Then he smirks like the last person you\u2019d see before you die.<\/p>\n
I breathe in deeply, and next thing I vanish.<\/p>\n
II<\/b><\/h4>\n
(Hours earlier)<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u2019m illegally streaming \u201cA Real Pain\u201d<\/em> in an undisclosed room, using a VPN, wondering if I\u2019m risking jail or if I am to become the next victim of the unquiet American, the man who blew me on a train before attending his own retrial for murder \u2014and whose true name is Ralph Lauren. He has spent the last 12 hours sexting me.<\/p>\n It was hot at the start, then it went Cold War kind of blue, and right now we are reaching mind-fuck proportions thanks to Benji Kaplan, Kieran Culkin\u2019s character, the outstanding Pain in A Real Pain<\/i>.<\/p>\n The movie is the account of the Holocaust Package Holiday to Poland that cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) embark on to honour the memory of their recently deceased granny. It is a harmless Hollywood film with Kieran Culkin in it, which is all you need to turn any movie into an extraordinary thing.<\/p>\n I\u2019m conveying his unquoted quotes to Ralph, which is kind of fitting, since Benji is a USA shitty-zen in Holocaust land, while Ralph Lauren is an expat zen-shit of identical origin waiting for his own trial in Hiroshima.<\/p>\n Ralph sends me a photo of a giant resort he is building in Mexico. It looks like a giant banh mi \u2013the Vietnamese sandwich\u2014 wrestling with an army of green peas. Kieran\u2019s drops his line in perfect time to make it work as a caption for the snap: \u201cMoney is like fucking heroin for boring people.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I type the line, add my Viet sandwich simile, and send it straight away.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were a bored millionaire on heroin I\u2019d probably build a yoghourt pyramid with your own sperm,\u201d<\/em> writes Ralph.<\/p>\n Hands down. That\u2019s more like it.<\/p>\n I wonder if he might be the chosen one. The thrill of chatting up a murderer has never been harder \u2014in the nicest hard way.<\/p>\n Sadly, nothing really good lasts for very long<\/p>\n I suggest meeting up at the Peace Memorial park, and he replies: \u201cI\u2019m going to stick the whole needle sculpture up your ass.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Unimpressed would be an understatement.<\/p>\n To change the subject or to block him, that is the question.<\/p>\n Do I need to push reality in order to feed my fiction? I know the answer. Whenever writing can lead to your own death, you know you are in the right way. Ultimately, all writers are looking for their own eradication from life when they write, don\u2019t they?<\/p>\n If your subject is deadly and you are writing about life and death, it would be awfully negligent to ignore him, no matter how filthy he shall get. In the end, he will feed you and you will devour his hand, write, and eradicate yourself from life.<\/p>\n It is the perfect crime.\u00a0 <\/span>Benji Kaplan would be so proud.<\/p>\n A Real Pain<\/i> could have been another frivolous feel good movie about the genocide you never lived if it were not for Benji, who keeps losing his zen-shit and humanizes the whole Hollywood-script-charade with timely, brutal lines, delivered with that cheeky loving face that you\u2019d like to turn into a teddy bear, a doughnut, a football club, a ball, a ring, a planet, a mug, and, ultimately, a dream language.<\/p>\n While Benji and the rest of the Holocaust Holiday Package travellers are heading towards a concentration camp in a first class train, he loses it outside the deluxe, pornographic toilet. His cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) says, \u201cMaybe there\u2019s a time and place to grieve.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe are on a fucking Holocaust tour. If now is not the time and place to grieve\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Before the end of the movie, Ralph Lauren asks if I would like to rent an old man. I was about to hire one for tomorrow in Tokyo, so I say yes please.<\/p>\n He sends me the location of a seemingly wasteland in town. Before I leave I send him the photo of the Japan Times<\/i> reporting his upcoming court case for murder. According to the story, the trial started two hours ago.<\/p>\n \u201cOh dear, my lawyer managed to postpone it. I hope it is not disturbing, I can explain\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n I tell him I\u2019m used to criminals and ask if he is scared.<\/p>\n \u201cVery much, but I\u2019d have an old army man with me, so don\u2019t worry.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I get out of the room and walk the quiet streets of the city at dusk. I rent a city bike and pedal quietly towards the location. The city is eerily empty. The sky is pink and the clouds are punctured, and the music is lovely. I wonder who is playing the soundtrack. There\u2019s no one else around, all businesses are shut down and you can feel a weird buzz in the air, start of spring kind of vibe.<\/p>\n I walk down an alley, and then the alleged wasteland opens up.<\/p>\n It is not a wasteland but a perfectly trimmed lawn and I see the wooden window of an adorable kitchen, chequered red and white drapes.<\/p>\n She is washing the dishes; the sun is shining, rainbow bubbles floating in the air. And there is a robin quietly singing on the edge of a branch. The tree is a majestic oak and she is whistling while she washes, bubbles forming and vanishing into thin air, a drop of iridescent water, their only legacy.<\/p>\n Then the dog walks diagonally across the frame into the lavish garden lawn, sinks its head, shakes, grabs something, and starts running towards me. I know the dog, and the kitchen, the drapes, the bubbles and every piece of subtext, all the ellipses and the clouds, every single particle. I feel an urgent need to smoke and when the dog looks at me and opens his mouth I know that there is going to be a human ear inside it, and I also know that it belongs to the rented army man.<\/p>\n Next thing I feel a snake texture on my neck and his rough fingers erasing my left side. He asks me to stay calm and then he says.<\/p>\n \u201cA Real Pain is to wake up knowing that it is the first morning of your life without David Lynch.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I HIROASHES Hiroshima could be the end of many things, including Aikido and walking. I\u2019m on a stretcher. Reiko and Takashi are carrying me. They both wear green scrubs and are walking real fast towards the helicopter, which has a massive Red Cross on its side. I recall that I\u2019m in Japan with no travel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1059],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/bpangparamapam-scaled.jpg\")
<\/b><\/h4>\nYoghourt Pyramids<\/b><\/h4>\n
Change or Block<\/b><\/h4>\n
Dead right<\/b><\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fiestaybullshit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/now1.png\")
<\/b><\/h4>\nMagritte<\/b><\/h4>\n
Army Dog<\/b><\/h4>\n