Forgot to mention I'm in Berlin now: I arrived Wednesday evening at my friend Jess's lovely place in Kreutzberg, and Thursday morning I walked with her to the art gallery she works at. When we arrived, I figured I might as well check out the exhibition they had up, so I asked Jess about it. "Oh," she said, a bit hesitantly: "It's a video piece by Bruce LaBruce, you should, um, check it out." I happen to actually know who that is, on account of the fact that he used to shoot for Vice Magazine and him having the gayest name of all time. "You should know though," she continued, "it's zombie porn." Um, ok then. Jess turns the projector on and leaves the room, leaving me on my own in the freezing cold screening room. The movie begins innocently enough, with a man driving his pick up truck down a winding road outside of LA. It gets weirder when he wordlessly stops to pick up a zombie hitchhiker. It gets weirder still when I notice that the zombie hitchhiker has the pecs and traps of a Bulgarian powerlifter (I guess the undead go to Equinox?). I look around me to see if Ashton Kutcher is waiting in the wings somewhere. Suddenly, the car crashes! The man is thrown from the car, and the camera cuts to him lying on the ground covered in blood with a giant hole in his chest: he watches his own heart begin to slow and then stop. Gross. Just then, the zombie reappears, apparently unscathed by the crash. He walks over to the man and pensively, tenderly, drops his pants and kneels over chest of the corpse. Then he--and there's really only one way to say this--he fuck-starts the man's heart.
Now, I like to think of myself as being an open minded person, especially when it comes to art, but I literally threw up in my mouth a little bit just typing that sentence. I jumped up and ran out of the screening room; it was quite possibly the fastest I've moved. Ever. Jess looked at me knowingly and said: "yeah: and it goes on like that for 65 minutes." I mean, in her defense she had told me it was zombie porn. What did I think was going to happen?
[brings knees to chest, rocks softly back and forth].
Hey, your Grandmother could be reading this. She still thinks you don't use foul language.
ReplyDeletere: anonymous: i'm pretty sure she does read this. hi barbara!
ReplyDeletere: Bruce (if, weirdly, it is actually you): i am unquestionably a wimp. however, as a heterosexual male who owns a pair of chinos, i'm going to go out on a limb and say i'm probably not your target demo.