Bruce Wagner - Memorial

Yes, I will have a son. Not “Chester.” I couldn’t do that again. We’ll call him Lionel…

He would tell Ghulpa it was an honorable name, and came from “lion.” Well, it did, didn’t it? In a way. Not such a good thing, though, come to think of it, when it came to his BG. She might allow it, because the hearts and souls and strength of lions were so important to her, even though she feared them. Didn’t her beloved Durga, her bloodcurdling Kali, ride atop one?

They would have a lion for a son. What more could she ask for to beat back her terrors than a lionhearted boy?

CHESS and Laxmi went to the zoo. Though she didn’t like the idea of them being caged, she wanted to show him “the Ganeshas.” They smoked weed before driving over, and he dropped 2 Inderals and 4 vikes. They took her car.

He read aloud from the newspaper as they wended their way through Griffith Park. They were laughing so hard it was tough for Laxmi to steer. Chess had the full-page ad in his hand and declaimed from it, telling Laxmi she should use it for a monologue in her acting class:

What does Mc ®mean to me? Everything that I love…to me, Mc means McDonald’s ®. So I’m cool with Mc and Mc is cool with me.

Mc is cool with me!

Underneath the Golden Arches, it said, “I’m lovin it.”

“Oh my God!” said Laxmi. “McDonald’s is selling fruit salad with yogurt now! I’m so sure the fruit is cloned!”

“Look at this chick,” said Chess, staring at the graphics. “Here’s what she’s saying: ‘I don’t know who loves this salad more. Me? Or my fork.’ Fork this.”

“It’s so creepy. And the drawings. They’re like from chick-lit novels! Anorexic girls in stilettos with chihuahuas — the chihuahua accessory is so over —they’re just staring at you, and, like, sitting in Eames chairs.”

“Are we spending too much time thinking about MickeyD’s?”

“Yes! Yes! They’ve won! They’ve totally won!”

Laxmi laughed in that abandoned, guttural way she saw Cameron Diaz laugh on reruns of Trippin’.

Chess did some more dramatizing.

“ ‘Having one makes even a bad hair day feel good.’ That’s what it says! I’m serious! Having one makes even a bad hair day feel good!”

“ ‘I’m lovin it’!”

“What the fuck do they mean, ‘I’m lovin it’?”

“They are lovin it!”

“Love this,” said Chess, grabbing his crotch. Theme of the day.

Laxmi whooped then Chess winced and ouched from a shooting pain. She was laughing so hard she almost swerved off the road into a girl on horseback, which seemed totally surreal.

“Oops,” said Laxmi. Then: “Bad hair day!”

“Do you see these people?” said Chess, holding up the ad so Laxmi could cop another look. “They’re like in some loft, a hip loft with Levelor blinds and red brick—”

“The Pacific Electric Building!”

“—some marketing fool’s idea of a hip loft! It looks like a bad comedy-club set. Check out the shag carpeting! It’s lime. And, what is that, a turntable?”

“They don’t even sell those at Restoration anymore. I went in. I really wanted one. But you know who still has LPs? Amoeba, in Hollywood. They even sell 8-tracks.”

“This fucking ad looks like it was production designed by UNICEF! See the kids on the couch? One’s a spade, right?”

“Kate Spade! And her brother!”

“A cuddly-assed African-American. And there’s a Latino on the end who looks like she’s ready to have her burrito McMunched. Munch munch, munch-a-bunch o’ Fritos… a TJ donkey’s gonna give her oral — a McBurro! Waiter! Bring me a McBur ri to, smothered in underwear! And special sauce! Bring me the head of Alfredo McDonald! Laxmi, look at this! It’s the fucking Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition munch-a-Latino-for-lunch bunch!” The driver split a gut, futilely waving her hand that she could take no more. “And the guy in the middle? Check out his hair! It’s long. A Filipino mix who thinks he’s hot! Like a reject from Project: Runway!”

Laxmi peered over at the page.

“Wilmer Valderrama, look out!”

“Wilma who?”

“He’s, like, everybody’s boyfriend—”

“Fred and Wilma?”

“—from That 70s Show?”

“Hey, Laxmi…you better be glad you’re doing FNF and not print ads for Ron McDon. This shit is low.”

“But their Dollar Menu is hot.”

They were already near the end of Zoo Drive. Their high-frequency stoner jag petered out but Chess still scanned the paper, looking for residual laughs. He read aloud a small item about how some pharmaceutical company admitted harvesting pituitary glands from dead kids in Ireland without their parents’ consent. There’s a horror film for ya. Used em to make human growth hormone; the hospitals got “just a few dollars for each.”

“The luck o’ the Irish!” he said, with a demented leprechaun accent. Laxmi lost it again. “Gland of the free! Johnny, we hardly knew ye— or ye pituitaries.”

Some of the cadavers had been “hollowed out” —any and every organ that was market-redeemable had been removed.

Laxmi shook her head. “That is so totally surreal.”

“I just saw a movie on Sundance,” said Chess. “What a fucked-up channel — they’ll, like, put anything on. I mean, this fuckin car ride would be better than Tarnation. Anyway, it’s about this Jewish guy from New York — Maurie Levin! — who flies to Austria after hearing about some old doctor on trial for experimenting with disabled kids back in the 40s. Killed em and took out their brains. His name was Dr Gross.”

“Of course.”

“The guy gets there—”

“Dr Levin!”

“Right. Dr Levin the documentarymaker gets there just in time for this public ceremony called the Burial of the Brains…”

“Of course.”

“ Laxmi, I shit you not. It was so lame. I thought it was a Chris Guest movie — you know, the guy who did Best in Show?”

“I loved that! Isn’t he married to—”

“The chick from Psycho ’s daughter.”

“She died, right?”

“The mother. The one from the shower.”

“So creepy. I heard that guy Hitchcock really hated women.”

“He’s like a duke or a lord or something.”

“Hitchcock.”

“No, the guy who’s married to — the Guest guy.”

“Sir Maurie! Lord Levin!”

“I think he’s a duke. Duke Guest. Guest Host. Patty Duke. Whatever. I read it in People.”

“People …people who read People …are the loneliest people in the—”

They passed the kiddie train you could ride on, and it triggered a meditation on his dad. Maybe my father is rich — a rich man. Maybe my father is a public figure and knows who and where I am but is hesitant to contact me. Maybe my father has been in touch with Joan and Marj all along. Maybe it was actually my father who loaned me the 10K through her auspices. Maybe my father is a CEO or COO or CFO of a major media corp. Maybe my father is the key shareholder of the parent company that produces Friday Night Frights…she saw him zone out and let him be. According to Laxmi her father was rich but Chess wondered if she had some fantasy-exaggeration element goin on. Maybe my father is her father, he thought. Seeing it for the still-stoned musing that it was, he shook his head and laughed. He’d keep that one to himself.