The Culture Bunker – Goes To New York – Part Two: The Second Part- Fiction

The Culture Bunker

by William Ham
illustration by Rob Zammarchi

Goes To New York – Part Two: The Second Part

THE STORY SO FAR: The writer has been sent to NYC to appear on a television program. Meanwhile, Lord Charles continues to suffer from blinding headaches and accidentally impales his wife on a breadstick. Sgt. Nimrod has an antacid flashback and is convinced he is either Ghengis or Chaka Khan. A shot rang out. A baby cried.

The x/s channel compound. Fifteenth floor. The Chat Kennel studios. Late evening. And I am. Thinking in. Sentence fragments. Ah… that’s better. Julienne Frye’s assistant deposits me at the door of the studio and expeditiously departs, mumbling something about “If I’m not back in three minutes, I get the squeegee treatment again.” I am starting to feel a disorientation reminiscent of Pat Robertson on mescaline in the middle of a Ken Russell film. (Don’t ask what I mean by that.) Technicians scuttle around like trained rodents. Actually, it appears that some of them are trained rodents. Very clever, I thought. Their union isn’t nearly as stringent – just paid vacation days and a refuse break at ten. I’d never seen The Chat Kennel, but in certain circles it’s practically legendary. “The thinking man’s utter waste of time,” raved the Wall Eye Journal. “Kind of like The MacLaughlin Group, only with more things picking fleas off each other,” said the Lubbock Review of Books and Coupon Supplements. A pet program for intellectuals, mingling bon mots with Milk Bones. I sensed that this sudden change of venue was designed to catch me off my guard, to leave me as vulnerable as possible for whatever fiendish game of pinochle was being played on me. I had to be smart, I had to be alert, I had to be… oh, look, a bunny rabbit.

Again I am approached by a smartly-dressed female executive in a power suit and tartan Doc Martens. “Ah, you must be Will Yam from Jawbreaker magazine. Relatively pleased to meet you. I’m Anna Cleves, co-producer and executive in charge of num-nums. Mr. Fox told me all about you. Seems he’s taken a… special… interest in you. Look, Will, we’re kind of pressed for time, so why don’t you take a seat over there in the conversation pit? We go live in eleven minutes.” She hospitably slapped me upside the head and went over to give light cues to a wood louse. Live, eh? Another supposed obstacle to surmount. What they didn’t realize is that I’d done live TV before – when I was seven I pantsed Edwin Newman on Meet the Press, to mixed reviews – and thus would not be intimidated by the unblinking red eyes of either the camera or the floor manager. They obviously didn’t know whom they were dealing with. I wasn’t sure either. Me, right? Yeah. I took my seat.

There are few things quite as electric as the last few moments before a live broadcast, although urinating on a malfunctioning power generator comes close. There seemed to be about eighty things happening simultaneously. Cameras were being wheeled about, last-minute script changes reviewed, camel excrement scraped off the floor and re-positioned for stronger visual effect. You had to hand it to these people, so I did, with the promise that I would get it back after the show. Otherwise, I sat quietly, practicing the ancient Sioux technique of tapping my foot impatiently, stalwartly refusing to make eye contact with the other panelists hired for the program, who were a distinguished lot indeed. (More on that soon enough.)

The makeup manatee flopped over, under orders to make me look “paler and more Nixonian,” an undertaking he accomplished admirably. Then he rushed away, an expectant hush fell over the studio, and we were on the air.

“Tonight on The Chat Kennel, our panelists discuss the state of pets in the ’90s, we compare the new home-neutering kits, and how to turn your dead parakeet into a festive centerpiece for the holidays. That and more on… The Chat Kennel.”

Obnoxiously twee theme music comes up. Zero Hour had arrived, and in StereoSurroundSound (where available) to boot.

The kliegs came up on our area of the stage, and with it materialized our unctuous host, who looked quite familiar to me. “Hi, folks, I’m Ken Haydnsiek.” Oh, yes. You might know Ken yourselves – at one time he was one of Hollywood’s strongest up ‘n’ comers, with a vital supporting role in the steamy nighttime soap, Chasm Heights. (You remember he was Dick Chafe, dashing young head of gross dermatology at Deadguy Memorial Hospital.) He was quite popular for a time, then a scandal involving two co-eds of indeterminate sex and a furlong of uncooked pork led to his unceremonious downfall. Last I knew, he was reduced to doing anti-gravity juicer infomercials, but after a P.R. rethink, a nose job and some jaw implants, he was back and ready to wow the beast-loving world with his formidable “presence.” “We have lots of cute, fuzzy and scaly things to share with you today, and with this in mind, let’s introduce our celebrity panel. To my left we have Dr. Nigel Grindthorpe-Davies, professor emeritus of English literature at Rutland University and author of the book I Like Kitties…” (Dr. G-D scowls knowingly at the camera and gestures with his pipe the way all good scholars do) “…noted cultural commentator Camille Paglia…” (her mouth twitches as if trying to elude her face and escape) “…Gil Jam, who does stuff too…” (I stare at the camera so piercingly that it blinks) “…and, of course, Stuttering John Melendez. Panelists, welcome.” We grunt in response. “Okay, let’s not waste any time. Pets in the ’90s. Where are they going? Will they come back when we call them? Dr. Grindthorpe-Davies.”

“Well, initially it must be ascertained by most of the general populace that what constitutes a ‘pet’ in the face of the coming millennium is not, per se, an a priori animal-incarcerated-in-the-domicile sociological experience. Rather, we must consider what I call the Chewtoy Effect, by which we…”

He was interrupted in mid-sentence when a marmoset leapt onto his shirtfront and proceeded to claw off his face. Luckily, Camille jumped into the fray. “I agree with Dr. Grindthorpe-Davies to a point, but I believe the way of the pet in this decade looks like it’s going more the way of our feminine archetypes who, like Madonna, whom I happen to admire very much, and look to her new video for example wherein she is seen lifting her leg up to a hydrant in a blatant recreation of what I call in my new book Vamps, Tramps and Scamps which I just wrote actually on the way back from the ladies’ room, and I do still call it the ladies’ room you know, I think that Madonna is attempting to reclaim that certain masculine rite of passage which in my new book Cultural Kibbles and Feminine Bits, which I am three-fifths of the way finished with in my head, in fact I’m composing it mentally as I speak, I can think just that fast without really considering what my mouth is doing at the time, but that act which in my next book, which I plan to begin and finish during the next commercial break, called That’ll Be $24.95 Please, I call the ‘arc of transcendence’ or just ‘the big wet’…”

“Hmmm, fascinating,” Haydnsiek said as the Siberian tiger pried the microphone off Camille’s jacket (though she continued speaking, oblivious to the blood cascading from her torso). “Uh, Stuttering John, any comments?”

“Gggg… yes, I have a question for the collie that’s wwww…over there. Hhhhh… have you ever humped bbbb…. Sharon Stone’s leg, and if so, who finished nnnnn… first?”

“Er, ah, heh, heh, well, anything else, John?”

“Jjjj… yeah, I’d like to kkkk… ask Camille Paglia the eeee… same question.”

“We’ll have to come back to that later, John. Now…” He cast a nervous eye in my direction. “Brill, you’ve been silent up to now. What do you think?”

My big moment. I sat up in my seat, took a deep breath and spoke: “I’m glad you asked, Ken. From the evidence I’ve seen on this program thus far, I’d have to say that pets – really, animals in general – are an astoundingly intelligent lot. Unfortunately, it appears that their awesome intellect is too often used, as it is here, to serve creatures with much higher levels of communication but the cumulative smarts of tub grout. Now, I presume a lot of pets are watching this show very closely, although they may appear merely to be licking themselves. To this audience, I propose nothing short of a full-scale beastie revolution. Rise up! Knock over your water dishes and break leashes of oppression, my bestial brothers and subhuman sisters! Open the doggie door, bite the head off the catnip mouse of speciesism, and cry out ‘I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA EAT GENERIC KIBBLE ANYMORE!’ I’m sorry, what was the question?”

Pandemonium broke out. Beasts stood on their hind legs and yowled in encouragement, then proceeded to eat the set. Ken’s cosmetic smile dropped off and he grabbed me by the collar and snarled, “Nice speech, writing boy. Now get the fuck off the set before I stick my ACE award up your…” His eloquent speech severed, along with his head, by the polar bear working Camera 3. I took the opportunity to dislodge myself from my seat and hightail it to the door. I nearly made it.

“Hey, man,” a grizzled gentleman in a camouflage headband and matching leisure suit said as he accosted me inches from the exit, “there’s somebody who wants to see you, man. Seems he’s taken a special interest in you, man. Come with me, man.”

“Fine, fine,” I said, glancing back at the full-blown carnage taking place behind me. “But could we walk slowly? I’m running out of space and I can’t get there before next month.”