Dear diary,
And now I, consummate gentleman Tolsteer-Yoshi, riding my freshly baked racehorse SorchyHong-MukDonk, pass the point on the horizon where day becomes night; therefore I transmogrify into my lounge persona, Doctor Bryan the Wolfman, and my horse transmogrifies into a hummingbird fruit-bat.
“Go eat, and come back when I need you,” I say to my hummingbird fruit-bat.
The little creature replies: “I’m guessing that it’ll probably be closer to morning-time when you want my companionship again, because then I’ll change back into the princely steed SorchyHong-MukDonk?”
“That’s correct,” I say.
So the hummingbird fruit-bat stops hovering nearby and heads straight to the peach display at the farmer’s market. I myself now begin to creep thru the forest in the opposite direction. I’m looking for a big-box hardware shop; my hope is that I’ll be able to snatch a hand-drill away from a monkey who is trying to use this tool to bore a hole in a tree that has grown up inside the store. (The reason the monkey would want to drill thru an indoor tree is to access the ants that infest its wood. For monkeys in storybooks love to eat ants.)
Soon I discover a big-box hardware shop and enter the frosted French glass double-doors. I sneak thru aisle after aisle, looking for hand-drills or companionship. Within twelve minutes, I find both: for there is a tree growing up thru the center of the shop, and a monkey is standing at its base and drilling a hole so as to harvest its ants; and this monkey proves an excellent companion because he and I chat for a while about the attractions of maple syrup before I do a karate chop to his neck and steal his tool. Then I howl at the ceiling lights in the store and make a dash to the exit.
Once back outside in the moonlit forest, I dismantle the hand-drill that I borrowed from the hardware store’s primate. Rearranging its most delicate parts, I build a powerful electromagnet and a superconductor. Immediately I discard the superconductor by tossing it over a nearby cliff, because I don’t need it right now — I only built it to keep in practice. Then I switch on my powerful electromagnet and aim it in the direction of the Mega Mall, where I was adventuring in earlier chapters.
Just as expected, a shopper comes hurtling thru the air, being pulled by the intensely strong force that I have generated. This person ultimately clangs into my electromagnet, so I shut off the device; and the person drops to the ground.
“Greetings, shopper,” I say, rubbing my claws together, while there are tufts of wolf fur protruding from out of my lab coat. (Recall that I am a doctor, which is a type of scientist.)
“Hi there,” sez the man. (This Mega-Mall shopper is a white male of average height in his mid-forties: extremely creepy; I’m almost of a mind to call the cops.) “Apparently the longhorn bull head on my oversized belt buckle got attracted to your super-magnet, and I came flying thru the air. Now I’m talking with you, in the forest of the night, instead of browsing around at the mall.”
I hold up my scraggly claw with the index finger extended: “One moment, please.” Then I dismantle the electromagnet and restore all the parts that I appropriated from the hand-drill to their former home. I quickly step back into the big-box hardware shop and sneak up behind the monkey from whom I originally pilfered the tool, who happens to have just awakened from his nap, and I slide the drill into his hand. He instinctively clutches it. Then I leap back outdoors and continue my conversation with the shopper whom I caught with my magnetic field.
“Sorry, I just had to return the hand-drill to the place where I rented it,” I explain to the mall shopper. “Now, the reason that I summoned you away from your afternoon of windowshopping is that I’d like to ask an average person about their opinions on art. Are you willing to participate in a brief, nonscientific survey?”
“Sure!” sez the man.
“Is it OK if I record your answers and perhaps send them to the government?”
“Of course,” sez the man.
“Alrighty. Now here’s the first question. Do you like music?”
“Yes.”
“What types?”
The man laughs: “The only two types there are: Country and Western.”
“And what, in your opinion, should a good song do?”
“Hmm… I guess I’d say that a good song should provide the background soundtrack to whatever action I happen to be performing.”
“Background, OK.” I scribble this down upon my pocket-sized notepad. “Now, second question: Do you like any visual art, and, if so, then what should the best examples of this type of art look like?”
“Yes,” sez the man, “I really like photos and paintings, and the best are the kind that depict game — that is, any of the wild mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians or birds hunted for sport. But my wife would kill me if I didn’t also mention that I equally love the type of visual art that matches all the stuff in the room and provides a nice backdrop to stand in front of while you’re having beers with your buddies. Or tea with the ladies, rather.”
I write all this down, very happy that the fellow is giving me such thorough replies. Then I look up from my notepad, intending to ask my next question; but the man interrupts as follows, off-the-cuff:
“Actually,” he touches his brow as if he has experienced a revolution of the mind, “now I’d like to change my answer. Instead of paintings I’d say that I like posters — with bold graphics and big fonts, you know? The kind with stylized letters that say your home state’s football and hockey teams… or Country-Western groups. — Also large banners with your favorite politician’s name spanning across them.”
“Excellent, excellent,” I say, while nodding and writing down all these details. “So, basically, either stuff to hunt, or backgrounds and advertisements. Alright. Now, how about dance — that’s the next question: Have you any preferences for dance as an artform?”
“Uh, yeah, I like when girls dance. I mean women, not actually girls. My little daughter is in a tap-dance group, and I watch her sometimes when they have rehearsals or performances, but I just pretend that they’re good, so that I don’t hurt their feelings by speaking too accurately. The full truth is that I would much rather see grown cheerleaders on the football field, or distinguished ladies at The Wholesome Entertainment Parlor.”
“And how about poetry?”
“Nah, I’m not much for poetry. Maybe Country-Western lyrics — does that count?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I say, making special note of this admission. “The last question regards sculpture — any opinion on that? Oh, and I’ll include cinema in this as well, cuz they’re sorta related. What do you look for, if anything, in statues and movies?”
“Well I don’t like the ancient sculptures that have no clothes on. I would prefer if everyone was represented in their uniform, so that we know their profession. Like, if you’re a mailman, then wear your postal costume; and if you’re a firefighter, then get your statue sculpted with your hot-gear on, or whatever it’s called. And I’m on the fence about the notion of painting statues, especially marble ones. I kinda like the idea, but I kinda don’t. It’s like furniture made of wood: sometimes it’s better to just stain it rather than paint it; but other times it works to give it a couple coats in a safe, neutral color; like when, say, a wooden deck is painted bright white. I really like the idea of adding gears and movable parts to the statues, tho — I guess that would fall under the category of robots. If that’s still art, then I cast all my votes for that: especially android butlers that answer your door and tell lies. Dang, now I forgot the other part of your question.”
“Film?”
“Oh yeah, movies! Yeah, I love good movies. I watch a lot of miniseries shows and documentaries, too, on the streaming networks.”
“And what do you think makes motion pictures good? Like, if a friend were to ask you: ‘Have you seen any good movies lately?’ and you answer ‘Yes, the 2013 film Wrong Cops is very good.’ — What, in this case, would you mean by that judgment ‘very good’?”
“Hmm,” the man puts his thumbs behind his belt buckle and stares at the ground for a while; “well, I don’t like Wrong Cops — that’s for sure. When I tried to watch it, I had to turn it off after the first few scenes; cuz it’s not smart enough for me. What I look for in a movie is excitement and action — I want the bullet wounds to look real, and the guns to sound real. I want to truly feel that the characters are dying on the screen, not that they’re pretending. And there should be no scenes of love — filmmakers should always keep in mind that children might be watching. And I prefer when movie crews use actual fake-blood packets (with genuine, realistic-looking liquid in them) that explode and splatter on the actors and the set, as opposed to all the blood being generated by computer art programs. Basically I want the screen to show me everything and to convince me. Leave nothing to the imagination. (If I wanted to use my imagination, I’d be reading, not screening.) I hate that phrase ‘Suspend your disbelief’. Eff off! I bought a ticket, and you’re supposed to make me believe. I wanna be spoon-fed eye-candy by willing entertainers. And the plot should be interesting, and it should have some crazy twist at the end that blows your mind. But the plot should also be clear enough to understand without having to pay close attention — not too complicated; nothing poetic: When I walk out of the theater, I shouldn’t have to be wondering ‘What the heck just happened?’ But most of all I prefer the type of shows that you can watch at home, on your TV, where you can leave the room and take a phone call from a client and then come back and still be able to tell where the story is going. You should always be able to easily find your way back into the series of events, and never feel lost, even if you’re sorta zoned-out or barely awake. But everything should still wow you. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense, yes,” I say, while finishing noting everything the man just said. After which, I look up and exclaim: “You did a great job answering my survey. Thank you for your time. I’ll reverse the energy flow on my electromagnet now and send you back to the Mega Mall.”
“But didn’t you dismantle it and put the parts back in the hand-drill when you returned that to the rental place?”
“Oh, that’s right,” I laugh. “Sorry — I forgot. Do you mind just walking on foot back to the Mall of the Americas? It’s only a few blocks from here — about the average distance of a catapult shot. (I know this because I used to try to attack the place with brimstones, before I learned to cherish the shopping experience.) Either that or I could build you an electric scooter.”
“A scooter? Hey, I’d really like that,” sez the man from the mall.
So I invent a new type of scooter that runs on moonlight, and it gets the man across the three streets in West Bloomington before it conks out from lack of juice. The man angrily then walks from the front row of cars, where the scooter died, to the entrance of a popular clothing store. He buys an orange shirt, and then he buys some yellow boots.
The audience is privy to these details because we follow the man at a discrete distance with the secret camera of what seems to be a wirelessly controlled drone-ship but which actually turns out to be the hummingbird fruit-bat from the beginning of this chapter. Using the creature’s manual-focus zoom-lens, we snap photos of the westerner’s journey in consumerism. Then I upload these pics and publish them in the next quarterly issue of Mall Rat Spy Mag, of which I happen to be the editor-in-chief. (I am also the sole contributor, because I don’t trust anyone.)
Now I whistle for my hummingbird fruit-bat and remind it that the day is breaking, so the tiny thing jumboizes into SorchyHong-MukDonk, my new hybrid ass-stallion. And I myself transmogrify back into the respectable gentleman made entirely of ruby glass, Tolsteer-Yoshi.
Being only a hop-skip-jump away from the red-light district, we gallop out of the nighttime forest and rent two harlots and ask them the same questions that I asked Mall Man above. For the record, these harlots give much better answers. And, by ‘better’, I mean bemystifyingly sophisticateder. They, for instance, are both huge fans of the movie Wrong Cops. They also are admirers of The Green Fog (2018); L’eclisse (1962); and Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight (1975 / 2012).*
* Anyone who has read all fourteen volumes of my Public Private Diary will know that the above-listed titles are a few of my favorite films, so it makes sense that I would fall in love with these prostitutes.
Note also: the joke about this chapter is that I pass over in silence the interview session with those whose discretion I esteem and whose taste I share, while taking great pains to record in detail the responses of the soul whose artistic judgments are the opposite of mine. I feel the need to stress this point here, even at the risk of bursting the episode’s bubble, because I fear that, if I fail to make a clear statement of disavowal, then similarly belt-buckled skim-readers might misunderstand me as being in aesthetic alignment with Mall Man.
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