drake: wow, can you believe bey’s backstage spread? i need to upgrade my tour rider, man, this shit is incredible!
sufjan: Truly This Cayenne And Maple Glazed Chicken With Freshly Steamed Garlic Broccoli Is To Perish For
drake: and the dessert buffet! god, i - oh, wow, look who it is! hey! hey kanye, what’s up man? what’s good? have you met-
kanye: Sufjan Stevens. Wow. It’s been a while.
sufjan: Mr. West… You Are Looking Well
kanye: You too. You know, I don’t know if you saw, but I, uh… I torrented Carrie & Lowell. That’s some excellent work. Your best ever, easily.
sufjan: Thank You For The Compliment How Are Kimberly And The Kids
kanye: Good. They’re good. They’re having, like, a “Mommy and Me” weekend in Bordeaux right now. Doing a grape juice tasting tour with Gwyneth and Angelina and all their kids.
sufjan: Oh That Sounds Delightful How Fancy
kanye: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, uh… I’m here. Stateside. Checking out Bey’s show. Didn’t realize you would be here, Sufjan.
sufjan: Well I Of Course Go Everywhere With Aubrey He After All Is My Fiancé
kanye: Fiancé? No kidding. That’s… huh. Wow. Never thought I’d see the… Well. Congratulations. To both of you. I’m… I’m happy for you. Really.
drake: …thanks? this is wild, i didn’t realize you two knew each oth-
kanye: Oh, wow, look at the time. I have to go, uh, prep a fitting for Yeezy Season Four. Nice catching up. Drizzy, see you at OVO Fest this August. And Sufjan… you take care of yourself.
sufjan: I Always Do Mr. West… I Always Do
drake: okay what… was that…
sufjan: What Was What
drake: you never told me you were friends with kanye!
sufjan: We Were Never Friends
drake: uh, you looked pretty friendly to me!
sufjan: Did You Try The Chicken Aubrey I Thought The Chicken Was Lovely
drake: how do you know kanye??? and how did i not know that you two were-
sufjan: Once Lovers
drake: excuse me?
sufjan: You May Recall That Many Moons Ago I Penned An Ode To Falling In Love Again And Driving To Chicago
drake: wait…
sufjan: Indeed I Devoted An Entire Record To The Glories Of Mr. West’s Great Home State
drake: wait… chicago was about kanye?
sufjan: And 808s And Heart Break Was About Me
drake: holy shit
sufjan: It Was Certainly A Messy Few Years But He Of Course Has Settled Down With Kimberly And I Of Course Am Now With You So-
drake: i can’t believe this! what? how did you two even get together?
sufjan: Well We Separately Signed Up For A Musician’s Retreat In The Rural Wilds Of The Ukraine And One Evening By Coincidence We Found Ourselves Withstanding A Particularly Intense Storm Of Snow While Locked Alone Together In An Abandoned Soviet Missile Silo
drake: what?
sufjan: So To Occupy Ourselves Until The Storm Subsided We Challenged Each Other To Compose An Ode To The Son Of God… He Wrote Jesus Walks… I Wrote To Be Alone With You… By Morn The Clouds Had Parted At Which Juncture He Gave Me His Telephone Number And I Gave Him The Number For My Fisher-Price Cassette Recorder With Sing-Along Microphone And The Rest As They Say Is History
drake: i… i can’t believe what i’m hearing
sufjan: I Actually Accompanied Him On My Recorder On The First Demo Of Jesus Walks That Very Night It Was Quite Magical The Sound Of My Instrument Echoing Off The Brick Of That Abandoned Soviet Missile Silo
drake: what were you and ye even doing in an abandoned soviet missile silo in the first place?
Have I told you guys about the Fake Alaskan Volcano Eruption of April Fools 1974?
*sits down* Gather round, kiddies. its Story Time with Viv!
Whoa you calling me Tori was really weird for a second, not in a bad oh god no kinda way, but in a “who the hell is Bucky” kinda way
ANYWAY, gather round friends, and I will tell you the only story you need to hear if you want to really understand my home state.
APRIL 1ST, 1974
Residents of Sitka, Alaska woke up to a rare beautiful clear day(it rains all the damn time in Southeast Alaska), the sun was out, the sky was blue, and black smoke was rising from Mt Edgecumbe
Now Mt Edgecumbe is only 18 miles from Sitka
And it’s a dormant volcano that hadn’t erupted for thousands of years, so to see this:
was very unusual, and rather worrying.
“Shit,” the Sitkans thought, “we may be Alaskans and pretty weird about responding to danger, but even we know this might be bad”.
SO the Coast Guard was called!
They flew a helicopter up right away and guess what they found?
Was it:
nope
Maybe it was:
Nuh huh, sorry
It couldn’t POSSIBLY be:
God no, but that would be hella rad
It was this:
(this is not an accurate image, there were only 70 tires in real life)
Turned out that a 54 year old local dude named Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar and some buddies had flown the tires up early that morning and he’d come up with the prank in 1970 but hadn’t been able to do it until ‘74 because all the other years had terrible weather on April Fools.
(He’d woken up that day, saw the clear sky and told his wife, Patty, “I have to go do it today” to which she replied “Just don’t make an ass of yourself” which delights me no end)
Porky has actually warned the police he was going to do this and also informed the FAA (gotta get that flight plan approved to haul those tires up) but, and oh god I love this, TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE COAST GUARD
Luckily for him the Coasties thought this was the funniest fucking thing they had ever seen in their goddamn lives, and as it turned out, residents of Sitka agreed!
The story ended up exploding(ah ha ha do you get it? because volcano?) and national newspapers even covered it.
But Porky’s favourite response was a letter he got after the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 that read:
“This time, you little bastard, you’ve gone too far.”
I’ve been told, though I can’t find any sources to verify this, that when he died another fire was set in the volcano by the town to honor him.
And that’s the story of how a man faked a volcanic eruption and became a state hero.
