Hello, you dearly neglected Money Shot Blog readers. I am not your usual host. My name is Julius Hoffman. But you can call me “Ray”.
I come to this here esteemed porn blog with terrible news. Your esteemed porn-blogger, and my dear friend and business partner, is dead.
Sherman McCoy is dead.
It’s June 30. 7PM as I write this. Or 19:00… what-fucking-ever. It’s been an unusually hot and sweaty day…
Hear that rumbling in the sky, Denmark?
That’s our good dead friend Mr. Kierkegaard coming back to the land of the living.
He is going to be joining our neophyte porn company.
His position? Chief Dead Existentialist. Every company needs one of those.
Only a dead man can dominate the situation in Denmark. Licentiousness, envy, gossip, and mediocrity are everywhere supreme. Were I to die now the effect of my life would be exceptional; much of what I have simply jotted down carelessly in the Journals would become of great importance and have a great effect; for then people would have grown reconciled to me and would be able to grant me what was, and is, my right.
– Søren Kierkegaard, 1849
Wow was he right.
But times are different now. We aren’t so hostile toward new ideas or new ways of thinking. In fact, we invite them; or at least the smart people and the creative people and the conscious people do.
Anyway, you get to go another round, Søren.
This time there’ll be much more hedonism involved. That much is sure.
Ray and I agreed that we would take the month of June easy.
Brainstorm. Think of every possible idea. Look at even the most basic concepts in a new way. Unwind in a different environment.
I was making coffee when Ray stumbled out of his room this morning.
Coffee?
Yeah.
Ray opened the fridge, browsed, shut it.
Do we have any hash left?
We didn’t have any hash left and I told him so. In consolation he could have the last piece of CHOKOLADE KAGE if he wanted it. Chocolate cake for breakfast just like Bill Cosby makes for his kids…
And anyway it was time for us to get going. It was time to start the project. No more messing around.
Time to really begin the next chapter of our lives. Time to Yell Fire! Time to do something god-damn important! I was beginning to psych myself up…
Are you with me, morning boy? Are you with me?
He was with me. I explained that he should take the day lightly. Rest. De-tox. Whatever. Just stay here and sober up so we can look at the plan with fresh eyes tomorrow.
I was going for a walk and then I was going to write.
Hey Ray… Stay off the hash for a while, OK?
OK. You too, right?
Right.
I walked.
I walked down to Christania and it was really crowded because the Roskilde Festival was beginning and I went to our usual dealer’s stand to buy a super-hash joint.
Some new dude was manning the stand.
You want the small one for fifty kroner?
Or this one for eighty…
Another dude standing with his back to us turns around and it is one of the normal dealers and he recognizes me and I look at him and shrug and he looks at the new-dude dealer and then hands me the super-hash joint that normally costs 120 kroner but we get them for the 100 kroner ‘cuz we’re such fucking good customers.
I walked. Smoked. Thought. Wondered if Ray would show up.
…at Søren Kierkegaard’s grave.
Those are my iPod earpuds laying there on his final resting place.
I wanted to give him the chance to hear some good modern music. He was listening to Silversun Pickups when I took the snap. Growing Old is Getting Old. Somehow that seemed appropriate…
When I got to his grave, there were two touristy-looking young women staring down at his old dead existentialist bawawa…
I took a little stroll around the old part of Assistens Kirkegård, waiting for some time along with him.
I wonder if Søren’s spirit haunts this place.
Does he, in the night, wander around?
Is he… perhaps… looking for a drink?
Does he ever get horny?
These are important questions.
As I’m pondering this, I come across the grave of one Miss Ellen Margrethe Seknner.
She died back in 1871. Was 22 years old.
Does the statue look like she does?
I mean… it’s angelic and graceful and all that… but still…
She’s sorta hot. In an angelic-dead-marble sort of way.
Betcha Søren’s spirit is fucking her.
Every night he probably strolls over to her, looks down at her sweet angelic face, and…
What’s it gonna be, baby? Either we’ll make love together in a wonderful sensual merging of our long-dead spirits… Or I can just slam you round and do it rough in your heavenly ass.
It’s Monday. What are you doing today? Me… I’m smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos, and masturbating.
No… Not really. I just wanted to get that in there. That, of course, is a line from yesterday’s episode of Breaking Bad.
Grabbing the latest Breaking Bad has been a regular Monday morning experience for me. I don’t own a TV so I download the episodes from iTunes… each new one is available online a few hours after it airs Sunday night.
It’s a really great show, don’t you think? I love the moral ambiguity. How contemptible is Walter White, if you think he is contemptible at all? I don’t think he’s a terrible man. He makes a drug that people buy of their own free will; the consequences of its use are not his responsibility. And he had to waste that Crazy Eight dude because of the “kill or be killed” situation. I think the lies he told to his wife and kid are the worst aspect of what he’s done. And he really owes poor Jesse Pinkman a lot for all that he put him through… $672K ought to cover that tho’.
Another reason I love the show is because of the fact that Science is always looming over the characters like some sort of Olympian god. Being a former science/math geek who has turned to a less “mainstream” career myself, I can identify with Walter White’s situation, and I can appreciate the character’s deep feeling for the power of science.
And it takes place in New Mexico! I did my post-doc at SFI right there! I can remember all the distinctive smells and the distinctive sights… and I remember it all being permeated with ideas of complex systems and chaos and Coyote and the javelinas and the fucking jackalope and Ten Thousand Waves and Fat Man and Little Boy and Georgia O’Keefe vagina paintings and working through all the volumes of Landau & Lifschitz and all the wonderment that goes along…
One of the best things about Santa Fe was the people. Within the complex systems crowd, you could talk about anything and it would be open for lively mindful discussion and possible action. Any crazy fucking idea that popped into your mind! Anything at all, no matter how nuts it seemed, was fair game…
Let me tell you how much of a math geek I am: Some people have memorized the first few digits of PI, but I can tell you first 20 of the Feigenbaum Number! (It was actually Professor Feigenbaum and his googley insane eyes that led me into the porn business, but that’s another story for another time…)
Time for a road trip to Santa Fe? No… Not now. Maybe in the fall. Besides… I’m getting ready to head back to Copenhagen at the end of the month. Gonna be in Denmark through the summer. My pal and business partner Ray Hoffman has finally got his international legal shit sorted out and is ready to shoot some porn… Why, exactly, we need to travel to Europe to shoot it when we both live in Southern California- the porn capital of the fucking world- is beyond me. But, eh, the pot there is good, and the summer days are long, and the air is fresh, and the girls are hot… So I’m not complaining.
This afternoon I was bumbling around my Copenhagen apartment, pondering life and existence. Thinking about this. And about that.
I came to the conclusion that it was too much thinking. I needed to kill some brain cells. Alcohol was an option. My fridge is stocked full of Prince Charles’s Select Ale, which I still regard as the best beer in the world.
But for a while now, I’ve intended to go and buy some pot. I’m no marijuana connoisseur– I’m more interested in the right to smoke it than actually doing so. But I was curious as to how buying it in Denmark would compare to getting hold of it in California, especially since California’s effective legalization of it… for HAHAHA “medicinal purposes” HAHAHA.
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