Revenge of the Nerd

Whenever I think of my future, I imagine
my answers to fan questions will be something like,
“yes, it’s all been a lot like
that Bjork video directed by Michel Gondry,”
and some of the audience will laugh, the really cool
ones, and some will research Bjork videos
by Michel Gondry when they go home later,
the also really cool ones, and all in all
the whole world will be harmonious, etcetera.
Then people will think, “yes, I see
the rise to superstardom, but does he believe his life’s
been a series of tinier and tinier plays?”
Yes! And when you’re “out” “doing stuff”
later that evening and receive a text message
from me saying, “the title of my next chapter will be
The Holy Bible II,” that’s a “happening,”
okay? I deliberately placed you into the creative
process for this thing. Lately I’ve been wondering
about whether or not people eat the capybara.
I think they do. Lately I’ve been wanting
to see a Hollywood high speed chase scene
in the middle of a snowstorm, or even a Bollywood
high speed chase scene in the middle
of a snowstorm and right now I feel bad for not
knowing what the chances are that someone
raised in Mumbai has ever seen snow.
This is not a gay love poem unless
you define gay as “homosexual,” love as
“a zero score in tennis,” and poem as “to deal
a blow to.” In this Bollywood high speed
snowstorm chase scene? Oh man, it’s nuts.
Wherever they are, it’s like, a man and a woman
love each other so much that they perform
amazingly choreographed song and dance numbers
that are all about how they love each other
so much, but then the father of the girl,
he strikes a deal with some other guy
to give his daughter away for a bunch of material
stuff and money, like, goats and rupees.
And the trade actually goes down, but this other
guy turns out to be evil and he locks the daughter
away in a tower, and she spends her days singing
to the clouds about how the guy she really loves
will one day find her and take her home.
Meanwhile, the guy she really loves spends
his days both trying to figure out how
she’s doing and also trying to figure out how
he’s going to get out of this Pakistani prison, where
he’s been locked away and physically tortured
at the bidding of the evil guy. I’ll let you infer
the social and political implications of this
scenario, but can I just say that when
our hero manages to fold a note written
in his own blood into an acorn and then tie
the acorn to a dove he’s captured with some
chick peas and a thread from his tattered clothing,
then successfully directs the dove to the location
of his beloved, where she finds the note and knows,
knows without a doubt that one day
he’ll be there and they’ll spend the rest
of their lives together, can I just say
that everyone in that movie house will be crying
their eyes out? And I haven’t even told you
about the big snowstorm chase scene yet,
where taxis and rickshaws are flying every
which way, people are crashing through vegetable
and spice stands, and pretty much no one
moving a big piece of glass across a street
does so successfully. It’s that awesome,
friends. And yeah, some of the chase scene
does get bogged down in the technicalities
of suspending a goat from a helicopter, but it’s like,
who cares, because this is love
we’re talking about, this is the shit. Like
the Dalai Lama says, the need for love
lies at the very foundation of human existence,
and that’s what this movie is all about. It’s like
when you think about your future and you don’t know,
who really knows, but you know love
will be there somewhere, even if only a faint
memory. And that’s all you need, all you really
need when the day comes when all of your closest
friends are no longer your closest friends
and you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what
to do, you don’t know what to do and they’re all
changing into fir trees without even saying
goodbye.