BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #40:

 

Q: How do I unlock Next Level Tightness?

A: Oh, that's easy, friend! All you have to do is produce and distribute a long-running super robot mecha OVA centered around a towering super robot created in the image of Rex Harrison. The gargantuan Rex Harrison mech is piloted by William Shatner. Whenever Shatner needs to do his 'speak-singing' routine he just hops inside the Harrison mech and his speak-singing powers are amplified into the Cosmic Love Limit Zone which is truly a big deal. Shatner is able to end wars, vanquish amorphous demons embodying cosmic evil, and even get invited to perform at prestigious industry award ceremonies, events, fundraisers, and promotions. So, my dear friend, do all of this, and you will surely unlock next level tightness!

BONUS: If the production of this OVA entails lots of drama; shady financial backers; tectonic shifts in creative direction; chaotic turnover of creative leads and core staff; a grotesquely protracted production timeline; and a storyline which, in the end, remains tantalizingly incomplete despite a release schedule stretching across no less than two decades . . . then congratulations. Because then you will have unlocked Meta-Tightness!

MOVIE REVIEW: THE PORNOGRAPHERS (1966)

 

Directed by Shohei Imamura

Written by Shohei Imamura and Koji Numata

Adapted from a novel by Akiyuki Nozaka

Cinematography by Shinsaku Himeda

Edited by Matsuo Tanji

Art Directed by Hiromi Shiozawi and Ichiro Takada

Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi

Produced by Shohei Imamura, Jiro Tomoda, and Issei Yamamoto

Starring

Shoichi Ozawa as Subu

Sumiko Sakamoto as Haru

Keiko Sakawa as Keiko

Masaomi Kondo as Koichi

. . .

"I thought an orgy would cheer me up."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Subu is an Osaka-based pornographer-pimp-orgy-booker-aphrodisiac-peddler. He shoots fuck flicks. He arranges private screenings. He writes and self-publishes dirty books. Subu has busted his ass cultivating a clientele of middle-aged businessmen looking to purchase boner pills of dubious provenance. Subu has a relationship with a madam who provides him with sex workers who can play the ever in-demand role of Eternal Virgin for married men in need of escape from their wives. He arranges orgies and group gropes. Subu might be a sleazebag in our oh-so-pristine eyes, but he's never short of clients. He'd tell you that he fills a vital social need by providing relief to sexually repressed patriarchs. Subu's grind is relentless even as he's hassled by gangsters and cops. For all the shit he has to put up with you'd think he would just get a regular job. Fragmentary flashbacks suggest he was sexually abused as a child, which may account for his outlaw tendencies. 

To be clear, The Pornographers is a rigorously un-sexy film. It is about the manufacture of certain kinds of fantasies, but we never see finished products. Pleasure is fleeting, if not just out of reach. Subu is devoted to his various smutty gigs, yet also a moralizing hypocrite when convenient. What we see of the making of porn is procedural almost to the point of tedium, relieved only by the grotesque follies of seeing amateurs blunder through gauntlets of cringe. Subu's on-camera talent is recruited in an entirely ad hoc fashion, usually based on sizes of genitalia, willingness to disrobe, willingness to work cheap etc. Subu has a couple of other guys who function as his crew and post-production staff, and that's about it. Subu's market is pretty much exclusively male and heterosexual. The kinkiest his movies get is a spit roast involving two guys and a girl, and one of the guys is an American. The fact that all of this is conveyed obliquely is a testament both to the cleverness of the direction and the stupefying banality of so much pornographic material. Even one of Subu's fellow pornographers professes his exclusive interest in masturbation which, especially in this context, suggests a triumph of imagination and self-sufficiency. By contrast, Subu's past trauma has, perhaps, made him ill-at-ease inside his own mind. 

Subu's personal life is both a disaster zone and about as perverse as one would expect from a Shohei Imamura film. Subu's banging his landlady, Haru, who carries a torch for her dead husband whom she believes has reincarnated as a carp. This holy carp lives in a fishtank in Haru's bedroom, often observing her during coitus with Subu. Haru has a creepy incest thing going with her teenage son, Koichi. Haru beats herself up over her lack of faithful widowhood, and We the Audience get to watch as she devolves into insanity. Meanwhile, Subu attempts to seduce Haru's teenage daughter, Keiko. You see, much like that popular car crashing franchise, it's all about family.

The Pornographers frames its action in widescreen black and white consisting of highly expressive shadows and gritty location shooting. Often the camera is positioned at a distance, like we're private eyes or secret morality police surveilling the characters, taking notes, building dossiers. The style and tone swings from grimy bathroom sink naturalism to bleak-ass comedy of cruelty to expressionistic nightmare mode. One bravura yet borderline inexplicable longshot involves two people speaking in the foreground while a woman approaches us from the deep background of an ominously long hallway. As the woman draws near, the reality of the film transitions from quotidian drama to erotic fantasy.  Imamura crosses the borderline between objective sociology and subjective psychoanalysis with aplomb. 

The Pornographers takes a huge leap into grotesque satire in its final scenes as Subu becomes totally disillusioned with his life, his profession, Reality Its Own Self. Some of the last shots involve a diminutive houseboat adrift among huge cargo freighters. Subu's porno-grind has seemingly mutated beyond the bounds of outlaw capitalism and into the realms of blue sky research and development. Subu goes from being a rigorously disturbing Imamura protagonist to becoming something like an Edogawa Rampo villain. It might even be a kind of piss-take on that sort of thing. Admittedly, Subu's innovations seem quaint by today's standards, but for 1966 the dude was definitely getting high on his own supply. Watching that houseboat drift away, it's hard not to see it as a happy ending for a deeply troubled man. Subu might make your skin crawl, Dear Reader, but he existed as a kind of vanishing mediator of heterosexual dysfunctions and disillusionments. One Subu floats free, and no doubt another Subu'll rotate into position . . . and then, in the fullness of time, along comes the Internet . . .

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #3: APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

I wept like some grandmother, and so will you!

MOVIE REVIEW: THE HEROIC TRIO (1993)

Directed by Johnnie To

Produced by Ching Siu-tung and Johnnie To

Fight Direction by Ching Siu-tung

Written by Sandy Shaw

Cinematography by Poon Hang-Sang and Tom Lau

Edited by Kam Wah

Music by William Hu

Starring 

Anita Mui as Wonder Woman

Michelle Yeoh as Invisible Woman

Maggie Cheung as Thief Catcher

Damian Lau as Inspector Lau

James Pax as Inventor of Invisibility Cloak

Paul Chun as Police Chief

Anthony Wong Chau-sang as Kau, Decapitator, Landmine Enthusiast

Yen Shi-Kwan as the Evil Master

. . .

"The past is trivial. What matters is the thing you wish to do now."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

The Heroic Trio takes place within an art-directed backlot comic book city caught between a heroic future and an imperial past.Think the Gotham City of Batman '89 and Batman Returns but on a budget, and coming out of the no limits hyperkinetic Hong Kong action/fantasy cinema of the early 1990s. Heroes and villains clash in a swirl of bodies, blades, and bullets. A subterranean villain reminiscent of Danny DeVito's Penguin hatches a vile scheme. A superwoman runs across power lines like early 1980s Daredevil to rescue newborn babies cruelly dropped from a deadly height. There's even a melodramatic pursuit on horseback. It's all here. It's almost all in-camera. Later for those computer graphics cubicle farms. This is the real shit.

The imperial past is embodied by a telekinetic eunuch known as the Evil Master, who employs an invisible agent to kidnap babies away to a subterranean realm of shadows where they are all raised to become future emperors. Back in '93, this may have been a fanciful expression of pre-1997 angst about Hong Kong's looming handover to Beijing; nowadays, this resonates with the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of Uyghur Muslims and/or Vladimir Putin's kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The sinister eunuch kills the babies who cry too much, but this might just be a method to artificially prolong the scheme, to always live in hope of the coming of a true ruler even if that means serving a long-dead regime. You know, I can't exaggerate the impressive gruesomeness of the Evil Master. I mean this eunuch character lives in a strange realm of shadows accessible via a certain manhole that can only be opened by stomping it in a certain way, sorta like a trick video game mechanic. And once you're down there the kidnapped babies are all imprisoned within hanging birdcages. And the eunuch just kinda lounges, not really putting out much effort. He has this gimmick where he can use psychic powers to chase intruders with flying poison needles. He's also got a fearsome warrior monk henchman-Kau-who relishes decapitations and creating fields of land mines. What I'm trying to say is that this Evil Master is one weirdass motherfucker, but he also kinda has his shit together. You're just gonna have to watch the movie to fully marinate in the sinister vibes. 

The heroic future is embodied by three superwomen-a hero, a bounty hunter, and a seeming villain. This titular trio brings the heroism although they must first fight out their differences among themselves, Marvel Comics-style, for one of the three is the eunuch's invisible agent, while another is a selfish vigilante mercenary. The invisible woman is known, helpfully, as Invisible Woman. The mercenary goes by the handle Thief Catcher, although she tends to use shotguns, machine guns, and dynamite to obliterate bad guys rather than capture them alive. The pure hero here is known as Wonder Woman-but not that Wonder Woman. So far as I know. 

The seeming villain of the trio-Invisible Woman-gets her powers from a prototype cloak of invisibility that she has appropriated from a lone genius inventor who has fallen hopelessly in love with her. That's kinda what happens when Michelle Yeoh shows up in your life in crimson shimmering, form-fitting superhero attire.  This inventor guy has devoted his entire life to perfecting the cloak even if he ends up dead due to exposure to the radiation which is necessary to its manufacture. The comic book science is strong with this film. Invisible Woman starts out cruelly using the inventor to further the Evil Master's schemes, but she is eventually won over by his pure hearted devotion. Dig the pages of scientific research blowing on a mysterious wind just like those autumn leaves in The Conformist. Invisible Woman embodies the struggle between good and evil. 

Thief Catcher is the comic relief character, who always knows how to make an entrance whether astride a motorcycle or a flying barrel, and never seems to run out of those oh-so-handy sticks of dynamite. It's possible that she has cheats enabled. I wouldn't hold it against her. Thief Catcher is played by Maggie Cheung who would go on to do a deadpan meta-parody of her role in The Heroic Trio and its dystopian sequel Executioners in the Olivier Assayas flick Irma Vep. 

The Evil Master's enforcer, Kau, is played by the prolific Anthony Wong, who many will remember from his turn as a hospital-hating archvillain in John Woo's Hard-Boiled. Here, Wong plays Kau as a mute flesh-and-blood analogue of the Terminator. Kau's immune to pain,has no fear, and uses a steel hood on a long chain to rip people's heads off-the same weapon the villain used in Master of the Flying Guillotine.

Wonder Woman is married to an incorruptible Movie Cop named Lau. Inspector Lau isn't a superhero, but he does get to throw some shots into a maniac rampaging through a maternity ward. Lau doesn't know he's married to a bona fide superhero, but he's no dummy. Inspector Lau is almost an unofficial fourth member of the Heroic, erm, Quartet? He has an all time brilliant moment of "cigarette acting" wherein he is so demoralized by certain events that he nearly lights up in the middle of a hospital. Inspector Lau is played by Damian Lau, who, among his many roles, played a noble swordsman in the tragic wuxia film Duel to the Death. 

Which brings me to Wonder Woman who is played by Anita Mui, who is a difficult figure to summarize. Mui died of cancer in 2003, and her stature in Hong Kong cinema and beyond is impossible to overstate. I recommend you do a YouTube search of her live musical performances just to take in her power as a popstar, but also read up on her legacy as a pro-democracy activist post-Tiananmen Square. Mui didn't just play a superhero in the movies. She lived it.

The Heroic Trio is also difficult to summarize. The version I watched most recently is just under ninety minutes, and part of me feels like it's just about perfect at that length. The movie uses the lingua franca of comic books to cut exposition down to nearly zero. The movie remixes characters and motifs from Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns,Blade Runner, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Dragon Inn '67, The Conformist, wuxia, film noir, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, the special effects fantasias of Tsui Hark, Evil Dead 2, Dirty Harry, The Terminator-similar to a Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino flick almost everything here comes from someplace else. And yet the ruthless  pacing and iconic human performers transform it into a hallucinatory epic that makes overlong contemporary blockbusters feel stodgy, formulaic, dinosaurian. 

The special effects are minimal. There's wire work where, yes, you sometimes see the wires, but these lapses scarcely detract from the visceral sense of physicality. Every action beat involves actual human bodies in motion. Sure, there's trick editing, out of frame trampolines, clever camera placement, stunt performers; but actual people put their bodies on the line in almost every frame. It approaches the excitement usually only possible in live theater.

And yet there's this other part of me that wants another sixty minutes or so, or a New Game+ mode or something. The Heroic Trio leaves me wanting more which is, allegedly, a good thing. 

Of course, there is the sequel, Executioners . . . maybe I'll get to that one before the year's out . . . 

BONUS: The final confrontation with the baby murdering Evil Master begins in a nearly abstract shadow realm that always reminds me of the boss fights of many 8-bit NES games wherein you often had colorful boss monsters contrasted against a solid black background. I'm sure it was due to graphical limitations, but this style of presentation became one of the "theatrical conventions" of retro gaming in my imagination. The Heroic Trio hits upon something similar by coincidence, but it still moves me on that level.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #39:

How come they never did a Gremlins 2: The New Batch themed re-skin of Elevator Action? Too obvious?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #38:

Did Williams ever authorize a NARC themed cereal featuring little marshmallow bits and pieces of exploded drug dealers?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #37:

 

How come they never did a Maximum Risk re-skin of Elevator Action? Too obvious?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #36:

Did CAPCOM ever authorize a Mega Man 2 themed cereal featuring little marshmallow Metal Man saw blades?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #35:

How come they never did a Die Hard With A Vengeance re-skin of Elevator Action? Too obvious?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #34:

Did SNK ever authorize a Guerrilla War themed cereal featuring little marshmallow Che and Fidel heads?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #33:

 

How come they never did a Sonatine re-skin of Elevator Action? Too obvious?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #32:

 

Did Konami ever authorize a Castlevania themed cereal featuring little marshmallow Medusa heads?

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #31:

 

How come they never did a Hellsing re-skin of Elevator Action? Too obvious?

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#6)

. . . at the trivial tedium of the local, and then they get mad at the all-engulfing grandeur of the global.

People get mad.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #30:

 

How is it possible that William Shatner never did a cover version of Was (Not Was)'s "Wedding Vows In Vegas?" 

It totally has that Shatnerian not-really-singing-but-actually-kinda-just-speaking-in-rhythm vibe.

You know we could make this happen.

There's still time.

I checked my watch and everything.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #2: WORLD WAR Z (2013):

Brad Pitt definitely earned the fuck outta that Pepsi!

MANGA REVIEW: THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM (1972-1974, 2006-2008, 2020)

by Kazuo Umezz

English translation by Sheldon Drzka

Adaptation by Molly Tanzer

Lettering by Evan Waldinger

Book Design by Adam Grano

Edited by Joel Enos

English language publication by Viz Media in ten paperback volumes from 2006 to 2008, and republished in three hardback volumes in 2020. 

Original Japanese language serialization in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1972 to 1974.

. . .

"I believe the children are our future"

-lyric from "Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston

"Oh, that's right . . . we're in the future, and the earth is a wasteland devoid of food and anything else . . ."

-dialogue from the children's adventure manga The Drifting Classroom

"Is it future or is it past?"

-dialogue from the TV show Twin Peaks

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

You could call The Drifting Classroom a manga riff on Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies with a strong Fortean timeslip vibe. It's the kinda story that starts wild and gets wilder, ultimately giving you the feeling that it might go in any and all directions at once.

An entire school full of teachers, support staff, and children grades k thru six vanishes from 1970s Tokyo and reappears in the middle of a forbidding wasteland that stretches endlessly to the horizon in all directions. These vanished people must figure out a way to survive on their own once it becomes clear that no other human beings live in this bizarre new world. Along the way, those that survive uncover the location of the wasteland and how and why it came to be such a devastated place. Drinkable water and edible food must be found and rationed. The adults start cracking up under the psychological trauma of being wrenched out of one's home reality only to be abandoned in a terrifying desolate hellscape. Some of the children break down, too, but they are surprisingly resilient when measured against the adults. Conflicts over authority and management of resources ignite. Factions form. Lines are drawn. And that's when the mutant monsters come calling. Not everyone survives.

I said that The Drifting Classroom feels like it could go in any and all directions, and that's true; but there are also recurrent themes: the socially-even arbitrarily-constructed nature of authority; going hungry and thirsty; creating purpose for oneself when cut off from your usual sources of existential affirmation; children crying; children missing their mothers; learning to improvise and manufacture deadly weapons; determining the conscionable amount of violence to use in order to stop dangerous enemies; the power of belief; how to assess whether a mushroom or plant is safe to eat; ecology as a survival necessity; radical transformation; the confusion of brutality and self-sufficiency; the emotional absence of fathers; the bond between mother and child.

The Drifting Classroom could also be read as a part of the "mysterious disappearance" genre of stories particular to Japanese film, novels, and manga. You could compare it with Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes and The Box Man, which are two novels that narrate how and why middle aged men would wander off the map. From a different angle you have Shohei Imamura's film A Man Vanishes. The Drifting Classroom is mostly about people disappeared against their will, whereas The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, and A Man Vanishes are explorations of situations where people seemingly choose to disappear . . . or are they choosing to vanish because they felt they had no other choice? And what the hell kinda choice is that . . .?!

The Drifting Classroom is also a wildass survivalist ride full of action and grotesque atrocities. A yarn, in other words, to be spun just for the fascination of spinning it. Once the kids are left to fend for themselves there's no stopping the narrative momentum as they alternately fight amongst themselves and endeavor to solve the mystery of their appearance in a world of desolation. If you start reading it at a chain bookstore you may as well get comfy because you're going to want to read it to the end. I know I did.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #18:

 

BIPARTISAN MURDER OF D.C. CRIME BILL LAYS GROUNDWORK FOR THIRD PARTY INSURGENCY.

THE NEW DREAM #12:

 

victory screen for the retro arcade classic Snack Liberator

post-triumph infernoscape

full-on burning crater routine for the Snack Oppressor's ultra-tech base secreted away in the heart of the Amazon

your generic militarized headbanded shonen hero silhouettes himself against a setting sun, future rifle butt-resting against a saucily cocked hip

scanning widescreen close-up of your hero's wet, quivering eyeball jellies

black and white freeze frame on eyes

text:

SNACK FREEDOM HAS BEEN RESTORED TO THE PEACELOVING PEOPLES OF EARTH. BUT NEW DANGERS DWELL JUST OVER EVERY HORIZON. WHEN WILL HOMO SAPIENS GIVE UP THE EVILS OF WARFARE? PERHAPS WE SHOULD GIVE OUR HOPES TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY . . .

cut to a panoramic shot of a spectral future city miraging itself across the setting sun

text:

NEVER GIVE UP THE VISION OF EMOTION'S FUTURE!

obliterating white light

we are now standing in the Oval Office

pixel art Ronald Reagan shakes our hand

Reagan says, "Fine work, son. But I have just one question for you . . . are you my biological father?"

close-up of shonen hero's confused face as he says, "Uhhhh . . .!?"

gang of spiritual advisors, lawyers, and lobbyists hustle Reagan offscreen just as his head starts bobbing all over atop a loose spring

White House dining staff brings in a tray of Cokes and cheeseburgers

freeze frame on shonen hero eating a burger with gusto

on-screen text:

PLEASE PLAY AGAIN ON HARD-ON DIFFICULTY.

COMICS REVIEW: DO A POWERBOMB! (2022,2023)

 

Created, Written, and Illustrated by Daniel Warren Johnson

Colors by Mike Spicer

Lettered by Rus Wooton

Published as a seven issue series June to December 2022 and as a collected trade paperback in March 2023 by Image Comics.

. . .

"They think they know how we do things on Earth? We're gonna show them just how real we can get."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

It used to be that everyone said,"Pro wrastling is fake, and all its fans are marks!"

Time passed.

Now it's like,"Pro wrastling is a form of theater-a physically demanding performance art. Its fans are not marks; rather they are sophisticated connoisseurs of gesture, theatricality, and presence."

Basically, no one quite believes that pro wrastling is real in the way that baseball or football are real. Here, the reality test consists in whether or not an outcome is predetermined and pre-scripted as opposed to a clash of skill where the game must be played moment-to-moment in order to determine the true winner. Pre-scripted equals failing the reality test. And yet the gladiatorial soap opera of pro wrastling absorbs its fan base into an alternate reality similar to comic book superheroes. Pro wrastling could be said to have less reality than a true sport like football, but more reality than comic book superheroes by virtue of it involving actual humans experiencing actual exertion and pain as opposed to stories told with mere ink and paper. 

Which brings me to Do A Powerbomb!, which is a comic book that starts with a tragic accident in the scripted world of pro wrastling, and then dives into another dimension where pro wrastling theatrics are not scripted. To put it briefly, an extra dimensional necromancer spent too much time watching pro wrastling from our reality and thought that it was all absolutely real. This necromancer then established his own gladiatorial spectacular and proceeded to recruit warriors from across the multiversal planes of existence: humans, monsters, robots, cyborgs, uplifted talking animals, wizards, dragons, deities, lizard people, other necromancers, presumably. The prize for victory is the resurrection of a dead person, presumably a loved one, but, in theory, you could bring back anyone who has died: George Washington, Alexander the Great, Jack Kirby, Richard Nixon, Marie Curie, Fred Astaire, Robert Oppenheimer, Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X, Isaac Newton, Benito Mussolini-you get what I'm saying. In the world of Do A Powerbomb! uncomfortable ideological issues are mostly sidestepped in favor of personal melodrama grappling with loss and grief. The combatants in the necromancer's fights are all willing to battle to the death for the prize of bringing a dead loved one back to life. Storm and stress ensue.

You can read the book yourself to see how it plays out in detail. What I liked about Do A Powerbomb! was its look, the color and ferocity of its images, and the rugged'n'raggedy costumes of its hard bitten fighters. Creator Daniel Warren Johnson's affection for his characters comes through in the detail and exuberance of his illustrations. I was less taken with the writing. This is one of those stories with a cosmic premise that collapses down into the dimensions of a high concept B-movie-think Star Wars or Masters of the Universe, as opposed to The Seventh Seal or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I enjoyed it well enough, but it did not totally satisfy me. I do believe that Daniel Warren Johnson created exactly the book that he wanted to make, so the issue for me comes down to a matter of taste as opposed to a failing within the work itself. My mileage did, indeed, vary.

You know, Do A Powerbomb! is the kind of comic book that could exist as it does now, as a seven issue series with a clear cut beginning, middle, and end; or it could go on for many more issues, thousands of more pages. I kept imagining an action-sports-fantasy manga version serialized for a few decades. I think that's the version I want, and so I keep resisting what's actually in my hands. There's just no pleasing me sometimes. It's tragic.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#5)

. . . at regulation as government overreach, and then they get mad when deregulation contributes to graft, corruption, and disaster.

People get mad.

SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENTS #2: TOO OKAY.

 

I'm too okay. I set just the right example, no more, no less. If I keep on like this, well, I'll be putting the courts, the schools, and the self-help industries outta business, heh, heh, heh-hell, even homeschooling'll be discredited. My okayness goes that hard, that deep. I'll become the next-level one-stop-shopping: church, state, mother, father, blacksite torturer, standing armies, floating navies, nuclear stockpiles, soaring air forces, loving spouses, well-behaved children, dutiful employees, admiring bosses, charming serial killers, advocating unions, thundering daikaiju apocalypse beasts, Keanu Reeves-it all goes in the trash now that I'm on the scene. Later for role models. Who even is Michael Jordan? 'Tis a mystery of forgetting the forgettable, isn't it? Get outta here, guacamole. You like cheese? So you think fried foods are irresistible? Can't function in the morning without that pot of coffee? How 'bout cookies? And tacos? And a dog's head in your lap? Watching the Super Bowl? Having good time at sports bar? You think you like those things? Time to change your thinking. Here, I'll change it for you. There. All done. But a trifle. I didn't even have to be great. I just had to be okay enough. You're me, now. You weren't nearly so okay as me. This we all knew. Now, I am only one who has Super Bowl pizza party fired cheese dog's head coffee in the morning guacamole daikaiju apocalypse chicken breast five mile cocaine rail Telly Savalas Players Club International Hallmark Indiana Jones Theme Music self-employed eternal nutbust networking event with an unlimited dark money donor organization snug against my pancreas-I'm just okay enough, you see. That's all I ever had to be when compared to the likes of you!

SELF-DEPRECATIONS #2: TOO OKAY.

 

Look at me. I'm covered in helicopter landing pads; electronic warfare security labyrinths; automated gun emplacements; mined no man's lands; miles and miles of electrified razor tentacle tangles; rapid deployment kennels full of napalm spitting/shitting neomutts; overpriced food courts where all the different franchises all taste like they're cooking in one big pot; all the locals are aspiring stand-up comedians; the social media feeds are all synched to these admittedly kind of impressive 3D printer micro-manufacturies that pump-out many-limbed ambulatory physicalizations of psychopathologies round-the-clock which tend to get into big bloody maul-battles with the neomutts; and the whole thing is wrapped-up in a fake folk history concocted by a buncha Florida Men-lawyers, lobbyists, consultants, political strategists, real estate developers, shartcuterie arrangers-sequestered inside a conference center kitbashed from a dead mall recently converted into a combination office space/fundamentalist church space which is constantly being invaded by trendchasy YouTubers attempting to fuck with phony dead mall nostalgia-when I was a teenager we hated the mall, we wanted to burn it down, that shit was corporate skullduggery palace of illusion to the max-which is what I eventually wound up as anyways, so go ahead film every part of me. Cut it to some vaporwave. I can even recommend tracks. Some men become their asshole fathers. I became an entire hyper-commercialized lifestyle redoubt sector. Which is like becoming all of the asshole fathers at once, all wadded up and sutured and fused together, with all of their dreams and paranoias and bigotries and pretensions and entitlements and burst-bulging prostates and private security details ballooning the resource expenditures-the more you spend the more you save, I guess. May as well believe it. And it's just . . . okay. It sucks. But it doesn't hit like full-on proper suck. Everyone is just full of shit enough to know that they are, indeed, full of shit, and so it never quite tips over into auto-destruct disaster. Everyone has a perfect, slimy, law school product congruence with the ambient suck vibe of universal duplicity-that's how I would put it. I'm like a militarized golf course with a bad case of rabies. It's definitely not how I saw myself working out, but it does sorta work. If I had thought to keep the receipt, I would totally refund myself.

WARDSBACK #1:

There's a movie called Cocaine Bear. I assume it's about a bear that snorts cocaine. Bears have nostrils and gums. Cocaine is typically ingested via nostrils or manually applied to gum lines. It all fits. Even if it's all a little too obvious. So let's imagine a more interesting movie, shall we? Here we go. Here's my imagining: Bear Cocaine, being the saga of cocaine which snorts bears. I guarantee you that has never been depicted in a motion picture before-I might even be one of the few to even attempt to imagine such a wonder. Hollywood, you've got millions of dollars to light on fire in the name of trifles and distractions . . . why not try a little harder, eh? Bear Cocaine. Make it so. You'll have my gratitude. I don't know if I would actually watch it-I haven't even glanced at the trailer for Cocaine Bear-especially when I think about all the sitting silently while staring into space I've got scheduled this season-but, hey. I can spare some gratitude. Hell, I'll give you a little gratitude right now, as an incentive, or a down payment, if you like. Maybe even one of them 'rent-to-own' type of deals, ha, ha, ha-so there you go. And here we are.