Life at the Sentient Bean / Melee

By the time I entered I could see Bannister was trying hard to control himself as he asked for apparently not the first time, “Can you give me a clue just what you feel it is lacking?”

With that Cyrus saw me and said, “Finally, someone who understands what this music needs?”

“Alright Cyrus, lets go give it a listen,” Cyrus picked at my shoulder like I was a cuddle stone as we went off to audio land. There were plenty of mirrors in there so I knew he would be distracted while I told the mixers in private to pitch the music up a half step and play it louder. That would keep Cyrus busy for a while. I could wangle the real issue from Banister while he was occupied with his tin bird brain ears. Now for some quality B and M pacification.

Bannister and Mora were in conference looking none too happy. The Chinese censors were coming over. Apparently they take their fish seriously and wanted to review our perhaps overly sexualized fishy character for sanitizing.

“But we bribed them already.” Mora was seething.

“So we will bribe them again.” Bannister said coolly. Once we get this product rolling out, it will fly off shelves in the overseas market alone. Not to mention if they still maintain this political Kabuki ban here; the black market proceeds will have Cyrus up to his beak in seeds. But where is Fang Fang Wu?”

“I don’t know. I am going to talk to Suki tonight and see what she knows.” was my first offering in this round of deep conference.

“So then what? I mean, what are you going to do?” Bannister said in his ever practical manner.

“First thing is go and zap my invoice to you so you can pay promptly before leaving.” I said with a smile and started heading towards my office.

“I mean about Fang Fang,” he said in an apparent attempt to delay the inevitable billing.

“Collect from you and then go find her. The question is which one of those things will be more difficult.”

Bannister just rolled his eyes. Aurora Mora was trying to sneak out of the room. “I haven’t forgotten you either Aurora.” I said over my shoulder and closed my office door.

Behind that office door is where this story started:

I am the moral hazard. The risk the money lenders use to foist their canard to justify usurious rates and divine right to reap prophets. I did not set out to exemplify and justify their mean spirited ways; but here I am.- Pyoter Bierbuston Symes ~ 21st Century Saying

There were doors behind doors of the pantry doors. A door that led to a staircase up. A door that led to a door to the porch and then out. All doors where I never knew there were doors. But when my son said he saw a girl with immaculately combed floor length silky black hair sweep her way out of one of those doors that I knew not of, I knew who she was and I knew why the cold chill of my blood pumped through me. I had been here before and yet I had never been here before.

It had been an ongoing dream place that had manifested itself in my sleep many times. I knew there were chambers back there . I knew it would be filled with space that I craved. Space that was once mine, but no longer is. Filled with plush comfy furniture. As upkeep bills kept rising, that part of my brain; my house, my life had been walled off. Shut down. Substantively and existentially as well. But the part of my cellular structure that thrived on consumption screamed out to eliminate those barriers so I could stack more items within those walls. On those walls. Around those walls. Never mind that it has been decades since I needed such luxuries. Less the time that I even wanted those luxuries. Until recently I had eliminated all such perceptual stackings.

But what of that son of mine? He would be about my age right now. If he had survived. I would like to see how my recombined stacked DNA had turned out. Perhaps some records still were held from before the hair plundering began. I departed right after it was clear that the Stax Lords resplendent in the comb over copycat hair had prevailed.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Fish on the Brain

Cyrus strutted in with those words. I swear he dressed and moved more and more like a parakeet every time I saw him. Which was rather disconcerting considering  he was a very large and a very rich man. But there he was in a powder blue suit, the whitest shirt I had seen in years, and a mottled grey bow tie. Perhaps his morphing into a bird had something to do with his fish fixation of late, but a clear theme had emerged with his work. At his side was Aurora Mora and it dawned on me where I had just seen that face and figure. The animators had used her to model our fishy temptress in the spot. Cyrus’s motivations and drives were generally as confused as the confused and obfuscated messages we were foisting on the public.

“You need to get Fang Fang back lads, she never would have let you stray as far from the fishy trail as you had in that last cut.” Cyrus whistled as he found the mirror in the room and he moved his head jerkily as he admired his beloved.

He was right of course. Having the Fangster shacked up with Cyrus was a great source of insider information. She would give us a heads up in the night after Cyrus had one of his brain storms. We would be well on the way before he even arrived at the suite. Fang Fang also would take great delight in describing Plush's mating rituals which often involved him brainstorming current campaign ideas while doing “unspeakable things to my person” as Fang would put it. She claimed to suffer through it, but the look in her eye belied the suffering point.

All I know is when she fled Cyrus and begged me to hide her she was not the same Fang Fang Wu from Buffalo that I had met in the alley behind the Sentient Bean. She had sharpened edges upon return. Sure she still portrayed the tough worldly smart aleck oriental female delight in public, but the softer private side of her had disappeared after Cyrus. The only glimpse was in her dreams and nightmares. Only then could I see the original little Wu’ster, But after waking up shivering she would collect herself and not ever let the inner little girl out to play anymore.

Bannister was talking budget with Aurora, because nobody talked dollars with Cyrus. Bannister had that producer middle man hat on now so I knew the rest of the day would be one of:  “How much will this cost?, What is taking so long? I’m not paying for that.”

But that’s OK. We would make our dough by marking up the lunch order. Bread and Circuses should have been Cyrus’s middle name.

Cyrus was done at the mirror, so he began to chirp about the ramifications of the research into the meme of fish. I knew my headache would get much worse as this little diatribe began.

“Fish lads. It goes back to the beginning, where we all began. We all are just chock full of former fish molecules. Damn it! The very core of our brain goes back to when we were all fish. Swimming and reproducing in that primordial soup. It is in our very core. We see these creatures fluttering around, and since we know they won’t eat us, or at least most of them won’t, all it does is engage our breeding instinct. Yes. Three responses. Either we want to eat them, fuck them, or if they stand in the way of our eating and fucking, eliminate them. In this film we are going for the big ol’ randy flounder response in us. Whether they know it or not, people watching this fish will feel invigorated, they will want energy. Energy provided by the caffeine in our illustrious beverage. The alcohol will tear down their inhibitions. Their public persona will become radiant, wide awake, and most the uninhibited little beasts we can be. Shivery and shimmering with moist viscous exteriors, rubbing membrane against membrane coating each other with our own special brand of sputum. Thats what we are selling. Selling the sizzle, not the steak. Any knucklehead can drink whiskey with a cola back. We are selling the ultimate combo platter. Heaped high with promise of immersion into that great ecstasy. Now get on with it! Aurora!! Deep conference.”

Banister in his best cover your own ass moment asked again, “Cyrus, are you sure we don’t need to add a disclaimer mentioning the other ingredients in our product?”

“Tut tut my dear boy. That is so 20th century of you.”

With that Cyrus toddled towards the conference room with Aurora Mora in tow and shut the door.

“Chop chop, wicky wicky,” announced Bannister. “You heard the man”

As we worked only once did a disheveled and wobbly kneed Aurora exit the room to provide the lunch order. “Are you sure you don’t need Cyrus out here yet,” she asked hopefully. I shook my head. Aurora sighed and resignedly returned to the conference room.

Before lunch arrived we had a surprise visitor. It was non other than Suki Su Wu.

“Have any of you heard from Fang Fang,” she asked in a highly disconcerted tone as she scanned the room.

“Last I saw she was busy humping a slot machine.” I said with trepidation.

Suki looked disgusted and then cast her eye’s down in the oriental shame ploy I recognized from her sister. I knew when she would look up from that feint I was in big trouble.

Life at the Sentient Bean / Night of the Living Drunks

So Banister blustered in and he unleashed his scroll of changes du jour. I was never quite sure why he printed these things out, they were in my e-mail, and especially why he printed them in scroll fashion. But it did give his entrances a certain flair, like returning from the mountain with the law. Thank goodness the stone printers were prohibitive on cost, otherwise these notes could become a serious weapon when the sessions went south. The first proclamation to come forth from the lips of Bannister Crawler were:

“First, the scene with the girl, white jumpsuit, parachute, and burro has to come right out. That time goes to more product shots.”

Some things never change.

“Who’s idea was that anyway” demanded Bannister.

Well the likely candidate was the original Art Director since she had been fired soon after this project began, though I miss her because I liked the way she thought, and Bannister was all over that suggestion.

“Good thinking” proclaimed Bannister. “let’s get cracking!”

And this is where we went:

Dingy room with a large circular bar that dominated the space leaving only a narrow path behind the patrons seated at the bar. Perched at one corner on top of the bar was a show platform upon which was a slowly undulating forty year old stripper dancing on the mock up stage. Pondering the cesarian scar on the stripper are two young men in their very early twenties with generic bottles of swill with “Beer” printed on the label. This is their first foray into the adult drinking world and it ain’t a pretty sight. The grizzled old men are either half asleep at the bar or arguing about some now meaningless point of political Kabuki theatre. That is except for the few with their tongues lolling out of toothless mouths while leering up at the performer. Our two initiates also seem focused on the tiny dancer but have been drinking all afternoon and are now moving into the heart of the night mostly befuddled while dealing with the conflicting emotions of MILF lust and Oedipus complexes long buried. Through the bar door swims a shimmering, undulating, and technicolour neon tropical fish with an extreme femine form. Bright red quivering lips encircling a seductively round mouth, slender neck leading to soft shoulders and willowy arms tipped with delicate hands gesturing smoothly around an absurdly tiny waist which expands to a superbly shaped behind before resulting in the archetypical mermaid tail. Yet the whole fishy package is topped with two heaving luminescent breasts. As she slides around and between the two young men softly brushing faces with slender fingers, breasts against their arms, and tail lightly flowing up their inner thighs the womafish has certainly drawn their attention away from the aging stripper who just moments ago had their undivided attention. Holding the large containers of caffeinated Pumps Beer in front of the heaving, glistening breasts the fish tart says to the lads, “Grab a hold of these and steer me like a cow.”

The lads are transported by the fish to a Eurotrash nightclub where there are hundreds of women their age, in the prime of their hard bodied youth, dancing with abandon. Huge Bacchanal on the order of the Matrix Reloaded rave. These two lads are happily pounding down the caffeine laced beer, and from the glowing faces of the women surrounding them you can tell it will be their night to remember. Fast montage into a frenzied and blur of images till we come abruptly to the the final scene with lads passed out on top of an aquarium with tropical fish lazily swimming about. One fish has a twinkle in it’s eye and winks at the two young men who look at each other and then at the camera and exclaim “Woof!”

Tag Line:                                          

          Pump Beer

Looks like a fish, swims like a fish, steers like a cow

I just looked at Bannister and he looked at me.

“Before you say it, yes we bought the rights to that tag line, and the client likes it.” was all Bannister had to say. We now had to make it happen.

With that Cyrus Plush rolled in with Auroa Mora on his arm followed but the rest of his entourage and announced “Yes ladies and gentlemen. The research shows it is all about the fish.”

My head hurt now.