Previously...
The camera pans in slowly on a white bearded man sitting in an arm chair in the dim lamp light. A low tone begins to build.
"A tiny little crack had opened up in my view of the world, and I could see an incredible light, coming from the other side."
The background music picks up tempo and rhythm and the scene cuts to a dark-haired girl in her twenties staring thoughtfully out a window as she smokes a cigarette. She turns from the window and addresses a man in bed across the room.
"If somebody told me I was going to die tomorrow I'd be too busy doing all of the things I never bothered doing that I wanted to try rather than spend my time trying to keep it from happening."
"Oh, well, now that makes sense."
Cut to a confessional. A distraught woman in glasses is speaking in hushed tones to a priest.
"My brain is pulsating inside my head and I have the urge to pour myself a grown up drink in order to remedy it."
The priests nods, "Somewhere the king of schizophrenic ranting is twitching and smiling in his sleep."
Cut to two people passing on a snowy street. One of them is the woman with glasses. The other is a dark-haired man with a glass eye and a deep facial scar. As they pass, the man with the facial scar turns and asks:
"Who is this bearded goofball you speak of, and how do I call upon him?"
The priests nods, "Somewhere the king of schizophrenic ranting is twitching and smiling in his sleep."
Cut to two people passing on a snowy street. One of them is the woman with glasses. The other is a dark-haired man with a glass eye and a deep facial scar. As they pass, the man with the facial scar turns and asks:
"Who is this bearded goofball you speak of, and how do I call upon him?"
"Our next meeting will be at your local Sizzler. Bring pen and paper."
Cut to a park on a grey day where the bearded man in crouched down speaking to a small boy. The boy's mother stands by, slightly uneasy, resting a protective hand on the boy's shoulder. A twinkling grin spreads across the bearded man's face.
"The Devil's whole problem is that he doesn't exist."
Cut to an elevator. The dark-haired girl is there with another woman beside her. A shrouded man stands in the background behind them. Their eyes are fixed on the floor indicator above them. The dark haired girl breaks the silence and shakes her head as she speaks.
"There's something wrong with you if you need virtual, interactive porn. I'm just saying."
The shrouded man interjects, "We just amuse ourselves with these questions, same as chimpanzees amuse themselves with grooming rituals and the like."
An awkward silence follows and everyone looks a little uncomfortable. Finally, the other woman turns back to the shrouded man and asks, "Where do you come up with this stuff???"
Cut to the interior of a car. The man with the glass eye is sitting in a fast food drive-thru with the dark-haired girl's boyfriend. The man with the glass-eye leans out the driver's side window and yells into the speaker:
"I enjoy polluting my stomach with content that can withstand a nuclear fallout."
The other man shakes his head as he lights a cigarette, "I thought we had done away with the senseless killing of grandfathers?"
The camera pans up out of a pitch-black darkness to an open doorway high above. The silhouette of the bearded man stands in the doorway. The background music begins to build relentlessly.
"This is not a riddle"
Cut to a woman standing in a kitchen, opening her mail. She drops the enclosed letter on the counter and sighs with disappointment.
"And here I was dreaming up methods for actual death and dismemberment."
Back to panning up to the silhouette.
"I have no simple answer for it."
Cut to a restaurant where the man with the glass eye is having a candle-lit dinner with a beautiful blonde woman. He indicates his ear and then points to the woman across the table.
"You dream leaked from your head."
The blonde just laughs with a sparkling smile and replies, "I have a favorite coffee mug and it has that quote from Ghandi on it."
Again on the silhouette.
"It's just a deliberately engineered paradox, either way you look at it."
And as he reaches out and flips the light switch beside the door, the background music stops abruptly. The camera cuts to the pit below where a woman is tied to a chair. A low tone begins to swell as the camera pulls back to reveal endless waves of rats advancing on all sides. The woman yells out frantically:
"My husband loves country!"
N U C L E A H E A D A C H E
The final shot is of a drunken man standing uncertainly and holding a paper-bagged bottle on the subway. He leans in to address the bearded man seated before him, sloshing his drink as he speaks.
"You're a fucking idiot. That's what your mood reads day in, day out!"
A grin spreads across the bearded man's face.
Returns
August 2011
