Punk

Review of My Girlfriend the Car

By Johnny Lux

My girlfriend - sorry, [ex]girlfriend - is a car. A sleek red sports car. One that threatens to be too much vehicle for any man to keep up with. Summer could take some lessons from her; her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard - all with a wit and intelligence rare in a high-end luxury automobile.

I'm just a duck. Sure, not the biggest duck in the world - I'm no Hitler or anything - but like most people I'm capable of the kind of thoughtlessness that would make even Eva Braun reconsider the whole "dying together in a bunker" level of commitment.

(For those of you ready to cite Mars v. Venus , I have included the following color-by-number activity to keep you occupied while the adults talk. Art it up, then proceed when you're ready.)

[Middle finger diagram I'll send once I scan it.]

So, sometimes when my (ex)girlfriend honked, I didn't hear what she was actually saying. She would honk and I'd hear "honk," instead of, "Listen to me: I just got out of a very long, committed relationship with someone who was not you. You need to be careful with me. I'm delicate, and if you can't understand that, we will not be happy long."

I'd hear "honk," and I'd reply, "quack," when I should've been saying, "I've been alone for a very long time and though I don't like it, it's what I'm used to. I'm used to being 'alone,' which is different from 'independent', but sometimes looks the same. Relationships are strange to the Aix sponsa , who spends much of his time hiding in plain sight. He's trying, even when he knows he's got a long way to go."

And then my friend the bear would come in and say.

* * *

Ok, so I had this idea, right? I had this idea that if we were all monosyllabic creatures - ducks, cars, that kind of thing - maybe we'd stop seeming so strange to one another. And maybe if we weren't so strange to one another, we could be better to one another. Shorten the distance between what we feel and what we say and maybe - even if we didn't stop being so complicated - we'd at least be more honest with ourselves and the world. Which became.

A Review of a Line from Bukowski's "The Crunch" -

people just are not good to each other

one on one.

[.]

we are afraid.

Because here's what happens: for every thing we say, all these little blank spaces creep in between the words seep into the cracks between the letters. We are afraid; doubts grow in the blank spaces, fears about things said and left unsaid. What we're afraid to hear and not hear, say and not say. Does he pay attention to me? Does she take me seriously? Am I in love with him/her?

And what my friend the bear said was, "If you love someone, then fucking love them. Quit getting locked up in this bullshit that eats away 99.9% of our life and energy."

But it doesn't work that way, does it? On Halloween, the night everyone trades one mask for another, we lay in bed, warm, close. My ex[girlfriend] leans in; I can feel her breath on my face. She hesitates for a second and then kisses me before rolling over. A kiss dry and brief, like clouds scraping together, it could mean, "See you in the morning." It doesn't. Quick as two sparks dying in the night, it means, "We are over." Suddenly, we are strangers.

If I could say anything now, it would probably be something corny and sentimental, like, "I don't know what I want in my life, but I know that I want you in it." But it wouldn't be enough. It's too late.

It's easy to forget there's no magic in words. Easy to forget that they're all we have. Easy to forget and easy to regret the things left unsaid, the things that can't be unsaid, the mistakes like bad dreams as that final white space descends, smothering all possibilities under the soft blanket of silence.

Counterpunk

Review of the Sex Tapes My Wife Left Behind When She Moved Out

By Thomas Sable

  6/23/1997 - In this early work, you see a raw talent just looking for that final bit of polish to push it into the realm of genius: my wife. When I first saw this tape, I wept at its beauty. Well, technically I was already weeping at the fact that the one thing that made my life worth living was gone, but I quickly realized this was bigger than me. This was the birth of a star.
            In this film, labeled "Mommy's Home Movies '97" in black marker, our Mexican cabana boy plays a Puerto Rican pool cleaner. The plot is formulaic and uninspired: My bored housewife invites the pool boy in for a drink of cool lemonade on a hot summer day, then is shocked to find her clothes yanked off her body by a mysterious, possibly malevolent force, etc., etc. The "Puerto Rican" pool boy can't believe his luck, and falls to ravishing the bewildered, enraptured housewife. They couple like wildebeests.
            Yes, the use of archetypes is crushingly obvious, the production values poor, but this video has one thing missing from Hollywood porn: It's got heart. It's real. There are no divas on this set; just two passionate, hard-working people trying to make the best amateur porn they can. In this crazy, mixed-up world, I don't know much, but I know that's got to count for something.
            And I guess it was around late-June of '97 that my marriage started to go wrong.
 
8/27/1999 - 2069: A Space Orgy . In much the way Kubrick's original marked a quantum leap in special effects, 2069 is a huge step in my wife's progress as up-and-cumming video starlet.
            In 2069 , a malevolent, female super-computer named GAL has trapped several astronauts - cleverly spelled "astronauts" on the video's cover, which I think was printed out on my inkjet - inside a space station miles above the earth. GAL sees all and knows all, and by increasingly sadistic turns forces the "asstronauts" to live out her mad computer fantasies.
            My wife appears as Chastity O'Rourke, a winking irony on the part of the screenwriter, given that my wife is a dark-haired Italian and anything but chaste. She has to satisfy each of her fellow astronauts in turn, culminating in the final scene, where the titular orgy takes place; releasing so much orgone energy that everyone involved ascends to a higher plane of being as "starchildren."
            Again my wife gives a heartfelt performance, but it's clear she's moved to another level. No longer a neophyte actress, she shows some real craft. When she first appears, wearing a K-Mart bag over her head as a spaceman's helmet, the sexual tension practically drips from her body. She even "sells" the idea that we are in space (even though it looks like my basement) by making climbing around on the rafters as though weightless. It's a bravura performance hurt only by the mediocrity surrounding it: Chet Pantsless and Victor Hugo are fairly average talents, not up to a production of this level. I think Chet Pantsless works the late shift at the McDonald's about a block from here.
           
9/24/2001 - Sexe et Mort is clearly a reaction to the tragic events of September 11. That my wife jumped on this script, credited to Tom "Euripides" Gaston, a local hardware store owner and first-time screenwriter, is a testament to her artistic pride. We were all so shell-shocked after 9/11, but it took that most fiercely independent of media, pornography, to say what we all were thinking.
            But what were we all thinking? Sexe et Mort - loosely translated as "sex and death" - reminds us that we are all mortal. In close, black-and-white handheld shots of my wife having sex with several different men, it reminds us of the fertility of life. Life goes on, even in black and white. But what's this? In the corner of every scene is a small plastic skull - a memento mori that even in such fertility looms our ultimate demise. Of course, director Winston Grabass can't resist a postmodern tweak, subtitling my wife's moaning with pretentious French.

And in the conclusion, where he formally frames my wife's ecstatic face wearing an expression I've never seen before, now grainy and indistinct by time, before fading to black? Genius.