Chasing the Reality Dragon

This is not a true story.

A night like this. Watching the worst movie ever made, a German or Swiss suspense (horror? - it's Halloween, after all) film. I drove a long way to get here tonight. It started raining about halfway through the trip. There should be better movies available, even in a dump like this. It's like being at a drive-thru movie in the rain, in a convertible, and a dead battery. Worse. The mattress springs vibrate from the trucks on the interstate on the other side of this wall. All the women are very attractive, and the men look like William Devane, with scars at their eyes and Hitler speeches. The film intends to disguise the fact that it's recorded on videotape with something like the kind of thing you see on relatively good BBC sitcomes in terms of lighting, and pans and zooms and focus adjustments, but it's still obviously filmed on videotape and it's at those points when I seem to be waiting for one of the women to realize they are in a bad porn movie and take off all of their clothes. It's a Sundance Channel broadcast of this movie which is 36 years old according to the summary on the screen. It really is Halloween night. It's still raining outside. I'm hoping that all the children have come in from the candy gatherings already. It's too late and too dark and in the middle of this storm is too chaotic for children to be on the streets whoring themselves out with humiliation for the candy dragons. At one point she looks like she's about to give a blowjob to the guy who seems to have just slipped into a coma. In fact, she's giving him a blowjob as some kind of dry hump. Is her shirt open? I think it is.

The music is awkward, trying, I suppose, to be campy. But it's not working. Not much is working. I have to get rid of this television. Fortunately I'm on the third floor. It doesnt seem like there should be more than one level to a motel like this. I stayed at a place like this, however, without the grit and shoddy walls and landslide location, on Long Island, for a wedding reception of a friend from work. So I know they exist, something I need to repeat to myself, even as I lie here within the thing.

I wish I still werent watching this movie, but I am. This scientist, who has just committed suicide to avoid the internal horrors of having to deal with the criminally intense ex-communication from the medical community for his work, was distraught over losing an unborn fetus on the floor of his secret laboratory. Now his beautiful widow is setting out to murder each of the medical board's members as revenge for their causing her husband's suicide. He was experimenting with human embryos and animal hormones to treat a plethora of diseases, to keep Michael J. Fox-types from having something to wobble about. So this madman board hurls religious and conservative vitriol at him, and I wonder if Sundance has aired this film for its current relevance. Basically, it's a porn disguised too well as a horror or suspense movie. Too well in the sense that there isnt nearly enough nudity even, or better, and just enough killing and bad blood makeup to demonstrate that the filmmakers really believed they were making a horror film. They must have gotten their wires crossed and their screws loose at some point. Christ, there's even almost male frontal nudity. There has to be a hockey game on.

She's just slit the throat and stabbed the balls of her first victim. There are, I believe, two or three other male victims still to come, and one very attractive blonde victim. I can only hope that, before The Daily Show comes on, it's time for the blonde victim, and maybe there can be some 1970 feminist kissing prior to the actual kill.

The dogs are fighting, our two canine girls, both aged and stubborn. The big one, the size of a small wolf, carries a squeaky toy around with her, everywhere she goes. She is unnecessarily threatened by the smaller and older dog, who is half chow and half mother-in-law. Speaking of mothers-in-law, it does appear that the blonde's time is nearing. i'll keep you posted. Any time the smaller dog approaches the larger dog's squeaky toy, the two growl at one another at length. This will only end with an all-out fight or with our separating them, whichever comes first.

Tonight was the absolute worst episode of House ever made. Not that David Morse doesnt make a great cop, or a great bitter bully, but the thoughtful, deliberate, restrained bullying from Morse's character, while it made for the only good scene in an otherwise terrible hour of programming, was entirely unrealistic. Then we had the accidentally incestuous Romeo and Juliet marriage of this week's two patients, and the sudden and inexplicable compassion of Dr. Foreman, the contrived attitudes and banter of the other doctors, rectal thermometers, and marijuana salmonella. It's all a farce. If we cant depend on House for television reality, it's time to turn the channel.

Except that my remote is broken, and the motel manager is asleep, and my feet are sticking out through the bottom edge of this bed's ratty blankets, and I'm wishing I had my big cop-sniffing dog to guard the door.

But I'm not there with the dogs right now. Out on the road, the beaten path, the well-worn ones, in a bad hotel in the wrong part of the state. The name of the movie is, "She Killed in Ecstasy." Ah but after the disappointing lesbian scene, the entire premise flickered out. Apparently this is part of a Soledad Miranda film festival. The next movie is called "Vampyros Lesbos." I cant watch it. The night is already too frightening and the nightmares are digging in deep and hitting hard. They are even keeping my new crush, Rebecca Saxe, out of my dream-mind, and that is something I cannot handle.

Someday when my children are still young it will not be unusual for us to casually note the low-flying helicopter, depending on the route we took or the amount of our last bank deposit. Call that progress. A thousand years ago we barely had physics. I'm not sure if it will be Waterworld or Mad Max but, weather aside, it will be a world which does not look kindly on the particular chaos of today. Every time an engine rush growls by this motel room, I flash back to days of horror and forward to times where I'll need to hide under the bed and flush the books.

I hope the dogs arent fighting and that the children are in from the dark. I will not suggest that the ones who should be locked up on any given evening are less the sexual predators and more our dear leaders, from whom our children must forever be protected, at the risk of our own dear lives, but I will point out that everybody was hugging before the Patriot Act was passed. Fighting or not, I'll keep the dogs by my side instead of pretending that un-Constitutional law enforcement procedures and inhumane legislation written by patsies and delusional historical nomads can do anything to protect my family in any meaningful way.

It has nothing to do with partisan rhetoric. In the most ancient of philosophies, there is the right way and the wrong way. And to point out - the issue is always with the "way," not with the person. Acts are wrong. Acts, events, constructions of history, can be, simply, objectively, wrong. This transcends morals or religion or animal nature. There is the right way and wrong way. Each question does have an answer, and the answers are only gained through much debate and introspection. It's not something that can be realized via polls and a team of advisors with gulfs of nothing forever between them. It's something that must be attained through communication, acceptance, learning and thought. And these are the kinds of words which most called "liberal" admire and strive for. And this is not to be arrogant but rather to seek understanding among all men - men and dogs alike. And blondes and mothers-in-law and hockey players and motel night clerks.

I'm not out on the road here looking for people to bash in words or in deed. I'm looking to learn and to deconstruct and to teach and fail and run and hide and provide material witness for the crimes of today, but not tomorrow, if we can help it. I'm out on the road feeling happy that my big dog can smell a cop, that I know how to type, and I've got a blanket for the night. We're all a little desperate sometimes. But until it's a thousand years from now, I see no reason not to feel a bit of urgency. We've got things to do.

No talking on the phone.

The matter is settled. The fix is in. Make your voice heard in a way that can matter: raise it.

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