAYING THAT SIMPLY WATCHING THESE SHOWS AND BEING INTO THESE FANDOMS IS PEDOPHILIC? I don’t think so. I really, really do not think so.

Saying stuff like ‘reblogging anime posts or gifs or art is child porn’ also belittles and undermines actual CSA/pedophilia victims which is one more tally on the list of fucked up shit you’ve done. Way to be one of those people out there who do their best to divert valuable time and resources that could be spent on actual CSA victims instead of fictional fucking people.

This is a two-way street. You rant about how this is a 13+ site and how adults are responsible for kids in their spaces WHEN THEY HAVE ALREADY GONE TO REASONABLE LENGTHS TO PREVENT MINORS FROM GETTING AT THEIR CONTENT, but you’re always going on about getting high and doing drugs and talking about onlyfans which is AN ADULT SUBSCRIPTION WEBSITE GEARED TOWARDS PEOPLE WHO MAKE PORN OR FETISH CONTENT. You have absolutely ZERO 18+ content warning or follower requirement on your blog! Which is made creepier by the fact that you’ve de-aged yourself by a whole four years, you’re making yourself out to be some kind of abused child who was manipulated by older people, and you’re trying to speak for children. It’s wack.

For the record, being mentally ill is not an excuse for any of this at all whatsoever. If you hurt someone and you are mentally ill that is still on you. It is on you to learn to live with mental illness and not hurt those around you. When your shitty actions give someone else trauma, that is your fault, and it does have an effect on them, and it does hurt them. Fuck off with that 'no accountability' bullshit you're peddling. That's not how life works. Your actions have affected those around you and it takes a massive amount of willful ignorance to go around acting like you don't fucking know that already, especially considering that other people’s mental illnesses hurt you-- unless you were lying to us about that, too.

Get some fucking help and get out of our collective DMs........ Or don’t and get high like you always do instead of accepting responsibility for your actions, Mr. 'I'm lucid enough to be able to blame my mental illness for my own behaviour when that bs wouldn't even hold up in court'. Whatever.

I’m done with your shit.

Here's some receipts. Kyle, whoever you are, I suggest you run the fuck away before they start doing to you what they've done to Steve and Sam. Good luck having a friend who non-jokingly says they wish you would die because that is extraordinarily fucked up.

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Some tea about how you were fed up with the people treating you like shit instead of you being forced to ditch these people

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#queued post #aineedhelp #dumbposting #majimaguro #abusive people #narcissism #narcissists #abuse #abusers #emotional abuse #gaslighting #manipulation #weaponized mental health

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classic-rock-roller · 6 years

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1. You are with Crue and they are on tour. You’re all on the bus, and you’re late arriving to the next state for the show, so it looks like they’ll have to get ready on the bus. They are about to go about their business and get ready when Tommy suddenly shouts, “Everybody on the bus get naked!” The boys whoop and start changing into their stage clothes. After a minute, Nikki comes up to you and says, “He said everybody on the bus. Last I checked, you’re on the bus, sweetie.” What do you do?

“Yes, I’m on the bus. But the closest you get to see me naked with Tommy around is my underwear so that’s all you’re getting.” I’d strip down to my underwear and then quickly grab a blanket and cover myself with it, “There, I’m ‘naked’.”

2. You went to dinner with Kevin and Co. for your birthday. Upon being seated, you tell Kevin explicitly, “Don’t tell the waiter it’s my birthday.” He nods in agreement. After a couple of minutes, Randy says he needs to get something from the car. He leaves and returns a few minutes later. When your food comes out, the wait staff all sing to you and make a big to do. Once they leave, you glare at Kevin. “I told you not to tell the waiter.” He just grins smugly and says, “I didn’t tell anybody. Randy told the manager when he said he went to the car.” Randy just grins and said “Sorry, dude, I had to tell them. Them’s the rules.” How do you respond?

“Well, even if they are the rules. You’re still annoying. I said I didn’t want a big thing for my birthday. It’s like any other day.” “But it’s your birthday we have to do a little something special to make it fun.” “Well then, take me out for ice cream.”

3. You’re at a wedding reception with Kevin during the summer. It’s hot, and everyone is outside. You stop by a washtub full of ice to grab a can of soda when Kevin runs up, grabs you, and shoves an uncomfortably large handful of ice down your pants. How do you respond?

“Kevin, what the fuck was that for?” “You looked hot, I wanted to cool you off.” “Yeah, you don’t do it like that. I’ll be right back.” I’d head to the bathroom to dump all the ice out of my pants and once I get back, I’d lecture him about shoving the ice down my pants and acting childish.

4. Kevin calls you one day while you’re both at work. He’s sounding chipper, but you ask what’s up. He says, very casually, “Yeah something exploded and there was a huge fire and I think one guy got hurt pretty bad. But everything’s fine, I was just calling to check on you.” How do you respond?

“What the fuck? Kevin, why do you sound chipper about this? A guy might have gotten hurt badly.” “It gave me a minute to take a break and talk to you.” “Kevin, I really appreciate that you thought of me but you should go check on the guy to make sure he’s ok. I’ll talk to you later. And please don’t do anything stupid. I don’t need you to end up like that guy.”

5. Kevin has just proposed to you, and of course, you accepted. After a moment of giddiness, Kevin says “This might be the second happiest day of my life.” Curious, you ask, “Second? What’s the first?” “I’m not allowed to talk about it.” What did he do and how do you respond?

I try to weasel it out of him and he finally says, “It was the day I asked you out for the first time. I just found out we would be getting a record deal and I decided to just ask you out, I didn’t have anything to lose. I didn’t expect you to say yes and now we’re here.” “Aww, that’s sweet. That was one of my best days as well. I was super excited that you finally got the record deal you wanted and that you’d asked me out. I’d been waiting for weeks.”

6. Crue invited you to a pool party without Kevin because Nikki got mad at him over something dumb. You found a super cute bikini, and you’re wearing it over there. Just as you reach the door, Kevin grabs your wrist and stops you. “Where do you think you’re going dressed like that? Your body is for my eyes only.” He’s being very possessive. What do you do?

“Kevin, I can wear whatever I want. But if it makes you nervous,” I’d run back to our bedroom and grab one of his old shirts. “I’ll wear this over, ok? I was planning on wearing a cover-up anyway.”

7. You wake up one night because you’re too hot. Kevin isn’t next to you, so you seek him out. You find him on the balcony, gazing awestruck at the sky. It’s a full moon tonight, and he is loving it. You go up to him and lean your head on his shoulder He doesn’t move from his position and doesn’t say anything. He’s thinking. What does he eventually say to you and how do you respond?

“What do you think it’d be like if I wasn’t famous? If no one knew who I was and we didn’t get swarmed on the street every day?” “It’d be kind of boring. Plus I can’t picture you living on a farm in the middle of the country.” “Who said anything about a farm?” “You did the last time we had this conversation.”

8. You live in the same apartment building as Crue, who live a floor below you. You have Kevin over frequently now that you don’t have to deal with roommates. One day, they all come up and knock on your door. “Oh hey guys, what’s up?” You ask them. The 4 of them look at each other uncomfortably before Tommy pipes up, “Alright look, we’re glad you have a healthy sex life, but could you maybe try to not pierce a hole in our ceiling with your bed? Thanks.” How do you respond?

I’d blush beet red and go, “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I’ll try not to.” Kevin, who is sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, says, “Can’t make any promises.” I just turn around and glare at him. “Again guys, I’m so sorry. We’ll try not to.”

9. Kevin takes you to a murder mystery dinner. Everyone’s got to use pseudonyms given by the host, and you two aren’t paired in that respect. Kevin is acting very suspiciously all night (even for a murder mystery party), and you think he’s the killer. Eventually, you corner him and ask, but he just keeps looking you up and down and is clearly not listening. What do you do?

“Kevin, can you please listen to what I’m saying? Kevin!” “But you’re so distracting like that and when you’re angry.” “Just focus on the dinner ok? You can focus on me after.”

10. You went over to hang out with your friend Nikki, and his Grandmother, Nona, is visiting. As soon as you arrive, she answers the door and says “If my boy doesn’t snatch you up soon, I will be very disappointed in him.” You’re surprised at her forwardness, and you hear him shout, “Grandma NO” from inside the house. What do you do next?

I’d smile at her and go, “Well, that’s very kind of you, Nona. But I don’t think that’ll happen.” Nikki is just standing at the top of the stairs blushing.

11. You’ve got a front row seat at one of QR’s shows. As the show goes on, Kevin gets paler and paler, and he’s uncharacteristically uncoordinated and shaky. His foot catches on Randy’s guitar wire, and he just falls forward, making no effort to break his fall - he was out before he hit the ground. Now he’s unconscious on the stage in the middle of a show, and because of the size of the venue, you’re not allowed on the stage. What do you do?

Well, I’d try to get backstage and when the bouncer would try to stop me I’d go, “I’m the girlfriend of the singer who just collapsed out there. Let me through.” I’d push past him if he wouldn’t let me and get there just as they’re carrying Kevin off the stage with Randy following behind. “Randy, what happened?” One of the paramedics shouts something about him not eating all day. I’d glare at Randy, “You know he won’t eat before a show if he’s nervous and I asked you to make sure that he did because I couldn’t be here to do so.”

--------------------

1) You work at an amusement park in the summer. You are working on the log flume ride, sitting at the top of it to make sure no one does anything stupid before the drop. Crue is on one of the logs and as it goes around the bend to the drop, Tommy stands up. “Tommy, sit down please.” He looks over at you and says, “Well, you’re over there and I’m over here so what are you going to do about it.” You know he’ll fall out if he doesn’t sit down now. What do you do?

2) You take Randy to a wedding to meet most of your extended family. At the reception, your grandmother comes up to the two of you and goes, “So when are you two getting married? I want my great-grandbabies.” How do you and Randy respond?

3) You’re at Crue’s house for a pool party with Randy. The two of you are sitting on a low wall just talking. Nikki comes running over and picks you up before saying, “Come on, I’m going to jump in the pool with you.” You tell him, no but he doesn’t listen. What does Randy do?

4) You were in the kitchen and Randy was working on a song in your bedroom. You’re making dinner when you see a spider and let out a really loud scream and jump on a chair. Randy comes running into the room, “What happened?! What’s wrong?” You look over at him and say, “I just saw a spider.” How does he respond?

5) You are out in the living room late at night. You’d taken a nap earlier in the day and couldn’t fall back asleep. As you’re sitting reading a book, you see Stephen come out in just his boxers and take the milk carton out of the fridge before taking a swig from it. You’re just staring at him, when he looks over at you he stops, “Oh, I thought you went to bed a while ago.” “Do you do this every night?” Hoe does he respond?

6) You and Randy are sitting on the couch when you snuggle into him. “What are you doing?” he asks. “I just want to cuddle.” “We could do more than cuddle if you want.” You sit up, “What? You mean like kissing?” How does Randy respond?

7) You are over at Kevin and his girlfriend's house. You find the tin can that is attached to the side of the fridge. Absentmindedly you look in and find about ten dollars. You pull it off and ask Kevin and his girlfriend, “Hey, whats this for?” How do they respond?

8) You and Randy had rented a kayak to go exploring the bay. While on the way back, the water get’s really choppy as a storm is rolling in. You’re an equal distance from an island and from where you rented the boat. What do you do?

9) You and Randy are walking in a park when you come across a wall. He climbs it and starts walking along. You’re getting nervous because the wall keeps getting higher. It’s about twenty feet high when he slips a little but catches himself. What do you say and how does he respond?

10) You’re at a park with a wide open field with Randy and Kevin. You look to Randy and say, “Catch me if you can!” Before taking off. Randy chases after you and quickly catches you. He kisses you deeply. You can both hear Kevin gag and say, “God, can the two of you get a room?” How do you and Randy respond?

11) You and Randy are walking along the boardwalk at the beach when you come across one of those old cheesy haunted houses. It’s about six dollars a person and Randy looks at you, “Come on, Can you go? Please?” How do you respond and do you go?

@osbournebemydaddy, your turn, love

#tag game #tag war

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welcometophu · 6 years

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Not Your Destiny: Chapter 28

Marked Book 1: Not Your Destiny

Chapter 28

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It’s mid-afternoon before the investigation is done enough to clear them for re-entry. The insurance agents arrive just past two, around the same time as Luca brings Gabi over. Tony takes the two agents in, armed with cameras and a tablet, while Luca, Gabi, and Ángel head toward the office.

It’s a mess. Ángel can see what Papi meant about pockets of water coming down, but it clearly wasn’t enough to save much. The roof is still stable, and the structure is sound, but everything inside reeks of soot and wet ash.

Ángel puts a hand over his mouth, tries to breathe through his fingers. Luca pauses in the hall, gives a bandana to Gabi before putting one over his own mouth and nose.

“It’s still going to taste like ash,” Gabi mutters before she puts on the bandana as well. Her voice is muffled. “It’s like trying to breathe with a horrible cold. Or in Los Angeles. LA smells like smoke all the time, and I don’t think most of the people there even notice.”

“When did you go to LA?” Ángel asks.

“Summer after graduation.” Gabi pushes the door to the office open, stops in the doorway, back straight and stiff. “Maritsa wanted to go to Disney but Cleto wanted to go to California, and Luca just wanted to go anywhere that was far away from Florida, so we figured we’d go to Los Angeles. It was fun, but our Disney’s still better.”

Ángel comes up close behind her, Luca flat against his back with his arms around Ángel, hands on Gabi’s shoulders. Ángel swallows hard, tries to process what he sees.

“It’s a fucking mess,” Luca grumbles.

The phone rings.

They all stare at it, as if it’s going to somehow answer itself. Gabi finally takes a step forward just as Luca steps back. In the distance, Ángel can hear the low rumble of voices as Tony talks to the insurance people.

The phone goes silent just as Gabi’s hand falls on the receiver. She exhales, and it starts to ring again.

“Mollicone’s,” Gabi says flatly as she picks up the phone. She winces, steps back, the phone pulled out from her ear. Ángel can’t make out the words, but he can clearly hear the anger in the voice on the other side, and the volume. “Excuse me,” Gabi tries to interrupt, but the voice keeps going. She takes off the bandana to uncover her mouth, and growls low in her throat before snapping loudly, “Excuse me!”

The phone goes silent.

Gabi reaches out for her chair, pauses as she touches the top of it. She raises her hand again, soot across her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” she says, voice breaking. “We literally just got back in the building a few minutes ago. We don’t know what records are still safe. I haven’t even looked at the cars on the lot. We understand that you’re concerned about your car, but right now, no matter how upset you are about the fire, I don’t have any more information for you. And I can assure you, we are far more upset than you.”

There’s no answer before she hangs up. Her sooty hand curls tight, and Luca moves past Ángel and reaches out, drags her in and nuzzles the top of her head while he holds her.

Ángel swallows, uncomfortable and unreasonably angry at the caller from the other side of the line.

The phone rings again, and Ángel gets to it before Gabi can.

“Mollicone’s,” he says, quickly following it up with, “we don’t have any news yet about the status of any cars in for repair, and ask that you plan to call back in 24 to 48 hours, please.”

Silence for a long moment, then a long low breath. “Is there anything you need?” the voice on the other end of the line asks, and Angel’s so surprised at the question that he has no idea how to respond. “I’m sorry,” the voice says. “You’ve been good to me over the last year. My car’s a mess, but it’s important to me, and I’m thankful for all the hard work. It’s not there right now. It’s safe. I’m not worried. But your shop meant a lot to all of you, and I know there are people out there who care.”

Gabi hiccups, holds out her hand and wiggles her fingers. Ángel places the phone in her hand, and she curls tight against Luca’s chest as she responds. “Hey, Stephen.”

Ángel can’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Gabi smiles at something Stephen says. She looks around, makes a face. “Yeah, we’re probably going to be hungry later, but this isn’t the place to eat. I appreciate the offer, though, and thanks for thinking of us. Once we’ve got things cleaned up, when we’re in the rebuild phase, come feed us then. Right now everything just smells and tastes like ash. Eating here wouldn’t be a good idea.” Silence again, and Gabi nods, laughs.

“Yeah, well you try to keep your car running until we’re open again,” she says, smirking. “Although for you, maybe we’ll make a house call. We’ll have to see.” She nods to whatever Stephen says, then reaches out to replace the phone on the cradle.

Ángel grabs the phone and removes the cable from the back, unplugging it. “No more calls,” he says. “Not until we’re—you’re—ready.” It’s not his place, and he knows it, but he already feels like he has a stake in it, even after just a couple of weeks.

“Probably for the best,” Gabi agrees. She shoves her hands in her pockets, shoulders tense and pushed up near her ears. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth as she surveys the room. “Okay, here’s how we’re going to do this. Tony’s handling the claim, and I’m going to start boxing up whatever paperwork I can and putting it in the back of Luca’s car. We’re going to have to go through it, see what we’ve got on the current pile that’s still readable, and contact all of those people. In the meantime, you and Luca go out onto the lot and take an inventory of every car. Look for damage from the fire, or damage from water. Take down the license plate, make, and model, and we’ll match it all up tonight or tomorrow so we can make calls. It’s going to suck, but it’s got to get done.”

They need something to write on. Ángel hovers, not sure where to even look.

Finally Luca steps past Gabi, pulls open the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets. He pulls out a box, takes a pen, then finds a pad of paper. “Cabinets stayed dry, and it looks like water cleaned them off.”

There’s a puddle on top of the cabinets, spreading out from roughly the center, as if it fell in a deluge straight from the ceiling. Ángel huffs. “I tried to call water. Apparently I saved the files. We’ll figure out if anything else came through unscathed.”

“Come on.” Luca hands the paper and pen to Ángel, then drops an arm around his shoulders to steer him out of the office.

Behind them, there’s the squeak of wheels on the floor as Gabi moves one of the chairs, then the creak of a drawer opening. Ángel hears her breath catch before Luca gets him out of range. As soon as they’re outside, Luca strips off his bandana and shoves it in his pocket, wincing as he inhales the scent of ash lingering in the air.

They start out back, and it’s a mess. The tow truck is blackened, the belts melted, the chains hanging awkwardly. The tires are flat, and it lists as if something somehow tilted it over. When they walk around the other side, that side is burnt more, the car next to it a husk.

Luca licks his lips, shakes his head. “I was going to say it’s a good thing nothing exploded, but I’m not sure whether it did or not. Something burned hot back here.”

“Tony smelled accelerant,” Ángel says quietly. “Whoever it was might have put it on that car, used it as one of the starting points for the fire. Either way, that car’s a loss.”

It’s only two spots over from where Helga was parked, and the Mustang had been on the other side of the tow truck. It’s not just lucky that Ángel and Tony are alive, it’s good luck for the cars as well.

Luca moves in with his phone out, clicking as he takes shots of the tow truck first, then the damaged car. He rubs at the side, then nods to himself before reeling off the make and model for Ángel to write down. Angel’s surprised to realize that it was Tony’s SUV, and he didn’t even recognize it and didn’t remember that they’d parked in that spot. He’s not sure how Luca recognized it, but Luca’s worked on a much larger variety of cars, for a lot longer than Ángel has.

They go through the lot slowly. There are two cars far at the back that have water damage and some soot, but don’t seem to be burned. Several are partially burned, and two are simply gone, turned to husks by the flames. Luca leans in close and sniffs by those, wrinkling his nose as he straightens. “Tony’s right. I don’t know what it is, but I smell something,” he says.

“I’m sure the investigators noticed that these cars were starting points for the fire,” Ángel says. He gestures to the driveway along the side. “There were three cars out front, plus the one that was on the floor that we didn’t drive out; whatever you were working on in your bay last.”

Luca makes a face, then grabs the pad of paper and makes notes. “BMW and the owner’s kind of an ass,” he grumbles. “This isn’t going to go well.” He pauses, nose wrinkling as he sighs roughly. “That might be who called earlier and was ripping Gabi apart. I’m going to have to be the one to call him. I don’t want her to have to deal with him.”

“If they can’t understand it’s not your fault….” Ángel trails off, shakes his head because he doesn’t understand people.

As they walk along the side, he can see spots where it looks like the fire burned hotter. Places where the wood still stands, and other places where it’s burned through, hot and hard. He looks up, somehow surprised at how stable the roof still is. Either they got to it in time, or his attempt to call water helped more than he thought.

He wiggles his fingers, hoping he had some positive effect on this mess. It’s not much, but at least it’s something.

There’s a new car just pulling in when they get out front, the fire department logo on the side. Luca shoves the paper and pen back into Angel’s hands and lengthens his stride, heading quickly to meet it. He’s there before the door opens, waiting as a man steps out from the driver’s seat, and Daphne emerges from the passenger side. There’s a kid in the back, and as soon as Daphne gets the door open, the kid is out, staring curiously at Luca and Ángel, brow furrowed.

“I’m Ronnie Hamilton,” the driver introduces himself. He’s still in uniform, one of the official investigators, and Ángel’s surprised that Daphne’s with him. “I’m just heading off shift, and I wanted to stop by and check in before I finished up. Daphne insisted on coming with me.”

“Ronnie’s my brother,” Daphne says, her smile soft and too sweet to be real. “I wanted to make sure that Tony’s okay and that everything’s being done to help him.” She glances across at Ronnie. “I’m so glad that my brother’s able to be a part of this investigation.”

“Papi’s in charge,” Ángel says. Daphne’s expression flickers for a moment, darkening before the smile comes back. The kid doesn’t smile at all, inching closer and looking closely at Ángel.

Ronnie considers him, then sticks a hand out. “You must be Marcos Cruz’s boy. He mentioned that you’ve been doing some work here.”

Ángel doesn’t want to touch him, not when Daphne’s standing right there, smiling like everything’s perfect. But he reaches out, clasps Ronnie’s hand just long enough before he lets go.

He refuses to lie and say it’s nice to meet him.

“I was here on Sunday,” Ángel says, tone flat. “Tony and I were working on my car.”

“I’m sure they took a statement,” Ronnie says.

“Luca Bianchi.” Luca pushes past Ángel, offers his hand and waits when Ronnie’s slow to take it. “I work here regularly, and if you want to do any official investigating, I can take you in.” His gaze shifts to Daphne. “You should stay out. It’s not exactly clean and neat inside.”

“I’m not afraid of a little dirt,” Daphne says. “I’d like to see for myself that Tony’s all right.”

“We’re not giving sight-seeing tours,” Luca says dryly. “I’ll let him know you’re here, and you can wait outside.” Luca motions at the door, yanks it open and holds it for Ronnie. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Angel’s left standing there with Daphne and a kid, and no idea what to do.

“You have a cat,” the kid says, pointing at Angel’s wrist.

“Ben,” Daphne says quietly. Her gaze is fixed on his wrist as well, and he considers pulling it in close to his chest, cradling it so they can’t see.

But he won’t let her intimidate him, either, so he pushes his arm closer, raising an eyebrow when Ben takes a step back rather than let Ángel come close to touching him. Ángel holds his arm with the wrist out, showing the ink. “Yes,” Ángel says. “I have a cat.”

Ben’s chin tilts up and he crosses his arms, gaze narrowed and brow furrowed. “I hate cats,” he says simply. “All cats.”

“I like them,” Ángel counters, raising one eyebrow because he’s absolutely certain he’s not having the same conversation as this strange little kid. “In fact, I like some cats more than I like some people.”

Ben’s mouth goes tight, twisted and angry. He opens his mouth, closing it again as Daphne’s hand falls on his shoulder.

“Ben,” she says quietly. “Why don’t you wait in the car for your dad to be done.”

“Okay, Aunt Daphne.” Ben’s attention shifts back to Ángel for a moment before he climbs back into the car, the door still open. Ben pulls out a phone, and looks down, and it’s as if Ángel is forgotten.

Daphne heads for the door, and Ángel has to dart forward to intercept her before she can get it open. “Luca said no,” Ángel reminds her.

“You don’t actually own this place, and neither does he,” Daphne says curtly. “I just want to talk to Tony.”

“Gabi does own this place and she’s in there, and do you really want to deal with her when she’s already pissed off?” Ángel warns. He spots a car coming down the street, exhales. “And if you want another opinion, Zita’s coming. You can talk to her.”

Daphne freezes, turns slowly and pastes on a smile as Zita pulls into the lot, followed by Tanner’s truck. “How lovely. I haven’t seen Zita in ages.”

Angel’s pretty sure there’s a good reason for that.

“Ángel!” Emerson yells, waving as he spills out from the back seat of the truck. He makes it over to Ángel before Hayley even climbs out. Bubbles hover near his head, popping with high-pitched sounds that Ángel can barely hear. Bright and shining grey, silver and gold around the edges, and more numerous than Ángel can ever remember seeing.

Ángel opens his arms, pulls Emerson in for a hug. As Emerson exhales, relaxing in relief, it reminds Ángel of Luca and Gabi.

Emerson’s going to make a good cat.

Emerson pulls back, crosses his arms as he chews on his lip. “Tanner said you were fine, but still—I saw Helga, too. I’m glad no one got hurt.” Emerson waves a hand next to his face, pushes a string of three bubbles away as they linger for a moment before popping.

“Don’t get agitated,” Tanner cautions.

“Hi, I’m Daphne.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Zita interrupts, pushing between Daphne and Emerson, nudging him back from the crowd. “Daphne, I don’t want you on my property. Emerson—”

“My brother’s inside,” Daphne points out mildly. “He’s on your investigative team and wanted to stop by on his way home. I’m waiting here, with his son.”

Zita has an arm around Emerson’s shoulder and moves him another step away. “Fine,” she says curtly, nodding at the ground. “As long as you wait right there, not an inch out of that space. And stop disturbing my friends.”

“Ángel—” Hayley stops when he brings a hand up, rocks back on her heels. “What?”

Her expression is hurt, and Ángel changes his mind, motions her close and hugs her hard, then holds out an arm for Tanner. He murmurs while they’re all close together, “I’m going inside, because I don’t know if Luca’s been able to tell Tony that Daphne’s here. We’ve got insurance agents, an investigator, and too many people.”

Hayley nods rapidly, and Tanner claps him on the back. “Don’t worry, we’ll just be out here.”

Ángel didn’t think otherwise; as long as Emerson’s nearby with Zita, Tanner isn’t going anywhere. Zita manages to peel Emerson away from the others, taking him over to her car and climbing into the back with him. As Ángel turns back to the shop, the door opens and the two insurance agents emerge, pausing to shake Tony’s hand.

Daphne clears her throat, and Tony’s head comes up abruptly, stares at their small group. Daphne takes a step toward the shop, and Tony disappears from view, the door slamming closed.

“Obviously he knows you’re here,” Ángel says.

Daphne skewers him with a look. “I’m going in.”

“No,” Ángel says. “You’re not. And if your brother were out here with you, he’d say the same. You’re not part of the investigation, and you don’t work here—you don’t belong in that building right now. It’s been cleared for us to go in, but we can’t work in it, and it’s not habitable. Stay right here.” He grins, tries to make it sharp like Gabi does. “Besides. Zita’s right there. Do you really want to walk in when she told you not to?”

“Ángel—” Hayley says, stopping when he gets a hand up.

“Would you mind hanging out here with Daphne and Ben?” Ángel hates throwing Tanner and Hayley under the bus like this, he really does. But at the same time, there is no way in hell he’s letting her go in there right now.

He doesn’t give them a chance to say no, hurries to the door and pulls it open, disappearing into the darkness.

“Tony?” he calls out.

“He’s with Hamilton,” Luca says quietly. He’s leaning on the hood of the burned BMW. It’s not as bad as Ángel thought it would be, but it’s definitely going to be totaled. “Tony wants to talk to him about the accelerant; Hamilton thinks they got everything they needed earlier.”

“He’s avoiding Daphne,” Ángel says softly, and Luca nods. When Ángel leans next to him, Luca bumps his shoulder.

“Yeah, he is,” Luca murmurs. “Tony doesn’t want to deal with much right now, and I can’t blame him. You guys could’ve died. She thinks she’s being supportive, but… it’s not what he wants.”

“What do you think would help him most?” Ángel stares across the floor, watching as Tony directs Ronnie Hamilton’s attention to various places along the wall. He catches movement out of the corner of his eye, the way Luca turns and just looks at him. “What? You guys keep saying I’m family. Let me treat you the same.”

“In a perfect world? To go back in time and have the fire not happen,” Luca mutters dryly. “Obviously that’s not going to happen. I think he needs a distraction, and I don’t know what that is, but it isn’t Daphne. We need to take some time off, until we hear back and someone says we can start ripping this place apart. After that, I think the best thing for Tony will be getting to rebuild.”

In the distance, Tony glances over at them, just for a moment.

“Enforced holiday tomorrow, then,” Ángel says, running under the assumption that Tony can hear him. “Even if we just spend the whole day watching movies and eating bad food.”

Luca snorts. “Go on, convince Tony to eat bad food.”

“We could hand feed him chocolate,” Ángel says idly. “Pretend it’s something healthy, like grapes, then switch it out at the last second.”

Luca snorts again, and on the other side of the room, the rumble of Tony’s voice goes silent. Tony turns back, Ronnie following the path of his gaze after a moment, as if he’s realized he’s lost Tony’s attention.

Luca raises one hand in greeting, lowers it slowly when Tony stares at him. He uses it to push at Ángel, shoving him toward the hallway. “Maybe we should go check on Gabi,” he announces loudly as they both stumble off the floor.

“I can hear you being idiots,” Gabi calls out. “Get in here. Help me carry shit to the cars.”

The file cabinets are open, and the desks look like someone ransacked the place. Everything is empty, packed into plastic bins that Ángel has no memory of anyone bringing in. The tattoo printer sits on his desk, sooty but unmelted.

Gabi smiles slightly. “Look what made it through. Why don’t you carry that to your car, Ángel. Is she road ready enough to take home for now? If not, put it in mine. Everything else is going in Zita’s car. As the major shareholder with a car that’s actually functional, she has to take charge of the business for now. We’ll bring it back after the cleanup is done and we’ve done an inventory of what we’ve got. I need to make phone calls tomorrow, get a dumpster delivered for when we’re ready to do demolition.”

That’s what makes Angel’s heart ache, twisting uncomfortably. Luca grabs him, pulls him close, muttering, “You reek, Ángel.”

Standing there, with Gabi and Luca holding on tight, feels good.

“Let’s get this out of here. Tomorrow is enough time for figuring out what comes next,” Gabi says. She jabs a finger, points at the heaviest of the bins. “Go on, Luca. Lift. Carry.”

“Your wish is my command.” Luca grins.

Ángel trails along after him, carrying only the printer, but to him, it feels like the heaviest of loads. So many things that could’ve made it through, and this is the one thing that has. It makes him wonder.

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#welcome to phu #welcometophu #not your destiny #phu marked #marked

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sewingscars · 7 years

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Diversion!!!

To all the trans military and veterans who have fought for our freedom, WE SEE YOU AND WE THANK YOU!!! .

We will NOT be posting any articles about the Anus-Mouthed-Leathery-Tangerine's tweets from his shitter. This is not to devalue or distract from this mornings news. On the contrary, it is simply a reminder.

This piece of shit H.R.2796 - Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017 was introduced into Congress on 6-7-2017.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2796

.Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017

This bill prohibits the word "sex" or "gender" from being interpreted to mean "gender identity," and requires "man" or "woman" to be interpreted to refer exclusively to a person's genetic sex, for purposes determining the meaning of federal civil rights laws or related federal administrative agency regulations or guidance.

No federal civil rights law shall be interpreted to treat gender identity or transgender status as a protected class unless it expressly designates "gender identity" or "transgender status" as a protected class.��

YESTERDAY DAY 187- 1/ Senate Republicans secured the 51 votes needed to advance their health care bill after Pence cast the tie-breaking vote. The Senate will now begin debating, amending, and ultimately voting in the coming days on the future of Obamacare. The vote was too close to call until the last moments, when several Republican holdouts announced their support, including Rand Paul, Dean Heller, Rob Portman, and Shelley Moore Capito. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski both voted against the motion to proceed. (New York Times / Washington Post / CNN)

2/ The Senate will now have 20 hours of debate the health care bill, evenly split between the two sides. Senators can bring up and debate an unlimited number of amendments to the bill as long as they are “germane” to the bill and would not add to the budget deficit. Then a period known as vote-a-rama happens, where Senators votes on the amendments. The first amendment will be the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, which repeals most of the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. If that fails (as is expected), Senators will then vote on the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which cuts massive portions of the ACA. Because of reconciliation rules, these amendments would require 60 votes to pass. If BCRA fails, Senators will consider what is being called a “skinny repeal,” which repeals the individual mandate penalty, the employer mandate penalty, and the tax on medical devices. (New York Times / Vox / Time / NBC News) John McCain returned to the Senate for the health care vote after being diagnosed with brain cancer last week. McCain’s vote is critical to today’s procedural vote. His absence would have left Senate Republicans with no margin of error. (Washington Post / Politico) Senate Republicans don’t know what’s in their health care plan, but they voted anyway on the motion to proceed. About a half-dozen senators were publicly undecided about whether to start debate on rolling back the Affordable Care Act. Several senators have said they want a “replace” plan ready to go before voting “yes.” An agreed upon replace plan is not in place. The bill will have to pass the House before making its way to Trump’s desk. McConnell forced the procedural vote to put every senator on record. (Politico / Vox / CNN).

3/ Trump ripped Jeff Sessions on Twitter, calling him “very weak” when it comes to investigating Hillary Clinton. Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Sessions in recent days, leading to speculation that it’s just a matter of time before the attorney general resigns or is fired. The recent tweets come a day after Trump publicly described Sessions as “beleaguered.” (NBC News / CNN)

4/ Later in the day, Trump added that he is “very disappointed in Jeff Sessions” but won’t say if he’ll fire him. Trump has previously discussed replacing Jeff Sessions in a move viewed by some of Trump’s advisors as part of a strategy for firing special counsel Robert Mueller in order to end his investigation into the campaign’s efforts to coordinate with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. Sessions recently asked White House staff how he could patch up relations with Trump, but that went nowhere. Instead, Trump floated longtime ally Rudy Giuliani as a possible replacement for Sessions. (Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / Associated Press)

5/ Sessions is “pissed” at Trump for the attacks, but doesn’t plan to quit. Senate Republicans have said that attacks on Sessions, who spent 20 years in the Senate, strain their relationship with Trump. Many GOP senators have expressed annoyance with Trump’s tweets, saying “I really have a hard time with this” and "I’d prefer that he didn’t do that. We’d like Jeff to be treated fairly.” Senators have also been nonplussed by Trump’s criticism of Sessions’ decision to recuse himself, saying “Jeff made the right decision. It’s not only a legal decision, but it’s the right decision.“ Trump’s senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon also support Sessions. (The Daily Beast / McClatchy DC)

6/ Anthony Scaramucci says it’s "probably” correct that Trump wants Sessions gone. The new White House communications director didn’t want to speak for the president, but said he thinks Trump has a “certain style” and he is “obviously frustrated.” (The Hill)

7/ Senate Democrats are planning a procedural move to prevent Trump from making recess appointments by forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions – brief meetings, often only a few minutes. Democrats are worried Trump could attempt to bypass Congress and appoint a new attorney general and undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling in the US election during the planned August recess. (CNN / Reuters)

8/ The Senate Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to Paul Manafort to testify in its Russia probe. Manafort had agreed to provide notes of the meeting at Trump Tower last year with the Russian lawyer, according to a person close to the investigation. Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dianne Feinstein said they had been “unable to reach an agreement for a voluntary transcribed interview with the Judiciary Committee” with Manafort. (ABC News / Politico) . UPDATE: **The Senate Judiciary Committee has dropped the subpoena against Paul Manafort **and plans are underway for the former Trump campaign chairman to speak to investigators. (Politico)

9/ Parents are angry after Trump delivered a politicized speech to tens of thousands of boy scouts. Over 35 minutes, Trump threatened to fire one of his Cabinet members, attacked Obama, dissed Hillary Clinton, marveled at the size of the crowd, warned the boys about the “fake media,” mocked the polls, and said more people would say “Merry Christmas.“ Responding to criticism, the Boy Scouts of America insisted it was "wholly non-partisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy.” (Washington Post / BBC) Trump joked he would fire Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price if the health care bill doesn’t pass. “Hopefully he’s going to get the votes tomorrow to start on the path to kill this thing called ObamaCare that’s really hurting us,” Trump said during a speech to Boy Scouts at the 2017 National Jamboree. “He better get them, otherwise I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’” (The Hill)

10/ Trump confirmed a covert CIA program while tweeting that the Washington Post had “fabricated the facts” about his decision to end a program aiding Syrian rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Trump was referring to a story about ending an Obama program where the CIA armed and trained moderate Syrian rebels, a move long sought by the Russian government. (Washington Post / Politico)

11/ A federal judge ruled that Trump’s voter fraud commission may request voter roll data from states. Opponents contend the effort could infringe on privacy rights. The judge said the lawsuit did not have grounds for an injunction because the commission was not technically an action by a government agency – the commission is an advisory body that does not have legal authority to compel states to hand over the data. (Reuters)

12/ Jared Kushner bought real estate from an oligarch’s firm represented by the Russian lawyer. Lev Leviev was a business partner at Prevezon Holdings, where Natalia Veselnitskaya acted as legal counsel. Prevezon was being investigated by Preet Bharara for money laundering before he was fired by Trump in March. Prevezon Holdings attempted to use Manhattan real estate deals to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury. In 2015, Kushner paid $295m to acquire several floors of the old New York Times building at 43rd street in Manhattan from the US branch of Leviev’s company. The Prevezon case was abruptly settled two days before it was due in open court in May for $6 million with no admission of guilt on the part of the defendants. (The Guardian)

13/ A White House press aide resigned after Anthony Scaramucci said he planned to fire him over alleged leaks. Michael Short is the first to leave after Scaramucci promised all aides “a clean slate” and “amnesty” to prove that they were not leaking. “This is the problem with the leaking,” Scaramucci told reporters outside the White House. “This is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.” Short, who initially said Tuesday that he hadn’t yet been informed of any decision, resigned Tuesday afternoon. (Washington Post / Politico / The Hill)

DAY188 - Trump TWEETS ( NO official report, NO press release, NO executive order) that trans people are banned from the military. The Internet explodes. Everything that has been happening is no longer discussed. His diversion has been executed perfectly. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. #lightingahellfiretocoverashitstorm

#trump #trans rights #transphobia #trans inclusion #transgender veteran #FtM Transgender #transgender rights #transgender military #resist #fuck trump #trump diversions

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jeroldlockettus · 6 years

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Extra: Richard Branson Full Interview

Richard Branson left school at 15 and founded what would grow to become the multinational Virgin Group. (Photo: Gilberto Cardenas/flickr)

What follows is a conversation with Richard Branson, founder of the international conglomerate the Virgin Group. Stephen J. Dubner spoke with Branson in November for our special series, “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.” We will be releasing full interviews from that series as bonus episodes — one a week for the next six weeks. You’ll hear our lightly edited conversations with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and others. Hope you enjoy.

Stephen DUBNER: Hello this is Stephen Dubner. Is that Richard Branson?

Richard BRANSON: I am. I’m Richard Branson. Yeah. Nice to talk to you.

DUBNER: It’s nice to talk to you, too. Thank you so much for making the time. How’s things?

BRANSON: Everything’s very good, thank you. I’m sitting here with a cup of tea in my hand and I wish we were talking in person. But anyway, nice to talk to you.

DUBNER: All right, so let’s begin. If you would just literally say your name and what you do.

BRANSON: Yeah. My name is Richard Branson and what do I do? I do everything Virgin.

DUBNER: Now, I’m sure most of our listeners are quite familiar with you, but just pretend there’s someone out there who lives in a cave who’s never heard of Richard Branson. How would you describe yourself to them — at least your professional self?

BRANSON: Well, I am an entrepreneur, I suppose you would also categorize me as an adventurer, and, hopefully, a philanthropist. So those are sort of my three main areas of occupation these days.

DUBNER: A tangential and very small question but one that I am curious to know. The Virgin logo is one of the most recognizable in the world, and I would argue one of the most elegant, as well. I’ve read a little bit about its history — I know it came from Virgin Records, and Roger Dean was the original designer, and then it morphed over the years. But can you just talk for a moment about the logo itself, and what it means to you, I guess?

BRANSON: Yes. I mean, I was 16 when I started off in business. So I was a virgin at business. And we were either going to call the company Slipped Disc records or Virgin Records. And fortunately we went Virgin, because Slipped Disc Airlines would not have been a great success, I think. And we started with a fairly, sort of hippie-based looking logo by Roger Dean. And then when we signed the Sex Pistols, we felt the logo was not going to be appropriate. And so we got somebody into the office, and we talked at great lengths about what we wanted. And I stood up to go to the loo, and I walked past him and he just scribbled on a napkin the Virgin logo. He just signed the word “Virgin,” and I said, “You don’t have to do anything more. We have our logo.” And it became the iconic logo of the last 50 years.

DUBNER: Was it in red originally?

BRANSON: I think the original scribble — I can’t remember whether he scribbled it in — with a red biro or a black biro. But anyway, it became red from day one. And we were fortunate to get that bold, bold, bold, color and the bold logo. Just very simple. I mean, it can be used tiny. It can be used large. You know, we’re just building three enormous cruise ships. And I’ve just seen the logo on the side. And it works, really, whatever size.

DUBNER: You know, obviously it’s not your last name. It doesn’t say Branson. But Virgin has come to mean almost Branson. I’m just curious, what is it — what does it feel like for you to see that logo on all these different things, whether small or you know, cruise ship size?

BRANSON: Well, I still pinch myself. I mean, I still get enormous satisfaction if somebody comes up to me and, say, they’ve just flown on a Virgin Atlantic or a Virgin America plane, and had a wonderful experience, or you know, worked out in about a Virgin Active club or being on a Virgin train, or booked a ticket on Virgin Galactic. And you know, I must admit, I sometimes think I’m going to wake up one day and just realize I’ve just had the most incredible dream. And I’ll be — you know, well, hopefully back as a poor student again one day. And starting all over again. But, yes, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve had a extraordinary life. Just finished publishing my second autobiography, so that’s — I suppose — says it’s been pretty full. And yeah, it’s been an incredible ride, so yes. But — I appreciate every minute of it.

DUBNER: Now, your title — your official title, as far as I can tell, is “Founder, Virgin Group.” In addition to that, are you the C.E.O. of anything?

BRANSON: I used to be. But I’ve delegated pretty well all the C.E.O. roles. And I actually believe that people should delegate early on in their businesses, so they can start thinking about the bigger picture. If I’m ever giving a talk to a group of young businesspeople, I will tell them you know, go and take a week out to find somebody as good or better than yourself. Put yourself out of business, and let them get on and run your business day to day, and then you can start dealing with the bigger issues, and you can take the company forward into bigger areas, and you can — maybe if you’re an entrepreneur, you can start your second business or your third business. And so I think too many young entrepreneurs want to cling on to everything, and they’re not good delegators.

DUBNER: But it’s true also — at least I would argue, I’m curious to hear your take — that, you know, I think in the public perception, there’s sometimes not that much difference between the entrepreneur and the C.E.O. But in fact, the energy and the ideas and even the personality of the person who creates the firm is often very different from the energy and so on of the person to be executing and running the firm daily. Do you see that split in that way? Or do you think that’s a little bit of a misperception?

BRANSON: I think it’s more often than not that you’re correct. There are exceptions to the rule. I mean for instance, when we had a record company in Germany many years ago, the person who actually ran the record company was a true C.E.O. He was not an entrepreneur. He was great with people. He didn’t want to stray from his job of running the record company. And he did a fine job. Whereas in France, we had a guy called Patrick Zelnik, who was a C.E.O. but he was also an entrepreneur and he took the record company into Virgin Megastores, into all sorts of different businesses, a bit like myself. And he pulled it off. But you know, once he’d become a true entrepreneur, you know, the two of us sat down, and he then just found other people to be the C.E.O.’s who were perhaps less entrepreneurial, who would stick to their onions and do the day to day running well. Because it’s difficult to concentrate on looking after your people and also be, being an entrepreneur.

DUBNER: I know that once, when you were asked how involved you are in the mechanics of your businesses, you said, “I don’t understand these things completely,” and you said, “I’ve never been able to know the difference between net and gross.” I’m guessing you were exaggerating at least a little bit, or no?

BRANSON: Well, I’m quite badly dyslexic. And really bizarrely, it was on my 50th birthday that I was having a meeting with a group of executives. And I asked the question, “Is that good news or bad news?” when some figures were given to me. And one of the executives took me outside of the room and he had already prepared himself for this: he had a — some coloring pencils and he had a blank sheet of paper. He colored in this piece of paper blue, and then he put a net — a fishing net amongst it. And he put little fish in the fishing net. And he said, “Richard, I don’t think you know the difference between net and gross, and let me simplify it for you. The fish in the net are your profit. And the — all the fish that are not on the net are your gross turnover.” And hey, presto, I got it. And ever since then, I’ve been very swankily saying, “net profit and gross turnover.” As if nobody else knew it before. But the bizarre thing is that by then we had the biggest group of private companies in Europe. And I’d managed to build all these companies without knowing it. And I think that should be reassuring for all those kids who are failing their maths exams. It actually doesn’t matter a damn. What matters is, you know, have you created the best company, the best airline, or the best record company? And the best train company. And if you have created the best, your figures will add up at the end of the year, and you’ll have more money coming in than going out, and you can employ some accountants to work out the difference between net and gross.

DUBNER: Now, maybe it’s — maybe you’re a fluke, or maybe it’s a bit of a generational thing, maybe the world has just changed a lot. But you know, management has obviously become very, very professionalized in the last 20 or 30 years. And you know, M.B.A. programs are just exploding everywhere, there’s so — and so now, to be the C.E.O. of even a very small company, one is expected to be extremely well drilled in all the things that it sounds like you’ve really never had to be very good at. Do you think that that professionalization of leadership is in some ways a mistake, that someone like you had a lot of instinct and energy and appreciation for what you are trying to do with the company, and that some of that gets killed off by this professionalization of the leadership class?

BRANSON: I think it can be. I think if you feel a little bit lost in a company because of that should spur you on just to get out and run your own company. I mean, I’ve never had to report to anybody since I was — well, since I left school at 15. And that’s a luxury. And you know, I can do foolish things like, “Let’s start a spaceship company.” Which, you know, if I was working for a public company or a normal company, I would never have got it through. And so the great thing about being an entrepreneur — I think entrepreneurs are a class unto themselves. You know, they do not need that professionalism. They need a passion, absolute passion for what they’re doing. They need an absolute belief in what they’re doing. They need to be wonderful motivators of people. Inspirational leaders. And you know, those are sort of the key things that they need.

DUBNER: Can you talk a little bit more about being a wonderful motivator of people? By all reports, everything I read about you, it sounds as though most of the people who work with you and for you really like you. And that you — I don’t know about, go out of your way to treat your co-workers well, but you have a lot of policies that are very employee-friendly and so on. I think a lot of people out there, bosses — whether they’re C.E.O.’s or down — they’d like to be like that, and they’d like to motivate people. But it’s hard. Do you have any secret advice?

BRANSON: Well I mean, I think, I find that some American companies are anything but good at motivating people. And I find that hard to understand, because if you’ve got a happy, motivated group of people you’re working with, you can achieve anything. And you know, you can ride the good times together, you can ride the bad times together. If you treat your people badly, they’re not going to go that extra mile when things get tough. I just think you should treat your people in the same way that you treat your family. I mean, however you would treat your brothers and sisters or your children, the same should apply exactly to the people you work with. And it’s so much more pleasant. I mean you know, I mean a lot of our time we spend at work, and work should be fun. It should be enjoyable. And you should also have policies that follow through with that, so you know, if people want to work from home, let them work from home. If people want to work from home on Fridays and Mondays, let them work from home Fridays and Mondays. If people want to take a month off and go around the world, let them take a month off and go around the world. I mean, people will give everything back if you give them the flexibility and treat them like adults.

DUBNER: I hear you and I so want to believe that that’s the way to be. But the sceptic in me just thinks well, if every company let everybody work from home Fridays and Mondays and let them take a week off and go take balloon trips or climb a mountain that, you know, productivity would plummet and economy would fall apart. Why do people not exploit that, at your firm, at least?

BRANSON: Because they feel trusted. And also, look — let’s just look at this business of forcing people to come to an office. First of all, you’ve got maybe an hour or an hour and a half of travel time in the morning, another hour and a half of travel time in the evening. And, you know, when you’re at the office, it’s important that you say hello to everybody and that you’re friendly with everybody, so you use up another hour or two, you know, socializing with people. Then, because you’re not at home, you need to communicate with your family. So you spend another bit of time communicating with your family. And so the day carries on and you might get a couple hours of work done. If you’re at home, you know, you wake up. You can spend a bit of time with your family. And be a proper father, which is perhaps the most important — or mother — most important things that we can do in our life. But you can also find the time to get whatever your job is done, because you’ve got another four or five hours free to do it. And you know, we’ve never been let down by people that we’ve given that trust to. I think treating people as adults, giving people trust, is so important. And I mean — I’ll just give you one other example — slightly different. But I mean, we have a policy of giving ex-prisoners a second chance, and taking on as many people who’ve been imprisoned as possible into our Virgin companies. Because we give them that trust, not one of them have ever re-offended. And, we’re talking, you know like in Virgin Trains, I think we have 35 people. Well, the person who is head of our security at Virgin Trains, she comes out of prison on a Monday morning, works until Friday night, goes back to prison for the weekend, comes out. But she’s absolutely brilliant at her job. And somebody who will do everything they can for the company because the company has given them that second chance.

DUBNER: You have started and sold and shut down and grown many, many, many companies. Can you talk just for a moment about your overall win/loss record? I’m curious to know if you actually have ever tallied up the successes versus failures.

BRANSON: I haven’t. I mean we’ve never had a company go bankrupt. Because our reputation is everything. And we believe that if you can afford to, if a company is not working out, you must settle all your debts. And so you know, we’ve never had a bankruptcy, and that’s in 50 years, so we’re proud of that. And I think that’s really helped keep the reputation of Virgin. But obviously over 50 years things change. So you know, give you a very good example. We started off with record shops. And we built maybe 300 record shops around the world, Virgin Megastores. And then iTunes came along, and the internet came along, and people, sadly, didn’t see the need to go into record shops anymore. And so, we either sold or closed down most of those 300 record shops. There’s still a few left in the Middle East but that’s about it now. But, you know, that spurred us on to move into mobile phones and into new technology that was evolving. So rather — if mobile phones was going to put us out of business, cause — and games — people — a lot of kids were spending more time on games than music, then it was up to us to embrace it, and so we embraced that instead. And I think, you know, fortunately we’ve been ahead of the game over the last 50 years. So by and large, we’ve had many more successes than we’ve had things which we’ve had to say goodbye to.

DUBNER: Now, a lot of the businesses you’ve been in, including some of the ones you just mentioned there, are not businesses that you build from scratch, or even really necessarily run from the ground up, but they’re more partnerships. And the way you do business — and the Virgin Group is a little bit different than many other firms — you call it branded venture capital. Talk to me just about how that works and whether it was a happy accident or is that something that you decided strategically to pursue a long time ago?

BRANSON: Well, I think just to be slightly more accurate, we’ve generally speaking started by owning pretty well every company. So we start with 100 percent ownership in the companies. And then over the years, in order to then invest in new entrepreneurial ventures that I may have come up with, we’ll sell shares in the companies that we started. And sometimes we’ve sold 100 percent. But we keep a brand royalty in everything. So — and we keep in touch with the Virgin brand, we monitor the Virgin brand. We have a team of people who monitor it to make absolutely certain that anybody who’s running a Virgin company respects the fact that our reputation, for all of us, is all we’ve got. So generally speaking we’ll start with 100 percent ownership and then maybe over the years we’ll settle down and then put that money into new ventures.

DUBNER: Thank you for that clarification. Was that the case with Virgin Mobile? Was that a little bit different or no?

BRANSON: So Virgin Mobile, we own 50 percent of the company. So with Virgin Mobile, we didn’t have the resources to build out a network, and we also didn’t think that would be our strength. What our strength was, was marketing to the public, and the brand, and the whole proposition. So we did a deal with a company called T-Mobile and they took 50 percent of the company. They gave their infrastructure — their masks. And then we ran it on a day-to-day basis. We put the team in. And yeah, we built a pretty formidably successful company. And then we merged it with the biggest cable company in the U.K. And it became Virgin Media. So that’s how that worked out. And I actually — my new book, Finding My Virginity, I tell the story of how our partners in that one actually were, in our opinion, naughty boys and tried to steal the company from us. But anyway, we fortunately won quite a big court case on that.

* * *

DUBNER: Talk about your strategy for choosing the right C.E.O. for a Virgin firm.

BRANSON: Oh, Helen? Could I have another cup of tea? Thank you. Sorry, just being British, order some tea. Say that again?

DUBNER: No, take your time. I’d like to know your strategy for choosing the C.E.O. of a Virgin firm. What do you — what do you look for? How do you — how does the process work, and so on?

BRANSON: Well, we — first of all, ideally, we’d like to promote from within, because I think there’s nothing more discouraging for, say, a thousand people who work in a company for a so-called expert to be brought in from outside. And generally if you can’t find a good C.E.O. within a thousand people in a company, there’s something wrong in the first place. You should have deputies who are quite capable of stepping into the C.E.O.’s position. You know, I look for people who are fantastic motivators of people, people who praise people, who genuinely care about people, people who, you know, are not apt to criticize people. And — obviously they have got to be good at what they do. And then, you know, we let them get on with it. And we try not to second-guess them. And we accept that, you know, some things they’ll do differently than us. Some things they’ll do better than us. But you know, by finding somebody, that frees me up to have a life and move on to other adventures or other entrepreneurial things. And so I think we’ve managed to get a great team. Now, the other advantage of promoting from within is, you know what you’re getting. You know, quite often people bring in outside C.E.O.’s into a company and it can destroy the whole atmosphere of a company, and you know, the damage can be enormous. And the other thing is, we try to promote our C.E.O.’s, — if I give you two examples. There was a recording studio division and we had. And there was a excellent lady that cleaned the floors. Anyway, she ended up, a girl called Barbara Jeffries, running the whole recording studio division. And in Canada, we had an excellent receptionist who ended up being C.E.O. of our foundation in Canada. And so I think again, you mustn’t always put people in boxes based on their job. You’ve got to think that people are often capable of far more than meets the eye. And if you promote people above what they’d expect, they will give everything back.

DUBNER: You’ve been quite outspoken about supporting women in business leadership. A lot of Virgin companies have or have had female C.E.O.’s or managing directors. But as I’m sure you know well, overall —especially in the States — there’s relatively very few female C.E.O.’s, especially of big companies. What do you think is the issue there? And — obviously it’s not an easy problem to address. But what do you think is the issue and what you think are some smart steps to begin to address it?

BRANSON: I think that when you have a company dominated by men, they’re apt to think of their fellow men as the next potential C.E.O., rather than a woman. I mean it — and therefore, my own instinct is that the only way of actually solving this, you know, in a relatively short term, is to force things upon companies. So, in Scandinavia their government has said that companies have to have 40 percent, 40 to 50 percent, females as board directors of companies. And you know, initially that was difficult, because there just weren’t enough obvious candidates to fill all the places. And a lot of women had a lot of different roles on a lot of different companies, the same women. But in time, people have realized how much better those companies are run. I mean, women, you know, let’s say a supermarket chain, women have an awful lot more knowledge than men on supermarket chains. And maybe they shouldn’t. But they do. And so on. I mean, you know, women are a breath of fresh air actually, in most most areas. So I think we need to kick start it, it needs to be forced on companies. I’m not sure that a lot of women agree with me on that. I’ve asked women and they say, you know, “We’ve got to fight our own corner.” But you know, personally, I’m not sure they’re right, because I think there’s a danger that men will continue to appoint men. At Virgin our bank in Britain is run by a wonderful woman called Jayne-Anne Gadhia who has actually taken on a big sort of campaigning stance for women in Britain. The chairman of the bank is also a woman. And you know, I think we’re doing better and better. And you know, the people we’ve got are the best for the job. They’re not there just because they’re a woman. They’re there because they’re really, really good at what they do.

DUBNER: But there are many others. You have Mary Wittenberg. You have Lisa Thomas. There are many others. And I’m curious — you kind of are in a, if not unique, unusual, position to oversee a firm with a lot of female leadership, and therefore you can kind of compare female leadership to male leadership. I’m curious — it’s always hard to generalize, but do you see significant differences in female versus male leadership, at your firms at least?

BRANSON: I wouldn’t say significant. I would say that, you know, a good female leader is just as good as a good male leader and vice versa. And you get the occasional women trait, you know, arguably slightly more emotional, maybe. I mean, in the same way that, you know, oh actually hang on there, maybe I’m getting on dangerous ground here. But — but I think I’m seeing — saying it as a positive. I think you know, they express themselves in a female way sometimes. And that can sometimes rub men up the wrong way. And — but you know, it’s in my opinion, it’s a positive thing. It’s great. Great to see people express themselves fully.

DUBNER: So we’ve been speaking with quite a few C.E.O.’s lately for our show from companies like PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, Microsoft, Satya Nadella, and Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg and quite a few others. And obviously every person is unique, in how they, you know, think about their job, how they spend their time. But it strikes me that even the most public-facing of those C.E.O.’s is much less public facing than you. In other words, in many ways the Virgin brand is really Richard Branson. That, at least, is my assessment. I’d love to hear your assessment and how you see yourself as a representative of your firm.

BRANSON: I think, you know, if you go back to when I was 15, 16, I didn’t have any money and I was starting a company without financial resources. And therefore, you know, if you’re going to take on British Airways, or you’re going to take on the big record companies, I had to use myself to promote what I believed in. And so I was creating artists, or I was creating an airline that I believed in. I didn’t have the money to market it. So you know, so in order to get on the front pages rather than the back pages of the newspapers and get the brand out there, I would do anything I could to get Virgin on the map, even if it meant jumping in boats or balloons, and trying to break world records, etcetera. I think that worked. And now, I think the Virgin brand stands on its own two feet and I’m not needed in the way that I was. We can also afford to take advertising and things. But I can still maybe put a little bit of icing on the cake. And you know, if we build a spaceship, I’m certainly not letting the chairman of British Airways jump in on the first flight. I’m jumping in myself. And so yes, still the two maybe intertwined. But I think the Virgin brand is here to stay. And hopefully will outlast me, and that was the original plan.

DUBNER: You know, that’s what I wanted to ask you next. I’m glad you brought that up, because I didn’t want it to appear to be a morbid or overly-probing question. But what would Virgin look like beyond Richard Branson? And I’m curious if you think about succession.

BRANSON: Well, I would be irresponsible not to. And I am fortunate — first of all, we’re — all the companies are run by great, wonderful people. We have a chairman and chief executive who run the group on a day to day basis. And I’ve got two wonderful children who do their own thing, but they dive in and out. And I’m very proud of them and proud of the help that they give me and the contributions they make. And they love people. My daughter runs our foundation and does a really good job. My son makes documentary films on subjects, all of which, actually, we see eye to eye on. So you know, drug reform and the death penalty in America, gun reform and other things like that. And they’re really great — they’re really good films. He just did a film about my ballooning exploits which Netflix just picked up called Don’t Look Down. And so they’re both very capable and I think it helps for a company like Virgin to have a face, and I think they can be the younger faces going forward. But I’m not — I’m still enjoying myself. So for the next 10 or 20 years, I’m still going to be very much involved, I hope.

DUBNER: I know you’re not much of a fan of Donald Trump. There is a bit of history there. But of all the C.E.O.’s we’ve spoken with, it strikes me, you have more in common with him as a businessman than anyone else, in that you’ve built a brand whose name alone is so recognizable but it’s valuable, and that the name can get attached to a multitude of businesses. Do you dislike that parallel as much as I suspect you do? Or maybe you don’t even see it as the parallel I suggest it is.

BRANSON: The — yeah. I mean obviously, he’s used his own name as his brand. And you know, and obviously we’ve used Virgin as our brand. But — yes, but there’s certainly some truth in what you say. I mean before he became president, there was a certain kind of building that wanted the Trump name on it. And he did well out of that in the end. And I’m not sure how successful he was at stretching the brand. But you know, because I mean obviously he went into airline business, and that failed, and you know, the casino business I don’t think was great. And so on.

DUBNER: The golf courses seem to be doing — that seems to be an exception.

BRANSON: Yes, the golf and the luxury side of it did well. But anyway, I mean, do I like the comparison? Yeah. He’s the president of the United States of America. But you know, there are aspects about the way that — what he has to say, about people in particular, that I find uncomfortable. And you know, I would love him if he could change his approach and embrace people more than he has done in the past and is doing.

DUBNER: Again I know — it’s obvious that you see yourself as a very different kind of human then him, and also as a different kind of communicator and leader and so on. Again, I don’t mean to harp on the parallel, but one thing I will say is true, if I look at the two of you as businesspeople. You certainly stray a lot from the beaten path. You’re kind of both, in different ways, the very opposite of the modern corporate leader. So I guess what I’m asking is — you both been very, very successful — what I’m asking is, does that success indicate perhaps that too many modern corporate leaders are too timid or risk averse? Because neither of you or that.

BRANSON: I’ve just literally five minutes ago saw Michael Bloomberg. Now, he’s somebody that I have enormous respect for. As a businessman, he’s created, you know, he hasn’t been bankrupt three or four times. You know, he’s built extraordinary businesses. And he’s done it, I mean he’s not your normal corporate type of businessman. And I think there is a lot of extremely good businesspeople in America and around the world that fit into that category, who I would have enormous respect for. And most businesspeople, most entrepreneurs, I have enormous respect for. I think entrepreneurs are the people who employ people, who create most of the new jobs, and who make the world a better place, who shake up the bigger, more complacent fat-bellied companies, and who innovate. And I think without all these wonderful young and old thrusting entrepreneurs the world would not move forward. There is a big difference, I think, between entrepreneurs and then the sort of rather staid business leaders of big companies, who often are anything but entrepreneurial. But fortunately there are the young, thrusting entrepreneurs that are taking them on and coming up with new innovations. And these big companies are having to try to find managers who are slightly more entrepreneurial.

DUBNER: I’m curious — so, your career, as I understand it, obviously began — you were very young, and you created your own path and just kept going and kept having ideas, kept trying, failed, didn’t let it bother you, and so on. But from the original — the magazine, student magazine, which was a culture magazine, to record stores, record label, airlines, trains, mobile phone company, etc, etc, etc. It’s not a model — I don’t know who you might have looked to as a model for that, because I think of people who had done what you had done. I’m just curious, what kind of — either, mentorship did you have along the way? Or maybe it wasn’t actually mentorship, but just someone you saw whose ideas and vigor you admired, and patterned yourself after? Or was it really Richard Branson just kind of figuring out Richard Branson along the way?

BRANSON: It was more the latter. I think, first of all, I never thought of myself as a businessperson or an entrepreneur. I just initially thought of myself as an editor and wanted to have a magazine to campaign against the Vietnamese War. But in order for the magazine to survive, I had to worry about printing and paper manufacturing and distribution and so on. And I sort of became an entrepreneur, just in order that I could fulfill my dream of being an editor of a magazine. And my education was, you know, being in the real world and learning the art of survival away from school, away from learning, and just being thrown in the deep end. And that’s exactly the same way I learnt to swim, was going into a fast-flowing river and having to learn not to drown.

DUBNER: It’s kind of amazing you’re still alive, I have to say, with all the things you’ve done.

BRANSON: No. I am a very, very, very, very lucky man. I tell 75 stories of near-death experiences in my new book. But anyway.

DUBNER: You must be part cat.

BRANSON: But there was one man, a man called Sir Freddie Laker, who ran a — he was the sort of pioneer of discount airlines, really. And he came to my house boat one day and he had gone bankrupt. He’d been pushed out of business by British Airways. And he just gave me a couple of bits of advice. He said, “Three words you got to remember: sue the bastards.” And he said that British Airways will do everything they can to put you out of business. You have to take them to court before you go out of business, rather than afterwards. And I took his advice. We took British Airways to court for a dirty tricks campaign they waged against us. We won the largest libel damages in history. And we distributed — it was Christmas time — we distributed it to all our staff. And it became known as the British Airways Christmas bonus. So we were very popular that Christmas.

DUBNER: Unfortunately you can’t repeat that every year, can you? Well, maybe you could.

BRANSON: Well, if they want to, we’ll —

DUBNER: It’s up to them, I guess. Let me ask you this. You’ve admitted that Virgin Galactic may not be the best bang for the buck when it comes to maximizing profits. You also admit that the Virgin board has not been thrilled with the endeavor. Why is this so important to you?

BRANSON: You only live once. And there is no space line on Earth. There are millions of people who would love to become astronauts, who would love to go to space. Me included. And I want to fulfill a dream for myself, for those millions of people, for my children, and build a Virgin Galactic space line that is safe and, in time, affordable. And it’s taken 12 years to get this far. And I think we are three months or so away from our dream. But space — rocket science is tough. And space is tough. And we’ve had tears along the way. We’ve had many high moments along the way. But I think we’re almost there. And it’s not just putting people into space, it’s putting, like, there’s four billion people who are not connected in the world. Virgin Orbit, which is another Virgin company, will be putting small satellites into space and creating big arrays of satellites around the earth. There’s point-to-point air travel, which we will get involved in at tremendous speeds. I go to Australia a lot, and I’d love to be able to get there in three or four hours rather than in 18 hours. But anyway, I love a challenge. I can’t resist a challenge, whether it’s Virgin Hyperloop, which is another exciting thing we’ve just got involved in, or whether it’s space travel or whatever it is. You know, we love to get in there and learn and hopefully experience.

DUBNER: Once again, you’re atypical for the kind of people we’ve been speaking with for this show lately. You’re not the C.E.O. of a firm with a big structure reporting up to you. You’re the founder and therefore you roam across projects and so on. That said, I’m curious to ask you something I’ve asked some of these other folks. Which is, I hear often that being at the top of a firm, especially if you’ve ascended from internally, it’s very lonely — that you get there and all of a sudden you don’t have any peers. You’re alone at the top. I’m curious whether for you that’s the case, whether you get lonely at the top?

BRANSON: No, I don’t get lonely. I think — I mean, I love people. And I think if you really love people and you see the people who you work with as you know, brothers and sisters, or children, depending on their age, and you’re a good listener of people, and you enjoy the company of people, it’s anything but lonely. And so maybe I’m lucky — I don’t know. But there are occasions, because I’m a recognizable face around the world, that you can maybe get just a little bit too many selfies in a day.

DUBNER: Is that why you want to go to space? To avoid all that?

BRANSON: Well, maybe that’s why I live on an island, anyway. But I mean, I love people, but sometimes it’s good to retreat occasionally. I think, you know, the Virgin company is an unusual company, it’s true. I mean we’re a sort of way of life company, which I don’t think really exists in the world. So you know, we look after you when you are young. We look after you as you get into your 20’s, and then you know, like with health clubs and music companies and games companies. And then we maybe move into trains and planes, and then spaceship companies, and then cruise ship companies, banking, insurance. So we look after most of your needs. And we have stretched the brand into lots of different areas. And most companies — like you mentioned people like Facebook, or others — they’ll specialize in one area and they’ll do an incredible job, and most likely they’re worth an awful lot more as companies than Virgin. But all I can say is, we’ve had a lot more fun, I suspect, because you know, we’ve learned a lot more. And enjoyed every minute of it.

DUBNER: Thanks so much for your time today.

BRANSON: Cheers. Thanks a lot.

In the next bonus episode, our interview with Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein.

David RUBENSTEIN: You know, money doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Some of the saddest people I know are the wealthiest people I know. And some of the poorest people I know are some of the happiest people I know. You know, Thomas Jefferson said, “Life is about the pursuit of happiness.” But he didn’t tell us how to actually get happiness. And it’s the most elusive thing in life, is personal happiness. But you know, I think I was happy before I was wealthy, so you know, I don’t know that the wealth has made me happier.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Greg Rosalsky, Stephanie Tam, Max Miller, Vera Carothers, Harry Huggins and Brian Gutierrez. For this series, the sound design is by David Herman, with help from Dan Dzula. The music throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at [email protected].

The post Extra: Richard Branson Full Interview appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/richard-branson/

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junker-town · 7 years

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Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa are the NFL’s most dynamic pass rushing duo

The pair did something real special against the Giants last Sunday. Retired NFL defensive lineman Stephen White hands out the rare double Hoss!

Let me get this out of the way —Joey Bosa has played better than I thought he would so far. If you came here to roast me for being wrong about him in my draft breakdown, have at it bruh. I will be wrong about some prospects, right about others and you have every right to call me out when one of my predictions doesn't come true in either direction. That's what they made comments sections for after all, right?*

Now that we got that shit out of the way, lets talk about Sunday.

Chargers linebacker Melvin Ingram made the defensive play of the weekend in my opinion. When his team needed someone to change the game down late in the fourth quarter, Ingram answered the call *Lyanna Mormont voice.*

His sack, caused fumble and fumble recovery of Giants quarterback Eli Manning with four minutes left in the game, with his Chargers down 22-20, to give San Diego the ball at the Giants' 11-yard line was some straight up Superman shit. Who knows what happens if the Giants are allowed to punt the ball on fourth down instead?

We know what did happen. The Chargers were in the end zone three plays later, and they would go on to earn their first dub of the season. All thanks to Ingram having risen to the occasion.

Now, my first inclination was to name Ingram as Hoss of the Week for that play alone. Then after I watched the tape and saw numerous other plays he made throughout the game I was just about sold. However, as I reviewed the film, I simply could not ignore how many plays Bosa was making as well.

Bosa may not have made the big play of the game, but he damn sure made a lot of other plays to help keep the game within reach. What's more, both Ingram and Bosa helped each other get at least one of the two sacks a piece they each recorded on the day.

I am not sure if you are aware, but those two guys have been one hell of a dynamic duo so far this season. Ingram, who has been playing out of his mind, has 7.5 sacks already and should be in the way-too-early conversation for Defensive Player of the Year. Bosa hasn't been too shabby either, posting 4.5 sacks of his own.

I'm not sure there is a pair of edge rushers who are wrecking shop any better than these two cats so far in 2017. Since this was the case again on Sunday, I thought it appropriate that they share in Hoss honors this week.

After watching Bosa and Ingram put in work I would hate to be a quarterback in these dudes’ cross-hairs. Just when you think you have one of them blocked, here comes the other one fucking your shit up. There were two plays that were perfect examples of this on Sunday.

The first one came with 10:35 on the clock in the first quarter. Ingram lined up as a standup defensive end on the right side, outside of the Giants' much maligned left tackle Ereck Flowers. On the snap, Ingram shot upfield like he'd been shot out of a cannon and hit Flowers with a mean dip and rip. Ingram initially had to get a little deeper than Manning to get all the way clear of Flowers, but once he was, Ingram made a hard left turn and closed on Manning from behind. Manning hearing Ingram's footsteps, tried to escape the pocket to his right.

Unfortunately for Manning, Bosa was lined up at left defensive end on that play. Bosa got upfield against Giants right tackle Bobby Hart. Bosa wasn't able to beat Hart around the corner, but Bosa was savvy enough to recognize he didn't want to get too far behind Manning. He made a spin move on Hart to come back to the level of the quarterback. And guess who was right there once Bosa finished the move?

Go ahead, guess.

Manning ran right out the proverbial frying pan trying to get away from Ingram and right into the fire with Bosa who lit his ass up.

Bosa returned the favor early in the fourth quarter on another third down. This time both Bosa and Ingram were lined up on the right side, with Bosa in a super wide three-technique and Ingram standing up outside of him in a really wide nine.

On the snap of the football Bosa approached Giants left guard Justin Pugh for a step or so, then suddenly turned right into Flowers and blasted the fuck out of him. I'm talking feet off the ground, knocked three yards back blasted the fuck out of him. Pugh having been attracted by Bosa's approach was still trying to block him as Bosa and Flowers went tumbling to the ground.

While all this was going on, Ingram had initially gotten up the field with the quickness again to attract Flowers so that Bosa could get that kill shot on him.

Spoiler Alert: It worked. It just so happened to come on third-and-10, too.

I mean, just as an aside, this was a very well run pass rush game and both of those guys are sneaky AF.

But I digress.

Once Bosa exploded into Flowers, Ingram looped inside to the A gap. Pugh tried, to no avail, to come off of his attempted block of Bosa and squeeze down for Ingram. Ingram came in too low and too fast for Pugh to even get a hand on him. Ingram was on Eli before he could blink and he took him down for a loss of 13 yards.

Bad Boys

Whatcha gone do?

Whatcha gone do when they come for yoooouuuu?????

Of course what makes these guys so dangerous is that even though they work well off each other at times, they don't actually need any help getting to the quarterback. Just look at Bosa's second sack of the game, for instance.

Bosa was lined up at left defensive end in a wide nine with New York facing a third-and-3 at the Chargers' 42-yard line. Another first down or so and the Giants would've been in scoring range. Bosa comes off and forklifts Hart right back into Manning's lap, but Giants right guard John Jerry came over to help. Did that stop Bosa?

Hell nawl!

Since he had already pushed Hart so close to Manning, Bosa just reached out and basically hit Eli with an uppercut to the underside of his elbow. The ball came squirting out of Manning's hand for a sack and caused fumble, even though technically he was still being double teamed. Unfortunately for San Diego, Eli was able to recover his own fumble.

That time.

Regardless, it was still one hell of a play that ended a New York drive.

That's another thing, all four of their sacks came on third downs. That's a big fucking deal when you think about the fact that the Chargers only won by a measley five points.

Again, I digress.

Later on in the game Ingram was able to show that he could get Manning on the ground by himself, too.

Now, to the naked eye Ingram's game-winning sack might look like another pass rush game, like the TEX game he ran with Bosa that I described earlier. Upon closer inspection it just looked that way. Here's what actually happened.

Third-and-7 with four minutes left and the game on the line. Ingram was standing up in a six-technique on the left side of the defensive line, head up on Giants tight end Jerrell Adams with defensive tackle Darius Philon lined up inside of him at three-technique on the outside shoulder of Giants left guard D.J. Fluker.

Now Philon came off and made a regular pass rush move on Fluker, but Adam chipped on Ingram as he was trying to get upfield and knocked him inside. Ingram saw that he couldn't possibly go back outside and get to the quarterback. He also noticed that Fluker was locked in trying to block Philon. So Ingram hit the afterburners and screamed through the A gap, sliding right past Fluker and right on Manning's ass.

For some odd reason Eli decided to not tuck the ball away, and as Ingram took him down, Manning ended up fumbling.

Ingram could've been satisfied with just getting the sack and caused fumble, but instead he got up off the ground hauled ass to the football. As I always say, good things come to those who hustle, and Ingram was able to top it all off with the fumble recovery that his team sorely needed.

It doesn't get much more big time than that.

Funny thing is these cat's still weren't done. It may have been overlooked by some since the Giants didn’t have much chance to win after they got the ball back right at the end, but Bosa and Ingram did not stop getting after it.

On the third to last play of the game for New York’s offense, Bosa lined up at left defensive end and beat Hart clean with a swiper move and stuck his helmet right in Manning's side as he was releasing a pass that would ultimately be caught by Shane Vereen for a short gain.

The very next play Ingram lined up as a standup left defensive end with Philon inside of him again. This time they did run a TEX game together. Ingram looped inside low and fast, which forced Fluker into a holding call and also motivated Manning to throw off target out into the flat to Vereen on a play that ended in a incompletion and with a hurry for Ingram.

Eli would throw a pick to officially end the Giants’ chances on the very next play.

After all that, I just realized I only talked about the pass rush stuff. Both of those cats made nice plays against the run as well.

All told they combined for four sacks, two caused fumbles, one fumble recovery, one tackle for a loss, seven other tackles, three hurries and two hits on the quarterback. That's more big plays on defense than most teams make in a game most weeks.

It’s safe to say Ingram and Bosa are not fucking around this season. If one of them isn't breathing down your quarterback's neck on any given play, then the other one likely is.

The rest of their squad may not be balling, but these two by themselves are worth the price of admission. On Sunday, Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa annihilated the Giants, especially in the most crucial moments of the game. That's why I decided to name them both as co-Hoss Of The Week winners for Week 5.

*I'm never reading the comments section.

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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8 Insights Into Uber CEO Pick Dara Khosrowshahi From Peers and Rivals

Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi speaking with Skift Executive Editor Dennis Schaal at the 2016 Skift Global Forum. Skift

Skift Take: With a two-decade track record in online travel, Khosrowshahi has had his duck-and-cover as well as been-on-a-mountaintop moments. If Uber's looking for a steady hand, and a guy with experience who isn't afraid to take a U-turn when called for, then they could have done a helluva lot worse.

— Dennis Schaal

From shining moments to times when he was a hard-ass, who is Dara Khosrowshahi, the current Expedia Inc. CEO and Uber’s pick to take the helm at the ride-sharing company?

What makes him tick business-wise?

In 2016, we interviewed Khosrowshahi, and many of his peers and competitors for Skift’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel.

We bring you eight oral history anecdotes ranging from him modestly admitting his short-comings to pioneering moments and being a tough-as-nails business person. The anecdotes cover a lot of deals, and character-defining episodes, many of which have relevance for the tasks ahead at Uber.

A philosophy of Being Unafraid to be Different

Khosrowshahi has worked alongside Expedia-controlling shareholder Barry Diller since 1998, and they’ve been together through times when the online travel company has struggled and excelled. There have also been around a couple of dozen deals they’ve done together along the way.

Khosrowshahi: “I think Barry [Diller] is always comfortable being a counter-programmer. One of the pieces of advice he gave me is that 90 percent of the time you’re going to make the decision that everyone else is going to make because usually 90 percent of decisions are fairly obvious. But 10 percent of the time you’re going to make a different decision and the key is what is that 10 percent. And he’s always encouraged us – he’s encouraged me – not to feel uncomfortable going against the flow. Because it’s during those times when you go against the flow, when you actually make a difference.

“If you’re always going to go with the flow you’re going to be a perfectly average company and that’s certainly not necessarily something that I want to say after my career, that I was perfectly average. There’s a comfort in that. There’s a comfort in knowing, you know what, I’m not making the typical decision, I’m making a different decision. I know there’s a risk. But I’m going to take that risk and I’m going to go for it. And Barry really encouraged us to go forward with that thinking. It’s OK to be different. You want to be different as a company, you want edge, you want an angle that separates you from the crowd. Be careful what those choices are but you got to have an edge to be different.”

TripAdvisor Saved His Ass

Khosrowshahi became a first-time CEO at Expedia when IAC spun off its travel holdings in 2005. [See my interview of the newbie CEO in September 2005.] He conceded in the oral history that he had a learning curve and wasn’t particularly good in the CEO role for the first few years. He credits one of its business units, TripAdvisor, and its then and current CEO, Stephen Kaufer, with saving his butt because at the time TripAdvisor was growing like a weed.

Kaufer, who has a sign, “Speed Wins,” tacked onto his office door, taught Khosrowshahi that “speed takes care of a lot of mistakes,” Khosrowshahi said.

Uber, of course, hopes that its new CEO wouldn’t need a comparable learning curve as the head of the ride-sharing company.

Disrupting the hotel Business

In 1999, while vice president of strategic planning for Barry Diller’s USA InterActive, Khosrowshahi led the talks to acquire acquire Hotel Reservations Network, later renamed Hotels.com. It was a time when hotel bookings occurred over the phone or by walking into a hotel lobby.

Brad Gerstner, former co-CEO of National Leisure Group, founder of Room 77, former Orbitz Worldwide board member and founder Altimeter Capital: “[National Leisure Group] started negotiations with Expedia. Then we meet Diller; and Dara Khosrowshahi had bought a company for Barry Diller in 1999 called Hotel Reservations Network. Remember Barry’s background: He owned the Home Shopping Network so he understood this idea that you could have a phone number that people could call and you have a catalog or you have television to drive the demand and everybody calls this phone number, and you have real scale economies and commerce. Using that same model he sees this company called HRN, or Dara sees it, and they had 1-800-HOTELS. Hey, you don’t know a travel agent call 1-800-HOTELS. We’ll get you a better deal on hotels. That was the business.

“We’re talking about the future Hotels.com, but at the time it was all telephone-based. [Hotels.com co-founders Bob] Diener and [David] Litman those guys are amazing entrepreneurs but they weren’t at the time necessarily in the technological vanguard in the way that Rich Barton was. But Dara had bought the company for Diller and it was exploding, it was growing so fast. Dara understood that this was all going to move online and this company was just going to be huge and if you remember, HRN’s massive breakthrough was their partnership where they ran the hotel business under private label for Travelocity. Travelocity outsourced all hotels to HRN which was an incredibly positive move for HRN but probably signed the death knell for Travelocity. Because while Expedia went on to develop all their capabilities around hotels, Travelocity never did because they outsourced. They let HRN do it and by the time Travelocity understood strategically many, many years later that they had to do it themselves, they were too far behind.”

Read More From Skift’s the Definitive Oral History of Online Travel Here

A Tough Negotiatior But It Doesn’t Always Work Out

Tim Poster’s Las Vegas Reservation Systems, which changed its name to Travelscape in 1998, recognized the power of Microsoft and was advertising and working with Expedia, which was featured on the MSN homepage. Rich Barton’s Expedia was independent of Barry Diller’s IAC at the time, and Dara Khosrowshahi was not yet affiliated with Expedia, but was IAC’s deal-maker. Expedia would acquire Travelscape in 2000 – but first came some bad blood and a thwarted deal around October 1999 between IAC and Travelscape.

Poster: “We were going to do a deal with Barry Diller. This part wasn’t public, but now who cares? They were going to buy us. I think this was in the very early days of InterActiveCorp. They made an offer to buy us for $120 million. You’ve got to remember at the time that was like all the money in the world to me. We didn’t have any debt; my partner and I owned the whole thing. We said, ‘Yes.’

“They had people out here in our offices for months, like counting every paper clip. It was just one of those grueling legal things. Every single thing was a fight over everything. It was like four months of that. My partner Tom [Breitling] and I, we were supposed to go to New York after this was all done, and we had spent like $300,000 or $400,000 on legal fees. Let’s say we were supposed to be in New York on Wednesday, well, Tuesday afternoon I get a call from the guy who is now the CEO of Expedia, Dara Khosrowshahi. He called me and he said, ‘Listen, I got to tell you, I’ve got some things that you’re probably not going to want to hear, but actually if you hear me out, it’s actually good news.’ I say, ‘Yeah, what’s that?’ He told me that, ‘Well, we got everything done and we took it to our board, but the board just won’t go for the valuation. We could only get approval for $90 million.’ I almost died. I told him I’d call him back.

“I went and got Tom and we called him back and he said, ‘No, I know, I understand, we agreed to 120 and I know we had a deal.’ We had a signed LOI [letter of intent] and everything, $120 million. He tried to convince me that this was still a great deal. He begged me to think about it. We were going to be on a flight to New York the very next morning to sign it.

“This was after months of grueling negotiation. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I told Dara that there would be absolutely no way that I would ever agree to anything less than 120. This was one thing I didn’t like. They even had private investigators follow us. The one guy told us ‘Well, everybody in Las Vegas that deals with the casinos, they’re all connected to mafia guys and all that.’ I remember telling Dara, I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what you think of Las Vegas people, but when we say we have a deal, we have a deal. We had a deal at 120 and you’re not honoring it.’

“One of the New York bankers from one of the New York firms, who I later became friends with, told me that he was in the room in New York when that phone call took place and so was Diller. Before [Dara] called me, [Diller] said, ‘These guys are very young; $90 million is all the money in the world to them. Believe me, they’re going to take the $90 million.’

“Everybody in the room was saying, ‘Yeah, but we made a deal with these guys for 120. That’s the deal. We have a signed deal with them.’ ‘Don’t worry. They’re going to take the 90. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. This is so much money, they’ve never had this much money in their lives,’ which he was right about.

“I told Dara, ‘I don’t know who else I’m talking to,’ but I could tell I’m on the speaker phone, ‘but all of you can fuck off. Unless you tell me now it’s 120, fuck you.’ That was it.

“Diller said, ‘Don’t worry. He’ll call back.’

“I never called back. Trust me, I was sweating. Believe me. I felt like, ‘Holy Christ, what did I just do?’

“We didn’t have to sweat too long because it was like three weeks later, Expedia went public and then they immediately wanted to buy us. We ended up doing the deal with Expedia, I think it was for $105 million, plus we had a little bit of debt, like $10 million or something like that. It was almost the same amount. What was ironic was that Barry Diller ended up buying Expedia a few years later, so he ended up buying Travelscape anyway.”

September 11 Nearly Stymies Expedia Deal

On July 16, 2001, USA Networks announced it intended to acquire a controlling stake in Expedia and to purchase outright National Leisure Group, then the largest online cruise and vacations packager. But then came the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Khoswrowshahi: “[USA Networks’ deal to acquire a controlling interest in Expedia from Microsoft] had been finalized. And we had signed for the deal and that deal – as many deals of the time – had what’s called a Material Adverse Change clause in the deal. September 11 was, if nothing else, quite material to the travel business. Unbelievable tragedy, and all the talking was about how we really didn’t know where this was going in any way, shape or form. And we had some time to make a decision as to whether or not we wanted to go forward with the acquisition or not. And, there was a debate happening.

“[Expedia founder] Rich Barton called up Barry Diller and Rich said, ‘Listen, we want to be in business with you but people at the company are nervous enough right now as it relates to September 11, and if you don’t want to close the deal that’s fine, just tell me now. I want to know now whether you want to close it or not. I completely respect your walking away from the deal but time is my enemy. During times of difficulty and crisis, leaders need to be clear. They need to provide clarity to their employees. I just want to provide clarity to my employees so please tell me sooner rather than later whether you want to do this deal or not.’

“We all got together as a small group of people around a table: Barry, myself, Victor Kaufman, the vice chairman of the company, and a few other folks. And we talked it over and I remember someone at the meeting – Barry and I still debate who it was – said, ‘If there’s no travel, there’s no life. It’s going to come back. Expedia is going to be an important part of it. So either the whole world is going to blow up or we’re going to be OK and who knows how long it will take, but we’ll be OK.’ I was at that meeting and Barry said, ‘Let’s close’ and I forgot whether it was myself or Barry who called Rich, we said, ‘You know what? We want to go forward with our partnership.’ And in hindsight it was a great decision and I’ve got to commend Rich for looking out for his employees and asking us to make that decision sooner rather than later.

“[The deal to acquire National Leisure Group] wasn’t as big a deal as Expedia. And, to some extent, we felt like we needed to hedge our exposure. If we’re going to go forward with one player, it was Expedia. In hindsight it was definitely the right bet to make.

“Expedia had its own path. I think Hotels.com led us to look at Expedia. After we bought Hotels.com we said, ‘Hey, we like this travel thing. We like this sector. This is going to go online fast. Let’s look for who else is playing in the sector.’ It led us to Expedia, it lead us to Hotwire. It really got us in the travel field and certainly got us interested in the lodging sector as a particularly interesting area to organize. I think Expedia on its own, really the credit goes to that team on their own. Their recognition of product and technology got them there and also their recognition that they shouldn’t just be an air brand. They should be a full-service brand, including hotels and dynamic packaging, were the real keys in their overtaking Travelocity.”

IAC Lets Booking.com Get Away

Khosrowshahi: “I think the Expedia team had taken a look at Booking.com and Active [Hotels, acquired by Priceline in 2005 and 2004, respectively] and again had passed. And, I think it was because we were attached to the merchant model and we were attached to high margins at the time. And I think in hindsight that blinded us. I think companies get very comfortable sometimes that there way is the only way and hats off to Glenn [Fogel, Priceline’s mergers and acquisitions lead] and team for recognizing Booking and the potential there. And there’s another deal that’s been a home run on the Internet: the Priceline purchase of Booking.com. It’s been absolutely extraordinary.”

Khosrowshahi Grabs TripAdvisor While Yahoo Dallied

Khosrowshahi: “TripAdvisor was a super-interesting company that was all about the power of user reviews and there was a sale process in which Expedia took a look at TripAdvisor and ultimately passed. There was an IAC corporate deal team that looked at deals. This was a travel deal so we passed it on to the Expedia team to take a look at. They passed really because they thought that TripAdvisor was too Google-dependent at the time and TripAdvisor was quite dependent on Google. TripAdvisor entered into an exclusive negotiating period with Yahoo and I remember going to Barry and saying, ‘You know what? I think we missed the deed on this. It was the company. I know that there’s a Google risk but I think every company on earth has risk relative to Google. And I think that growth is going to be on the company’s side.’ Barry said, ‘If you really believe in it then go chase it.’

“So I had called the banker who was working on the TripAdvisor deal, who advised me that they were in an exclusive negotiating period with Yahoo. We said, ‘Listen, we’ve very interested. This exclusive negotiating period seems to be going on for a long time so if you have any trouble closing let us know. We’re small, we’re fast and we can close a process faster than you can blink.’ And, I got a call a couple of weeks later saying, ‘Hey, we can talk?’ And, at that point, we really mobilize to take a good look at the company. I think the key element for me was meeting Steve Kaufer. I flew up to Boston, had dinner with Steve and Langley [Steinert], who was the other founder of the company. I came back from that dinner, I tell Barry, ‘We have to have this.’ So, then in a couple of weeks we negotiated a deal and we closed on TripAdvisor. It was really a bet on Steve and Langley. And, I think in hindsight it turned out to be one of the best deals in the travel sector ever.”

Khosrowshahi Let TripAdvisor Do Its Thing

TripAdvisor co-founder and CEO Stephen Kaufer: “While we were part of Expedia, I got the insight of how an OTA operates from the insider’s perspective. We still got to sell our leads to all the other travel companies out there and grow our supplier-direct relationships with the Hiltons and IHGs [InterContinental Hotels Group] of the world directly. It was an excellent relationship. Dara Khosrowshahi was my boss for most of the time. I just thought he did a wonderful job helping TripAdvisor by educating me and the rest of the team on what he could, by way of how the online travel industry operates, yet allowing us to lead a very separate life in terms of all of our clients or a lot of our clients, who were competitors of Expedia. And he never got in the way of that. He never dictated terms. He never said, ‘You can or can’t do this or that.’ That allowed us to flourish. When we spun off [in 2011], that was an easy transition for everyone.”

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rollinbrigittenv8 · 7 years

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8 Insights Into Uber CEO Pick Dara Khosrowshahi From Peers and Rivals

Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi speaking with Skift Executive Editor Dennis Schaal at the 2016 Skift Global Forum. Skift

Skift Take: With a two-decade track record in online travel, Khosrowshahi has had his duck-and cover as well as been-on-a mountaintop moments. If Uber's looking for a steady hand, and a guy with experience who isn't afraid to take a U-turn when called for, then they could have done a helluva lot worse.

— Dennis Schaal

From shining moments to times when he was a hard-ass, who is Dara Khosrowshahi, the current Expedia Inc. CEO and Uber’s pick to take the helm at the ride-sharing company?

What makes him tick business-wise?

In 2016, we interviewed Khosrowshahi, and many of his peers and competitors for Skift’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel.

A philosophy of Being Unafraid to be Different

TripAdvisor Saved His Ass

Kaufer, who has a sign, “Speed Wins,” tacked onto his office door, taught Khosrowshahi that “speed takes care of a lot of mistakes,” Khosrowshahi said.

Uber, of course, hopes that its new CEO wouldn’t need a comparable learning curve as the head of the ride-sharing company.

Disrupting the hotel Business

Read More From Skift’s the Definitive Oral History of Online Travel Here

A Tough Negotiatior But It Doesn’t Always Work Out

“Diller said, ‘Don’t worry. He’ll call back.’

“I never called back. Trust me, I was sweating. Believe me. I felt like, ‘Holy Christ, what did I just do?’

September 11 Nearly Stymies Expedia Deal

IAC Lets Booking.com Get Away

Khosrowshahi Grabs TripAdvisor While Yahoo Dallied

Khosrowshahi Let TripAdvisor Do Its Thing

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