i guess if i took life (or myself) seriously, i would’ve spent a part of today digesting and then verbally spewing about the obama new yorker cover. but actually i don’t care? is that shameful, should i go into exile? i don’t care about barack obama. i want banksy to be president. now that his long-protected identity has been found out, he should petition the US government to let a british graffiti political commentator run for the ultimate gig.
anyway i don’t yet have the latest issue of the new yorker in my hot little hands because i’m too lazy to take the elevator down three flights to get my mail. matt will retrieve it, in an hour or two, like a carrier pigeon. this heat makes me feel like scarlet o’hara when all of the girls are taking their rest in this ridiculously huge room and servants are fanning them. i’ve honestly got organic white grapes to the right of me: who’s gonna hand feed them to me?!
what i really feel like talking about is how devolved i let myself get. i get myself to a point of such utter shamefulness that i finally snap out of it and rigorously work to re-refine myself. and then i get to refinement and so begins again the shame spiral. i hit the bottom today when i was recalling how “the bishop of battle” was my favorite movie when i was five.
it wasn’t even a movie! it was one-fourth of a movie, entitled “nightmares”. i guess that the bishop of battle was the second installment of four. it featured a super young emilio estevez as a rat-tailed arcade jock in california. his name was J.J. and everyone knew he was the best to ever live. he’d enter one of those slimy, dark, sticky-floored arcades, where you knew the pizza would just be THE BEST, and people would crowd around to watch him wreck the arcade games like he was an athlete. and by god. HE WAS.
so his main foe game was the bishop of battle, which featured this creepy green 3D bishop who talked about how he ruled over everything he saw or something. there were 13 progressively harder levels in the game and J.J. had only ever made it to 12. in the clip below, J.J. and his posse are tryin’ to beat the game and he loses. the arcade is closing, the groupies leave, and J.J. yells angrily after them. somebody tells him that level 13 probably doesn’t even exist! but J.J. wisely retorts that some guy in jersey got to it twice.
oh but if you find a clip later on in the movie!! J.J. makes it to the 13th level. but i won’t tell you what happens. only. REAL LIFE LASERS and the green 3D bishop himself showing up in a parking garage!!
it’s funny – these are my fond memories of being an only child: romping through the grass imagining i was in a surreal parallel universe with this electronic gun that my parents gave me (it had two different noises you could make, battery-powered) and watching epic cinema brilliance like the bishop of battle. my mom i think wanted me to be a scientist and plied me with the scientist start-up kit complete with magnifying glasses and glass cages and droppers and such. one year the japanese maple in the backyard suffered a beetle plague. my mom, hating the beetles, enlisted me to catch some. i caught two and they wouldn’t stop fighting to the death in their puny glass cage. i acted like a bigshot but i was truly horrified and petrified by the sight. I NEVER BECAME A SCIENTIST, are you surprised? she also plied me with a full kitchen set complete with a fake stove and plastic burgers and corn on the cob – I NEVER LEARNED TO COOK WELL, are you surprised?
i learned how to watch movies. still, it’s a long road from bresson to the bishop of battle. IT’S AN IMPORTANT road.
enjoy the music in this short clip. also, i’m turning into this guy:
