Warning: massive amount of text ahead. I created a mostly functional race route around the world (all loactions like buildings, businesses, landmarks, etc. are REAL locations and could theoretically actually work in the race). I tried to have a good variety in locations and types of challenges, but it's really hard! I find it a lot harder to complain about challenge design after making this. Even though this could technically happen there are probably some safety concerns in going to South Africa and Lesotho and it's probably not possible for the American Amazing Race to film in Cuba, but I decided to do it anyway. If you have any questions or feedback please let me know!

RACE #2
Leg 1 (USA - Japan)
Leg 2 (Japan - South Korea)
Leg 3 (South Korea - India)
Leg 4 (India - Oman)
Leg 5 (Oman)
Leg 6 (Oman - South Africa)
Leg 7 (South Africa - Lesotho)
Leg 8 (Lesotho - Greece)
Leg 9 (Greece)
Leg 10 (Greece - North Macedonia)
Leg 11 (North Macedonia - Cuba)
Leg 12 (Cuba - USA)

LEG 1
USA - Japan
Start at Cloud Gate, Chicago, Illinois
Run to clue at Millenium Monument
Clue #1
Make your way to the Gunma region of Japan, and travel to Sarugakyu Onsen. However, to get your tickets to Japan, you must make your way on foot through the busy streets of Chicago to Navy Pier, where flights will be given out according to the order of your arrival. Flights go to Tokyo, and you must make your own travel arrangements from there.
Flight 1 (5 teams): Chicago - Los Angeles - Tokyo, arrives 8:00 AM
Flight 2 (4 teams): Chicago - Tokyo, arrives 9:30 AM
Flight 3 (2 teams): Chicago - San Francisco - Tokyo, arrives 9:45 AM
Clue #2
Both team members must go into the hot springs and search it for the partly submerged cluebox to get your next clue.
Clue #3
Travel to Sarugakyo Bungy for your next clue.
Clue #4
Roadblock: Who’s ready to take a jump?
Bungy jump at the largest bungy jump in all of Japan at 62 meters, or over 200 feet! Once you’ve taken your leap of faith, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #5
Travel to Uenokunirokunomiya Haruna Shrine, Takasaki, for your next clue.
Clue #6
Create one string of paper cranes in Senbazuru. Senbazuru is the crafting of 1000 paper cranes for good luck. Following the demonstration, learn how to craft paper cranes. Once you have created forty of them and strung them together, deliver them to a Shinto priest at Akiba Shrine. He will give you your next clue.
Clue #7
Travel by train to Akihabara, Tokyo, and go to the top of the Tokyo Skytree to receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Roadblock: Who can ‘go’ kart? The teammate who did the first roadblock cannot do this one.
Travel to Akihabari Street Kart 1 and dress up in one of the many ridiculous costumes the company has to offer. Then, join a fifteen minute go-karting tour around the streets of this bustling region and look for three enormous signs in race colors with three different Japanese characters on them. If you can spot and write all three characters down correctly during the rush of Tokyo, you’ll receive your next clue. If you can’t get it right, you’ll have to join the next available tour.
Clue #9
Travel to Horin Park on foot to find the first pit stop! The last team to check in here may be eliminated.
Pit Stop, Leg 1
trip to Canada
last: eliminated

LEG 2
Japan - South Korea
Clue #1
Fly to Busan, South Korea! Upon arrival, make your way to Beomeo-sa for your next clue.
Fast Forward, Leg 2
Go to Songdo Beach and swim out into the ocean, locating the five whale statues in the water. At each statue, pick up marked letter tiles. Once you have all seven (two statues have two tiles), you can go back to the beach and unscramble the letters that spell out the name of a traditional South Korean delicacy that the other contestants eat at their first challenge. If you get the right word, you’ll be given a clue that takes you straight to the end of the leg.
Clue #2
Master the art of Korean meditation. If you can master all of the moves correctly, then your instructor will give over your next clue.
Clue #3
Head to Taejongdae for your next clue.
Clue #4
Roadblock: Who’s desperate to eat?
Take the marked path over one mile uphill to the marked food stand, and finish one serving of Soondae, a traditional South Korean delicacy that is made of pig intestines and pork blood. Once you have finished the food, you can run down to your partner and get your next clue.
Clue #5
Take the Songdo Marine Cable Car from Songnim Park to Amnam Park to receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Detour: Fish Identity or Fish Delivery
Fish Identity: Go to Jagalchi Fish Market and search for the marked stall. Once there, sort an enormous box of fish and organize them. Once the stall owner approves, put them up for stock in the stall to receive your next clue.
Fish Delivery: Go to Jacky’s Seafood and take three orders and three addresses that need to be delivered. Once you have delivered all the fish to all the correct addresses throughout the Gamcheon Culture Village, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Make your way to the pit-stop at Haedong Yonggungsa. The last team to arrive may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 2
-first: trip to Belize
-last: non-elimination

LEG 3
South Korea - India
Clue #1
Fly to Hyderabad, India, and go to the Charminar for your first clue.
Clue #2
Travel to Ramoji Film City Main Entrance to receive your next clue.
Speed Bump, Leg 3
Make your way to Saha’s Adventure Park and zorb down a steep hill. Once you’ve made it, you can continue racing.
Clue #3
Detour: Birdy Woods or Bollywood
Birdy Woods: Dressing up in clumsy bird costumes, search through Asia’s largest aviary for a cutout of the bird your partner is dressing up as. Once you’ve found the two cutouts, head to the Bonsai Garden. If you match the right bird, you’ll receive your next clue.
Bollywood: Head to Ramoji Movie Magic. Dressing up in traditional Indian outfits, memorize a short dance to the tune of some Bollywood music and perform it to the live audience and judges. If you meet their standards, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #4
Head to Nehru Zoological Park where your next clue will be waiting.
Clue #5
Take an amazing elephant ride! With both teammates on the elephant’s back guide it through a short course. If you can reach the end in under two minutes, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Make your way to Bidar Fort by public transport for your next clue.
Clue #7
Roadblock: Who’s itching to get etching?
One team member must help in the process of the creation of bidriware. First, you must chisel one section in the piece of bidriware very precisely. Any error and you must restart. If given the clear, then you must then make their way inside Bidar Fort and collect a total of three baskets of soil for the artisans to use later in the process. Finally, you must use some of the soil you collected and coat a piece of bidriware in it. If every part of the challenge was done to the satisfaction of the artisans, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Make your way to the Bahmani Tombs and the pit-stop! The last team to arrive will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 3
-first: trip to Japan
-last: eliminated

LEG 4
India - Oman
Clue #1
Fly to Muscat, Oman! Once you have arrived, make your way to Al Alam Palace, where you will find marked cars waiting outside. Your clue will be waiting on the car.
Clue #2
Drive all the way to the Nizwa Souq in Nizwa, Oman, where you will find nine different tags, each releasing teams at different times the next morning, when you will be given your next clue.
Tag 1: departure at 7:00 AM
Tag 2: departure at 7:05 AM
Tag 3: departure at 7:10 AM
Tag 4: departure at 7:15 AM
Tag 5: departure at 7:20 AM
Tag 6: departure at 7:25 AM
Tags 7-9: departure at 7:30 AM
Clue #3
Detour: Selling Goats or Weighing Dates
Selling Goats: Navigate through the souq to the weekly goat market. You must select a seller and help them sell their goats. First, thoroughly clean five goats so they are ready for selling. Then, parade five goats around the “walking circle,” where potential buyers will inspect which goats to buy. You must finally buy a goat yourself, haggling for a price under 100 riyals, or 260 US dollars. Once you can purchase a goat, you will receive your next clue. Keep the goat for the next challenge.
Weighing Dates: Find the marked stall in the souq that is selling dates. Your goal is to weigh out 200 grams of Ajwa Dates, 175 grams of Barhi Dates, and 125 grams of Hayani Dates. To do this, you must travel across the market to a scale at a different date stall. If you can get the perfect amount of dates, you will receive your next clue. Keep the dates for the next challenge.
Clue #4
Travel on foot to the Contemporary Mosque with either your goat or dates and trade them with the man waiting out front for your next clue.
Clue #5
Make your way back to the souq, and head to Omani Craftsman's House where you will find your next clue.
Clue #6
Roadblock: Who can work and weave?
The teammate participating in this roadblock must help create a small basketwork bowl. After watching the example, you must use the provided materials to finish off the bowl. If it meets the requirement of the shop owner, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Make your way to the pit-stop for this leg of the race, Nizwa Fort! The last team to arrive may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 4
-first: continue racing
-last: continue racing

LEG 5
Oman
Clue #1
Drive yourself to Bimmah Sinkhole in Muscat, Oman! You will receive your next clue after having a cup of delicious locally-made coffee. Caution! Double U-Turn ahead!
Clue #2
Detour: Script Write or Shipwright
Script Write: Drive to Bait al Zubair and go into the Manuscript Room. Using a provided paper and translation guide, figure out what the marked manuscript says in English. If anything is wrong when submitting it, though, you must start completely over.
Shipwright: Drive to Oman Maritime Boatyard and find the marked boat. Oman Maritime has been reviving the craft of making the traditional wooden boats of Oman’s past, and you must help with the process. First, you must hand-sand a small section of the marked vessel. Then, you and your partner must work together to stitch coconut palm fiber through twenty holes, or eighty total stitches. Once you’re done, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #3
Make your way to Mutrah Souk for your next clue and the U-Turn board!
Clue #4
Search through the enormous market for one of three marked stalls. One you’ve found a stall, search through their wares for a trinket with a red/yellow flag on the bottom. Give the correct trinket to the shop owner, and they will hand you your next clue.
Clue #5
Drive yourself to Qurum Beach, where you will receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Roadblock: Who will pass the shells?
For this challenge, one team member must watch the demonstration of two fishermen playing a traditional Omani game, Al Hawalees. You must first create a “board” in the sand and collect the required amount of shells to play. You must then challenge a local fisherman. If you can win while following all of the rules correctly, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Make your way to the pit-stop at Wadi Bani Khalid. The last team to check in will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 5
-first: trip to Tanzania
-last: eliminated

LEG 6
Oman - South Africa
Clue #1
Fly out of Oman to Durban, South Africa, on one of two flights.
Flight 1 (2 teams): Muscat - Durban, arrives 7:30 AM
Flight 2 (6 teams): Muscat - Dar es Salaam - Durban, arrives 8:00 AM
Upon touching down, make your way to Moses Mabhida Stadium, where you will find your next clue.
Clue #2
Roadblock: Who will swing for the skies?
One team member must strap in and complete the Big Rush Big Swing, the largest swing in the world! Dive 263 feet down. Once you have finished the swing, you will receive a section and seat number. You will search the stands for your next clue.
Clue #3
Make your way to Umhlanga Lighthouse for your next clue.
Clue #4
Shake it up! In this challenge, you must create Lighthouse Bar’s famous “Umhlanga Schling.” Use the provided recipe to create fifteen drinks to perfection, and you will receive your next clue.
Clue #5
Head to Addington Beach and dig underneath one of the large sandcastles for your next clue.
Clue #6
Detour: Tree or Sea
Tree: For this detour, go to Durban Botanical Gardens. Use a provided golf cart to make your way to the famous Wood’s Cycad, a tree dating back to the age of dinosaurs. It has been cared for here since 1848. Once there, use one of the provided pieces to put together a large 3d puzzle of the tree. Once it has been approved, you will be handed your clue, and you can drive back to the front of the gardens and continue racing.
Sea: Go to uShaka Marine World and help out with some chores! First, help the kitchen staff and prepare 5 pounds of specially made vegetables for some of the aquarium’s fish. Second, travel around the park and take water samples from each of the specified exhibits. Finally, record blood test results taken during routine health check-ups. If you’ve completed all of the steps correctly, you will receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Head to the pit-stop at Suncoast Casino and Entertainment World! The last team to check in may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 6
-first: 5k each
-last: eliminated

LEG 7
South Africa - Lesotho
Clue #1
Drive yourself through Qacha’s Nek and into Lesotho! Once in Lesotho, drive yourself to Maletsunyane Falls where you’ll find your next clue.
Fast Forward, Leg 7
By completing this fast forward, you will skip an overnight rest point and will be able to head directly to the pit-stop. Head to Sehlabathebe National Park. Once there, using the provided map and compass, ride by horseback to the nomadic tribal people’s current village. At the village, help cook pap-pap, a type of porridge common in Lesotho. The first team to complete the challenge will be able to head directly to the pit-stop.
Clue #2
Drive yourself to Seshoeshoe Decor and Fashion Designers in Maseru for your next clue.
Clue #3
Who can cut up a pattern?
One teammate will choose one of the complicated tribal Lesotho designs, and must find five pieces of fabric that match it perfectly. But be careful, the designs have miniscule differences between them. Once you’ve found all of your fabric, cut them at the directed places to receive your next clue.
Clue #4
Make your way to the Subeng River Dinosaur Footprints, where you will find seven tags, each releasing you at a time in the morning when you will receive your next clue.
Tags 1-2: departure at 7:00 AM
Tag 3: departure at 7:20 AM
Tag 4: departure at 7:40 AM
Tags 5-7: departure at 8:00 AM
Clue #5
Detour: Cave or Maze
Cave: For this challenge, go to Liphofung Cave. You must memorize all of the rock paintings in a specified section (15 paintings), and then run approximately a quarter-mile away and select the correct paper cutouts and put them in the right order as they were shown in the cave. When you have everything selected and ordered correctly, you’ll receive your next clue.
Maze: Make your way to the second largest dam in Africa, Katse Dam. Enter the first marked gallery and record the air temperature and the humidity. Use those observations to crack a complicated code, and enter the parallel gallery it directs you into. Be careful, it might be hard to find! If you enter the correct gallery, you will find a boat key, which you must give to the boatmaster. He will then give you a small ride around the reservoir and you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive yourself to Sani Stone Lodge for your next clue.
Clue #7
Help a local Basotho Shephard and their dogs move their sheep to a new grazing location. Don’t let the sheep get away! Once they’ve all been successfully moved, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Make your way on foot to the pit-stop at Sani Top Chalet! The last team to check in may be eliminated!
Pit-Stop, Leg 7
-first: trip to Egypt
-last: non-elimination

LEG 8
Lesotho - Greece
Clue #1
Via Maseru International Airport, make your way to Athens, Greece, known to be the home of the first democracy! From there, make your way to the Theatre of Dionysus on The Acropolis, where you will take part in a U-Turn vote. The two teams with the most votes will be sentenced to an automatic U-Turn when they arrive at the detour. After the vote, teams will be given their next clue.
Clue #2
Fly to Chania, Greece on the island of Crete! Upon touching down, use the provided cars to make your way to the Agora and search for the marked stall.
Speed Bump, Leg 8
Together, team members must eat through a total of twelve Greek figs. Once all of the fruits have been stomached, that team can continue racing.
Clue #3
Detour: Traverse or Immerse
Traverse: Make your way to the Maritime Museum of Crete, and find the small yacht model outside the museum. Your goal is to remember as much as you can without writing it down, then make a half mile walk through the streets of Crete to the yacht harbor, where you must find a marked yacht and rearrange the items until it is just like it was in the model. Once the actual yacht matches the model, you’ll receive your next clue.
Immerse: Travel to Minoan’s World 3D Museum, and get treated to a five minute long “9D movie” on Cretan History which engages all of your senses. If you can answer all five questions correctly, you’ll receive your next clue. However, only two teams can participate in the show at once.
Clue #4
Drive to the Palace of Knossos for your next clue.
Clue #5
Use the provided map to navigate through the ruins, collecting puzzle pieces at each of the marked rooms. Once you have all ten bundles of pieces, head outside and recreate the large painting using the pieces you collected. Once it has been finished, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive to Cretan Olive Oil Farm for your next clue.
Clue #7
Roadblock: Who is feeling oily?
In this challenge, one teammate will help in the process of creating olive oil. First, set up special tree-shaking equipment and a net, used to efficiently get olives out of the tree without bruising them. You will then sort the olives between bruised and fair. Finally, crush both bruised and fair olives with a traditional granite olive press. Once they have been successfully grinded into a paste, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Find the pit-stop along the coast of the small village of Loutro back on the west side of Crete. You will soon discover, however, that the village is completely blocked off from the mainland by mountains, so you will have to find alternate transportation. Hurry, because the last team to arrive will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 8
-first: trip to Austria
-last: eliminated

LEG 9
Greece
Clue #1
Fly back to the mainland in Thessaloniki! When you’ve arrived, search Aristotelous Square for your next clue.
Clue #2
Detour: Serve or Observe
Serve: For this detour head on foot to Bougatsa Giannis, a renowned restaurant in the Ladadika area. You must take the orders of twelve total people and retrieve the correct dishes for them from the kitchen. Each person also has a dessert, which must be retrieved from nearby pastry shop Trigona Elinidi. You may take notes, but if you mess up someone’s order, you must start it over again.
Observe: Go by taxi to the Thessaloniki Science Centre Technology Museum and make your way to the main planetarium. The night sky will be projected above, and will be moving around you at one hour of regular movement per second. Using the provided key, identify five Greek constellations first identified by Claudius Ptolemy- Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Centaurus, and Perseus. Be careful, it might be dizzying! Once you’ve found all of the constellations, you’ll be rewarded with your next clue.
Clue #3
Find the Arch of Galerius for your next clue.
Clue #4 Use one of the marked cars to drive yourself for the rest of the leg. Go to the Thessaloniki Concert Hall for your next clue.
Clue #5
Roadblock: Who can blow a note and hold a tune?
Macedonian brass bands are extremely popular in the Macedonia region of Greece, so for this roadblock, learn how to play the trumpet, a popular instrument played in these bands. If you can play a few notes of the folk song with the band, you’ll get your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive to Dalamara Winery. Once there, follow the guide to the directed area, where you must load two empty kegs onto a horse drawn cart. Direct the horse approximately half a mile through the vineyard and return back to the kegs. You will continue to load and deliver a total of eight kegs to receive your next clue.
Clue #7
Drive to Ski Center Voras and take the lift to the top where Kajmakcalan, a chapel right on the border between Greece and North Macedonia is situated. The last team to arrive at this pit-stop may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 9
-first: trip to Colombia
-last: eliminated

LEG 10
Greece - North Macedonia
Clue #1
Drive yourself across the border into North Macedonia to Popova Kula Winery! Once there, pull a tag that departs you at a certain time the next morning.
Tag 1: departure at 8:00 AM
Tag 2: departure at 8:10 AM
Tag 3: departure at 8:20 AM
Tags 4-5: departure at 8:30 AM
Clue #2
Roadblock: Who is a master chef?
The teammate doing this roadblock will use the provided recipe to cook the national dish of North Macedonia, Tavche Gravche, a special type of baked beans. If it is cooked to perfection, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #3
Drive yourself to the Millenium Cross in Skopje for your next clue.
Clue #4
Detour: Art Block or Charity Walk
Art Block: Drive to the Art Bridge, which is home to 29 statues of important Macedonian artists and musicians. Wandering on and around the bridge are 29 people dressed up as those artists and musicians. You must match nine total people to their statues. A maximum of three teams can complete this challenge.
Charity Walk: Drive to the Mother Teresa Memorial House and load a trolley cart with a marked group of items that will almost completely fill the trolley. On foot, travel to the SOS Children’s Village National Office where you are to deliver the items. If you do not choose this option, your items will still be donated after the leg.
Clue #5
Drive to the city of Struga, where the North Macedonian national anthem was created. Make your way to the Saint Archangel Michael Cave Church for your next clue.
Clue #6
Teammates must work together to memorize four total stanzas of the Macedonian national anthem- in Macedonian. If you can perform it with the orchestra without forgetting the lyrics, you’ll receive your clue to the next pit-stop.
Clue #7
Drive to the Monastery of St. Naum and the pit-stop! The last team to check in may be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 10
-first: trip to Indonesia
-last: eliminated

LEG 11
North Macedonia - Cuba
Clue #1
Make your way back to Skopje, then fly to Havana, Cuba, on two predetermined flights. Once there, go by taxi to Taller Calle 8, a car repair shop, where you will receive your next clue.
Flight 1 (2 teams): Skopje - Paris - Havana, arrives 6:30 AM
Flight 2 (2 teams): Skopje - London - Miami - Havana, arrives 7:10 AM
Clue #2
Roadblock: Who can fix it up?
The teammate doing this roadblock must follow the example to repair one of the classic Cuban cars. If it makes it past inspection, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #3
For the remainder of the leg, you’ll have to drive the car you just fixed. Head to Fusterlandia, where you’ll find your next clue.
Clue #4
Find where the attached image is in person throughout the folk neighborhood of Fusterlandia. If you can find where the image actually is and show the judge, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #5
Sell the Box or Find the Band
Sell the Box: Drive to Santa Maria del Mar Beach and sell the provided boxes of boxed rum, the “juice box for bug kids.” While never selling any box for under 25 Cuban Pesos, make 375 Cuban Pesos (around fifteen US dollars). Once you’ve made your sales, you’ll receive your next clue.
Find the Band: For this detour, drive to the Cuban Art Factory and observe the large, marked piece of sheet music in the first room. Going from room to room in the factory, try to find the band who is playing the music that was in the first room. You must make your guesses ten minutes apart, so be confident in your answers! Once you have chosen the right band, you’ll be rewarded with your next clue.
Clue #6
Drive to Vinales Valley Tobacco Field and search the marked area for your next clue.
Clue #7
Perfectly roll ten Cuban cigars, five per contestant. Watch the example closely, as any small mistake in rolling the tobacco leaf will cause the cigar to fail. Once all of the cigars have been perfectly rolled, you’ll receive your next clue.
Clue #8
Take a long drive to the eastern side of Cuba and the pit-stop at Ignacio Agramonte Park in Camaguey! The last team to check into the pit-stop will be eliminated.
Pit-Stop, Leg 11
-first: trip to Botswana
-last: eliminated

LEG 12
Cuba - USA
Clue #1
For the first part of this leg, you’ll be staying in Cuba! Drive yourself using the car you used in the last leg down Neptuno street in Havana, where you will find a guarapo stall with a flag.
Clue #2
Using the hand-press to crush sugarcane, make forty glasses of guarapo. Once all of the glasses have been successfully made, you’ll be handed your next clue.
Clue #3
Drive to the Tropicana Night Club for your next clue.
Clue #4
Roadblock: Who can make it and shake it?
For this challenge, one team member must follow the instructions of the costume designer to create a costume for one of the showgirls. If the costume is made correctly and given a pass, teams will be given their next clue.
Clue #5
Teams must drive to Aeropuerto de La Habana Ciudad Libertad, where you will embark on a charter flight to Key West, Florida, back in the United States. Once in Key West, teams must go to the southernmost point in the continental United States for their next clue.
Clue #6
Make your way to the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, where you’ll find your next clue.
Clue #7
Roadblock: Who is a reader, a writer, and a decipherer?
Ernest Hemingway, known for books like The Old Man and the Sea, had a notoriously bad handwriting, with little regards to punctuation or accuracy. One team member must copy one of Hemingway’s notes perfectly, letter for letter, on the provided typewriter. If it was typed perfectly, you will be handed a decoder key which you can use to find the hidden message, which will reveal the location of your final challenge.
Answer: Smathers Beach
Clue #8
Now that you’ve made it to Smathers Beach, you’ll partake in a final challenge. Out in between the marked buoys are bundles of letter tiles. You must dive down to retrieve them and bring them back up to shore. Figure out what you’re supposed to spell out with them, and once you think you have the answer, hang the tiles in order on your clothesline. If you have the correct answer, you’ll be given the final clue.
Answer: United States, Japan, South Korea, India, Oman, South Africa, Lesotho, Greece, North Macedonia, Cuba, United States (teams must figure out that they have to spell out all of the countries they visited in order on the race)
Clue #9
Congratulations! Make your way to the final pit-stop at Fort Zachary Cruise Pier! Go, go, go, the first team to reach the pit-stop will win 1 MILLION dollars!
Pit-Stop, Leg 12
10 countries
4 continents
over 27,000 miles
first: 1 million dollars

DeFi: Why There is no Need to be Hasty

I have seen many posts across the Cardano community about how ETH’s DeFi rush will give ETH the first movers advantage in a winner take all DeFi ecosystem.
First, I know how anxious many of you feel. We see another project with a fervor of activity while IOG is still working behind semi-closed doors on Goguen. We all want Cardano to live up to its potential and its scary when it looks like another platform is racing ahead.
However, let us take some time to think of this from first principles and ask, “Why is DeFi a winner take all situation?” If you look at the tech ecosystem, platforms that are labeled “Winner take all” platforms are closed systems. Not every business that calls itself a platform, online or not, is not in a winner take all market. That said, winner take all really is a misnomer, even the strongest closed network tech companies with the strongest of feedback loops have competition.

Facebook has TikTok and Snapchat
Amazon has Wayfair while Target and Walmart online are catching up extremely fast
Netflix has Hulu/Disney Plus, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Prime Video and CrunchyRoll
Spotify has Apple Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Youtube Music, Amazon Music, Google Music

In the finance space things generally are not winner take all because the system is interoperable (imagine what would happen to Bank of America tomorrow if it announced that it is no longer accepting deposits from other banks?). As an example, I can ACH money from Citibank to UBS, buy stock there, then transfer it with ACATS to Interactive Brokers.
Looking at the financial markets, there are so many different institutions, many of them extremely large.

Banks: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Bank of New York Mellon are all massive institutions; and those are just the large bulge brackets, there are a ton more regional banks and smaller institutions),
Brokerage houses: Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade
Asset Managers: BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, PIMCO, Wellington Asset Management and JP Morgan Asset Management, all have more than $1 Trillion dollars in AUM
Insurance Companies: MetLife, State Farm, Berkshire Hathaway, Progressive, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Travelers, Chubb, USAA all write $10s of billions of dollars of premium a year
Hedge Funds: Bridgewater, Citadel, AQR, Renaissance Technologies, DE Shaw, Elliot Management, Bracebridge, Panagora Asset Management all have $10s or $100+ of billions under management, and again those are just the big guys)

Seriously, just go look up how large these companies are. Those are the guys we are going for, not some fly-by-night DeFi script kiddy who lost $200mm dollars because they forgot to call the correct method in their smart contract.
Oh, and that list I included, those are only the large firms. I did not even touch upon the myriad of boutique and regional firms. I also haven't even gotten to any international firms yet, or mentioned other entities like the DTCC, prop-trading firms, family offices, private banks or sovereign wealth funds like GIC/Temasek and CIC with over a trillion dollars under management.
Also keep in mind that while DeFi might feel full of vitality and growth, what are people in the market really doing? What real world activity are people borrowing do to on crypto platforms? People are not borrowing on DeFi to start businesses, build homes or pay for school. They are borrowing to fund margin loans so they can leverage and maximize their yield. It is just a moderately sized casino*** with a cardboard sign duct-taped over that reads "Bank." The current total value locked in De-Fi is $9bn at most which is tiny. I have been at large asset management firms with single accounts with more money than that. Even if De-FI on ETH miraculously grows by 700x without any blowups, it will still be smaller than the AUM of the largest asset management firm by over $100bn.
Lastly, I think people underestimate the issues ETH has ahead of it. Read this medium post and this academic paper about priority gas auctions, DeX front running and transaction ordering dependence vulnerabilities [0, 1] and how this not only impacts users but affects the security properties of the consensus layer. Additionally, ETH 2.0 does little to fix the fee issue, for that they are working on EIP-1559 which is still contentious and will be hard to ship without on chain governance, which also isn't included in ETH 2.0 either. Even further still, ETH will need to do a difficult hard fork to implement these changes, while Cardano has HFC events which are operationally less complex and easier to execute. There are still so many kinks to work out. ETH isn’t the iPhone moment, ETH is pretty much the 10lb Motorola voice only cellphone (more like a blunt weapon) that costs the same as a pedigreed show dog.
TLDR; The market is still in its absolute infancy. The space we all can disrupt is massive. Fighting over the current market is like fighting over a parking space when you have the entire continental United States to explore. While the project can’t stagnate or rest on its laurels (which I don’t think is happening), it can take its time to be methodical to ensure that when the world financial markets are onboarded onto the blockchain that Cardano has the research, codebase, infrastructure and community to step up to the challenge and excel.
*** Las Vegas Sands and MGM Resorts each made more money in the last 12 months--even with COVID--than the TVL of DeFi assets on ETH. Yet, the icing on the cake is that the Macau gambling market is 4x the size of Vegas so even the gambling industry is much bigger than DeFi right now.
[0] https://medium.com/@danrobinson/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest-ecc5f0505dff
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.05234.pdf (its long but all you need is the first 3-ish pages)

What Wisconsin Democrats Learned from 2016

It was a most unusual sight for Joe Biden’s campaign: a crowd. Across the street from the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, in the town of Manitowoc, several hundred fans of the former Vice-President gathered in the afternoon sunshine late last month, carrying signs and wearing masks that allowed them to muster energetic, if muffled, chants. This was not a planned rally, more like a flash mob without the theatrics. Biden, insistent on modelling good medical etiquette during the pandemic, schedules no grand gatherings, leaving them to his rival, Donald Trump, who, before his coronavirus diagnosis, routinely spoke from a stage, with Air Force One positioned scenically behind him, as thousands cheered his boasts and invective.
A line of police officers kept the crowd away from the brick foundry, where Biden’s motorcade was parked. Closest to the building, about a hundred Trump supporters had gathered, many waving campaign banners. One homemade poster read “A Vote for Biden = Socialism.” Another said, “Build the Wall with Liberal Tears.” A chant for four more years merged into one for four more terms. Few on the Trump side wore a mask. All of the Biden supporters did, including Darlene Wellner, an eighty-year-old retired social worker. I asked Wellner what brought her out for Biden. She started with Trump’s dishonesty and turned to his environmental policies. “So much damage has been done. It’s just heartbreaking what is happening in this country,” she said. Wellner has taken it upon herself to write thirty postcards to people she considers fence-sitters. “If I can influence five of them, it wouldn’t be bad.”
Biden had arrived in Manitowoc, a town on Lake Michigan, largely thanks to Sachin Shivaram, the C.E.O. of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, who was so worried about Biden’s chances in the state that he contacted everyone he knew in hopes of persuading the campaign to deploy the candidate. “If you don’t have that on-the-ground presence of the candidate, it trickles down,” he told me. In his community of De Pere, he saw a surfeit of Trump signs, and almost none for his rival. At the factory, the union leadership supported Biden, but he noticed that some workers were wearing maga gear. He was thrilled to hear, about seventy-two hours ahead of time, that Biden would be seeking attention in Manitowoc, in a state where Hillary Clinton barely competed. He wasn’t alone. On the afternoon of the visit, the Manitowoc County Democratic Party storefront was bustling. “We’re in Trump country,” Karen Steingraber, a volunteer, said, as she assembled Biden-Harris signs, “but we do what we can.”
Inside the foundry, Biden delivered a series of sharp-edged attacks to a few dozen carefully distanced onlookers and reporters. The speech was good stuff for the faithful—evidence that Biden, at seventy-seven, could deliver a biting anti-Trump narrative, along with his customary empathy toward the families of the covid-19 dead and those who are struggling financially. Addressing the working-class voters in Wisconsin who favored Trump last time, he pledged, “You will be seen, heard, and respected by me.” Speaking, as he often does, from behind a surgical mask, he said, “Frankly, I’ve dealt with guys like Trump my whole life. Guys from the neighborhood I come from who would look down on us because we didn’t have a lot of money or your parents didn’t go to college. Guys who think they’re better than you. Guys who inherit everything they’ve ever gotten in their life and squander it. Guys who stretch and squeeze and stiff electricians and plumbers and contractors working on their hotels and casinos and golf courses just to put a few more bucks in their pocket. Guys who do everything they can to avoid paying the taxes they owe because they figure the rest of us, the little people, we can pick up the tab for the country.”
On paper, Wisconsin looks eminently winnable this year for Biden and the Democrats. The respected Marquette Law School poll, released on Wednesday, showed Biden ahead by five points, with a Libertarian candidate, Jo Jorgensen, receiving four per cent, and Trump favored by just forty-one per cent of likely voters. If it weren’t for the shock of 2016, when polls showed Clinton comfortably ahead in October, Biden supporters’ worry meter would be much lower. “Every Democrat is on edge,” Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, told me as we sat on his back porch, in Madison. “To me, it means that every Democrat will work their heart out.” Trump was the first Republican Presidential candidate to win the state since 1984, but his winning margin was less than one per cent of the roughly three million votes cast, suggesting that even minor adjustments in the Clinton campaign’s message or tactics could have changed the outcome. Clinton received 238,449 fewer votes than Barack Obama had four years earlier, including forty thousand fewer in Milwaukee alone. Yet she lost the state by only 22,748 votes.
Clinton and her team assumed that they would win Wisconsin with a minimal investment, even after she was pummelled in the Democratic primary, losing to Bernie Sanders by thirteen points. Only in the last two weeks of the campaign did Clinton advertise on television in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Madison. This year, Biden has dominated television advertising for months. In one measure of the intensified effort, a list of campaign events, Biden interviews, surrogate appearances, and radio and television advertisements stretches to two single-spaced pages. And the ground game is broad. By the campaign’s count, three thousand people have done phone-banking sessions in Milwaukee, where there are forty teams of volunteers and dozens of paid staffers. (The campaign declined to say exactly how many.) “We definitely learned our lesson,” Marcelia Nicholson, the chairwoman of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, told me.
Despite polling averages that have shown Trump lagging Biden for months, the Republicans, too, are boasting of their efforts on the ground and including rallies in the schedule. Before his coronavirus diagnosis, Trump had planned to hold events in La Crosse and Green Bay; Vice-President Mike Pence has visited the state five times since July, including a recent trip to Eau Claire, where he was joined by Ivanka Trump. The campaign is trying to fortify rural counties that voted for Obama twice before flipping to Trump in 2016; it also took the rare step of opening an office in Milwaukee, aiming to reduce Biden’s large margins among Black and Latino voters. Team Trump has held training sessions with more than six thousand people, according to the campaign. Samantha Zager, the deputy national press secretary, noted, “We’re the only campaign in the state currently asking Wisconsinites for their votes in person.” She described Biden’s bid for Wisconsin as “too little, too late.”
I asked Wikler how Democrats intend to avoid a nail-biter this time. “Organizing,” he said. “In 2016, you’d go into an office and no one would be there. Someone behind a table would tell you to pick up a clipboard and bring it back when you’re done.” The next year, Martha Laning, Wikler’s predecessor, began building a statewide organizing effort that would operate year-round rather than emerge near the end of a campaign cycle. “You hire organizers to recruit local leaders to build neighborhood teams. They’re volunteer team leaders, they recruit volunteers. Those teams are responsible for organizing their neighborhoods,” Wikler said, likening them to old-school ward captains. In 2018, Democrats swept the elections for statewide offices for the first time since 1982.The current ground game is a joint operation of the Biden campaign and the Wisconsin Democrats. In addition, staff and volunteers from a raft of independent organizations are working to get out the vote. In Milwaukee, significant efforts are under way by Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (bloc) and Voces de la Frontera Action, which focusses on the city’s hundred thousand Latino residents, as well as other Latinos around the state. Since Kamala Harris, a Howard University graduate and member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, joined the ticket, organizers have been drawing strength from members of the Divine Nine historically Black fraternities and sororities. In Fitchburg, the state’s first elected Black mayor, Frances Huntley-Cooper, an Alpha Kappa Alpha, called it “an automatic network. I have so many sisters who are on the phone every day.” Many others, she said, are helping people navigate the requirements for voting by mail, and volunteering as poll workers.
Then there is money. In one sign of the Democrats’ success, last month’s live reading of the script of “The Princess Bride,” by most of the original cast, attracted an astonishing hundred and ten thousand viewers and raised $4.25 million. The cast members of “Parks and Recreation,” “The West Wing,” and “Veep” appeared on other nights. Citing the organizing oomph, the Democrats I spoke to in several Wisconsin cities expressed confidence in Biden’s chances, if the election is fair and square. Their worry is that Republicans will find ways to suppress Democratic turnout. For months, Trump has been groundlessly attacking mail-in voting, recently tweeting falsely, for example, “The Ballots being returned to States cannot be accurately counted. Many things are already going wrong.” With court battles over voting rules already under way in Wisconsin, I asked Mandela Barnes, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, what he foresees. He said, “Republicans are going to use any tactic they can try to keep people from voting, because they know that lower turnout is typically beneficial to them.”
More than a million voters have already requested an absentee ballot, and more than six hundred thousand have voted. Anticipating a torrent, election officials are getting creative. Some have positioned drop boxes outside public buildings, such as libraries, in Milwaukee. In Madison, a Democratic stronghold, hired clerks sit outside the City-County Building during office hours to collect ballots, first checking that they have been signed and witnessed. The city organized two events called Democracy in the Park, where poll workers stationed themselves in two hundred and six parks to register voters and receive ballots. On the first day, roughly ten thousand people delivered ballots. An attorney for two of the state’s most senior Republican legislators unsuccessfully tried to stop the exercise, arguing that it was “an illegal collection of ballots.” Republicans are also in federal court trying to limit the number of days that ballots, postmarked by Election Day, November 3rd, will be received and counted. Yet even as Trump rails against the dangers of absentee voting, the Wisconsin Republican Party is saying precisely the opposite, in literature designed to be hung on a voter’s door handle. “Absentee and Early in-person voting are safe and secure ways to guarantee your voice is heard,” the flyer says, featuring a stylized black-and-white photo of Trump, with only his trademark red tie in color, pointing at the camera. “president trump wants YOU to make a PLAN to vote TODAY!” I picked up the door-hanger at an office of the Racine County Republican Party, in Burlington. Among other handouts was a card showing a Photoshopped highway sign that read, “Caution: Democrat Voter Fraud Ahead.” Behind the counter, a volunteer, who asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted by Trump opponents, said he was afraid that Democrats would try to steal the election. “I know if Democrats lose,” he said matter-of-factly, “they will try to burn the country down.”
Trump, whose campaign is lagging financially, is distributing flyers that misrepresent Biden’s record and positions. One, with the Trump campaign’s signature, is printed handsomely in red, white, blue, and gray. It wrongly states that Biden is calling for defunding the police, that he intends to “raise taxes on the middle class,” and supports climate policy that would cost ninety-three trillion dollars. I spotted it when I visited the middle-class Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, where Emily Siegrist, a Democratic nurse practitioner and former soldier in the Wisconsin National Guard, is running ahead of Dan Knodl, a Republican state legislator, who defeated her in 2018. This time, she is well-funded and working hard. When I caught up with her, she was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a gray sweatshirt that said, “Girls Unite.” I asked about the Democrats’ decision not to knock on doors or hold rallies, in contrast to the Trump campaign and many down-ballot Republicans. She said it makes campaigning harder, and creates a wild card in predicting the outcome. Although her volunteers have made fifteen thousand phone calls, by her estimate, she sometimes can’t resist campaigning the old-fashioned way. “I’ll ring the doorbell and jump back. I’ll talk to them from a distance, ‘My name’s Emily. I just want to introduce myself.’ ”
Back in Manitowoc, Shivaram revelled in the positive vibes from the crowd that gathered to cheer Biden. “I had no idea that this many people supported Biden in Manitowoc,” he said. Although Biden held no rally and shook no hands, the visit accomplished its pandemic-era goals by earning plenty of local television, radio, and print coverage from the foundry speech and interviews with reporters in the larger Green Bay market. “The media coverage made the visit look big. That really energized people,” Shivaram said. So, I asked him, was he feeling better about Biden’s chances? “From my little corner, it doesn’t feel good at all,” he replied. “I’m scared he is going to lose.”

Back from Vacation Fact List

I feel like no one has talked about this here, but my jaw actually dropped at the fan question about the two psychologists named Levinson and Gould who studied the midlife crisis. That's an amazing connection even though it's a coincidence! These are the kind of fan questions they should be talking about.

Back from Vacation

Episode written by Justin Spitzer and directed by Julian Farino.
Fast Fact: This episode was Justin's first full episode as a writer. He was also the person who wrote Dwight's line about absorbing his twin in the episode "Grief Counseling." Justin is the creator of the NBC show Superstore.
Greg Daniels wanted to explore the idea of the feeling you get when you have to come back to work after being on vacation. That's the idea that this episode was built on.
Writers would usually get about 9 days to write their first draft of a script. They would get sent off on Friday and have the entire next week to write, and then it would be due on the following Monday. But instead of Friday, they did not finish breaking down the idea for this script until Monday night. Then Greg wanted Justin to turn it in that same week on Friday morning, so he only had 3 full days to work on it.
They weren't actually behind schedule for this episode so one of the writers asked Greg why he was only giving Justin 3 days to write the script. Greg said he just wanted to "keep the pressure up, just tightening the screws."
When Justin brought the script back, it went through many rewrites.
Fast Fact: Julian Farino directed the first 3 seasons of the show Entourage, including an episode that Rainn Wilson was in. He also directed an episode of the show Rome.
Fast Fact: The photo of Michael and Jan was taken on a tiny beach set they built in the warehouse. It had sand and lounge chairs with a green screen behind it. Kent Zbornak and Phil Shea reached out to the people at Sandals Resorts who then donated products that were featured in the episode, like the umbrellas. Then Steve and Melora came to the set to take a bunch of pictures. Melora didn't actually have to be naked for the pictures, they did that in photoshop. Phil had the posters printed from a graphic shop in Culver City, CA.
The cold open with the tape recorder is completely scripted.
Kim Ferry, the show's hair stylist, put the beads in Michael's hair. Since Steve had very short hair, she had to put the beads into a hair clip, and then stick it to Steve's hair. She created a few variations and Greg picked his favorite.
When Michael comes into the office he's carrying a ton of bags. Most of them are from a deleted scene where Michael gives everyone souvenirs from his trip.
In this season, the wardrobe department got Angela a bunch of blouses that are never seen again in other seasons.
When Pam points out Jan in Michael's vacation pictures, he tries to cover it up and says "No, no, no. No, that’s a German woman named Urkel Grue." But in the original script he was supposed to say "Urlgra." Steve voices the character of Gru in the Despicable Me movies. The first movie came out in 2010, three years after this episode aired. But it's possible that it was already in production during the filming of this episode which is why Steve said Gru instead.
Todd Packer's line "how do I get you out of this picture?" when he's on the phone with Michael about the picture of him and Jan was improvised by Dave Koechner.
At 7:20, Michael is running down a hallway to get to the warehouse. This was the hallway where the writers worked, and all the doors are to their offices. When he turns the corner and runs through a doorway, he's running into Mindy Kaling's office.
When Michael starts running through the hallway, he runs past a woman in an orange hoodie sitting at a desk. That is Mary Wall, the show's executive producer assistant. They had all the writers close their doors for this scene, but they let Mary keep working. The desk she is sitting at is directly outside of the writers' conference room, which is the doorway that Michael comes running out of into the hallway.
Mindy's office was a dead end so after they filmed the hallway scene, Steve had to go down to the warehouse and walk up the steps to go into the little fake closet at the top. Then he ran out of it like he was coming into the warehouse.
When Michael goes into Darryl's office, he's eating a big plate of food. That was not in the script. He was eating the food that was always put out for the cast at craft services.
At 8:12, when Andy, Meredith, and Jim are gathered around Kevin's computer looking at the photo, there's a message on his bulletin board that says "don't eat the yellow snow." At 8:18, there's a Post-it note on Angela's side of the accounting partition that says "Angela, can I have $8 petty cash to buy some more jelly beans? I'll get you licorice and cherry. Thanks, Pam."
The snow outside when Michael is in the parking lot playing his steel drum is fake since the episode was shot in October. When Pam is in the doorway talking to Michael, it was Jenna's idea for her to not come all the way out the door. Pam didn't have her coat on so Jenna thought she probably wouldn't fully come outside and would just hover in the doorway.
In one of the deleted scenes during the luau in the warehouse, Meredith is trying to reach a box up on one of the shelves. She climbs the bottom shelf and the entire shelf comes crashing down on her. Kate Flannery did this stunt herself, even though they had a stunt double named Debbie Evans on set that day.
Darryl finding his iPod was not in the script and was improvised by Craig Robinson. He actually found an iPod and speaker somewhere in the warehouse and just randomly did that bit. Because they were supposed to be doing inventory for the plot, the cast really did go through some of the boxes in the warehouse to make it look like they were doing something, which is how Craig found the iPod.
At 14:44, Angela is starting to walk up to Roy, but when Darryl yells to everyone about finding his iPod she quickly walks the other way.
The whole set was shut down for the scene with Pam crying, similar to the Jim and Pam kiss scene in "Casino Night." They took hours to prepare and shoot the scene, and it was very important to Greg that Jenna was actually crying. He didn't want to put fake tears in her eyes. No one talked to Jenna for about a half hour, and she listened to a playlist of sad music she had created the week before to help her think of some sad personal memories. She listened to it until she started crying, and then they shot the scene. You can see Rainn Wilson tearing up in the scene which was not part of the script.
Jenna would listen to Norah Jones’ music on the way to work every day during season 3 to help her get in the mindset of what was going on between Pam and Jim.
A fan named Nilly pointed out that Daniel Levinson and Roger Gould are two adult developmental psychologists who have contributed massively to the field, including the study and definition of the midlife crisis. Jan's full name is Jan Levinson-Gould and she goes through a midlife crisis. This is just a coincidence and was not purposely done by the writers.

Goodfellas turns 30 this year! Here are 40 interesting pieces of fact and trivia about the classic mob movie

You can check out a video version of this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OQkxioCNrw&t=3s
1 The first scene shot in the film was Morrie’s wig commercial, directed by Stephen R Pacca, who owned a window replacement company and directed and ran a similar ad in New York City that Scorsese was inspired by
2 When Jimmy is handing out money to everyone, Robert De Niro, ever the perfectionist, didn’t like how the fake money felt in is hands. He wanted real cash to be used, so the props master gave De Niro $5000 of his own money. No one was permitted to leave the set at the end of each take until the money was returned to the props man and counted.
3 Sticking with De Niro being a sticker for authenticity, according to the real-life Henry Hill, the protagonist of the movie, De Niro would phone him 7 or 8 times a day, wanting to discuss minute details of his character, even ow he would hold his cigarettes.
4 The classic Funny how scene is based on an occurrence which actually happened to Joe Pesci. When he was working in a restaurant years ago, he complimented a gangster by telling him he was funny, but the remark was met with a less than impressed response. Pesci told this to Scorsese, who implemented it into the film, and the scene was directed by Pesci himself and not included in the shooting script of the film, meaning his and Ray Liotta’s interactions would elicit genuine reactions from the supporting cast.
5 Henry Hill said that Joe Pesci’s portrayal of Tommy was 90 to 99% accurate. The only exception was that the real Tommy was a much larger and powerfully built man.
6 Veteran actor Al Pacino, who director Martin Scorsese wanted to work with for years and who he would later work with in The Irishman, was offered the role of Jimmy Conway. Pacino turned it down, for fear of being typecast as a gangster actor. He would go on to regret this decision.
7 Much has been made about real life mob involvement in the making of Goodfellas, from Robert De Niro attempting to contact the real-life Jimmy Burk, to Scorsese hiring background actors with real life mafia connections, such as Tony Sirico, who would later find fame playing Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos. According to Nicholas Pileggi, author of the book Wiseuy upon which Goodfellas is based, there were several mobsters hired as extras in order to add authenticity to the film. They provided the studio with fake social security numbers, and as such it is unknown how they were paid.
8 Ray Liotta’s mother died whilst the movie was being filmed, and Liotta used his emotions over his mother’s death in his performance, most notably in the scene where he pistol whips another man.
9 When Joe Pesci’s mother saw the film, his real life mother, she liked it, but questioned her son if he had to swear so much. 5 years later in Casino Catherine Scorsese, who played Pesci’s mother in Goodfellas, complains to her son in Casino about swearing too much.
10 The painting of the two dogs and the man in the boat that Pesci’s mother in the film paints was actually painted by Nicholas Pileggi
11 The Lufthansa heist, which plays a major part of the movie, did not have its case solved and closed until 2014, and most of the surviving participants were arrested.
12 When Henry Kill is introducing mobsters to us in the bar, one of them is a character named Fat Andy. This character is played by Louis Eppolito, Eppolito was at the time a former NYPD detective whose father, uncle and cousin were in the mob. 15 years after the release of Goodfellas, Eppolito, along with his police partner, were arrested and charged with racketeering, obstruction of justice, extorsion, and up to 8 murders. They were both given life sentences, with an added 80 years each.
13 The F word and its derivatives are used 321 times in the film, at an average of 2.04 per minute, and almost half of them are said by Joe Pesci. At the time it was made, Goodfellas held the record for the most amount of profanity in a single film.
14 The scene where the three main characters eat with Tommy’s mother was almost completely improvised by the cast, including Tommy asking his mother if he could borrow a butcher’s knife and Jimmy’s remark about the animal’s hoof. Scorsese did not tell his mother tat Pesci’s character had just violently beaten a man, only that he was home for dinner and that she was to cook for them.
15 The real life Jimmy, along with Paulie whose death is mentioned in the film, also died in prison in 1996. He would have been eligible for parole in 2004.
16 Paul Sorvino wanted to drop out of the role as Paulie just three days before filming was schedule to start, as he felt he lack the cold personality to play the role correctly. After phoning his agent and asking him to release in from the film, his agent told him to think it over for a while. Later that night, Sorvino was practicing in the mirror and made a face that even frightened himself, and he was convinced that he would be able to play the role.
17 According to film legend, the real life Jimmy Burke was so trilled that Robert De Niro was playing him in the movie, that he phoned up De Niro from prison and gave him advice. This is something denied by Nicolas Pileggi
18 Even though Joe Pesci was in his fourties during the filming of Goodfellas, the real life inspiration for his character was in his 20 when the events of the film took place. Scorsese was initially concerned with Pesci being too old to play the role of Tommy, and Pesci sent him a video of him walking
19 Nicolas Pileggi spoke to Henry Hill throughout the script writing process, and he says much of the voice over narration in the film are almost exact quotes from Liotta himself
20 According to Debi Mazar, Henry Hill’s girlfriend in the film, when she trips after meeting Henry she actually tripped over the camera’s dolly track. Scorsese kept it in the film because it looked like her character was overwhelmed by Henry.
21 One of the daughters of Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco’s characters, the one too shy to give Paulie a kiss when he visits their home, is actually the daughter of Harvey Keitel, with whom Braco had the child.
22 In order to better get into character, when driving to and from the set Ray Liotta would often listen to tapes of interviews Pileggi had with the real Henry Hill. Liotta noted that Hill spoke casually of murders and other serious crimes whilst eating potato chips.
23 After seeing the film, Henry Hill thanked Liotta for not making him look like an asshole. Ray Liotta response was to think to himself “did you even watch the movie?”
24 The famous long take of the Copacabana took just 7 to 8 takes to get right
25 Henry Hill’s life after he went into the witness protection program was adapted into a movie released the same year as Goodfellas – called My Blue Heaven. Nicholas Pilei’s wife wrote the script for the film.
26 According to Scorsese, legendary actor Marlon Brando attempted to persuade him to not make the movie.
27 The real life Henry Hill was paid around half a million dollars for the movie.
28 Robert De Niro was offered the roles of both Jimmy and Tommy. He chose the former.
29 Despite it’s status as a classic, Goodfellas only won one Oscar. And its winner, Joe Pesci, was so surprised, that his winning speech was one of the shortest in Oscar history, simply saying, “it’s my privilege, thank you”
30 Frank Vincent, the man who plays Billy Batts and is beaten and stabbed to death by Joe Pesci, and who also starred with Pesci in two other Scorsese films – Ragin Bull and Casino - actually has a long history with Pesci. The two used to be bandmates and a comedy duo in the late 60s. They also starred in the low budget 1976 mafia film The Death Colelctor, where they were spotted by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, and eventually hired for their roles in Raging Bull.
31 The producer’s original choices for the roles of Henry and Karen were Tom Cruise and Madonna.
32 Paul Sorvini improvised the slap that his character gives Henry in the scene where Paulie confronts Henry about drug dealing
33 In the original shooting script of the film, the Billy Batts shinebox scene was the very first scene in the film, followed by the dinner at Tommy’s mother’s house. Then Liotta would say the phrase “As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster” and the movie would show his youth and growing up.
34 Early screenings of Goodfellas were met with poor reception. According to Pileggi, one screening had around 70 people walk out, and in another the film’s team had to hide at a local bowling alley as a result of an audience angry at the film’s level of violence.
35 In spite of the film’s violent reputation, there are only 5 on screen deaths
36 When Spider is shot by Tommy, Michael Imperioli broke a glass in his hand and had to be rushed to hospital. But when he got there, the doctors attempted to treat his apparent gunshot wound. When the actor revealed what his real injury was, he was made to wait for 3 hours in the emergency room. Scorsese told Imperioli that he would tell this story one day on the tonight show with Jay Leno, a prediction which cam true in 2000.
37 US attorney Edward McDonald, the fed who explains the ins and outs of the witness protection programme to Henry Hill and his wife, is actually playing himself in this scene, re-enacting the conversation he had with the real Henry Hill. McDonald volunteered to play the role and won a screen test when Scorsese was location scouting his office as a possible filming location.
38 The movie ends with Henry in the witness protection program, but after the film’s release, as a result of violating his terms and conditions, including going around and telling people who he was, Henry Hill was thrown out of the programme.
39 Henry requests that he isn’t sent anywhere cold when g egos into the programme. In the ending of the film, he picks up a newspaper for Youngstown in Ohio, a place which has below freezing temperaturs in winter, suggesting that Henry’s wish was not granted.
40 The film’s ending, where Joe Pesci fires several bullets staring at the camera, is a homage to the landmark 1903 short film The Great Train Robbery, widely considered one of the first narrative pictures. Scorsese saw his movie as part of a tradition of outlaws in American pop culture and noted that, in spite of the fact tat the two films are separated by almost a century, according to the man himself, “they’re essentially the same story.”

Full Summary of Wade Keller's Huge Interview With AEW President Tony Khan

Tony says he feels "really, really great" and "well prepared" about their first episode.
Feels like they're getting amazing press. With the help of TNT/Warner Media, they've had advertising through podcasts, social media, Facebook ads, mainstream TV ads (NFL, HBO, "wrestling TV"), airports, movie theater trailers, etc.
Since watching the shows from gorilla, while also producing, is different from just watching the shows live, Tony makes sure to always watch the shows back (usually the next day), and plans to continue that for TV. Mentions that he watched Fight for the Fallen after he watched WWE Extreme Rules, and was "blown away by how much better our show was" and felt like that was one of AEW's weaker shows.
Says Double or Nothing is "the most commercially and critically successful wrestling pay-per-view" of the year. Cites doing over 110,000 buys at the price point they set, for their first ever show, while not having any TV to build it up. Happy with how well All Out did, despite the challenges of losing Jon Moxley to a MRSA infection 10 days before.
Top-5 issues he's had with their shows (in no particular order):
- 1. The Double or Nothing Casino Battle Royale started out flat, because they wanted to build towards a moment with MJF and Shawn Spears (that would factor into the future animosity between them), but the downside is that their first impression suffered because of it.
- 2. They could have (and were supposed to) handle the chairshot from Shawn Spears to Cody better, but it didn't go off as planned. Thankfully Cody was okay, and thought the Cody/Shawn Spears feud was fantastic.
- 3. The Hangman Page vs. Kip Sabian match should not have gone as long as it did. He regrets not having cut 5 minutes from it, plus it went 2 minutes longer than it was supposed to. Felt like it dragged, and didn't do anyone any favors (thinks it should have gone 12-13, not 17-19 minutes).
- 4. Losing Jon Moxley to MRSA, but think they handled that as well as they could. Really glad Jon's okay, and they're focused on Moxley vs Omega going forward.
- 5. Concedes that the Buy-In shows probably shouldn't have so much comedy when the main card is so serious.
As far as TV goes, you can still expect to see the arenas set up in a similar way, great wrestling matches, and a high production value. You probably won't see things like the Moxley vs Janela match.
Tonight's countdown special on TNT is designed to help introduce AEW to new viewers. They suspect that a lack of wrestling on Tuesday night (for the first time in a long time) will lead to viewers seeking out wrestling programming on TV.
While a lot of people will show up for a TV premiere, if you don't deliver then they might not show up for Week 2. He "wants Week 2 to be just as big of an event as Week 1, and Week 3 to be just as big as Week 1 and 2, and so forth." They're planning on "rolling out huge things every week."
Talks about the importance of Being the Elite - and how AEW wouldn't exist without it - despite it being a very different tone from AEW's shows. Says the "Road to" series will probably be more in-line with the tone they're going for for their shows. Says there's nothing wrong with having a sketch comedy show on YouTube, and a serious wrestling show on TV (which isn't to say that they'll never have comedic segments).
Doesn't want to insult people's intelligence. Against "invisible cameras" and doesn't want to rely on "DQ's," "ridiculous ref bumps," and "distraction roll-ups" too often.
His own personal wrestling influences are wide-ranging, dating as far back as the WWWF, and including Memphis, Mid-South, 90s New Japan and All Japan, and 2010s New Japan (references Kenny Omega, Prince Devitt, and Kota Ibushi). Says he shares common interests with Cody regarding Jim Crockett Promotions, WCW, and Mid-Atlantic; and common interests with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks with Japanese wrestling.
Even though "they all have different tastes in wrestling," they have a "similar mindset for what is good and what is bad." "90+% of the time" when one of them thinks they have a good idea, they all agree.
Hopes to grow the audience by putting on a great show, rather than trying to cater to specific demographics.
Designed to be more sports-based, but that doesn't mean they will lack drama (just like traditional sports aren't devoid of drama). Stories will stem from "wrestling in the ring," "personal issues," and "grudges" - with less focus on the "preposterous" and "ridiculous."
Wasn't surprised to see to see NXT go head-to-head with AEW on TV. Says that if AEW ran Tuesdays, he would have suspected NXT would move to that day (and says that arguably would have made more sense for NXT, since moving Smackdown to Fridays and potentially losing those Tuesday viewers).
While the shows will be wrestling-heavy, they will still have promos ("We have Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley: it would be insane not to let these guys talk") - "just not ridiculous, scripted promos."
Doesn't want to "over-produce" the commentary. While he has chimed in "a handful of times" for things to say - and while he regrets some things that have been said - he likes that it feels "real" and "organic."
Wants to have a show that's focused "in and around the ring" (compares to how the UFC is presented). Doesn't like so much focus on what's happening backstage.
Since the show is TV-14, they are being given more leeway and are being encouraged to be themselves and "be edgy."
In regards to WWE, they're not attempting to "counter-program" them or anything, but aren't above poking fun. They just don't want it to "become a habit" or "become a theme of the show." He was fine with Cody smashing the throne, because it came from his personal experiences. Says they're a "challenger brand," and while there isn't just one competitor, "there's one obvious competitor that we're always going to be compared to, for the foreseeable future." He doesn't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but actually a good thing - "especially after Monday."
Wants wrestlers to appear authentic. In regards to their characters, he doesn't want people to do things that they don't believe themselves. He's against writing dialogue for wrestlers, and thinks it can just result in them coming off as bad actors.
Says he's been "waiting for this moment for a really long time." In regards to the start date, he says that he's "known for a year and a half that this day is coming, and I could have told you that it was either going to be today or tomorrow." Cannot legally get into specifics, but says he has a "long-term," "multi-year" commitment with TNT.
In regards to wrestling being looked down upon by TNT in the past, he says that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Says he was able to demonstrate factual numbers and patterns to say that "TNT had a big wrestling audience, and we can have one again. We're going to have one. We're going to have it tomorrow and we're going to have it a long time."
Committed to doing big, quarterly PPVs. Also interested in other big events (like the CEO-partnered Fyter Fest, and the charity fundraising Fight for the Fallen) that they can put out either through BRLive or streaming. Double or Nothing will always be held Memorial Day weekend in Las Vegas. All Out will always be held Labor Day weekend in the Chicago area. Full Gear has a chance to be the big, winter quarterly show (didn't necessarily seem to be as committed to the idea of it staying in the Baltimore area).
Says the ITV deal was not supposed to be announced (sounds very annoyed with this situation). They had replays scheduled for Sunday/Monday, "but they're still working on getting the show on earlier." He fully expects "this week" that they'll be up before that. It was just announced prematurely before everything was fully hammered out. "Hopefully stay tuned and we'll have some good news soon."
In regards to planning out TV, especially further down the line: "It's going to be way harder than we thought. It's going to be really hard, I know it's going to be, but it's not going to be the first time I've tried to do something I haven't done before. I think we have good aptitudes for this. I think it's going to be a challenge, and I don't expect it to be easy at all - believe me - but I do think we're going to pull it off and I think it's going to go great."
Agrees that wrestlers work best when they're amplified versions of their own personalities, but that's not necessarily always going to be the case (cites Kenny Omega's recent character change as not really being true to who Kenny is as a person).
Says that overall he's a lot less nervous with AEW than he is with the Jaguars or Fulham, because a lot more things are under his control.
In regards to keeping kayfabe on social media, says that he doesn't necessarily think it's a big deal and he trusts his performers to handle it well. He has had to talk to people a couple times in regards to bad things they've said on social media, but generally that isn't an issue. Says that could change a bit once they're doing weekly TV. Wade Keller seems to be of the mindset that wrestlers should always be "on," but Tony doesn't necessarily seem to agree (he gives the example of the media scrums not being done in kayfabe, and it being fine because it's clearly separate from the PPV).
As far as being wrestler-friendly, they'll have a relatively light schedule (every Wednesday this year, other than Christmas, plus Full Gear on a Saturday). Not everyone on the roster is going to be on every show - by design to give people time off and breaks for a healthier work/life balance. If it's a "reasonable request," he will allow wrestlers to work independent dates outside of AEW. They also have a tuition-matching program for people looking to get an education (says that he believes WWE also offers that, but it would be very difficult to work that around WWE's schedule), and some wrestlers are able to have careers outside of wrestling, as well (such as Britt Baker's dentistry, who he would never want to force to be on the road for 5 days out of the week). Many wrestlers also work various in-office position with AEW.
Doesn't want to be a "control freak," and is very open to feedback and suggestions from wrestlers. They try to have producers and coaches that are very agreeable guys to work with (cites Jerry Lynn and Dean Malenko), and he would rather say "yes" than "no" to a wrestler's idea.
In regards to AEW forcing WWE to make a better on-air product, he says "that is already clearly happening." "Yes, I do expect they will have to make some changes to their shows to accommodate some things that we're doing, like, for example pyro, I don't think it's a coincidence that pyro came back." "When there's a competitive wrestling market it's better for the fans, it's definitely better for the wrestlers, and I think it's better for the companies, too, because the competition not only brings the best out of both companies, but the market it creates - let's face it, people are very excited with what's going on between AEW and WWE."
Wants to do with the women's division what WCW did with the cruiserweight division: notably with the joshi and how they interact with the western women.
Thinks his roster is as good as what any other brand has on TV in regards to in-ring skill and personality.
In regards to the recent RAW ending, "if people like that: great. It seemed like a lot of people didn't, but I'm sure there's some people that did, and I don't begrudge those people for liking it. Different people like different things in wrestling - everyone's entitled to their opinion." Goes on to say that he would never ban anyone from the arena for wearing a wrestling shirt from another promotion, and just thinks it's cool that you're wearing a wrestling shirt, period.
Defining success, he says that it's more subjective with AEW than his other sports teams. They've set benchmarks, internal targets, and network targets as goals. "I would like for this show to have a good audience and for this show to be on for many years. I would like to make the wrestling business a better place, as we've already done in 2019, I'd still like to be doing that in the future." "I would like for us to be a profitable company. I expect to make back everything I've invested and then some. When we're making profits it'll be that much sweeter."
No plans for house shows this year, and when they do start doing them it will not be every weekend. Never wants to be running 5-6 days a week. He'd "like to settle into doing somewhere between 85 and 125 dates a year... but again, every person doesn't need to be on every show, and I don't really see why anyone would be wrestling 100 times a year or more, for us."

Anti-corruption Compilation part 6

Branch Closing Fact List

Branch Closing (with Charles Esten)

Episode written by Michael Schur and directed by Tucker Gates.
Tucker Gates directed four total episodes, including "Threat Level Midnight."
Fast Fact: This episode now streams as a supersized episode, meaning it's longer than a usual episode. But when it first aired on NBC, it was the same length as a regular episode. Then NBC released a producers cut and added some of the deleted scenes back in.
Around this time, the cast started making exclusive content for the NBC website. Angela had a segment called "Adventures with Angela."
Fast Fact: On January 9th, 2007, Apple introduced the first iPhone and Steve Jobs did a presentation to unveil it. The cold open of this episode was the first-ever video played on the iPhone during the presentation. When Steve was demonstrating how to play music, he played "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day. In the season 6 episode "Secret Santa," Dwight and Andy sing that song.
Fast Fact: Everyone's talking heads are in front of a window when they think they're losing their jobs to imply that their future is outside of the office. When they find out the branch isn't closing, all of the talking heads switch back to having the inside of the office behind them.
Pam's hair is different, and she has pink eye shadow and lip gloss on. The idea in the hair and makeup department was that Pam was experimenting a little bit because she was trying to break out of her routine.
Michael's wind up teeth going off at his desk was not in the script, it happened by accident and Steve Carell and Melora Hardin just went with it.
Phyllis is knitting at her desk in this episode. But in real life Phyllis does not know how to knit at all. There was a basket of knitting stuff next to her desk throughout the show so she could pretend to knit if she was in the background of scenes.
In Dwight's talking head he says "And right now, the title of Michael's book is 'Something Weird is Going On.' Colon; 'What Did Jan Say? The Michael Scott Story. By Michael Scott, with Dwight Schrute.'" The script only had "Something Weird is Going On. Colon What Did Jan Say?" On the day of shooting, Mike Schur added the line "The Michael Scott Story" and Rainn Wilson added the line "By Michael Scott, with Dwight Schrute."
Rainn has a "tell" whenever he improvises a line. The corners of his mouth go up in a smirk as if he's proud of himself for thinking of that on the spot.
At 6:21, the white board behind accounting says "Congratulations to all for our first (of many) Emmys. Steve was robbed!" in the box for Tuesday the 5th. On the top line written under Thursday, it says "In case you haven't noticed, there is a lot of colorful hooey on this board!"
At 8:23, Lori Socks is in the background. Her and her husband Steven were stand-ins. After rehearsing a scene with the cast, stand-ins take their place while the crew sets up the lights and the camera angles. This way the cast can go do things like get their makeup fixed, change their outfit, or go over their lines. Lori would stand-in for all of the women, and Steven would stand-in for all the men. Occasionally they were in background scenes like this one.
Meredith's storyline of trying to figure out who she made a pact to sleep with on the last day of work was cut from NBC's original airing of the episode.
State Farm Real Deal: Angela and Roy have a few flirtatious moments throughout the show. In "The Fire'' when they're playing Who Would You Do, Roy picks Angela. In "The Secret'' when Phyllis asks Angela if she would pick Jim or Roy, Angela picks Roy. In episode five, "Someone in the Warehouse," of the webisode series "The Books Don't Balance," the accountants are wondering if Roy took the missing money, but Angela says he has too much character to do that. Kevin asks Angela if she has a crush on Roy and she gets flustered. In "Casino Night" when Michael addresses the crowd and says "old friends, new lovers," Angela and Roy are sitting next to each other at the bar and exchange a look. In "Branch Closing" when Angela is trying to confront Roy, she tells him he's strong and capable. She also waves to him at the end of the episode. In "Cocktails," Roy asks everyone at the bar if they want a drink and Angela replies "oh, no thank you, Roy." In "The Negotiation," Roy comes in to get his very last paycheck from Angela. Paul Feig said they thought it was funny that Angela liked Roy while everyone else thought of him as a jerk. Greg Daniels said that Roy and Pam were more of a traditional relationship, and Pam needed a more modern and equal relationship. But it made sense that Angela would be attracted to Roy.
When Michael and Dwight are driving to David Wallace's house, the temperature in the car says it's 80° but the episode is supposed to take place in the winter. The episode was shot in August and aired on November, 9th.
David’s house is located on Lomita Drive in Pasadena, CA. It is three houses away from the house used on the TV show Benson.
David's house has a doormat that has the letter H on it instead of a W. The doormat belonged to the real owners of the house, and the crew didn’t realize that doormat was there until they were editing the episode.
Charles Esten auditioned with Rainn Wilson for a TV show called The Expendables years before The Office. They got the parts and filmed a pilot episode, but the show never got picked up. When Charles auditioned for the part of Josh Porter on The Office, Mike Schur asked how he knew Rainn, and Charles said he would bring a DVD of the pilot they shot if he got hired.
When Andy flips, Josh walking in to say goodbye and having Andy immediately calm down was Charles' idea.
When Dwight and Michael are role playing with Dwight as David, the scene was supposed to end where Michael says "Because he'd be intimidated and I, just... let's start again. Just be more scared of me, okay?" The part after that where Michael walks up again and Dwight acts scared was improvised. They had to cut the scene off immediately to keep it in the show because everyone started laughing afterwards.
Dwight going through David's trash was cut from NBC's original airing of the episode.
At 19:00 there's a dog in David's yard. The dog was not the homeowner's dog, the crew hired the dog and its trainer for this scene. They thought there might be more of a feeling of jeopardy involved if there was a guard dog in the yard. But the dog ended up being too friendly to be intimidating.
Angela says she doesn't want to drive all the way to Dunmore to meet everyone for the group lunch. But Dunmore is only 9 minutes away from Scranton.
Kevin suggests they all go to Cooper's. Brian Baumgartner and Angela went to Cooper's when they visited Scranton.
Creed's storyline of selling all of the office equipment was cut from NBC's original airing of the episode.
Kevin and Angela hugging after finding out they weren't losing their jobs was improvised by Brian and Angela.
When Jim and Karen are talking about whether or not she should move to Scranton, there's a sign behind Karen that says "Window of opportunity. An obstacle to one is an opportunity to another."
When Meredith is on the phone with Gary Trundle, the voice of Gary is Kent Zbornak.

Part 5: Amazing In Depth Essay About Sopranos Symbolism and Subtext (credit: FlyOnMelfisWall source: thechaselounge.net)

Tony Defies His Father’s Life Lessons

Season 6, part 2, depicted Tony as a heavy gambler, one who risked far more money more often than had ever been suggested before. While he always profited significantly from bookmaking and loansharking enterprises (his own and those of his crew), his personal wagering was limited and low-key in the first five and a half seasons, consisting mostly of casual card games or the odd day at a casino or racetrack. He certainly had never been depicted as the kind of man who gambled enough to endanger his liquidity or to necessitate six-figure loans just to stay even with his bookies, which describes the state of affairs in the episode Chasing It.
His gambling problem becomes so significant in that episode that it’s even addressed in therapy. Tony admits he’s been sending “good money after bad” but quickly defends the practice. “If you couldn’t lose, what’s the fuckin’ point, huh? See, you need the risk,” he tells Melfi. She asks, “What are you chasing? Money or a high from winning?” His shake of the head indicates that he doesn’t really know the answer to her question.
Many viewers couldn’t provide an answer either and felt this sudden gambling crisis reflected a writing failure, an attempt to manufacture drama by imposing unnatural or contradictory behavior on a well-established character. I felt a bit that way myself until I began to consider the gambling in light of Tony’s contemporaneous, burgeoning, and subconscious anger towards his father at that point in the series. In that context, the gambling began to make perfect sense, and, once again, it all goes back to the night of the incident involving the cleaver.
That was the night when Johnny emphatically imparted to Tony the lessons that gamblers are scum and that gamblers who borrow money and fail to make timely repayment are even bigger scum. If, in the last half of season 6, Tony’s subconscious was stuck on the cleaver incident as the true genesis for his life trajectory and was subtly pushing him to rebel against his father 35 years after-the-fact, then borrowing huge sums of money, gambling it all away, and shirking the responsibility to repay the loans would be a natural, safe course for that rebellion to take. Making Hesh the victim of his irresponsible borrowing would be a bonus, since Hesh’s age and relationship to Johnny and to Tony himself make him another natural father figure.
Of course this is exactly what happens in Chasing It. Having already borrowed 200K from Hesh in the prior episode, Tony visits his home one night. In a near-replay of his gift to Beansie, he brings Hesh a Cleaver hat while expressly denouncing the movie itself as unfit for viewing, a blatant self-contradiction reconciled only in that it signals Tony’s ongoing subconscious preoccupation with the movie’s cleaver logo and themes of violent retribution against a father figure. In any case, Tony shares gossip about Phil’s “boss” party from which he’s just returned and offers an almost stunning sentiment when Hesh questions why he left the party and the company of his crew so early. “I look at my key guys . . . what’s number one on their agenda, you know? They’re all fuckin’ murderers for Christ’s sakes,” Tony jokes, only you get the feeling he’s more serious than not. “What I’m tryin’ to say is, it’s nice bein’ here.” “Here” of course meant in the company of a guy who he fancies is able to put friendship above business, who makes his living under the auspices and protection of the mob but without directly participating in its violent aspects.
The warm fuzzy feelings disappear pretty quickly, however, when Hesh reminds Tony of the outstanding loan. Even though Hesh makes clear he is only wondering about repayment of the principal and is not looking for a “vig”,” Tony unreasonably seizes on this debt reminder as grounds for judging Hesh to be a stereotypical, money-grubbing Jew. He insists on paying Hesh a vig anyway and rubs two quarters together in derision when Hesh stops by the pork store the following week. Suddenly Tony is offended at the notion of folks collecting debts and profiting from gambling loans, something he’s unapologetically done himself directly or indirectly all his adult life. Then again, his subconscious is in a different place than it’s ever been before, fixated on the pivotal events and people in his past that contributed to him becoming what he is instead of what he’d like to have been.
The always-prescient Hesh ominously notes that this is not the usual Tony. “He’s all worked up, or something. I don’t like the way he talks. Hostile remarks. It’s not like him. Makes me worry.”
A secondary thread in this episode deals with Vito Jr. experiencing behavioral and social problems in the wake of Vito’s death. He dresses full tilt “gothic” with black lipstick, overturns headstones for fun, kills a neighbor’s cat, bullies a handicapped girl at school, and craps in the gym shower as revenge on hateful peers who tease him because his father was gay and notoriously died with a pool cue rammed up his butt.
Marie Spatafore asks Tony for $100K to move far away where Vito Jr. can start with a clean slate. Reluctant to give her that kind of money, Tony tries first to make Phil, as Marie’s cousin and Vito’s executioner, assume financial and quasi-paternal responsibility, with predictably bad results. Underscoring yet again the fatheson/surrogate theme of season 6, part 2, Tony tells Marie, “It’s not easy to substitute for a dad. I know. But maybe I can fill in here.”
Tony does talk to Vito Jr., employing a tact reminiscent of his intervention with AJ in Johnny Cakes and polar opposite of the one his father undertook with him after Satriale’s. He tries to plant or reinforce in Little Vito’s own mind a fundamentally good self-image by praising that he’s always been a “good kid.” Vito rejects Tony’s presumptuousness, noting that Tony is such a stranger to their family that he often mistakenly calls him “Carlos, Jr.” instead of “Vito Jr.” Still Tony tries to accentuate the positive. “Look, all I know is I couldn’t shut your dad up about what a good kid you were,” he scolds. “We were friends you know.” “But buddies?” Vito asks sarcastically. After excusing the zinger, Tony offers some genuine compassion for what it’s like to lose a father you loved and yet who caused you shame or disappointment at the same time. “I’m sure you miss him . . . a lot . . . whatever he was.”
Obviously this encounter is included in the story for what it says about Tony, not for what it says about Vito Jr., an inconsequential character in the overall scheme of the show. Tony’s counsel reveals his own latent conflicts, that despite what Johnny Boy was, and what Junior was, they were his father and uncle, the most important men in his life, the men who were around him throughout his formative years and who provided what measure of paternal love he knew. Not all of it was bad. Very much like what Tony recounts regarding Christopher’s childhood -- holding him as an infant and riding him around on his butcher bike -- there were endearing memories and experiences, enough that he could still love these men despite all the harm they caused him.
Little Vito is correct that Tony has no idea whether he (Vito) is an intrinsically “good kid”, and we have no idea whether Vito Sr. ever said or harped on that fact to Tony (probably not). But it doesn’t really matter whether either is true. Tony says these things because he intuitively recognizes how damaging it was to his own psyche and self image as a kid to hear his father euphemistically tell him after the cleaver incident that he innately possessed the sadistic, evil, or predatory nature to do what he witnessed in Satriale’s. He knows at a core, unconscious level that living up to his father’s concept of him was more important than living up to his fledgling concept of himself, a self-concept which, stripped of his father’s corruption, is revealed in all its relative innocence and idealism in Join the Club. That Tony is a mild-mannered salesman, loves his wife and kids so much that he sabotages his one chance at an illicit affair with an attractive woman, is naturally uncomfortable with minor credit card fraud, and is positively stunned at a level of violence in which another person merely slaps his face. So his effort to make Vito Jr. think of himself as a “good kid” and to internalize his father’s ostensible view of him as the same is Tony’s effort to help Vito Jr. avert the self-doubt and sense of innate moral inferiority that paved his own path to a life of crime.
Though I don’t think Chasing It asks us to make this juxtaposition, I can’t help but recall another, early episode featuring Hesh, Denial, Anger, Acceptance. There the Hasidic motel owner tells Tony he is a “golem”, a “monster, Frankenstien”, prompting Melfi’s question near the end of the episode, “Do you feel like Frankenstein . . . a thing, lacking humanity, lacking human feelings?” We don’t hear Tony’s answer in the therapy room, but it’s provided years later in his Test Dream when Tony the “mobster” (“monster” minus an “n” plus a “b”) runs from a torch-bearing, lederhosen-clad mob. Yes, he feels like Frankenstein, a monster, albeit one created by other people, against whom we can presume he bears a serious grudge.

Chris’ Displaced, Murderous Rage as a Precursor to Tony’s

In Walk Like a Man, Chris finds himself “ostrafied” by his mob cohorts because, in his effort to stay sober, he spends very little time with them at the Bing. When he does see them, he is ridiculed for drinking non alcoholic beverages and witnesses his once-favored status and earning opportunities in Tony’s crew being usurped by Bobby Bacala. Chris seeks Tony’s understanding for the fact that he inherited alcoholism from his mother, making sobriety especially difficult for him to maintain. But Tony doesn’t buy this “excuse”.
Tony: I know a crutch when I see it.
Chris: So my dad? You obviously musta knew he had a crutch.
Tony: What the fuck are you talkin’ about?
Chris: Com’e on, Tone, huh? Between the coke, the vodka, whatever the fuck else he was squirtin’ up his arm. Let’s be honest about the great Dickie Moltisanti, my dad, your hero. He wasn’t much more than a fuckin’ junky.
Tony is speechless. He doesn’t know what to think or say in the face of a son calmly debunking a lifetime of false paternal myth and hero worship and replacing it with naked, unvarnished, and unflattering truth. He is undoubtedly also disturbed to see the pedestal he built under another of his own father figures crash to the ground so suddenly and emphatically.
Elsewhere in the episode, Paulie provokes a squabble with Chris over stolen power tools that ultimately results in Chris beating and throwing Little Paulie out of a second story window and Paulie driving his car like a high-speed plow over the expensive new landscaping at Chris’ home while Kelly watches in terror. Tony forces a truce, which Chris seals with a drink to placate Paulie. This sacrifice and effort to fit in is rewarded when Paulie mocks Christopher’s drunken soliloquy about his daughter and makes her the butt of two cruel jokes in front of the crew. As Chris’ “friends” convulse in laughter, and especially as he absorbs the depths of betrayal written in the broad smiles of his “father figures”, Paulie and Tony, Chris storms out of the Bing and to the home of JT Dolan.
There’s a natural symmetry to him showing up in that moment at the home of the screenwriter who helped him express his covert hatred of Tony Soprano in a movie script. But on this night, the hatred spurting out of him is far more urgent and tangible. He threatens to “bring everybody down” by revealing sensitive secrets, like the truth behind the murders of Ralph and Adriana, and notes the rewards of the Witness Protection Program. He even mentions that Sammy “The Bull” Gravano is “living large” in the program in Arizona, a remark with some portent for the next episode.
JT repeatedly warns that he doesn’t want to hear these things that could get him killed and is unmoved by Chris’ plea for sympathy. “You know my father abandoned me,” Chris cries. “I thought you said he was shot,” JT fires back coldly before trying to shock Chris back to the realities of the life he chose: “Chris, you’re in the Mafia!”
Clearly Chris doesn’t subscribe to the “don’t shoot the messenger” theory. He impulsively draws his gun and blows a hole through JT’s head, but driving the action is the anger accompanying his sense of paternal betrayal and abandonment. It’s a transparently displaced act of rage reminiscent of the beatings Tony administered to Georgie through the years when the motivating anger was actually aimed at others or at himself.

A Reprise of Tony’s Paternal Guilt

Just as Christopher’s paternal hatred was exploding, Tony’s was imploding. And, once again, the explicitly acknowledged guilt Tony feels as a father and the unacknowledged blame he dispenses as a son are part of the same, swift current.
In Walk Like a Man, Tony has decided to quit therapy once and for all following Melfi’s demand that he honestly assess its value to him and whether he is serious about continuing. But before he can share his decision with her, Blanca ends her engagement to AJ, plunging the younger Soprano into a deep, suicidal depression.
When AJ cries that Blanca was “the best thing that ever happened” to him, Tony makes his most concerted effort of the series to boost AJ’s self-esteem and convince him of his intrinsic worth, telling AJ that plenty of girls would love to have a guy like him. AJ tearfully scoffs.
AJ: Yeah, right. Like I’m so special.
Tony: [earnestly] You’re damn right you are. You’re handsome and smart . . . a hard worker. And, let’s be honest, white.
I guess Tony had limited raw material to work with, but he did his best to sell all points.
AJ’s crisis causes a reversal in Tony’s decision to quit therapy, making his position in his next session paradoxical. On one hand he declares that therapy has been one big “jerk off” but allows that he is now “trapped [there] forever”.
The immediately striking aspect of this scene is that Tony is intellectually aware of the reasons for AJ’s depression: painful, personal rejection and the demise of his first, serious romantic relationship. That could happen to any young person in any walk of life with any kind of father or background and produce serious depression. But Tony’s awareness of this fact doesn’t stop him from feeling he is to blame for AJ’s plight.
Tony: Obviously I’m prone to depression . . . a certain bleak attitude about the world. But I know I can handle it. Your kids, though.
[His watery eyes and frangible voice betray the sincerity of his emotions as he continues.]
Tony: It’s like when they’re little and they get sick. You’d give anything in the world to trade places with them so they don’t have to suffer. And then to think you’re the cause of it.
Melfi: How are you the cause of it?
Tony: It’s in his blood, this miserable fuckin’ existence. My rotten fuckin’ putrid genes have infected my kid’s soul! That’s my gift to my son.
A long pause ensues as Melfi absorbs the importance of the moment. These words are almost a verbatim echo of Tony’s emotional outpouring years before in Army of One, the only time he came really close to condemning his gangster way of life and particularly its harmful effects on his son. His verbiage here is even stronger in that he speaks of having “infected [AJ’s] soul”, a metaphor with considerably greater moral and spiritual weight than implied by the innocent, biological conveyance of a defective gene for regulating serotonin uptake.
So, as before, this confession of guilt and sorrow is clearly about more than genes. It’s about more than Tony wanting to save AJ from romantic heartbreak. This is about Tony feeling an inexorable corruption of his own humanity and sense of worth by the influence and value system of his violent father. And it’s about his concomitant guilt for fearing that, as a man like his father, he has done the same thing to AJ.
Just as in Army of One, Melfi’s gentle tone of voice signals how much she’s pulling Tony to make these realizations while his angry tears show how much he’s pushing to resist them.
Melfi: I know this is difficult. But I’m very glad we’re having this discussion.
Tony: Really? Really? ‘Cause I gotta be honest. I think it fuckin’ sucks.
Melfi: What does?
Tony: [yelling] Therapy! This! I hate this fuckin’ shit!
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem. He can’t stand to feel sorrow or indulge the pain of deep introspection, a theme recurrent through the series and explored openly in House Arrest and The Ride.
It’s no coincidence that Walk Like a Man and a number of other episodes from the final nine essentially begin by showing Tony soundly asleep in his bed. It’s also no coincidence that, after waking in Walk Like a Man, he plods downstairs while singing a verse from the Pink Floyd classic “Comfortably Numb”, a song which also features prominently in the following, culminating episode. Remaining numb to his deeper feelings of conscience and humanity is both the secret to Tony’s success as a gangster and the reason why some of his most personal, tactile acts of violence have followed moments of great sorrow (e.g., belt-whipping Zellman, killing Ralph, viciously beating a drugged-out Christopher after the Adriana hit.) Psychological distraction and extreme sensory manipulation are the keys, whether achieved by adrenaline-inducing violence, compulsive sex, compulsive eating, compulsive spending/material acquisition, or compulsive sleeping. The objective in all cases remains to either feel anything but pain or to feel nothing at all.
Walk Like a Man brings these deeply repressed feelings close enough to the surface that Tony glimpses the price of dredging them all the way up. And it’s not a price he’s willing to pay.
He knows that in order to “grow”, to truly progress in Melfi’s office, he has to be willing to essentially condemn an entire lifetime of immoral choices and acts that inflicted immense suffering on other people. He has to be willing to experience the guilt and remorse associated with that process. He has to be willing not only to smash the pedestal he erected under his father and denounce his way of life and his example but to own the fact that he willingly followed in his footsteps as an adult, compromising the potential of his children and especially of his son. In short, he has to do what the monks in his coma dream were suing to make him do: take personal responsibility for his life and actions. No more blaming Livia consciously or Johnny Boy unconsciously. No more blaming Junior or Paulie or Dickie because they were equally poor surrogate fathers. No more “going about in pity for himself” because of his upbringing.
All of this is why the explicit admission never comes, the breakthrough never truly occurs. It’s too hard. It opens him up to too much sadness and regret and sense of waste and failure in his life. As hard as it is at times for him to live with the repression of those feelings, repression is easier than confrontation and all its consequences.
Of course the very fact that Tony has such feelings to repress has always been paramount for me. Though his actions grew increasingly dark over the course of the series, he always betrayed evidence of some conscience, some capacity for love, some capacity for sorrow and moral conflict, without which I can’t imagine that I would ever have been as obsessed with this show as I became. I cared about him and devoted so much passionate energy to trying to understand him only because his vulnerability and shreds of goodness made him, in my judgment, worthy of caring and understanding.
The humanity was often microscopic, but it was there, even in relation to some of the darkest deeds on the show: the way he was haunted briefly after killing Matt Bevalaqua, who he recognized was barely more than a “kid”; his reaction to the way Richie Aprile maimed Beansie; his long resistance to the idea that Pussy was a rat that had to be killed as well the way the murder troubled him well afterward; the way he uniquely (among the crew) was saddened by and took moral issue with what Ralph did to Tracee. We glimpsed his humanity in his red, grief-swollen face and defeated voice in All Due Respect when he instructed Chris where to find and bury the body of Tony B. We even saw it after he coldly ordered Adriana’s execution, both in the angry beating he administered to Chris (classic distraction from sorrow and punishment of Chris for having “created” the whole situation to begin with) and in his lumbering, emotionally oppressed frame and countenance in the closing scene of Long Term Parking.
So by the time of Kennedy and Heidi, even though there was nothing new about Tony killing people for whom he felt some form of affection, there was something entirely new about him killing a loved one without any trace of regret, sadness, or moral conflict. That’s why his seemingly remorseless, defiantly triumphant murder of the young man he thought of as a surrogate son forever changed the way I view Tony Soprano. Or at least I thought it did.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 6

Gay Witch Hunt Fact List

I was shocked that the extra part of Jim and Pam’s kiss scene from Casino Night was recreated for this episode and not from the original shoot! I always thought they had filmed it before. They had an amazing crew. I hope Oscar comes back for another episode, he was awesome!

Gay Witch Hunt (with Oscar Nuñez)

Episode written by Greg Daniels and directed by Ken Kwapis.
Fast Fact: This episode introduces two new characters, Andy Bernard played by Ed Helms and Karen Filippelli played by Rashida Jones.
Ed was a huge fan of the original UK show, and he originally auditioned in New York for the US version for the role of Jim.
Ed worked with Steve Carell on The Daily Show.
Ed watched The Office and became a fan. He got a call near the end of season 2 to meet with Greg Daniels and Paul Liberstein about a new character that they wanted to introduce in season 3. The meeting went great, and he loved the idea for Andy. He was originally only asked to be on a total of eight episodes on the show because they thought that the Stamford storyline would not end in a merger with Scranton. They also weren’t sure about having Jim away in Stamford for so long, so they only hired Ed in two episode chunks. He was living in New York at the time, so he stayed at the Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel in North Hollywood, LA and rented a Chrysler Sebring to drive. By the sixth episode, they offered him a deal to stay for the whole season and he moved to LA.
Because Karen wasn’t in any scenes with Pam or Angela in the beginning, Jenna and Angela only saw Rashida at the table reads. So they would all have lunch together in Jenna’s trailer after the table reads.
Fast Fact: This episode was shot in late July. In early July, The Office was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series for season 2.
While filming this episode, they also had to shoot a promo for the Emmy Awards. Conan O’Brien was the host that year and he had to come to their set for the promo.
Fast Fact: The Stamford branch scenes were filmed over on the warehouse set. There were two big sound stages. One was completely dedicated to the Scranton branch, and the other was the Scranton warehouse and the “swing set” for whatever other sets they needed for filming. Things like the New York corporate offices, the hospital for when Pam has her baby, and Oscar’s apartment when Angela moves in with him were all built there.
When season 3 was ordered, the show was given a bigger budget. That’s why they were able to do more scenes outside of the Scranton office.
The Stamford branch scenes were shot for one or two days of the week and the Scranton cast members had off for those days, and then they would shoot their scenes for the rest of the week. They didn’t get to see John Krasinski as much during those weeks.
The flashback to Jim and Pam’s kiss shows what happened afterwards. They had to recreate the entire scene for this extension.
The scene where Michael goes over to apologize to Oscar in accounting was mostly improvised by Steve and Oscar.
The wardrobe department got the sweater that Angela is wearing in this episode from Urban Outfitters.
At 4:53, there is a post-it note on Jim’s computer that just says the word smile.
In a previous podcast episode, Jenna and Angela talked about how Jim’s talking heads in Scranton were facing an exterior window to show that he had a future outside the office. But in Stamford, his talking heads are facing the inside of the office.
Cornell does not actually have an all male acapella group called Here Comes Treble, but they do have an all female acapella group called Nothing But Treble that was founded in 1976. Their Instagram is nbt_cornell.
Rashida was really nervous and was convinced she was going to get fired. The character of Karen was originally written to be more ornery, soury, and mean. But Greg decided to soften her character in the next episode.
When Jenna had to come in to read with potential actresses for Karen, they had narrowed it down to three actresses. They had to do a Karen and Pam scene that was never in the show and was just written for the purpose of the audition. The casting crew asked Jenna who she thought was the best and she said Rashida.
Rashida thought the fans would hate her because Karen would be in the middle of Jim and Pam’s relationship.
The plotline of Jim pranking Dwight with the gaydar was written so that Jim would still have some kind of connection with Scranton in this episode.
David Denman had just got done filming a movie which is why he’s so in shape in this episode. But Greg had originally written that Roy was falling apart after Pam broke up with him. So that’s why they made him look so bad with photoshop in his DUI mugshot. They had six different photos and they had the cast vote on which one was the best.
State Farm Real Deal: When Meredith licks the hand sanitizer, what is actually in the bottle is clear gelatin mixed with club soda. But it was put into an actual empty bottle of hand sanitizer bottle without being washed so Kate Flannery said it tasted like perfume. She had to do about four or five takes of this scene. Kate actually did the majority of Meredith’s stunts throughout the show.
Andy kicking the trash can after Jim puts his calculator in jello was not scripted. Ed came up with that idea on the set and the writers liked it.
Oscar Nuñez and Angela had already known each other before from doing a sketch comedy show. But they didn’t know that the other person had auditioned for The Office, so they didn’t find out they were on the show together until the first day of shooting.
Oscar was catering and babysitting, and he still kept his jobs even when he got the part on the show because he didn’t think it would last. Kate Flannery did the same and she was a waitress. They didn’t quit their jobs until the show got picked up.
Michael kissing Oscar on the lips was not scripted and was improvised by Steve on the spot. He was originally supposed to hug Oscar and then lean in for a kiss, but then chicken out and kiss him on the forehead. Oscar had no idea he was going to actually kiss him.
Dwight trying to kiss Oscar after Michael does was improvised by Rainn Wilson.
Oscar was offered a role for 10 episodes on the show Halfway Home on Comedy Central which is why the writers gave the character of Oscar the 3 month sabbatical.
When Jim is in the Stamford conference room having diversity training he looks over at the empty chair next to him. This is a nod to when Pam fell asleep on his shoulder during the Scranton diversity training.
The gaydar Jim sends Dwight is made from a real metal detector.

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