They call classified ads classifieds, though they're anything but secret - they self pay to be printed public, but no one ever really sees them anyways, so they just may as well be classified.
I once smoked glass with Ray Underhill who was from Carlsbad actually, but he was never a like, hipster, or real hipster that is, and then Hosoi, Hosoi was just a mostly, pro, pro roller-skater who just skateboarded anyways, if you think about it, and I thought about exactly that, or exactly that, driving down Ocean, all along while looking for Mullican. But there was something else. And it wasn't deracinated characteristic Brian Anderson dandyism art historical illiterate blind spot, or it wasn't the Danny best coast felt brim hat Garcia of it all, or the feeling of futility when someone says online that Vegas curls Cali is dead Paul Rodriguez is the best street skateboarder of all time, or a not immediately obvious to most, though inherently populist Erik Ellington first re-weaving Guns N' Roses exactly ten years after they were otherwise myopically relevant to mainstream America, which in Ellington's case seemed not so much retro gesture, as just behind the times, or Arto being behind the times in his 411 profile in '97 with Swinging Utters song even though the pop-punk resurgence of the 90's had expired about two years prior (in the nineties two years was a long time), and even, or even Andrew Reynolds in the glade of Emerica motorcycle gang morphology nude descending from plaza 411 Etnies skateboarding tout court (and yet another instance of skateboarding monoculture aesthetic dwindling and co-opting mainstream characteristics) and Krew, Krew crew solidifying the non-skate skate pant anti-aesthetic, and then everyones arm tattoos and everyones the pedestrian same as everyone else, or, and maybe, just a little maybe, perhaps, it was actually, the moccasin chill wave airbnb graphics of surf-coffee Austyn Gillette aesthetic bowling shirt idyll of it all that I certainly didn't miss while traveling with Mully.
In the Wall Street Journal they were talking about Pappalardo again recently - Aria Dean posited that Anthony offered a model out of the tech formalist straight jacket like Richard Serra grinding a circle directly onto a street in Harlem. She said perhaps Anthony took it too much to heart, that the less is more, became a nothing is more, and I could tell it was all too theoretical - imagine the phenomenology of reading the news and knowing for sure it was incorrect right there and it holding a certain disconcerting thrill. Aria just may as well have also inserted Bob Dylan's claim that folk was the Garden of Eden and was too perfect (read boring) to stay, while the she was at it. Because I knew with Anthony, and with Anthony, it was all something else completely.
And what could so they ever say about dear Mullican anyways, for certain. Mullican was like a wood fence built around a tree, Mullican, like a broken frond laying in the grey snow, or he was just a shadow on the snow actually, or he was like a shadow on the dead sand. Mullican was like a burning ship on fire in the sea, like a watercolor of a waterfall. Was it that about him though, was it just all too precisely like everything, and like everything, of the all too many tiles on Bauhaus glassphone that are or is a new exacerbated postmodern in a way we didn't really fully recognize yet, and that just seemed abstractly foreign to most.
But this and the ding tams, and then the noise, and then of this loamsome rome, this chap, but this I got, is tail to tale, but this is of media apparition MC DJ 'Mully' Mullican, corn dog, horn dog, great pyrenes retriever mix, the original Kold Medina - master of ceremony, surf disco tower rollerskatin' hot doggy disco doggin' party monster back from rory dead (and hell), with queer bite quite louder than bark, and oh, but with what a bark still so mighty loud and for all murial tippers . . .
And ah, but what a corker and oh, but what a tossser and oh, so they say wherever you are, there you go. Well, wherever Mullican goes, there he begets pups.
Or I'll put it another way. Pro rollerskate product for co.s, involve moulder manufacturer to send packages of merchandise to rep to am or pro or flow rider. And, but, with Mullican, it's exactly the same you see, but except instead of sending packages - hackles raised Mullykan leaves packages.
Though not exactly packages of say, the niche specialty subcultural activity of rollerskate equipment and other related miscellany accessories (fingerless gloves, tights, roller flare, dance belts), which I otherwise ply in, or plied in - the packages of Mullican tend to be more of, one should say, that of: mutt-ed liters of squirmy, spumy, soon to be fatherless baby dogs across the land of the cities we chartered, or like toured.
And that's the thing, while off on tour, if I can prittle with, meet some scotcher scorcher perhaps, at one of Mullican's in store pawtograph appearances for like, a place to crash, it works out just great because I can, one: cancel both my suite and both Mullican's kennel reservations (Hotels prohibit dogs from staying over night), B, save money on both, but, and, then, if there's a dog, a female dog particularly at her or, like, their apartment, here's the caveat, I steadfastly, steadfastly, I have to do the thing where I warn, warn 'Hey, like, fyi, Mullican is not exactly neutered, so to speak, and you totally have to like, keep your eye on him every blinking second, and I do mean every breathing second, so we should definitely, most definitely keep them separated. You know like Keep them Separated? Like that.' And so, here's the thing also, so: it always doesn't exactly, maybe, perhaps, I don't know, like, work out exactly that way because, let's, let's just say, that there's perhaps, maybe, well, some-things, some things, you can't exactly do while . . . watching . . . the dogs . . . Hence, Mullican's Puppies. Mullican's Puppies, but never mine.
But let's just reel it back for just one sec. A significant part of Mullican's popular reception is due, was due, is really due to, if you think about it, to how he is now kind of widely recognized as result of being media created image functionary crossover, and with the cities we visit, or with the cities we visited at least, when people come see Mullican, Mullican invariably kind of serves as a real life like, how do I say this? a - a connection., he's like connection, and, like, it's that very con in connection, a sort of metonym (for them at least) of that of the vast greater modern world, and Mullican's primary appeal, Mullican's intrigue is, is, is simply people just being in the same vicinity as something, something, anything, that is representative of some notion of some, in-the-now, contemporary quasi (post)pop(?) detritus of what has now evolved (or devolved into, rather) partydogggscape! Corpo spectacle. Rather than even challenge au courant referential tableaux of Mullican's primary appeal and intrigue, how they just so simply, actually aggressively insist upon. just. like. Mullican. himself., he's so irresistible they say, and no questions asked, and honestly, I always thought precisely this kind of thing is or was kind of weird, and if you think about it, it's actually rather peculiar, but maybe, I don't know, come to think of it, maybe it's not so much, actually.
People, (me included), are so bored with their lives, it really doesn't even matter sometimes what it is, is that, is coming circusing touring through to their town. I mean, it could be a funny car or motorcycle from a movie from the seventies, it could be a single item of clothing, a sweater, a leather jacket worm by perhaps, I don't know, from some character from a musical from back in the day?, but you'll bet people come see it.
Suffice to say, despite our glowing growing popularity, unfortunately besides a few tchotchkes and the clothes, and good meals we were kept in, we didn't exactly amass, or like walk away with even but a modest sum of money. Ours (Mullican and I) was mostly a life lived on the road, that which does, or like did, incur such bewilderingly high overhead expenses, so much, that we got stuck in this negative cycle of not being able to afford coming off tour.
Though, I will certainly say, it sure didn't hurt, it certainly doesn't hurt, that Mullican was simply just a gorgeous doggg, processing blinding white platinum fur like pale oak, sprackled with stray golden baby fuzz strands, Mully with face of polar bear, healthy zinc-white natural bleeched teeth, glittering teeth which people would actually, surprisingly frequently take notice of on their own, and rarely ever fail to point out. And the thing is is, is that Mullican (Well, besides Spudz McKenzie - ((more on him later))), Mullican was, was, is, is, actually, and really WAS, like THE original, THEE original, prototypical it-partydog influencer, and that was like, way before dog influencers were, you know actually a thing, de rigeur, whatever on Tick Tok, Instagram. Progenitor perhaps? Yes, yeah, that's the word!
Mullican comes for one and one thing only and let me tell you - that's to be party dog. Mullican could make Snoop Doggy Dog look like, I don't know, Carol Burnett? NO, NO Anne Coulter. I mean, think about it, he was, he is, was, pretty much is the original party dogg! (Well, again, besides Spudz McKenzie.).
I was originally just riding for Bark rollerskate bushings. Barks also made a rollerskate tool key (this dumb tool that was wildly niche genre popular by virtue of misguided consumer tendency dorker fetishization, kinda like, well, exactly like, the same impulse that was responsible for the grotesque and outsized success of products like D3's, Grind King Trucks, Tensor Trucks, Ace Trucks and the vacuous new Independent trucks modeled explicitly after Ace precisely to take Ace out). Bark also had had their own speed cream too - they had a couple of varieties out actually, as if either actually made a damn difference. Anyways, at the time, Bark, the name, it didn't mean nothing - originally, it was just, just some kind of random, kinda like unconscious just name, uninspired, picked almost accidentally and just ran with well into the laminated ground of rink. Bark's original conceptualization was just deadpan graphics and appropriated found throw away imagery, that had been appropriated, re-printed in detached way that veered and stood out from the then usual way products up until the 90's, say how chillblained lamestream products typically found at the drug store or super market or Radioshack, were usually always pro logo'd. Anyways, to make a tedious story, less tedious - they met Mullican, Mullican, Mullican the dog I found - well, the dog I rescued while on tour (on tour with a different company - Bark, at that time didn't tour). The Bark heads met Mullican and then they were random inspired to use him as just this like focus, this new focus or like complete reconceptualization, this re-jigger of Bark (I'm trying not to use the term 'rebrand' of even the term 'brand' for that matter - this was well before i-phones). Now Bark, Bark, instead of blank vacant textural gesture, then became literal symbol. Someone designed a black milk bone silhouette placed above 'Bark' written in kindergarden-crayon-time font, that was made to look exotic to tin foil eye and design forward by mere virtue of bolding and italicking 'Bark' in font. What was an obscure bushing company, then made this miraculous mainstream crossover by virtue of such family friendly logo, buoyed now by the iconocity by which Mullican found himself now smuck dub at center of it all.
And honestly, nothing kinda really seems to matter now, though. But I mean, what was it about Mullican's obvious natural beauty that besides serving as imagery of copy friendly advertisement attached to product no one really wanted to buy? (Rollerskate bushings - though under the tenure of Mullican, under Mullie's aegis, Bark Bushings, think about it, was now really just a t-shirt and sweatshirt company for hoi polloi. And by virtue of bushings being, some, this, specialty, exotic rollerskate equipment related product, there was this kind of zietgiest, new in the knowness, that non-rollerskating people thought they were reflecting, by wearing what was once a semi obscure niche specialty item.) In this certain period of supply side, final period self cannibalism capitalism, that otherwise so compelled to hasten and enliven everyone such to always on cue immediately, and on the spit split second to inspire walking out of those signings such to so readily capitulate to the beauty of all the reckless rose and tempestuous tulips lining upon mall parking lot meadow and just so to leave those appearance signings as if floating in a luminous haze? It was the democracy of beauty. Not that Mullican's beauty was democratic - the conditions of Mullican's beauty was anything but, was actually steeped in a fascism of the degree by which his seemingly readymade physical characteristics and features were measured out, proportioned out all by its own devilish nature all on its own. The democratization involved what I often think of, I keep circling back to the title to a movie from a few years back and that's: Everybody Want's Some. Mullican satisfies the democracy of the universal dispersal of desire.
Not that Mullican in the least satisfies anyone's desire except his own. But it was predicated on the promise, it was precisely the promise he projected, the treacly let's party! semiotics that he so readily, so instantly summoned firing off with the sound like crisping cracking open of Cabo San Lucas Michelada.
The thing is was, and don't tell anyone this, not to mention to a soul, and don't tell God even, was, was we just got, what can I say? Mullican - Mullican, he, just got, like, simply . . . burned out. Or more precisely: spumy flamed out. When Mullican was once so otherwise so high strung, like, I would always say it was as if his body just never stopped pumping adrenalin and he could or would never sit down - he would ceaselessly engage with his environment and anyone who came around, to the over stimulating juice naturally pumping through Mullican's head. But here's the thing, so we'd travel around with the cocaine water bottles I would prepare for him. And I know what you're thinking - wouldn't cocaining just make Mullican more bonkers and all over the place?! But, no!, no!, that's the thing - it actually like, didn't (don't ask me how I figured this out). Not only did it make him not more all over the place, but it chilled him out real good. I could give him a bottle in his car proof water bowl, and then he would just sit looking out the window, watching as the vacant plains pass past, Mullican intently concentrating on the moving landscape, as we sped off to our next promotional destination. Mullican was, or could be so intent in a spell of concentration, under the spell of the coke water, that if he had hands he could practically carve a working zipper out of a solid wooden block! The cocaine water was so effective, that we both actually began to sort of depend on it, but let's back this up a bit, and start again at the beginnin, Okay, so here goes.
Gazing out at the vista of the mountain tops at dusk, translucent arias of baby puppy Mullicans snow a tableaux on the verdigris sky like salt seasoning the seeds of life onto the traveling land, two white harvesting puppies split to tens, tens turn virus to hundreds and then multiply thousands Johnny Appleseeded against the ambient evening, still striving in all it's gay promise. The promise will not be fulfilled, and like, or like ever, but at seven o'clock, at seven o'clock everyday, I can depend on that feeling at least - as if that feeling is the early evening's promise. Details of the past haunt me always now though, like scuttering summits fluttering in it's wake and every time they give me Rorschach I only see skeleton pelvis.
Flackering Geneviève wandered into the paw-signing pawtograph in Vanc at the Comic Con, in a way that could freeze the gaze of Lacanian screen. I've hung out at all the obvious places, but her abrupt presence automatically nulled the tens of thousands I myself must have directly come across in the years leading up to her. A view from my vest, in such disarming way, that could simply cause one to otherwise flee in retreat. Though even someone like her (and her anchor girlfriend she was with who was just a friend), got bored of life, to point of coming to party doggg Mullican's suffering booth appearance. But you should have seen her, you really should have, Geneviève looked just like Ellaine de Kooning, or like Ellaine de Kooning. I mean Geneviève was probably, definitely, more arresting than Ellaine (mouth full of ecstasy Ellaine, known to terrorize her husband the great painter Willem at parties, openly opening herself up to other men right in Willem's plain view). Less Matha-Q-War-Generation talkie moxie face, Geneviève had no nonsense Gen_X face, green eyes, reddish brown hair with black deco Betty Page gunrest bangs, black ice Betty Parsons scarf.
It was barely cold on our walk. The Halloween clouds hovered through the moon, causing fluctuations in the light in the early pulsing of Friday Mike McGill snake of night.
Geneviève wears a leather jacket that's strange and barely works, but it does. When most people wear leather jackets, it only serves to reveal how conventional they really are, or how they have a rather cheap and easy to come by taste. The zip-up pockets are in the midsection of her jacket, and she had had her hands resting inside on her ribs, in a way that seemed uncomfortable and un-fun-functional, but also seems like some modern new way of having ones' hands in ones' pockets, a way that takes some getting used to, but reflects some idea of progressive modernity and someone w/ intentional quirky and restless cosmopolitan construction. As if the quirky pockets placement is connected to some Dada-like activity of the ceaseless, gattling, self destroying machine of city. The jacket Geneviève has on is surely for some young flighty, some under fed semi single woman of city avenue, who's certainly not a mother - and there is something ceaselessly charming about it, and it is as if by some point the woman wearing it will eventually some day have to give it all up and take it to resale boutique along the boulevard, only to be fetched up by another unstable isotope of young city starstream.
Geneviève spoke in intricate tapestry of acronym and metonymy, that was ahead of me. She listened intently to what I was saying, peak conversation, and me wanting to divulge everything.
In LA everyone's been breaking up lately. It used to be different, everyone paired up and they just stayed paired. So much, that they never went out, and when you could get them out it was limited, sometimes like they were even doing you a favor in the first place, the impression when they were leaving early. You'd ask them if they knew anyone single to introduce, but they never did, they never did, and everyone they hung out with were all paired up also. It's like they all stuck together. You met women, attractive women who were taken and they go out of their way to make over conspicuous hints to you they never stray. Then you finally end up with someone, someone lovely picks you out, and it's like you are in the clover of luck, until you quickly find out they still have an active eye out. And it could be anyone that attracts them, and you catch possible potential ones they hint on while you are out and about the town, and you notice the potential, your potential replacement, and you think about their features, how wanly they may be dressed, their body, the archetype they embody and it stays with you well after the woman is gone. The cruelty of the criteria for the random, that you think about for years and is all what's left.
But the love is good no?
It's too precarious to even call it that, its like gripping from running faucet, like slurping from fire hydrant. You later feel like you are mostly just a fill in the blanks actor for their appetite. And when they are letting you down, they simply can't wait for the next or even keep it discrete from you. An insatiable, relentless appetite for destruction.
Always being horny and always wanting to fuck are two different things.
Yes, I know, women be complicated.
You can't sip from a hydrant.
But what is it about why I am so inclined to prittle it all out so incessantly and provoked by no one? And why should I so be spurred to pour over words to tell this tale in depth of exhaustive detail of such dalton lengths, at risk of boring a stranger, or so uselessly revealing my interior autonomy? Is there ever such other recuperative efforts that should so come to salve the trauma of all my past peril and such that of all my utterance dismay?? The trauma that comes with coming into direct contact of the Sublime.
But I know it wasn't the art gallery in Hastings me and Geneviève later went to, and it certainly wasn't the kind of lame but not exactly too horrendous 'painting' made out of rubic's cube squares formented into bit map image of the two girls from the Roxy Music Country Life album cover, and it definitely wasn't how the beginning of the night still spelled if just small optimism with Geneviève, that I could just for now look at the painting with detached general passive good will generous spirit and not scrutinize the painting's otherwise colossal concentrated sophomoric effort, like I usually, normally would or would have (I'm well used to seeing much better Contemporary art in LA), and I doubt it was ever because now I was just so thrilled to be out and about with Geneviève on so seductive world-opening-up-travel-lark-detour, and how I keenly noticed her musing 'Mmmmmm-hmmm' and thinking about it in hindsight, like the idiot I was actually really being unconsciously, in thinking I had gotten into this great situation, this very situation I even actually had to travel to Canada to experience, this very experience I had been waiting for since always, since kindergarten. And it really also wasn't how the street we walked down to get to New Finearts Gallery that held a certain stroll walkability backdrop (the neon words outstripping what's left of natural light of the store fronts we walked past), and don't even try to tell me it was the back and fourth of too much to talk about between us blooming, as there is nothing better to do in Vanc at this very moment except this now and Geneviève. So don't even try to trick me into thinking that it also wasn't me and Geneviève snorting cocaine at the end of the night off the postmodern Memphis Style coffee table that looked like a semi functional Micahel Graves sculpture at her apartment, and it also wasn't the comedown starting exactly when she received the phone call, Geneviève answering 'Hey bubbuh' to whomever, in a playfully mockingly signaling intimate solidarity husk of low voice to whoever was on the other side, Geneviève going in her bed room for an uncomfortable amount of time on the line. But I'm kind of sure it wasn't even the desperation I felt as the drugs abruptly wore down right then, coinciding with the panic of knowing something was revealing itself from behind the seems seams, as the night suddenly, unexpectedly, descended sour in dramatic way only angel dust can precipitate. It was not the shadows cast from the yellow street lights sharding through the Mullion windows of Geneviève's apartment onto innocent/not so innocent Mullican curled upon her floor, no. And I know for sure, I know it definitely was not, was not, and I really, really ever doubt it was not all but the absurd unrealistic expectations I festooned onto it all, onto a situation with a woman of this caliber, a woman of this caliber, in a city I was just passing through, all the unreal, unrealistic, naïve expectations of the situation that up to now had been so invisibly hopeless. And I promise, I know, and I know for sure, I really just know it totally wasn't, it absolutely wasn't, it could never have ever been, I swear, the trauma living inside me since then, like throbbing tumor radiation'd from going through the phenomenological view point of being by Geneviève very subtly, but very definitely friendzoned, and there's no no way I can ever say it was the turrets like syndrome lattice work of effects that marked what was soon to embody what would descend into my, my low, low period phase that had probably already started, but whenever I would randomly think about it all, this low, low super low, new epoch of my life now being marked marred with the residue of knee jerk flinches of verbally cursing off of myself out loud, in automatic negative self talk, and then all the blunders of the cruelly short situation with we're a long way from sometime Geneviève, all the misreads with her that held such ultimate gravity one way or another, and now, so now shrouded in the wreath of all my own defeat and Jeff Philips committed suicide on X-mas day.
But you know what it also kind of was on the flipside thou? What it was, was, it must have been eventually met, countered by the redeeming moment we plied in, of the universe practically saying back to us, and coincidentally also through party dog container embodied by even Mullican himself, this dimension, this nature of the earth expressing itself this way, saying it was all okay to like, ya know, like party! (and not in some cliché, fatalistic, Dionysian way), and this very specific thing was embodied in, played out through an otherwise innocuous gesture by Mullican one specific time, happening at the set up for a promotional event in Switzerland (actually the last time, and the one and only time we went to Switzerland). It was the set up, at the set up for the promotional party event for the distributor in Chur on our final leg of our endless tour, exactly when they knowingly in nod, slyly put on the Spud McKenzie anthem song on over the PA when we first arrived to the event site during prep hours before the party actually started, but Mullican heard it, heard the anthem, and of course Mullican knew it, and it was how Mullican casually acknowledged the song by how he so laconically cocked his head, threw his head back so casually in the direction behind him from where the music was coming from, like he knew, Mullican of course knew the Spud McKenzzie anthem song, and of course he had well heard this (how could he have not?), this only just the next stop for him of the permanent party vacation of his life, like he's Keith Richard's dog, or like Mullican is Keith Richards (but punker!((AND more rasta!))), in a way that affirmed this was clearly, was certainly not Mullican's first rodeo drive. And it was just that knowing turn of Mullican's head in the direction the music was coming from, just ordaining the moment as if, if just for now, we are all christened Mullican's subjects.
Geneviève certainly never to become spinster, had a restrained, understated Rachael Kushner like sense of superiority, though there was an unsaid attitude that I as well definitely operated under, my jejune (naïve, simplistic, superficial) bandied out and about touring pirate like sense of superiority, through which the sails of my demeanor self gusted with a heavy, lufting hot air. Though with grande dame like Geneviève, such imperial fireworks and pyrotechnics would seem, should seem, to be requisite for holding her imagination (or at least to an idiot like me - actually, only a true fool could think that) - though she proved to be more sophisticated than any American girl I had yet to meet, which was surprising because we were in Canyada. But actually, and actually, you must know, my touring arrogance is not the full side of me actually, that arrogance not full story of me, as back home in Koreatown, I do relish in puttering around in otherwise being just ordinary guy walking his extraordinary dog - Mullican, the original, and authentic party dog from Hell, that is.
But since we were always on coke, even when we weren't on coke, we were still on coke, and the overstimulation of my louche but coke lizard insect blob fish full firing mind, coupled with the immediate surreal convulsing compulsive cinch of the knifeblade beauty of Geneviève flewing me out of my skeleton, she appearing at the comic-con like emerging from glowing vomitory entrance, veiling my sight, immediately leaving me with sudden acute feeling of dire un-resolution.
Geneviève was one of those illustrations where there's a grid of solid black squares lined up in rows, that's neatness, that's order, has been specifically set up to give illusion when your eyes scan across the diagram and you see fleeting shadows that appear and reappear in the corners of the blank white rows between the squares. I read once, this was caused by the desensitization of peripheral retinal cells in the eye that are not involved in the image-forming process, but I really know it was actually all just Geneviève's fault.
Right when G first arrived at the booth, I was accosted by press for some journal out of Vanc, and it gave me something to do (and look lamely important) before the booth opened. Mullican was going to be 'interviewed' with the help by me, 'translating' as his handler. And I know what you're thinking, but this was not the first, and was like, our thing - it actually became a thing we did, a bit of stage craft, when we did press in cities. And people really ate it up too, especially, especially when I do the thing, where I put my ear up to Mullican's nuzzle and mime like he's whispering me his secret answer that he wants only me to tell the interviewer for the piece.
What's Mullican's favorite colour?
Well, since he's a dog, he's color blind (saying with antagonistic, disciplinary self serous you-should-know-this playful authority)
Well, if he's wasn't colour blind, then what do you think would be his favorite color?
I think Mullican's favorite color would be . . . . . . . yellow (saying slowly, drawn out with a hesitant sober seriousness, as if the Queen of England's press secretary)
What's Mullican's favorite food?
Potatoes. Mullican loves his potatoes!
Ha ha like Mashed potatoes?!!
No, no, no nothing like that! (with indignation) He likes it when, I peel a bushel, a rash of potatoes and, I peel their skins off, and boil them with just a hint of salt, and he likes to gulp them hot hot right out of the boiler! After I cook them up, I say 'Mullican, time for papas, time for papas, Mullican', they're like instantly gone.
Ha ha, so he just chomps away does he? What's Mullican's favorite band?
The Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Our viewers may not know that band. Does Mullican have another?
(Leans head in deferring to Mullican, sustains a protracted silent contested back and fourth, before finally pulling away and answering) Beastie Boys.
I don't know if I have anymore questions? Um, does Mullican have another favorite food?
Bananas, cookies, pears, potato pot pie, Bush beer.
Any aura at the autograph pawtograph table me and poor Mully possessed was evaporating quickly like milk at Geneviève's apartment in Hastings, was signaled when she dude'd me down, that's when she said something to me, I don't remember exactly what it was, but it ended with coma, 'dude' - and I had a feeling I knew what that meant . . .
Geneviève said, she did say though, after we got back from the bar to her apartment, how mentally exhausted she had been organizing the Simone Forti retrospective at the Polygon Gallery, and going to Mullican's instore pawtograph event was the perfect, as she put it, 'mindless salve' to remedy, to antidote, the last minute re-hang she and art services had had to soldier through the night before. Despite her generosity of housing Mullican and I for the night though (we left Mullican in his cage, I mean, crate, at her place, when we went out), you still get the feeling, you got the feeling, she's the kind of friend who never comes to your place though, the kind of friend who you always have to default to her place or you'll never see her again. And it certainly must be true, because why would I remember such detail enough to be compelled to remember it back to you again?
Geneviève with her class-up, exactly 85% over the top, 10% ironic, 5% something else Ghostbusters receptionist Le Corbusier frames on now, and she could get away with it since she was basically a New York fifty - she broke the gag bag in a way that the institutional stewardship of her occupation was vaguely imported through - through her rigorous methodology of shaving down the nose Styrofoam, in a way that made it seem sort of academic or literary to snort blaze.
Ya know man, Vanc, Vanc, is a big city, just like any other big tent city that operates with the same air of serious self regard in which any center naturally conducts itself. You just have to walk around with, I mean it certainly helps to have, to like practically have preloaded answers in your head to on the spot questions, not so originally asked in like this, some predictable, official vetting process that for some nearly never ends: What are you ashamed of?, What do you consider your biggest mistake?, If you could change one part of yourself, what would it be?, What could you improve about yourself? - these stupid questions stupid people in power unoriginally never fail to ask in a way where there is no right answer, and, like, I mean, god, even if there was, like, even if you gave them a right answer, ya know, a correct answer practically, some other superficial criteria not met, perceived by somewhere else - judged by someone else behind the scenes, would come braying itself into the myopia of a conventionality of thinking that exists in all top places, and it's just all really weird.
Forsure, it's totally like that in LA . . . some parts of LA, at least.
Geneviève not listening or acknowledging what I said, still cutting tusk rubble, that look more powdery than they should in their illicitness, avec Geneviève derailed in her train of thought. You see, I told you she was self absorbed and so into herself.
Geneviève grew up with three other sisters way off in Broadmoor in South Vanc. Geneviève had been the younger of the two sisters that shared the middle between oldest and youngest. Since Geneviève was oft overlooked, or not overlooked - underlooked, as the rhythms by which her family operated under and carried fourth, her position, Geneviève's position, sometimes seemed felled to fell to be least held focus, least held considered, and maybe sometimes seemed least held paid attention to. Geneviève, naturally underrated against the charismatic and selfish, and very vain but still brilliant fuck up oldest sister Tobee, Tobee who at one time could remember being only child. Attention next carried to youngest sweet Abigail, who was annoyingly disciplined, pious and a total taddle tale, but nonetheless who everyone in the family found irresistible and were all very protective of, Geneviève included. Then there was Geneviève's next to older sister Nell, which whom Geneviève shared the middle with. Nell, who was reserved, even tempered, all the quite too frank, and had a pattern of impeccably good behavior, forged from being born with having hot mess Tobee as first sister of Tobee always causing a very Tobee precocity - thus giving Nell an understated sense or temperament of held back emotions and pursed liped words. And it was her sister's held back emotions, warded off reactions, that which may have formed the very Geneviève temperament to the point of Geneviève living with such total private beach seclusion interiority and Geneviève, Geneviève naturally keeping colossal secrets no one but herself knew (Like when she on her own volition, lost her virginity upon her own premeditated planning, to a man older than her father's age, in a condominium in the concentrated capital of Yaletown section of Vancouver.)
And I don't want to forget to mention, the looming cynical negative dialectics established after that of Geneviève establishing itself: independent in a way that she is un-colonizable unobtainable vs. someone lucky will actually be prized with sharing their life with her.
Geneviève was so fair, you simply just couldn't help but implicate yourself as another cad who was just like everyone else, a cad to so desperately, so selfishly and so unoriginally want to possess her presence into your own monopoly.
At her apartment in Hastings, Geneviève takes the long brown glass vile, that I smuggled through customs, taps her finger on the bottom in purposeful way, sprackling a measureful and tilly more upon the wine table, in a way that makes our consumption seem logically practical again.
Geneviève shaping and playing and raking with my coke intently like it's a tiny postminimalist installation, now our coke, but actually, like it was now more her's now. She was playing with the pile with the edge of a leather jacket polaroid she had had that had bits of crazy old dry candle wax dripping frozen still on it. But I liked that it could be viewed as our angel eczema flakes, tried to hold onto that thought as I fiended for more throat candy. Though for a second I felt blessed just to have her so intently going on her monologue so focused on, focused at me. She goes on.
Geneviève stops from what she was saying, elbows out, hands up in the air at the level of her head like mysterious mystic Sabrina, her left hand holding the cokey polaroid now in self stylized dramatic pause.
I mean Greese right, Greese is not so much a movie about the coming of age of a group of friends before they graduate senior year of high school, but it is a depiction, it's a depiction of more than anything else, of the notion of that of . . . the Other, the disrupting of post war, you know, like, Leave it to Beaver ideals of the day. The Other, the outsider of mainstream or like, conventional patriarchal society, or like, ya know, mid century Los Angeles, LA in the fifties ya know, but through the lense of the 70's, more specifically or . . . Like, say, one way this Other disruptor takes place is through media forms, like - like, when radio MC, master of ceremonies, Vince Spontaine is hitting on Marty, a high school student no less, essentially, who, through her own hinting at Spontaine, she was a virgin - Maraschino, like the cherry, ya know. And how so Spontaine, relishing with seductive insouciance, 'Do your parents know I come into your bedroom at night' - you know like, via the airwaves. I've been watching this movie since I was little, me and my sisters, or my sisters and I always watched Greese. Oh, but here's the thing, the thing is ya know, I was watching it, I was watching it not too long ago, I hadn't seen it in forever, but I was watching it with subtitles on accidentally, and I discovered a line, a line I had never caught. It makes me want to go back and watch every movie with the subtitles on now. But I never, I never caught where Marty was telling Rizzo in the girl's washroom at the drive in, that she caught Vince Spontaine slipping an 'asprin in her coke' - an incredible piece of info, for such a minor, but memorable character. I mean, I totally missed that quick quip, this info they snuck right in, it that Spontaine tried to roofie Marty! Or what's it called? How do you say it in the States?
Roofie . . .
Oh, no, yeah, right, so whatever, but so I was saying about disruptors. Disruptors, so Vince Spontaine was . . . was one. The media as disruptor, Rock N' Roll as disruptor, Hot Rod culture and all . . . But the main disruptor in Grease. You know what the main disruptor in Greese was? The main disruptor in Grease, it was depicted in the movie as being the non-Anglo Saxons, citizens closer to their Immigrant lineage or like the non-Protestant students. I mean there was Sandy, Sandy got picked on by Rizzo for being Australian even, like the swirling miasma melting pot of contradiction of an increasingly populated Los Angeles, but Rizzo who was Italian Other - and about to become double Other by the pregnancy scare later. Or maybe she was tripple other, because maybe Rizzo was from a lower social class also, like she was from a poorer Italian family. But you get the feeling that Sandy, or actually you know, Sandy more easily was able to be assimilated into Rydell High. I mean, both by shear charm of her agreeable and conformist personality, which didn't hurt certainly, and it didn't hurt that she looked like Olivia Newton John. Anyways, anyways, take another line . . . I'll have one, yes have some . . . Anyways, and what was I saying?
Disruptors, Rizzo, Sandy was the notion of other, but by virtue of her personality and the Anglo Saxonness of like her Austrailian background . . . .
Right! Right! No, yeah, no, so, anyways, anyways. Italian immigrants or Italian citizens as Other, as disruptor. This is the subtext of Grease. I mean, its all right there, at the front of it all, it's just not directly addressed at all by the narrative, and I think that that's what makes Grease such a great movie or rather, like so compelling. Ya know? It's just lingering, just lingering in the subtext as Italian Other, lingering is more effective, way more effective than logging it into the fore of the like story, or like directly addressed in the plot. But and but, so, so, the T-Birds, the T-Birds are like, were like 3/5ths Italian American's right. Kenike their leader, or, but you have a feeling, or you know he is, or was like poor or coming from a poorer neighborhood and not necessarily zoned to Rydell. Roger, you don't know much about him, maybe he's poor. But in Grease, even white whites can be excluded from the mainstream too. But maybe you get the feeling Roger is innocent, and by virtue of his innocence, it somehow alienated him enough to become indoctrinated into the T-Birds. Weirdly enough, when Roger mocks Sandy, where fore art thou Sandy, that gesture seemed inserted to make the audience seem to think Roger and Sandy paired would be too brother and sistery from Roger's hectoring, when otherwise they probably would have been a better match than Sandy with Danny Zuko. But then there's Danny Zuko, with the iconic hair and immediate hyperreal sideburns. The narrative says Sandy will keep coming back to Zuko - the old adage of opposites attract or whatever, which may or may not be true, sometimes is, sometimes isn't. God, this coke is strong anyways, but what was I saying?
Sandy and Zuko, opposite . . .
Yeah, yeah. But when I was young, I just thought everyone in the movie was white, to me Italians were white, I mean they are, though, I did, was able to sense a bit of racial differences in perhaps the way the principal addressed Sonny on the first day of school. Just the way his last name, consciously or unconsciously came off from her from saying it, even though I do believe the principal was for the most part, like fair and like, not racist, not racist or even classist, though one could assume she still carried these instincts though, because of her prim Edwardian demeanor.
Yeah, and the T-Birds were all also fuck ups, guttersnipe . . .
The T-Birds were fuck ups guttersnipe. Were they Other, did they embrace Otherness because of where they fit or didn't fit in society and it encouraged them to gang up? But there's also the sense that their ganging up embodied this hip progressiveness that the squares were not tuned in into. So there's a few things at play. In some way, the T-Birds and Pink Ladies seem more up to date through the seventies lense that judges them twenty or so years later from the actual fifties, and the squares through the lens of seventies production seem all the more antiquated. If Grease would have been produced in the fifties, I wonder how portrayal wedded to the times would casted off both sides to look. If Grease would have been made in the forties, which of course would be impossible, because then it would veer into future science fiction, I'm sure squares, like the jock who briefly dates Sandy would come off as being John Travolta equivalent like specimen of times? In the seventies though, he seems painfully anachronistic though, despite being a good looking guy.
No, yeah, no yes! he always reminded me of someone I went to middle school with, he looked similar similar to this kid I knew, or knew of . . .
But the disruption by the Other comes to a head at the Big Dance. Its at the big Dance where it culminates and all comes to the fore. Kinikie's now ex-girlfriend, Rizzo, Rizzo now then brings rival Gangleader, craterface from other school on other side of town as a date, who is harder, uglier, more thug, or actually like a genuine thug, and you get the feeling he's poorer, comes from a poorer school, that now seemingly makes Rydell seem like an exemplary, like a good vanguard school, which I guess they are, seeing that that they were having a live TV show broadcast in their gym, and, or, like not to mention the end of year bonanzas they had also, the carnival and the luau in Greese 2.
I actually never seen Grease II, I heard it was like, kinda lame . . .
Oh, no! I love Grease II! But yeah, anyways, so anyways, anyways, Kenike, Kenike, brings his own disruptor, in the form of Cha Cha! Cha Cha DiGregorio! Now if that isn't a loaded name I should say! I think all the names are loaded though, like take the goody goody girl Patti Simcox. Anyways Cha Cha goes to Hispanic stereotype Catholic St. Burnadettes - Cha Cha is a chintzy beauty, if that's your style, or like if she's your thing, but she's also gaudy gache, kind of trashy you can tell, and more on that later, but, and according to Frenchy, Frenchy, Cha Cha, she, has 'the worst reputation'. And come to think of it, Frenchy, by mere virtue of her loaded name, Frenchy is also an outsider, but she's seemingly higher on the pyramid than Italian - as she lives in a big house, which hosts Pink Ladies sleep overs and is an automatic go-to, where she shows the girls how to French inhale. You mind if I take another line? Think, think even 19th century bourgeois Russia, the Russian gentry were known to speak in French, or as they say in Kentucky, Fraanch. But what was I saying . . .
Frenchy as higher on Rydell social pyramid?
No . . .
Cha Cha, then . . .
No, not Cha Cha . . .
Um . . .
Oh, the dance! Yes the dance! Anyways all these conditions come to the fore at the dance. The dance becomes this, this like a, like this heterotopia, a field in which becomes equal opportunity for the Other, even though it is created in favor for the Patriarchy or patriarchal favor, like, right? The media is invading the school scene, you got Marty's date, Rodger abandoned by Marty, or about to be abandoned by Marty, Rodger spiking the punch bowl, you have the coach and the principal as some, like this administrative married couple warning no sleezy dance moves, Rizzo proclaiming in earshot defiantly, 'I guess that leaves us out' to reaction of the principal's annoyed dismay, oh, you even have the coach game rule number one, only couples can be boy girl, which will not age well. They count down to go on air, five, four, three, two, one, as if counting down to a new epoch. Spontaine proclaims put your mittens around your 'kittens' and away we gooo! Hand Jive signals, immediately the rocking of the giant cardboard Rydell effigy's arms causing the head to drop and shower toilet paper onto the crowd all to the dismay of Patti Simcox, as if this symbolic of the imminent takeover of the Other and by Rydell's own precipitating. Hand Jive just goes immediately though, everyone is in raptures in trance, Hand Jive as populist jam that not no one likes, including me. People are over-dancing, people disqualified to sit down are still hand jiving sitting in place. Before I was born late one night, my papa said everythings all right. Everyone looses themself in abandon. People dancing too enthusiastically. And I started dancing when I gathered eggs. Spontaine walks through the dance floor looking for people to disqualify, but also, also, he's like general, he's like a general casually touring a war zone in midst of battle, rules are off the floor and out the door, and not only is Spontaine cancelling dancers, but he's also using his stature and position to flirt with teenage girls while walk dancing by with their dates, which even causes some frission with Zucco, when Spontaine hand jives a little with Sandy. There's an instance where he taps Rizzo's thug date over-dancing without any comportment, and the greaser thug rival gang leader raises his fist to Spontaine when Spontaine disqualifies them, and with princely hypocrisy, Spontaine seeks solace in taking automatic defensive comfort in Marty's embrace in dance, who's outrageously a student, but within the war, or the war of dance particularly, all things are seemingly permitted and how so go unnoticed.
A brawl breakes out between Kenikie and his scabbed face rival who's with Rizzo. The rival gets whisked away by authorities and Kenikie and Cha Cha recuperate, fall back and resume center floor and for a moment you see Kenikie really is the best dancer at the dance, reclaiming control, reclaiming the center of attention. The dance contest becomes a quest for attention, media attention specifically, and becomes an unconcious critique even on the inner workings of the movies' casting function. He descends into splits, while he holds Cha Cha's foot in his face, most likely an illegal dance move.
Rizzo ejects herself and leaves the gym. Patty Simpcox rushes to the fore, dancing unscrupulously, shoving herself into the view of camera, as if taking a lead in all's fair in love and dancewar like young Republican monopoly move. Kenikie as foil rushes behind Patti Simcox and pulls her dress up in front of the camera just in time, only to return dancing solo with himself and without Cha Cha because they've been disqualified, but he grooves to the floor truly possessed.
Danny and Sandy emerge from the back, guns 'a blazing, they go into this lasso looping dance in a corny self serving pageantry, like taking the lead in boat race. You have a feeling they could win, but it wouldn't exactly be the coolest win, but a popular win nonetheless. There's an ominous shot of Cha Cha on the sidelines eyeing Danny and Sandy, exactly like the snake in the garden of Eden. She doesn't even go to Rydell High.
Chaos rises to the highest level of fever pitch and Sandy is grabbed away by one of the idiot T-Birds and Danny seems to offer the least bit resistance as possible. He just low key passively lets them take away Sandy, with just the most superficial amount of protest or disorientation and then Cha Cha comes slithering in to continue the dance. This is a crucial part of the entire sequence, and really the crux of Danny. Zuko really is a Supreme fuck up. In the nineties he will become an overweight heroin addicted hit man, with trendoid of the times 90's lame pony tail. He will much later shoot someone accidentally in the face who's sitting in the back seat of a moving car with a gun, by mere virtue of Zuko being a California fuckup (later Zuko will die by taking a bathroom break while staking someone's house). Imagine having Sandy for a date and just going with the flow and letting Cha Cha slime herself in on river of cheat perfume. I mean you already won the dance, by virtue of showing up with Sandy as a date, but even Zuko is gonna louse that up. Danny and Cha Cha are exactly the same breed and you see how natural it is for them to devil dance together to instant flashiest way possible. Danny and Cha Cha have a past history, but monsters don't like other monsters, and someone is required for each to be taken hostage in the relationship, and neither side backs down. Though you get the feeling Zuko met his match and his fingers got burned and bit and brazed by the traveling carnival ride known as Cha Cha. And actually, I know for sure that's what happened actually.
And if you think it couldn't get worse, the situation rings, announces itself in descending into hell in Eden (Los Angeles, becomes Lost Angeles), and the dance move Cha Cha and Danny immediately degenerate into is Danny dropping to his knees with his legs spread on the floor, while Cha Cha slithers on her back, and mimes licking between his legs and his backside! No doubt the most lascivious and revolting dance move one could ever think of.
As events would unfold, Zuko and Cha Cha, the two most dirty dancers win, who, according to the rules, should have been ejected and disqualified right at the start, which without them being disqualified by rules, would not have been possible, because they had yet to actually immorally ditch who they initially came with, but because of the chaos of what's ensued, and because of the populist appeal of the greaseball flash and superficial novelty of pomp of both Cha Cha and Danny - immediate superficial novelty being the cardinal populist virtue, they are crowned Queen and King. You get the feeling that Rydell is a microcasm of LA or this country, and this sort of standard setting chaos of judgement is pervasive through the land and it is this sort of criteria which determines cultural standards - it's like watching the drunk blind machinations of cultural logic writ large, play out condensed in real time. It's like watching an insurrection, or a similar thing to when governments get overthrown and toppled over. The entire sequence is extraordinary though, is perfectly and flawlessly executed and one wonders how something so true could manifest itself through the vessel of media form (one gets the impression, troupes of musical theatre tradition have a significant part to play here).
Hell fully descending upon the dance announces itself when the lights turn off and the glaring evil Plato's cave spotlight shines on Danny and Cha Cha - and this is Danny Zukko's Hell and it's also a brazen bizarre media spectacle. Danny in the spotlight is christened, graduates from one of Satan's agents, to now being the Devil himself. And also, you also get a feeling, this is the inner working social dynamics behind show biz power couples in Los Angeles - you end up with whoever you land with. The fact that Danny is on national television forsaking Sandy, and not to mention the rim job dance move in front of everybody, it's is all unequivocally unforgivable, and a cardinal sin to any of the ethics of the entire social scene, not to mention social contract no doubt.
The telephone rings, interrupting Geneviève's momentum. She gets up, moves the telephone into her room and she could do this because it has an extra long telephone chord. The old warped door to her bedroom muffled closed in a way that sounded exactly like the sound of being shut off. I got a bad feeling instantly (when I eat cocaine, it actually connects me with a strong sense of intuition), though as of now, I could still afford myself to be in some denial. I felt the need to distract myself in being consoled by maybe petting Mullican, I called Mullican over, but he was laying brooding in his dog bed that we traveled with, and Mullican refused to get up, as if resentful I was sharing our stash with Geneviève. I wanted to eat another line, but felt it would be bad manners to not wait for Geneviève to get back. Feeling bad, I found an empty water bottle in her kitchen, came back to the table, poured less than a gram in the bottle, got back up to the kitchen to fill it with super clean Canadian tap, shook it up, poured it into Mullican's foldable cloth travel water bowl and brought it to him. I'm sorry Mullican, I know I've been selfish ever since Geneviève appeared in the frame, please be patient with me old boy, this is important .
Mullican laps the water in an over gentle, slightly histrionic sulk, despite him not being burdened by being boarded at the kennel.
Geneviève opens the door, comes back out, says nothing while taking too long to put the phone back in the fifties looking wall niche where it originally was. I'm trying to make myself distracted and I go over to Mullican, but it's too late, it clearly looks like I'm just rifling away for something to occupy myself for immediate posture dignity, but Geneviève doesn't even seem to notice even that.
Rick, is coming over.
Oh . . .
No, he's real cool. He's real nice, I think you might like him. Geneviève absent mindedly, as if thinking about something.
Eyeball at the lines of skinny slugs sitting like rat poison tails, and I try to conjure a rickity, gamely, roll with it delusional party optimism, a certain jeux d' esprit that goes with knowing I'm about to snort another at least, and with that cheap optimism, I can attach the notion that, hey, maybe they're just buddies now, and I go with it, though I'm seventy five percent aware I'm lying to myself and I know it because, I really, really ever doubt, and actually, I did know, I will not get to be alone with her now, nor ever again. Though such a fatally vapid line of thinking, of consciously knowing I'm operating under such an on the spot mode of superficial self deception, a fake, party naif boy like festive festival coke stoke of oblivious willed optimism, and then that combined with the general trauma around Geneviève in general, marks a new social emotional low, and realizing this, I know in dread it's something, a despondency I cannot so quickly recover from, even on the anything goes of it all no direction home free wheeling road. With G, it was like over dosing from future absence. And was also a factor, what could easily be thought of in an understated way or self denial dismissal, of a sort of damage control variety, where you find yourself in a compromising scene, are just trying to cope, and you just sweep it all under the rug, or anywhere closest you can find. And take into consideration also, with the cheap stoke and then also the un-seriousness of character implied that goes with chokeaine, associated with being a traveler pilgrim party person player flake of the Ecuadorian basket knitting fuel, always exists subconsciously in the hang out unsaid, and especially towards the end of the night - and only makes me just think I'm a bad kid long gone astray, and hence bad adult. The situation of accelerating thoughts, and sudden flimsy not really euphoric, not that even great high coupled with the very real about face lows of drama, the perilous amplification of the razor candy, and this very emotional place I've descended into is so bewilderingly dangerous, was certainly never addressed or could even be comprehended or even articulated in the anti-drug commercials I grew up with.
I realize I'm holding my breath and not breathing, in being silently jilted, but trying to play it off, mentally wrestling, though this is something that takes the most deft maneuvering I'm not capable smoothly playing off. Geneviève is a real intelligent woman, I'm sure she could tell, and actually to tell you the truth, I know she could tell. And if she couldn't tell, it's because she didn't bother, simply because she's so otherwise mired in her own situation.
And I don't know what it was (well, actually, I do), but her attitude, kinda, or a little at least, may have been more like, I don't know, I owe you nothing buster. There was nothing particularly gentle with how she administered such ruinous situation though. And so I now realize, I never really was going to make supreme meaningful anything with her (all I ever wanted), and like ever. I realize, because if I was, things would never have landed this far off the krooked path (and with this much time already having been wasted anyways - if you have to tell someone 'these things take time', it's never going to be). But it was a very generally shattering yet very specific disappointment, it was kind of like Gino's part in the Chocolate Tour, but not even that good. You could also really tell Geneviève, sly as a child, got herself into and out of situations like this. Consider too, she would have made it real easy right off, or, I blew it for not trying to frisk her within the first hour or so of being alone, though really, honestly, there was no acceptable opening to go in for it anyways. Loosing from not trying, with specter of knowing I would have lost by trying anyways. The reason I'm really here in her apartment was really driven or spurred at least by the superficial primary appeal of Mully at the comic con in the first place, and again, how that was indicative of Geneviève getting herself into her usual kitten stranded upon bare branch situations of her own devising (remember how I told the story of her loosing her virginity in Yale town when she was younger). It will soon go from I'm spending the night, to when her boyfriend arrives, morphing into me being here only driven by just some air of pragmatic necessity, like accommodating traveler for layover or canceled flight.
Geneviève's attitude has changed and she's no longer enterprisingly chatty like she was minutes ago. She delicately places herself down on her couch, pinched fingers on her lips, then asks me if she could have a line. I say 'of course dear' lamely, with a bit too much woefully misguided Colombian night train stimulated emphasis (And why did I say 'dear'? Like I'm already practicing my innocent performative demeanor for when her friend arrives, and she can clearly see such pathetic move ) - it's like I just so easily allow myself to fall into place to be relegated her neutered, castrated friend arm now (and a total drip to boot), because I don't know exactly how to react any other way now, and I, spurred by stimulants, automatically default to figuring being overnice is really just the best policy now, and I do well know it's precisely that same over-nice that makes you friend zone'd every time and I do mean every time. And, but, maybe I'm friendzone anyways. Not only and, but, I'm friendzone anyways, but I'll take the L and be a good sport and grateful for the hospitality, so whatever. But with this carries social points deducted one must ruinously carry around and for years, if not forever. There's also the general pedestrian perception because the you of you could be seen as being not 'man' enough to fight for your love or, not even your love, but not 'man' enough to fight over what you blithely, vacuously take possession of that is not even yours which is alas the story of the world (Consider this clunky, though maybe sometimes effective, but otherwise stupid masculine sense of manifest destiny self will determinism of colonizing a woman, as opposed to say as being just a really conscientious guy - I mean you could, and some do get a favorable response with a girl being conscientious, but that would in the end most likely be a too long far off differed response anyways, where you have to give it some time or a lot of time or too much time and almost happens on accident anyways, if it even happends. (( And me and Geneviève had anything but time. it's incredibly naïve to become pre attached to someone from out of town, but there is something undeniable about her that my romantic-at-all-costs-heart could certainly never deny. And I have always believed in far fetched miracles)) Also, too, playing the game of ultimate risk and not getting what you want demands for any self respecting gentleman to be a good sport about it and shrug off socially and one must be brave and not cowardly. But it can sometimes be baffling perilous, because some situations carry way too much weight, become too perplexing, and one must self assert their autonomy by ending it bitterly, in a way that could be reclaiming back the notion of one's self, at the risk of being contaminated by the other's viewing such as cowardice, and you leave yourself with a very bad grade.) But honestly, that I'm not up for dousing myself in the musk of umbrage now, seems precisely the same nice guy attitude that repels some or most or precisely some women away, but all such qualifications don't really even apply here for Geneviève after all. One would think though, before execution, one would at the very least get satisfaction by badmouthing the judge or warden, but you would be surprised you won't do it because you are pathetically holding out for a stroke of last second luck that is never going to come. And even if I did do this cheese burger brained emotionally deficient response, I know I won't even have the same latitude she would allow for say, for instance, some other with whom she had a un-like ours maybe antagonistic, maybe perhaps, I don't know, productive sexual tension frission starting off right from the start - and one could easily imagine, if this hypothetical lathe operator pulled the stunt, despite him say, wearing those pants where the cuffs were flush with the ankles, he could, it's possible, he could very well get her sway in his direction by virtue of a very certain and pervasive kook charisma where the guy is obliviously over confident and the woman may even feel slightly sorry for him, but by the sheer drive of his misguided charisma, is just enough to override any resistance by her and actually still attract her to his shabby-but-still-goes-a-long-way-charisma, where it's convenient to her because she still gets her domineering guy, while still affording her to think she's better than him and how could I even make this up. It just depends on who the woman is, how the situation plays and that's a true poststructural conceit. There's simply too much going on to form a unified theory, but there's also patterns noted from empirical observation.
Yeah, Rick, my ex, works as proskater. He's actually top pro in Canada.
Immediately, I know who Geneviève is talking about and a wave of dread shocks mesh holes through my stomach lining like one of those glass balls from Sharper Image, those hundred dollar electronic glass balls that seemed futuristic in the 80's, and that they use for cheap props in low budget sci-fi movies, that have visible electric waves that gravitate to your hand in the inside when you touch it. That was my stomach. And don't for once think just because I'm an ex-pro rollerskater, doesn't mean I'm not hip to skateboarding. I know it's either Canadian Rick Forrester from Alberta, I hope to god it's not Rick Dennis.
Red Chocolate pro Rick Dennis arrives within the hour. Immediately, I can read the demeanor between he and Geneviève fraught and of involved history. Through Rick's eyes, there's a patient weariness of syzygy (an opposition, like moon against sun), as if he had had to decide long ago that that this just goes with the territory, and also, I too could sense his weariness is more than well earned. I'm bewilderingly self conscious now, and use it as an occasion to introduce Rick to Mullican, as if being here was somehow just precipitated by innocent Mully Mull alone, and that this is all just an indeed innocent and very predicated on practical 'sleepover' between us girls (me and Geneviève) now.
Rick looks at the lossy coke on the table with critical distance, as if this is something anticipated or bound to happen sooner or later. He looks at the pile and lines, like he's bigger than what they bring to bear. He sits next to Geneviève on the old green Vancouver couch, while I sit in my chair at the head of the coffee table looking like a total chump in my single autonomy.
There is hushed bickering between them, and I have to play it off like I'm not intently noticing everything going on. I can tell though, Geneviève is explaining the situation to Rick, it even goes so far as Geneviève is now whisper pleading for him to snort cocaine with us or with her, please, do it for me, she seems to practically mouth with a strained, gentle practically. Before he has a chance to say yes or no, Geneviève asks.
Is it okay, you certainly don't mind if Rick takes a hit?
That Mullican and I are on the road until we get to LA and both physically depend on the medicine, that I had to smuggle the piles through customs (hidden inside the lining in Mullican's animal support vest - customs agents never think to use a drug dog on a drugged dog carrying drugs), and not only that this is cutting into my share, this is even cutting into innocent Mullican's share and it's not even his fault now.
Oh, sure, no problem. Have as much as you want!
Saying such, under international maritime law, practically relinquishes it into the couple's possession now. Geneviève cuts Rick an extra phat line, like this special line, that you can tell he doesn't even want to do and Mullican's tail (and mine) are hardly wagging. The way she presents it to him, is in a pandering, here baby, take this, it will be all right, baby, way that the outside world works against everything that forms the very essential make up of me.
The sound of the certainty of action of cutting chop elicits a teeny tiny false justification not even worth mentioning.
Rick honks down the handrail like a real pro though - I got to hand it to him. You could kind of see why Geneviève thinks he's cool, and I start to sympathize, even kind of admire Rick.
Geneviève follows suit, snoncks another up too, and I feel played and she looks like a Gorgon to me now. There is something timelessly castrating about Geneviève that is right out of a Carvaggio.
Here, have some, she offers me, like she's doing me some huge fucking favor now, like she's interested in the best for me.
Gen, catch me on my troubled portion, I slork my paltry slow regs line, it does terribly practically nothing. I wish I barely did drugs now. I wish this was my first time in a while, like Rick. I felt inferior to Rick's low tolerance and desperate - if I would have had the means, I swear to God I would have smoked my regs line or shot my regs line right there . . .
Rick lit a cigarette and violently blew the exhaust of the first activating drag towards the lamp light onto the table next to the couch, and it blew down in the air at the base of the cone of light, the smoke impossibly swirling like oil and then freezing suspended. And this was a long time ago, when the indoor smell of cigarettes to us was still invisible - a now long passed generational desensitization that traversed even physical continental borders.
The minor hits Rick and the then conversation then just suddenly turns to him being outwardly aggressive on his part. I'm hiding silently thinking, focused still on being so envious of his low tolerance, how he innocently has a low tolerance is just another way that makes him better than me amongst all the other things. This is one of the worst ways to feel when traveling.
So, besides trucking around with Mulli-Kan, is that his name?, What is is it exactly do you do? Rick looms my way with plainspoken candor smugness. It now clear Rick seems like the guy who has a superiority complex about his no nonsense calling out and dispenses whatever social protocols and niceties the rest of the civilized world operates under, as if he's so original, such an individualist to just so be able to tactlessly call it all out - even though it really marks an unoriginal man smugness, an audacious tactlessness, that even Geneviève must think is kind of silly, if she even thinks about it at all.
Uh, nothing, I mean I'm pro. I'm pro like you, well, a pro rollerskater, well retired pro rollerskater actually, I respond trying to win Rick over, trying to on the spot appeal to the small flick of admiration I felt in Rick as to mitigate, dial back the otherwise traumatic Geneviève situation that unfolded. If I'm dumb enough to be able to convince myself, upon the precipitation if just by a grain of something I like about him, anything enough to mime friendliness with Rick, I can also be easy on Gen and be her castrated little buddy no problem and without causing unnecessary drama. I mean, what's so bad about that?
But with Rick, you can tell he's not coming from a traumatic place where he's just trying to play defense and hold it together, like I am. And, you can kind of tell he's probably been in this compromising situation before, spurred only and again by Geneviève, to the point of familiarity where he is able to snap into knowing how to react and now draw power from this very antagonistic attitude from such experience he's now displaying.
Oh, you're a pro rollerskater.
Yes, yes, well ex-pro. I used to be pro, before Bark became Mullican . . .
What exactly does a pro rollerskater do.
Um, I don't know. Lots of things. Demos, at home local practice demos, driils, lead drills, contests, skate videos, rollerderby, though I wasn't quite too keen, never really did much rollerderby, but I have . . .
Can you do a back flip . . . Rick not wanting an answer, but using the question in a way that outwardly relishes in all it's implication.
I respond with a bruised patience. That's more rollerblading, that's different, but to answer your question, I have. I can gainer out of BMX tranny over a parked BMX bike, or I have before. Even with skates and not blades. I don't know. I'm retired, I can now skate for myself, skate for my art . . .
What did you say? Did you actually say skate for your art lol?
Yeah, that's what I said, Rick.
Oh, so you think rollerskating is art huh?
I don't think it is, Rick. I know it is, Captain.
Oh, well. Ok, then how is is, rollerskating art?
Rollerskating is about moving and grooving. Rollerskating also exists at the very heart of Disco. Rollerskating basically comes from Disco, well, besides the whole Coney Island golden era, Heaven's Gate in the 1890's right, but Disco, Disco precipitated a re-birth in rollerskating, it's undeniable and you can't argue that. But, looking into the eye of self doubt ya know, and being able to act against all self doubt, riding out in a fidelity of self realization of mechanical unconscious, and just being sassy. Just owning it. That's the real deal rollerskating.
Oh, but how is that art though?
I just told you Rick.
You didn't tell me much. Rollerskating is not art, I mean if it is for you, more to you man ha ha, but Jen can you back me up on this?
Geneviève sat with her legs crossed on the couch next to Rick, with her left hand on his leg like firmly established couple. The beak, my beak hit her and she's thinking contemplatively in a noticeable inner peace, like she's trying to figure out something in some holistic, like healthy way.
Well, hon, there is the work Rauschenberg did with Merce Cunningham in '63, the multimedia performance, where dancers had rollerskates. Pelican, that's, that's what it was called I think . . .
What. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Well, maybe you should go back and take a look Rick. I, now acting like I know what Geneviève is talking about, but it sounds good to me and I rollerskate with it. I latch onto the crumb she's threwn out, in the oil puddle of fire of utter dismay she otherwise created.
Ricksplaining, Well, okay, okay. But that's performance, a performance, or I take it done in an actual like theatre, so maybe that's more art than that . . .
Actually it was in a roller skating rink. Geneviève gamely, pointing out, with a seeming innocence, like playing a game of Trivial Pursuit.
Filching on trying to connect with what anemic cinema buzz I have in trying to regain some footing and sense of autonomy, but also, all the while trying to sell him, I just know this Rick, when I'm on my rollerskates, I'm my true, my like true, true self, my real self! Ya know? I'm free to dance and that dance is my song and that song is my art . . . express myself. So, music, fashions, costume, makeup, makeup art, choreography and skating is where I am free to do all of those. It's like total immersive work of art, there's a - a German word for it . . . So don't try to tell me . . .
Hey, no reason to get bent out of shape. I was just wondering how how . . .
How you just weren't wondering anything . . .
Proving Rick is not the only one who can be jerk on coke, I find my tooth, flex back and it feels the most superficial amount of good to reclaim a bit of myself in the moment - though Rick or what's her face fails to give slightest nod and both sit unhealthily wired there, spurring me to feel completely out of element and maybe, perhaps, unwelcome now, that I am invading their -
What I'm wondering is what you and your Mullican are doing here at my girl's . . .
I'm not yours, Ricker, games for slaves Geneviève vacuously claps back, just adding another layer to the scene. Earlier, I was doing the thing where I mention someone, and then when I say their name again, I add an 'er' to it - I was talking about this guy Tim, and I offhandedly may have said Timmers in my usual jeux d' esprit, and now Geneviève is totally vamping off my thing, tossing me aside, and biting my style to boot, in a way that expresses she low key disregards personal boundaries. Neither on my side, and using my thing against someone I now find my rival, who she's also now also against, in a fascism of the heart, black ice autonomy she possesses. And a sea without tides is dreary.
I may a stupid, but I'm not dumb - later I could see Geneviève was not beyond taking a guy down a peg, and you could tell now how she said I'm not yours Ricker, that this had pretty much probably played out the way she intended orchestrated. (I probably never really had a chance with her, ((but I suspect, you know, if I had been Rick, of course you know she would not have called me to come over and would have actually hooked up with other me spending the night, if that makes sense.)))
Geneviève and Rick went into her room to bicker in private, and they never came out. I responded by eating more choke, attempted the most noticeably horrendous disco nap I can remember recently having, and by the time the strained geriatric morning light could be seen through the warped window, I handrailed up one last and left - our bags 'n gear, and out with Mullican's folded up cage, I mean kennel.
A comedown morning gray in Vanc, we walked past a used book and record trading store. In the window was a stupid Beatles White Album wrapped in comic book preservation plastic, as if there weren't a trillion copies everywhere else. My thoughts accelerating on mundane details, though distinctly anything but high, and simply depressed knowing my head is emptied of anything secreting pleasure or any near future euphoria. That the Manson murders marked the end of the sixties, foreclosed the wanton proto-twee pomposity of the goofy hippy 'movement', and that the deferred meaning of Helter Skelter, really in the end had had relatively no effect on how the White Album was ever critically regarded post ipso facto - and if anything, the hype of violence only skyrocketed The White Album's own very ascendance - only all but alluded to the gaping aporias and hypocrisy of Western glare. It certainly didn't hurt to call it the white's album, and why would it hurt to have infantile and just generally embarrassing to hear, said out loud song titles like 'Piggy', 'Honey Pie', 'Birthday', and it also definitely didn't hurt that frail little it's just so hard to be bicostal me, Barry Goldwater supporting, Joan Didion, selling the name sexy, from titling her White Album book.
Mullican whinnies like a horse, and shakes himself off, as if dusting his fur.
I'm sorry Mully, we'll be off the street soon, I promise.
I had to carry everything a couple of miles, just to run into a gas station that had a pay phone to call transportation to the airport (and thank god Mullican's folded up cage had wheels). Because I had snorted Geneviève out, all the angel dust was dusted, and I had none to fix Mullican's usual pretravel water fix. By the time we reached LAX though, he was panting and panting like he was having a breathing problem, only getting worse and it got progressively, distressingly worse, so much, I really had to make pains to call the stupid vet and schedule an appointment.
Entering the stolid and left inert but still somehow getting worse, mess of my apartment in Koreatown, was like entering the subconscious of a stranger. Mully's panting had gotten quite worrysome, seemingly close to breaking point by then.
But luckily, thank god, I had the warewithall to keep doling out more coke water to Mullican throughout the night, and he stabilized and was back to normal, and thank god, by early morning. I thought the visit to the doctor's office would be a pretty chill affair. By this point though, now not so really necessary, I decided to just go anyways, because I don't know, I'm just a good owner and I'm sorry, but maybe sometimes I over do it.
Dr. Lake though, then caught me off guard, said can I ask you something.
Oh, sure you want a pawtograph . . .
Who's Mullican's manager.
Mullican doesn't have a manager - I mean, I am. Why?
Mullican's blood work shows quite some concern.
What do you mean concerns?
Mullican's blood reading is off the parabola, for a second I had to do a double take, make sure I wasn't looking at J -
What blood work? Blood work? I didn't know, authorize no blood work . . . on M?
Our diagnostic protocols in place require . . .
No, I told you to make sure he's just okay, like he's okay! I don't remember authorizing, uh blood. I mean, I just wanted to make sure he wasn't, like, he wasn't dehydrated, no cause for concern . . . I don't need no, didn't like-
Well, Mullican is extremely dehydrated, distressingly so. We also found alarming trace amounts of ah, er . . . substances of . . . concern.
Substances of concern.
I think you know what I'm talking about . . .
Look, no, actually I don't know what your'e talking about. And you know what? If I didn't know no better, I wouldn't like what you seem to be inferring.
I'm afraid I have no choice, but am forced to report you to the, the . . .
Report me to the what, for what, Lake!? I've - Mullican's done nothing wrong! He's just here for a check up, a check up and a . . .
I know Mullican is, has, well, probably done nothing wrong or for now at least, but I'm extremely, I'm extremely quite concerned with Mullican's diagnostic, and I'm just afraid I simply am going to have to report you to CSAPS . . .
Whats -
California State Animal Protective Services . . .
Protective services, oh ok . . .
No, I'm serious, I'm going to have to report this as . . .
Isn't . . . That's, though. . . Like, client patient confidentiali-
In the state of California, practitioners are under obligation to notif-
But,
. . . .
You've gottt to be kidding me . . .
No, no, Mr. Diamonte, I am very serious. We have to take these things here at Skimiore Veterinarian very -
You're joking right . . .
I'm afraid I'm not.
Oh, well, you know what? What are you going to do.
I intend to do just what I had said.
And that's . . .
I'm afraid I'm under obligation by the state of California to -
Yeah, well you know what, you do - you do that, you do that Lake and you know what, you want to know what? I'm going to sue, I'm gonna sue you back, how about I counter sue you for, for wrongful, wrongful prosecution then, defamation - or not even, but, and but, if you want to go it the hard way, route, if you really, I really can't believe this is happening, but if you really, really want to, like do this that way Lake, I'll be havin' my lawyer, my lawyer serving me up your AMA on a silver platter for supper time faster than you can say -
Next order on the docket for today is case number Ca.94-00132671, The State of California, Ventura County vs. Jax Diamonte. Now folks, as selected jurors in this trial, I feel compelled to reiterate, to point out that this trial has generated it's own degree of general public interest and intrigue, and I must remind you that you had been selected to be jurors in this case today, precisely because of the impartiality with which you have, and I do stress, under oath, acknowledged here inside the court, that you are capably, able to hear out and impartially consider the arguments going to be presented in the plaintiff The State of California, Ventura County vs. defendant Jax Diamonte. I also feel compelled to remind you that California appeals court forbids you from, that when you go home at the end of the day today, there is to be no discussion with family or friends whatsoever until the trial is adjourned. And there is especially to be no interviews or interaction with the press or press media or news. Failure to not engage with the media could lead to a fine not exceeding $125,000 and up to eighteen months jail time, that is, if you so fail to uphold what you have already now been sworn in for. So folks, in order to expedite this process, so that justice can be served, your participation is integral and cannot be done without your very cooperation. We really appreciate you for being here, we know all our time is very valuable, and on behalf of the California State Judicial System and Ventura County we very, very much appreciate you all for being here. Also, I might add, that moving forward after today, jurors should refrain from wearing any Mully Mull gear, Bark merchandise, free Mully tees, no matter how tempted you may be in wearing them on this occasion. And I can assure you, I am actually not wearing a Mullican shirt under my robe. We shall now hear the plaintiff district attorney for opening argument . . .
Thank you your honor, ladies and gentleman of the jury, and those also in attendance in the Ventura County First Precinct District Court. My name is Danforth Sonny and I am the district attorney appointed to serve the greater Ventura County area and it's municipalities. I try primarily criminal cases. This is not a civil case. And what makes this a criminal case is is that we at the D.A.'s office of Ventura County have taken a complaint of cause of action, that we would see fit to pursue alleged allegations of clear cut violation and mistreatment, to full extent of the law, and those allegations be tried as for serious charges and in this very instance, leveraged against Mr. Jax Diamonte, accusations concerning breaking the very laws, which we are bound to uphold, of and by the state of California to upmost full extent and to the very best of our ability. We here at the D.A.'s office, go through multitudinous amounts of briefs of complaints filed here downtown with the Ventura County municipal clerk. We go and take these and examine them line by line. These complains are tagged and flagged as we like to say at the D.A.'s office, tagged and flagged, which we closely examine and deem weather admissible or inadmissible to the court, or if we found that no laws of Ventura county and the state of California had in fact not been broken within the claim and are not admissible in presenting to the court. For instance, someone gets accused of something, and it's obvious, it's obvious, to us that such accusations are not actually or even considered infractions upon the laws of the State of California. In such case, when we determine no laws had unquestionably been broken by examining the nature of such claims, it does not get submitted for appeal for substantiated consideration to be put on the docket for processing in the Ventura county criminal court. We have had a pretty good track record in being able to seriously access these claims, before we submit them in. I just have to say that in the last sixteen years of practicing law, in all my professional experience, I have never seen a case like this. The veterinarian services health provider for one Mullican raised an alarm with cause for concern regarding the mistreatment and abuse of one Mullican by Mullican's owner Mr. Jax Diamonte. Blood test suggest an inordinate amount traces of illicit substance found in Mullican's bloodstream, which then would warrant a serious look into and investigation into suspected allegations of animal abuse, which we take here very very seriously. Whether or not Mullican is a semi celebrity or not, any complains issued by such parties are taken to the same degree of seriousness regardless. People of the court. There's no pretty way to say this, so I am just going to have to state this plainly. Mullican was bought to the clinic Dr. Lake practices, Skimiore Veterinarian Services in really rough shape, after coming back from a promotional meet and greet event in Canada. Upon examination, we at the Ventura County DA's office know, do know, and can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt Mullican to be used as a dancing grind organ coke monkey for the personal and financial interests of one Mr. Jax Diamonte. With a rigorous touring schedule and endless appearances and gigings all around the country, and the world, Mullican is forced to endure the slog and never ending conveyor belt treadmill for the personal and financial gain of one Mr. Jax Diamonte. Folks, never before had we seen anything like this in terms of scale of blatant animal cruelty, animal abuse, animal negligence, and animal exploitation and animal trafficking, animal harm - of an animal being drugged, given, fed drugs to this extent, so that he could perform in the service of and make special guest celebrity dog influencer appearances. And it really buried the needle with the respect to trace levels of the blood report, we see that Mullican has had thousands of dollars, of illict substance coursing through his veins and I'm not just talking beer either. The levels of illicit narcotics was so high, they had to staple an extra page onto the graph practically, just so they could see how high the red drug arrow rose! It was so high, it is enough even for us of the Ventura County DA's office to take pause. The very facts of the case are straight forward, under the California State, which requires veterinary health care givers to report suspicion of, or reasonable belief of animal abuse and negligence. Under California State law, we must be able to prove evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt, that, that animal abuse and mistreatment took place. After hearing the testimonies of witnesses we have brought in and after hearing testimony for a leading veterinary heptamologist, we know that we will be able to prove beyond shadow of a doubt, of animal negligence, animal abuse and animal cruelty, and I am confident you will find Mr. Jax Diamonte guilty.
We will now hear the defendant's opening arguments by his council Mr. Renee Dupree.
Yes, people of the court, your honor, and distinguished members of the jury. Real quick, I'm curious, and this is just for my own personal curiosity, by show of hands, how many of you like to party? Oh, that many, wow. Okay, okay, wait, cool! No, wait how about, no instead, no actually, how about this, instead, raise your hands, raise your hands, and this is just, again, out of curiosity, raise your hands instead, if you don't like to party. Don't like to party. If you don't like to party, raise your hands. Show of hands. Okay we got, one, two, three, four - are you sure about that? Don't like to party huh? No, no, that's okay. No, that's okay * I guess* lol. Okay, so we've pretty much established that everyone here, with the exception of a couple of squares. No, that's okay. No. no. Okay, you want to change your answer. I bet you do! Okay, okay, good. No, and seriously, I was just kidding about the squares remark. So we've just established everyone for the most part here-
Objection your honor! I don't see the point in-
Overruled. Please council, it's too early for this. You've had your time to state your case, now please allow the court to hear the defendant's opening argument.
Thank you, and your Honor. And and no, please bare with me, because I'm going somewhere with this. So, anyways, we've basically established everyone here likes to party. Right? And don't feel ashamed or embarrassed, it's actually a good thing! We all need a little party! That's a definite fact of nature. It's like that Seal lyric from that one: 'We neva gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy.' Ugg, you know that one. I'm not the best singer, but you get the idea. Right?!! LOL. Now, I'm not concerned with why we are here. These accusations leveraged against my client have absolutely no base for claim. Absolutely. None. And my client clearly never authorized some 'blood test' for Mullican. Vet Lake, just apparently went ahead and did it, claims he did it and event admits to testing without client's consent, as some automatic function of Mullican's appointment, because he probably also assumed he could get away with it no questions asked and overcharge billing as per usual, like he is constantly, always known to do. We know this because of other bills we received, never had line itemized automatic diagnostic blood tests! And if you don't believe me, we have plenty of proof of examined, previously unexamined past bills in good faith of even other extraneous charges, which are also riddled with unnecessary procedures or 'diagnostics', 'services', whatever, and they just decide to tack right on and is, is something everyone has to worry about. But we are not here to challenge past extraneous charges on the bill Mr. Diamonte recieved. Today, we are here to contest the results of a diagnostic the defendant clearly did not, did not, or never, and never authorized, which case claim should immediately have been thrown out and any burden of proof, submitted, of which they have none, be considered inadmissible. And all of it! And up to now, despite how confident prosecution is holding itself to be, they still up. to. now., cannot. produce. anything. proving Mr. Diamonte's authorization for this blood work for Mully. Okay? And that's it. That's it. Whatever they found, claimed they found, under these circumstances of not at first getting the client's author-ization automatically makes their claim - or at least should make their claim inadmissible to the court. If not legally, at the very least morally. Think about it, it's like going out to a restauraunt and the waiter brings you a hamburger you didn't order, and you have to eat it anyways and it gives you food poisoning and makes you sick. It's like that! Exactly like that! And that's it. This is pretty easy for us to prove, and for them to have no concrete, acceptable proof, and cases this rudimentary that actually, somehow still, for some reason or another, mainly political and celebrity related reasons, I suspect, well, I do know actually, and, well, what do you know, they still got it appointed to the court, and it ends up here, to waste your time today. And you know what, to tell you the truth, cases like this, really are of no interest to me, and I normally, don't really ever, do not take cases of such easy to prove clear cut bogus accusation. Typically, cases like this are usually, most likely, relegated to junior partner. But the reason I did agree to take on this case, and the reason I am here today, is is because I feel compelled to defend the good name of Mullican and his handler Mr. Jax Diamonte. Mr. Jax Diamonte, a fine young man of moral rectitude, an innovator in his field and the best friend and keeper of our Mullican. And Mullican, Mullican, well, you all certainly know Mullican! Mullican is the original party dog. He's the original! The very first! Before Mullican, there was no other party dog, you see, party dog's didn't exist before then. And, you know what?, a lot of people don't seem to like that. That does not sit well with a few. What Mully represents, what Mully embodies. And that's why I am here. And I trust all the cool kids here, cool jurors here will easily see this. That's all, and thank you for listening.
Plaintiff counsel may call witness, one Dr. Spencer Lake.
Thank you your honor. Now, Dr. Spencer, how long have you been practicing veterinary medicine.
Coming on roughly seventeen years.
Seventeen years, and has this been in California the entire time?
Yes, yes, I've been in, my practice is in Oxnard.
I take it, you have been privy to, or had, had seen a lot during the course of your practice.
Well, this is Ventura County . . .
Court collectively sparks into futile, muffled laughter
Ha ha, it most certainly is, it most certainly is Dr. Lake. Did you ever have or treat celebrity patients.
Do you mean, have I treated an animal owned by a celebrity or an animal that was a celebrity.
Well, I guess both.
Yes, I've treated pets owned by celebrities, and also I've treated celebrity animals.
Would you like to give us some examples of both celebrity clients, and celebrity pets you've seen.
I'm afraid, I'm not at liberty to divulge my client's -
You can't tell us who you have treated. And why is that.
I'm bound by the California State board of veterinary practitioners, as well as by general medical practitioner laws, strict protocols revolving around doctor patient confidentiality.
Have you ever seen something, something or anything that showed cause for concern, but have not reported it.
I have. I certainly have. But in all those cases pretty much, I had to make the call whether it would, or would do more harm than good in filing claims of animal abuse.
And why is that.
Because in doing so it would pose a risk, not just for me and my practice, but also for the pet in question. If animal abuse was even misconstrued or unfairly judged in the least on my part, then it would take pet away from owner and the animal would be worse off. We would in the end be doing the animal a great disservice.
So you feel that, by reporting Mr. Jax Diamonte to the CSAPS, you were operating under an a priori discretionary criteria.
Look, I like Mullican. He's a good boy. I mean I know he's wild. I mean, no, I'll take it back, I know he could be a good boy. He can be a terribly sweet dog, when . . . he wants to be.
Let's take it back a bit to when you first started seeing Mullican. Is there any, or where there any things that perhaps, I don't know, things that struck you as odd.
Well, the very first thing I noticed about Mullican, was Mullican stank real bad. Like, he had never been bathed. He always smelled like beer.
What like near beer?
No, not like near beer, but just beer. Like actual beer beer.
No, what I meant to say, was, was it, was it as if he had been just been adjacent to beer or the, um, scent was coming from him, off him.
No no, the scent was for sure coming from, through his skin. I always noticed he did not immediately respond to promps other dogs normally easily would. He was conspicuously slow. He always seemed in a daze, easily confused when shepherding him into another examination room, say. He made it particularly difficult to examine his ears, made it difficult to look into his mouth. Getting him to do anything related to the check up was always such an ordeal, harder, much harder than it needed to be.
How many times have you treated Mullican.
Well, I mean, that too was sporadic. We saw him about four times in six years. He never came for, for, had any of his semi annual exams. And Mr. Diamonte certainly didn't keep up with his every three months Bordetella Booster.
So Dr. Lake, what precipitated you giving Mullican a blood test for tox screen.
Well, when Mr. Diamonte initially talked to our clinic tech, he informed him that Mullican was having a hard time breathing. Though Mullican, when he arrived to the clinic, he was said to by Mr. Diamonte to have stabilized, to had improved considerably. Though, I did notice with stethoscope, Mullican's breathing to be slightly strained in a way, not necessarily obvious to non-practitioner.
So there was concern, still concern enough, enough to administer a toxicology screen.
Yes.
So what were the findings in the tox screen?
A negative screening test immunoassay for cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine is usually, say, like, I don't know, somewhere less that 300 ng/mL?
Ok. And so what was Mullican's reading.
Mullican's read 1470 ng/mL for metabolite benzoylecgoine.
And relative to normal positive tests, how high would that be.
Well, for an eighty five pound dog, I would say it's considerable, quite alarming really.
And that led you to act in such capacity to . . .
I've never in my seventeen years seen anything like this, or would have even ever thought that anything like this was possible. This led me to make a decision to report Mr. Diamonte for flagrant animal abuse. I mean, say if Mullican would have tested around 600 to 700 for metabolite benzoylecgoine, I would have perhaps, I don't know, maybe, maybe, just addressed things differently. Surely, I would never, or let me rephrase - I would do anything to avoid having to separate owner from pet - that, that reporting abuse to CSAPS would be the very last, most drastic result of consequence, is something I would as veterinarian physician make great pains to avoid.
Your honor, I have no more further questions.
Does the defending council have any questions they would like to bring fourth to Dr. Lake?
Yes your honor, I would, I mean I do.
So, Dr. Lake you had said, or you complained actually, that you never see Mullican for appointments at your practice am I correct?
Objection!
Overruled. Vet Lake may answer the question.
I wasn't complaining, I was merely stating for the record that I saw him sporadically and irregularly. I would have liked to see Mullican more, as I would like for any patient who's owner otherwise does not, never brings their animal in when suggested by the clinic.
Well, maybe you think that that was because Mullican was just in otherwise general good health and didn't need to get on the treadmill billing cycle by which you soft bully your patients into, by needlessly, over scheduling constant, unnecessary, and quite costly, over priced vet visits?
No, that's not -
Do you ever recall, ever being asked by my client, my client asking you when he had his first visit, my client directly asking you if you took pet insurance.
No, no I do not.
Well, here's the thing, though not stated on the deposition, Mr. Diamonte did ask you on very first visit, if you took pet insurance, to which your reply was you simply didn't know, you hadn't the faintest idea, nor did you try to be helpful or even further consider if it was even a possibility and you just so willy nilly passive aggressively deferred Diamonte's pet insurance question to be asked by Mr. Diamonte himself to your office manager instead, telling him he would probably have to ask her, event though you actually knew the answer, you knew the answer and you even acted annoyed and inconvenienced by such practical question by Diamonte.
Objection! I don't see how this line of question pertains to -
Overruled again counselor. Let the defense have an opportunity to posit their questions. You may answer now Dr. Lake.
Well, no that's not. I can't recall.
So, Dr. Lake, when doing an examination on your patient, do you usually tell the owner, let them know ahead of time what procedures the examination may entail?
Well, it's hard to say, every patient is certainly different. There would be no way to exactly . .
I know every patient is different, I'm just asking you Lake if, hey, you let them know where the check up is headed.
Well, no, I necessarily don't all the time. I certainly don't tell the patient a head of time, every time, every little thing I'm going to do, if I'm about to get my stethoscope out, or I'm about to check the canine's teeth, for normal checking up of. Between me and patient, there is really no need to overstate what I normally would do, because they, my patients don't feel the need to question me.
Right, like Mr. Diamonte didn't feel the need to ask if you were going to run a not authorized drug screen on Mullican.
Well, that is, that's different. Although, yes, that's a procedure we certainly don't run for most -
Oh, no, I agree with you there. So since a drug screen for an animal was not a normal part of check up, maybe perhaps, I don't know, you would have told Mr. Diamonte that -
Look - the condition Mullican was in, merely confirmed what I had been thinking all along, what I believed all along. To tell Mr. Diamonte I'm running a tox screen on him, would have been at risk of getting to the bottom of what was the problem with Mullican. And guess what? I was right! The tox results more than confirmed what I believed to be true, the results, more dire than expected.
Yes, but doesn't it, doesn't like the client still have the right to you know, know - what you are going to do to their animal? not to mention, to know what and what they are going to have to pay for later - especially, you would think if you planned to use it against them in court.
Not necessarily.
Not necessarily what, why's that?
Because, like I said, I don't always walk my patients through everything I'm going to do ahead of time.
Okay, but you just admitted you'd have to not divulge that you were going to run a tox, in order to find out if Mullican was fed drugs.
Well, let me rephrase that, no, not necessarily, because running a tox and not telling, is basically in line, or could be in a way, the same behavior that goes with, is in line with normal activity of visits.
Okay, great, except, according to you, this is not a normal visit. I just want you to see, how you are contradicting yourself here, Lake. 'I'm comporting to protocols like a normal visit, except the circumstances around this typify this as not a normal visit. I don't necessarily tell the client what I'm doing ahead of time for things that are of standard procedure, even though running a tox screen on an animal pet is anything but standard procedure'.
Yeah, but running blood work falls in line with normal check ups, though it's not too common. But to also run the sample through the machine for tox screen - it's quick. I -
Ok great. I can't imagine though, a veterinarian would have much use for a drug testing machine for animals though. What, Lake, is it just like an extra setting on a microwave for you? Just like, like a turn of the dial on the bread baking machine you have out there in the back?
Well, I can't speak to that, no. But it's right there at our facility, we don't have to send a courier out for the blood, like we used to, because there's a separate diagnostics lab service, with seperate billing, in our building that all the practitioners use.
You certainly did get the results back fast, though, right? And you certainly snapped quick, to immediately decide to pivot to then reporting Mr. Diamonte to California State Animal Protection Services, I mean, I should say, from strictly the basis of expedience, that's quite impressive.
Not really, Mr. Dupree. It's not so entirely complicated. I've been practicing for seventeen, eighteen years. I have seen a lot, and once I can identify a condition or a certain state, since I have had so much experience, it allows me to act, I can act swiftly.
But you just said the situation involving Mullican, Mullican is something you've never seen.
That's correct, the degree by which Mullican shows, um - peculiarities, while that degree might be new or unprecedented, it's also the same old story, same old Hollywood story for the most part. I mean remember Rin Tin Tin?
No, I don't. But so what, so in terms of other Party animal influencer icons? Other clients beside Mullican, the first and only canine pro rollerskater dog? What do your other clients include, Spudz Mckenzie?
Like I said, I do see, have had many, or have seen my fair share of high level portfolio celebrity animals, or in Mullican's case, semi-celebrity animals.
But, seriously, how prevalent actually is this behavior with pet stars? Given being in a high profile litigation suit, may certainly raise your visibility. Maybe after this is over, hey, your profile too will be even further raised, or am I right.
Mr. Dupree, I don't seem to know what your'e implying.
No, I think you do know. I think you do know exactly what I'm implying.
Look, the previous day, late in afternoon, right before we were closing the office, Mr. Diamonte called the clinician and reported Mullican to have heaving and wheezing and shortness of breath. What that is is, is under certain situations of withdrawl of certain substances, there is know to induce a bronchial depression in the lungs, and that's what was basically going on with Mullican.
Well, it must not have been too bad, because after a good nights rest, Mullican was just fine.
That remained to be seen.
There's one thing that after a visit to Skimiore clinic that wasn't fine.
And that's . . .
Destroying Mullican's credibility and in the same time, hey coincidentally you get to build up your little vet practice.
Objection your honor. Defense is making outrageous accusation.
Sustained.
You gouge owners of sick animals for money, Lake. And you want to talk about animal cruelty. I don't see the difference in -
Objection again your honor! Defense is failing to -
Please wrap this up council.
We're done here. I've got no more questions, your honor.
Let Mr. Diamonte approach the bench for questioning by the defense council.
So, tell me Mr. Diamonte, what is your role at Bark? Or better yet, tell us how you first got involved with Bark.
Well, I was pro.
You were a pro . . .
I was a professional rollerskater for Bark, for Bark Industries.
Pro rollerskater. Not many people in the court may be familiar with what exactly a pro rollerskater is, does. Or no, no, let's back it up - how does one become a pro rollerskater?
I guess, it was just, I mean, I made a name for myself in the circuit, I stood out I guess, by the rigorous emphasis I put into actually choreographing out my custom routines from scratch, and not many people at the time did it that way, or actually, no one did. The scene only allowed or it was taboo not to use classically venerated roller templates. I was actually looked down for it with distain, and by some of my peers - who did I think I was?, who did I think I was to just invent my own routines? Some understood what I was trying to do though, and so I would author sets either for me or for whichever troupe I happened to be skating with. Legends like Virginia Paxton, Carroll Ives, Jukinte Sibanora, Humbert Dutton, to name a few. Mostly, mostly, though I moonlighted with the super demanding Charm City Rumblers, in Baltimore.
Choreography. Interesting. Ok, explain this process, walk us through. What goes into your working up your routines.
Objection your Honor!
Overruled Counsel. This is actually interesting. You may continue Mr. Diamonte.
Well, when I'm planning my choreography, I work alone in the studios. And without musics. I just try things out ya know? I mean, I'm always having to experiment. Usually, if my eye catches something in the mirror, or I find a pose with my body that looks interesting, I might riff on that, and maybe with that, develop with it up, an overall, overarching theme.
When you are authoring these choreographies, do you still wear your rollerskates?
That's a good question. It depends on a few factors.
Like what?
Like what what?
Like, what are some factors that determine if you are wearing rollerskates during your authoring of your routines.
Oh, yeah, well, I suppose, it could depend on a myriad of factors, I guess really. How slippery the floor at the dance studio is. Weather or not I'm injured. Sometimes planning out the routine takes so much concentration, that, that the rollerskates become a distraction, a burden. There's also a certain purity of mapping out the routine barefooted that takes on a kind of, I don't know, primordial dimension.
Fascinating. Well, you certainly seemed to have done a fantastic job, because here we are talking about Bark!
Well, I mean, we distinguished ourselves in the field with integrity, and we are proud of that, no doubt. Bark has always also just been a good quality rollerskate bushing also, quality product. But really, we were just riffing off our heroes. I mean, I'm just happy to have an outlet to pay tribute to all those rollerskate choreographers especially too, from the golden age from the late nineteen forties, to early nineteen fifties, the whole Coney Island, Atlantic City roller rink scenes, the legendary Chicago scene and that is, that's - quite special. It's like real special, actually. But really, Bark didn't reach it's height until we introduced Mully to the fold.
So please, take us through what happened leading up to taking Mullican to see Dr. Lake.
Well, there's not, not much. Not much to say, really. I - we had just got back from doing promos, a slog of promos and then, well, we just got into town from Vancouver, and Mullican seemed tired and fatigued in a way I was not used to. Or, no, he just seemed off. You see, we had just slept on the floor over night in Vanc at a good friend of ours apartment, and then that combined with the travel back, left both of us zorched, zapped, really. So, I don't know, I thought it be best we called for an appointment. But then Mullick's condition improved over night considerably, to the point, point of almost cancelling his with Dr. Lake, appointment, his appointment. I decided to uh, to take him in anyways, even though I was sure, I mean I was sure, he was, was fine, and I felt I really didn't have to.
Didn't have to what. But you decided to take him to see Dr. Lake, because you just wanted to . . .
I mean no reason, it was more of . . . more of a precautionary, precautionary measure by this point. Getting back into town is, is always a bit disorienting and all, and it's also by having an errand to run, any errand, isa good way to kinda get back into the routine of normality. Like normalness. Coming off of touring requires a decompression chamber practically.
So you are saying you took Mullican to the vet, seeing he no longer seemed um, was just fatigued from the trip, just needed a night's rest.
Yes, no, no, so he was good after that.
Did you hear that? He said he was good after that. What about you though.
What about me what?
You know, what about YOU.
Oh, yeah, yes, I mean. You know . . . I was just, I'm just . . . tired.
You're just tired. You're tired. Well, I realize, this entire process is, has . . .
Going through this all, and all is. . .
Is what? Going through this?
Objection your honor. They are making a mockery of the court, I don't see how such digression pertains to . . .
OVERRULED, Counselor.
So you were saying.
I was saying, what was I saying, I was, I mean I am, tired. I'm just tired. Quite tired yes. But I will say, after this trial is all over. After this trial is over, me, Mully Mull, Bark cartel, and some Heads, some special guests are going to have a Mullican's blow out Luau party bonanza in Honolulu! And anyone, anyone who is within ear shot and can hear me right now, is invited, you are all invited. If you can get out there, if you can get out to the islands, we've got you. Come join us.
Objection! This clearly violates all . . .
Sustained. Please Mr. Diamonte,
I've got no more questions your honor.
Will plaintiff council proceed to question defendant, Mr. Jax Diamonte.
Ok, Mr. Diamonte. When planning your custom choreographies, did you ever do so under the influence.
Objection your honor! This has no-
Overruled, you may proceed Council.
So, Mr. Diamonte. Again the question is is, when planning out your routines, did you ever do so under the influence of illicit drugs.
I plead the fifth. No, wait you know what? No. No, nope I never do practice stoned.
Well, that's kind of funny, because here we have the June 1994 Issue of Gypsy Rambler, and pull quote for your pro spotlight says and I quote: 'If I don't get faded I can't skate' end quote.
Actually, I never said that. That's, that's misquote, that should have well been caught by the Rambler's editor, Chip Singer. What I actually said was, was 'When I skate, I can't be faded.'
So would you say when not performing in an official capacity, you otherwise partake, get high.
No, no. Not that. Nothing, like that, god. You've got to realize, Faded in the 90's was a slang, was slangs, for like topped.
Topped?
Yeah, tops, tapped. Meaning can't be defeated. I had just come out of the St. Louis City Sit Down or Skate round robin tournaments, and at the time I was basically unstoppable.
Right, ok, so what about Mullican?
What about Mullican what?
Is, has, Mullican been known to perform the duties associated with his job as brand ambassador of Bark Industries under the influence of illicit drugs.
Well, Mullican can't dance, Mullican doesn't dance.
No, well, we know Mullican can't dance.
Ok, so there you go. You just answered your own-
So, you are saying Mullican has never, would never . . .
Has never, would never what council! Please do get to the point Sir!
Drugs, Mr. Diamonte. Drugs and street drugs too. Particularily CO-caine Diamonte. We found a staggering amount of the chemicals associated with cocaine in his blood works, and even somethings we don't, can't seem to recognize, cannot be identified, or identified. Uh, reconciled. And this is, is saying something comparatively so, seeing this is Ventura County.
Well, that was on a blood test I certainly, never approved, so.
So . . . so what? What are you inferring.
I never asked for the blood work, so look, I'm just saying those results were probably, I don't know, the results for whomever asked for them? I can't say I even know what they are.
Well, that's kinda funny because, Dr. Lake seems to not have any other official 'party dog' celebrity, masters of ceremonies for patients. Mullican seems to be the only one am I not right?
Well, you tell me, that's quite unfortunate. No wait, I thought he said earlier, actually he did say though, I thought he couldn't like divulge to the court who exactly, what it was that was. . .
Well he does, but certainly none like Mullican, or let me rephrase that, none of Mullican's notoriety. . .
So since, Mullican is of a certain notoriety, that automatically attaches him to any high, potentially incriminating toxicology report you so happen to just gin up?
Well, it was your toxicology report, for your dog, Mr. Diamonte.
No, no it wasn't, because I didn't order one, no.
So, when you were in the clinic, you didn't, I don't know, happen to just notice the tech taking Mullican's blood in front of you. The tech said you were there. We do have you saying in your deposition, you were in the room when it was administered.
No, what I said was I was in the room for the entire duration of the visit. I did not confirm I saw Mullican's blood being taken. And if I had, I would have said something, seeing this would have been unusual. I was just not informed okay?
That doesn't matter, because Dr. Lake said -
Dr. Lake said. Dr. Lake said. No, it does. You know what? - quess what, it does matter Sir. It matters a lot. Imagine being incriminated by evidence that depended on you not ordering it, and then even not knowing about it, so it can be used like a cudgel against you.
Jury hums in unison.
Have you ever fed Mullican illicit substances.
I plead the fifth. No wait, you know what council? No, no I have not. And for the official record, of the court, Never.
Your Honor, I would like to submit exhibit A. A home movie video recording of one Mattias Dover's bachelor party on a San Clarapente resort in Puerto Vallarta from six years ago.
I will accept the evidence, it will be marked as evidence, council, but the court strongly frowns upon such late evidence submittal pyotechnics in the court house.
Duly noted your Honor. Yes, your Honor. Okay, so, Mr. Diamonte, do you have any idea, any idea what's on this video tape.
No, I have actually never in my life seen it before.
So, you have no idea what this tape contains.
I plead the fifth . . . No, yeah, wait, you know what? I have an idea what it contains.
An idea.
Yeah, it must have been Mathy's bachelor party blow out, what can I say.
Ah, I find that a curious way of putting it . . . blow out.
It was a real beano, okay . . . Again: what can I say . . .
Now would you like us to play the tape for the court, or instead of delaying the proceedings by having to go through the trouble of wheeling in a video television all the way from storage to play the tape on, just tell us, just tell us ,for the people of the court what's on the tape.
Objection your honor, the plaintiff is baiting my client.
Sustained.
Well, um, what part of the night is on the tape?
Let's just say enough, enough, the entire night, Mr. Diamonte.
You know, the, that night was real . . . . real fuzzy, I mean do -
Do you remember the Mariachi folk band.
Yes.
The stripper who later arrived with a jam box who danced to Love and Rockets' ' Alive'
Barely.
What about the Donkey. Tell us about the Donkey.
Donkey?
Someone apparently rented a Donkey? The donkey with a little straw hat? Holes for his ears to pop out? He was wearing jumbo Donkey sized sunglasses? A bullet belt fitted with reposado shot glasses on a gunbelt strapped around his stomach?
Oh, the burro,
Burro?
Oh, yeah, that was just the party burro.
Did you hear that people of the court? - a party burro. So what happened with the - party burro, Mr. Diamonte. Please take us through this.
Objection your honor!
Look, it's either he show the video tape to the court, or I'm giving Mr. Diamonte the opportunity to elucidate exactly what happened as so to make for a better case for himself.
Overruled. Maybe it would be in your best interest, Mr. Diamonte, to just briefly explain to the court what was on the tape yourself and you can make it brief.
So the burro, Mr. Diamonte.
Well, like I said, I can't recall.
Just do your best, please Sir.
Well, the night was, I mean, I think the burro might have arrived before - after the pom pom girls. I don't know.
Pom pom girls?
Yeah, pom, pom pom. They come in and they came in and took over the party, basically. They were, were like, a like, this small army, a little cartel of them. At one point I could have sworn they were playing Buena Vista Social Club's Chan Chan, I think I remember, oh. The night just quickly sped on.
Quickly speeding up?
Yeah, you know . . . how . . . it goes.
Yes, Mr. Diamonte, because of what happens on the videotape, I fortunately, or unfortunately do know just how it does go. But please elucidate for the court, if you may. If I may as be so abrupt to spur your thinking further, please tell us about the mounds.
Mounds.
The mounds, yes, the . . . mounds.
Ok, well, have it your way, have it your way Sonny. The pom poms bought jet fuel, but we didn't exactly, ah, necessarily WANT to see them leave and besides, but besides, they were kind of anyway, eazy on the eyes and, well - ready to party. They had arrived with two armed militia members, so we didn't have to worry about getting jacked. Vladia, or no I think her name was, was, - Heidi, yes Heidi dropped weight out of her military satchel, just poured it onto the table, plusssh, into a giant mound. Like just so, so brazenly ripped the bundle onto the dinning table, or the table. The cargo was so expensive, it was bracing to see the bourgeois blow handled so brazenly, but then I remembered why we were here - to celebrate Mathy's last night of freedom!, and besides, there was more than enough to go around and then some, and such gesture really did set the tone for the rest of the evening's, um - activities.
Are you talking about the part where Ezmerelda or Heidi, at one point, announces 'Feliz Cumpleanos mientarosas, digame aprender por las dulces'?
No, yeah, maybe, it might have been something, something like, like that or maybe that. No, anyways, after, they had, had been there a little while, and by that time everyone had . . . gotten . . . pretty loose. But the language barrier, it was the language barrier - was a bit of impairment, an impediment, so to get something going, break the ice, Keinholtz, Ken, took some powder and put it in a bottle of what's it's called . . . Like the soda . . .
Mexican coke . . .
No, I mean it was that, eventually, but no, no what was it, was called something, it was called . . . Jarritos. No, Jarritos. So we just kept feeding Burro more and more Jarritos mix, just to see what it would do, or like what would happen. The girls were utterly charmed by this, and they thought it was like hilarious and were laughing and going on. But then now everyone wanted to take a turn. Digame, digame the girls kept saying. Digame, until the burro, noticeably stimulated by the music, started bopping. Just bop bopping up and down to the tejanos, and then there was this very specific, very steely look in Burro's eyes. I'll never forget that look, and that you could tell, you totally could tell he was trying to connect its bopping somehow to the music, that it was, the music, that it was now keenly sensitive to. Like now, so sensitive to and all. We were all dying and now just having a good time. But then what happened was, was the bopping had, must have raised it's - the burro's heart rate, and that activated something inside Burro and the coordinated bopping just descended into Burro pileing, running, ramming into all the furniture and the walls like lawnmower or tractor. Burro, croaking and braying, was destroying everything in the suite, and then we needed to get it out, and like, immediately, but we couldn't exactly take it outside downstairs in fear of attracting the, well, authorities or something or getting into trouble, so we decided to repair it to the roof.
And so then on the roof . . .
Well, what can I say. It didn't, well it. Well, let's just say Burro, perhaps in his own way, wanted to, um, I don't know, besar el cielo? And before we can stop it, him - Burro trots right off the roof to his spectacular demise, I mean there wasn't even a ledge or wall or like barrier even, anything to stop him, I mean, I don't even know how it could be up to code. That wasn't our fault! And, but, I don't know, I don't even think we could have stopped him anyways, really. It was this like death drive thing, this death drive great leap in all its ecstasy, but it was just so, I don't know, it was just so, so . . . like, so metaphorial. It was like a real metaphor. I mean everything, everything that is contained in life, you could, you did see it there, it was there, it was all right there, it was just all, just contained in the action of Burro's trot right off the edge. Burro in all his resolve, sailing down fatefully through the air into the arms of the other side of oblivion. It was so surreal and sublime, really . . . and I've - I've never seen anything quite like it or like ever. It was really, actually beautiful.
Your honor, I have no more questions.
We now shall hear closing arguments. We are going over time, so please each side needs to make it brief. The Plaintiff side may proceed.
Citizens of the court, members of the jury, as this case comes to close, I know you will be tempted to be swayed by the immediate charisma that the defendant's side has so forthrightly put on display, during the entire duration of these proceedings here. But as the district attorney of Ventura County, I, we, would urge you to set any immediate sympathies aside, set your own sympathy aside, that which defending side has so vehemently, so ceaselessly, and brazenly attempted to appeal to. We have Vet Lake's sworn in testimony of what he directly saw on Mullican's last visit, we have presented witnesses' sworn on record deposition statements, also that of the veterinary assistant working at Skimiore Veterinary Clinic, Illuowe Savage, that of the diagnostics technician, Tommy Woolsworth, who processed, interpreted the blood diagnostics, and thus corroborating the charges relating to allegations of gross animal negligence and cruel mistreatment, explicitly confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt, that which Jax Diamonte has been charged with. More than that, we have painted a picture for you, a psychological portrait if you will, one of a dangerous animal owner, who's reckless and anarchic attitudes and demeanor has even led to the death of an innocent agricultural animal from Mexico! And don't think I cannot hear your slight snickering, you all should very well be ashamed, and you should be ashamed of yourselves. But, and but, I can assure you that there is nothing, there is absolutely nothing funny about an overstimulated party burro leaping off a hotel building towards it's untimely death! And that the defendant tries to just gloss over such sight, as if the flying donkey was falling into some kind of transcendental symbolic order, is a lowness, a new depth, that even I as prosecuting attorney, would not have expected from Mr. Diamonte today. Look - it's obvious Mullican is sick , only all but exploited by of the machinations of his sponsor, and a direct result, really of gross mistreatment, exploitation, animal trafficking and animal abuse. I can assure you with the case presented here, that all the instances of flagrant abuse and animal violence are so apparent, a case of this very nature need not require to seek further resolution or differment in appllate ruling, because I am confident, I am very confident you will do the right think - think, I mean thing, and that you will find Jax Diamonte guilty of the charges presented here. Thank you and thank you for your time.
We shall now hear the defense closing argument.
Thank you judge, and thank you people of the court. Your honor, citizens of Ventura County First District Court. I'm not going to lie to you, this has been a real long and unnecessarily draining case and I'm sure you, the jurors are absolutely exhausted both mentally, physically and emotionally by all the histrionics, all the pointless legalese deployed here throughout the week. Well, we are too! But we do look forward to repairing back and meeting all our comrades, seeing you all, meeting up with Mullican at Mully Mull's adjourning blowout bonanza in Honolulu and the upcoming, unmissable subsequent Bark demos set 2 go down at Aʻala Park, that's Aʻala Park also sponsored by APB Skateshop. So, I'm just going to make closing arguments real short and real sweet. Is it not a good idea to feed cocaine to an ordinary dog through his daily water supply? Possibly. But is it immoral to pretend a dog of Mullican's caliber to be anything but exceptional? It most certainly would be. And . . . it most certainly is. But here's the thing. Think this: would it be fair to say Mullican, precisely because he is such an extraordinary original party dog, like how we were talking about with Spudz McKenzie earlier, has given happiness to thousands, if not millions of people? Absa and pardon my swahili people of the court fuckinglutly. You know, I don't know too terribly much about Mullican I'm afraid, but you know what? What I do know is, is that he is enigma. An enigma! Okay?! And knowing full well about his enigmatic um, disposition, is like practically, really, if you think about it, carte blanche basically to do just whatever it takes to like, just keep this party moving, going, you know as in party, as in like the party ya know?, you know like, the one??, as in like the big party, the transcendental signified like 'it' of party, that's eternally, perpetually, rovin' rockin' wreckin' and rollin on along!? I think you kids knows what I'm talking about. Thank you for your time, and we will see you at the Rainbow Room.
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