Simon's total stage time at Madonna's June 23 concert was under twenty minutes, yet it gave the media enough fuel to hype nonstop for an entire week.
The flame guitar from the opening, without a doubt, became the number-one obsession for fans.
The concert wasn't even over that night before people started digging for the origin of the guitar in Simon's hands.
The Los Angeles Times got detailed information on the flame guitar almost immediately. They even interviewed members of the build team, and what they revealed made most gearheads back off on the spot.
Leaving aside the price tag of over $100,000 and the fact that Westeros had filed a design patent, even if someone somehow copied it, the weight alone was enough to break most people.
That night, the flame guitar looked effortless in Simon's hands, but because it had a fully metal flame system installed and a body far larger than a normal guitar, it weighed over twenty kilograms. A regular guitar rarely topped five.
Sure, most people could lift a twenty-kilogram object.
But for an instrument, that kind of weight, even with a strap, meant almost no guitarist could truly perform freely while fighting that constant drag.
Unless they sat down.
And who was going to sit there, hugging a domineering double-neck flame guitar like it was some delicate acoustic?
Just imagining it felt humiliating.
Of course, even with all those obstacles, it didn't stop people from wanting it.
Afterward, requests poured in through every channel to buy the guitar. The highest offer even reached three million dollars, but Simon refused them all. Janet already planned to display it in their soon-to-be-finished Point Dume estate.
Because of the flame guitar, some outlets circled back to Simon's frightening physical strength, dragging out the video of his ten straight knockouts at a Melbourne boxing ring earlier this year for another round of headlines.
The flame guitar itself was unreachable for most people.
But the single "Fire" hit shelves the following Monday, and in just five days it sold over one million copies.
The other two new songs, "Hung Up" and "American Pie," Madonna planned to release on her next album. So if fans wanted them early, they could only wait for the concert videotape due out soon.
Of course, a large portion of people had simply recorded the broadcast on home VCRs.
Aside from Madonna's team, the biggest beneficiary of this concert was ABC, which had paid a fortune for the broadcast rights. Their six-million-dollar bid delivered an average audience of thirty-six million and a peak of forty-three million.
Those numbers were on par with the Oscars.
But for the Oscars, six million dollars was not even a fantasy.
Despite the windfall, everyone also understood that this concert was packed with factors that could not be replicated.
To protect ticket sales, most stars would never casually allow live TV broadcasts. It might bring a short-term payout, but it would also crush fans' motivation to buy seats and show up in person.
Madonna's team knew that. They chose to broadcast mainly for promotional value.
This time, the results far exceeded expectations.
After the concert, even though Simon would not appear again, tickets for Madonna's remaining North American and European dates sold out completely within days.
Of course, blazing media attention always came with controversy.
The petite girl named Jennifer who rushed the stage during Simon's final appearance was, for a while, suspected by many outlets to be a planted extra.
As for why?
A lot of people felt the scene was simply too perfect.
A doll-like beautiful girl.
Westeros soothing her with flawless timing.
And then Don McLean "American Pie" [TL/N: American Pie came out in 2020. Simon originally sang "Rocket Man," but it didn't fit earlier, so I adapted like Mahogara and changed it to "American Pie."]
It was "American Pie" that became the biggest so-called "bug" the skeptics pointed at.
In a commercial concert, any song, not just a cover but sometimes even an artist's own original, could require special clearance.
If Simon Westeros had not secured permission from Don McLean and the rights holder for "American Pie" beforehand, then singing it onstage would be infringement, and he could be sued.
But the news that followed, one by one, shattered the doubts.
The whole incident really was an accident.
Jennifer Brey, a seventeen-year-old girl from Florida, had no real connection to Simon beyond being a wildly devoted fan. That night was the first time she had ever seen him in person.
As for "American Pie"…
Simon had, in fact, infringed.
But Madonna's team contacted Don McLean and the label that held the rights immediately after the show.
Once they learned the circumstances and received a licensing payment, everyone involved expressed understanding.
In a media interview, Don McLean even praised Simon's performance and said he hoped they could collaborate someday.
And when "American Pie," a song released last year, surged up the singles charts the following week to second place right behind "Fire," the rights holders were simply thrilled beyond words.
After singing "American Pie," Simon brought Jennifer Brey backstage, and the petite girl quickly became a media target. Reporters dug up everything they could, what should have been public and what never should have been.
Jennifer Brey came from Miami, Florida, a normal middle-class family. Her father worked at a food company, her mother was a nurse, and she had an older brother and a younger sister. The girl fell in love with Simon starting with Run Lola Run. She worked odd jobs for years, saving every dollar, then spent it all on that one concert ticket.
She traveled alone by train from Miami to New York, waited outside Brendan Byrne Arena all day, pockets empty, with nowhere even planned to sleep after the show.
That night, after the song, Simon originally meant to send her back down. But he sensed she was not mentally stable, and then realized she was alone, so he took her backstage. Once he learned her situation, he arranged a hotel for her and a plane ticket back to Miami.
That was all.
After doing what he believed he should do, sending a young woman home safely, Simon stopped thinking about it.
But the media, overflowing with gossip, did not stop.
Some speculated that something had happened that night. Some chased every tiny detail of her contact with Simon. There were even talent agencies that tried to sign the girl.
None of that had anything to do with Simon.
The day after the concert ended, he left North America and flew to Australia.
Cersei Fund Management had already begun a new phase of positioning in the global oil market. Apollo Management was moving forward with the Simmons acquisition. BlackRock Asset Management was also planning a bottom-fishing operation when the war sent global markets into chaos.
You could say the coming July was critical for Cersei Capital, so Janet did not return to Australia with Simon this time.
Jennifer traveled with him as planned.
Over this period, the assistant personally oversaw the construction of a lakeside cabin on Simon's Tasmania land, waiting for the right snowy day to finally have the long-awaited time alone with him.
In Melbourne, one week before Simon arrived in Australia, Batman: The Dark Knight officially began filming.
Given the benefits Batman had brought to Melbourne in film, tourism, and employment, Batman: The Dark Knight received even more favorable terms this time. The tax rebate rate increased from 15% to 20%, and there were still no additional restrictive conditions tied to other productions.
Simon didn't exploit Melbourne's looseness by gaming the system. Instead, he shifted even more of the production process to Australia. He even bought the abandoned factory used for filming in Melbourne's western suburbs last time, planning to build it into a dedicated production base.
Daenerys Visual Effects Australia was also officially established.
As for the shoot itself, fans might have grumbled about Simon appointing Jan de Bont, but in practice, it was exactly as Daenerys and Warner had publicly stated. The control of the film remained firmly in Simon's hands.
The script was personally approved by Simon. Unless someone could convince him, Jan de Bont had no authority to change it.
And the crew was entirely the team Simon had personally trained on the first film. That was enough to ensure technical continuity with the original.
Moreover, while Jan de Bont was the nominal director, Simon assigned him two additional deputies: Roland Emmerich and Martin Campbell. All three would later become top-tier Hollywood directors, already possessing ample production experience, and their talent was beyond question.
Simon's requirement was simple. They would work closely, and most decisions would be discussed together before being executed.
With minds combined, even though the final on-set call belonged to Jan de Bont, Simon believed de Bont, who treasured this opportunity, would not refuse to absorb the right suggestions from the other two.
In addition, Simon once again invited Joel Silver to serve as the producer responsible for logistics and support on Batman: The Dark Knight.
With all these advantages in place, if Jan de Bont still managed to ruin the film, Simon would kick him out without hesitation.
In reality, Jan de Bont was not kicked out.
Simon arrived in Melbourne, carefully reviewed the footage from the crew's first week, and felt confident enough to act as a hands-off boss.
Of course, in media coverage, to calm fans' worries about quality, Simon was still portrayed as "diligently" following production every step of the way.
Before anyone realized it, time moved quickly into July 1990.
Even with Simon away from Los Angeles, Daenerys Entertainment continued on schedule with its first-half financial audit work, and Janet occasionally helped juggle it as well.
And it wasn't only Daenerys Entertainment. Because of the attention sparked by Simon's concert appearance, some outlets listed it all out and realized that since the summer of 1986, when Simon Westeros first stepped into Los Angeles, in only four years he had built an enormous business empire.
The entire Westeros system, with Westeros Company at its core, spanned four major fields: entertainment, fashion, technology, and finance.
What was even rarer was that in every one of those four fields, he wasn't playing in the shallow end.
The brightest jewel, Daenerys Entertainment, still limited its scope to films and related merchandise, yet in only a few years it had already risen into the ranks of giants.
The industry's curse of extreme uncertainty and unsustainability had been broken by Daenerys Entertainment.
From its founding to now, Daenerys Entertainment had never suffered a major loss on a film project. Instead, it repeatedly turned small bets into massive wins, creating box office miracles like Scream, The Sixth Sense, and Pretty Woman.
The launch of the DC film universe showed the industry an entirely new path of growth.
In fashion, Gucci, once nearly bankrupt, revived rapidly after Simon Westeros took it over. Recently, industry valuations had already placed Gucci above one billion dollars. Compared to the original investment, Simon Westeros had already achieved multiple times the return in equity value alone.
Technology was the field Simon Westeros had made his earliest large-scale bet on.
Even though Ygritte, one of Westeros's four "women," still looked small, the companies Westeros had backed during the 1987 crash, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SUN, and others, had all seen their stock prices rise rapidly in recent years.
Especially Microsoft.
Since Windows 3.0 launched in May and became a major success, Microsoft's market value had continued to climb sharply, now exceeding five billion dollars and closing in on its close partner Intel.
Some analysts even predicted that by August, Microsoft's market cap could double compared to the roughly three billion level at the start of the year.
So even without counting profits from buying Microsoft during the crash, just the additional ten percent stake purchased last year could, in under a year, deliver close to a one-hundred-percent paper return for Westeros.
Finally, finance.
Cersei Capital became famous through two operations last year, one in Japan's financial markets and one in the U.S. bond market. Then early this year, the exposure of Simon Westeros's $4.5 billion in offshore cash reserves shocked the world.
Even though it tried to stay low-key, Cersei Capital's every move kept sending ripples through Wall Street.
Cersei Capital's positioning in the global oil market was not a secret from the beginning.
Fortunately, the firms able to dig out information on Cersei Capital weren't fools. Quietly following was the way to win. They didn't spread the information around, and some even helped cover, which kept Cersei from becoming completely transparent to the public.
After rough estimates, the combined market value of the entertainment, fashion, technology, and financial companies the Westeros system touched had already exceeded fifty billion dollars.
In this era, even General Electric, often ranked near the top of the Fortune 500, still had a market value under fifty billion.
July in the Northern Hemisphere meant blazing summer.
In the Southern Hemisphere, it was the deepest, coldest stage of winter.
Melbourne had an oceanic temperate climate, and it basically never snowed in winter. Tasmania's coastal areas were similar, but once you went tens of kilometers inland, it became a completely different world.
In the second week of July.
When a heavy snowfall finally blanketed the area where Jennifer had built the cabin, the two of them went there together.