“and that's how I got to be the governor of Los Angeles.” said Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking a cigar from the ashtray and taking a big lungful of Cuban tobacco. I look over at his stunt double with a skin tight green lycra hood over his head wait to one side of the set while the green screen is sweeped of debris. We're on the set of Terminator 5 set for release next year. I have been trying to get this meeting since I'd arrived in Los Angeles and it seemed fitting for it to take place on my last day in the states. Arnold Schwarzenegger sits across from me in a wicker chair dressed in his signature leather jacket and jeans. Terminator make-up is applied to bits of his head and glints in the high noon sun thrown from a 1000w redhead.
“So tell me about this new Terminator flick.” I said.
“It's a reboot, but also a sequel. A paraquel. I play the role of a terminator sent back in time then is stuck in an alternative reality. The film flashes forward to the present day, where I have been aging. This is the first film where we really explore the philosophy of what it must mean to be a Terminator. It is a cybernetic organism yet has the ability to learn, a metal endoskeleton surrounded by living tissue. What are the differences and similairities between humans and machines? We hope to explore that in the next Terminator movie. That and time travel.”
“So what has the Terminator in this film been doing?”
“Since he saved Sarah Connor's parents he started a career in politics and is now lobbying for restrictions on research into robotics. This terminator is a member of a community. One day a terminator from his future is sent back in time in order to assassinate him and he has to try and keep himself safe whilst also trying to find out why the terminators will exist.”
“Is there action?”
“Let me tell you, the action in his movie will blow Terminator 3 out of the water! We have the director of Fast and Furious to come in to film, there's Tom Hardy playing the evil futuristic terminator, Emily Watson to play Terminator's wife, Justin Timberlake to play John Connor and Dwayne Johnson as a detective, who also turns out be to be a robot.”
“Sounds like that's an all star cast Mr. Schwarzenegger. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?” I said, watching the action taking place on stage. The stunt double rides a flaming car like it's a surf board before leaping off whilst 760 miniaturised cameras begin to take pictures.
“I'm also going to make a sequel to Pumping Iron.”
“Excellent.” I said. We chat a little more before Arnie is called back on set.
“I'll be right back.” he walks off. I can't help but feel disappointed he said 'right', missing an opportunity to deliver his famous catchphrase. I pack up my notes into my bag and go back out to the car.
I ask Bill to take a long route to the airport. We drive along Venice beach, through Little Ethiopia, down to gentrified Inglewood and San Pedro.
“Did you manage to find the edge of the city?”
“I don't think it exists.”
“That's a shame. It was fun anyway.”
“Remember when I released those wasps in the museum?” I said.
“I liked that day we drove all the way to San Diego and you were like 'Is this LA? Is this LA?'” laughed Bill.
“What was the name of those women we met?”
“Where?”
“At the art gallery.”
“Casandra and Jacqueline.” said Bill, smiling.
“That was a wild night. You remember dancing on the roof of the Aon centre?”
“You fell!”
“Nah, I had a parachute. What will you be doing after this?”
“I don't know. Go get something to eat. Go see my family.” said Bill. We drive along Mulholland and through Glendale, San Bernardino heights then Santa Monica. The Paul Getty Museum, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese Theatre, City Hall, LAX. The car parks up outside the entrance.
“Thanks Bill. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” he said. I get out, shutting the door behind me which rocks the car slightly. I go to knock on his window and he rolls it down.
“I left something on the back seat for you. Live long and prosper.” I say, throwing a peace sign before going towards the departure entrance. Bill looks over his shoulder, then goes in the back. Just where I'd been sitting I left a bag. He unfastens the latches on it and opens it up, inside is a dead dog with it's mouth stuffed with a roll of hundred dollar bills.
I took a window seat as the plane began to drive on the runway and reflected on my journey. The quest for the edge of Los Angeles. It had been a series of thrills and spills but in the end I learned a valuable lesson. I take out a copy of City Of Quartz and begin to read. Partway through I realised the plane was still driving on the runway. I turn to the seat next to me.
“Why haven't we set off yet?” I asked. There's no-one there. In fact, there's no-one on the whole plane. I put the book down and walk up the aisles. “Hello?” I said. The plane begins to turn and I look out of the window at LAX slowly rolling past, again. I go through First Class and pause at the pilot's door before knocking. I wait for a while and was about to go back to my seat when I heard the door being unlocked. I turned around. In the frame stands a naked man.
“Who...who are you?” I said. The man began to walk towards me. Behind him I can see the runway stretch ahead of us and the plane begins to accelerate. I back off slowly, watching as he advances towards me before setting off into a run.
“Who are you?” I shout, running down the aisles. But there is nowhere to go. The plane begins to take off and I scramble through the seats as the floor begins to dip, just about managing to sit down and fasten a belt across my lap. The man appeared from around the corner and stared at me, seemingly unaffected by the sudden increase in altitude.
“What do you want? Who's flying this plane?!” I said. He reached up to his face and began to pull at his top lip. With the engines screaming on both sides of us I watched as he began to unzip his skin. The human form peeled away to reveal an Untitled painting by Rothko. I sat in my chair convulsing as the plane finally takes off back towards England.
22.11.13
18.11.13
Baby Boomers; Late Bloomers Or Irrelevant Rumours?
I watch hour after hour of television pilots from the various networks, the blu-ray discs lay scattered around the glass coffee table of my penthouse apartment. I'm watching an extremely light detective show in which an elderly woman investigates teen crime at a local high school. I watch as she opens a door and is hit in the face with a cloud of smoke.
"Smells like my grandsons car!" she says. I scream at the television and throw a blu-ray as hard as I can at the screen. I throw it so hard it goes faster than the speed of light and momentarily, yet infinitely, exists at every point in space at the same time before recombining inches away from the camera lens on the set four weeks ago, flies another few feet before hitting the old woman in the nose. I then grab handfuls of the discs and throw them out of the window, letting it rain bullshit onto the streets.
There once was a time when teenagers were hip and every strand of marketing was directed at them. To get the 16-24 audience in a prime time slot was the dream of every television exec this side of Death Valley. Yet times were changing. Young people didn't watch television, downloaded all their favourite films and were slowly dwindling in a post-recession economic meltdown. Rather than hanging out at the hippest clubs you'd be more likely to find teens hanging out under bridges offering to sell themselves for a cup of coffee. And the people on the other end of this illicit barterdom? The elderly. They had more money than they knew what to do with and half of them didn't even remember that they had it. Kept alive with futuristic machines that turned back the clock, the vampire myth was becoming more of a reality each day, sometimes literally as children would have their blood swapped with that of centenarians in order to keep them alive.
With this in mind the future world of media has took a turn for the old. Rather than the ultra-violent non-linear post-modern slanged-up shows we're used to seeing grace our tv screens, networks are now focusing on a more slower paced form of entertainment. The shows are often populated by protagonists that are over sixty, the villains are young people, the plots amble along apparently aimlessly and climax in a snappy line delivered with a smile rather than an adrenaline roaring cliffhanger. And it's not only television that's acting old. Radio waves are now being filled with old time music, cinemas project movies twice as big for those with bad eyesight and social networks are now jammed with the elderly spewing racist nonsense every second. This problem won't go away overnight. In fact it will never go away. The population is getting increasingly old and will begin to outnumber the young. I took to the streets to find out what the public thought about it.
"It's a good thing I think, I mean, everyone gets old. Why not make more stuff for them?"
"My grandma watched Breaking Bad."
"Don't they already show repeats all the time?"
"I think it's a good idea."
So there you are. Four people said those things so therefore all public opinion must conform. Yet I couldn't help but feel as if the elderly were a growing problem. Before the decade is over, 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 80. That means one of these people will have to look after the geezer, another will have to tell them what to do and the other person will die of starvation. Is this a just world, or should we just lead the elderly to underground crypts and hope that they evolve some kind of subterranean civilization beneath our feet? Like most things, the correct answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle.
"Smells like my grandsons car!" she says. I scream at the television and throw a blu-ray as hard as I can at the screen. I throw it so hard it goes faster than the speed of light and momentarily, yet infinitely, exists at every point in space at the same time before recombining inches away from the camera lens on the set four weeks ago, flies another few feet before hitting the old woman in the nose. I then grab handfuls of the discs and throw them out of the window, letting it rain bullshit onto the streets.
There once was a time when teenagers were hip and every strand of marketing was directed at them. To get the 16-24 audience in a prime time slot was the dream of every television exec this side of Death Valley. Yet times were changing. Young people didn't watch television, downloaded all their favourite films and were slowly dwindling in a post-recession economic meltdown. Rather than hanging out at the hippest clubs you'd be more likely to find teens hanging out under bridges offering to sell themselves for a cup of coffee. And the people on the other end of this illicit barterdom? The elderly. They had more money than they knew what to do with and half of them didn't even remember that they had it. Kept alive with futuristic machines that turned back the clock, the vampire myth was becoming more of a reality each day, sometimes literally as children would have their blood swapped with that of centenarians in order to keep them alive.
With this in mind the future world of media has took a turn for the old. Rather than the ultra-violent non-linear post-modern slanged-up shows we're used to seeing grace our tv screens, networks are now focusing on a more slower paced form of entertainment. The shows are often populated by protagonists that are over sixty, the villains are young people, the plots amble along apparently aimlessly and climax in a snappy line delivered with a smile rather than an adrenaline roaring cliffhanger. And it's not only television that's acting old. Radio waves are now being filled with old time music, cinemas project movies twice as big for those with bad eyesight and social networks are now jammed with the elderly spewing racist nonsense every second. This problem won't go away overnight. In fact it will never go away. The population is getting increasingly old and will begin to outnumber the young. I took to the streets to find out what the public thought about it.
"It's a good thing I think, I mean, everyone gets old. Why not make more stuff for them?"
"My grandma watched Breaking Bad."
"Don't they already show repeats all the time?"
"I think it's a good idea."
So there you are. Four people said those things so therefore all public opinion must conform. Yet I couldn't help but feel as if the elderly were a growing problem. Before the decade is over, 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 80. That means one of these people will have to look after the geezer, another will have to tell them what to do and the other person will die of starvation. Is this a just world, or should we just lead the elderly to underground crypts and hope that they evolve some kind of subterranean civilization beneath our feet? Like most things, the correct answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle.
16.11.13
Dancing In Blood
A crystal interface is embedded into the plastic molded counter. Tablet computers secretly read your fingerprints and transmit them to large police organisations. I select the options and look at the rotating wire-frame humanoid begin to morph.
"It uses sixth generation DDR-RAM in a java environment, vintage-fitted to deliver an optimal end user experience." says Boff. I nod, face lit from below in a shade of blue. I look up at the OHP screen and see my creation come to life, Gene Roddenberry takes off his clothes and begins to slow bang Liza Minelli.
"What kind of algorithms are you running here?" I ask.
"A basic MySql hack modded onto Marionette. It's what Pixar uses."
"But..the chip set for this app must need...gigaquads" I say, turning away from the screen momentarily.
"Not so. It uses white space and a simple gaussian noise recombination. It's streaming data from the cloud auto-authed through a 16x DVD drive." he says. I turn back to the tablet and smear my fingers. Gene Roddenberry is replaced with Channing Tatum.
"I think I've seen enough." I say. We walk back outside and stand by the kidney bean shaped pool.
"There's still some bugs I need to grind out, but I think we'll be ready to go live Q3 2014."
"What gave you the inspiration?"
"Well, I started off wanting to make a really in depth cataloging system for porn. I'd spend hours watching clips, taking notes. I wanted to do it mostly for myself, I had quite specific tastes, but I thought it could be used by others. A truly in-depth search engine for any pornographic image or video ever recorded." he says, smoking an electronic cigarette. I look out towards the Hollywood hills.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, I checked the analytics of the search engine, looked to see what people were looking for and try and direct my analysis more towards trends. Turned out a lot of people were looking for actors I'd never heard the names of. Wasn't until I cross-referenced this with Facebook and made an infograph I worked out most people were searching for porn stars that had some kind of resemblance to someone they knew, consciously or not." he said. I shivered lightly.
"Creepy."
"I know. This data alone could predict porn, fashion, taste, style, whatever, it was like a weather report. I then thought of what to do next. Why not take the people out of the porn, make it more eco-friendly, more now? So I set about working on CGI porno where people could specify what exactly they'd want to see. That was the first prototype of that thing in there."
"Sure, makes sense. Make porn more family friendly by taking out the exploitation."
"Turns out equal rights are making a big resurgence, and people hate porn. But they also love porn. CGI porn makes it so anyone can watch it without feeling guilty."
"So what made you have it so you could change peoples faces?"
"Evolution. Why not watch Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon take turns on some robot? Even better, why not import some photos from your phone and watch your friends have sex?"
"Well...I dunno."
"Think about it. You could watch yourself having sex with anyone...without using your imagination!"
"Sounds like the future to me." I say, spitting into the pool.
"Hi-Def CGI dicks of any size fitting in any hole of any one. It's a cybersex future cumming at your screens!" he says, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing, his testicles vibrating like electric eggs. I kick them off before leaping from the balcony and running for a car.
The high speed chase begins in West L.A. and takes me bouncing over small humps in the road as I'm chased by jeeps. I swerve between traffic as an Asian man pops out of a sunroof and begins to shoot an Uzi. I do a hand-brake turn and the car scrapes through an alley at ninety miles per hour. I drive off a bridge and into the aquaduct, tyres spinning across the dry concrete. One of the jeeps hits a shopping trolley that gets caught under one of it's wheels. There is the sound of an engine revving down and I slowly turn around. Silently the jeep flips into the air, flips over twice and then hits a concrete barricade. As the metal and meat crash together loudly time and sound return to normal. I look in my rear view mirror momentarily and jam the car into a higher gear, taking a plywood ramp up out of the aquaduct, flying over a small house and back down onto the street. The other jeep hits the top of a palm tree and explodes. I drift around a corner, slam the brake on and manage to parallel park it between two other cars. As I get out the door falls off. A homeless man who has been watching the whole thing then looks down at the empty bottle of whiskey in a brown bag and raises his eyebrows.
I stand on stage with a punk band I had joined early in the week. I go up to the microphone.
"We are The Shit Wolves and we hate you!" I shout, hitting the strings of my guitar. The crowd starts to pogo as I shout into the microphone and the band plays around me.
"Come on join my frozen anarchy,
She said la la la
The police put you in jail
So they can fuck you
Ooh ooh
Oh oh woah-ho, ho!
Frozen anarchy across the states!
Frozen death blows across the states!
Oh, oh, oi, oi, whoa-woo awoo woah!" I sing.
Half an hour later we are backstage drinking warm beer. The band talk about whether it was punk to promote yourself using the internet.
"I still think we should send those cassettes to the radio station, with fuck you written on them." says the bassist, laughing at his own joke.
"We should go to Palestine and play to the soldiers fighting over there. It's like we're saying to Obama, we're a punk band playing in a war zone. You got a problem with it?" says the drummer.
"Well, I got my girlfriend to make the next poster anyway." says the keyboardist.
"Again? I thought we agreed to use that picture of that man who shot himself?"
"She already had 'em printed up man. They're pretty sweet."
"Yeah but that picture is fucking horrible." laughs the bassist. I take out a glass pipe and stuff it full of crystal meth.
"Boys...how about we make a Vine?" I say, lighting up.
"It uses sixth generation DDR-RAM in a java environment, vintage-fitted to deliver an optimal end user experience." says Boff. I nod, face lit from below in a shade of blue. I look up at the OHP screen and see my creation come to life, Gene Roddenberry takes off his clothes and begins to slow bang Liza Minelli.
"What kind of algorithms are you running here?" I ask.
"A basic MySql hack modded onto Marionette. It's what Pixar uses."
"But..the chip set for this app must need...gigaquads" I say, turning away from the screen momentarily.
"Not so. It uses white space and a simple gaussian noise recombination. It's streaming data from the cloud auto-authed through a 16x DVD drive." he says. I turn back to the tablet and smear my fingers. Gene Roddenberry is replaced with Channing Tatum.
"I think I've seen enough." I say. We walk back outside and stand by the kidney bean shaped pool.
"There's still some bugs I need to grind out, but I think we'll be ready to go live Q3 2014."
"What gave you the inspiration?"
"Well, I started off wanting to make a really in depth cataloging system for porn. I'd spend hours watching clips, taking notes. I wanted to do it mostly for myself, I had quite specific tastes, but I thought it could be used by others. A truly in-depth search engine for any pornographic image or video ever recorded." he says, smoking an electronic cigarette. I look out towards the Hollywood hills.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, I checked the analytics of the search engine, looked to see what people were looking for and try and direct my analysis more towards trends. Turned out a lot of people were looking for actors I'd never heard the names of. Wasn't until I cross-referenced this with Facebook and made an infograph I worked out most people were searching for porn stars that had some kind of resemblance to someone they knew, consciously or not." he said. I shivered lightly.
"Creepy."
"I know. This data alone could predict porn, fashion, taste, style, whatever, it was like a weather report. I then thought of what to do next. Why not take the people out of the porn, make it more eco-friendly, more now? So I set about working on CGI porno where people could specify what exactly they'd want to see. That was the first prototype of that thing in there."
"Sure, makes sense. Make porn more family friendly by taking out the exploitation."
"Turns out equal rights are making a big resurgence, and people hate porn. But they also love porn. CGI porn makes it so anyone can watch it without feeling guilty."
"So what made you have it so you could change peoples faces?"
"Evolution. Why not watch Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon take turns on some robot? Even better, why not import some photos from your phone and watch your friends have sex?"
"Well...I dunno."
"Think about it. You could watch yourself having sex with anyone...without using your imagination!"
"Sounds like the future to me." I say, spitting into the pool.
"Hi-Def CGI dicks of any size fitting in any hole of any one. It's a cybersex future cumming at your screens!" he says, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing, his testicles vibrating like electric eggs. I kick them off before leaping from the balcony and running for a car.
The high speed chase begins in West L.A. and takes me bouncing over small humps in the road as I'm chased by jeeps. I swerve between traffic as an Asian man pops out of a sunroof and begins to shoot an Uzi. I do a hand-brake turn and the car scrapes through an alley at ninety miles per hour. I drive off a bridge and into the aquaduct, tyres spinning across the dry concrete. One of the jeeps hits a shopping trolley that gets caught under one of it's wheels. There is the sound of an engine revving down and I slowly turn around. Silently the jeep flips into the air, flips over twice and then hits a concrete barricade. As the metal and meat crash together loudly time and sound return to normal. I look in my rear view mirror momentarily and jam the car into a higher gear, taking a plywood ramp up out of the aquaduct, flying over a small house and back down onto the street. The other jeep hits the top of a palm tree and explodes. I drift around a corner, slam the brake on and manage to parallel park it between two other cars. As I get out the door falls off. A homeless man who has been watching the whole thing then looks down at the empty bottle of whiskey in a brown bag and raises his eyebrows.
I stand on stage with a punk band I had joined early in the week. I go up to the microphone.
"We are The Shit Wolves and we hate you!" I shout, hitting the strings of my guitar. The crowd starts to pogo as I shout into the microphone and the band plays around me.
"Come on join my frozen anarchy,
She said la la la
The police put you in jail
So they can fuck you
Ooh ooh
Oh oh woah-ho, ho!
Frozen anarchy across the states!
Frozen death blows across the states!
Oh, oh, oi, oi, whoa-woo awoo woah!" I sing.
Half an hour later we are backstage drinking warm beer. The band talk about whether it was punk to promote yourself using the internet.
"I still think we should send those cassettes to the radio station, with fuck you written on them." says the bassist, laughing at his own joke.
"We should go to Palestine and play to the soldiers fighting over there. It's like we're saying to Obama, we're a punk band playing in a war zone. You got a problem with it?" says the drummer.
"Well, I got my girlfriend to make the next poster anyway." says the keyboardist.
"Again? I thought we agreed to use that picture of that man who shot himself?"
"She already had 'em printed up man. They're pretty sweet."
"Yeah but that picture is fucking horrible." laughs the bassist. I take out a glass pipe and stuff it full of crystal meth.
"Boys...how about we make a Vine?" I say, lighting up.
13.11.13
Mondrian
Black shuffle steps, raw torn lips, purple and white skin, ottered onto once another like crow, rook, raven, a minnow swims in the lake and leaps onto rocks. Elastic monster masks are contained into DVD slip cases. Cops eat donuts and drink offal flavoured tequila wrung from the bloated tripe. Ash rained from the clouds made from the cigarette smoke from a thousand freelance radicals living in cardboard boxes by the Los Angeles bay. Vampires slide out from orange coffins as Kanye West announces the release of his new album broadcast on podcasts uploaded onto Raspberry Pi's sent over to Africa by clueless billionaires with soft, wet hearts. Failing hipsters smoulder in personal immuno-pods that traverse them around the city, a high centre of gravity and an ease of target lead the burning sputes to tumble down onto the grey destiny. Galileo lying in his bed with his eyes open and the sun coming up from the hills, leaping up from the straw mattress, Galilei writing down concepts of physics that would remain intrinsic to modern knowledge on falling. The reality of cream covered custard pies hit against the face with the plate and the force of an arm. The heel hitting a banana skin and propelling the person forward before the accelerating weight causes them to fall. Video tapes of Jeremy Beadle creeping up on people dressed as an authority figure. Trembling Mondrians.
11.11.13
With A Chance Of Meatballs
“Nobody can teach your grandma to suck eggs.”
“I know.” I said. Of course I knew, I tried when I was sixteen. Nevertheless I looked out of the window and let my eyes pour down onto the street, out onto the bay. I pictured myself surfing.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don't think it's that complex. I'm just looking for some standardized information, I thought this would be the place to find out.”
“But you're asking about something metaphysical. You aren't interested in the administrative districts recognized by law, or the actual geography of architecture.”
“Geoarchitecural analysis.” I corrected him.
“So what is it you want?”
“To know where the edge of the city is. I'm not asking about where the city finishes and outside of the city begins. But the actual edge. To visit the places on the map where the line is appears no different from any other potential point on the line, therefore it seems arbitary.”
“You're suggesting that borders are infinite?”
“What's the point in learning a different language if you don't have any social skills. Comprendez?”
“But you pass through this meridian as you leave the city. You must know what's not Los Angeles, if only for it to be another city, so maybe you should look at where Los Angeles isn't and begin walking until you re-enter the city.”
“Maybe.”
“Well maybe the area where the city is and isn't can be quite a large area. A mile deep ring on the fringes of Los Angeles, a place caught between two states.”
“Maybe if you organised borders to be gradients rather than lines? Different zones...different...vibes.” I noticed he had caught a constrained night dream onto his face via a large cut given in his sleep. Long fingernails.
“If you'd like to do that, you're free to.” he said.
“The thing is though...what's it matter?” I said leaning back.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Why do I care where it is. It doesn't matter.”
“You're the one who wanted to know.”
“Yeah whatever.” I said.
I leave city hall with a buck in my pocket and rash on my hand. I'd already spent the morning deciding on definitions of Los Angeles, California and all I found out was less than I thought I knew. So I decided to walk north. I went through the city and over the hills, eventually reaching city limits. The mountains around me were steep and glowed orange. I continued until there was no trace of anything made and started walking back. The sun was beginning to rise on the Mojave desert and I went back through the scrub and hill, back hot with sweat, red from the sun, and my shoes were rags and my eyes were shot with blood. Each step I took was the end. The cars went past and the trees were small and I want to drink but there was was to go back. Not all of the houses and structures were part of it, but they were a sign. I stood in the road and felt the air move and kept walking back and toward. There was a bit between city and nature. It was like seeing what wasn't there and if you turned or even blinked it'd go so you had to carry on staring to see it change and be real and that's what I did stood on the road looking at where the city was and wasn't til my eyes began to shake.
I revisited a diner on the edge of the city and began to fold the bit of bread they'd given me. Americans put sugar in everything they ate. I see a tall, heavy set man sat on his own in a booth by the window.
"Hello."
"Hey buddy." he says.
"You mind if I sit here?"
"Sure, why not." he says.
"You from New York?"
"Pittsburgh. You from England?"
"Yeah. I'm on holiday. I think you call it 'a vacation'."
"I know what a holiday is fella. So what brings you out here? You look like shit, pardon my French."
"De nada home boy. I've been walking."
"You looked like you walked through the desert."
"Didn't Christ return from the desert?"
"Lots of people did. What about our troops. You saying them mean sons of a bitches are like Jesus Christ I salute ya buddy." he says, biting into his grilled cheese.
"You know, I've been wondering who do I have to blow to get a drink round here. So I came over to you."
"What?"
"I said, will you buy me a drink. I only had enough for this piece of bread."
"Sure. You want a root beer?"
"Thanks." I say. He goes over to the waitress and grabs her by the arm and orders me a beverage as I munch on my bland meal. He comes back to the table. I gladly quaff the beverage before continuing; "You know, people say a lot about Americans. And one of those things is how friendly some of you are."
"No problem buddy. I used to be homeless, I know what it's like. You probably came over here from London hoping to be a big movie star, thinking that the streets were paved with gold. Turns out it's pretty hard after all, huh?"
"You got it."
"A lot of people come over. Be an actor, be a writer, whatever. It's not all it's cracked up to be."
"I met this girl the other day...she was also from England."
"That's what I'm saying." he said, nodding. I thank him again for the root beer and leave the diner, looking out at the city with blurred, fucked up vision. I laugh to myself and hid in the bed of a pickup truck, hiding beneath the dark blue cover sheet. Maybe I'd wake up in Los Vegas or on the beach. Maybe a thousand miles away with no phone or wallet, feasting on the dying around me.
“I know.” I said. Of course I knew, I tried when I was sixteen. Nevertheless I looked out of the window and let my eyes pour down onto the street, out onto the bay. I pictured myself surfing.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don't think it's that complex. I'm just looking for some standardized information, I thought this would be the place to find out.”
“But you're asking about something metaphysical. You aren't interested in the administrative districts recognized by law, or the actual geography of architecture.”
“Geoarchitecural analysis.” I corrected him.
“So what is it you want?”
“To know where the edge of the city is. I'm not asking about where the city finishes and outside of the city begins. But the actual edge. To visit the places on the map where the line is appears no different from any other potential point on the line, therefore it seems arbitary.”
“You're suggesting that borders are infinite?”
“What's the point in learning a different language if you don't have any social skills. Comprendez?”
“But you pass through this meridian as you leave the city. You must know what's not Los Angeles, if only for it to be another city, so maybe you should look at where Los Angeles isn't and begin walking until you re-enter the city.”
“Maybe.”
“Well maybe the area where the city is and isn't can be quite a large area. A mile deep ring on the fringes of Los Angeles, a place caught between two states.”
“Maybe if you organised borders to be gradients rather than lines? Different zones...different...vibes.” I noticed he had caught a constrained night dream onto his face via a large cut given in his sleep. Long fingernails.
“If you'd like to do that, you're free to.” he said.
“The thing is though...what's it matter?” I said leaning back.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Why do I care where it is. It doesn't matter.”
“You're the one who wanted to know.”
“Yeah whatever.” I said.
I leave city hall with a buck in my pocket and rash on my hand. I'd already spent the morning deciding on definitions of Los Angeles, California and all I found out was less than I thought I knew. So I decided to walk north. I went through the city and over the hills, eventually reaching city limits. The mountains around me were steep and glowed orange. I continued until there was no trace of anything made and started walking back. The sun was beginning to rise on the Mojave desert and I went back through the scrub and hill, back hot with sweat, red from the sun, and my shoes were rags and my eyes were shot with blood. Each step I took was the end. The cars went past and the trees were small and I want to drink but there was was to go back. Not all of the houses and structures were part of it, but they were a sign. I stood in the road and felt the air move and kept walking back and toward. There was a bit between city and nature. It was like seeing what wasn't there and if you turned or even blinked it'd go so you had to carry on staring to see it change and be real and that's what I did stood on the road looking at where the city was and wasn't til my eyes began to shake.
I revisited a diner on the edge of the city and began to fold the bit of bread they'd given me. Americans put sugar in everything they ate. I see a tall, heavy set man sat on his own in a booth by the window.
"Hello."
"Hey buddy." he says.
"You mind if I sit here?"
"Sure, why not." he says.
"You from New York?"
"Pittsburgh. You from England?"
"Yeah. I'm on holiday. I think you call it 'a vacation'."
"I know what a holiday is fella. So what brings you out here? You look like shit, pardon my French."
"De nada home boy. I've been walking."
"You looked like you walked through the desert."
"Didn't Christ return from the desert?"
"Lots of people did. What about our troops. You saying them mean sons of a bitches are like Jesus Christ I salute ya buddy." he says, biting into his grilled cheese.
"You know, I've been wondering who do I have to blow to get a drink round here. So I came over to you."
"What?"
"I said, will you buy me a drink. I only had enough for this piece of bread."
"Sure. You want a root beer?"
"Thanks." I say. He goes over to the waitress and grabs her by the arm and orders me a beverage as I munch on my bland meal. He comes back to the table. I gladly quaff the beverage before continuing; "You know, people say a lot about Americans. And one of those things is how friendly some of you are."
"No problem buddy. I used to be homeless, I know what it's like. You probably came over here from London hoping to be a big movie star, thinking that the streets were paved with gold. Turns out it's pretty hard after all, huh?"
"You got it."
"A lot of people come over. Be an actor, be a writer, whatever. It's not all it's cracked up to be."
"I met this girl the other day...she was also from England."
"That's what I'm saying." he said, nodding. I thank him again for the root beer and leave the diner, looking out at the city with blurred, fucked up vision. I laugh to myself and hid in the bed of a pickup truck, hiding beneath the dark blue cover sheet. Maybe I'd wake up in Los Vegas or on the beach. Maybe a thousand miles away with no phone or wallet, feasting on the dying around me.
8.11.13
Forever Triangle: Uncle Jupiter
I am standing outside a school holding a giant cheque which reads one hundred and sixty thousand dollars printed in a font that resembles handwriting, designed by a team of graphic artists and distributed across the Western coast of America. It was the font of choice for these kinds of events, though there was a wide selection of fake handwriting available to charities, government bodies and the media. A flash bulb goes off in front of my face. Who uses flash bulbs any more. My mouth is dry and I gulp the back of my tongue. The woman next to me talks to the dozen or so reporters but I can't concentrate on what she is saying. The enormous cheque begins to slide down a sweaty palm and I worry I will drop it. Somebody finally takes the cheque off me and the woman puts an arm around my shoulder and we smile as more flash bulbs go off and people shout questions.
I am left alone in a hallway and hear my name called out. Fire doors open inwards for me and I walk across the auditorium floor, the applause falling as quickly as it rose. The head of the board of governers and the headteacher are stood to one side. I look around for a podium or somewhere less exposed but find none.
“Hello. Good afternoon. I hope we're all going to have a good time today. I just donated one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to your school. A hundred and sixty thousand. It's a generous donation, so generous that not many people are even able to do it. But I am, because I care. I care about the little guy, hitting the books, trying to make himself smart. I don't care if you're a jock, cheerleader, class clown or goth, everyone deserves an education that is paid for through generous donations like the one I just gave. I suppose you're asking yourself, why, why would this British guy come over to my school and give me nearly two hundred thousand dollars? But you know what? You shouldn't be asking why. You should be asking how. How do I get to be that guy?” I say. I wonder how loudly I am speaking. How do I sound, blowing air in short bursts over a wet blob in my mouth. I think about the size of my tongue.
“It's economics, Salzebury, the Gideon knot, Keynes, mythology, survivalism, trigonometry zoology, fluid dynamics, pyramid schemes, zombies, Rudolph Hess, microscopy, an excel spreadsheet, ipads, gemstones, bus tickets, viruses, environmentalism, brain transplants, pacifism, The Odyssey, facetime, gin and tonic, new shoes, the conquest of Mexico, batman, zygotes, fountain pens, mints, Sigmund Frued, Futurism, the Amazonian Rainforest, golf, Ludwig van Beethoven, buicks, childhood, pataphysics, buddhism and cell phones," I explain. "You can't just get a college education by paying for it. You have to work hard. Then you have to carry on working hard once you've graduated. The only difference is you'll be working somewhere nicer than cleaning up piles of shit in a school like this. You want everyone laugh at you? Think that you're a fucking joke? No, didn't think so. Take the easy way, drive a hyundai to work, have an affair, earn the average wage. All of it will seem terrible but at least it won't actually be terrible. That's why getting an education is important. You think I just threw one hundred sixty at this place so you could paint the corridors, put a basketball court somewhere? Hell no. I just give you the opportunity for an education. Make yourselves smart and in doing so increase the competition for jobs in the future.” I said, smiling. I looked down and shook my head before looking back up.
“You don't even know what. This is basic economics, but they don't teach that shit at high school. Don't want everyone knowing how to make mad money, who they gonna make money off? Y'all punks need to be schooled on some left wing sheeeeyit.” I say. I have grown confident as I speak. I feel strong and powerful. I pop open the top button of my collar.
“Ch'all better recognize socialism. You probably thinking of Groucho if I say Marx. But guess what. I'm talking about a guy called Karl. And he invented Communism along with this dude called Engels. Say what? Motherfucker invented communism, ain't that a Russian thing? Hell yeah homie. So's space travel. You think it's a coincidence all them dudes on the enterprise are chill?” I say.
“Anyway, I've donated almost a billion dollars to schools in Los Angeles. Y'all going to get a sweet education for gratis. Might seem fun now, but wait til you leave college. Everyone around you's gonna have been at the same college. I made this whole city totally fucked!” I say, miming smearing my hands across a dome. I laugh and walk out, starting to run through the empty corridors. It is a labyrinth of plastic, every door seems as same as the last. This is the place shootings happen. Eventually I reach the outside and have to lie in the car park, coughing. What have I done? There's no load game in real life! Everything had repercussions, from breakfast to noon. I sat up and started to run again, down streets populated by cars, veins bulging on my forehead. Nine hundred and thirty two thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars of company funds given away in the space of a day. I wondered for a moment if I would have to claim bankruptcy then laughed. Of course not. I still had things to do. I rang Bill and he picked me up.
“Take me back to the hotel.” I say.
“Sure. Are you okay?” he says. I begin to take off my clothes.
“Yes.”
I am left alone in a hallway and hear my name called out. Fire doors open inwards for me and I walk across the auditorium floor, the applause falling as quickly as it rose. The head of the board of governers and the headteacher are stood to one side. I look around for a podium or somewhere less exposed but find none.
“Hello. Good afternoon. I hope we're all going to have a good time today. I just donated one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to your school. A hundred and sixty thousand. It's a generous donation, so generous that not many people are even able to do it. But I am, because I care. I care about the little guy, hitting the books, trying to make himself smart. I don't care if you're a jock, cheerleader, class clown or goth, everyone deserves an education that is paid for through generous donations like the one I just gave. I suppose you're asking yourself, why, why would this British guy come over to my school and give me nearly two hundred thousand dollars? But you know what? You shouldn't be asking why. You should be asking how. How do I get to be that guy?” I say. I wonder how loudly I am speaking. How do I sound, blowing air in short bursts over a wet blob in my mouth. I think about the size of my tongue.
“It's economics, Salzebury, the Gideon knot, Keynes, mythology, survivalism, trigonometry zoology, fluid dynamics, pyramid schemes, zombies, Rudolph Hess, microscopy, an excel spreadsheet, ipads, gemstones, bus tickets, viruses, environmentalism, brain transplants, pacifism, The Odyssey, facetime, gin and tonic, new shoes, the conquest of Mexico, batman, zygotes, fountain pens, mints, Sigmund Frued, Futurism, the Amazonian Rainforest, golf, Ludwig van Beethoven, buicks, childhood, pataphysics, buddhism and cell phones," I explain. "You can't just get a college education by paying for it. You have to work hard. Then you have to carry on working hard once you've graduated. The only difference is you'll be working somewhere nicer than cleaning up piles of shit in a school like this. You want everyone laugh at you? Think that you're a fucking joke? No, didn't think so. Take the easy way, drive a hyundai to work, have an affair, earn the average wage. All of it will seem terrible but at least it won't actually be terrible. That's why getting an education is important. You think I just threw one hundred sixty at this place so you could paint the corridors, put a basketball court somewhere? Hell no. I just give you the opportunity for an education. Make yourselves smart and in doing so increase the competition for jobs in the future.” I said, smiling. I looked down and shook my head before looking back up.
“You don't even know what. This is basic economics, but they don't teach that shit at high school. Don't want everyone knowing how to make mad money, who they gonna make money off? Y'all punks need to be schooled on some left wing sheeeeyit.” I say. I have grown confident as I speak. I feel strong and powerful. I pop open the top button of my collar.
“Ch'all better recognize socialism. You probably thinking of Groucho if I say Marx. But guess what. I'm talking about a guy called Karl. And he invented Communism along with this dude called Engels. Say what? Motherfucker invented communism, ain't that a Russian thing? Hell yeah homie. So's space travel. You think it's a coincidence all them dudes on the enterprise are chill?” I say.
“Anyway, I've donated almost a billion dollars to schools in Los Angeles. Y'all going to get a sweet education for gratis. Might seem fun now, but wait til you leave college. Everyone around you's gonna have been at the same college. I made this whole city totally fucked!” I say, miming smearing my hands across a dome. I laugh and walk out, starting to run through the empty corridors. It is a labyrinth of plastic, every door seems as same as the last. This is the place shootings happen. Eventually I reach the outside and have to lie in the car park, coughing. What have I done? There's no load game in real life! Everything had repercussions, from breakfast to noon. I sat up and started to run again, down streets populated by cars, veins bulging on my forehead. Nine hundred and thirty two thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars of company funds given away in the space of a day. I wondered for a moment if I would have to claim bankruptcy then laughed. Of course not. I still had things to do. I rang Bill and he picked me up.
“Take me back to the hotel.” I say.
“Sure. Are you okay?” he says. I begin to take off my clothes.
“Yes.”
OK Coral
Thousands of miles of bone covered by a coloured skin, slowly turning the bleached whiteness of death. The sky screamed infernally overhead burning deeper and deeper through the ancient reef. It was the time. Unknowing, each mouth kissed the sea, releasing motes out from their stomachs that drifted into the ongoing storm happening beneath the foam. The cells that caught one another began to change, drifting down far from where they began onto a sheet of rock. The polyp grew a mouth and began to grow another, attached by a tiny membrane. And these copies would go on to grow another copy. With identical mouths they snared plankton, reaching upwards on a limestone skeleton towards the shifting sky.
In it's eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's borders there was a creature making it's way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.
The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily shit was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.
On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.
Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.
The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.
The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it's existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it's life was ended. But then again, neither could we.
In it's eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's borders there was a creature making it's way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.
The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily shit was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.
On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.
Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.
The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.
The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it's existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it's life was ended. But then again, neither could we.
4.11.13
I Am The CEO
I cruised over the rocky outcrop with a cigarette pinched between my teeth, it was a recessed type of filter used by machine gun artists in the second world war. The All Terrain Vehicle came to a purring stop as I parked on the mountain side, looking at the city through my field goggles. I had been in Los Angeles a long time. And I hadn't learned nothing. Don't get a McJob, be a Steve Jobs. I had integrated myself into a large non-profit company and worked it from the inside out, sabotaging my co-workers, setting up chains of events so that they would find themselves destroyed. I was the puppet master. I was the Royal Tenenbaum. I was CEO, earning eighty thousand dollars a year just to go wine and dine chumps in order to secure investment. I sat across from gorgons eating expensive salad and drinking white wine. Success? I'd made the American Dream a reality. I was a semi-state fictional character starring in my own film before being made into life. Was this box office blockbuster going to bombasticate the socio-cultural landscape of Los Angeles? I was in the mouth of the world, my whispers being projected across multiple wi-fi dimensions directly into high definition big detail corporate monosynths. I lowered the binocs and dialled my assistant on my cell phone.
“Organise a board meeting, stat.” I whisper through cut teeth.
The limousine slinks it's way through the streets of Hollywood with me in the back, reclining on Swedish leather. Deep warbling world music swells in the speakers around me as a single tear coagulates on my bottom eye lid and captures the reflection of the street lights as they zip overhead.
“It's all so...beautiful.”
The limousine pulls up to a traffic light. I look over into the car next to me and see a young couple. The one driving looks like Danzig. His girlfriend looks over to me then says something to her partner. They both laugh. I turn back to watching the stop light and put my hands on the wheel. I rev the engine. The couple return the challenge. We are both revving our engines, the pitch of the valves increasing as explosions rapidly accelerate. The light goes green. I slam the stick shift of my ATV into Drive and begin flying down the length of the limousine. The racer next to me flies past, I can see his expression of concentration increase through the flicking windows. I hear a horn ahead of me and look up. The seven forty express train coming from Pasadena is on a collision course with me and the driver next to me. And he's slowly catching up. I flick the stick shift into it's race gear setting and begin to pull away. The train's horn toots again just as the front of the limousine smashes through the barrier across the tracks. I look over once more at the couple. He is frantic, eyes bulging, heads pressed against the wind shield. She looks over at me and winks. I push the ATV to it's limit and with a jump narrowly escape along with the rest of the limo. The other car meanwhile isn't so lucky. It's passengers are ejected two hundred feet in the air whilst the car is crushed beneath American railroad legacy. I come to a skidding stop just before the driver's compartment. A little window opens.
“Any problems boss?”
“Guess they had a train to catch.” I say to Bill.
The limousine finally pulls up on the very bottom section of the underground car park. I enter a set of steel doors and plod wearily through the benign corridors. I enter the board room and see it's members sat around a long oak table. A fire blazes in the heath, throwing shifting shapes across the little bald men. Silently I walk to the head of the table and put my seven thousand dollar Dolce briefcase on the table.
“Gentlemen of the board. Any acknowledgements?” I say.
“What are we here for?”
“I gathered you here today...for a presentation.” I say. “Just a few weeks ago the world's entire supply of titanium was bought out. All the mines, processing plants and country stockpiles were purchased overnight.” I take out a lump of titanium from my pocket and throw it onto the table.
“Gentlemen...welcome to the titanium business.”
I ascend the spiral staircase up into the tower. Printers continually churn out stock market prices, high energy business people talk to themselves on headsets, sometimes a basketball is thrown about in order to decide who's making coffee. I stand at a cubicle in which a long haired lawyer rests his feet on the desk as he makes a yo-yo bounce up and down, speaking Portuguese into a cordless phone. He notices me and puts the phone down.
“How's it hangin, hot shot?” I say, leaning against a thin wood.
“Long, loose and full of juice padre. How was the board meeting?”
“You knew about that?”
“Anybody whose anybody heard your business deal. You've transformed a non-profit law firm into the world's one and only source for titanium.”
“Walk with me.” I say, walking off. He follows.
“So what's next?”
“How much does a kilo of titanium cost at the moment?”
“Seven hundred and sixty five dollars.”
“But how much are we selling?”
“None.”
“Exactly. By the time we finished this conversation the world will value titanium twenty bucks more than it did when we started.”
“What's the game plan though here ?”
“What do you know about titanium?”
“Well...it's strong. And it's light.”
“That it?”
“I don't mine it, I buy it.”
“It's used in the manufacture of aerospace parts, sporting goods, surgical instruments and the storage of nuclear waste. It can also be processed into a white dye used in teeth whitening. But I'm going to do something else with it.”
“What?” said the lawyer. I exit the office and stand on a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as dusk settles in, walking over to the short wall seperating myself and a sixty foot drop. The lawyer grabs hold of the door and nods.
“You're not afraid of heights are you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You know what else titanium can do?”
“What?” he whispers, lips turning blue.
“It can turn a man invisible.” I say, taking a potion from my pocket and drinking it's contents. I watch the lawyer look directly at me in astonishment.
“Padre? Padre?” he says. I creep towards him. “Where've you gone man?” I grab him by both wrists and begin to pull him. He yells. “Stop! Stop!” I pull him towards the balcony and begin to climb over.
“See you in hell!” I scream as I pull him over the edge.
“Organise a board meeting, stat.” I whisper through cut teeth.
The limousine slinks it's way through the streets of Hollywood with me in the back, reclining on Swedish leather. Deep warbling world music swells in the speakers around me as a single tear coagulates on my bottom eye lid and captures the reflection of the street lights as they zip overhead.
“It's all so...beautiful.”
The limousine pulls up to a traffic light. I look over into the car next to me and see a young couple. The one driving looks like Danzig. His girlfriend looks over to me then says something to her partner. They both laugh. I turn back to watching the stop light and put my hands on the wheel. I rev the engine. The couple return the challenge. We are both revving our engines, the pitch of the valves increasing as explosions rapidly accelerate. The light goes green. I slam the stick shift of my ATV into Drive and begin flying down the length of the limousine. The racer next to me flies past, I can see his expression of concentration increase through the flicking windows. I hear a horn ahead of me and look up. The seven forty express train coming from Pasadena is on a collision course with me and the driver next to me. And he's slowly catching up. I flick the stick shift into it's race gear setting and begin to pull away. The train's horn toots again just as the front of the limousine smashes through the barrier across the tracks. I look over once more at the couple. He is frantic, eyes bulging, heads pressed against the wind shield. She looks over at me and winks. I push the ATV to it's limit and with a jump narrowly escape along with the rest of the limo. The other car meanwhile isn't so lucky. It's passengers are ejected two hundred feet in the air whilst the car is crushed beneath American railroad legacy. I come to a skidding stop just before the driver's compartment. A little window opens.
“Any problems boss?”
“Guess they had a train to catch.” I say to Bill.
The limousine finally pulls up on the very bottom section of the underground car park. I enter a set of steel doors and plod wearily through the benign corridors. I enter the board room and see it's members sat around a long oak table. A fire blazes in the heath, throwing shifting shapes across the little bald men. Silently I walk to the head of the table and put my seven thousand dollar Dolce briefcase on the table.
“Gentlemen of the board. Any acknowledgements?” I say.
“What are we here for?”
“I gathered you here today...for a presentation.” I say. “Just a few weeks ago the world's entire supply of titanium was bought out. All the mines, processing plants and country stockpiles were purchased overnight.” I take out a lump of titanium from my pocket and throw it onto the table.
“Gentlemen...welcome to the titanium business.”
I ascend the spiral staircase up into the tower. Printers continually churn out stock market prices, high energy business people talk to themselves on headsets, sometimes a basketball is thrown about in order to decide who's making coffee. I stand at a cubicle in which a long haired lawyer rests his feet on the desk as he makes a yo-yo bounce up and down, speaking Portuguese into a cordless phone. He notices me and puts the phone down.
“How's it hangin, hot shot?” I say, leaning against a thin wood.
“Long, loose and full of juice padre. How was the board meeting?”
“You knew about that?”
“Anybody whose anybody heard your business deal. You've transformed a non-profit law firm into the world's one and only source for titanium.”
“Walk with me.” I say, walking off. He follows.
“So what's next?”
“How much does a kilo of titanium cost at the moment?”
“Seven hundred and sixty five dollars.”
“But how much are we selling?”
“None.”
“Exactly. By the time we finished this conversation the world will value titanium twenty bucks more than it did when we started.”
“What's the game plan though here ?”
“What do you know about titanium?”
“Well...it's strong. And it's light.”
“That it?”
“I don't mine it, I buy it.”
“It's used in the manufacture of aerospace parts, sporting goods, surgical instruments and the storage of nuclear waste. It can also be processed into a white dye used in teeth whitening. But I'm going to do something else with it.”
“What?” said the lawyer. I exit the office and stand on a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as dusk settles in, walking over to the short wall seperating myself and a sixty foot drop. The lawyer grabs hold of the door and nods.
“You're not afraid of heights are you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You know what else titanium can do?”
“What?” he whispers, lips turning blue.
“It can turn a man invisible.” I say, taking a potion from my pocket and drinking it's contents. I watch the lawyer look directly at me in astonishment.
“Padre? Padre?” he says. I creep towards him. “Where've you gone man?” I grab him by both wrists and begin to pull him. He yells. “Stop! Stop!” I pull him towards the balcony and begin to climb over.
“See you in hell!” I scream as I pull him over the edge.
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