Post-wedding party last night. Myself, my wife, and ten drunken lesbians. There was heavy whipping cream1 and gratuitous breast fondling.2 I love you, San Francisco!
—
1In the dessert, actually.
2My own breasts, mostly.
Month: September 2005
Ya to na so re yoi! yoi! yoi!
The Japanese are nuts about baseball and it’s still a sport for the masses here. Hirasaki-san has kindly purchased tickets for a Japanese major league baseball game. The air is humid but picking up here at Jingu Stadium.
Now the teams playing tonight are the Yakult Swallows versus the Hiroshima Carp. Now you might think it would be difficult, nay impossible, to do a baseball cheer either for carp, or for swallows. You would be mistaken.
And I know what you’re thinking about calling an entire baseball team the Swallows, and that’s just not right, so put that out of your head. Let’s say you’re rooting for the Swallows and you want to show your team support. What do you do? You take out your big green umbrella, of course, and you bounce it up and down, while singing the team song, Tokyo Ondo, at the bottom of the seventh.
That’s what you do, if you’re a fan of the Swallows.
The seventh inning stretch comes up. The Carp contingent doesn’t sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Instead, the Carp fans inflate all these rubber balloons (see, you’re back thinking about the Swallows again, and I told you to stop thinking like that) and we sing the team song and then we let the balloons go and they float into the sky just like… well… here’s a QuickTime movie.
Alo Salut sunt eu un haiduc
A smoke-filled restaurant somewhere in Omotesando. Jars of sake and imojochu decorate one wall. I keep hearing this Romanian song all over Tokyo — the US will probably be inundated with it shortly. So I’m hanging out with Haba-san and Oikawa-san, enhancing the jet lag with Kirin. I ask about the Kyushu skewers that we’re munching on. “Cow organs,” Haba-san tells me. Haba-san’s girlfriend, Kumiko, arrives, and after a few more beers we initiate the time-honored cultural exchange program of teaching one another dirty words.
“I am mad with him,” says Kumiko. “This case. What do I say?”
“Ah,” I say. “In this case, you say, ‘You shithead.'”
“You?” asks Kumiko.
“You shithead,” I say.
“You shit?” says Kumiko.
“No. You shithead,” I pronounce.
“You shit… You shit, head. You chit. Chit head,” says Kumiko.
“Ssshhhit-head,” I say.
“Ssssshhhhhit-head,” says Kumiko.
“You shithead,” I say.
“You shit, head. You, shit head. You. Shit-head. You shithead,” Kumiko said, with conviction. Then, pointing at Haba-san, she says, “You shithead.”
I nod satisfactorily.
Kumiko pauses, and thinks. “What is shithead?”
I wonder, should I get up and fix myself a drink?
That’s my wife. Mickey Finns is a Russian schnapps that’s trying to expand distribution into Ireland. That’s me in the background. I don’t believe that I am the fruit in question.
What a field day for the heat
INT. OVAL OFFICE - NIGHT
A round mahogany table in a dimly lit room. The Presidential
seal leers down on a dozen generals and bureaucrats.
Computer screens flicker and scroll an endless stream of
data. The President taps a note pad with a ballpoint pen.
PRESIDENT
Update.
GENERAL #1
Four thousand five hundred dead,
Mr. President. Bridges into the
city are out. Side roads
impassable. Power, water, all out.
PRESIDENT
Stop. You.
BUREAUCRAT #1
Survivors gathering at the
Convention Center.
PRESIDENT
Number?
BUREAUCRAT #1
Thirty thousand. Dozens of deaths
every hour. Looting, raping,
lawlessness.
PRESIDENT
Go.
GENERAL #2
We've dispatched haz-mat teams from
McClellan. Eight thousand men,
armaments, vehicles. Arrives
tomorrow morning.
PRESIDENT
Status.
BUREAUCRAT #2
Administration approval rating down
twenty-four points. Friendly news
media replaying your speeches from
three days ago. Unfriendly media
calling for your resignation. The
region went solidly against us in
the last election.
PRESIDENT
I know.
GENERAL #1
Sir, we need a go no-go.
The President sighs. He caps the ballpoint pen.
EXT. CONVENTION CENTER - NIGHT
Urban hell on earth. Fires burn; people attack one another
with sticks, knives. Stampeding, glass breaking, an idiot
melange of screaming.
A woman clutches a wailing baby in her arms and dodges
bullets. A bleeding man staggers into her; she pushes him
away with a shriek.
Four men surround her. They carry guns and knives. One man
swings a pipe experimentally.
A new, mechanical sound: the distant hum of rotary engines.
The chaos pauses and the people look up.
WOMAN
Food!
MAN
Water!
Helicopters appear over the black city skyline. Their blue
searchlights scan the destruction.
The mob stops fighting, drops their weapons. People flag the
helicopters, shouting with joy.
INT. PRESS ROOM - DAY
Bright sun through the windows. The President shuffles
papers behind a podium. A makeup artist touches his nose
with a powder puff.
PRODUCER
We're on in five.
PRESIDENT
I'll rehearse.
EXT. CONVENTION CENTER - DAY
Helicopters slowly descend upon the crowd. The faces of the
people, smiling, shouting, waving, gather around beneath
them.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
My fellow Americans...
Our woman's face. She looks at the helicopters, thinks...
then turns, and begins to run.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
I have consulted with the governors
and the mayors of the affected
region...
A milky white powder billows from canisters on the sides of
the helicopters.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
And unfortunately, despite the best
efforts of the state and federal
authorities...
As the powder hits the people, they crumple and fall like
narcoleptics -- silently, suddenly, as if poleaxed.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
No survivors have been found.
EXT. BLIND ALLEY - NIGHT
The baby in her arms still screaming, our woman cuts down a
back alley. She runs into a blind end: a door, a metal
Dumpster, three brick walls.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
We will be tireless in our efforts
to overcome this disaster...
She wrenches at the locked doorknob -- useless.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
We will not falter and we will not
fail.
A familiar mechanical drone. The baby wails. Our woman
looks up, and as she does a dark helicopter fills the sky
above the alley.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
And though there has been great
misery and pain...
She wildly looks around her, sees the Dumpster.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
I believe we as Americans can rise
to the challenge.
She looks up. From the woman's POV, a billowy cloud
envelops us, and we are in sudden perfect white silence,
except for the President's voice...
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
Through this challenge, we will
discover our capacity for
greatness.
FADE TO:
EXT. CONVENTION CENTER - MORNING
Morning, gray and fine. Camouflaged army troops, bearing
rifles, pick their way through innumerable piles of corpses.
Smoking, charred rubble, overturned cars.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
It will take more than weeks or
months. It will take years.
EXT. ALLEY WAY - MORNING
An Army grunt wanders down the alley. He shoulders his
rifle. Our woman lies in the alley. He nudges her hand with
his boot.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
It will cost billions. We will
find the money.
A tiny, reverberating cry.
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
For a time, my fellow Americans, we
will mourn. But then...
The grunt turns toward the Dumpster. Tentatively, he lifts
the lid, and we hear a baby's cry...
PRESIDENT (V.O.)
We will rebuild.
CUT TO BLACK.
