Ask Me Anything #2: Legendary Sweater (Patreon)

“So, what do I do? Just grab the questions from the box and answer them to the camera?” asked the tigress as she adjusted her red sweater and sat down in the chair that was set up in front of a very complicated camera right in the middle of a white void of a studio. The lights were blindingly bright and the part of the soundstage that was used as the setting for these interviews was spotless; not even a dirty shoeprint anywhere. Once she was sat down in the chair, she was told to look into the camera and smile. Her green eyes locked to the Zeiss glass and her lips pursed into a smile that showed off the smaller pearly whites she had hidden behind them. 

“Alright, are we all ready?” said one of the producers who stepped out from behind the camera to stand right beside it but out of frame.  

The tigress nodded, “Yeah! I’m ready! These questions should be a breeze.” The tigress reached over to the box and tried to pick it up before she realized it was glued to the little podium it sat on. 

“Just introduce yourself, the show, then reach in there, pull out questions, and answer them! Also, don’t forget to plug whatever you have going on at the end, too!” one of the producers guided her through the key points and things that she had to do. The striped cat nodded and smiled at the producer. “Okie Dokie!”

The producer turned to the camera operator and gave him to go ahead to start filming. A few seconds later, a production assistant came to the camera and held a clapperboard up to it, “Alex Marx the Spot Questions in a Box, rolling,” the clapper board clapped and the producer gestured her hand in a signal for Alex to start. 

The tigress smiled into the camera and waved. “Hi, I’m Alex Marx the Spot, and this is Questions in a Box! These guys asked you all to send me a bunch of questions on Twitter, and here I am answering them!” Alex looked off to the side at the producer and raised her brows. “So how many do I answer? 10? 10… Okay.” She then looked back into the camera and shrugged her shoulders playfully, “Let’s see what sort of curiosities you guys are having about me.”

Alex furrowed her brow at the camera as she reached into the black cardboard box with a hole cut in the top of it. “Here we go…” the tigress reached her hand all the way into it and swished her hand around to mix up the small pieces of paper with questions from her fans printed on them. She sifted through the pieces of paper blindly for a few seconds and stuck her tongue out a little bit as she randomly grasped for the lucky question. With one piece of folded paper wedged in between two of her fingers, she pulled her hand out of the box and unfolded the paper to reveal the question. 

As she unfolded the paper, there was a voice from off camera that said. “Just read the person’s name, then the question,”

Alex looked up from the paper to the person off-camera and smiled. “Okay, got it.” Her green eyes looked right into the camera and she giggled a bit before she looked down at the paper in her hand to read it. “First question is from AlexMarxStan76, they said, ‘New album when?’.” The tigress let out a soft laugh once she read the question, she then folded the paper back into her hand and looked straight into the camera. 

“My new album just came out yesterday! Or yesterday from when we’re filming this video… I have no idea when this comes out… But yes! My new album just came out, so another new one will be a while from now. Calm down, enjoy the album, listen to it on repeat, over and over and over and over and over.” Alex laughed again before she dropped the folded piece of paper from her hand the way someone would drop a microphone on stage. She then reached into the box again to grab a second question from it. 

“Second question, from EyeLoveLemons, ‘Did you come up with your stage name yourself?’ What was the story behind it?” Alex smiled while she read the question and was very excited to give her answer. “I did! I am very proud of it because it is a very clever play on words, and anyone who says it’s not cool is lying.” The tigress chuckled. “I came up with it when I heard the line ‘x always marks the spot’. I think it was in Pirates of the Caribbean. And I laughed at how it sounded like my name, so I wrote it down and thought it was so good and had to use it. I sat on it for years though, I was still in school at the time so I was doing a lot of math homework and not a lot of music.” She chuckled. She tossed the piece of paper up in the air and stared at the audience through the camera. “Next question…!” The piece of paper fell down and landed on her head, which caused Alex to shake her head to get it to fall away. 

Alex continued to answer questions about her past projects, upcoming projects, her personal life, and many more. She told jokes and made puns, some of which landed so well that the producers and camera operators laughed, and some ended with awkward and cringe-inducing silence. Some of her own puns made had her cringing, too, “This is going in the cringe compilation… I’m so doomed.” Despite her self-inflicted cringe, she still laughed and reached her hand into the box for another question. She moved her hand around the bottom of the box, the sound of paper sloshing around echoed throughout the room for close to half a minute before she pulled her hand out and read the question printed on it. She cleared her throat before reading it aloud. 

“This one’s from Church Sparkchaser, he asks, ‘Is there a story behind your red sweater, or is it just something you found while shopping one day?’” The tigress smiled wide and clapped her hands together as she stared into the camera. “Coincidentally, the producers told me to wear this today, hahaha, is this why you told me to wear it?” Alex looked off to the side at the producer before she looked back into the camera. “I would have worn it anyway, it’s literally my favorite thing to wear. There isn’t really an exciting story behind it, but I found this red sweater browsing Esprit one day. It was so soft, warm, and cozy when I tried it on in the fitting room, I had to buy it!” She looked down at the red sweater she was wearing and picked the small pieces of lint and dust off from it before she continued. “It’s my only one, and it’s a couple of years old, but it still looks just like the day I bought it. I’ve spilled so much stuff on it you don’t even want to know. Coke, tea, coffee, mayonnaise, everything.” The tigress let out a heartfelt chuckle. Once it seemed like she was done with the question, the tigress’s ears perked up and she looked off camera again as the producer asked a follow-up question. 

“So how much did you pay for the sweater?” 

“How impressed will you guys be if I can remember the exact price that I paid for this?” the tigress raised her brows and let out a laugh as she looked at the producer, then the camera, then the cameraman behind the camera, and the production assistant. 

“There’s no way you remember the exact amount.” The producer said and shook their head. 

Alex turned to look straight into the camera and with a wide grin spread across her lips, pulled at the collar of her turtleneck sweater a few times. “$19.99… I gave them a $20 bill and got 1 cent back as change.” The look on the producer’s, cameraman’s, and production assistant’s faces varied from disbelief to impressed. “And you guys can’t fact-check this because Esprit doesn’t sell them anymore. If anyone at Esprit is watching this, hit me up, please, let’s collab!” she joked. 

Alex then noticed the producer pull up their phone off-camera and chuckled. “Guys, they’re fact-checking me, I feel so so so offended.” She laughed. After a few moments, the producer put their phone down and Alex called out to them. “So how much was it?” 

In a slightly defeated tone, the producer responded, “$19.99.” 

“See? I told you! I’m bad at math but I can remember the price I pay for things…” Alex winked into the camera before breaking out into a fit of satisfied laughter. 

“And that’s 10 questions! Thank you guys for watching and asking such nice questions. My new album ‘I Fuck on the First Date’ is out now everywhere, and you can watch the documentary they made about me, Stripe of Life on Netflix on July 22nd! You can come see me on tour this summer, tickets are available now! And subscribe to this channel for more videos just like this! Thanks for having me on and I hope to see you all soon!!” The tigress blew a kiss toward the camera and waved. 

“And cut! That’s a wrap!” 

Alex clapped, too, and let out a happy sigh before she looked to the producer, “You’re going to have to bleep out the entire name of my record in the video, aren’t you?”

“Hah, probably…” replied the producer.  

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Art by Nelly63 (main AMA art) and Sogolina (album artwork)