Another stolen Q&A

This morning’s entry will be totally fill-in-the-blank, because, last night, lounging inexplicably on our doorstep, we found a frog whose size, shape, and texture resembled a green hamburger patty.

Dear diary,

Over the noon hour yesterday, I went on an adventure through the Internet, in search for a quote from Werner Herzog to use in a comment that I was typing in response to a post by M.P. Powers, and I ended up stumbling upon a survey that Herzog had endured for some online magazine; however, instead of a regular inquiry, the editors had given him prompts: fragmented phrases that he was expected to complete. Now, as I explained in an earlier entry, it’s not only my duty but my God-given calling to steal the questions asked of other artists in interviews, whenever I find them, and address them to myself as if I were the subject. So below I’ll give the site’s prompts in bold, followed by my own responses.

(It’s rare that I feel the need to cite a source, as the interviewees are usually boringer than flat cardboard, but Herzog sparks the ecstatic truth, so here’s the link to his original interview. Just don’t blame ME if the site contains viruses and malware; it loaded slowly when I first visited, and it’s bogged down with advertisements; so view at your own risk.)

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INQUISITION

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My parents were... normal selfish baby-boomers, suckers for propaganda, complacent churchgoers; decidedly not supporters of the arts.

The household I grew up in... was insufferable, not because of any real evil—I just can’t stand an average suburban arrangement: it’s soul-destroying, I wanna be a movie star; and yet I’m afraid to run away to the big city where all the hotshots reside; so I remain staring at the four blank walls of my bedroom, listening to rap music and dreaming of the good life, and later reading classic novels and poetry and dreaming of the good life.
     During my rap phase, I remember my dad complaining to my mom: “He just sits there all day with his head plugged into that thing,” referring to my headphones being attached to the dual-cassette boombox. And during my literature phase, which continues to this present moment, I remember my dad complaining to my mom: “I don’t understand why he doesn’t go to college.”
     And, just for good measure, I’ll throw in one last complaint that I overheard my dad blurt out to my mom; this one was not provoked by any special occasion: He said, “I’ve never seen anyone so negative as that kid’s attitude.” (High five to my dad, by the way – he “raised” me.)

When I was a child I wanted to be... an astronaut. I know this to be a fact, because I had a neat book that had many statements with blank spaces that the reader could fill in to describe herself, sort of like this survey I’m filling out now (once a narcissist, always a narcissist); and I’ve probably mentioned repeatedly in these diary pages that my brother, who had his own copy of the same neat book, answered his future-career question with “fireman”; meaning that he is someone who cares for others so much that he would put his life on the line and even risk getting flesh-burns to save humankind. Whereas I, like Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses, am so allured by the squid-like aliens that infest the planet Jupiter’s molten atmosphere that I’d quit this life in a heartbeat to join their kingdom:

...for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

If I could change one thing about myself... I would give me more money and fame, and I’d make me more easy-going, less high-strung, plus handsomer. Since they call David Lynch “the Jimmy Stewart from Mars,” then I will be the Cary Grant of Jupiter.
     ...Or no rather Mark Burnham’s Officer Duke from Earth’s own near-future L.A. (Wrong Cops (2013))

You wouldn’t know it but I am very good at... writing. The reason you wouldn’t know it is that I am hidden, so nobody is allowed to read me because they can’t find me. Here, I’ll copy a quote that I repeat incessantly in this ship-log, from my hero Marcel Duchamp, from The Afternoon Interviews (that he underwent with his biographer Calvin Tomkins):

I think the great man of tomorrow in the way of art cannot be seen, should not be seen, and should go underground. He may be recognized after his death if he has any luck, but he may not be recognized at all. Going underground means not having to deal in money terms with society. He wouldn’t accept the integration.

You mayn’t know it but I’m NOT good at... dressing myself. I have no style whatsoever. Yesternoon you could have seen me by the traffic light wearing dark navy jeans with a black windbreaker. And once I wore a nearly see-thru white-collared dress-shirt without any T-shirt beneath to cover my paps. Plus I wear pleated khakis when plain-fronts are fashionable, and then I wear plain-fronts when etc. And my haircut is dowdy.

I wish I had never worn... any clothes at all, ever.

At night I dream of... harems. Big beautiful all-inclusive sensual erotic orgies of the flesh. No joke. Actually, that’s what I used to dream about. Now that I’m older, I only have nightmares — I find myself dreaming that I’m in the very bed where I’m actually sleeping, and a stranger is there in the room with me, standing in the shadows and watching me sinisterly. I also often dream about rebuking my parents, I mean seriously raging at them: my dream-shouting intensifies to a point where it ends up breaking into reality, and I wake to find myself thrashing in my bed sheets and voicing sounds like when a dog tries to “sing.”

When I look in the mirror I see... a typical writer of TV sitcoms.

My house is... not a home.

Movie heaven... shares a fluid boundary with poem hell.

I drive... nothing anymore. I used to drive a Geo Prism (sorry but I don’t know the year: I’m the opposite of a car person, because my dad was a car person). And before that, I drove a Tornado; not the kind that Yahweh owns but an Oldsmobile. And my most recent car was a red Fiero whose body was plastic and whose engine was mounted in the trunk – that car was so low to the ground that (I’m not kidding) during one winter, when trying to exit a parking lot, I actually bottomed out on a speed bump. Some nearby truckers had to push me free.

My real-life villain... is clocktime. I wanna rip its arms off. No: that’s too clever, too cute. Nonetheless, it’s a good excuse to quote Breton’s Second Manifesto of Surrealism:

...do away with time, that sinister old farce, that train constantly jumping off the track, mad pulsation, in­extricable conglomeration of breaking and broken beasts...

But now I wanna change my answer: My real-life villain is poverty. Which I interpret as a type of discord, as opposed to social harmony. I really do wish I could play some part in eradicating the rampant inequality that is our era’s defining trait. I have no idea what to do or where to start, but I’ll never stop searching for a way to make a meaningful difference.

The person who really makes me laugh... Tim and Eric, from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! – except for a few really disgusting segments here and there, I can watch all five seasons of that series, from the first episode to the last, with full-blown enthusiasm, over and over. So that’s my answer for contemporary comedians. My answer for a genius of the near past is Robert Downey Sr. – his film Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight, also Chafed Elbows and Babo 73 and No More Excuses.

My five-year plan... is nonexistent. I never plan, and I do not feel the passage of years.

What’s the point? Vote early and often. So I refuse to participate. Make believe. For (as Quentin Dupieux always sez): No reason. The point is to find the place where necessity and your illusion of free-will make amends. Libido. Destrudo. The blood of Jesus. Fall in love with the marketplace, the root of all evil: for time is money, and money is power, and character is fate, and Bryan was a luckie felowe. (See Tyndale’s Genesis 39:2.)

My life in six words... to quote Hamlet: Words, words, words.

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So that’s it; the survey is finished. I just want to make a small note before retiring to my billiards room: I answered that last question with Hamlet 2.2.192—this represents a revision; my original ending was King Lear 4.6.183: “kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!”