Ajouté au panierAlberta is bigger. More wheat, more West and more sky. We’re heading to the bar, speeding on numbered roads straight from the original mapmakers. Chris warns us not to wear our silly hats inside. It’s not a big stretch for me to play Ronda Rousey in my home video. I’m talking WWE Ronda, not UFC Ronda 1. We have a lot in common: we can’t act, we can’t talk, but we stay in your face because we believe we’re just a heartbeat away from genuinely connecting with an ordinary person. We rehearse our entrance for the Royal Rumble with Chief Brand Officer STEFFF McMahon.
RHhONDA You’re in trouble bitch –
STEFFF No, RHhONDA. You don’t need any lines. The Universe just has to see you pointing at the sign.
RHhONDA I’m pointing at the sign?
STEFFF The sign!
RHhONDA Oh yeah yeah yeah — no, I know.
STEFFF It’s like: you’re literally pointing at the future, because you are the future.
RHhONDA Right.
STEFFF Everyone will get it. It’s what we do. Right
RHhONDA I’m… I’m just worried about one thing. Like if I’m standing here and I’m pointing – pointing, pointing, pointing at the sign — I guess I’d be pointing with this hand, right — because the hard cam’s over there — so I’m pointing at the sign, for like, I don’t know, yay minutes — isn’t it gonna look kinda weird
STEFFF RHhONDA, you’ll be fine, okay? You’ll be fine.
RHhONDA Right.
STEFFF Just be yourself, right?
RHhONDA Yeah.
STEFFF Just point at the sign.
RHhONDA Right.
STEFFF Trust me. It will all make sense.
RHhONDA Point at the sign…
STEFFF That’s it. That’s all you have to do.
Painted-on tunnels, ACME bombs, playing the piano with machine gun toes – I wish! Nothing about Character Animator inspires me. I hear my characters long before I see them. I’m not dying to see them at all. So I write and I write. Am I making an animated video slowed down by narrative, or the other way around? Problem: the main characters aren’t in enough pain so why would anyone care about them? I kill them over and over again. BOOM! a stranger barges in. It’s my collaborator. He climbs up to the crow’s nest to have a vision or something and BAM! He’s all tangled up in the rigging 2.
My collaborator lowers down some rigging tests. Our main characters — who are lemons, but they’re oranges just for now – are dressed kinda like California Raisins. Uh oh. Why are they even dressed? Are they mascots for kids’ cereal? Worse: if they’re not bopping around like kids’ cartoons, they twitch like crack whores. Damn. Character Animator is not the Northwest Passage after all.
A woman walks into a bar and — listen, you large language model, you better be able to kidnap me from myself, or else! A woman in a suit with a tight skirt and a marshmallow chin walks into the bar, her heels clicking across the wooden floor. Let’s criticize everything, says the man next to her as he blows the foam off his amber-hued drink. Amber-hued? Dude, it’s just a beer. The woman isn’t listening anyways. She’s thinking about her face. Who gave her that marshmallow chin? 3
If it wasn’t for that chin this woman would be straight outta Airport Lit. The kind of fiction that’s about ink on paper that gets onto your fingers when you stare off into space in between sentences that spell but don’t cast anything. I’m trying too hard. Where’s the emergency exit? “Just tell me a story!” Marsha cries. Look here Marsha, the story is I’m your mother so I get to name you after your chin. And it’s microwaved, your chin. Not roasted over a campfire. Because I said so.
I don’t like Marsha. But I can empathize. She’s a badlymade woman in a badly-made world. Whenever she tries to be original, she ends up sat on her ass in this anyplace bar anyway. So this must be the right place? An Industry Plant sits on the floral patterned stool next to us. He wipes the foam off his amber-hued daffodil of a daffy drink, and drops a clunker in Marsha’s ear: “Where else would you be, if you could be anywhere but here?” “Look,” continues the Industry Plant, “let’s find a way we can have a little fun, so we can each feel —” It’s not long past noon. The bartender and his regulars stare me and Chris and Nina down from a different planet. Ya can’t just waltz in here like assholes from the city. Unbelievable. The bartender’s not really saying this. He doesn’t need to. Oh, ya think ya didn’t? Well – ya did. Thank God we left our silly hats in the car.
***
Video is a problem. If only my website didn’t exist. If only I was a painter or photographer – I wouldn’t even need a broker and my insurance would cost less than half of what it does. My broker needs 2 weeks + 1 day to find me commercial general liability insurance. Meanwhile, Christ resurrects and Montreal is blessed by an ice storm.
The building manager is in a rush. She’s meeting with the city over delays with the transformation permits. What that means is, that while our building is real, none of the new units on the ninth floor are. “Don’t worry”, she says. “You can still get your mail”. Sure. Whatever you say, Marsha. My building manager (who might as well be Marsha, her life is nothing like mine) has a way with words. As soon as she speaks them, they become somehow reality-adjacent.
At the edge of the studio, the great parking lots commence. Réno-Dépôt, Party Store, Dollarama, Bureau en Gros, Home Dépôt, Ordinateurs Canada. Elvis, by Baz Luhrmann. The bulk of my sculptural vocabulary – which I must express without a driver’s license. I walk a ladder back from Réno-Dépôt and Uber an office chair from Bureau en Gros because my 30-dollar dolly from Bureau en Gros can’t handle the dip from the sidewalk into the crosswalk.
Without a real address, the internet won’t let me get the internet I need to research the sculptures I want to make. “Just tell them you’re unit 901, no problem,” advises Marsha.
Right. I buzz outside Vidéotron. The staff locks me in the store with them. I perform my little white lie about being unit 901. No go. Why did I even bother following Marsha’s instructions?
I make a show of double checking my insurance contract. “Ah non, je veux dire, le local 903.” I explain that the unit is physically real – here is my insurance contract which proves it, but – the Vidéotron manager jumps in. Since I am a business account, it doesn’t matter if my unit doesn’t exist in the eyes of Canada Post. “Fantastique!” The manager will pass on my information to Vidéotron Affaires, who will call me back ce jour-même, lundi au plus tard.
Samedi. I need an antagonist for my animation video. I call my mother. She can’t stop talking about tree roots, drainage ditches and property lines. Of course the neighbour is trying to kill her pine – again. “She digs another inch, I’m phoning the city!” Hello KAREN.
Lundi, mardi. I merge my mother with the neighbour she’s feuding with and add a whole lot of right-wing kitsch – mercredi, jeudi – because I can, because this is an animation video. Anything is possible, even the internet!
Vendredisamedidimanchelundi — apparently I fell off the spreadsheet at Vidéotron, but so what. Because when I go to drill a hole in the wall so I can hang up my jacket, I find out there’s no juice coming out of the walls even though the lights turn on so how are you gonna plug in a modem anyways but thank God for the 2nd email about fire alarm drills (which I read at home) because that’s how I discover the existence of the JUNIOR MAINTENANCE MANAGER who miraculously gets me connected to power but while I’m out at the bike shop with a flat I miss the phone call from Vidéotron to process payment so add another five days. MARSHA doesn’t care. In this airport, in her life, everyone is always standing around, waiting to get scraped. 4 Is that even consensual? I ask. MARSHA rolls her eyes, overselling. Losing patience, I suplex Marsha 5 – who might as well be the BUILDING MANAGER, who might as well be my animation collaborator – off the adder onto the SPANISH ANNOUNCE TABLE, which is what I’m calling the table where my computer – hooked up to the internet – will be. Of course I’ve already strewn its surface with a bunch of thumbtacks from Bureau en Gros. Thank God the table actually breaks.
Mercredi, I think. The KAREN DOLL is rigged with a wooden spoon in her left hand and an assault rifle in the right. “Let’s talk about international objects,” says the KAREN DOLL. “I can’t talk about them on the Peephole Network, but I can talk about them with you in private. International objects protect mommy, daddy and the whole family. Our homes, our steeples, and all of our peoples! So don’t be scared, boys and girls! International objects know that if you don’t deserve to die, you won’t!” But, will people think the wooden spoon is the international object? “Don’t overthink it, the art audience doesn’t even watch wrestling.”
Jeudi, vendredi, samedi… Euphemisms shouldn’t hurt even while they’re slowly or quickly killing you. “Calendars murder Art,” says Marsha. Shut up, Marsha. Why am I hearing the electrician next door?
***
SHE’S BACK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
screams the UFC’s marketing department. CINEMATIC RONDA moves through oversized rooms, carefully balancing a blank expression on her face. So this is what superstardom looks like. CINEMATIC RONDA is truly alone in this house – and in this sport! After all, no other fighter is repped by William Morris Endeavor. But what do all these rooms have to do with Amanda Nunes? After a staircase, CINEMATIC RONDA runs into Stephen A. Smith on a TV monitor. “Is that about you losing, or is that about you not living up to the image that you created?” asks Stephen A. Good question. Did RONDA really create her image? Or did she recreate herself in ‘her’ image? I mean, is anyone home?
Umbrella, meet sewing machine. Now I can’t hear the electrician next door anymore.
CINEMATIC RONDA shuts off Stephen A. with the remote and exits onto her agent’s balcony. Behind her back, Amanda wrecks shop in the Octagon for about 5 seconds. On the balcony, CINEMATIC RONDA stares across an abyss. That’s not Holly Holm on the other side, those are the HOLLYWOOD HILLS. CINEMATIC RONDA is walking into this fight with just her story — she’s a game changer out for redemption, it’s written all over her face. What’s-her-face — Amanda– has lots of weapons, but no story and no name. CINEMATIC RONDA is supposed to win. 6 Got it.
I ask the painters in the hallway if I can borrow their mop. At first, they think I’m asking them to clean my floor for me. Once we clear that up, the woman offers to show me how to use the mop, but I already know how because I’ve been both a painter and a janitor but I don’t tell her this. Am I looking for someone to clean my “office”?
IN A WORLD WHERE –
1- No way UFC president Dana White will allow his light weight champ Conor McGregor to fuck off for a year just to train for a fight in a totally different sport!
2- No way the Nevada Athletic Commission will sanction a match between a 49-0 professional boxer and a mixed martial artist who is 0-0 in professional boxing!!
3- Dollar bills arrested mid-air. Frozen women. This is boxing!!!
4- International objects taste like chicken, like the chicken you had for dinner last night.
5- Why stop short of frog legs?
6- Wtf, that’s Dana White up on the stage, sat right next to Conor.
7- I smell a bitch, says Floyd Mayweather.
8- Nouille de pool.
Dear Santa : All I really want for Christmas in July or preferably April though May is good too, is a pair of 8 foot ladders. You see, I need them to make sculpture with AND I need them to be sculpture. For example, I could use them as scaffolding for lights and to hang things from. Because, Santa, it’s too complicated for me to drill into concrete. Or I could use them to touch the ceiling and the hooks that are already in there and for that, my 6 footer is too short. Also, I think that aesthetically, a pair of 8 footers will go well with the 6 footer I walked over last weekend and together they can star in a soap opera or act like they’re in a TLC match. I already have 8 steel chairs and a couple tables so you don’t need to get me those.
Finally running out of rooms, CINEMATIC RONDA circles a date on a calendar on the wall.
Santa, I’m only asking because last time I checked, Réno-Dépot doesn’t have any 8 footers on the floor only 6 footers or 10 kilometer extension ones, and the Home Depot is but an orange speck in the distance so I don’t want to walk an 8 footer from all the way over there even if they do have them in stock. You’ve got the reindeer so it shouldn’t be that hard for you.
“Get the bag,” says Floyd to his entourage. Ah, the mysterious backpack sat on the stage. What could possibly be inside it. The crowd – the real bitch here – obediently screams into the long pauses Floyd leaves for them. Verse or curse, it doesn’t matter : the pacing is excruciatingly slow. Floyd tells his DJ to start the music. Sample lyric : “McGregor is a bitch.” I think of the secret column of dead air at the heart of each and every pool noodle. Sat on his stool, Conor chews gum with oversized nonchalance, opening and closing his mouth like he’s letting little fish in, one at a time. Scavenger fish, maybe – picking at shreds of innuendo stuck between the Irishman’s teeth. But-it’s-not-racist-to-say-that-in-Ireland, fook da Mayweathers, Connor With Two N’s is a bitch, Floyd is a pussy, both men have pillow fists. Floyd tosses dollar bills all over the “stripper” McGregor. “They’re all ones!” Conor exclaims. It’s a four-city tour.
***
OHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“People! Let’s stop this Ronda Rousey nonsense, ok!… She gonna retire go do movies she already has a lotta money come on!” — Amanda Nunes. 7
UFC RONDA loses to CINEMATIC RONDA. Both Rondas lose to Amanda. The Rondas wake up in the body of WWE RONDA. WWE RONDA points – and points, and points and points — at the sign. The memes come hard and fast. This is pro wrestling. Everything is.
It’s weird talking about Conor as the B-side, but this is boxing, where it’s all about unfair advantages. But hear me out – why couldn’t Conor McGregor, the best boxer in all of Mixed Martial Arts, beat Floyd Mayweather, the greatest boxer of all time? I mean, Floyd’s over forty, coming out of retirement, and was never known for knocking people out. And, he’s never had to solve for an MMA boxing stance! Would it even be that big of a deal if Conor –
I press 9, it stops at 10. Security shows me the special trick : When it stops at 10, you slide the grille all the way up. Then you open les portes just a little – like so – then close them again. Then you slide the grille down and hit 9 again – voilà, the monte-charge drops down to 9.
WWE RONDA pushes spelling mistakes around her mouth before WE WANT BECKY! dropping them off partially or wholly chewed WE WANT BECKY! into the microphone. WE WANT BECKY! The honeymoon is over.
We exit the prairie bar after just one drink to rendez-vous with Chris’ grandma on the Correction Line. 8 Zero kmph is the best speed to take in the rhythms of the swaying wheat. Beauty is all around. Chris’ Grandma pops the trunk. It’s full of root vegetables — cucumbers or zucchinis, I can’t tell. The organisms swoop and curve like swan necks. Grandma toots on one like it’s a saxophone.
***
100 MILLION DOLLARS LATER –
“He lost the fight, but he won at the game of life,” trumpets MMA media. Overnight, Conor turns into Zombie Simpsons. All across the land, nobody really loses anymore. It’s against the rules.
The WWE turns RONDA heel. Her new gimmick: pro-wrestling is fake, she can actually kill Becky with her bare hands and everyone knows it. WWE RONDA’S contempt for the crowd is electric. She’s human again!
Lundi. The internet comes with astonishing amounts of cable, so much rope to play with. Euphemisms, wrestling promos, objects foreign and international. Some are huge, like buildings, others are small, like a pencil. Some are colourful, like flowers, others are dull and boring, like a pencil sharpener. Some are endlessly photogenic, like Jake and Logan Paul.
I get on my bike, weaving around the knee de pools past industries I don’t understand. The Paul brothers are the worst possible potholes – but roads are fake news! The Pauls are not even professional athletes. Doesn’t matter. They’re 20-somethings famous for doing something on YouTube that 11 year old boys really like. Doesn’t matter. They’re here to rip the world of combat sports a new one – and UFC President Dana White too.
GIVENS
1- Most MMA fighters retire with broken bodies and small bank accounts.
2- Dana White will bite on almost all your feints.
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO JAKE AND LOGAN PAUL
1- Call out the retired MMA fighter in his late thirties, who’s a former Olympic wrestler with a hip replacement and a reputation for being the worst striker in the history of the UFC.
2- Not like he can take you down if it’s a boxing match.
3- Excellence is elitist, but not when you’re just imitating excellence.
4- KA-CHING! It’s not all ones.
24 hours after signing to fight Jake Paul in an 8-round boxing match, retired MMA fighter Nate Diaz (39 years old, ju-jitsu specialist) chokes out a professional Logan Paul look-alike in a street brawl. The real surprise is that the brawl, which took place in New Orleans, wasn’t sanctioned by the Nevada Athletic Commission. WrestleMania 39. Logan Paul does a frog splash off the ring post onto fellow Youtuber and former celebrity boxing rival KSI, who is dressed up as a giant bottle of Prime energy drink. We created PRIME to showcase what happens when rivals come together as brothers and business partners to fill the void where great taste meets function. 8
Nesting in the void between the inner and outer windows, I continue plotting how to break into my studio. Yes, I can live on spiders and sunshine, just like all the other pigeons.
Endeavor, UFC’s parent company, acquires the WWE.
- The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an organization which promotes Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fights. These are competitive (i.e. real) fights. World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is a professional wrestling promotion, which promotes scripted (i.e. fake) fights.→
- Character Animator is an animation software from Adobe. Rigging is an animation technique which determines how your character moves. Rigging is also found on sailing ships.→
- Specially formatted text was generated by Sudowrite, an AI powered writing app.→
- Scraping is the process of extracting data from websites.→
- A suplex is an offensive move used in amateur and professional wrestling.→
- I am describing and quoting from a video produced by the UFC to promote Rousey vs. Nunes at UFC 207, Dec. 30 2016. This was Ronda’s return after her shocking defeat to Holly Holm at UFC 193.→
- Quoted from Amanda Nunes’ victory speech at UFC 207.→
- Marketing material for PRIME Energy drink. →