BOXED: THE SOUL

at the Red Circle Table, there are two white women:

Carli Lloyd: you know?

Madonna: i know.

and then Jennifer Aniston FINALLY joins the mix.

Blue Stan Lee: Jen, what gives? i did my hair like yours.

Jennifer Aniston hugs Stan Lee and it goes right through.

Jennifer Aniston: oh Stan, i'm so sorry. you know i love you like a non-drunk uncle. it's just...the press was hounding me for a saucy quote...i had to do something splashy for the Friends anniversary.

President Bump: LeBron, look, i'm still your best friend. Happy Mental Health Day? is that something you wish people? it doesn't sound right. sounds off.

LeBron: get off me, bum! what did you do!!?

Bump: nothing i swear, i'm even making the Neil deGrasse Tyson hands-off meme with my small hands so you'll understand. i did not burn your jersey, i am an actual Angel. i LOVE your jersey, LeBron, i kiss it, i sniff it, i sleep with it when Melania's gone---which is often---and my bed is cold!

LeBron: *steamed* yeah but you basically did. INDIRECTLY. you're like the Andy Dick of presidents.

Bump: *hand on Bron Bron's shoulder* LeBron, buddy, you should always have an opinion on ANYTHING that's going on in the world. that's the point of our massive public platforms. i know i do all the time!

the Dunns: *heartsick* we're done with you.

Shirley Brifman: it's not safe for women anymore.

Teuila Blakely: i know. and the other blonde chick is here with me, too. we're both worried sick over you. look, whenever you need to have a tea, we're here for you with a finger rub. do NOT talk to any official men who come to your door knocking with an email from Apple which looks suspicious but just good-enough, do not give out your information, especially that you're a girl in this world!

Shirley: i'm sorry. but that Apple letterhead was quite convincing. the website looked real, all the rectangles were in place. a symbol's a symbol, right?

Dirg: no worries, matess, everyone gets scammed eventually, no matter how smart you think you are. except me of course. go on a vacation and walk it off. take it from me, the Apple logo is easy to draw.

Shirley: i'm sorry. i was tired. i'm always tired. i'll go with Pear or Samsung next time. i feel stripped, naked, exposed. i knew in the back of my head something was off but i needed to survive desperately and quickly, i needed a record of my life that i existed. the only whistles i ever blew were the ones to call off brutes' slimy fingers off my girls when it was finish-time. you can't rightly type brothel madam in the rectangle. can i move to New Zealand?

Teuila: truthfully it's the same.

Shirley: tea. right. but there's nothing in it, innit?

at the Debates:

Warren: SHHHHHHHHHHHH! QUIET! stop shouting at me, i'm a librarian!

Ariana Grande is grilling on a shichirin preparing for the Olympics:

Ariana: keeping my boy happy. you wouldn't like him when he's not happy. a happy wife is a good cook, la di da *humming*

at Electric Brixton, Doryce is dancing up a storm with all the men. and the boys.

Gladyce: i love you, babe. but i can't keep up with you. i'm panting. granny-panting. how do you do it? how do you have the stamina?

Doryce: babe you gotta live no matter what! let nothing keep you down! you know i knew this nightclub was called The Fridge but i didn't know it would be an actual huge Icebox! my rave stick has turned into a green popsicle!

Gladyce: save it for Halloween ooze, i'm sure it's edible.

Doryce: we gotta prepare for the next Ice Age. we two anyway. i am disappoint tho. the banana hammer didn't come to pass. nor the coffee puck.

Gladyce: i'll satisfy you sexually later when we get home, dear.

Doryce: did you do the trick i taught you?

Gladyce: yes but...the toffee Hershey's chocolate nuggets. like striking gold without bars! you say to freeze them, they'll taste better, i froze one nugget for one day here by tossing it into the dance pit, but i think you have to freeze it for 4 or 5 days till it becomes a puck. it tasted the same.

Doryce: oh i love those wrappers on those toffee ones! it's the prettiest shade of orange. it's copper! remember the Copper Age, babe!? we got DOWN in the Copper Age with those sentry soldiers who deserted!

Jimmy G joins the First Take Table, which is more integrated:

Jimmy G: yeah see the thing is...the nickname...it can wear on you after awhile. not like an old jersey. it seems cool at first but. nobody in the Hall of Fame has a nickname which stuck that's, like, Porn Star Jimmy, right? i mean Porn Star Jimmy? Fast Hands Jimmy, okay. Jimmy Football, sure. even Jimmy Neutron. but Porn Star Jimmy? is that how i'm gonna be remembered forevermore?

Dirg: i can't believe i missed that story. i was too busy with my schoolwork.

Laertus: sure.

Dirg: the Tom Brady Kiss story, too i missed. but you know women do have the power to alter whole trajectories of life journeys. one false fuck and it's all over, a man's worth down the toilet hole. his whole life of work gone with one whack.

Laertus: i'm thinking when you speak of women you're only referring to porn stars. cos those are the only women you know. hey at least you finally acknowledge The Goddess.

Eye Luggage: hey, porn stars are women, Courtney Love and i started out our careers as strippers. strippers are the biggest intellectuals you'll ever come across, they have time to think of things like fascism.

Laertus: well-met.

Eye: we're lucky enough to have The Man himself, Tom Brady---also known as TB---here at the podcast studio!

Dirg: also known as Touchy Babe...

Eye: ...and Tom's Number One Fan, Peter Griffin himself also joining us. sit right next to your idol there, Peter, sorry for the small seats, they fit my ass.

Tom: Peter i gotta say, that was a private moment and everything, but you had the funniest Family Guy line ever this week: when you wanted to give your son Chris a Tom Brady Kiss. something about that line spoken in your Rhode Island accent, that line will singe into my psyche's funny bone forever.

Peter Griffin: wait, YOU like my show? OMG. this is why you're my hero, Tom, you're a football player who knows what psyche means.

Tom: it's no big deal, right, guys? right, fellas?

Eye: not at all. it's wonderful. in these thoroughly fucked-up times, in this thoroughly fucked-up world, why not celebrate any last bit of love we can get? if the kiss goes on a little longer than expected, hey, it's all gravy, baby!

Laertus: Dirg, if your father kissed you on the lips like that you wouldn't be the fuck-up you are today.

Dirg: i see nothing wrong either. all of life is transactional.

Laertus: you know i really didn't like you, Tom, not at all for awhile. i mean you were already perfect, perfect life perfect wife perfect lips, and you won all the time, even when you weren't supposed to. like The Fates had deemed for you to get, like, 3 Super Bowls, but you somehow ended up with 10. the Fates speak with foreign accents. like even when you were trying to lose the refs make a decision that always goes your way. not liable for cheating in a court of law. and then the red hat in your locker, THAT's unforgivable for a white boy. BUT BUT with this kiss incident, you know what, i DO like you now! i'm actually actively rooting for you now! win another Super Bowl, Tom! you're a weird human like the rest of us finally!

Dirg: but do you respect him? is it a Rafa Nadal situation?

Eye: what were we talking about again?

Tyzik: oh how Nixau has the best smile of all time. SVU and go.

Dirg: i mean it's too meta, right?

Jack Dorsey: that's what i tried to tell everybody. but nobody listens to a surfer.

Dirg: i mean you have the actress who gets raped by the movie mogul ON THE SHOW. right? but then the next morning you look on twitter and you see this same actress embracing the character who plays the movie mogul who just raped her---in the script---and they're all smiles posing for pictures hugging and kissing on each other. it's just too weird. the mind can't procees such surreal things.

Eye: well it's just good acting, right? not deepfake, just good acting. tv magic, which is white magic. tho it's been accused of being black magic. genLOCK, anyone?

Laertus: you mean the new Star Wars cartoon show i CAN watch?

Eye: okay, let's get down to it: ladies and gentlemen, our Feature Presentation: Deep Sound Check: and Blade Runner: 2049 and go!

Dirg: wow, you mean we actually did this? we the three of us stayed in the same movie theatre together all scrunched up in one small seat for THREE HOURS and none of us killed each other from annoyance or boxed-in!!?

Laertus: you know i had the most wonderful warm strange exasperated feeling while watching this. a feeling the combination of which i shall never feel again. it was like this calm came over me. and yet i felt petrified that the wave was fake, computer-generated, a wisp, not real. you know i'm not one for football but it was like watching football alone in your room on a lazy Sunday afternoon. shades drawn, pitch black, just the glow of the screen on your face, no facemask. watching Jared Goff on the green grass at empty Rams Stadium, cos there are no real football fans in L.A. Jared tosses the ball and all is right with the world. but is this world real? cos then before my eyes it's RYAN GOSLING in the quarterback pants throwing the football. i reflect fondly on Ryan's career as i see it in front of me, i see him working on an empty film set...and Jared's career, push-upping alone in an empty grass stadium...they are both trying to make it in the big city. a warmth washes over me again as i think about their lives, trudging along, just trying to make it, Jared trying to get through this movie in hushed tones and orange glows. orange dust and orange smog everywhere. i imagine Jared as the same personality as Ryan: calm, funny, California-cool, as evidenced from the This Is Sportcenter commercial where Jared imitates tournament-winner Coco Gauff. crocodile before baby shark.

Dirg: you know it's not such a stretch to imagine Los Angeles in the future simply a huge Fatberg of Smog, not a city anymore.

Laertus: i have the feeling the police brutality is worse, cos it can go unseen now. i love ALL movies that take place in the future. but in the REAL FUTURE, WAY many years from now, The Year 3000, The Year 5000, The Year 10000, cos it's fun to imagine just how Earth will really be like in the far far future. will we have a planet still? will we be robots with beating hearts?

Eye: will we finally have flying cars?

Laertus: the feeling crashes over me again as an imperceptible underwater tide. with Ryan acting, and with Jared playing football, all is right with the world. or is it? yes it is, but only because i know i was BORN. i have a SOUL, so all this running-around i'm doing---running-around we all do---is worth it cos in the end, I EXIST. i'm not doing this cos i was programmed to do this. in the end, my actions and beliefs and thoughts and acts of kindness and mindness and sadness and anger and hate MATTERED, it leads up to something, cos I AM REAL, not a fake metal box projecting an image. not a blue hologram. well not a blue hologram whilst living this life anyway. ghosts are another matter, ghosts are proof. i got that strange tingling down my spine when i looked up at the spinal art of the roof of that scene with the daughter trapped in the bubble---Bubble Girl---who is an historian or something, takes digital photographs, creates art programs much more advanced than Photoshop to lie about Replicants' memories to make them think they are really alive and have a soul. but it's all manufactured and leads to nowhere. i mean there's buying Instagram friends and then there's outright creating friends with an Apple pencil. creating friends by 3D-printering them. that's what this poor creative-soul girl did. looking at that roof, that arched elevator ladder on that roof, i arch my back all the way past my sightline to my own room ceiling, think about my spinal cord and its fluids, and the fact that all this i was doing would end up meaning something cos i would return to the knowledge that i was BORN, not MADE. i'm part of something. i come from SOMEWHERE, not NOWHERE. i MATTER, i'm not a robot. when i look at a tree, it matters. it's collected, it registers.

Dirg: cool off from those warm feelings, eh bud? i'll take over. the plot particulars in this were hard to follow, they really didn't matter, right? it was all about design. that sleek yellow design of that Government Desk. the dirtiness of it all, all dystopias are dirty like that. there are never clean sleek white dystopias, which would be scarier to me. i mean hovercars are cool, but there would be an awful lot of accidents in the sky every day---sky accidents---it's untenable. we'd have to go back to planes.

Eye: air accidents? airy accidents? the sad thing, partners, is that the future will NOT be like that when 2049 rolls around! it will be quite disappointing when reality hits. the future in fiction is ALWAYS cooler.

Laertus: there was a Jared in this. Jared Leto. whose Joker is forgotten so he sports a weird glass third eye or something. and wants to birth a robot. and kills all the betas, right, Dirg?

Dirg: if i ever become king, i need a throne room like that, surrounded by water and fountains and upside-down waterfalls like a medieval moat. where are the kings? there are no real kings anymore. and what's the deal with Sean Young? she's still alive, right? they couldn't get her to come? so they hire an actress to play her body but they still use Sean's voice, what!!?

Eye: talk about getting the shaft. that is her real voice, right? it could be Frank Welker.

Dirg: really the only thing i was looking for here was if Ryan Gosling could pull off serious. he kind of didn't, i mean whenever Pretty Boy got serious in his face you saw his Mickey Mouse Club smirk behind his eyes, you knew he wasn't really serious. this is dark stuff, man. and the question remains in the end: is Harrison Ford a Replicant?

Laertus: was Elvis and Frank Sinatra always this annoying? or is it the hologram effect?

Eye: and just generally loud noises suck. that's cool to have a lobby in your castle, tho. ah, the snow scene in the end, very anime. and ripe for an anime interstitial.

Dirg: i'm thinking Harrison Ford does NOT have a soul. how could ANYONE have survived that helicopter crash?

Eye: okay, what we all came for: sex in the future! so what do you think? the feminist critics were justifiably braying about the male gaze here.

Laertus: you know it's not what i expected from the trailer. i see the beautiful Mediterranean-Spanish model who's his girl blown-up large in that pink/purple projection out in the city as a HUGE HOLOGRAM of nakedness! wearing her pink/purple wig! on top of and ON buildings! like a living marquee, living billboard. but sexy forehead. like the dream of fucking a Marvel superhero! a King Kong who's a girl! and i read articles on how this film was depicting future sex. i thought Ryan Gosling would be fucking this giant heavenly hologram!

Dirg: agreed, bro. the reality was very banal. it was a mind trick sure, but it was just her entering the soul of the real normal-sized-person hooker so he could fuck his hologram girlfriend. needed a disposable street-trash body for that beautiful unique caring soul. i'm collaborating with you next time we do future sex together, Laertus. to do it right.

at Colorado Springs, Madame Pons sits up on top of Takahashi in a pool of melted skin and dirty sweat post-coitus, both are breathing hard but not quite satisfied, a lingering doubt creeps in.

Sue Su: FUCK!!! the audience knows it's Takahashi!!! my beloved!

Takahashi's head droops at the back of the bed as the drone camera trains on his face. his face remains perplexed and puzzled, his lips puckered in disbelief. his face is shut but his eyes are wide open. he doesn't say a word.

Sue: BUMP DID THIS!!! TO FUCK ME OVER!!! LOOK, THE EVIDENCE! THE SPILLED JAR OF FLOWERS OVER THERE!

Madame Pons turns to the drone camera with a hard turn of her hand:

Madame Pons: folks, it's me. baring my body to you in freedom and real life, because i'm baring my soul. i'm scared right now but i also feel a strange tinge of bravery. you know me, it's me, i love you all. whether i'm clothed or not. affection and love will always be timeless. there is no shame in fucking, it releases your soul into another person. sex heals. i am no brothel madam. i am a person. even if i'm here to only help one person. to only help Sue Su. or to only help you watching now. may my naked body sacrifice on this public altar so you out there can enjoy sex finally in private. even with your clothes on. i am not ashamed. you shouldn't be either. let's help one another through our turbulent emotional rollercoasters. we must help each other heal. this won't shame me to suicide, i am stronger for this. i am strong. even tho everyone in the world now knows i have a big vagina. it's a Marianne Williamson vagina big enough to cradle all the civilizations of the universe!

Dirg: hey Takahashi, where have you been!!! i've been missing discussing the latest games with you! we got a lot of catching up to do!

Sue: i love you Pons. you deserve to live, to live forever, for your life is real. you've taught me so much. don't let the bastards win. when you heal, you self-heal.

there's a dawkish din coming from outside the compound, soon the screens fill up. loud noises, chants, fists flying, all in unison shouting the same line:

SHOW YOUR CUNT! SHOW YOUR CUNT!

Sue backs up in the corner her hands in her big eyes crying.

at the con Shaq O'Neal FINALLY sits at the Red Circle Table. well the Red Circle Table stand booth at the con anyway:

Dirg: you know it's very smart. you replace the red-hat-wearing white guy as the Pizza Guy with you! brilliant marketing move. the Democrats need to call you up for PR lessons. you're as huggy-bear huggable and family-friendly as they get. you're the most nonlethal black man who ever lived! masterstroke!

Shaq: just call me Papa Shaq. you doing okay, buddy? you don't seem yourself.

Dirg: no not at all. i need a Father.

Cotard: what can i do you for, my son? i've been traveling. far and wide. i went on my game-show circuit.

Dirg: are you trapped in a loveless marriage?

Cotard: no that wasn't me. but i am kinda. but i did go on Jeopardy. to visit Alex Trebek one last time. you visit the doomed, visit with friends. he taught me to adopt the Alex Trebek Way of Looking At Things. live like there's no tomorrow. appreciate and scan and push the button first. appreciate, don't hate. the Alex Gaze. i kissed him on the mouth despite his Canadian humor thinking i was looking at him as a leper, i assured him i was not. Alex talked in all questions about the open cold sores blistering his mouth inside with pus but i cared not, i wasn't embarrassed, i loved him and drank his pus. it's all human, baby.

Dirg: everywhere i turn, every corner, life has tricked me. life is one big trick. i can't take this lifestyle of mine i constructed and built anymore, i need MORE! the boxes have closed in on my body squeezing me into a small box with my legs in my face. i need air. promise you won't laugh? this isn't just my con costume, i need a change.

Dirg leaves the auditorium and returns in '70s street-punk London garb with a spiked collar around his neck. he waves a huge purple/pink Taco Bell flag left to right.

Dirg: *shouting loudly* TACOS!!! TACOS!!!

Dirg: *solemnly* this is the only flag i'd ever die for.

Cotard: okay that's a start. you gotta believe in something. i won't tell President Bump, i'll keep that under Confession. despite all his Catholic voters. how many chicken patties did you make the poor glass girl at the Jack In The Box drivethru stuff into the one two-buns?

Dirg: 5. but they could only legally do 4. i have a problem when it comes to stacks. but she was stacked tho. you know an Instagram girl is more when she makes you feel depressed.

Cotard puts his arm around Dirg's shoulder.

Cotard: come here i want to show you something, i've been needing a change, too. i discovered a new religion...