Last Days of a Great City

Elevated Noon: A Nanoplay

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Characters:

      Marshall Phil Kane
      Deputy Marshal Dario Pell

Deputy Pell: Gonzalez and his men will be here any minute, Marshall.  [The bell in the church tower tolls once.]  What are you aimin’ to do?

Marshall Kane:  The stakes are heavy, Pell, you know that, as light as one might try to make them seem.  [The bell tolls a second time.]

Deputy Pell:  He’s a killer, Marshall, one of the best shots in the Territories, an’ he’s got an old score to settle.

Marshall Kane:  Yeah, well I figger he won’t be expecting a gun barrel-full of satire and other literary techniques.  [The bell tolls a third time.]  It’s Horatian that got him convicted, it’ll be Juvenalian puts him away once and for all …

Dialogue Concerning Samuel Beckett and Snakes on a Plane

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I’m sitting with Raul (another gay philosopher) on my front porch, and we’re celebrating the Samuel Beckett centenary by exchanging silences.  We had been discussing the second act of Beckett’s Happy Days, in which Winnie, a middle-aged woman is buried to her neck in a mound of dirt.  Raul reminded me of Not I, where the stage is in total darkness except for the character Mouth, “about eight feet above stage level, faintly lit from close-up and below, rest of face in shadow”:

“Winnie has an obsession with her gewgaws, but she can’t manipulate them.  Mouth is worse off.  She has a shattered consciousness that she tries to reintegrate without the assistance of her own corporeality,” says Raul.

“I'm totally into your corporeality …”

He ignores me.  “She’s just a mouth floating in the void.”

“You’re saying that Beckett turned the stage into some ghoulish specimen jar.”

“No, just the opposite.  The fact that the characters are constrained makes their struggles more poignant.”  Raul pauses to dab a tear with the corner of his Kleenex.  He’s getting agitated.  “Popular media go the other way.  It’s all about the possibilities inherent in excess, not constraint.”

“Endless, inane chatter; quick-cutting of images; ever bigger explosions—”

“Right, but we can't sustain that.  I think the Blogosphere’s overwhelming response to Snakes on a Plane signals a newfound regard for constraint in art.”

“As in the constraints on the agency of the creatures that would terrorize the passengers?  Is that what you mean?  Like, where are the snakes going to hide—the beverage cart?”

“Yeah, like Samuel Jackson yelling into his radio, ‘We got motherfuckin’ snakes!’”

All Hail the Fuckers at LiveJournal

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I visited livejournal.com and printed a list of Live Journal interest areas.  These are tabulated automatically when these bitches write profiles that tell the world what they’re into.  If one of them lists “pizza” in her profile, pizza gets one vote in Live Journal’s list of what’s hot.

Pizza was #116 on the list, by the way.  Take a minute to think about all the things in the world that are interesting.  Now try to absorb the fact that these losers can’t find 115 things more interesting than pizza.

The fuckers like cheese (#34 on the list) better than Nirvana (#41).  In fact they like cheese more than beer, baseball, sushi, and God (#140).  Sure, people get all Rosemary’s Baby about God, and cheese is a mysterious substance.  I mean, is it a plastic, or what?  But what kind of fuckhead finds cheese more interesting than Bjork (#234), or dreams (#103), or New York City (#351)?

Sleeping is more popular than laughing, boys are more popular than girls, reading more popular than writing, and eyeliner (#160) tops Moulin Rouge (#296).  OK, the bitches got something right.  Ewan McGregor’s hot bod couldn’t rescue hour after insufferable hour of Nicole Kidman pretending she could act and sing.  I can’t stand watching her smug mug on TV talk shows.  She looks like an overcooked piece of white asparagus with lipstick.

Most puzzling to moi is the fact that drugs, #313 on the list, rated far lower than Harry Fucking Potter, Starbucks, and shoes.  Dear one, if you mainline a shoe, will you see a thousand tiny red faces floating a foot above your head, smiling and saying that everything will be OK?  Will your body shrink to a tenth its size while you stand in front of an open closet door, pushing aside enormous shirts on enormous coat hangers?  Will the subway car rattle you like a coin in a glass jar as you strain to understand how heads go completely bald?  Will it?  Well then, go fuck yourself if you think shoes are more interesting than drugs.

I mean it, go fuck yourself.

Contributors to Last Days of a Great City

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It was Felix who brought us together.  We had little in common before that.  One thing that united us—Black, White, young, old—was an abiding skepticism about received wisdom.  Felix saw this and invited us to blog together, to inflict our clashing perspectives on one another and the world.

Each of the contributors to Last Days of a Great City has blogged on issues relating to the Culture Wars, sometimes openly and often under an assumed name.  Each continues a dialogue that began with Dionysus and Apollo—a dialogue that has little resonance in the waking dream induced by contemporary market forces.  Last Days owes allegiance to no school of thought, no political party, no religious creed.  Individually and collectively we aspire to Truth, Beauty, and Justice, although Rachel Tension still thinks that's a big load of bullshit.

We talked amongst ourselves to find a cultural product that we could all endorse.  This took more than a month of e-mailing back and forth—long e-mails filled with didactic nonsense.  We finally lighted on this speech from Nagg in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame:

Let me tell it again.
(Raconteur's voice.)
An Englishman, needing a pair of striped trousers in a hurry for the New Year festivities, goes to his tailor who takes his measurements.
(Tailor's voice.)
"That's the lot, come back in four days, I'll have it ready." Good. Four days later.
(Tailor's voice.)
"So sorry, come back in a week, I've made a mess of the seat." Good, that's all right, a neat seat can be very ticklish. A week later.
(Tailor's voice.)
"Frightfully sorry, come back in ten days, I've made a hash of the crotch." Good, can't be helped, a snug crotch is always a teaser. Ten days later.
(Tailor's voice.)
"Dreadfully sorry, come back in a fortnight, I've made a balls of the fly." Good, at a pinch, a smart fly is a stiff proposition.
(Pause. Normal voice.)
I never told it worse.
(Pause. Gloomy.)
I tell this story worse and worse.
(Pause. Raconteur's voice.)
Well, to make it short, the bluebells are blowing and he ballockses the buttonholes.
(Customer's voice.)
"God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!"
(Tailor's voice, scandalized.)
"But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look—
(disdainful gesture, disgustedly)
—at the world—
(Pause.)
and look—
(loving gesture, proudly)
—at my TROUSERS!"

We invite you not only to look at our trousers but to comment freely and otherwise keep in touch.  Click here for profiles of the contributors to Last Days of a Great City.