The Case of the Missing 40,000 Jerry Nugget Decks: A Detective Story
NB: I first published this article (with pictures) at PlayingCardDecks here.
Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards. The story of the original Jerry's Nugget decks is a fascinating one, and there are many interesting side-stories to explore about along the way. You can read the main story about the Jerry's Nugget decks in my previous article here: The Legendary Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards.
But the full truth still remains somewhat hidden, and there are aspects about the Jerry's Nugget story that even today we can't totally be sure about. And with the passage of time, several juicy tidbits of lore have become attached to this famous deck.
In this article I invite you to join me in a quest to explore another juicy story that has become part of the Jerry's Nugget legend. Is it true that the final stock of 40,000 Jerry's Nugget decks was bought up from the casino by a mysterious overseas buyer? Because this is an oft-repeated part of the story, that you'll hear whispered rumours about across the landscape of the internet. But this a statement of fact or fiction, and is it truth or myth? It could mean that right now someone is potentially sitting on a small fortune of Jerry's Nugget decks worth around $500 a piece. If it's true.
So please put on your Sherlock Holmes trench-coat and deerstalker hat, arm yourself with a good amount of deductive logic and persistence, and join me as we see if we can really get to the bottom of this mystery, and dredge up the truth behind this famed haul of 40,000 decks!

A Secret Stash of 40,000 Decks?

If you are curious - like I am - and do some digging about the story and history of the Jerry's Nugget decks, it won't take you long to stumble across mention of the claim that a stash of the final 40,000 decks of Jerry's Nuggets was bought up in a single swoop, cleaning out the casino's remaining inventory of these prized decks.
The story about some lucky buyer nabbing a final stash of 40,000 decks is circulated quite widely around the internet. Do a Google search for "40,000 Jerry's Nugget" and look at how many hits this gets! Some places that sell the decks even include this in their ad copy. For example, here's the ad copy over at one online retailer, which was selling authentic decks for $525 before they sold out:
Another online retailer says the same. Many reviewers have parroted this information as well, such as this example. So do various sites dedicated to information about playing cards, such as this example.
As far as many people are concerned, this information is more along the lines of "fact" than fiction, and it's become part of the story that everyone accepts. Little wonder that it is often repeated by collectors in discussion forums about playing cards, and that it has given more than just one person a tinge of envy.

Who is the mysterious buyer?

So who is the lucky guy with 40,000 decks of precious Jerry's Nugget decks hidden in his basement or garage? And is the story even true?
Some of the sources for this story seem quite credible. And they also reveal the buyer's name: French magician Dominique Duvivier. One person quotes Jordan Lapping, apparently among the first cardists to get Jerry's Nugget decks and use them for flourishing.
Dominique Duvivier is a French magician who performs and works with his daughter Alexandra, and together they have a high profile in the world of French magic. They are even well known in the circles of international magic, and were featured on the cover of the June 2013 issue of Genii Magazine.
Norwegian magician Allan Hagen has a long-time interest in the Jerry's Nugget decks, and he also mentions Duvivier's purchase of 40,000 Jerry's Nugget decks as apparent fact in something he posted on Reddit in 2015, where he describes his perspective on their rarity and value.
You'll read similar reports in an article published by Ukrainian cardists Alexander and Nikolay about Jerry's Nugget decks in June 2017. Two things are common to all these accounts: the number 40,000 for the haul of decks purchased by the mysterious overseas buyer. And now his name: Dominique Duvivier.
I contacted a number of different sources, including people who had personal connections with some of the key players who were closely involved when Jerry's Nuggets decks first became a fad among magicians and cardists in the late 1990s. One source told me: "Interesting, the name of the European magician - it was a big secret back then. Someone actually told me his name back then, but it was on the proviso that I never publish it. Well, I see it's out of the bag now."

Was Dominique Duvivier the buyer?

But is there any evidence that Dominique Duvivier was really the mystery buyer whose name had been a carefully kept secret for some time at least? It was time for some more detective work. Google brought me to Duvivier's personal website.
It didn't take long to discover that Duvivier does indeed have a real fondness for Jerry's Nuggets Playing Cards. They are everywhere - in his photos, his videos, and his instagram.
Judging by the many French-language comments on his site, it also becomes apparent that Duvivier is highly respected and appreciated in his home country for his magic. It's also evident from reading some of the comments that his Jerry's Nuggets decks are a signature of his performance. Some even consider them to be the equivalent of a Stradivarius that Duvivier uses to perform with as a master magician.
But it was when I checked Duvivier's youtube channel that I found some real gold: Dominique himself performing with Jerry's Nugget cards in this clip. In fact, if you check out his other videos there, you'll find quite a few where he performs magic with Jerry's Nugget playing cards, like this performance from 2014, this more recent ace cutting routine, and this false shuffle. Duvivier has even contributed a Jerry's Nugget themed trick to the magic industry, entitled Jerry's Nuggets Cards in Bag.
You can watch the promo video for this trick in French or English. His daughter Alexandra Duvivier successfully used it to fool Penn and Teller on their show Fool Us. Here's the episode, and some unseen footage.
But just because Dominique Duvivier happens to really, really like Jerry's Nugget playing cards doesn't prove that he bought out a massive stash of the last 40,000 decks from the casino. So this still begs this question: Did any of this even happen? And is there really someone on this planet with a hoard of 40,000 decks, whether it is Dominique Duvivier or anybody else?
One of my favourite photos on Duvivier's site is this one here, with his haul. If that's any indication, surely the legendary haul was starting to seem somewhat plausible. It was time to ask around, and check in with some of the people who were around when the Jerry's Nugget decks first became the rage.
Of the sources I consulted, few could be considered more reliable than Lee Asher. For many people Lee is synonymous with the Jerry's Nugget phenomenon. He also had close connections with the events of the time, and was instrumental in bringing the Jerry's Nuggets into the limelight in the first place, by singing their paises. He was kind enough to respond when I contacted him for comment about Duvivier's alleged haul of 40,000 Jerry's Nugget decks, and Lee bluntly told me the following:
"This is misinformation. There weren't 40k decks left in 1999. We don't even know if Jerry's even printed 40k decks."
Really? Apparently Lee Asher knew Duvivier personally, and he was the very person who first told Duvivier that the casino even had the cards for sale. He also visited his home and shop in Paris many times throughout this period of time. In Lee's words:
"Without a doubt, I NEVER saw 40k of ANY deck there. That's basically nine pallets worth. The house, their magic shop and night club weren't big enough to house these decks. It also seems Duvivier isn't the last one to buy the remaining decks. Jerry's Nugget Casino believes they sold the last case of cards to someone in Japan in 1999."
Well, it seems that the story had to be put to rest. Was this entire story perhaps just a magnificent urban legend after all? And if it was, where does the number of 40,000 decks come from, and how did this story get so much traction that it spread all around the internet, and is accepted unquestionably by so many people? My task had just become a bit harder, but I wasn't going to give up yet. It was time to try to track down where the many websites that quoted this story got the figure of 40,000 from in the first place.

Where does the figure of 40,000 come from?

With some more digging, the oldest article I could find on the subject was by a card collector who has a collection of fine articles on his site, White Knuckle Cards. This particular article dates back to 2009, and is one of the earliest references to the legendary stash of 40,000 decks that I could find.
This particular article seems to be the first time the figure of 40,000 pops up, pre-dating all the more recent mentions of it. And it's not hard to figure out how it spread from there. On 6 August 2015, someone called "Doctor Papa Jones" added these details to Wikipedia's article on Jerry's Nuggets, evidently relying on the White Knuckle Cards article. As a result the Wikipedia article now read as follows: "In 2000, a private collector purchased the remaining stock of 40,000 decks".
So now this "fact" is on Wikipedia and has some real "credibility". In fact, the number 40,000 stays up on Wikipedia for the next five years unchallenged! And that allows it to spread around the internet and go wild. Because where does everyone go when they're looking for reliable, authoritative, and trustworthy information about something? Wikipedia!
Despite the mention of the magical stash of 40,000 decks, Duvivier's name remained out of the spotlight for a further four years. It was simply a mysterious "private collector" who had purchased the big haul. But in 2019, someone connected the dots to Duvivier, and so the Wikipedia article was changed to include his name.
So how did that happen? Well the supporting reference that Doctor Papa Jones included in his 2015 edit was a link to an article by Dan and Dave Buck, dating back to 7 Dec 2011. This article is also no longer available, but can be tracked down with the help of the Internet Archive here. It doesn't give the figure of 40,000 but does drop Duvivier's name.
So the evidence seems to suggest this development: Apparently relying on the White Knuckle Cards article from 2009 as a source, the number 40,000 first embedded itself in the WIkipedia article on Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards in 2015. Slowly the story grew, until somebody finally connected the dots that were hidden in plain sight elsewhere on the internet, and as a result Duvivier's name gets added four years later. Now things are set up for a great story: Mr Duvivier is sitting on a massive stash of 40,000 Jerry's Nuggets in France.
The story gained even more traction as a result of the revived interest in Jerry's Nuggets that inevitably happened when a tribute deck was printed in 2019. It was inevitable that many would rely on Wikipedia as a source, and so the details even ended up being quoted in ad copy for the reprinted decks. What had previously just been a matter of quiet rumour or speculation, was now considered as fact. Oh, the joy of Wikipedia - it has certainly helped promote quite the legend here!
And it doesn't take a genius to see that if this is true, Duvivier could be sitting on a small fortune. At $500 each, 14,000 decks would be worth around $700,000. Naturally a market flooded with them would drop their value. But even if the going price dropped to $100 a piece, that would still value his holdings at over $100,000. Even if he just sold the occasional decks at $500 a pop, this windfall could generate a nice little secondary income. That is, if the legend is true, a fact yet to be proven....

Revising the figure

Because this year, the Wikipedia article was changed. By now of course the (mis)information about Duvivier's haul had gone far and wide, and a lot of potential damage has already been done. But on 25 March 2020 someone called "TheCongressGuy" changed it to read that Duvivier "purchased the remaining stock of 1,500-2000 decks".
Suddenly the number of Duvivier's legendary purchase had been reduced from 40,000 to something around 5% of the size. A figure of 1,500-2000 seems much more likely. So who made the change and what was their source?
I did some more digging and managed to track down TheCongressGuy. He is Kevan Seaney, who describes himself as an "antique playing cards collector, specializing in the Congress 606 brand" and posts here. In February 2020 he wrote here that he'd learned that Duvivier had not purchased 40,000 decks. I was curious, and eventually found the following video that he posted about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2pctAEuiZA
And who was his source that Kevan credits for correcting the previous (mis)information about the number 40,000? If you watch that video, you'll find out that it is none other than the great Lee Asher. Lee Asher isn't just "anyone". He's a playing card expert, and the current president of 52 Plus Joker The American Playing Card Collectors Club. He's the guy who first generated public interest in Jerry's Nugget decks, brought them to the attention of cardists like the Buck twins and Chris Kenner, and was later a purveyor of these icon decks via his website. He's also had personal connections with Duvivier, was the person who informed Duvivier that they were available from the casino, and has personally spent a lot of time with him in Paris.
And Lee Asher is a key person that has helped get real Jerry's Nugget decks into the hands of a new generation today. He's the guy who was instrumental in making a collaboration happen between Jerry's Nugget Casino and Expert Playing Card Company, by suggesting that EPCC get the exclusive licence needed to reprint these iconic decks in 2019, as announced in an official press release here.
It's plain that along with EPCC's Bill Kalush, Lee Asher (pictured below) was singularly responsible for getting an officially licensed Jerry's Nugget deck back into the hands of a new generation and into the collections of those who couldn't afford the massive sticker price of the originals. So if anyone has a passion for the original Jerry's Nuggets, it is Lee Asher. Of anyone in this picture, Lee is the person with the most credibility, and his opinion and perspective should carry a lot of weight.
With Asher as his source, Kevan Seaney points out that 40,000 decks of Jerry's Nugget playing cards is the equivalent of around 8 pallets. That's a massive amount, and would weigh around four tons. And it would take up a tremendous amount of space! Kevan cites Lee Asher as saying (via voice messages in Instagram) that in 1999 Asher told Duvivier that he could get the decks from the casino, and that Duvivier bought around 1,500-2000 decks at the time. Lee subsequently visited his home and store - France's oldest magic shop - in France many times. And according to Asher, there was no way Duvivier had room for 40,000 decks. Kevin also says that Lee Asher pointed out to him that these were technically not the final lot of decks sold by the casino anyway, and that the last decks (a "case" of unknown size) probably went to Japan.
Wow. That really changes things! So based on this apparent "new information" from Lee Asher - who to his credit has apparently been saying this all along - Wikipedia gets a new edit by TheCongressGuy aka Kevin Seaney. The impressive figure of 40,000 is reduced to a much more modest 1500-2000, which is paltry by comparison to the much larger figures circulating the internet, and not nearly as impressive a story. But this is only after Wikipedia has been singing a different tune for five years, so the `damage' has been done, and the story of Duvivier's windfall of 40,000 Jerry's Nuggets is already accepted by most people as a true story.

Duvivier's own story

Suddenly it occurred to me to investigate Duvivier himself. Was this perhaps a line of inquiry that might produce some solid leads and definitive facts? Has the man himself ever commented on all these stories about his legendary haul? Could I find anything directly from the man himself that would shed some light on these legends? In fact, why hadn't I thought of this earlier? Just because nobody else seems to have dug up or reported anything from the man's own mouth, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I slapped myself for my own foolishness, and headed back to Google.
As it turns out, Duvivier has written about this! But because it's an article in French, it's escaped notice from most people. Since he's popular as a professional magician in France, he not only has his own website, but he also writes his own blog. And sure enough, he's addressed this very topic in a blog article that he wrote in April 2011 under the title "Magiphageuh No 14: Les Jerry's Nugget".
With the help of an online translation tool, we learn this:

"As most of you already know, I only use real "Jerry's Nugget" cards to work with and have been doing so for many years. As these cards happen to be extremely rare to find on the market (I am obviously talking about the original Jerry's Nugget cards and not the recently reprinted ones) and they excite the magical world a lot, I am therefore constantly asked how many I own, how long have I owned them, what deal I made to get them and with whom, why do I have so many cards, why did I choose these specifically, why don't I want to sell them, why, why, eh?! And I hear such amazing stories about myself on these famous "Jerry's Nugget" cards that I decided to speak on the subject myself today."

This sounds very promising! Duvivier then goes on to tell the story about how the Jerry's Nuggets gained their legendary reputation, and the unique qualities they have. In France in the 1970s, American playing cards were quite rarely seen, and Duvivier knew a French pilot commandant called Reyno who loved magic, who would occasionally bring back cards from the US to a small circle of French magicians. At this time even standard Bicycle and Tally Ho decks were prized by these French conjurers, so besides them a Jerry's Nugget deck was considered a real crown jewel.
Over the years Duvivier occasionally got more of the Jerry's Nugget decks, sometimes even an entire case of them at once, especially via his friend Michael Weber, who was his main supplier. We fast forward to 1999, when he finds himself heading to Las Vegas to perform at The Magic Castle. Here's the story in his words, courtesy of an online translation tool:

"In 1999 (if I'm not mistaken) my daughter Alexandra and I were hired to perform for a whole week at Magic Castle and then for a few contracts in Las Vegas. You may think that I had only one idea in mind at the time: a trip to the original casino where my favourite cards were from, Jerry's Nugget! Michael Weber had told me that there were still a few decks for sale there, so as soon as we arrived I immediately asked Philip Varricchio, who had come to pick us up in a limousine, to take us there. He was rather surprised, as we hadn't even put our bags down at the hotel (yes, I'm a fool) and the old Jerry's casino wasn't really known for being a must-see place! So I told him that I wanted to go there to buy Jerry's Nugget cards. According to him it was impossible to get them for the simple reason that they hadn't been around for a long time, but I was so insistent that he finally complied (hey, hey, hey!). When we arrived there, we went to the gift shop of the casino and I asked the salesman if he was selling their decks.
- Yes," he told me, "I have a few.
He shows me a small piece of wall in the back of the store where a hundred decks were on display. I ask about the price. Not even expensive!
- Well, I'll take them," I say (laughs).
And of course I ask if he has more in reserve! Yes, there were about a hundred boxes left (each box containing a large number of cards, 144 decks!). After a little negotiation, the unit price was even lowered to less than $1.
That's it, that's how it happened and that's it. In fact, in all this story, the most difficult, the longest and the most expensive was to get the stock back to France.
Since then, I've been seeing, little by little, the bids going up on these cards in a rather hallucinating way, whereas, of course, that wasn't my initial motivation at all. From the moment I bought the remaining stock, it's as if everyone wanted to own even more! But I just wanted to have enough stock of Jerry's Nugget decks because I'm a card fanatic and these in particular. I use these cards because they're the best cards I know and I've fought like a big man to own enough of them for me (I should mention that I never had a middleman or a partner to buy these cards). Anyone could have done as I did and I don't understand why no one did: you just had to take the trouble to go to this casino, because the cards were available! In any case, now they are all warm and cosy in different safes, which I won't tell you about. They say I'm the person with the most cards in the world, but I have to say I don't care. I know Chris Kenner is the one who planned it, he has a lot of them too. I've been offered golden bridges to sell a few packages, or even my entire stock. I've had some incredible offers over the years. I never intended to create a buzz with these cards: I just use them for my own personal consumption, that's all...because they're my favorite cards."

Probably the key sentence in that account is this, and the best translation seems to be something like this:
"Yes, there were about a hundred boxes left (each box containing a large number of cards, that's 144 decks!)."
The formula is simple: around 100 boxes with 144 decks each. If true, that would mean 100 x 144 = 14,400 decks. Given that this is directly from the horse's mouth, suddenly the story becomes slightly more plausible. So too is his additional statement:
"In all this story, the most difficult, the longest and the most expensive was to get the stock back to France."
That suggests he didn't bring the whole stash to France in one go, which might explain why visitors like Lee Asher and others who saw his home and magic shop never saw any evidence of them. I'm not a French speaker, so I'm happy to be corrected if I'm misunderstanding anything Duvivier has written - by all means check the article for yourself in the original French, to see if I've got it right. But the long and short of it seems to be that Duvivier is saying that what he bought from Las Vegas around 1999 was not a stash of 40,000 Jerry's Nuggets decks, but 14,000 decks.
14,000 is not nearly as impressive a figure. But even though it's only a third of the size of what the legend floating around the internet says, 14,000 decks is still an incredibly impressive haul. Certainly the amount of pictures and videos that show Duvivier performing with Jerry's Nugget cards, seems to suggest that they are very much part of his regular repertoire. It could just be possible, and maybe I've finally found the truth!
Perhaps the most defining photo of all is this one (credited to Zakary Belamy), which shows Duvivier enjoying a bath with his Jerry's Nugget playing cards! Given the value of these playing cards on the market today, some might consider this sacrilege, but it sure suggests he has a large enough supply of Jerry's Nugget cards. At any rate, his collection of them seems large enough that he can even afford to take them to the bath for a photo op along with his favourite yellow rubber ducky.

But is it true?

Was the mystery solved at last? It was time to get back in contact with Lee Asher, and share my findings. But despite the claims of Duvivier in his 2011 article, Lee is not convinced that Duvivier is a credible source. To be fair, this is what Lee Asher has been saying all along, and for years he's been saying that the story about the legendary haul of 40,000 decks wasn't supported by the facts.
Ultimately what this comes down to is: are we going to believe what Duvivier says? For the most part, Duvivier has appeared to have had little interest in setting the record straight, despite the fact that the rumour of him nabbing 40,000 decks persisted as long as it did. And if he does have a large stash, why has he shown little interest in selling any of the decks that he does have, instead being happy to hoard them or use them only for himself? Would he really have spent all the time, energy, and money necessary to ship even 14,000 decks of playing cards across the ocean from the United States to Europe, just for his personal usage, at a time when the street value of these was only a dollar or two a piece? And if he did, where did he put them, and why has nobody ever seen his stash, including those who visited his home?
There are other details about Duvivier's record of events that call aspects of his narrative into question, such as his complete omission of any mention of Lee Asher, who was the one who made him aware of where he could get them. And in those days, the casino gift shop was very small, so is it really reasonable for them to display 100 decks on their back wall, as Duvivier claims in his 2011 article, when they had such little space to work with?
I had some private correspondence with another magician/cardist who has also stayed at Duvivier's house, and that individual expressed similar sentiments. He agreed that there was no evidence of Duvivier ever owning that many decks. Just do the math: 40,000 decks would mean Duvivier could use a brand new deck every single day for more than 100 years before he chewed through a collection of decks that size. Again: very unlikely. If he really did have that many, it would be way more than he could ever use, and surely he would have sold some by now - which he hasn't. This person remains somewhat skeptical, but acknowledges that the figure of 14,000 is a more realistic number that is not beyond the realms of possibility, especially if Duvivier has them locked up in a storage facility in Paris somewhere.
As an educated guess, it seems that there is good reason to cast some suspicion on this story, and there are some aspects about it that seem rather unlikely. Shipping that many decks, at the time only worth a buck or two each at most, all the way from Las Vegas to Paris would be crazy. But a man willing to jump into a bath with a yellow rubber duck and destroy $1000 worth of playing cards in the process strikes me as crazy enough to do it. Perhaps Duvivier's story is true after all.

A final twist

I was now several weeks into my adventures as an investigative journalist, and I was getting ready to wrap up my story and publish it. But there was one final lead that I had not yet explored. If I was really going to try every possible avenue of information, I had to try contacting Dominique Duvivier himself. Why not? Admittedly, the odds of getting a response from someone about his apparent stash of precious Jerry's Nuggets wasn't likely. If there was any truth to the story about his legendary haul, even to some degree, then he's undoubtedly had hundreds of inquiries over the years. Just imagine the long lines of people asking him about his stash, trying to convince him to part with some of it. If yet another email comes in on this subject, he'd probably roll his eyes and press `delete'. He is working full time as a professional magician after all, and has a career to worry about. I couldn't blame him if he was tired of responding to what undoubtedly would be countless messages from prospective buyers.
But I had no intention to buy anything, so as a good amateur journalist, I had to try. It was a long shot, but to my surprise, I got a response from Duvivier the very same day! It wasn't much, but it included one unexpected bombshell - especially after the journey I'd been on so far: "You'll be glad to know that a special article is going to appear in next Genii Magazine. It's called Dominique Duvivier and Jerry's Nugget cards."
I was stunned. Was someone else working on exactly the same story as me, and had they beat me to the punch? Maybe even Duvivier himself? Could it really be true that in little more than two weeks time, the next issue of Genii was scheduled to come out, and would potentially reveal all? Suddenly I knew that I had to wait with publishing my story. In further emails, Dominique was tight-lipped about any more details. At the very least, surely I would have to wait until that issue of Genii was available, and fork out my cash and purchase a subscription in order to read it. I owed it to my readers to explore every last clue, and give them a story that included all the evidence.
So that is what I did. I waited for the July issue to appear online. Digital editions of Genii are released online each month on the 20th of the month. Finally 20th of June rolled around, and I eagerly perused the contents of the latest issue. Nothing. Nothing remotely Duvivier related. Nothing Jerry's Nugget related. Was Duvivier for real? An inquiry with the editor of Genii produced this response: "Not this issue. Coming up." Would it be August or September maybe? Further inquiries produced only silence.
In follow up correspondence with the Frenchman himself, Duvivier told me "I wrote the article myself. It?s quite long." That sounded promising, but it could just be about his love affair with Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards, rather than a "tell all" story about his haul. There still was no guarantee that it would even be published. And I couldn't be sure that it would offer any more information than his blog article from 2011 which already gave his side of the story, or that it would be any more reliable than the version of events he'd provided there. Was it really worth waiting any longer? It was time to share my findings with the world anyway, and I could always provide an addendum to my story if any credible new information appeared.

Final Thoughts

Is this the final word on this subject? No. I've tried to do the best I could based on information available to me, and shared as much as I could with my readers, so that you can form your own conclusions based on the evidence so far. Undoubtedly there are still some missing puzzle pieces, and in future years some new information could come to light that shows that some of my conclusions were misplaced or that puts aspects of this story a slightly different perspective.
Today we are two full decades removed from the time when the original decks first sold out at the Jerry's Nugget casino. And the further removed in time that we come, the harder it becomes to uncover the truth. Memories become murky. As it is nobody at the casino seems to remember the specific details of what happened. At the time they were probably only too glad to get the remaining stock out of their hands, and nobody could have anticipated how these decks would become the famous icons that they are today. Even their chief evangelist Lee Asher has to be somewhat surprised at the turn of events he's produced since first singing their praises some twenty years ago!
So what can we conclude from all of this? Here's some final thoughts that I'll leave you with:
1. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Unfortunately, it's a fact of modern life that not everything on the internet is true. And as we've seen, this also applies to sites like Wikipedia. For topics that have a large number of experts or people interested in a particular subject, changing the facts on a Wikipedia article will quickly see the changes being reverted. But with a more niche subject, like Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards, and especially when it concerns circumstantial material that nobody is quite sure about, it's easy for misinformation to enter Wikipedia. And once it's embedded there, eventually the lore spreads and becomes considered as "fact". So it's important to check your sources, and don't take everything you see online as gospel truth - even if it's on Wikipedia.
2. The legend about the stash of 40,000 decks should be put to rest once and for all.
It's a myth, and there simply is no evidence for this claim anywhere. At most, there is the claim from Duvivier himself that he bought up about 14,000 decks. That might be true, but again, we only have his word for this. As a counter-point, there are those like Lee Asher who know Duvivier and have visited him many times, and insist that they never saw any evidence of this. The enormous cost of shipping a large stash like this to Europe already makes it somewhat hard to believe.
There's no doubt that Duvivier is a huge fan of Jerry's Nugget decks, and he appears to own and use them more than most. But in the end, how credible is he? How seriously are you going to take someone who is happy to post a picture of himself in a bath with a rubber duck and playing cards from a Jerry's Nugget deck? Either that means he has far more decks than he knows what to do with, or he is a little loopy. Or perhaps it's a bit of both. You've had an opportunity to read all the evidence for yourself, so you decide.
Either way, we can safely say that there has never been a stash of 40,000 decks, and the jury is out on whether there was even ever a stash one third of this size. But even if the size of the legendary stash turns out to be smaller than first thought, the reputation and magnetism of the Jerry's Nugget decks has only increased in size, and these now iconic decks will remain firmly embedded in playing card lore.
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Update from the writer: After the original publication of this article, Dominique Duvivier personally phoned me on 24 July 2020 to discuss it, and to share his side of this story. He remembers events slightly differently than Lee Asher does. As Duvivier recalls it, his own interest in the Jerry's Nugget decks dates back to the 1970s and 1980s. At that time he was sourcing them from his friend Michael Weber, who along with magicians like Chris Kenner was also interested in these decks. According to Dominique, he only met Lee Asher during his USA tour in 1999, after he had already bought out the remaining stock from the Jerry's Nugget casino. Duvivier confirmed that the figure of 14,000 accurately reflects the approximate number of decks he purchased from the casino at this time. He shipped the majority of these to France by boat, and stored them in a warehouse, intending them to serve as a life-time supply for himself and his family. Look for his story in an upcoming issue of Genii magazine.

[UNEDITED]
I saw that many of you non-swedes wanted to be able to enjoy the recent interview he did in Swedish. I have not had time to edit the text yet so it will be filled with spelling mistakes and such but if I have time later on I might fix that. The interviewer is called Mats Nileskär and he alternates between asking questions and explaining stuff so that's why sometimes it's just him retelling things that lean said earlier. Anyways here is the transcript:
Mats:
There was once a sixteenyearold full of love for screw, drill and Florida trap. Full of fascination for fantasy figures and the cinematic. He rapped honest, drowsy, tentatively and almost apathetic to strange, mind expanding beats. Music that didnt exist in reality. Yung leans journey from his laptop in his room in Södermalm, to sold out shows and rock star dreams in the country of Hip Hop. It is one of the most beautiful stories in the history of Swedish music. And like all beautiful stories it holds plentiful of darkness. Yung Lean could have ruined everything and been scarified on the emo rap scene. Instead he became the influential survivor. Yung Lean and the producer friends in Sad Boys changed the world and intertwined with something beyond their own existence.
Lean:
I usually don’t sit and count who my influences are. Because I have always had a lot of my own influences that I have payed homage to. But sometimes I don’t think about stuff and then I get a dm on Instagram. Like I got a dm from Trippie Redd that read like “Shoutout to one of my biggest influences.”
Music break
Ugly God. Like lots of rappers that I wouldn’t think were fans of me. Then there are these that are a bit more obvious like maybe suicide boys, Pouya. When they meet me at festivals, they are fans. And I don’t want to come off as bragging, it is the same way when, like I met young thug once in New York, and then I get star struck, I am a fan of him, nothing weird about that. But there is like, you know, group from group, it goes back. If you look at Wu Tang, and then it goes down, it gets weirder, like Odd Future and Asap Mob. And when we started, there was probably more people that thought like, like Yung Sherman, Yung Gud, Bladee, and all in Drain Gang and Sad boys and this is what we look like, we can also do this. I think we made it even more easy to access. And even more like, you only need a computer and internet. And less of, like maybe you don’t even have to skate, maybe you don’t even have to live in New York. More of like, you have a concept, and we were strict with that concept, we had a clear aesthetic, a clear way of making music videos, a clear message. It was easy to take things from that goth aspect, or the sad aspect, or like, people had purple hair like Ecco had. People dressed exactly like Bladee or Sherman, or rapped like me. And I still think that I see that today. And I’m proud, and I’m happy. I don’t see it as something negative, like, shit these boys are stealing or all these rappers are stealing, it’s more like, in that case I have also stolen. Everyone has been influenced by something, and as long as you are not ashamed about that, it’s okay, because that is how it goes. People can be like, I’ve never listened to Yung Lean, And I can see that they obviously have, and like…
Music break (Unreleased Lean)
Lean:
We got a lot of the autotune aspect from, like Bladee and Whitearmor started using it a lot, and me and Micke (Gud) used it a lot. For us that was inspired by Future and Atlanta. And Casino and the first FBG mixtapes with young scooter and all those. Like those were using autotune. But we were from Europe, like, we are from The Knife country, Håkan Hellström, Broder Daniel (Swedish artists), it is more like Kraftwerk when we do it. It is more monotone, a bit more dead, maybe a bit more ABBA english. It is a bit more depressing I think. And that is not something you try to do, it just ends up like that. And then I think that, a mix of that, we we got big during 2013, Hip Hop went more Nihilistic, dark, it was grim. The way Chief Keef rapped, everything after Finally Rich, Bang 2, Almighty So, it was like melodies but dark mumbling about killing people. Hip Hop was going that way. You no longer had to have a hook like “Woke up in a new Ferrari”. The whole song could be the same melody.
Mats:
The bored and monotone mumbling turned into an anxiety lowering melody. And a manic flow of words. Yung Lean and sad boys, deeply uninterested in conventional song structures landed in the beginning of the start of a new era. Post Hip Hops surrealistic and psychedelic era. The new era was open for people that had not belong before. People that looked and sounded like Lean. A new sound, a new way to experience and listen to music. It was perplex and fascinating. Something Sad Boys happily utilized.
Lean:
Yeah, it’s true. As long as you, like for us it was the natural thing to do. For us it wasn’t that we were exploiting this style of music or what they were doing in the US. For us it was more like, I have rapped since I was a kid, same for making beats for Micke. Drain Gang had a punk band. All of us made music. And when the time came it was just logical for us to take part. Same with rapping in English, it just came naturally. I actually lived in Vietnam three years before that. My mom is a diplomat so I was in the English school and spoke English so rapping in English came naturally. That the beats were slowed down, that, like everything was a bit weird, it came naturally to us. And of course the timing was perfect, it wouldn’t have been able to come at a different time. I think I’ve said that before. That if that had happened in 2009 it would have felt fake. I would have had to be more of a Paul Wall character or like Petter (Swedish Rapper). I was very lucky with coming up during that time. But after all I was just being myself to 100%. I think that if I hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have worked out.
Music break
Lean:
Except for you and some others it was typically Swedish, a prime example of how it is in Sweden. A Swedish artist comes up, something they don’t recognise. They think it’s embarrassing. A Swedish sixteen year old boy from Södermalm, a middle class boy. He shouldn’t be doing this, it’s embarrassing. They wouldn’t want to touch me with a ten foot pole. He can’t be included here blah blah blah. But the second that the US started appreciating it and when he was in the New York Times or when he collaborates with Frank Ocean or other big names. Then they are ashamed of themselves. Like “Oh shit, he is Swedish, he is with us now…” It’s typical for Sweden, the law of Jante, like you shouldn’t think that you are somebody. That was basically what I witnessed since I was sixteen. It’s sad that we can’t trust each other and support everyone. I really believe that there is room for everyone to make it in Sweden.
Mats:
What did it do to you, experiencing this? The Journey from hate to understanding and in the end to love.
Lean:
I think that it might have been easier with hate. To be completely honest, if you look back at a lot of rappers, when they were hungry, when they were still hated or underground, they had so much to give. And I had that kind of idea in my head. That it was more exciting when Sweden hated me and I was only famous in the US. I really thought it was interesting. But I have matured now, time has passed, six seven years since we talked. The music I make now is different. If I had not been loved and was still hated, it would have been a bit perverse. Maybe then I had only been provoking just to provoke. I don’t like that. Right now I think I deserve to be where I am. I wouldn’t want to be in any other position.
Music break
Mats:
What happened when you got to the US for the first time, as an unlikely star?
Lean:
What happened? I can’t say I remember a lot. We were very young. Suddenly we were sitting in limousines. Lots of drugs, lots of illegal substances. We were very young, you know almost like a Metallica documentary, suddenly someone is sitting there with a knife in some group or something. No but a lot of things went downhill, but all the gigs were so much fun. It was some kind of friendship, like a family. You can’t take away all the gigs and the touring we did in the start. When we arrived in the US, it’s like, you know Femi, Emilios girlfriend, that has been with us since day one. She says it’s like we were all a part of Lost. Like the airplane crashed and when we meet each other now all of us know that we were part of that. Character wise I don’t remember anything that was any special. I remember us playing at Röda Sten in Gothenburg for 150 people. And when we got to New York we sold out Webster Hall twice, back to back. And rappers were contacting us, we were hanging out with artists. It was another level of respect. I guess I’m a bit like you there. I’m a hip hop nerd, always have been. When I started expressing myself through this music it was easier for Americans to understand what the fuck I was doing than for like a 40 year old Swedish man. So there’s nothing weird about that. But I wish I remembered more from the first tours (laughing).
Music break
Lean:
You are sixteen, you go to the US, you are living in some hotel, you get to meet some drug dealers from Florida whom are also promoters, they have a Cadillac, and someone is backstage and lots of different rappers are coming in and suddenly Travis Scott is there and blah blah blah. Things are happening all the time. You wake up in a bed there are people around and then you have to go on stage. (Lean starts talking about something else) Is that David Lynch? Sorry we are watching a movie, we are watching Dumbo. (Back to interview) I wasn’t really ready for that. That it was going to be so much work. You don’t think that but there is so much work. Now I can do many shows. Like the last tour that I did sober I was able to do like 70-80 shows and been able to do that but you are still tired. Like you have to workout and sleep. But back then, where did all the energy come from? Including all the drugs and the shitty sleep and all partying. I don’t understand it at all.
Mats:
Let’s talk some more about Florida. How was it to meet spaceghostpurrp who sort of created the foundation for what you got your inspiration from, the do it yourself attitude, punk, the south, three six mafia meets other genres in Florida. How was it to meet him?
Lean:
I-I have to be completely honest. Spaceghostpurrp is insane you know. He is crazy as a human being. I think he is bipolar and doesn’t take his meds. And the people who actually met him, I met Denzel Curry, Travis Scott and some other people from raider klan, while all the rest of Sad Boys met Spaceghostpurrp. Because I had a bad comedown. So I didn’t meet him that time but our old manager was a good friend of him and he is a misunderstood legend, he really is. But the whole thing about him is like Rocky, the pretty artist and the genius ugly duckling. We both know that Asap Rocky got more famous because he is prettier and it just fit better. The picture was prettier to give to the people than that of spaceghostpurrp who was kind of wacky. But yeah I hope that everything is good with him. I have no contact and don’t know how he is doing nowadays, I don’t. But blacklander was some of the best. I remember when that was released and I was in eight or ninth grade. First I was so into MF DOOM and madvillain and then suddenly I saw a picture of Odd Future and then spaceghostpurrp came and then that was what I wanted to listen to all the time. And via spaceghostpurrp, I remember he linked a lot of good artist that I started listening to. So then came Waka Flocka.
Mats:
It must have been like heaven, but as time would tell also hell. Landing in Florida.
Lean:
It feels good. We were there a bit too long but it’s such a special feeling. You can go to Everglade and see alligators and you really feel all that in fort lauderdale that is it like a swamp. We recorded at a place called pink house, pink mansion. They had a lot of brick that they had thrown down so that it became pink. Rick Ross had recorded there and it’s really Florida. People run around with machetes and it’s voodoo and all of that Haiti thing. Music break
Lean:
And then we were there in the pink mansion and recorded all of Warlord. It was insanely creative and it was like, I guess like when you read about Black Sabbath recording it feels like you have like a demon in you and you just make so much music and don’t realise what’s happening and yeah it ended up bad. It ended up with me at the psych ward, smashing a balcony and covering myself in the blood and the same night my manager died and then I got back to Sweden and was in convalescence, like at the psych ward. After that trip a lot of things changed in my life. I remember after a while when Hoover was released, maybe two months after. All the boys, I remember Axel and Benjamin, Bladee and Sherman was like, this might be Jonathans last video ever. And I was sure of that as well for a while. My mom helped me write a CV and I walked around with that and was thinking about working at a kindergarten.
Music break
Lean:
I was so fucking tired, of all that had to do with music, and all that shit.
Music break
Lean:
It went down like this. Barron, may his soul rest in peace, me and Benjamin and Hunter lived in an apartment that was owned by Barrons father, who’s a lawyer named Stephen Machat. Stephen was a lawyer for Ozzy Osborne, Nate Dogg and his father, Barrons grandfather, was the lawyer that cheated Leonard Cohen out of a lot of money. So it’s a lawyer family. I had started to go into psychosis, or like drug related psychosis or an overdose for some days and I wasn’t feeling any good. Barron and Hunter was out to buy some paper, paper and soda. And while that’s happening, at the same time that Barron crashes, I’m smashing this balcony without knowing what had happened. And Benjamin calls 911. I was not in the car with him and the car did not catch on fire either. He crashed into a tree. There are a lot of weird versions of that story. But I have also heard a lot of terrible things from family members and people around that were sure that I was the devil and that I had evil powers and all that. If you think about it, I was seventeen eighteen how the fuck can you put the blame on a seventeen year old. It was tough for me as well. But I have no magic powers. Unfortunately. If I had I would use them for good things.
Mats:
It was the father of the manager, Stephen, that accused you of being pure evil.
Lean:
I wonder why it was me that got that since he has worked with like Ozzy Osborne and have told stories about when Nate Dogg ran into his office with an AK-47.
Music break
Lean:
Yeah I wonder how I ended up being pure evil. But I guess there was something there, Swedish folklore with midsummer powers.
Mats:
The troll syndrome or something like that?
Lean:
Yeah haha, exactly, the big monster, Näcken (Water spirit) haha.
Mats:
But there is something provoking about it still right?
Lean:
When it is about peoples lives. I knew Barron, we were with each other every day. It is not fun to be called the Devil or pure evil when I was just seventeen and ended up at the psych ward. It’s about real peoples lifes. You can’t just call young people those things. And of course I understand that someone is scared and upset because their child died, but you can’t put the blame on people or call them things like that, it’s sick. But if it had been in a completely different scenario I would probably have been more proud of being called that. If it had to do with my music. But when it’s about real things it’s just scary.
Music break
Mats:
Yung Lean took drugs, dressed up as a nurse and wrote an unreadable book about his life. Everything got out of control around the making of the dark album Warlord. Where Sweden and Florida in songs like the Billy Bragg sampled song Miami Ultras. Yung Lean took an overdose, experienced psychosis and ended up at a mental hospital. At the same time he lost his American manager in a car accident. Barrons father, the well known show business lawyer with ambitions to reach the American senate put the blame on Yung Lean. He planned to release an unfinished version of Warlord. Back in Sweden, Sad Boys could see how a version of the album had leaked.
Lean:
Yeah shit I remember that. Yung Sherman was celebrating his birthday and we were out bowling, or maybe it was his old girlfriend who was celebrated and suddenly everyone was on their phone like shit, Stephen has released it all. Directly on band camp connected to his account. Unfinished versions of the songs, the song names were wrong. We had been working on that album since we got back home, it was all we had. Leaks can be the worst things. If you have been quiet for so long and so much has happened and you just want to release Warlord the right way, with the correct videos and artwork and then something like that happens. It’s like a fucking punch to your face. We lost a lot of hope that day.
Music break
Lean:
I think that the most crazy, for me, was a while ago, the had been at Fort Lauderdale at a large fair and I had bought a costume that was made for nurses and I wore that all the time. We were going to a hotel with an artist and he was buying weed from a stripper. And when we are at this hotel a man in there is arguing with the workers there and he has a large entourage and I recognise the voice. I’m like it’s Jim Jones, Jim Jones from dipset. I did not realise It by then but I had started living a little in my own world. I was begging to enter the psychosis. I was wearing the nurse outfit and took a picture with Jim Jones and we talk for a while. When I have looked at that picture years later I’ve been like what the fuck is this shit.
Music break
Lean:
Who was it, I think it was The Who, who met in a clothing store, and a guy was like you should make music. And then they made music. And it kinda felt that way, like yeah you guys should make this music.
Music break
Lean:
Sad rap, haha. Sad rap is quite a sickening term. It shouldn’t exist. We don’t make sad music. When you start going into the dark water you just want to go deeper and deeper. And you can only get back up when you are really hit by the waves. It was a mixture of destructivity, teenage anxiousness, and yeah, just how I felt back then.
Music break
Mats:
What for some appeared like a smart joke in the beginning, and for others like INAUDIBLE (he speaks danish accent Swedish) entertainment had in the middle of the 20th century attracted a dedicated fan base in the US. Something that no Swedish rapper had dreamt about. Yung Lean saw the opportunity to create surrealistic art and shabby rap. And history was written when Yung Lean was the first swede to enter the top 40 American R&B list. A list whose history goes back to Harlem Hit parade, 1942, where leaders like Louis Jordan and Lionel Hampton ruled. Yung Leans Unknown Memory entered at 36th place on the album list, right above Kanye West and under Migos. It was October 2014.
Lean:
It sounds like a lot of fun now that you say it but the most fun was just if the songs and the album were great for me, like it goes so far. Prices and stuff comes but it’s so temporary compared to creating it, what you have gone through to create the music.
Mats:
Yung Lean was a a part of the drug cult. The cough syrup drinking and pill popping that defined a depressed generation. Lil Peep with Swedish roots had just started building his emo vision, related (musically) to Yung Lean, and Juice WRLD stopped breathing after just a couple of albums.
Lean:
The death that affected me the most among those is a person that I didn’t know that well. But it was when I met Fredo Santana and we were in the studio. Me, Fredo, Axel and some of his boys. He was the kindest. We were listening to get rich or die trying and made a song together. He was a really good guy. And the day after I got a message that he was dead. It’s not more than that. In the US and in Sweden. I have friends that have died from benzodiazepines in Sweden as well. I think that it has a lot to do with, like lean, it goes hand in hand with the sales. Lean, Codeine. First Actavis, and then it gets so expensive and after a while completely banned. Then people start drinking red, and it costs like a thousand dollars a pint. You can’t pay that much unless you are a rapper. If you are a rapper you get special prizes. And then you want to get cheaper stuff, you want to take the same things as the rappers you look up to. I guess that once everything was very weird. Around 2013-2014, there was ILoveMakonnen there was, like mushrooms and that stuff. Before it was all opioid based with Percocets.
Music break
Lean:
It felt like, I don’t want to be that guy but, the music often gets very interesting when people are trying different stuff. I think that’s the sad reality. Maybe not with my music. I feel as I can create more when I’m sober. I have tried most of the drugs so if I feel I want to channel some type of drug I can go back in my memories to get the feeling if I want to sound a special way. If you think about like Young Thug when he made I came from nothing, you could hear he was all fucked up. You can’t do that sober. Gucci Mane is also an example. But now Gucci mane is also an example because now he’s skinny, he looks good, he has a great body, he has his wife, I wanna give him that. I don’t want him to be fat and have a codeine belly, be constipated and on the brink of dying all the time. I want him to look like he does now. I will sacrifice the music for that. His music is not good any more. But fuck that I can listen to the old songs. I’d rather have him healthy. And with Future as well. That he is afraid of going public with having quit lean because his fans wouldn’t trust him no more. That’s sad. But the music is explosive now. There is more hip hop being created now than ever before. It used to be kind of a mainstream genre with Lil Wayne and people thought it was a joke and the underground stuff was much cooler. But hip hop now, the biggest artists, it is the most experimental genre right now. It is more experimental than experimental indie pop. They use more drugs than those who do experimental jazz. It is weirder than punk. It is the weirdest there is right now. And people just have to live with that. That so many people die on the way doesn’t have to be a part of that. It could continue to be this special without people dying.
Music break
Lean:
Much of the trap you listened to in the beginning was like, more voices, almost choirs, Siberian choirs. Gucci Manes adlibs are louder than the main track. One of Chief Keefs biggest hits, Citgo, you can’t even hear the instrumental. There’s like six different layers of “smoking on the gas, gas citgo citgo”. It’s amazing. It’s weirder than anything else and I think I saw it from my own perspective. For me, all the elements of hip hop ant trap, and the clothing, has been art. And my way of expressing myself, minimalistic, if it’s with an iPhone camera or if I get to direct a whole video, it will always be done my way. It’s a mix of movies I’ve seen, experiences I’ve had, colours I think about that day. I think that this timing. Luck doesn’t exist to put it that way. If I am allowed to leave it at that. Haha.
Music break
Mats:
When you got back to Sweden from Florida. Your dad picked you up right?
Lean:
Yeah, I think both my parents were at the airport. You mean that my dad came to Florida and I walked around the mental hospital and I called my dad the king of California, because I didn’t recognise him. I just told him several times, “Are you the king of California?”. He became quite sad, but he has also been able to joke about it a lot now. There was one story that was quite scary actually. I kept saying that there was a doctor that was coming in and fucking things up for me. He was threatening me that I was gonna go to juvie and things like that, threatening me. And my dad asked me what the doctor looked like and I explained it to him. And he was like, that is not a doctor, it’s the guy who comes in to clean. He just came in to provoke me. And I was told that months later. It was quite scary. I have actually been at the psych ward in Sweden as well, much longer than in the US. 2017 I was at Danderyds (place outside of stockholm) closed section for a month. For psychosis as well, but not drug induced. But I have been sober now for two almost three years. I work out, I do boxing. I’m really happy and I’m more creative than ever. I think that everything that we’ve been talking about, me being a part of drug culture. Kids that say like, Yung Lean, I smoked my first joint for you, I took my first E for you. They would have done it to someone else’s music as well. I promise that. I’ve never pushed anyone to do drugs, I promise. I’ve just told it how it is, from my perspective. And you can do exactly the same thing and be sober as well. It is as much fun if not more fun. If I go out to club now, I can be out all night, I don’t get tired. I have much better relations now with everyone around me. I’m just a happier person. I think it’s much more fun for me to do this interview now compared to last time.
(They put in a clip from the interview they did way back)
Lean:
It sucks to be in school but that’s also a way to be down to earth and not feel so like I’m so fucking special, which I’m not. In a way it’s nice to be in school. Like, I’m no superstar. I have a normal life. It’s nice to live out my teenage life before something crazy happens.
Mats:
How old are you right now?
Lean:
I turn eighteen this summer.
(Back to the interview again)
I was at the Mount Sinai (Medical Centre) in Miami. And I found out Avicii was also there when I watched his documentary. And when at the hospital in Danderyd. It was very nice I must say. I was fucked up, completely manic, but it was a very nice place. Big up to the Swedish health care. That they put up with all the people there.
Music break.
Lean:
Those hours. All the people who are there, who try to break out, or try to commit suicide, or are screaming. You are laying there and you hear screams all night. It’s like being in a nightmare 24/7, plus that your own head is a nightmare 24/7. I had plans of escaping, I had a map of the hospital that I took a copy of and hid under my pillow. It was like One flew over the cuckoo's nest. You walk around there.
Mats:
Do you remember when you started making music after all this? The first attempts at getting back there musically.
Lean:
I was still a bit manic and when I was allowed to leave for some hours I chose to go to the studio. So I was driven to the studio from Danderyds hospital. I recorded six songs and then had to go back. When I finally left and was convalescent and quite low because of all the medication I just chose to never listen to those songs)
Music break (Lean starting singing I’d rather go blind by Etta James)
Lean:
I have no idea what I’m talking about there. I don’t really want to know. I just remember that I made a listen to your heart cover and I made a version of Etta James song because I had listened to that so much when I was at the hospital.
Music break (Lean continue to sing I’d rather go blind by Etta James)
Lean:
In the beginning you just try. You are like Bambi on the ice, trembling. But then I finished Stranger. We had made that album before I ended up at the hospital. Me and Micke finished it in the studio and then Whitearmor and I did our own tape. We went out to Mariefred where a guy named Pontus has a studio. He produced Britney Spears Toxic. And there we were making Poison Ivy. It felt very nice to just clear my head and the music turned out great. Those days were nice.
Music break
Mats: (talking about the upcoming album)
The adventure continues. The new album that follows up the anxiety filled milestone, Stranger, is punky millennium R&B, that can only be made by Yung Lean.
Lean:
It’s everywhere. Some of the songs are almost like ballads and some are more to the classical witch house, others sound like some, you know SVT Play (Swedish national TV) intro with piano haha, it’s everywhere. But I’m very inspired by The Stooges, I wanna be your dog. That song, and R&B.
Music break
Mats:
Jonathan spend the first time of his childhood in Belarus.
Lean:
You know you have some fake memories. You have a picture of an apartment. But I have one memory that I’ve been told so many times that It’s like I can see it. It’s when I was at kindergarten and my dad comes to pick me up. He asks for me and I’m not with the other kids. I had been bad so I was put in the corner with a large cone on my head. My dad walks over there and since he is Swedish he gets super mad and wanted me to quit going there. My mom was calmer and explained that that’s what they do, nothing weird about that, just some discipline. My mom is grown up in Soviet you know and went to a Russian school. Two different worlds. But I have lots of nice memories from there. I went to a school theatre and danced in snow and that stuff. I must have been a Pinocchio, somewhere around there I turned into a donkey. The cigar came. (Referring to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCBjfgXg8A4) I had a very nice childhood, middle class, Södermalm. My dad’s a writer, raised in Söder as well. My moms raised in Russia, she’s a real boss. She has had a crazy life. One time she told me that she was a cleaner at an embassy, and that one day she would be in those rooms. Now she is becoming an ambassador in Albania. She has worked her way up. I’m very proud of her. We lived in Söder. I have been to a lot of schools, Södermalmskolan, Gamla Maria, Katarina Norra, Kärrtorp…
Music break
Lean:
When I got back to Sweden from Belarus I started going to a kindergarten. It is one of my first memories. I was still speaking Russian and I so badly wanted to be understood. I walked around speaking in Russian Swedish, can I have milk and bread, can I have milk and bread. I really wanted to learn Swedish so I forbid my parents to speak Russian with me. That was very stupid, I really wish I hadn’t said that. I wish I had learnt Russian as well. Music came into my life early. It was what made my life fun. It was always my thing and what I was good at. I think I said that last time we talked. When I was young I got a little bit famous with a song called Söder Söder. I was opening for Adam Tensta (Swedish rapper) when I was in fourth grade. Then I made a mixtape with a friend during a summer, and I made a lot of music with my sister. I dressed up and put on makeup. Went to school and listened to Green Day. You know, you wanted to, I basically dressed up the way I do today. I did the same thing back then as I do now. The only difference is that I make money now.
I think that they were worried a lot. I guess the drug aspect of it. When you get so interested in things, those things comes with it. When I was I seventh grade I was caught with some weed, petty shit, and yeah they were worried about all that. But in the end they have been very proud and they will come tonight to my show. They have been to so many of my shows and they are very proud. If I make a good song I want to show it to my mom. If she likes it then it will be released. Same with my dad. I don’t know if they understood if they that there was always something extra or something special that I wanted to do. I guess you will have to ask them about that. But I know that they are proud.
Music break
Lean:
I think it’s so much fun. That I’m Swedish and that there are not that many Swedes that like me. I means that I’ve made it. I remember when I went out to eat with my mom, she had got us Indian food, I told her that I had gotten a gig in Gothenburg. And she asked like for who, for yourself or what? She was just laughing at me. I had to convince her, showing the event. And she asked like, Yung Lean, is that you? And I showed her videos and she still didn’t get it. I finally had to call Emilio on speaker and have him explain it to her. My dad didn’t get any of it either. It was quite tough because someone had written an article where it said that I was the son of Kristoffer Leandoer, the horror writer. He was so mad, I came home from school and he was furious. He was like “What’s all this? My name, and this song, greygoose?”. But afterwards when he understood it he was proud. But no one ever understood how big it was. I was at my room all the time. We remade the basement into a small studio and I was always there. I was smart with that shit. I got like Lofty 305 and people from Miami and small underground people that I kept sending my songs to. I just sat home and we had this Tumblr that Axel created and we were like dolphins, we communicated directly to the fans, even if I had like 3 fans, and suddenly I had ten thousand fans, and we still communicated directly to them. They got to know all about us. They knew exactly what we were doing.
Music break
(Again a clip from the older interview when Lean was seventeen)
Lean:
I do not claim that I do all the things I sing about in my songs. I’ve never said that. That would be completely crazy. I wouldn’t be a good seventeen year old then. It would be insane. But I guess you should believe that Yung Lean doesn’t exist. That he is just some fucking seventeen year old that’s completely crazy, and then the real me comes in and say things and have real emotions and real lyrics. I guess the mix between those things are Yung Lean, that’s what Sad boys are. The mix of what’s real and what’s not. That’s what the listeners have to think about themselves, and decide what they want to believe and now. And what they like, is it the music or the person.
Mats:
And it is when you balance that where everything becomes interesting.
Lean:
It’s exactly that. And it’s so nice because you get to do that, while really you are not allowed to do it, it’s completely wrong, but if you really want to do it, do it, and then you do it. Everything that’s written should have to be thought of several times, nothing should be just straight forward. I get it, that’s good, now I won’t listen to it again. That’s no good. If it’s an album or a song where you get everything there’s no fun in it. It’s like watching a bad film. You want to see something that leaves an impression. It’s much more fun that people talk about me. Rather than that they just say like he’s such a good rapper. It’s not like I’m trying to be a weird rapper, I guess that what I feel like doing, that’s real. I make things from myself. I don’t rap about these crazy things because I want to be like that or because I want to build up an image. I do it because it’s what I feel like doing. I do it because it’s what I want.
Music break
(Back to the new interview again)
Lean:
I remember Charlie XCX saying that her and Robyn had been in the studio and she had shown her Ginseng strip and they had been like turn it off, turn it off. They hated it. And then some days passed and both of them had listened to it by themselves. And when they came back to the studio the just kept on listening to it. It’s like you have to hate it at first. It’s so provocative. Like he looks this way, or it’s so honest, or it’s just something. It’s too close, or I don’t know. Like it’s still a meme on all my YouTube videos. Listened first time, hated it, listened tenth time, my favourite song. It’s the Yung Lean effect.
Music break
Lean:
I would love to make film when I get older. I would like to make film of greek tales. There is a tale of a man called Geryon, he is completely red and has a red dog and lives on a red island. He is killed by Hercules. I would like to make a film about that but more of a psychological thriller. Kinda like pusher, Snabba Cash (Swedish movie) meets Greek mythology.
Mats:
You have the John Ausonius (Swedish serial killer) project, you are drawn to darkness.
Lean:
Yeah, yes I do. It’s natural and not at all an image. I remember my dad joking about that when I was small. I always wanted the orchs to win in the lord of the rings, and that Voldemort was much cooler than Harry Potter. I think it’s quite simple psychology really. That it’s just more interesting. If I had a history of real darkness. Like growing up in war or torture. I think I would be very interested in happy stuff. But now I am not. You are attracted to what you are not from, where you don’t think you belong. But where I am is where I belong the best. I am privileged where I do not belong any more. I think everyone wants to find a world where they don’t naturally belong. For me that has been music. No one in my family had anything to do with music. No one has been a rapper. I have always felt at home in front on a microphone.
Mats:
When you found the darkness in Florida and managed to get out of it, was it mission completed?
Lean:
I don’t know if it was mission completed really. Barron died so I would want to take back a lot of what happened there. I think I had the darkness within me before that. It is inside of you.

TLDR: IOC, Japan, or Olympic contenders are going to flinch in the face of Beer Virus. EWJ $42p 3/27 EWJ $42p 4/17
PLAN A) CDC's WORSE CASE SCENARIO HAPPENS: The US continues to shit the bed, Millions infected, 0.5-1M die, and the coronavirus continues to be a big enough issue on social gatherings that the IOC or Japan say sorry bois, we gotta cancel.
PLAN B) THE NBA EFFECT: So the NBA season is pushed back a minimum of 30 days. I foresee the players, owners, and all financial interests (casinos, sponsors, Nike, etc) in the NBA not wanting to lose all of their regular season games, but they may settle on aborting the regular season. If they jump straight to the playoffs, all the bubble teams fighting for playoff spots are going to complain, as well as lots of lost revenue for all parties for every game that is skipped. Teams have already been pursuing extensions with their arenas to ensure they can schedule games into the summer months. American companies stand to make much more from the NBA season than the Olympics. If the playoffs are pushed back a month, they are going to have the world's best players for the USA, Spain, Australia and all the other countries busy with the NBA playoffs, making the basketball events insignificant. And NBC is going to have to fight for ratings with ABC covering the NBA playoffs/Finals.
PLAN C) OLYMPIC TRIALS: But u/thaddeuscastle, the Olympics are not until July, and I think the NBA will still figure their shit out before then, or the IOC just won't care about losing one event?! Currently olympic trial season should be going on around the world. Last week, Atlanta hosted the US marathon trial pre-corona. Now many olympic trial events are being postponed, the upcoming ones are facing cancelation threats, and basically the timeline will be absolutely crunched when the trials could be rescheduled. Not to mention that other sports leagues are going to have more than normal conflict (Soccer = Top Teir Club Leagues PPD, Baseball = MLB PPD, Golf = The Masters PPD, Tennis, etc). Usually big name players skip olympics if there is conflict anyway, but anyways for the top tier league play anyways, so no big deal.
So there you go, three contingency plans that would all point to the Olympics being postponed, moved, or canceled. Puts on EWJ. Less contract vig than individual Japan-exposed stocks. Also, consider CMCSA (NBC/Comcast).

For the U.S.;

• College migrations/dorm life
  
• Holiday migrations (Mardi Gras/Spring Break upcoming)
  
• Flight travel
  
• Public transportation
  
• Taxis/Ubers
  
• Trucking
  
• Concerts
  
• Conferences
  
• Restaurants
  
• Military barracks
  
• Lack of cough/sneeze hygiene
  
• School/daycare/nursing home populations
  
• Inadequate access to healthcare/prohibitive costs
  
• Parties: birthday, retirement, etc...
  
• Shopping carts
  
• Doorknobs/handles
  
• Elevator buttons
  
• Cellphone use
  
• Public restrooms
  
• Artificial fingernails/long fingernails
  
• Toll booths
  
• Churches (thanks u/backtoHarp )
  
• High density population cities like NYC
  
• Food deliveries (thanks u/elephants22)
  
• Elections (thanks u/spiritof1789)
  
• Sporting events
  
• Homeless populations
  
• Absences from Work for Sickness- either discouraged by the employer or economic pressures (thanks u/EmazEmaz)
  
• Social touching/handshakes/highfives/kisses (thanks u/cz1975)
  
• Public gyms (thanks u/xXEmancipatorXx)
  
• Money/Card use (thanks u/bohoraps and u/OtherwiseCourt5)
  
• Movie Theaters (thanks u/stbelmont)
  
• Theme Parks
  
• Casinos (thanks u/pmichel)
  
• Bars/Dance Clubs (thanks u/yasiCOWGUAN)
  
• Hotels/Motels/BnBs
  
• Malls
  
• Tourist Traps (thanks to u/Total-Owl)
  
• Arcades
  
• Bowling Alleys (thanks to u/aanvc)
  
• Massage Parlors (thanks to u/nevergonnasaythat)
  

What am I missing? What's in your country?

Thursday, January 16th, 2020:

• Disney on Ice, January 16 - 20 Your favorite Disney stories come to life at Disney On Ice presents Celebrate Memories! Sail along with Moana on her high-seas adventure and dance with Woody, Buzz and all the Toy Story friends. Feel inspired when love wins in Frozen and dreams come true for the Disney Princesses. Share the excitement and make new memories the whole family will treasure forever! Thu.-Fri. 7 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m.; Sun. noon, 4 p.m., Mon. 1 p.m. , $15-$80 XL Center, 1 Civic Center Plaza, Hartford, CT

Friday, January 17th, 2020:

• 15th Annual Festival of New Musicals,January 17 - 19 The Festival has launched more than 40 new musicals into the universe, sending them across the country, to Broadway, and around the world! Join us for a weekend filled with insider events, seminars, cabarets, and three staged readings of brand-new works as the brightest writers and performers collaborate to create the future of America's greatest art form. Packages & Tickets: Goodspeed's Festival Packages get you access to exclusive events all weekend long! Gold Package: $149, Silver Package: $80, General admission: $25, Students: $15 Fri. & Sat. 7:30 p.m., Sun. 1 p.m., The Goodspeed, 6 Main St. East Haddam, CT
• Cabin Fever PJ Party, January 17 A fun evening of movement, music and imagination. Geared for families with young children. 6:30 p.m.-7:15 p.m., Pre-registration: $5 per person, $18 family of four. At the door: $7 per person, $25 family of four. Children under 2 free, Roaring Brook Nature Center, 70 Gracy Rd. Canton, CT
• Hard Hittin Beer Shuttle, January 17 Friday night beer shuttle to Alvarium Beer Co, Five Churches Brewing, Relic Brewing and Kinsmen Brewing. There are three sessions to choose from. $20, includes transportation only. Must pre-purchase tickets online. 6:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. $20, Relic Brewing, 95 Whiting St. Plainville, CT
• Bootlegger’s Bash: Raise a Glass to Prohibition!, January 17 Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Prohibition in 1920s style! Dance to jazz music, snap a pic (or your mug shot) in the photo booth, and sample 1920s cocktails. We’re also hosting Hartford Flavor Company for a free tasting of their locally-made liqueurs. Be sure to come dressed in your Gatsby-esque best, you might win a prize for best costume. There will even be a pop-up exhibit of “flapper” dresses from our collection on display. Cocktails and refreshments included. Guests must be 21 or older. Advance tickets can be purchased here, or you can buy tickets at the door. 7 p.m.-9 p.m., $25, Connecticut Historical Society, One Elizabeth St. Hartford, CT
• Randy Rainbow Live!, January 17 Randy Rainbow (yes, real name) is a comedian, actor, writer, host and Internet sensation best known for his viral comedy videos. His popular series of political spoofs and song parodies have garnered international acclaim and over a hundred million views. He's been called "the best thing about the 2016 GOP race" by Dan Savage and his musical tribute to the first presidential debate of 2016 (“BRAGGADOCIOUS!”) received 28 million views in its first two days. He was subsequently asked by the cast of television's Will & Grace to parodize a song which they performed during a political fundraiser for the 2016 election. Randy has also written for comedian Kathy Griffin and hosted and performed in numerous theatrical events for the Broadway, cabaret and gay communities, as well as for the Tony Awards and some of New York City's most popular night spots including 54 Below, Birdland Jazz Club, XL Nightclub and Therapy NYC where his own weekly show ran for two years. He's been seen as a talking head on VH1 and has been heard regularly as both a guest and co-host on Sirius XM Radio. He is the creator and star of the long-running BroadwayWorld.com web series Chewing the Scenery with Randy Rainbow and Last Minute with Randy Rainbow. Please Note: This performance was rescheduled from November 9, 2019. If you previously purchased a ticket for that date, it will be good for the same seat at the January 17 performance. You do not need to exchange your ticket. If you have questions, call the Box office at (860) 444-7373 Ext 1. 8 p.m., $35-$55, Garde Arts Center, 325 State St. New London, CT

Saturday, January 18th, 2020:

• Root 63 Variety Tasting, January 18 - 20 Is Root 63 your favorite wine? The vineyard now has five of them, so come in for a special tasting of all fove wines which are 100% estate grown, sustainably farmers and produced and bottled on premise. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., $10, $12 with souvenir glass., Sunset Meadow Vineyards, 599 Old Middle St. Goshen, CT
• Forest City Public Beer Tour, January 18 All inclusive public beer tour to Still Hill Brewing, Forest City, Stubborn Beauty and Tavern at the Armory. What’s Included? - Still Hill Brewing (flight or pint of beer) - Stubborn Beauty (flight or pint of beer) - Forest City Brewing (flight or pint of beer) - Tavern at the Armory (one pint of local beer from tap) + - Sampler plate consisting of jerk jerk chicken wings, shrimp spring rolls and sweet potato fries food\ *Food may change slightly depending on availability. - Safe and Reliable transportation, What to bring: Please bring a photo ID. All passengers must be 21+* Pick-Up Locations: 11:20 a.m.: Double Tree Hotel Bristol - 42 Century Drive, Bristol, CT 11:45 a.m.: Middletown Inn - 70 Main St, Middletown, CT, 11:15am - 6:00pm, $95 Bristol Double Tree Hotel Parking Lot, 42 Century Dr., Bristol, CT
• Lunar New Year Celebration with Chinese Acrobatics @ Danbury Library, January 18 Celebrate Lunar New Year with acrobat Li Liu as she performs amazing stunts and tricks including balancing, plate spinning, ribbon dancing, and more! Learn about the 2000 year old tradition of acrobatics and the rituals and customs that will help begin the year of the Rat. FREE! All ages welcome. Registration recommended.11:30 a.m. Farioly Program Room at Danbury Library, 170 Main St. Danbury, CT
• Piff the Magic Dragon, January 18 Two shows. Straight from “America’s Got Talent, it’s the greatest magic performing dragon of all time! Don’t miss this night jaw-dropping magic tricks and hysterical comedy, think Larry David in a dragon suit blowing your mind with magic tricks. Voted the Magic Circle’s Stage Magician of the Year in 2014, Piff is keen to point out that, even though he is a magician doing tricks dressed in a dragon suit and definitely plays it for laughs, his act is not really suitable for young children. 5 p.m. & 8 p.m., $40-$65, Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge Rd. Ridgefield, CT
• Terry Fator, January 18 It’s a long journey from Corsicana Texas to the Las Vegas stage, but Terry Fator made it to the top as the headliner at the Mirage Hotel in Vegas for the past 10 years. Terry can impersonate over 100 voices with favorites being Karen Carpenter, Elton John, Garth Brooks, Justin Timberlake, Elvis, Meghan Trainor and Bruno Mars. His cast of characters includes: Winston the Impersonating Turtle; the World’s Greatest Elvis Impersonator; Elton John; Vicki the Cougar; President Donald Trump and annoying neighbor Duggie. 8 p.m., $49-$80, Palace Theater, 100 East Main St. Waterbury, CT
• Everclear with Paul Gabriel Blues Band, January 18 Everclear has written and recorded some truly iconic 1990s alt-rock hits. And while it’s a virtual surety that no Everclear gig is complete without a rendition of “Santa Monica” and “Father of Mine,” lately the band has found that exploring the full range of past material, especially the “deep cuts,” not only gives fans a rare treat, it also injects new life into the band’s live dynamic. Formed by Art Alexakis in 1991 in Portland, Oregon, Everclear has enjoyed a lengthy career spanning 11 studio releases (three of which went platinum), numerous videos, thousands of shows and accolades that include a 1998 Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental. Like a true survivor, Alexakis has soldiered on through multiple lineup changes over the years. The current touring lineup features longtime members Dave French (guitar) and Freddy Herrera (bass), as well as drummer Brian Nolan. 8 p.m. $35-$70, VIP $185., The Klein Auditorium, 910 Fairfield Ave. Bridgeport, CT

Sunday, January 19th, 2020:

• Tacos & Tequila Fiesta, January 19 Celebrate all things Tacos & Tequila at Foxwoods Resort Casino. Foxwoods is celebrating Cinco de Mayo a few months early. ¡Diecinueve de Enero. Enjoy taco and tequila samples from over 20 companies. Dance along to a live mariachi band or show off your skills on the mechanical bull. It's not a tasting, it's a fiesta! Prices: Blanco ($15) : Includes entry into Tacos & Tequila, you can purchase food and drink. Perfect for designated drivers. Reposado ($45): Includes entry into Tacos & Tequila, 2 Taco Samples and 3 Tequila Samples. Additional food and drink available for purchase. Anejo ($80): Includes entry into Tacos & Tequila, four taco samples and six tequila samples, unlimited Margaritas for one hour. Additional food and drink available for purchase. 4 p.m., Premier Ballroom at Foxwoods Resort Casino, 350 Trolley Line Blvd. Mashantucket, CT

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Find more things to do this weekend here!
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Check out some new movies like these:

Friday, January 10th
The Informer
Like a Boss
Underwater
Friday, January 17th
Bad Boys for Life
Dolitte

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999

1-3-2000	1-10-2000	1-17-2000	1-24-2000
1-31-2000	2-7-2000	2-14-2000	2-21-2000
2-28-2000	3-6-2000	3-13-2000	3-20-2000
3-27-2000	4-3-2000	4-10-2000	4-17-2000
4-24-2000	5-1-2000	5-8-2000	5-15-2000
5-22-2000	5-29-2000	6-5-2000	6-12-2000
6-19-2000	6-26-2000	7-3-2000	7-10-2000
7-17-2000	7-24-2000	7-31-2000	8-7-2000
8-14-2000	8-21-2000	8-28-2000	9-4-2000
9-11-2000	9-18-2000	9-25-2000	10-01-2000
10-09-2000	10-15-2000	10-23-2000	10-30-2000

• Bret Hart officially announced his retirement this week due to concussions he suffered starting back at Starrcade from a Goldberg kick. Doctors actually speculated that Hart may have had a concussion going into the match, but the kick magnified the damage. Following the Goldberg match, Hart continued to wrestle for a couple of weeks and got rocked again several times, particularly in a hardcore match with Terry Funk. Doctors said he's suffered about 10% brain damage, some of which may be permanent. Despite the injury, there was always the possibility that he could have remained an on-screen character in some role. But Hart was fired by WCW last week, which basically left him with no real options, since he has no intention of ever working for WWF again and said he doesn't want to end his career by working his way down the minor league food chain like so many other wrestlers do. Dave says Hart will be remembered for many things, and while his career had no shortage of memorable moments, the name Bret Hart will always be mostly associated with what happened in Montreal 3 years ago and with the death of his brother Owen. The first was the most historically influential match in modern times and Owen's death was the biggest mainstream news story in wrestling history. The last 3 years of Bret's life have been hell, from a disappointing WCW run, injuries, and the utter destruction of the Hart family in the wake of Owen's death. Dave thinks it's sad because if this was Japan or Mexico, the wrestling culture there is different. If a star on the level of Bret Hart retired there, they would have elaborate retirement ceremonies and make a huge deal of it. But here in America, he was double-crossed out of the WWF to avoid giving him a fond farewell, and then he was unceremoniously fired from WCW rather than having a chance to officially retire in the ring or give a speech for his fans. Then again, with the state of WCW, nobody would have believed a Bret Hart retirement speech anyway, since everyone would just suspect an angle. But it sucks that he's having to hang up the boots while unemployed and with no outlet to be given the send-off he deserves.
  
• Dave recaps Bret's career, starting as a teenager in the Amarillo territory with Dory Funk, his time in Japan, and then starting in Stampede and working his way up the ladder there (he started as an opening match jobber). Forming the Hart Foundation with Neidhart, their years together in WWF, his singles run, becoming IC and WWF champion when business was down and Vince needed someone who wasn't exploding with steroids to be the face of the company. As WWF champion, business was weak in the U.S. but Hart was a huge draw when WWF toured internationally (which they did a lot more back then because U.S. business was so bad). And then of course, Shawn Michaels, the Screwjob, and off to WCW where he was the hottest star in the business upon arrival. But from there, he was the victim of injuries and horrible booking and Hart in WCW never clicked. Dave goes on and on about the countless times WCW dropped the ball with how they booked Bret. Anyway, Hart has ruled out ever wrestling again, for fear of more brain damage and not wanting to live the rest of his life as a drooling vegetable. He also shot down the idea of ever being a manager because he's unhappy with the direction of the business and says he's leaving the industry entirely, not just the in-ring part. He plans to spend the next year working on a book about his life and doing some acting. Luckily, he should be well off financially. He earned north of 7 figures during his last four years in the business and has a Lloyds of London disability policy that will pay him the equivalent of 6 months salary, which will be another million or so.
  
• Bret Hart announced his retirement in his Calgary Sun column and since you can't just easily find this online anymore, here's what Bret wrote:
  

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That'll be the beginning." -- Louis La'Amour.
I'm really sorry to have to say that my professional wrestling career is over--forever. Although I've expected it to end for some time now, I could in no way ever prepare for it.
I suppose it doesn't do much good to speak negatively about how this or that has gone for me. I feel it is more fitting right now to remember the more positive aspects of my long and great career. I have not one regret. I'm proud of all my achievements, especially my seven World Heavyweight Championships.
I will miss the cities, the countries, especially the people--all colours, all religions, all ages, all languages. I've always tried my absolute best in every match, in every city, big or small, in countries all around the world.
I cannot begin to explain how proud I am to have touched so many people with the ability to wrestle. My heart is filled with memories. Like when I was mobbed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem by Palestinian children, tears in their eyes, kissing my hands. In Belfast, Ireland, being cheered on by both Catholic and Protestant fans, the emotions that poured out as I walked around the ring high-fiving our victory together. The time I was in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, where they waved Canadian flags and chanted O Canada! I could go on endlessly, but maybe it's easier to say I was privileged to be the only world champion who really travelled the world.
I hope that my fans who have kept the faith, believing in me, may in some small way take some lesson from me that will help them in their lifetime. I will never forget how touched I was in Rochester, N.Y. in one of my last matches, when a bunch of die-hard fans held up a sign that read: Parking $10, Program $5, Ticket $35, watching Bret Hitman Hart wrestle--priceless."
I'm forever grateful for the doors that opened bringing me to America. Thank you for having me, for giving me so much. I thank all my fans everywhere. I owe you all for everything I am.
As for the wrestlers, it would mean a lot to me to always be remembered as "one of the boys." I've made great friendships that will last my lifetime and look forward to an easier life filled with reminiscing.
To all of you who worked with me, carried me, and trusted me, those who allowed my success to continue while theirs did not, all from a deep sense of tradition and honour. I tried to always work hard to be champion in your eyes first. My greatest accomplishment is knowing that I never seriously harmed one wrestler. It may not seem important, but I want it remembered that in all the years I never, ever refused to lose to another wrestler--except once--and that was that fateful day in Montreal, where it's clear that I stood up for "the boys."
I could begin to list all the great wrestlers I either watched or worked with, but it would take forever. I will simply say that I'd give anything to climb into the ring with so many of you just one more time. To most people, wrestling is stupid, it's fake, it doesn't mean anything. When I think about it, I'm reminded of a quote by George Braque: "Art is a sound turned to light."
I drift back to a time when I was 23 years old, wrestling for my father, in Regina, making $150 a night. It looked like it was going to be a near full crowd on hand to see me take on my arch rival, The Dynamite Kid, in a ladder match. The title and a bag supposedly containing $5,000 dangled from a string above the ring. Whoever could climb the ladder and grab it first would be the winner.
We were both so young when I look back on it now, so intense, when the bell rang, we tore into each other, ferociously, eventually spilling out onto the floor. I went to slam Dynamite's head into a steel chair. He, of course, had his hands up for protection, but I had no idea he would hit it so hard. His head bounced back, I tried to turn, but our heads smashed. I split the back of his head open and shattered my face, one of those rare accidents.
I could tell it was bad. I could poke my finger through a gaping hole in the middle of my nose. The blood poured. We fought on. I remember Dynamite jumping up high, gripping that heavy steel ladder coming down straight down on my head. I didn't move. The crowd gasped. I dreamed a smile--because he never even touched me. He really was the best. Finally, I had him right where I wanted him, but the referee was down. That's when J.R. Foley crept up on the apron and whacked me across the back with his heavy walking stick. Down I went. The crowd was furious--so unfair. Dynamite began to climb to the top, his fingers reaching. Suddenly, I jumped up, throwing a perfect desperation drop kick, just like he asked me. "...just barely touch the ladder with your toes. I'll control how I go over."
Sure enough, the ladder wobbled and tipped, he grimaced, over they both went, with amazing timing. Dynamite leapt off, straddling the top rope, bouncing up and out right on top of J.R. Foley. But the ladder hit the top rope with such force, bouncing all the way back, heading right toward me. I was lucky I saw it. I rolled and rolled as fast as I could. It crashed with a thud, missing my head by only inches. I sat up, checking to see if Dynamite was hurt. He appeared to be all right, but still both of us knew we'd be going for some stitches.
He was riding with me, so he had to duck down when we drove past the fans on the way to the Pasqua Hospital. From there, we drove back home, all night, so that we could wrestle the following night, too tired to say a word to each other.
But if I can stop right there...to somehow try and explain just what it is that I will miss the most about wrestling, I loved it all so much. I stood that big steel ladder up, one step up, climbing higher and higher, the crowd soaring with me, louder and louder, the blood dripping off my nose...reaching...I pulled that belt down and there it was--it happened. The crowd exploded.
We blew the roof off...so loud I could not hear a single sound except the beating of my own heart. If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you live, you also have to find the courage to finally say goodbye.
I'll put my guns in the ground. I can't shoot them any more.

• The WWF/Owen Hart lawsuit was verbally settled out of court, pending a court approval scheduled later this week. Various sources have pegged the settlement at $18 million. It's believed Stu and Helen Hart will receive somewhere between $2-3 million, with the rest going to Martha Hart and her two young children. Martha told the Calgary Sun that the whole ordeal has been a nightmare and she can't say much more for legal reasons but that she's satisfied with the settlement. It's believed that WWF may file suit against the company that manufactured the rigging equipment, but Vince McMahon would only say that they are exploring their options on that. Martha Hart had previously vowed she would never settle before the case went to court, but those close to her say she was tired of the stress and was particularly upset that the case had torn the Hart family apart. Stu and Helen in particular were eager to settle and get it over with. The first round of settlement talks went poorly, with McMahon reportedly offering $17 million and refusing to budge, while Martha's initial asking price was said to be $32 million. It ended with Martha "cutting a promo" on Vince (oh Dave...) and talks broke off. The case was made more complicated by different Hart members' inability to stop talking to the media against lawyers' advice. At one point, Ellie Neidhart (Nattie's mom), who has sided against her parents and with WWF in the case, took a document from Stu Hart regarding all of the Hart children getting money out of the case and passed it on to WWF's lawyers, which engulfed the Hart lawyers in a storm of controversy and nearly blew up their whole case. The original Feb. 2001 court date was postponed indefinitely following that and with no new court date in sight so it was likely to continue dragging on for months and maybe even years. So ultimately, Martha decided to settle (yeah I think to this day, Martha blames Ellie for almost destroying the case and that's why she was forced to settle). As of press time, Bret Hart hasn't yet commented on the settlement, but he knew it was coming. He was on the Observer Live online show the day before it was finalized and said he understood Martha's position and would support whatever decision she made.
  
• The downward spiral of Davey Boy Smith hit a new low this week when he was arrested on 2 separate occasions for allegedly threatening the life of his estranged wife, Diana Hart-Smith. Dave talks about Smith's worsening drug problems in recent years along with all his health issues in between and how he's been in and out of the hospital constantly in the last two years. He also had a motorcycle accident a few weeks ago, multiple rehab stints, etc. Anyway, Smith was arrested on Oct. 25th and again on Oct. 26th. The first time, it was on 2 counts of threatening to kill his wife and her sister Ellie (again...Nattie's mom). After being released the next day, he allegedly threatened his wife again and was arrested again. She thought he was still in custody and went back to the house and was surprised to find him there and that led to the second arrest. Police have been to their house several times in the last few months for domestic disputes. There was also an incident a while back with Smith getting into a fight with Diana's new boyfriend, a Stampede wrestler who wrestles under the name Dick Butkus Jr. during which 85-year-old Stu Hart had to get involved and help break it up. Anyway, Smith spent this past weekend behind bars in Calgary, spending his time signing autographs for other inmates, but was released on the 30th on bail. But he faces 5 charges related to all his threats. Part of the conditions for his release were paying a $10,000 fine and he's not allowed to have any contact with Diana, Ellie, Bruce Hart, or Diana's new boyfriend. (Dave later mentions that Davey Boy is shacking up with Bruce's estranged wife Andrea now. Man, this fuckin' family, I tell ya...) He's also not allowed to drink or take any non-prescribed drugs and is ordered to stay away from where his wife is staying, along with staying away from Bruce Hart's home and Stu Hart's home. He was also ordered to enter rehab, even though he denied in court that he still has a drug problem.
  
• Davey Boy is still under WWF contract, though he hasn't wrestled a match in months. But the WWF has suspended him pending the company's own investigation of the charges. In the past, he blamed his drug issues and back problems from taking a bump on Ultimate Warrior's trap door in the ring when he was in WCW. Dave recaps the series of events that led to him getting rehired by WWF and talks about how they hired Jim Neidhart back as well and it was no secret that Smith, Diana, and Neidhart's wife Ellie were all planning to testify against the family in the Owen Hart case if it had gone to trial. So it wasn't exactly a coincidence that both Smith and Neidhart got jobs that neither of them really had any business getting (Neidhart was hired as a trainer, which everyone knew he wasn't qualified for and Smith was brought back as a wrestler despite a crippling back injury and more crippling drug problem). Neidhart was quietly released a few weeks ago and with the Owen Hart lawsuit finally settled, it probably doesn't look good for Smith (indeed, he never stepped foot in the WWF again).
  
• WCW Halloween Havoc is in the books and was possibly the worst wrestling PPV of the year. At this point, you'd think everyone in WCW would be putting their best foot forward to impress potential buyers, especially if that buyer ends up being the WWF and Vince becomes their new boss. But it was almost all bad matches and abysmal booking. The only bright side is that it was in Vegas and a lot of the tickets were sold to casinos for giveaways, so the show ended up being one of the biggest live gates WCW has had in awhile, even if the crowd wasn't exactly all wrestling fans. Russo is now out of the picture (claiming post-concussion syndrome and stress), but the show was booked by guys like Ed Ferrara and Bill Banks, who are basically mini-Russos and are just keeping his chair warm. So it wasn't quite the same scattershot chaos as most Russo-booked shows, but it still had the same lack of understanding about what makes a good wrestling show that Russo has perfected. Everyone involved (Ferrara, Banks, Terry Taylor, Johnny Ace, etc.) were told to continue Russo's stories rather than changing direction so everything mostly stayed the same.
  
• Other notes from Halloween Havoc: the opening tag title three-way match was the best and really only good match on the show., due to Mysterio, Kidman, and Alex Wright's performances. In typical WCW fashion, they had a top notch snafu showing Palumbo and Stasiak in their street clothes backstage, just seconds after being in their gear and doing a run-in on the previous match. So they put up a thing on the screen that said "taped earlier in the day" to cover for it, but then during the segment, Palumbo and Stasiak were talking about what they just did in the ring minutes earlier. David Flair looked totally lost in his first blood match with Bagwell and even though he's been a midcard star in WCW for over a year now, Dave says if he went to OVW, he'd still be the worst guy on the roster. David Flair is just not ready for the big leagues and it shows. Negative star. Mike Sanders vs. The Cat in a kickboxing match was a total clusterfuck that Cat apparently refused to do the job for since it's "his" gimmick match, so he lost by count-out instead, even though the time limit for the last round had already expired and it was just a mess. Negative half star. Mike Awesome vs. Vampiro is negative 2.5 stars. That's three matches in a row in the negatives, with 2 DUD rankings book-ending them. Dave expected Awesome/Vampiro to actually be good but it had more blown spots than any match he's seen on PPV in years. They were apparently supposed to do a table spot to end the match but they couldn't find any tables under the ring and the match fell apart and Vampiro ended up taking a top rope powerbomb that gave him a concussion and shook him up badly (didn't stop WCW from having him take another powerbomb at the Thunder taping the next day, even though he told them beforehand about the concussion, but we'll get there). And babyface world champion Booker T was booed by a good chunk of the crowd during his match with Scott Steiner.
  
• The latest PRIDE event in Japan drew a sellout crowd mostly due to so many pro wrestlers being involved. It also saw Naoya Ogawa defeat Masaaki Satake in a match most people believed was worked. Ogawa is Antonio Inoki's protege and he's keeping Ogawa protected. Dave says it definitely helps Ogawa keep his name and star power in a highly publicized match, but it doesn't say a lot for PRIDE's credibility. There's also suspicion that Nobuhiko Takada's fight against Igor Vovchanchyn was somewhat worked. Takada lost, but Igor is one of the top ranked heavyweights in the world and Takada went nearly 2 full rounds with him. Most people suspect the finish wasn't worked, but that Igor was told to take it easy on him because Takada is still a big draw and they wanted him to look strong in defeat against a guy he had no chance with. There were several other wrestlers on the card as well. Inoki came out at intermission and announced he was putting together his own show at the Osaka Dome for New Year's Eve (this ends up being the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye show, which also sees Inoki come out of retirement for his final "match" ever. More on all this in a bit).
  
• Genichiro Tenryu, at age 51, defeated Toshiaki Kawada to win the tournament and be crowned AJPW's newest Triple Crown champion, filling the vacancy left over after previous champion Kobashi left for NOAH. This complicates the AJPW/NJPW angle. There's 2 Tokyo Dome shows coming up in January. The first is NJPW's Jan. 4th show and there's another one near the end of the month that's an AJPW show, but will have some NJPW involvement. But Motoko Baba wants to protect the champion because she's hoping AJPW will still survive after the NJPW angle is over. In the past, companies like UWFI and WAR were desperate to survive and started working with NJPW, only to be devoured by NJPW's booking and left to die after the angle ran its course. Mrs. Baba is hoping to avoid the same fate, so she's not going to let Tenryu work a NJPW show and lose (remember, at the last show, NJPW's champion Kensuke Sasaki lost to Kawada and they won't let that happen 2 times in a row). Now that he's not the champion, it frees Kawada up to have a rematch with Sasaki, where he will presumably return the favor and do the job, but it won't be to unify the titles anymore.
  

WATCH: Genichiro Tenryu vs. Toshiaki Kawada - AJPW Triple Crown Championship match

• Let's look at some various poll results. Every issue has results for the polls they run online every day or so. Usually I skip over these because they're boring but they're kinda interesting this week. "How should WCW handle the situation with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall" got 55% of voters saying Nash should be suspended for going off script on live TV. As for the future of ECW, 30% of voters think it won't last much longer, while most everyone else thinks it will struggle but continue to survive. Whoops. And finally, Bret Hart's greatest match was 35% for the match with Owen at WM10 and 33% for the match with Austin at WM13.
  
• Stan Hansen has an autobiography that was released in Japanese that is selling like crazy in Japan. Hansen is near the end of his career, but he's probably the most popular American wrestler in Japanese history and has been a top star there since the 70s. (Hansen had an English autobiography released in 2012 called The Last Outlaw. I'm not sure if it's the same book translated to English or if there's another one out there in Japanese from 12 years earlier).
  
• NOAH will hold tournaments early next year to crown their first heavyweight, tag team, and junior heavyweight champions.
  
• Shinya Hashimoto was pulled out of upcoming NJPW shows because they're apparently doing an angle where he is starting his own promotion, in order to do a feud with NJPW (turns out this wasn't an angle at all. Hashimoto really did get fired from NJPW around this time and started Pro Wrestling Zero-One. The real story there is murky and no one seems to know for sure exactly what led to his firing. I think he ended up doing one or two more matches for NJPW over the next year or so, but otherwise, this is the end of Hashimoto in NJPW).
  
• Dave recently had a chance to read the book "Bodyslams!" by former WCW ring announcer Gary Michael Cappetta and liked it. It's not better than Mick Foley's book or anything, but Dave gives it credit for accuracy. Mostly it glosses over a lot of the scandalous stuff and is more about Cappetta's personal experiences rather than giving much detail on what was happening in the business at the time. Dave thinks the book could have gone into more detail on the things going on behind the scenes in WCW during pivotal periods like when Jim Herd, Kip Frey, or Bill Watts was in charge. Overall, definitely better than The Rock's farce of a book but still lacking what made Foley's and Dynamite Kid's books so fascinating.
  
• Steve Allen, the famous comedian and first ever host of the Tonight Show, died last week at age 78. This is only relevant here because most recently, Allen has been one of the lead spokespeople for the PTC and has been one of the most vocal opponents of WWF programming. Ironically enough, early in his career, Allen worked on TV as a wrestling announcer in the 1950s, though he never took it seriously, and in 1990, he appeared at Wrestlemania 6.
  
• The documentary "Gaea Girls", which is about a young woman trying to get into Japanese women's wrestling, has been winning some awards and been admitted to some film festivals.
  

WATCH: Gaea Girls documentary

• "Walker: Texas Ranger" this week did an episode loosely based on Owen Hart's death. It's about a wrestler, in costume, who fell from the ceiling during a show. Although in the case of this show, it was a murder ordered by a ruthless promoter trying to take over the territory of another promoter, who's a kind, older guy. The obvious parallels were a more evil version of Vince McMahon and a gentler version of Stu Hart. Dave thought the episode sucked and also got really sad by it. Dave says he hasn't watched Over The Edge again since Owen's death and seeing it fictionally re-enacted for a TV show was really depressing.

WATCH: Walker: Texas Ranger re-enacts Owen Hart's death

• Scott Hall was arrested this week for probation violation while he was already in court for a child custody hearing. This charge stems from some 1998 case where he keyed up a limo outside a strip club in Orlando. At the time, Hall had been given probation and ordered to complete a bunch of community service by April of 2000. He never completed the community service, so....probation violation. Hall was in court with his estranged wife Dana and he filed for sole custody of their 2 children, claiming Dana is "emotionally and mentally unstable and an unfit parent" but then Hall got arrested at the courthouse and the hearing was postponed. Speaking of, Dana herself has had 2 contempt-of-court charges against her recently for refusing to let Hall have visitation with their kids when she was supposed to.
  
• PPV news: CMLL in Mexico is holding a big year end show in December and are negotiating for it to air on PPV in the U.S., which would be the first Lucha Libre PPV to air here since When Worlds Collide in 1994. And remember a few months back when a promoter in Australia brought in Dennis Rodman and a bunch of other kinda big name stars and ran a show? Well it will also air on PPV in the U.S. and Canada and Mexico next month. That show was headlined by Rodman vs. Curt Hennig which ended in a double-count out because apparently Rodman refused to do the job. Word is that show was terrible, like this year's version of Heroes of Wrestling, but Australia is so starved for live wrestling that the crowd heat was still off-the-charts.
  
• Juventud Guerrera worked an indie show in Puerto Rico and right now, he's trying to get hired in WWF, or at least stay out of trouble long enough to get rehired by WCW. Guerrera has reached out to WWF through friends he has there, but after what happened with him last month in Australia, WWF apparently isn't interested.
  
• The latest OVW show saw Nick Dinsmore win the OVW title from Rob Conway. On the same show, Brock Lesnar wrestled a dark match against former UFC fighter Ron Waterman. Lesnar won and hey, who knows, maybe he's got a future in beating up UFC fighters.
  
• Ted Dibiase and Nikita Koloff are on a church tour together where they wrestle matches against each other and then preach sermons or something.
  
• The lines between wrestling and MMA got blurrier this week when Atsushi Onita went to the PRIDE offices and met with their promoter. Onita then issued a challenge to Antonio Inoki for a match, saying he wants to retire (of course) and his last match has to be with Inoki. PRIDE officials put out a statement saying they wouldn't promote one of Onita's exploding barbed wire matches, but that they would gladly promote Inoki vs. Onita under PRIDE rules in their ring. Inoki responded, telling reporters that he's retired. There's rumor that Onita will be appearing at Inoki's New Year's Eve show to set up some kind of angle.
  
• Paul Heyman and Sabu have a court date scheduled for later this month over their issues. If you remember, Sabu left ECW to go try to go to WCW but his contract prevented it. Heyman then sued Sabu for breach of contract when he started working other shows (particularly for XPW). Meanwhile, Sabu has also filed some legal paperwork to try to get out of his contract, so hopefully that will all be settled soon.
  
• Speaking of ECW, there doesn't seem to be anything new happening on the TV front. Negotiations with USA have apparently stalled. So....not great news. The latest episode of ECW Hardcore TV shows the signs of how things are going. The in-ring action was good but the show is beginning to look more and more low-budget by the week, as the company continues struggling to stay afloat. The announcers weren't flown in (it was dubbed in later in post-production) and the lighting was terrible.
  
• Still nothing new on the sale of WCW but rumors are flying like crazy because everyone is paranoid. For the first time, in an interview, Linda McMahon acknowledged that it's true that WWF is in discussions to purchase WCW but word is no substantial progress has been made yet.
  
• Notes from Nitro: it was a sad episode because the crowd was tiny and it almost felt like a bad indie show, especially because the small crowd was pretty dead. It was a disaster, with a total of 1,454 fans in the building and only 768 of them paid. Even worse, they tried to paper it but only 33% of the free tickets that were given out were used. WCW literally can't even give this shit away. Ric Flair returned as the new CEO of WCW and got almost no pop at all from the crowd, then cut a boring promo. Dave thinks it's sad that this is where things have gotten for him. The greatest of all time, cutting middling promos in front of a small crowd for a dying company. Then Jarrett came out to talk and the mic went dead. The fans chanted for Scott Hall all through the Kronik/Palumbo & Stasiak match. Kevin Nash was on commentary but after last week, he was finally ordered to stop talking about Hall. So instead of mentioning Hall himself, when the crowd started chanting, Nash kept asking, "What are they chanting?" but the other announcers wouldn't acknowledge him.
  
• Thunder was taped immediately after Nitro and the only notable thing there was a Lance Storm vs. Norman Smiley match that was apparently so bad that Storm went on his website afterward and pre-emptively apologized to the fans for the match. As of press time, it hasn't aired yet so I guess we'll see (the 2000 Thunders aren't on the Network and I can't find this online, so no idea how bad it was or wasn't).
  
• Backstage morale in WCW isn't great, which probably goes without saying. Word is much of the crew, wrestlers and backstage employees alike, are so drained by all the negativity and sale rumors that everyone has pretty much mentally quit. They're all just going through the motions every week now while waiting to see what's going to happen with their jobs.
  
• Buff Bagwell did an interview with the Observer website a few days before the Halloween Havoc PPV and had plenty of interesting things to say. He ripped on Vince Russo for the way he booked himself along with guys like Luger and DDP and basically just how awful Russo's booking is. He also complained about WCW fining people for showing up late. He complained about not getting a big raise like everyone else got back in 1998 because he was out with a neck injury when Bischoff was giving raises and complained about being underpaid compared to all the other "A-talent" like himself. Talked about how screwed up WCW is, saying Lex Luger is being paid $1.3 million a year to do jobs for Hugh Morrus. "Are you kidding me? Hugh is a great guy and all that, but he's not A-talent. I love him to death, but he's never going to draw a dime. We're talking about drawing money and he's never going to draw a fuckin' dime. And Luger is putting him over at house shows? Nothing is adding up. I know for a fact that if they try to get me to job for (David) Flair at Havoc, I'm going to walk out the door. I'm not doing it." In response to all this, WCW put Hugh Morrus over big on Nitro while they had Bagwell job to Luger in 2 minutes on the same show. Well, at least someone in WCW gets punished for the shit they say.
  

IMPORTANT NOTE: For only the second time ever in writing these Rewinds, I have hit the 40,000 character limit. So once again, the rest of this Rewind will be posted in a comment below, so keep scrolling. Upvote it for visibility I guess?

Oklahoma City's event list.

Wednesday, Feb 12th

• All Hearts Headquarters - A Valentine's Week Pop Up (Kasum Contemporary Fine Art - Oklahoma City) Thru Fri, Feb 14th Start Time: 10:00am A week of local shopping leading up to Live! On The Plaza and Valentine's Day! 1706 NW 16th St. | Plaza District Feb 8th - 14th | 10am - 7pm Closed Monday Featuring: Ohclay okc Urban Elm Co. Now accepting vendor applications. $150 for the week. Tables and chairs available. Email [email protected]
• 🍴 Anthem Drown Night! (HiLo Club - Oklahoma City) Our local friends at Anthem Brewing Co. have some great beers! Every Wednesday night from 9pm to close enjoy $8 Drown Night! Their Power Pils will be flowing!
• 🎓 Breakout! Escape Room: Where in the World is Valentino Cupid? (The Village Library - The Village) Start Time: 4:00pm . Add it to your calendar. Add to Google Calendar Add to iCal Share This Event Let your friends know about this event! Share it on social media. Facebook Twitter Email Program Type: Science & STEAM Age Group: Teens Registration for this event will close on February 12, 2020 @ 4:00pm . There are 15 seats remaining. Event Description
• 🎭 Cabaret (Oklahoma Christian University, Edmond, OK - Edmond) Thru Fri, Feb 14th Start Time: 7:30pm Each year, OC students put on Cabaret, a musical performance featuring songs from various musicals. You're sure to have fun as they dance and sing their way through songs of love, joy, sadness, humor and happiness. Look for tickets in January! Directions: Once you arrive to campus, take the main entrance on Memorial Rd. Then, turn into the…
• Candygrams for a Cause (Downtown - Edmond) Thru Fri, Feb 14th Help the Downtown Edmond Business Association raise money for Free to Live Animal Sanctuary. Cost is $2 per candygram or 6 for $10. They can be purchased at Rumors Salon, Broadway Antiques, Michelle Schaefer Insurance, Mainstream Boutique and Silver Leaf Gems.
• 🎨 deadCenter Docs + Art Moves (Oklahoma City Museum of Art - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Feb 15th Start Time: 2:30pm Join us for our FREE series of deadCenter Documentaries! Screening at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. 01/24 | Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009 / 90 min) Director Bradley Beesley 02//28 | Beauty is Embarrassing (2012 / 88 min) Director Neil Berkeley 03//27 | Dealt (2017 / 85 min) Director Luke Korem 04//24 | Tower (2016 / 82 min) Director…
• FREE Team Trivia (Othello's of Norman - Norman) Start Time: 8:00pm Join us at Othello's every Wednesday for FREE Team Trivia! Hosted by Challenge Entertainment, every Wednesday the fun is at Othello's! Play solo or bring a team of friends. There is no cost to play. Prizes available for top three finishing teams.
• 🎨 Hearts for Art (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Thru Fri, Feb 14th Start Time: 12:00pm One day to celebrate love is not enough! Visit the Museum any time from February 1 – 14 and show your love for your favorite piece of art or artifact. Pick up a heart at the Visitor Services desk, leave it by your selection and share on social media using #MyWest and #HeartsForArt. While visiting, pick up the “Find the Love” guide, a…
• 🍴 Junction Coffee Wednesdays (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00am Wednesdays, 7am-3pm Junction Coffee will park its double-decker bus curbside at the Devon Lawn
• 😂 Nick Griffin (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2
• 🏆 Oklahoma men's basketball vs. Iowa State (The Lloyd Noble Center - Norman) Start Time: 2:00pm
• Reading Wednesday (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 10:00am Reading Wednesdays Every Wednesday, at 10 am The Visitor Center FREE Best for ages 2 to 5 NO READING WEDNESDAY ON DECEMBER 25 AND JANUARY 1 Bring your toddler for story time each Wednesday at 10 am. Books are nature-themed and selected based on the season. We’ll begin with an interactive song and children will enjoy creating a small craft…
• ♪ UCO Jazz Ensembles I and III in Concert (UCO Jazz Lab - Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm UCO Jazz Ensembles I and III perform; Midwest City HS will be guests. For more info, visit https://www.uco.edu/cfad/events
• Van Darien (The Deli - Norman) Start Time: 10:00pm
• Van Darien + Indianola // The Deli - Norman, OK // 2/12 (The Deli - Norman) Start Time: 7:00pm https://www.vandarien.com https://www.indianolamusic.com Heartbreakingly honest observations by Van Darien from her upcoming album, Levee. The 10-song LP, colored by moody baritone guitars, swelling pedal steel, thick booming drums, and haunting vocals, beckons a dreamscape of both beauty and darkness. Van Darien dives deep into her roots and…

Thursday, Feb 13th

• All Hearts Headquarters - A Valentine's Week Pop Up (Kasum Contemporary Fine Art - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 10:00am A week of local shopping leading up to Live! On The Plaza and Valentine's Day! 1706 NW 16th St. | Plaza District Feb 8th - 14th | 10am - 7pm Closed Monday Featuring: Ohclay okc Urban Elm Co. Now accepting vendor applications. $150 for the week. Tables and chairs available. Email [email protected]
• 🎭 Ballet Folclorico Nacional De Mexico De Silvia Lozano (Armstrong Auditorium - Edmond) Start Time: 7:30pm
• 🎭 Blood Wedding (Weitzenhoffer Theatre - Norman) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 8:00pm OU University Theatre and Helmerich School of Drama presentation. Federico Lorca’s passionate tragedy Blood Wedding, set in southern Spain, portrays the heated rivalry of two families, and the rivalry of two men for a woman struggling between the attraction of a wealthy fiancé and her ex-lover. When her decision to marry is governed by pride,…
• 🎭 Cabaret (Oklahoma Christian University, Edmond, OK - Edmond) 1 day left Start Time: 7:30pm Each year, OC students put on Cabaret, a musical performance featuring songs from various musicals. You're sure to have fun as they dance and sing their way through songs of love, joy, sadness, humor and happiness. Look for tickets in January! Directions: Once you arrive to campus, take the main entrance on Memorial Rd. Then, turn into the…
• Candygrams for a Cause (Downtown - Edmond) 1 day left Help the Downtown Edmond Business Association raise money for Free to Live Animal Sanctuary. Cost is $2 per candygram or 6 for $10. They can be purchased at Rumors Salon, Broadway Antiques, Michelle Schaefer Insurance, Mainstream Boutique and Silver Leaf Gems.
• Cupid’s Conservatory (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 12:00pm Thursday, February 13 & Friday, February 14, Noon-4pm Visitor Center, south entrance Need a special gift for your Valentine? Shop for delicious treats like Bedré Chocolates, as well as local gifts, in the Crystal Bridge Visitor Center. Your gift purchases will enter you into a drawing for a giveaway prize.
• 🎭 Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Live! in Oklahoma City, OK (RSC @ OKC Innovation Station - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 3:30pm Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Live! Neighbor Day “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Daniel Tiger and all of his friends from the beloved PBS KIDS television series are hopping aboard Trolley to your town with DANIEL TIGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD LIVE! Along with “O” the Owl, Katerina Kittycat, Prince Wednesday, Mom and Dad Tiger and many more, Daniel…
• 🎓 Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Live! Neighbor Day (Rose State College Hudiburg Chevrolet Center - Midwest City) Start Time: 7:00pm Tickets are $25, $37.50, $50 & $75* | $5 increase day of show VIP tickets include the best seats in the house and a post-show meet and greet with the characters. *Ages 1 & up require a ticket Tickets are available by calling 405-297-2264 or in person at the Civic Center Box Office To RSVP to the official Facebook event and for special pre-sale…
• 🎨 deadCenter Docs + Art Moves (Oklahoma City Museum of Art - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Feb 15th Start Time: 2:30pm Join us for our FREE series of deadCenter Documentaries! Screening at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. 01/24 | Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009 / 90 min) Director Bradley Beesley 02//28 | Beauty is Embarrassing (2012 / 88 min) Director Neil Berkeley 03//27 | Dealt (2017 / 85 min) Director Luke Korem 04//24 | Tower (2016 / 82 min) Director…
• Fifty-First RV Super Show (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Oklahoma City's Top RV Dealers host the 51st Annual RV Super Show at the State Fair Park. This family friendly event will feature America's top RV brands with both towable and motorized--all at low show pricing along with tow vehicles & Powersports vehicles. Also on display
• 🎭 Green Jello LIVE (Your Mom's Place - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm Headliner: Green Jelly Main Support: Corkscrew Nosedive
• 🎨 Hearts for Art (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 12:00pm One day to celebrate love is not enough! Visit the Museum any time from February 1 – 14 and show your love for your favorite piece of art or artifact. Pick up a heart at the Visitor Services desk, leave it by your selection and share on social media using #MyWest and #HeartsForArt. While visiting, pick up the “Find the Love” guide, a…
• 😂 Nick Griffin (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2
• Romeo & Juliet (Oklahoma Shakespeare In The Park - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 8:00pm What if your first true love was someone youd been told to hate? Two young people torn apart by a divided society and forbidden love will risk everything to be together. The most famous story of love at first sight explodes with intense passion and an irresistible desire for change. Will this spark a civil war, or will division continue to tear…

Friday, Feb 14th

• All Hearts Headquarters - A Valentine's Week Pop Up (Kasum Contemporary Fine Art - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 10:00am A week of local shopping leading up to Live! On The Plaza and Valentine's Day! 1706 NW 16th St. | Plaza District Feb 8th - 14th | 10am - 7pm Closed Monday Featuring: Ohclay okc Urban Elm Co. Now accepting vendor applications. $150 for the week. Tables and chairs available. Email [email protected]
• 🎭 Blood Wedding (Weitzenhoffer Theatre - Norman) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 8:00pm OU University Theatre and Helmerich School of Drama presentation. Federico Lorca’s passionate tragedy Blood Wedding, set in southern Spain, portrays the heated rivalry of two families, and the rivalry of two men for a woman struggling between the attraction of a wealthy fiancé and her ex-lover. When her decision to marry is governed by pride,…
• 🎭 Broadway Tonight: 10 Hairy Legs 2/14/2020 7:30 PM (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) Start Time: 7:30pm We are thrilled to welcome 10 Hairy Legs, an all-male repertory dance company performing exquisite works from some of the most well-known choreographers in modern dance today. The company strives to advance the understanding of the male role in dance through the creation, acquisition and performance of exceptional work. 10 Hairy Legs will be…
• 🎭 Cabaret (Oklahoma Christian University, Edmond, OK - Edmond) Last Day Start Time: 7:30pm Each year, OC students put on Cabaret, a musical performance featuring songs from various musicals. You're sure to have fun as they dance and sing their way through songs of love, joy, sadness, humor and happiness. Look for tickets in January! Directions: Once you arrive to campus, take the main entrance on Memorial Rd. Then, turn into the…
• Candygrams for a Cause (Downtown - Edmond) Last Day Help the Downtown Edmond Business Association raise money for Free to Live Animal Sanctuary. Cost is $2 per candygram or 6 for $10. They can be purchased at Rumors Salon, Broadway Antiques, Michelle Schaefer Insurance, Mainstream Boutique and Silver Leaf Gems.
• 🎭 CityRep's Sexy Laundry (Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 7:30pm
• Cupid’s Conservatory (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 12:00pm Thursday, February 13 & Friday, February 14, Noon-4pm Visitor Center, south entrance Need a special gift for your Valentine? Shop for delicious treats like Bedré Chocolates, as well as local gifts, in the Crystal Bridge Visitor Center. Your gift purchases will enter you into a drawing for a giveaway prize.
• 🎨 deadCenter Docs + Art Moves (Oklahoma City Museum of Art - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 2:30pm Join us for our FREE series of deadCenter Documentaries! Screening at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. 01/24 | Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009 / 90 min) Director Bradley Beesley 02//28 | Beauty is Embarrassing (2012 / 88 min) Director Neil Berkeley 03//27 | Dealt (2017 / 85 min) Director Luke Korem 04//24 | Tower (2016 / 82 min) Director…
• 😂 Driving Miss Daisy (Pollard Theatre - Guthrie) by Alfred Uhry
• Fifty-First RV Super Show (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Oklahoma City's Top RV Dealers host the 51st Annual RV Super Show at the State Fair Park. This family friendly event will feature America's top RV brands with both towable and motorized--all at low show pricing along with tow vehicles & Powersports vehicles. Also on display
• 🎨 Gallery Reception - Lauren Midgley - "A Thin Place" (The Depot - Norman) Start Time: 6:00pm Lauren Midgley is a self-taught photographer and photoshop enthusiast. She studied fine arts at Texas Tech University and began her journey with photography in 2015 with her chosen focus being Conceptual Fine Art Photography. In her exploration of photography as an artistic medium, she says she found herself "increasingly frustrated and limited…
• 🎭 The Great American Trailer Park Musical (The Boom - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
• 🎨 Hearts for Art (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 12:00pm One day to celebrate love is not enough! Visit the Museum any time from February 1 – 14 and show your love for your favorite piece of art or artifact. Pick up a heart at the Visitor Services desk, leave it by your selection and share on social media using #MyWest and #HeartsForArt. While visiting, pick up the “Find the Love” guide, a…
• Jon Wolfe (Diamond Ballroom - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Come spend Valentine's Day with us! See y'all on Feb. 14. Get your tickets early!
• LIVE! on the Plaza: LOVE on the Plaza (Plaza District - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:00pm LIVE! on the Plaza is the Plaza District's free & monthly artwalk featuring art shows, live entertainment, great food and local shopping. Join us as we celebrate one of Oklahoma City's best monthly festivals!
  More details to be announced!
  Join the Friends of the Plaza VIP experience: The Friends of the Plaza are the Plaza District’s…
  
• Mix-Tape V-Day Bash! (Factory Obscura - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm JOIN FACTORY OBSCURA FOR THE BIGGEST VALENTINE’S BASH IN OKC
  On February 14, we’ve conjured up a mix of musicians and songwriters, poets and movement artists, brew masters, and more into a celebration of collaboration and feel-good fun.
  Rock out to 4 live bands on our Wonder Stage performing original songs inspired by the Mix-Tape…
  
• OKC Ballet's Romeo & Juliet (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Thru Sun, Feb 16th Tickets are now on sale for Oklahoma City Ballet’s production of Romeo & Juliet. Let Oklahoma City Ballet romance you with the greatest love story ever told this Valentine's Day weekend.
  With four performances at the Civic Center Music Hall February 14-16, this rich theatrical experience is packed with edge-of-your-seat sword fights and…
  
• 🎓 Oklahoma Hospitality Club (Gaillardia Country Club - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 12:00pm New Members contact: [email protected]
  
• 😂 Open Mic Night (Don Quixote Club - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm Every Friday is Open Mic Comedy at Don Quixote's! Laugh with local talent as they hone their skills. Are you funny? Sign up at 7:30. See you this week!
  
• ♪ Othello's Sessions (Othello's of Norman - Norman) Start Time: 8:30pm Othello’s Sessions takes place at Othello’s of Norman, an intimate little Italian restaurant tucked away in Campus Corner on Buchanan Ave. Within walking distance of other popular places such as The Deli and Second Wind Coffeehouse, Othello’s offers one of the most immersive live music experiences in the area. Othello’s Sessions features…
  
• Romeo & Juliet (Oklahoma Shakespeare In The Park - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 8:00pm What if your first true love was someone youd been told to hate? Two young people torn apart by a divided society and forbidden love will risk everything to be together. The most famous story of love at first sight explodes with intense passion and an irresistible desire for change. Will this spark a civil war, or will division continue to tear…
  
• Oklahoma City Spring Remodel & Landscape Show (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 2:00pm Welcome to the Oklahoma City Spring Remodel and Landscape Show. This comprehensive home show brings together homeowners and the most knowledgeable and experienced remodeling and building experts. Professionals will be on hand to share their valuable knowledge and bring your ideas to life - or inspire new ones! See the Latest Innovations and…
  
• 😂 Sweetheart Ball (Renaissance Waterford Hotel - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:00pm The Annual Sweetheart Ball is back! For 13 straight years the Eye To Eye Marriage Enrichment Community (E2E) team has created space each February for married and engaged couples (diverse in ethnicity, age, and years married) to pause and enjoy an evening of fun and romance, a tradition that started two decades ago. The last Sweetheart Ball was…
  
• 😂 Valentine's Day- OKC (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City)
  
• Valentine's Day with Phil Keaggy (UCO Jazz Lab - Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm Phil Keaggy is coming to the UCO Jazz Lab in Edmond, Oklahoma Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14, 2020 at 7pm! One of the greatest musicians of all time with a most inspiring story. He has recorded over 50 albums and worked with countless top industry professionals. Twice nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Gospel Album and seven time…
  
• Valentine's Day with Phil Keaggy at the Jazz Lab (University of Central Oklahoma - Edmond) Start Time: 7:00pm Phil Keaggy is coming to the UCO Jazz Lab in Edmond, Oklahoma Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14, 2020 at 7pm! One of the greatest musicians of all time with a most inspiring story. He has recorded over 50 albums and worked with countless top industry professionals. Twice nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Gospel Album and seven time…
  
• 🎨 William Shatner (Riverwind Casino - Norman) Start Time: 6:00pm Set your phasers to stun! Prepare to be beamed up for an unforgettable night with William Shatner, live on stage. In this unique evening, you’ll enjoy a screening of the classic film “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” on the big screen. Following the movie, one of Hollywood’s most recognizable figures, William Shatner, will take to the…
  

Saturday, Feb 15th

• 🏆 Central OK: University of Central Oklahoma Men's Basketball vs Newman (Edmond) Start Time: 3:30pm University of Central Oklahoma Men's Basketball vs Newman https://www.bronchosports.com/calendar.aspx?id=6517
• 🏆 Central OK: University of Central Oklahoma Women's Basketball vs Newman (Edmond) Start Time: 1:30pm University of Central Oklahoma Women's Basketball vs Newman https://www.bronchosports.com/calendar.aspx?id=6547
• 🎭 CityRep's Sexy Laundry (Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 7:30pm
• 🎨 deadCenter Docs + Art Moves (Oklahoma City Museum of Art - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 2:30pm Join us for our FREE series of deadCenter Documentaries! Screening at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. 01/24 | Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009 / 90 min) Director Bradley Beesley 02//28 | Beauty is Embarrassing (2012 / 88 min) Director Neil Berkeley 03//27 | Dealt (2017 / 85 min) Director Luke Korem 04//24 | Tower (2016 / 82 min) Director…
• The Great Backyard Bird Count (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 10:00am Saturday, February 15, 10 – 11:30 am The Garden Classroom and Garden Grounds Member $4; Nonmember $6 Best for families Register by Tuesday, February 11 REGISTER HERE Count birds in the “backyard” of Myriad Botanical Gardens and join scientists and bird watchers all over the world for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count. We’ll learn how…
• 🎨 In the Direction of the Sun - Art Exhibit Opening Reception (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 1:00pm
• Monster Jam - Arena Post Show Driver Meet & Greet (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 1:00pm Attend a private post-show driver meet and greet event with the chance to talk to the drivers, take photos and get autographs. The interactive experience includes:
  Access to post-show meed and greet event in designated venue event space - event will occur immediately after the post-show
  Meet and greet opportunites with the chance to take…
  
• 🏆 Monster Jam Triple Threat Series (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 1:00pm Monster Jam Triple Threat Series® offers the ultimate mix of action and excitement in six different competitions. World-class athletes tear up the dirt in Monster Jam trucks, speedsters and ATVs. They compete head-to-head for points in challenging Racing and Freestyle events testing their agility, speed and versatility. This is the big leagues…
  
• 😂 Nick Griffin (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City)
  
• OKC Ballet's Romeo & Juliet (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Tickets are now on sale for Oklahoma City Ballet’s production of Romeo & Juliet. Let Oklahoma City Ballet romance you with the greatest love story ever told this Valentine's Day weekend.
  With four performances at the Civic Center Music Hall February 14-16, this rich theatrical experience is packed with edge-of-your-seat sword fights and…
  
• Oklahoma City Spring Remodel & Landscape Show (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 2:00pm Welcome to the Oklahoma City Spring Remodel and Landscape Show. This comprehensive home show brings together homeowners and the most knowledgeable and experienced remodeling and building experts. Professionals will be on hand to share their valuable knowledge and bring your ideas to life - or inspire new ones! See the Latest Innovations and…
  

Sunday, Feb 16th

• Monster Jam - Arena Post Show Driver Meet & Greet (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 1:00pm Attend a private post-show driver meet and greet event with the chance to talk to the drivers, take photos and get autographs. The interactive experience includes:
  Access to post-show meed and greet event in designated venue event space - event will occur immediately after the post-show
  Meet and greet opportunites with the chance to take…
  
• Monster Jam Pit Party: Pit Pass (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 1:00pm PIT PASS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY 1:00 pm EVENT TICKET! The Pit Party is a pre-show event taking place from 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM. Ages 2 & up require a ticket.
  At the Monster Jam® Pit Party, you can see the massive trucks up close, meet your favorite drivers and crews, get autographs, take pictures and enjoy other family-friendly activities. It's…
  
• 🏆 Monster Jam Triple Threat Series (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 1:00pm Monster Jam Triple Threat Series® offers the ultimate mix of action and excitement in six different competitions. World-class athletes tear up the dirt in Monster Jam trucks, speedsters and ATVs. They compete head-to-head for points in challenging Racing and Freestyle events testing their agility, speed and versatility. This is the big leagues…
  
• OKC Ballet's Romeo & Juliet (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Last Day Tickets are now on sale for Oklahoma City Ballet’s production of Romeo & Juliet. Let Oklahoma City Ballet romance you with the greatest love story ever told this Valentine's Day weekend.
  With four performances at the Civic Center Music Hall February 14-16, this rich theatrical experience is packed with edge-of-your-seat sword fights and…
  

Monday, Feb 17th

I was unable to find any published events for Feb 17th.

Tuesday, Feb 18th

I was unable to find any published events for Feb 18th.

See Also

• OK Gamers
• Techlahoma