Bosnian pr*gnant rape Angel**a zombies with guns!

Many of the women around here – in fact, most – look a lot like happy pigs in lady clothes and gold jewels who know how to do that ballet walk, that fancy walk where you kind of hang your leg out in front of you before you put it down. There are black ones, white ones and brown ones but the one thing that they all have in common is the succulent plumpness of their calves.

These are among the things I have noticed while hanging out in this scratchy little abandoned lot waiting for people to get their zombie makeup put on. I kick a little stone at the sign that says Hollywood Production Company.

“How much you think they paying for this lot? Who would pay to film in an abandoned lot? The like…economics of this shoot are… They are decadent. And by extension… y’know.”

We don’t have any of those plump ladies with their little bags of lunch here on this lot. This lot is post-apocalypse, man. The plumpies got eaten on day one. Or hid out until they looked ragged and wild. With no food, shaking scared: I bet they could practically watch themselves shrink. Thousands of dollars of takeout food sweating out on the floor.

We are all bony now. I’m not a zombie, I am a priest. But when I got here, I had been cast as a zombie. That’s how this director thinks – I got Inside his mind now, see. The priest or the zombie: it’s all just a coin toss to this character.

8 Ozon

So, if I worked for Lawnmowers Monthly, I would not be going to Venice. But the little machine that I write about… she is called The Camera. And she is magical. So I am going to Venice.

Mireille is still asleep, down in the blue. Good. I don’t want to talk. What are you going to say? Some shit about socks, yeah?

I am flying on EasyJet from Charles de Gaulle. So that means you can’t even relax and enjoy your coffee. Because I am outside the little cattle pen where you rush for your seat. But then again all the seats are pretty shitty. There are likely to be no more than 5 attractive women on the flight, so unless you are one of the first ten guys on the plane, then so what. Ok, the cappuccino is good now. The Arab girl who made it for me is looking at me strangely, though.

“No, I’m not Tom Cruise,” I say to her and she laughs. I didn’t notice that she is young and cute before. Now I do. God, my ego is weak. She’s probably a hag with a face like a camel’s ass but I literally can’t see it because she laughed at my joke. I am hoping that the Film Festa will have some adventures so I can kid myself I am still young for another 3 or 4 months. Then I can start looking forward to Cannes.

I am hoisted practically into space. Above me is the unblinking blue eye of god. Below me the source of all meaning. Naturally, I sleep and when I wake I read about biscuits and how much they cost.

I split a speedboat taxi with a guy called René who takes photos for us quite often. He doesn’t care that we are in a place where people wear suits or harlequin costumes: he is going to dress like it is Indochina anyway. And he is going to sweat like it is Indochina. We come round into the Grand Canal and his sweat has me convinced that it is the Mekong Delta. He has so much metal hardware hanging from his khaki vest that part of me wants to push him in the water and have some fun. Ten years ago I would have done it. Now I wonder where all those urges are going. They don’t just fade away. I kind of feel them being put in a pocket in my soul. My soul has as many pockets as that fucking vest,

Schrodinger’s Inception [Warning: SPOILERS]

I’m on Schrödinger’s plane, over the Pacific. I’m locked in a box in an unobserved state with a dangerous element and when I arrive – in L.A. – I will find out if I am alive or dead. Looking at the low-down clouds, I wonder why it is that Schrödinger’s work is one of the few pieces of modern Quantum physics that artists have latched onto. Perhaps it is because of the cat that usually is trapped in this state: lonely creative types in sad little apartments, not even smelling the cat litter anymore, dreaming of other worlds and the possibility that, despite all appearances to the contrary… they are not dead.

I flip through the movie selection on the screen in the little pod I rest in. The pod is great but it only makes me surprised that I can’t watch any movie in the history of mankind. Why just this selection? Why would you have Caddyshack 2, for example, and NOT Caddyshack ‘1’?

I go with Total Recall, although I know that I will be asleep before the end of it. Quaid goes to Mars. That gross mutant guy is talking to him. It gets to the end. It’s dark on this plane. I look around me. Why was I just dreaming about a plane? My mates are looking at me funny “Watch the bloody film!” they say. Arnie’s on the top of the mountain now, with the woman who is less attractive than Sharon Stone karate kicking you in aerobic wear, but not bad. I feel the closure of a long narrative arc surrounding us, warming my narrative gonads. Then woah… what is this, it’s fading out. NO… not a last minute plot fuck! I don’t want to leave the top of the Martian mountain like this. This is as close as I will ever get to the top of that Martian mountain and I don’t want you to take it away from me.

Oh thank you. It was just a tease. They are Really On Mars. Then it ends. But I am immune to the sudden black shutter. I don’t freak out. I have my closure now. I don’t mind being back in the crummy seats with my mates who also have crumbs all over them.

Except my mates never turned up did they? But they were here? Well that was years ago, when we used to go to the cinema all the time and thereby, although we didn’t know it at the time, sort of dodged becoming glueys and then going to jail.

I leave the movie theater, as I now call it after years living with Americans and having Japanese businessmen insist that I teach them real US English. I pass through the lobby of the Odeon, and I note with some regret that my life is now so full of hot dogs that the smell of the pink, rolling tubes is no longer as exciting to me as Sinbad’s greatest adventure. I go outside and look at my watch. 30 minutes before the lads turn up. I could either sniff glue or get a pint.