Sambaman is snoring in the bed next to mine, singing Anjan Duttta's Bondhu in Portugueshe in his sleep. Anjan is serenading us, alternating with Paco de Lucia between bouts of wine - a 2007 Bordeaux on a tequila sunset over the Miami skyline. The vantage point is room 1424 of the French Hotel Sofitel, where everyone wishes you bonsoir with Cuban accents as you run into the hotel lobby from the crazy high speed tornadoesque winds.
The end is nigh. Sambaman will be dead at 40 with all the four cheeses clotting up his arteries like some much anticipated rain bringing relief to dark naked skin in some forgotten Bengali delta. ArSENik's liver will give through from all the alcohol. I wonder if it will make good patte. In related news, I just learned that the lead guitarist of the Stones, can't remember his name right now, you know the Pirate one. He starts with a K, non? He did a line on his dad. When his dad died recently, he bunched up some of the ashes and snorted a neat little line. And we all know the dude redefines the lines of accepted madness every day. The bar is higher. We have to jump higher. Sergei Fuckin' Boobka.
No wonder the Sofitel is empty. The windows look like the computer screen of a weak Tetris player from the parking lot. Every five minutes or so, thunderous vibrations shake up the room. You collect your things and run and somewhere between the eighth and seventh floors down, you realize you aren't in California anymore and thus the possibility of an earthquake is more remote than getting hit by lightning. You wait for the elevator on the seventh floor, shaking in your pajamas, a Scotch nightcap in right hand. You see the tequila sunset is part of a panorama landscape that is also shared by a canvas of gradient blue across which phallic objects are launched. "An airport!", exclaims Sambaman with juvenile glee. The man spends his free time landing plans amidst snow storms in Flight Stimulator 2.0. If life was a movie, he would save the world one day by landing a plane when the pilots pass out from some exotic Amazonian gastronomical disease, and then walk out to the tarmac in slow motion as the air hostesses, or Space Waitresses (as Chuck P. would call them) pole danced around him (in slow motion) as Steven Tyler raunched up regular family-style lyrics. Enter Papa Samba, who LOVES his first born like he loves aged German wine and he brainwashes Mama Samba to convince her that Sambaman would die from flying one day (and not from the four cheeses). And who suffers? Poor little ArSENik! Sambaman is a plane freak. He goes for a drive to the airport, pays for the expensive parking every weekend and watches planes take off, describing the motion to ArSENik, who is laying it on thick on some thick bartender, not because he wants to go home with her, but because he wants free Jack. It's pure poetry, like the Dude listening to the sound of bowling championship pins going for a spin.
If you have read about our earlier exploits, you'll know we aren't your average trigger happy tourists. We try to blend into the beige of the Miami peoplescape, kinda like that NBC ad that says "We are Miami. Yay!"ArSENik has been spoken to in Cuban accented Spanish like he was Che's long lost illegitimate son with a local fisherwoman, conceived underwater while Ringo was singing about octopus' gardens above the surface. So, we don't go to Parrot Land or whatever it is called. To these two, life is but a milestone of meals - Joe's tonight, Pollo Tropical tomorrow afternoon. And they don't differentiate. The greasier the better, the fattier, even better, beer battered and ArSENik would buy the whole restaurant dinner as if it was Che's birthday. Sambaman, an adopted local of sorts from his undergrad days, tries to show ArSENik Coconut Grove and Miami Beach, but ArSENik dozes off in the uncomfortable Hyundai 2010. He says he closes his eyes to block out the over-exuberant sun that is obviously trying to impress invisible nudist bathers. Sambaman smiles that pilot Orbitz smile and tells ArSENik the reason for his narcolepsy. He informs him he has been talking in his sleep. ArSENik stiffens like a chambermaid asked to do King Louis the XXWhatevaIII's bed during the height of the French Revolution. ArSENik thinks he has spilled the beans of his dreams of Sambaman's hot sister-in-law that plagues him from time to time, where she teaches him Brazilian accented French in a Santa suit. Now this may sound fine to you, but keep in find, Christmas falls in the summer in Brazil. Now, wouldn't any self-respecting female Santa be hot in that fake beard and the red wool. The SIL keeps the fake beard, but nothing else. Let's change the subject.
We are going to Primanti's tonight. It's a local Pittsburgh joint where they put fries INSIDE the sandwich. Brilliant, isn't it? Almost as good as fake white beards! The Rabbit, slogging away at a cool job back in LA is pouting at the thought of Floridian Pittsburgh sandwiches, because the burroughs are in suburban Pittsburgh, but ArSENik reasons 'C'est la vie' (there's that accented French again!). ArSENik is supposed to wake Samba up in fifteen minutes, but the act seems unnecessary at this point because of the barrage of calls from Rio. You see, Sambaman's film is playing at the Brasilia Film Festival, as I write and as he snores next to me, and the whole of Rio wants a piece of him. The festival folks are tweeting the hell out of the film, which is great, except that the Rockstar wants to sleep. If a beautiful French woman offered herself to Sambaman while he was going to bed, he would choose the bed - alone. Don't judge him! We all have our Achille's heels. I am sure ArSENik would choose the Jack in the Frenchwoman's hand when she embraces him, and push her aside for Jack, or Jacques.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Rant Till You Pant
I am a freak - a raging lunatic right now. Slept like 4 hours last night. Had to stay awake in the office. Injected myself with some double espresso Starbucks elixir (branded bullshit I know, but what the hell there was nothing else around, so don't judge me) and now I still can't sleep. It's 12:32! You must think I am working hard - slogging away like some nymphomaniac workaholic prostitute, but that's as far from the truth as Communism, man. I was up reading Advaita Kala's Almost Single.
End of para - what the fuck?, you think - ArSENik's going soft with age. I tell you, the chick can write. I mean sure it's a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of feminism, but screw all that man, you gotta be honest here. In any case, the best art form is one that convinces you of its offending POV, non? Whatever, before I get lost in space tangents, lemme just say it - I enjoyed the book. She writes like a Goddess. It's as if Saraswati and Athena were this cutesy liberal lesbian couple that had a catfight to have Odin's (too much of Gaiman off late you ask?) baby, which they brought up - that my friends is Advaita Kala. I will even go so far as to say that she can hold her own in front of the Chatterjee, yes yes, the very same, the Father of August.
I am sure I sound like a desperate stalker right now, but censorship is way overrated, so what the hell. Her writing makes me wanna seek her out and ask her out for a cup of coffee, and this despite the fact that I know she will be judging me the minute I open my mouth, actually even before that. Yes, yes I know children - good authors create characters from their vast zzzz...zzzz... I know how it works Sonny - I am a writer myself (OK fine, maybe not a big one, but I write scripts {which very few people read} and blogposts from time to time - the Magna Crata of our generation) and we writers have zero imagination, but amazing observation skills and, pay attention to this one - we are great at introspection and self-analysis and love to project ourselves onto our work (watch my thesis film).
Anyway, now that I have declared my undying love for Ms. Kala and her kala and would now be a certified loon in most societies, I have a confession to make. I am fed up. Of my last few posts - read them. They are so fucking pseudo man. I mean that's not the real me. It's some guy trying to be Fellini or Lynch or someone in between. Enough of this horse manure, let the real ArSENik stand up. This one's from the heart... Paparapapapa... Oh fuck sorry. Thought I was Tom Waitts there. If you got that and are a woman, hit me up. I would like to buy you a cup of Cappuccino.
I was depressed earlier today - you know one of those "artistic" slumps - partly because I had nothing to read, well nothing substantial anyway. I tried reading this Father Brown almanac which I had inherited through some grave misfortune from some dry, distant relative who happened to be a convalescing alcoholic. The almanac was probably the cause of the ailment. I was considering doing shots of Jack, which I haven't done in a while. And then I remembered I have some Vodka as well. Vodka and Jack = Jodka shots... but I decided against it and started throwing up here. It seems more therapeutic (not for you obviously) but for me, hell yeah bebe. Can't wait for the fucking library to open. I WANNA READ FIGHT CLUB. It's a weird fantasy, but what the hell - bite me, or rather fight me! Hahagaga. How sick is that? Laughing at your own puns and general wittiness and awesome, ness?.
Did I tell you Aaron Sorkin rocks my world these days? What's happening to me? Am I gonna quit filmmaking and become a writer? Nonsense verse, Facebook Wall Posts - you name it, I got it. If only Amazon Kindle would publish my book of Facebook Wall Posts. Can't wait till Monday. Going to Boston in this terrible cold. Why you ask? I just told you - I'm a fuckin lunatic. Maybe I am not. Maybe I have lost that feeling, that feeling of going numb from the cold. It still counts as a feeling right? Because I can't feel for anyone anymore (apart from myself of course - I am a Golden God after all). Doesn't it suck to be smart, good looking (I didn't say hot!) and have a decent body without trying? I mean you loose a frame of reference man. Fucking Communists! Ok fine, I have a receding hairline, but even that doesn't bother me no more - I hate this confidence thing. I have lost that innocence of fear from way back when.
Why am I unleashing this on to you? Because my regular involuntary confidante has been ignoring my calls, and you can't! Hahahah. Someone recently told me they didn't like Fellini because he was too self referential. This is a blog, miss (or mistah - but I doubt guys read blogs). I can do whatevah I want here - this is my sandbox, slave-girl. I mean, sure if you are reading this and getting a kick outta it, more power to ya. Blogging is psycho therapy for the poor, but of course you gotta be educated man. Oh, I got my Masters Degree in the mail yesterday. They tell me I had a 3.71 overall GPA - Hah! That matters as much as rhinoplasty does to theater actors. I miss the theater! Wish I had money to go watch plays again. My friend starred in one and I didn't go even though I wanted to, because that was like 5 decent meals, man.
Oh yeah Boston - so yeah the SS and the KK will be there to welcome me into their loving arms. Nazis with double lettered initials, you ask? No, no relax. Just a coincidence. These are upright citizens of society who actually like me (still don't know why, but they do). If I ever had to get alibis, it would be them. If I ever had to get old on a little room above a garage, it would be theirs. If I ever danced at a wedding, it would be theirs. Oh Boston and Philly. The Rabbit tells me Philly is absolutely good for nothing except for food. Being a history major, he educates me on the Liberty Bell, but what am I gonna do with a bronze ghanta? It seems like the second runner up prize at a female puberty contest. Food all the way it is - competing cheesestake places across the street - sometimes you just have to love Capitalism. And New York. I have been there many times. Done all the touristy stuff, even done the non-touristy stuff by now, but what the hell, we have a New York junkie with us. One week of bliss and cold, but hopefully more bliss than cold.
If you babble away, can you be a good writer? I don't think so. Shouldn't it be coherent and stuff? I mean mad men babble and not all writers are mad. Ergo, being mad doesn't gurantee you to be a good writer. You know what - it just hit me - just like the digital camera has been the ruin of the film industry, the laptop has been the ruin of the writing industry. Chetan Fuckin Bhagat. I love Five Pint Someone, because I used to be an Engineering geek who managed to survive The Shaft from Tech. But he can't write man. I mean he writes like an autowallah (assuming the autowallah is literate). The autowallah tells good stories, but he can't write. Why doesn't Bhagat give sermons instead - he can still tell stories rather than selling 95 Rupee books? One Night @ the Call Center is possibly the worst book I have read. The only salvaging part in the entire evil paper cuboid is when the protagonist decides to do something, and that too, its not novel.
And then there is the anti-Bhagat - Omitabo Ghosh. Writes like a Norse God on LSD, but his stories are dull and at best uninteresting for the most part. I mean seriously what was that ending with the Calcutta Chromosome, huh? Chutiya samjha hai kya? However, Hitchcock (and thus Polanski) would have been proud of one little sequence in an abandoned railway station somewhere in East Bumfuck, Bihar or whatever it was called back when the Stiff Upper Lip was still sucking us dry. Polanski IMO never a great director, good but never great, why you ask, why, ArSENik - don't be hating on the old guy, man, BECAUSE THE MAN HAS BEEN COPYING HITCHCOCK SINCE THE 60's, man. Ghost Writer - great film, but everything down to the music is a Hitchocopy. The man is like in his 70's now and he is still doing this shit. Repulsion, Knife in the Water blah blah blah. Chinatown is too slow. I like Rosemary's baby.
I was so desperate for a read, I dodged firewalls to download PDFs of Amar Chitra Kathas. While the nostalgia lasted, it was great, much like a heroin high I am told, and when it wore off, I wondered what the fuck I was doing craning my neck to read this beautifully illustrated crappily written entity in bed. So I threw it away (digitally speaking - Trash!) and am ranting on here. I hope to the FSM no one reads this. It's so fucking negative and all that - negative energy, vastu shastra, cynical, make war not love message bullshit, but I feel feucking great. I won't lie. Try it out. You feeling low - just come out and type your fingers away, man. Thousands of years of evolution and this is all we have.
End of para - what the fuck?, you think - ArSENik's going soft with age. I tell you, the chick can write. I mean sure it's a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of feminism, but screw all that man, you gotta be honest here. In any case, the best art form is one that convinces you of its offending POV, non? Whatever, before I get lost in space tangents, lemme just say it - I enjoyed the book. She writes like a Goddess. It's as if Saraswati and Athena were this cutesy liberal lesbian couple that had a catfight to have Odin's (too much of Gaiman off late you ask?) baby, which they brought up - that my friends is Advaita Kala. I will even go so far as to say that she can hold her own in front of the Chatterjee, yes yes, the very same, the Father of August.
I am sure I sound like a desperate stalker right now, but censorship is way overrated, so what the hell. Her writing makes me wanna seek her out and ask her out for a cup of coffee, and this despite the fact that I know she will be judging me the minute I open my mouth, actually even before that. Yes, yes I know children - good authors create characters from their vast zzzz...zzzz... I know how it works Sonny - I am a writer myself (OK fine, maybe not a big one, but I write scripts {which very few people read} and blogposts from time to time - the Magna Crata of our generation) and we writers have zero imagination, but amazing observation skills and, pay attention to this one - we are great at introspection and self-analysis and love to project ourselves onto our work (watch my thesis film).
Anyway, now that I have declared my undying love for Ms. Kala and her kala and would now be a certified loon in most societies, I have a confession to make. I am fed up. Of my last few posts - read them. They are so fucking pseudo man. I mean that's not the real me. It's some guy trying to be Fellini or Lynch or someone in between. Enough of this horse manure, let the real ArSENik stand up. This one's from the heart... Paparapapapa... Oh fuck sorry. Thought I was Tom Waitts there. If you got that and are a woman, hit me up. I would like to buy you a cup of Cappuccino.
I was depressed earlier today - you know one of those "artistic" slumps - partly because I had nothing to read, well nothing substantial anyway. I tried reading this Father Brown almanac which I had inherited through some grave misfortune from some dry, distant relative who happened to be a convalescing alcoholic. The almanac was probably the cause of the ailment. I was considering doing shots of Jack, which I haven't done in a while. And then I remembered I have some Vodka as well. Vodka and Jack = Jodka shots... but I decided against it and started throwing up here. It seems more therapeutic (not for you obviously) but for me, hell yeah bebe. Can't wait for the fucking library to open. I WANNA READ FIGHT CLUB. It's a weird fantasy, but what the hell - bite me, or rather fight me! Hahagaga. How sick is that? Laughing at your own puns and general wittiness and awesome, ness?.
Did I tell you Aaron Sorkin rocks my world these days? What's happening to me? Am I gonna quit filmmaking and become a writer? Nonsense verse, Facebook Wall Posts - you name it, I got it. If only Amazon Kindle would publish my book of Facebook Wall Posts. Can't wait till Monday. Going to Boston in this terrible cold. Why you ask? I just told you - I'm a fuckin lunatic. Maybe I am not. Maybe I have lost that feeling, that feeling of going numb from the cold. It still counts as a feeling right? Because I can't feel for anyone anymore (apart from myself of course - I am a Golden God after all). Doesn't it suck to be smart, good looking (I didn't say hot!) and have a decent body without trying? I mean you loose a frame of reference man. Fucking Communists! Ok fine, I have a receding hairline, but even that doesn't bother me no more - I hate this confidence thing. I have lost that innocence of fear from way back when.
Why am I unleashing this on to you? Because my regular involuntary confidante has been ignoring my calls, and you can't! Hahahah. Someone recently told me they didn't like Fellini because he was too self referential. This is a blog, miss (or mistah - but I doubt guys read blogs). I can do whatevah I want here - this is my sandbox, slave-girl. I mean, sure if you are reading this and getting a kick outta it, more power to ya. Blogging is psycho therapy for the poor, but of course you gotta be educated man. Oh, I got my Masters Degree in the mail yesterday. They tell me I had a 3.71 overall GPA - Hah! That matters as much as rhinoplasty does to theater actors. I miss the theater! Wish I had money to go watch plays again. My friend starred in one and I didn't go even though I wanted to, because that was like 5 decent meals, man.
Oh yeah Boston - so yeah the SS and the KK will be there to welcome me into their loving arms. Nazis with double lettered initials, you ask? No, no relax. Just a coincidence. These are upright citizens of society who actually like me (still don't know why, but they do). If I ever had to get alibis, it would be them. If I ever had to get old on a little room above a garage, it would be theirs. If I ever danced at a wedding, it would be theirs. Oh Boston and Philly. The Rabbit tells me Philly is absolutely good for nothing except for food. Being a history major, he educates me on the Liberty Bell, but what am I gonna do with a bronze ghanta? It seems like the second runner up prize at a female puberty contest. Food all the way it is - competing cheesestake places across the street - sometimes you just have to love Capitalism. And New York. I have been there many times. Done all the touristy stuff, even done the non-touristy stuff by now, but what the hell, we have a New York junkie with us. One week of bliss and cold, but hopefully more bliss than cold.
If you babble away, can you be a good writer? I don't think so. Shouldn't it be coherent and stuff? I mean mad men babble and not all writers are mad. Ergo, being mad doesn't gurantee you to be a good writer. You know what - it just hit me - just like the digital camera has been the ruin of the film industry, the laptop has been the ruin of the writing industry. Chetan Fuckin Bhagat. I love Five Pint Someone, because I used to be an Engineering geek who managed to survive The Shaft from Tech. But he can't write man. I mean he writes like an autowallah (assuming the autowallah is literate). The autowallah tells good stories, but he can't write. Why doesn't Bhagat give sermons instead - he can still tell stories rather than selling 95 Rupee books? One Night @ the Call Center is possibly the worst book I have read. The only salvaging part in the entire evil paper cuboid is when the protagonist decides to do something, and that too, its not novel.
And then there is the anti-Bhagat - Omitabo Ghosh. Writes like a Norse God on LSD, but his stories are dull and at best uninteresting for the most part. I mean seriously what was that ending with the Calcutta Chromosome, huh? Chutiya samjha hai kya? However, Hitchcock (and thus Polanski) would have been proud of one little sequence in an abandoned railway station somewhere in East Bumfuck, Bihar or whatever it was called back when the Stiff Upper Lip was still sucking us dry. Polanski IMO never a great director, good but never great, why you ask, why, ArSENik - don't be hating on the old guy, man, BECAUSE THE MAN HAS BEEN COPYING HITCHCOCK SINCE THE 60's, man. Ghost Writer - great film, but everything down to the music is a Hitchocopy. The man is like in his 70's now and he is still doing this shit. Repulsion, Knife in the Water blah blah blah. Chinatown is too slow. I like Rosemary's baby.
I was so desperate for a read, I dodged firewalls to download PDFs of Amar Chitra Kathas. While the nostalgia lasted, it was great, much like a heroin high I am told, and when it wore off, I wondered what the fuck I was doing craning my neck to read this beautifully illustrated crappily written entity in bed. So I threw it away (digitally speaking - Trash!) and am ranting on here. I hope to the FSM no one reads this. It's so fucking negative and all that - negative energy, vastu shastra, cynical, make war not love message bullshit, but I feel feucking great. I won't lie. Try it out. You feeling low - just come out and type your fingers away, man. Thousands of years of evolution and this is all we have.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Willie & Terry
Willie is tall and gaunt and likes to be alone. He is one of those guys who looks effortlessly good in thin ties and slim black pants. He wears pointed shoes and has a generally antiseptic look. Terry is tall and double chinned and bearded with that perpetual smile of satisfaction escaping from the corners of his mouth. He smokes pot, dines and wines all the time. Women don't fancy him and don't tell him their secrets, but they get high, dine and wine with him all the time. The Women secretly desire Willie, but don't trust him enough to talk to him. They speak to him, but they don't talk to him.
Willie and Terry are roommates - the yin and yang (or is it yang and yin?) of a supposedly creative space - empty at times ~ devoid of human touch, and whistling in the howling desert wind at the best of times. Maybe it is a movie studio. I am not sure. They don't pay rent. Willie stands outside in his cheap but expensive looking jacket - cold in the winter sun, working Main street. The owner sends him out sans breakfast (breakfast is a luxury, believes Terry, but that is the stuff of a different para) to lure in the Women from the cold. Terry sleep. I don't really know what else he does. Sometimes, after three or four joints, he speaks of the Great Post Modern Novel that he has written in his head - so "post modern in its antiquity that it would shame Homer", he claims as he exhales into the face of a petite young member of the Women.
Breakfast is a luxury. Two meals can sustain most humans, especially ones that lie in "bed" all day and write post modern novels in their heads. Beds are a luxury too. Terry once tried to explain to me the necessity for the absence of a bed in a space without vaulted ceilings if one had to write post modern novels in one's head all day. Willie doesn't understand this lazy line of reasoning. He just goes out there and drags Them in. He is a Magician of sorts - his hands never leave the pockets of the cheap expensive looking jacket. His lips are sealed shut. His beady eyes and arched eyebrows do all the talking and the Women stroll voluntarily in and then our Novelist rises from his ash colored covers. The Women get hungry listening to Terry and they order food. Terry would thank God for deliverable food if he wasn't an atheist. And when the Women get tired (listening to the post modern story), they go and sit next to the Owner. And they talk to him. Tell them their life stories - of abusive men and inflation.
Willie and Terry are roommates - the yin and yang (or is it yang and yin?) of a supposedly creative space - empty at times ~ devoid of human touch, and whistling in the howling desert wind at the best of times. Maybe it is a movie studio. I am not sure. They don't pay rent. Willie stands outside in his cheap but expensive looking jacket - cold in the winter sun, working Main street. The owner sends him out sans breakfast (breakfast is a luxury, believes Terry, but that is the stuff of a different para) to lure in the Women from the cold. Terry sleep. I don't really know what else he does. Sometimes, after three or four joints, he speaks of the Great Post Modern Novel that he has written in his head - so "post modern in its antiquity that it would shame Homer", he claims as he exhales into the face of a petite young member of the Women.
Breakfast is a luxury. Two meals can sustain most humans, especially ones that lie in "bed" all day and write post modern novels in their heads. Beds are a luxury too. Terry once tried to explain to me the necessity for the absence of a bed in a space without vaulted ceilings if one had to write post modern novels in one's head all day. Willie doesn't understand this lazy line of reasoning. He just goes out there and drags Them in. He is a Magician of sorts - his hands never leave the pockets of the cheap expensive looking jacket. His lips are sealed shut. His beady eyes and arched eyebrows do all the talking and the Women stroll voluntarily in and then our Novelist rises from his ash colored covers. The Women get hungry listening to Terry and they order food. Terry would thank God for deliverable food if he wasn't an atheist. And when the Women get tired (listening to the post modern story), they go and sit next to the Owner. And they talk to him. Tell them their life stories - of abusive men and inflation.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
MacKenna's Gold
Steely cold blue misty night. Two riders approach on dark blood-nosed horses - twins, the horses that is, not the men. The men seek locks of MacKenna's gold tresses from her hidden areas - locked away and guarded by her blond bearded man. The riders unsheathe their scrolls and ready for a duel. The creatures of the night settle in their front row thrones, chewing on the carcasses and sipping the blood of the weaker ones that fell on the way.
Mistah Owl, he Wise, hoots to commence the duel. The first rider's voice cuts through the night, but only steel can cut steel, and his soft voice only cuts through MacKenna's heart like putty - a gal raised on cliched foreplay techniques and premature orgasms. The wolves yawn at the moonless sky, the jackals frown like Italian circus clowns, the wild boars pick their filthy noses with their tails. If it were a Disney musical, the forest chorus would lull themselves to sleep amidst all this romantic 'nonsense'. Blondie just scratches his blond beard like a taxidermist in the wrong room at a PETA convention. Finally, after what seems like three lunar cycles, Rider #1 pauses a beat for breath, but it's a little too long, as Mistah Owl, he Wise, starts to hoot uncharacteristically like a roadside Romeo. The wolves start howling at the moonless sky, the jackals laugh nervously, like virgin fillies on first rides. Rider #1 is stunned into silence; MacKenna is caught red-handed with her hand up her skirt (and quickly withdraws the right hand).
The next sound is that of bullets fornicating at a shooting gallery - the pure, evil, shrill of a Tenor gone astray. It's Rider Deux reading from his frozen scroll - projecting like Shakespeare before he published. The carcass gallery quietens down and listens to the most beautiful eagle sounds if there ever were one, but this is a man - ostensibly so, he has arms and legs and a head and toes, thinks Mistah Owl, he Wise. The jackals amble over to the wolves and chase their elusive tails. The boars on the other side, are smoking from pipes fashioned from long bark trees. Blondie, raised on timid female attention and disinterested sex, is elsewhere. He is bouncing off puffy white cotton clouds on his fuel-empty red circumcised jet (more aerodynamic, they say). He takes his butcher's blond yellow hairy hand and puts it on the gearbox, he pauses, stroking it, as if it were a Cuban cigar, reveling in the pure entirely selfish pleasure and gives it a thrust, moving faster and faster, like a vulture, spreading its wings over the carcasses of other vultures. And then, just as it began, it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang, but sudden, like reindeer in headlights, and there is a beat of pure, holy silence, as the crowd takes it all in.
And then, and then, Blondie drops his pants - that's the sign! The boars regroup like a group of stoned teenagers out looking for Whitecastle and poof, thud, poof, it's done, just like that, not with a whimper or a bang, but suddenly, Rider #1 and his twin are torn to carcasses. Rider Deux smiles shyly like he's just won American Fuckin' Idol. His steed, too stoic to weep, is all glazed-eyed, staring straight at MacKenna, who has the air of someone who just bet on the wrong horse at the tracks. Deux gets bold. He jumps off his horse and goes down on one knee (the left one) and does an encore, directed solely at MacKenna and her gold hidden tresses. A couple of lines, but alas, Blondie, betrayed like Monsieur Bovary, pulls his pants up. A beat of stunned sobriety and then the boars go to town on Deux and his twin.
And so it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang like in the past, but suddenly. The wolves and jackals go back to each of their homes, the boars burp discordantly with their short tails between their stocky legs, MacKenna goes back to cliched romance and premature orgasms with Blondie and Mistah Owl, he Wise, does nothing but sighs. It's a deep sigh, as only Wise old owls can manage. It's not visual, but internal and nothing in those eyes, those stony steely eyes, that has seen countless massacres by stoned wild boars on moonless chilly nights.
Mistah Owl, he Wise, hoots to commence the duel. The first rider's voice cuts through the night, but only steel can cut steel, and his soft voice only cuts through MacKenna's heart like putty - a gal raised on cliched foreplay techniques and premature orgasms. The wolves yawn at the moonless sky, the jackals frown like Italian circus clowns, the wild boars pick their filthy noses with their tails. If it were a Disney musical, the forest chorus would lull themselves to sleep amidst all this romantic 'nonsense'. Blondie just scratches his blond beard like a taxidermist in the wrong room at a PETA convention. Finally, after what seems like three lunar cycles, Rider #1 pauses a beat for breath, but it's a little too long, as Mistah Owl, he Wise, starts to hoot uncharacteristically like a roadside Romeo. The wolves start howling at the moonless sky, the jackals laugh nervously, like virgin fillies on first rides. Rider #1 is stunned into silence; MacKenna is caught red-handed with her hand up her skirt (and quickly withdraws the right hand).
The next sound is that of bullets fornicating at a shooting gallery - the pure, evil, shrill of a Tenor gone astray. It's Rider Deux reading from his frozen scroll - projecting like Shakespeare before he published. The carcass gallery quietens down and listens to the most beautiful eagle sounds if there ever were one, but this is a man - ostensibly so, he has arms and legs and a head and toes, thinks Mistah Owl, he Wise. The jackals amble over to the wolves and chase their elusive tails. The boars on the other side, are smoking from pipes fashioned from long bark trees. Blondie, raised on timid female attention and disinterested sex, is elsewhere. He is bouncing off puffy white cotton clouds on his fuel-empty red circumcised jet (more aerodynamic, they say). He takes his butcher's blond yellow hairy hand and puts it on the gearbox, he pauses, stroking it, as if it were a Cuban cigar, reveling in the pure entirely selfish pleasure and gives it a thrust, moving faster and faster, like a vulture, spreading its wings over the carcasses of other vultures. And then, just as it began, it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang, but sudden, like reindeer in headlights, and there is a beat of pure, holy silence, as the crowd takes it all in.
And then, and then, Blondie drops his pants - that's the sign! The boars regroup like a group of stoned teenagers out looking for Whitecastle and poof, thud, poof, it's done, just like that, not with a whimper or a bang, but suddenly, Rider #1 and his twin are torn to carcasses. Rider Deux smiles shyly like he's just won American Fuckin' Idol. His steed, too stoic to weep, is all glazed-eyed, staring straight at MacKenna, who has the air of someone who just bet on the wrong horse at the tracks. Deux gets bold. He jumps off his horse and goes down on one knee (the left one) and does an encore, directed solely at MacKenna and her gold hidden tresses. A couple of lines, but alas, Blondie, betrayed like Monsieur Bovary, pulls his pants up. A beat of stunned sobriety and then the boars go to town on Deux and his twin.
And so it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang like in the past, but suddenly. The wolves and jackals go back to each of their homes, the boars burp discordantly with their short tails between their stocky legs, MacKenna goes back to cliched romance and premature orgasms with Blondie and Mistah Owl, he Wise, does nothing but sighs. It's a deep sigh, as only Wise old owls can manage. It's not visual, but internal and nothing in those eyes, those stony steely eyes, that has seen countless massacres by stoned wild boars on moonless chilly nights.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Seven O'Clock
I hate seven o'clock - every day, each day till the last stop, which seems especially far away even when you are just whizzing by those mid-twenties stations. The food vendors call out to me like some Japanese scented, mute old Madame in a rundown Parisian whorehouse, trying to appeal to the hunger somewhere deep in me. And then she brings out the shapely glass maidens, of all sizes and colors, dazzling like lunar jewels in the fading light that breathes life into my otherwise pretty sterile hunting grounds.
And it's a different maiden every day - a petite little cognac tonight, a large southern comfort tomorrow, a shy saaki bomb the day after, a smooth corona the following day, and sometimes it's a menage-a-trois, or even a menage-a-cinq on those painfully bright moonlit nights when your, no our memories dance on the glass of my present company, trying to compete for my attention, and always winning too easily. And instead of pushing the girls off the tracks like a true romantic, I remain and just be and supress these aphoristic ambitions.
And it's a different maiden every day - a petite little cognac tonight, a large southern comfort tomorrow, a shy saaki bomb the day after, a smooth corona the following day, and sometimes it's a menage-a-trois, or even a menage-a-cinq on those painfully bright moonlit nights when your, no our memories dance on the glass of my present company, trying to compete for my attention, and always winning too easily. And instead of pushing the girls off the tracks like a true romantic, I remain and just be and supress these aphoristic ambitions.
But will I ever truly get you, or stop pretending that I don't? Your little train rides, your tastes, your smells at those same stations I have stopped and allowed to armwrestle my senses, or even the ones I didn't stop at, but you did - went out for a stroll through the chilly morning mist without me, leaving me cozy and fetal in the harshness of the train's thin blankets. My glass maidens have never taken the train. Frowned upon by men in dark coats and caps so that their shadows are confined to the seediness of French windows.
Don't tell me you seek out sleep like flower children out looking for moksha on an urban tour, in the same glass bosoms, only to enter your dream just to be with me. That would be ironic if it weren't so tragic. How long will we keep twisting one another in this parallel existence? How long till the glass maidens infiltrate? How long till the dreams shatter like shards of glass and cut through the reality? It probably hurts like hell when that happens. You see the pain written in the wrinkles of those much traveled passengers - huddled in those square, gray corners of the train, hugging the smooth curves of nubile, glass maidens, patiently waiting for the last station, too wary to jump for joy as the train comes out of some exceptionally long dark chilly tunnels. I guess they let you bring maidens when you can count more wrinkles than maidens, but what's the use, these maidens are great at math I hear.
But we have it, don't we? That random jump of ecstasy, that unexpected elated squeal. At least for now. You huddled up next to your window and me perched up high within the blanket. It's almost like being with one another, but not quite. Think of the possibilities of ecstasy and elation if we ever hold hands when the train leaves those sunless corridors of silence. We would have to move around. You wouldn't have the wind caressing your hair anymore and I would have to leave the warmth of my blanket, but could it be worth it, just for the sunkissed ecstasy and the elation?
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Lizard Moon Dance
An endless desert of gray stones
Blue and cold under a giant moon
Two parched lips seeking warmth
Among two fertile angel breasts
Not even wild animals in sight
Sleepless creatures of the night
Fornicating under gray stones
Wild cries and nasty moans
Begetting uglier offsprings
For the frigid arid world
Lucifer waits and watches
From his blue lunar throne
Ha ha ha every time we conceive
After countless shrill moans
The abacus is broken in two
But His supplies still continue
Hidden away under gray stones
Away from bleeding honest eyes
Bleed, you animal, bleed tonight
While our shadows make love
No one to wipe your tears tonight
Your little angel is here with us
Wiping my brow, braiding her hair
Again as we howl and moan
A prisoner of her own virginity
Trapping you in her untouched hair
How does this end you wonder
But some stories never end, my friend
Especially when she and I are writing it
Together, in our hard, stony bed.
Monday, June 07, 2010
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Part Deux
They are back! After a hiatus of almost a year - older, but hardly any wiser, ArSENik and Sambaman pack like the Wolfman and a woman, respectively. Sambaman explains he needs a specific brand of shampoo for his thick hair, rubbing salt into ArSENik's receding hairline, and that they don't make them in little airline packs. ArSENik cooks up a controversy between the shampoo manufacturers and airline baggage companies.
With the foreplay out of the way, they are off to Vegas, again. But this time everything is planned, or so they think, but is anything ever really planned? They are staying at the MGM Grand. ArSENik is thrilled by the prospect of waking up to giant, visages of green lions out of their hopefully high vantage point every morning at 7:45 PM, when they turn the lights on. These bastards have objectives, unlike your average Vegas-goer. Sambaman's is more defined. He needs money to pay tuition for his final semester of college. So, he doesn't get a job waiting tables at a Brazilian Steakhouse in LA, like any average guy would, but goes to Vegas to make money with money. It is this sense of daring that endears Sambaman to the ladies, while ArSENik is more conservative. He needs to get LA out of his system and what better way than to drown in Rio Juevo Cuervo that flows through Vegas.
Chapter 1: Turbulence
They are soaring on the schoolbus airline - Southwest, where there are no seat numbers, which greatly distresses Sambaman - used to the lush comfort of first class on every airline. ArSENik cooks up a communist insurgency - "think about it, man. No, first class, no seat numbers. The Cubans, man, the cubans, they are coming for America's capital - Las Vegas!" This red scenario, as bloody as Sambaman's virgin Bloody Mary mix, serves up the long haired big comedian Penn (the one with a show in Vegas) in the exit row in front of the duo. Sambaman doesn't dig his humor. ArSENik suspects this is because of Penn's little cameo in Sambaman's favorite 'Friends' when he cons Joey into giving him $50 for an encyclopedia.
The air hostess charges ArSENik's credit card twice even though Sambaman only gets a virgin drink. ArSENik gets the Screwdriver - "need the Vitamin C, man". The hostess holds onto the card, supposedly to fix the "error", but doing gawd knows what with it. Horrible realities begin to dawn on ArSENik's fertile mind - what do they call the cocaine version of the mile high club?, should he really accept the card back knowing where it might have been on slidable little airline toilet tables, thrust by the dexterous hands of a nymphomaniac pilot.
He is shaken out of his reverie by a different air hostess - more motherly, or so it seems. "We'll be landing soon, sir. You need to finish your drink NOW". ArSENik stands up stiff and salutes her, but is forced to sit down and fasten his seatbelt. He chugs the screwdriver down with appreciative tourists cheering him on as if he were a well endowed midget performing at the Circus Circus. And then, there is contact, between ArSENik's lecherous eyes and the most formidable chin he has ever laid his eyes on. Now, anyone who knows the maniac well, is well aware of his extreme chin fetish. It's love at first bite, but alas, there is no bite, because ArSENik is bound to his seat by his seat belt as the world begins to swerve around him, like in that 'Inception' trailer. The little lights below are on top one second and then they are on his left.
Sambaman mumbles something about the higher potency of alcohol at altitudes of airline travel. When ArSENik scoffs at this conspiratorial statement, he recounts the saga of his hot sister-in-law wanting to go skinny-dipping in her little glass of airline vodka one stormy evening somewhere between the steely skies of Rio and Sao Paulo. ArSENik pictures this in his head, but the Chin has hypnotized him by now and he explains in great, graphic detail what he would do to that little beauty to Sambaman, much to the horror of the neighboring tourists.
Chapter 2: Lost Baggage?
As they wait for Sambaman's cosmetics bag to arrive at baggage claim, the Chin walks up next to them to wait for hers. Sambaman scoffs at her general ugliness. ArSENik agrees but still can't take his eyes off that stellar curve, protruding just enough to be not witchy. As usual, everyone gets their bags first and leaves. It's down to the Chin and Sambaman now. Sambaman is frustrated and walks over to yell at the baggage people, leaving ArSENik as lookout.
Sambaman comes back three minutes later to find a single bag - his, doing the rounds on the baggage carousel in slow motion, as ArSENik is salivating, staring at the Chin in profile. The Chin meanwhile is obviously trying to ignore this brown lecher with zero motor skills at this point. It's really quite romantic if you think about it, but Sambaman doesn't think so. He shatters the slow mo myth and drags his bag and ArSENik with each hand to the MGM Grand.
Chapter 3: The Green Lions - Pixie Saliva and the Wheels of Fortune
ArSENik again scoffs at honeymooning tourists photographing themselves in the ugly flashes of their little point and shoot cameras in front of the 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign. They eat at the Rainforest Cafe, waited on by a pink haired Pixie. ArSENik doesn't appreciate her chin. She forgets to bring Sambaman's appetizer and the entrees take forever, landing the duo in a unique league. Ask Guinness. They are the only people to sit through four rainforest 'storms', which occur every 30 minutes. You do the math.
They are as stuffed as turkeys during Thankgiving, but gluttony kicks in, and a skewed sense of justice, somewhere in the annals of Sambaman's twisted economic head, and he stares the Pixie down, ordering one of those humongous chocolate cakes, that also has whipped cream, and ice-cream, and a thousand other things, probably Pixian saliva too, who knows, but it's very very tasty. The Pixie does a little dance for Sambaman, obviously fishing for tips, but Sambaman makes ArSENik run on a full stomach, after paying the bill, because there is zero tip for the Pixie. ArSENik feels a little bad - I guess he liked the little dance.
However, ArSENik soon gets over his low point as he sees all the free alcohol brought out on trays by overworked waitresses in ugly oversized red jackets. Suddenly, Sambaman pulls ArSENik down! They are hiding - sandwiched between rows of penny slot machines - "I'll explain later. Just play along". One of CCR's high energy songs comes on in the overhead speakers. "This is not Casino music", thinks ArSENik. He realizes he must be hallucinating on Pixie saliva. He is being dragged on the smoke stained carpet of the MGM and is brought to a $5 slot machine with a little Wheel of Fortune machine attached to the top.
There is a new green gleam in Sambaman's eyes. It could be the lighting. Sambaman looks like Michael Jackson at Chucky Cheese. "What's with the stealth?", "Let's just say the floor managers here don't see my genius (pause for dramatic effect), yet."And so it begins - Sambaman inserting a couple of Ben Franklins into the machine, like it was a Vegas vending machine for condoms. "Jesus, where did you get that kinda money?", "Get a drink". ArSENik goes on a binge and orders every kind of cocktail known to the Vegas bartenders since the Vegas Long Island Tea Party. Tips flow like tears in a Lifetime movie. Sambaman has the Midas touch tonight and can't fail. ArSENik looses $20 very quickly on a neighboring machine. This madness goes on till morning. And then, sleep lulled by the Aphrodites of alcohol and money.
Chapter 4: Natural Meat & Divine Intervention
Sambaman sticks to character and sleeps most of the morning. ArSENik - hungry and miraculously not hung over, prowls around quietly on the hallways of the thirteenth floor of the MGM Grand, stopping especially in front of the room numbers with little red dots. Flashback to Sambaman telling him those are celebrity suits, when they check in earlier. What is he hoping to find? Left over caviar stuck to the underside of silver spoons? We'll never know because he bumps into a snack machine next to the ice-maker, and gives up a dollar for an expired cereal bar. It is delicious.
Late afternoon. Sambaman wakes up. They get ArSENik's general quota of naturally raised steak cut into little pieces at Chipotle. Only in Vegas, folks! Sambaman: "I have some gift points at the Aria. Let's go play there." The Aria is the newest kid on the block of Vegas hotels. It is as flashy as its name promises. Sambaman says a good hotel is one which smells good in the lobby. The Aria doesn't disappoint him. ArSENik is grateful for the cool artificial air on this terribly torrid afternoon.
Sambaman seeks out the wheel of fortune machines like a Hollywood shark sniffing out young, naked teenage legs. ArSENik reminds him - "don't you have free points or something here?" "Oh yeah". Anticipation - that same gleam back in Sambaman's eyes, as he walks up to the counter lady to collect his free points - the gifts of a hedonistic lifestyle. "I wanna play the Wheel of Fortune", "I wanna play the Wheel of Fortune" - and this man isn't even drunk, not on alcohol anyway. "I'm sorry, sir, but the free points only apply to the non-progressive machines." "Poha! I wanna speak to the manager." "Alright, sir." The cop lady leaves, takes a moment and returns. "I am the manager, sir. Can I help you?". Sambaman assumes the Kung Fu Panda stance, but ArSENik, sober for once, drags the Panda away.
The duo find themselves in front of some sort of slot machines with believe it or not, Thor on the cover - completely with axe and leather strips sundry. Hmm, must be a section of the casino reserved for pilgrims, thinks ArSENik. The last player - Jane Dorothy has left her gambling card in there. The startling figure of the balance is staring at ArSENik and Sambaman - $2361.00. ArSENik can picture her - a senile old widow down from Nowehereiwannago, Illinois, gambling away her dead husband's money. Before, Sambaman can lay his sleazy hands on the card, ArSENik, probably overcome by a somewhat misplaced sense of morality in that religious section of the casino, grabs the card and runs to the cop lady. She is shocked as he returns it. A senseless moment of pure Gandhism in this sinful sinful weekend.
"C'mon let's get this over with", proclaims Sambaman and puts his card in for Thor to bless. But Sambaman and slot machines are like Jedis and Lightsabers. The bastard can do no wrong. He starts winning as usual and the mood lightens up. There is no logic to the game, at least not one discernible to the bumbling duo, but who cares about logic when you are on top. A cute, waitress - one of those rarities at a Vegas Casino, probably a child of interracial coupling, catches ArSENik's eye. Her hair is as straight as Cupid's little arrows and her skin as as smooth as black marble, her smile has the brilliance of a hot lake on a summer day. She comes over. ArSENik orders something, but doesn't remember what. She returns after what seems like an eternity to ArSENik with the drink. Meanwhile, Sambaman's pockets continue tinkling, metaphorically speaking of course - all deals in Vegas today are conducted on credit. She hangs around to celebrate their victories, till duty separates her from ArSENik.
Love, alcohol and the smell of success makes ArSENik gamble $50. He starts slowly like a Midwestern housewife on holiday and then his Brutus right index finger hits the 'Bet Max' button and he looses $45 in 3 seconds. He is upset, but c'est la vie! Sambaman freaks out though - "What the fuck, man? Why you gotta bring me all this negative energy, dude?" He cashes out and without a sign of his waitress, ArSENik joins him in splitting from the Aria. On their way out, they pass by a series of randomly placed surreal photos of Christopher Walken - expressively expressionless. Sambaman's vast knowledge of pop culture comes to the rescue - "Aria is Walken's middle name". In his drunken stupor, ArSENik doesn't question the logic of this profoundly existential statement.
They are hungry. In a calculated move, ArSENik whips out Sambaman's iPhone and does some heavy online research, right there in the glass waiting tomb of the Aria as they wait for their car. He is pleasantly shocked to find In N' Out is all for Happy Cows, always has been, even before, ArSENik decided to start championing the cause himself, more than two years back. Like Harold and Kumar, they race down to the drive through of the California Fast Food chain, but there are cones, orange little cones, standing in their way, like leprechauns guarding buried gold in some exotic mountain underpass. ArSENik, showing novel agility, jumps out of the car, and kicks them out of the way, but before he can get back in, a voice yells at him - "Goddamn tourists! Call the cops, Whore-Hey". "Holy shit, haven't you learned anything from Dr. Thompson, man - don't piss off the natives!" - ArSENik rebukes himself, while jumping into the car. Sambaman drives like a young Asian woman, high on duck soup, to get out of there. It won't be natural meat tonight, folks, only a bout of our fresh cool summer air of the Vegas Highway on two empty stomachs.
Chapter 5: All Coked Up - The Spiral Down
The next day starts brilliantly with a cheap sumptuous, and according to ArSENik pretty authentic Indian buffet at Tamba. Sambaman, built with a zero tolerance to spice, almost passes out from most of the dishes. He loves the dessert dishes. Tamba is too snotty to keep any Thumbs Up - the new elixir in Sambaman's life, after ArSENik has described it to him as divine Indian cola. Then there is a sudden spark, cutting sharply through the food comma that is apparent in Sambaman's honeymead eyes. Just like Captain America to Billy the Kid more than 40 years before them - "Let's go outside".
The duo find themselves in the shade of the monstrous signboard of the Coke museum - the personification of excessive consumption, if there ever was one. But if you bought the ticket, you gotta get on the ride, man. They go inside. ArSENik has never seen more Coke signs in his life. Coke on everything from little keychains to Coke tattoos you can plant on your lady's sunburned arms. "Let's see if they have your Thumbs Up".
They trek up to what looks like a miniature cafeteria and ArSENik camps at a table for his surprise. Sambaman keeps him waiting and then arrives with two trays of liquids of psychedelic colors. "No Thumbs Up here" he says with the showman smile of Lucifer, "but there's plenty more", he adds softly. What is this, man? Consumption and globalization, summed up in twelve cups on two trays - on the house of course. ArSENik doesn't know what to believe anymore - he has never heard of the fruity little concoction this Vegas showhouse claims is a delicacy from India. Later, after getting back to LA, he checks with his fellow Milan fanatic about the ghastly tasting Beverly from Italy. The Signora has never heard of the foul fluid, or maybe she is just ashamed and therefore denies its existence. We'll never know.
With such a terrible taste in his mouth, ArSENik can't believe what he has just heard Sambaman utter, "Let's go to Texas De Brazil. I am starving for some Brazilian meat". "That's what she said". Sambaman goes wild at the restaurant. ArSENik has no appetite and just wants to get rid of the bitter taste. He orders a Caipirnha - Brazilian sugar cane alcohol, something he has never heard of in his ten days in Rio the previous year. Its sweet as nectar. Maybe too sweet under normal circumstances, but these circumstances are hardly, normal, wouldn't you agree? It's perfect.
The weekend threatens to end with a whimper - some laidback gambling at the resident hotel by Sambaman and more drinking by ArSENik, when suddenly, on an impulse, ArSENik spots an unmanned five card blackjack machine. Something clicks somewhere. He makes a quick $30. Sambaman asks him to raise the stakes and play with a human dealer. ArSENik is adamant about his affinity to the cold mechanics of the computer than the cold contact of a human dealer's eyes. More drinking. He puts his $30 on the higher thirds in a nearby roulette table. The ball spins and ultimately there is joy for ArSENik - Lady Luck, along with the ladies of the bar are smiling on him finally. He punches the air as if he has just found the cure of leprosy, and then there is unusual stillness in the air. Then an evil smirk from somewhere. Panda hands grab the man and drag him away as his eyes land on the ball - 27. Ho shit, bad arithmetic. That's not higher thirds, man. A mocking smile in the eyes of the floor manager - an undercover cop, a veritable villain of the masses. Sambaman gambles and lo and behold, looses, OK not all of it, but a sizable portion. The house always wins, man, in the sum total of all dealings.
The hangover morning - always the last one, spent mostly at the Vegas airport, that last flytrap for unsuspecting tourists, hanging onto that threadbare rope of hope. But, this is Sambaman. You don't fuck with a Brazilian on a roll, man. He emerges from the muck with some salvation money - about a month's rent or so, as the duo head back to LA, sipping a virgin Bloody Mary mix and an OJ.
With the foreplay out of the way, they are off to Vegas, again. But this time everything is planned, or so they think, but is anything ever really planned? They are staying at the MGM Grand. ArSENik is thrilled by the prospect of waking up to giant, visages of green lions out of their hopefully high vantage point every morning at 7:45 PM, when they turn the lights on. These bastards have objectives, unlike your average Vegas-goer. Sambaman's is more defined. He needs money to pay tuition for his final semester of college. So, he doesn't get a job waiting tables at a Brazilian Steakhouse in LA, like any average guy would, but goes to Vegas to make money with money. It is this sense of daring that endears Sambaman to the ladies, while ArSENik is more conservative. He needs to get LA out of his system and what better way than to drown in Rio Juevo Cuervo that flows through Vegas.
Chapter 1: Turbulence
They are soaring on the schoolbus airline - Southwest, where there are no seat numbers, which greatly distresses Sambaman - used to the lush comfort of first class on every airline. ArSENik cooks up a communist insurgency - "think about it, man. No, first class, no seat numbers. The Cubans, man, the cubans, they are coming for America's capital - Las Vegas!" This red scenario, as bloody as Sambaman's virgin Bloody Mary mix, serves up the long haired big comedian Penn (the one with a show in Vegas) in the exit row in front of the duo. Sambaman doesn't dig his humor. ArSENik suspects this is because of Penn's little cameo in Sambaman's favorite 'Friends' when he cons Joey into giving him $50 for an encyclopedia.
The air hostess charges ArSENik's credit card twice even though Sambaman only gets a virgin drink. ArSENik gets the Screwdriver - "need the Vitamin C, man". The hostess holds onto the card, supposedly to fix the "error", but doing gawd knows what with it. Horrible realities begin to dawn on ArSENik's fertile mind - what do they call the cocaine version of the mile high club?, should he really accept the card back knowing where it might have been on slidable little airline toilet tables, thrust by the dexterous hands of a nymphomaniac pilot.
He is shaken out of his reverie by a different air hostess - more motherly, or so it seems. "We'll be landing soon, sir. You need to finish your drink NOW". ArSENik stands up stiff and salutes her, but is forced to sit down and fasten his seatbelt. He chugs the screwdriver down with appreciative tourists cheering him on as if he were a well endowed midget performing at the Circus Circus. And then, there is contact, between ArSENik's lecherous eyes and the most formidable chin he has ever laid his eyes on. Now, anyone who knows the maniac well, is well aware of his extreme chin fetish. It's love at first bite, but alas, there is no bite, because ArSENik is bound to his seat by his seat belt as the world begins to swerve around him, like in that 'Inception' trailer. The little lights below are on top one second and then they are on his left.
Sambaman mumbles something about the higher potency of alcohol at altitudes of airline travel. When ArSENik scoffs at this conspiratorial statement, he recounts the saga of his hot sister-in-law wanting to go skinny-dipping in her little glass of airline vodka one stormy evening somewhere between the steely skies of Rio and Sao Paulo. ArSENik pictures this in his head, but the Chin has hypnotized him by now and he explains in great, graphic detail what he would do to that little beauty to Sambaman, much to the horror of the neighboring tourists.
Chapter 2: Lost Baggage?
As they wait for Sambaman's cosmetics bag to arrive at baggage claim, the Chin walks up next to them to wait for hers. Sambaman scoffs at her general ugliness. ArSENik agrees but still can't take his eyes off that stellar curve, protruding just enough to be not witchy. As usual, everyone gets their bags first and leaves. It's down to the Chin and Sambaman now. Sambaman is frustrated and walks over to yell at the baggage people, leaving ArSENik as lookout.
Sambaman comes back three minutes later to find a single bag - his, doing the rounds on the baggage carousel in slow motion, as ArSENik is salivating, staring at the Chin in profile. The Chin meanwhile is obviously trying to ignore this brown lecher with zero motor skills at this point. It's really quite romantic if you think about it, but Sambaman doesn't think so. He shatters the slow mo myth and drags his bag and ArSENik with each hand to the MGM Grand.
Chapter 3: The Green Lions - Pixie Saliva and the Wheels of Fortune
ArSENik again scoffs at honeymooning tourists photographing themselves in the ugly flashes of their little point and shoot cameras in front of the 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign. They eat at the Rainforest Cafe, waited on by a pink haired Pixie. ArSENik doesn't appreciate her chin. She forgets to bring Sambaman's appetizer and the entrees take forever, landing the duo in a unique league. Ask Guinness. They are the only people to sit through four rainforest 'storms', which occur every 30 minutes. You do the math.
They are as stuffed as turkeys during Thankgiving, but gluttony kicks in, and a skewed sense of justice, somewhere in the annals of Sambaman's twisted economic head, and he stares the Pixie down, ordering one of those humongous chocolate cakes, that also has whipped cream, and ice-cream, and a thousand other things, probably Pixian saliva too, who knows, but it's very very tasty. The Pixie does a little dance for Sambaman, obviously fishing for tips, but Sambaman makes ArSENik run on a full stomach, after paying the bill, because there is zero tip for the Pixie. ArSENik feels a little bad - I guess he liked the little dance.
However, ArSENik soon gets over his low point as he sees all the free alcohol brought out on trays by overworked waitresses in ugly oversized red jackets. Suddenly, Sambaman pulls ArSENik down! They are hiding - sandwiched between rows of penny slot machines - "I'll explain later. Just play along". One of CCR's high energy songs comes on in the overhead speakers. "This is not Casino music", thinks ArSENik. He realizes he must be hallucinating on Pixie saliva. He is being dragged on the smoke stained carpet of the MGM and is brought to a $5 slot machine with a little Wheel of Fortune machine attached to the top.
There is a new green gleam in Sambaman's eyes. It could be the lighting. Sambaman looks like Michael Jackson at Chucky Cheese. "What's with the stealth?", "Let's just say the floor managers here don't see my genius (pause for dramatic effect), yet."And so it begins - Sambaman inserting a couple of Ben Franklins into the machine, like it was a Vegas vending machine for condoms. "Jesus, where did you get that kinda money?", "Get a drink". ArSENik goes on a binge and orders every kind of cocktail known to the Vegas bartenders since the Vegas Long Island Tea Party. Tips flow like tears in a Lifetime movie. Sambaman has the Midas touch tonight and can't fail. ArSENik looses $20 very quickly on a neighboring machine. This madness goes on till morning. And then, sleep lulled by the Aphrodites of alcohol and money.
Chapter 4: Natural Meat & Divine Intervention
Sambaman sticks to character and sleeps most of the morning. ArSENik - hungry and miraculously not hung over, prowls around quietly on the hallways of the thirteenth floor of the MGM Grand, stopping especially in front of the room numbers with little red dots. Flashback to Sambaman telling him those are celebrity suits, when they check in earlier. What is he hoping to find? Left over caviar stuck to the underside of silver spoons? We'll never know because he bumps into a snack machine next to the ice-maker, and gives up a dollar for an expired cereal bar. It is delicious.
Late afternoon. Sambaman wakes up. They get ArSENik's general quota of naturally raised steak cut into little pieces at Chipotle. Only in Vegas, folks! Sambaman: "I have some gift points at the Aria. Let's go play there." The Aria is the newest kid on the block of Vegas hotels. It is as flashy as its name promises. Sambaman says a good hotel is one which smells good in the lobby. The Aria doesn't disappoint him. ArSENik is grateful for the cool artificial air on this terribly torrid afternoon.
Sambaman seeks out the wheel of fortune machines like a Hollywood shark sniffing out young, naked teenage legs. ArSENik reminds him - "don't you have free points or something here?" "Oh yeah". Anticipation - that same gleam back in Sambaman's eyes, as he walks up to the counter lady to collect his free points - the gifts of a hedonistic lifestyle. "I wanna play the Wheel of Fortune", "I wanna play the Wheel of Fortune" - and this man isn't even drunk, not on alcohol anyway. "I'm sorry, sir, but the free points only apply to the non-progressive machines." "Poha! I wanna speak to the manager." "Alright, sir." The cop lady leaves, takes a moment and returns. "I am the manager, sir. Can I help you?". Sambaman assumes the Kung Fu Panda stance, but ArSENik, sober for once, drags the Panda away.
The duo find themselves in front of some sort of slot machines with believe it or not, Thor on the cover - completely with axe and leather strips sundry. Hmm, must be a section of the casino reserved for pilgrims, thinks ArSENik. The last player - Jane Dorothy has left her gambling card in there. The startling figure of the balance is staring at ArSENik and Sambaman - $2361.00. ArSENik can picture her - a senile old widow down from Nowehereiwannago, Illinois, gambling away her dead husband's money. Before, Sambaman can lay his sleazy hands on the card, ArSENik, probably overcome by a somewhat misplaced sense of morality in that religious section of the casino, grabs the card and runs to the cop lady. She is shocked as he returns it. A senseless moment of pure Gandhism in this sinful sinful weekend.
"C'mon let's get this over with", proclaims Sambaman and puts his card in for Thor to bless. But Sambaman and slot machines are like Jedis and Lightsabers. The bastard can do no wrong. He starts winning as usual and the mood lightens up. There is no logic to the game, at least not one discernible to the bumbling duo, but who cares about logic when you are on top. A cute, waitress - one of those rarities at a Vegas Casino, probably a child of interracial coupling, catches ArSENik's eye. Her hair is as straight as Cupid's little arrows and her skin as as smooth as black marble, her smile has the brilliance of a hot lake on a summer day. She comes over. ArSENik orders something, but doesn't remember what. She returns after what seems like an eternity to ArSENik with the drink. Meanwhile, Sambaman's pockets continue tinkling, metaphorically speaking of course - all deals in Vegas today are conducted on credit. She hangs around to celebrate their victories, till duty separates her from ArSENik.
Love, alcohol and the smell of success makes ArSENik gamble $50. He starts slowly like a Midwestern housewife on holiday and then his Brutus right index finger hits the 'Bet Max' button and he looses $45 in 3 seconds. He is upset, but c'est la vie! Sambaman freaks out though - "What the fuck, man? Why you gotta bring me all this negative energy, dude?" He cashes out and without a sign of his waitress, ArSENik joins him in splitting from the Aria. On their way out, they pass by a series of randomly placed surreal photos of Christopher Walken - expressively expressionless. Sambaman's vast knowledge of pop culture comes to the rescue - "Aria is Walken's middle name". In his drunken stupor, ArSENik doesn't question the logic of this profoundly existential statement.
They are hungry. In a calculated move, ArSENik whips out Sambaman's iPhone and does some heavy online research, right there in the glass waiting tomb of the Aria as they wait for their car. He is pleasantly shocked to find In N' Out is all for Happy Cows, always has been, even before, ArSENik decided to start championing the cause himself, more than two years back. Like Harold and Kumar, they race down to the drive through of the California Fast Food chain, but there are cones, orange little cones, standing in their way, like leprechauns guarding buried gold in some exotic mountain underpass. ArSENik, showing novel agility, jumps out of the car, and kicks them out of the way, but before he can get back in, a voice yells at him - "Goddamn tourists! Call the cops, Whore-Hey". "Holy shit, haven't you learned anything from Dr. Thompson, man - don't piss off the natives!" - ArSENik rebukes himself, while jumping into the car. Sambaman drives like a young Asian woman, high on duck soup, to get out of there. It won't be natural meat tonight, folks, only a bout of our fresh cool summer air of the Vegas Highway on two empty stomachs.
Chapter 5: All Coked Up - The Spiral Down
The next day starts brilliantly with a cheap sumptuous, and according to ArSENik pretty authentic Indian buffet at Tamba. Sambaman, built with a zero tolerance to spice, almost passes out from most of the dishes. He loves the dessert dishes. Tamba is too snotty to keep any Thumbs Up - the new elixir in Sambaman's life, after ArSENik has described it to him as divine Indian cola. Then there is a sudden spark, cutting sharply through the food comma that is apparent in Sambaman's honeymead eyes. Just like Captain America to Billy the Kid more than 40 years before them - "Let's go outside".
The duo find themselves in the shade of the monstrous signboard of the Coke museum - the personification of excessive consumption, if there ever was one. But if you bought the ticket, you gotta get on the ride, man. They go inside. ArSENik has never seen more Coke signs in his life. Coke on everything from little keychains to Coke tattoos you can plant on your lady's sunburned arms. "Let's see if they have your Thumbs Up".
They trek up to what looks like a miniature cafeteria and ArSENik camps at a table for his surprise. Sambaman keeps him waiting and then arrives with two trays of liquids of psychedelic colors. "No Thumbs Up here" he says with the showman smile of Lucifer, "but there's plenty more", he adds softly. What is this, man? Consumption and globalization, summed up in twelve cups on two trays - on the house of course. ArSENik doesn't know what to believe anymore - he has never heard of the fruity little concoction this Vegas showhouse claims is a delicacy from India. Later, after getting back to LA, he checks with his fellow Milan fanatic about the ghastly tasting Beverly from Italy. The Signora has never heard of the foul fluid, or maybe she is just ashamed and therefore denies its existence. We'll never know.
With such a terrible taste in his mouth, ArSENik can't believe what he has just heard Sambaman utter, "Let's go to Texas De Brazil. I am starving for some Brazilian meat". "That's what she said". Sambaman goes wild at the restaurant. ArSENik has no appetite and just wants to get rid of the bitter taste. He orders a Caipirnha - Brazilian sugar cane alcohol, something he has never heard of in his ten days in Rio the previous year. Its sweet as nectar. Maybe too sweet under normal circumstances, but these circumstances are hardly, normal, wouldn't you agree? It's perfect.
The weekend threatens to end with a whimper - some laidback gambling at the resident hotel by Sambaman and more drinking by ArSENik, when suddenly, on an impulse, ArSENik spots an unmanned five card blackjack machine. Something clicks somewhere. He makes a quick $30. Sambaman asks him to raise the stakes and play with a human dealer. ArSENik is adamant about his affinity to the cold mechanics of the computer than the cold contact of a human dealer's eyes. More drinking. He puts his $30 on the higher thirds in a nearby roulette table. The ball spins and ultimately there is joy for ArSENik - Lady Luck, along with the ladies of the bar are smiling on him finally. He punches the air as if he has just found the cure of leprosy, and then there is unusual stillness in the air. Then an evil smirk from somewhere. Panda hands grab the man and drag him away as his eyes land on the ball - 27. Ho shit, bad arithmetic. That's not higher thirds, man. A mocking smile in the eyes of the floor manager - an undercover cop, a veritable villain of the masses. Sambaman gambles and lo and behold, looses, OK not all of it, but a sizable portion. The house always wins, man, in the sum total of all dealings.
The hangover morning - always the last one, spent mostly at the Vegas airport, that last flytrap for unsuspecting tourists, hanging onto that threadbare rope of hope. But, this is Sambaman. You don't fuck with a Brazilian on a roll, man. He emerges from the muck with some salvation money - about a month's rent or so, as the duo head back to LA, sipping a virgin Bloody Mary mix and an OJ.
Friday, June 04, 2010
Poached Gondolas on Tibetan Curry
I got up this morning and wanted to write - not try to be coherent and check myself on turning points and character descriptions, but just write. So, here I am - shirking away from all the responsibilities that come with a glorious Friday morning. Have to make a million calls, coordinate schedules, complete my ugly storyboards, send random faxes to people in undoubted positions of authority, but all that can wait, because I am throwing up in a literal sense here.
I am not being judgmental here, but wouldn't you agree it's better than most vices? I mean, it's not like I am taking three swigs out of my whiskey flask first thing this Friday morning and then trying to be coherent and productive the rest of the day, though, now that I think about it, that sounds delicious. Talking of delicious, I had forgotten how good ketchup and black pepper can taste - on an omelet of course. It's the right amount of sweet and spicy that seduces my tongue (sorry, that sounds a little dirty when I read it back!). Aah - the simple pleasures of life - the gifts of an urbane, middle-class upbringing!
You know a writer is loosing it when he uses too many exclamation marks, or 'bangs', as they call it in the South! This taking for granted of his audience, that they wouldn't get the subtext, so let's bombard them with miniature surreal imagery after every sentence - aah the insecurities of today's writer. The exclamation mark is the literal version of a sex scene in a film. Oh, ah, the audience isn't getting it, let's put in a sex scene, light it beautifully, and they'll forgive all story issues.
Wow, I sound angrier than I though I was. It's that weird kind of anger, that has no specific cause. Maybe, it's angst?! Hmm, we'll never know, because there aren't too many exclamation marks in this post. I remember reading Hunter S. Thompson somewhere where he said writing is only good and enjoyable when no one is binding you to do it. I am paraphrasing in shittier language of course. He was talking about his angst at waking up and writing articles as a journalist, sometimes on things he didn't care about.
How did we get here? Weren't we talking about ketchup and pepper on eggs right now? Are you still reading this? Are you? Why? I mean I appreciate it and all, but seriously, why? If I had three choices, I would wish for a neverending supply of toner ink for my dry printer without having to leave home, and for a fax machine at home. Gawd, why are we still using these? Didn't we evolve enough to telepathise with one another? We are humans for christssake, not wild animals, like Fantastic Mr. Fox and his friends. Good movie by the way. I liked it. If I had a kid, I would make the little bastard watch it. It would be an interesting experiment to see if he/she could sit through it. How out of touch with pediatrics am I?
I am not even going to read what I started writing now. It's veered off its path so much that going back there could cause fear and paranoia of the worst kind. But isn't that the point? The whole shazam about the journey and not the destination. I was recently told I have too much ambition to be a hippy and it broke my heart. So, I bared it out with the only living grandfather and he simply said if you don't have a destination, you cannot start on your journey. OK fine, he used more pedestrian language, but that's essentially what he said, or I think he did. But I want my critic to see my now - in this morning of weakness and still tell me I have too much ambition.
I am not being judgmental here, but wouldn't you agree it's better than most vices? I mean, it's not like I am taking three swigs out of my whiskey flask first thing this Friday morning and then trying to be coherent and productive the rest of the day, though, now that I think about it, that sounds delicious. Talking of delicious, I had forgotten how good ketchup and black pepper can taste - on an omelet of course. It's the right amount of sweet and spicy that seduces my tongue (sorry, that sounds a little dirty when I read it back!). Aah - the simple pleasures of life - the gifts of an urbane, middle-class upbringing!
You know a writer is loosing it when he uses too many exclamation marks, or 'bangs', as they call it in the South! This taking for granted of his audience, that they wouldn't get the subtext, so let's bombard them with miniature surreal imagery after every sentence - aah the insecurities of today's writer. The exclamation mark is the literal version of a sex scene in a film. Oh, ah, the audience isn't getting it, let's put in a sex scene, light it beautifully, and they'll forgive all story issues.
Wow, I sound angrier than I though I was. It's that weird kind of anger, that has no specific cause. Maybe, it's angst?! Hmm, we'll never know, because there aren't too many exclamation marks in this post. I remember reading Hunter S. Thompson somewhere where he said writing is only good and enjoyable when no one is binding you to do it. I am paraphrasing in shittier language of course. He was talking about his angst at waking up and writing articles as a journalist, sometimes on things he didn't care about.
How did we get here? Weren't we talking about ketchup and pepper on eggs right now? Are you still reading this? Are you? Why? I mean I appreciate it and all, but seriously, why? If I had three choices, I would wish for a neverending supply of toner ink for my dry printer without having to leave home, and for a fax machine at home. Gawd, why are we still using these? Didn't we evolve enough to telepathise with one another? We are humans for christssake, not wild animals, like Fantastic Mr. Fox and his friends. Good movie by the way. I liked it. If I had a kid, I would make the little bastard watch it. It would be an interesting experiment to see if he/she could sit through it. How out of touch with pediatrics am I?
I am not even going to read what I started writing now. It's veered off its path so much that going back there could cause fear and paranoia of the worst kind. But isn't that the point? The whole shazam about the journey and not the destination. I was recently told I have too much ambition to be a hippy and it broke my heart. So, I bared it out with the only living grandfather and he simply said if you don't have a destination, you cannot start on your journey. OK fine, he used more pedestrian language, but that's essentially what he said, or I think he did. But I want my critic to see my now - in this morning of weakness and still tell me I have too much ambition.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Sweet Sixteen
The clock ticked ahead shyly for eternity
And I feel a new prickle under my arms.
Daddy, I need a mic for my sweet sixteen!
I wanna sing to all my friends about Tony.
Tony is pink and hairy and jumps on troubles
Like they were three mice stealing from me
As if I were a Nazi dairy running very dry,
Forever after Peter and Michael, before him.
Oh, Daddy, Tony is sick and I need a mic
To tell my friends if he'll make it through.
I need them to sing back that it'll be okay,
That he'll pull through like Peter and Michael.
All my friends sing into mics and I can't.
Why don't I have a mic when I have Tony?
You promised me a mic this warm winter
To play with Peter and Michael, and Tony.
Hurry up, Daddy, Tony is almost blue now
All the pink has rubbed onto the three mice
Who are dancing like the poor in December,
Drinking my milk, eating my Camembert.
Oh Daddy, what have you done?
Tony has left - grown wings and flown away
Unlike Peter and Michael, before him
Who continue to run like headless mice.
No I don't want Peter and Michael
They are dirty now, like the Camembert.
I want a mic, damnit; gimme a mic
I wanna sing my troubles to the world.
Screw you, Daddy, I don't want your mic.
I can shout and scream to my good people.
I am sure they can hear me without a mic.
Lemme sing why you won't give me a mic.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Arachnophobia at 2:14 AM
Another sleepless night. Another forced technological intervention. Facebook at 2:14 am, hoping to fall asleep on the banalities of others' lives, when suddenly - a spider - black, but subtly back lit by the spill from the laptop monitor against a dull, yet rough white wall. Jesus! Arachnophobia past mid-night. Surely, there must be a law against this kind of behavior somewhere, but not here, heck no, this is Hollywood, man. We snack on spider tissue because we are cool and need to tell everyone how much. The desk lamp is turned on and renders a little orange warmth to the cold blue light of the laptop.
What are you doing, man? You are not Peter Fuckin' Parker. Run around, make some noise, wake the neighbors, call the super. Sanity versus Exhibitionism. Front row tickets. I fight the urge to let the battle ensue in that brilliant light. Meanwhile, the poor bastard is running towards Lennon and his lyrics of Imagine on the wall. Light doesn't affect his motion I noticed. Maybe the sucker is blind. Maybe it's a blind spider. Or maybe, all spiders are blind. They are supposed to be. Not evolved enough. If this was taking place centuries later and I were just telekinesising the fuck outta this blog post, maybe the spider would stop, do a steamy little number for me, sing in a deep Kathleen Turner voice and take a bow, but not tonight - this is just a post-modern saga, not some futuristic Phillip F. Dick novel.
The ten count is over. Exhibitionism is lying face down in a pool of its own blood somewhere in my subconsciousness. I walk over to the bathroom, trying not to shake for my companion, but once out of sight, my dirty little shaking hands tear a piece of TP off - a clinical move, reeking with mercenary efficiency. I walk back - an epitome of Nihilistic Buddhism, TP in one hand, silence hovering over my lips like a mistress at a funeral and nothing but the creature's reflections in my two eyes. It's almost over now I tell myself. We look at one another. It stops, for what can only be melodramatic effect. "Breathe, muthafucka. Enjoy the last five seconds of your miserable, mountaineering domestic life." Strong words for a monster-slayer. Pulp! It's done. Just like adolescent sex - anticipation far outweighing the act. I crush it between my thumb and forefinger a couple of times, just to be sure.
I bury the fucker in my trashcan, where rest countless other household bugs. If these goddamn animals have afterlives, they are bitching about me right now over some dirty Tecates and mouthfuls of crunchy pork tacos. Ouch! That must have hurt. Sanity is suddenly coughing blood as Exhibitionism punches him under the belt while I type this out for other insomniacs awake at this hour. As they say, it ain't over till the fat lady squeals and we all know Exhibitionism is one large bitch.
What are you doing, man? You are not Peter Fuckin' Parker. Run around, make some noise, wake the neighbors, call the super. Sanity versus Exhibitionism. Front row tickets. I fight the urge to let the battle ensue in that brilliant light. Meanwhile, the poor bastard is running towards Lennon and his lyrics of Imagine on the wall. Light doesn't affect his motion I noticed. Maybe the sucker is blind. Maybe it's a blind spider. Or maybe, all spiders are blind. They are supposed to be. Not evolved enough. If this was taking place centuries later and I were just telekinesising the fuck outta this blog post, maybe the spider would stop, do a steamy little number for me, sing in a deep Kathleen Turner voice and take a bow, but not tonight - this is just a post-modern saga, not some futuristic Phillip F. Dick novel.
The ten count is over. Exhibitionism is lying face down in a pool of its own blood somewhere in my subconsciousness. I walk over to the bathroom, trying not to shake for my companion, but once out of sight, my dirty little shaking hands tear a piece of TP off - a clinical move, reeking with mercenary efficiency. I walk back - an epitome of Nihilistic Buddhism, TP in one hand, silence hovering over my lips like a mistress at a funeral and nothing but the creature's reflections in my two eyes. It's almost over now I tell myself. We look at one another. It stops, for what can only be melodramatic effect. "Breathe, muthafucka. Enjoy the last five seconds of your miserable, mountaineering domestic life." Strong words for a monster-slayer. Pulp! It's done. Just like adolescent sex - anticipation far outweighing the act. I crush it between my thumb and forefinger a couple of times, just to be sure.
I bury the fucker in my trashcan, where rest countless other household bugs. If these goddamn animals have afterlives, they are bitching about me right now over some dirty Tecates and mouthfuls of crunchy pork tacos. Ouch! That must have hurt. Sanity is suddenly coughing blood as Exhibitionism punches him under the belt while I type this out for other insomniacs awake at this hour. As they say, it ain't over till the fat lady squeals and we all know Exhibitionism is one large bitch.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Ladies and Gentleman, please fasten your seatbelts - tonight's meal - BBQ-ed medulla oblongata
I am a blind pilot, passing over some ice-topped mountains in Greenland. I can't see anything of course, but if I could, it would be like a dessert cooked in a household of Irish-English heritage, if such a thing is at all discernible. But there lies the quandary, because the smell at the time would just be stale, metallic, reproduced oxygen - your staple fare at 3000 feet above air. And what good can descriptions by unimaginative over-traveled heavily mustached colleagues paint.
It's not like I'll loosen my thin tie and wipe my broad forehead between adjustments of the sexy, sleek pilot's hat when we cruise over the vast chromeness of the Sahara, dotted with occasional black olives of royal guards. Sounds like Colin Firth in A Serious, no sorry, Single Man, innit? Fidgeting around the autopilot controls and seeing the black sheen of a .38 caliber flashing the finality of death. For that one tenth of a second, the urge to be engulfed in the dull chromeness, ostensibly in an effort to pick out and eat the olives, french-kisses the hell out of me.
As the mustaches demand an urban detour, the blindness whisks away like a particularly persistent cloud cover, leaving me in the realm of the .38 caliber's ugliness, to sculpt the patron's unpleasant wife or the neighbor's leprous maid. I choose Khartoum with its beautifully carved chess pieces for us to tamper with. The mustaches are happy. They can cover themselves in white rags of comforting cotton while their bosses slug it out over games of chess between puffs of mint flavored hookah.
And so to Awadh, which would be modern day... , wait lemme Google, aah Lucknow, my initial hunch was right - the land of kababs and shayari, though right now, it's probably festered with terribly accented call centers and smoggy dark gray traffic. Fuck, I would kill for a kabab right now, which is ironic, because, if you don't kill, you can't produce a kabab. Why do some people spell kabab with an e? It might be a Turkish conspiracy to recapture the world in the name of commoditizing world peace. I have a hunch - personal interaction with modern-day Ottomans I tell you, not the kind you put your feet on, well I suppose you could, but they tend to be bony and fuck with your ankles. If only I had a pig like the Queen of Hearts, but the stink, oh the stink. Haha... irony alert again - pigs taking over Ottoman jobs!
Maybe I'm just hungry. BBQ pork chops would never taste better, I promise. But something tells me the magic is in the BBQ sauce and not the meet. Can you imagine tasteless crap like veggies, that your mama gets you to eat every living hour, with BBQ sauce? This is bigger than world peace, man. This is the Food Network on acid. Just dab the damn thing in BBQ sauce and voila, you have solved world hunger. Why are we dropping food concentrates in African wastelands? Let's shower them with BBQ sauce. Take that UN!
Aren't some African societies cannibalistic? Would they try to eat each other then - dabbed in BBQ sauce? If only Hannibal Lector were more white-trash than such a cultured prick, we would know what BBQ sauce on human meat tasted like. None of that 'I fried his liver with some flava beans and had it with a nice cianti' crap, I'm talkin' about downright BBQ-ed medulla oblongata here. Is 'cannibalistic society' an oxymoron? Is 'oxymoron' an oxymoron?
It's not like I'll loosen my thin tie and wipe my broad forehead between adjustments of the sexy, sleek pilot's hat when we cruise over the vast chromeness of the Sahara, dotted with occasional black olives of royal guards. Sounds like Colin Firth in A Serious, no sorry, Single Man, innit? Fidgeting around the autopilot controls and seeing the black sheen of a .38 caliber flashing the finality of death. For that one tenth of a second, the urge to be engulfed in the dull chromeness, ostensibly in an effort to pick out and eat the olives, french-kisses the hell out of me.
As the mustaches demand an urban detour, the blindness whisks away like a particularly persistent cloud cover, leaving me in the realm of the .38 caliber's ugliness, to sculpt the patron's unpleasant wife or the neighbor's leprous maid. I choose Khartoum with its beautifully carved chess pieces for us to tamper with. The mustaches are happy. They can cover themselves in white rags of comforting cotton while their bosses slug it out over games of chess between puffs of mint flavored hookah.
And so to Awadh, which would be modern day... , wait lemme Google, aah Lucknow, my initial hunch was right - the land of kababs and shayari, though right now, it's probably festered with terribly accented call centers and smoggy dark gray traffic. Fuck, I would kill for a kabab right now, which is ironic, because, if you don't kill, you can't produce a kabab. Why do some people spell kabab with an e? It might be a Turkish conspiracy to recapture the world in the name of commoditizing world peace. I have a hunch - personal interaction with modern-day Ottomans I tell you, not the kind you put your feet on, well I suppose you could, but they tend to be bony and fuck with your ankles. If only I had a pig like the Queen of Hearts, but the stink, oh the stink. Haha... irony alert again - pigs taking over Ottoman jobs!
Maybe I'm just hungry. BBQ pork chops would never taste better, I promise. But something tells me the magic is in the BBQ sauce and not the meet. Can you imagine tasteless crap like veggies, that your mama gets you to eat every living hour, with BBQ sauce? This is bigger than world peace, man. This is the Food Network on acid. Just dab the damn thing in BBQ sauce and voila, you have solved world hunger. Why are we dropping food concentrates in African wastelands? Let's shower them with BBQ sauce. Take that UN!
Aren't some African societies cannibalistic? Would they try to eat each other then - dabbed in BBQ sauce? If only Hannibal Lector were more white-trash than such a cultured prick, we would know what BBQ sauce on human meat tasted like. None of that 'I fried his liver with some flava beans and had it with a nice cianti' crap, I'm talkin' about downright BBQ-ed medulla oblongata here. Is 'cannibalistic society' an oxymoron? Is 'oxymoron' an oxymoron?
Friday, March 12, 2010
Short Film 'Six Women'
Please check out the website for my thesis short 'Six Women'.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1631757069/funding-for-production-of-short-dramedy-six-women
Thanks
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1631757069/funding-for-production-of-short-dramedy-six-women
Thanks
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Stolen Moments
A mouthful of overheard gibberish water cooler Arabic, those indecipherable yet beautiful conversations in the barbershop, the imperfect tip of a McDonald's $1 vanilla ice-cream cone, drive-through desserts on three full stomachs, liquid body soap, revolting against this to maternal authority, the magnificence of Cirque Du Soleil's "Love" in Vegas, clandestine "Please Please Me" on the black double deck stereo system during Geography homework, watching The Graduate in Directing Class, Simon and Garfunkel listening for the sounds of silence on that very first CD, speeding tickets, the impotent little electronic screams of the new Cressida when driven over 120 kmph, two whole CD's of Kishor's sadness, the orphan gray cassette that turned up in WNJ 6666, advanced cinematography, the Alipore Zoo pictures of a 1988 early morning on that first Kodak, girlfriends, ICQ, Godfather II on the Xbox 360 on a black futon, Xcite Bike on Super Ninetendo on a grayish pink sofa set, momentary bursts of singing in the shower when the mind suddenly soars for no apparent reason, a year of tabla classes to get the basics down, ugly storyboards, a pair of comical ears on a bird flying by, Hulu, the Crystal Maze, Pandora in IMAX 3D, Indy's last few hops and skips on an invisible bridge, the overworked community treadmill, the first Oedipal chess victory, this impulsiveness, the dull chrome of Sunshine.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Your Inheritance
You like to wear your hair short
And your mother is in full cohort,
Having forgotten our matted days
Of picketing for Rosa through the haze.
Your little girl wears tight jeans today
As blue as the free misty ocean spray
Which wet the hems of our bell bottoms
Before the man jailed us and got 'em.
You shout against animals and ozone
And while I may not have an iPhone
Count me in when you sign your petition
To bring my voice - that invisibly loud gun.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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