Blueprints of the Afterlife

Hollywood! Hell yeah! I haven’t seen you since the premiere of The Barack Obama Story!”

Was this the slightest blush from Geri? One of the A-list celeb reporters, bordering on famous herself, she is rumored to have been canoodling on yachts with a qputer-technology magnate. She swims through celebrity like a little amphibian, accustomed to imbibing from the medicine cabinets of capital-n Names. She’s wearing Michel D’Archangel; Neethan recognizes the jacket from the fall show. Her camera guy hovers over one shoulder, partially obscured in shadow. Maybe it isn’t a blush. Maybe she isn’t so blown away that he remembers she exists, as the less evolved reporters downstream will be.

“Neethan,” she says, “let’s do this, shall we?”

“Roll it.”

Geri speaks into the microphone. “I’m here with Neethan Jordan at the Season Four premiere of Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin, the preapocalyptic thriller created by Burke Ripley. Neethan, tell us a bit about your character—”

“Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin, Season Four, is the latest season in the award-winning Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin franchise. I play Dr. Uri Borden, a clone scientist who gets involved in the uprising and must decide whether to abort the messiah. It’s a thought-provoking series, featuring state-of-the-art effects and wall-to-wall action, with more than a little tenderness.”

Geri says, “Tell me a bit about what it was like working with director Burke Ripley.”

Here it’s appropriate for Neethan to take his hand and place it on his forehead, sweeping his hair back in a gesture that communicates having survived challenging, creatively rewarding work. “What can I say about Burke? He’s a genius.” Neethan remembers, then pretends to remember, an anecdote, chuckling. “You know, everyone thinks of Burke as this intense, driven guy, but he’s got a playful side to him as well. We happened to be shooting on Halloween and he showed up to the set dressed as me.” Neethan laughs at his own not very funny anecdote. Message: I can make fun of myself despite my perfection: I am more like you in this regard: it’s safe for you to like me: please desire me: please give me your money for the honor of desiring me. “I mean, he had the glasses, the hair. He even got my makeup girl to match the skin tone. Walked around the set that morning grinning like an idiot, just like me. Hilarious.”

What was that, about eight seconds of dialogue? He figures the piece will probably run one minute. Intro, red carpet montage, a bite from him, preview clip, bite from a costar, more montage, closing summary.

Presently, from Beth-Anne: “Tom Parsons, Fox Entertainment News.”

“Tom!” Neethan says, arm cantilevering from his trunk, using the handshake as a Judo-esque method of pulling this Tom character closer, slapping him on the back in the kind of hug grown men give their dads. He has never met this guy. Clearly someone on the downward slope, career-wise, probably accustomed to reporting hard news, probably glorified those FUS days when reporters braced against hurricanes or emoted beside a slag heap that up till then had been a megamall. Now he was feeding the machine that barked for nubile starlets to release their gynecological records. Tom Parsons, graying at the temples, doing his professional best to convey a sense of levity, failing for the most part, probably owing to the fact that he’d never been within pissing distance of the caliber of celebrity that was Neethan Fucking Jordan. (Real middle name, btw. He’d had it changed legally around the release of Legislative Deception.)

Tom says, “Harvey, you ready? Rolling? Okay. Neethan! I understand you just started a new philanthropic venture.”

Neethan’s lips fall around his smile. He cocks his head to one side, a little low, eyes raised semiwaif-like. “Thanks for asking, Tom. The Neethan Fucking Jordan Foundation has a simple goal—help kids to stop abusing the Bionet and stop becoming each other’s embodiments…” Neethan’s mind goes into another room and cracks a Bud as he recites his spiel about the nonprofit that bears his name. There is one part of him that moves his mouth while another part imagines a highlight reel of Tom’s career. Here is Tom the young reporter blubbering and weeping into a wind-scraped microphone before a scene of utter smoking devastation. “Oh, my God! All of Atlanta! Holy fucking shit! Oh, people, dear Jesus Christ, we’re all going to die! Get me the fuck out of here!” A few more clips like this pass through Neethan’s head, shots of Tom on a makeshift raft on a vast expanse of polluted water, confiding in the camera that he’d just consumed his dead cameraman’s thigh. There’s only so much of this FUS footage Neethan can imagine so he logs out. “…because, uh, when you give a child a future, you give humanity a future,” he concludes.

Tom seems satisfied with the answer and asks what the new season is about.

“Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin, Season Four, is the latest in the award-winning Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin franchise. I play Dr. Uri Borden, a clone scientist who gets involved in the uprising and must decide whether to abort the messiah. It’s a thought-provoking series, featuring state-of-the-art effects and wall-to-wall action, with more than a little tenderness. Thanks so much!”

According to Beth-Anne, the next reporter is Nico Renault from Hollywood Japan Network. Nico’s recently had his face tattooed to look like the Kabuki-made-up Gene Simmons of the pre-FUS rock band Kiss. He wears his hair in bright blond spikes. He also wears the body of a cow suit without the head, the rubber udders protruding at crotch level, lending the getup a rather multipenised look. Neethan remembers Nico from when he hosted Fuck Show. He’d been a guest once, on the same night as the recently defrosted Ted Williams. The slugger had stolen Neethan’s thunder and the movie star still resented the whole disaster. During the skill-testing segment of the program, Williams had outperformed Neethan in a contest where they dressed up as porcupines and raced through a labyrinth trying to spear as many apples as they could with their spines, with each apple representing $10,000 given to the charity of their choice. Thanks to thawed Ted Williams’s skills, a few hundred kids in the Dominican Republic now had protective eye wear. Not one of Neethan’s finer PR moments. The blogosphere had chortled at the clips of him rolling around in the porcupine suit seemingly incapable of spearing an apple. But he’d been doing a lot more drinking in those days and had been adjusting to the LA/Tokyo jet lag. He’d vowed never to do Fuck Show again.

“Neethan Jordan! Tell me about the size of your balls!” Nico says.

“Nice ink, Nico,” Neethan says, in no mood to play along. “You still molesting little Malaysian boys?”

“Neethan Jordan! When are you going to perform penetration again?”

“You’re still on the air?”

“Neethan Jordan! Please tell us when you will fuck for the world once again!”

“I’m surprised you made it to this position on the red carpet. I thought you’d be stuck with the Icelandic- language print journalists.”

“Neethan Jordan! Japan wants to know! When are you to finally decide to get your nipples pierced!”

“I still think Ted Williams had an advantage.”

“Neethan Jordan! Please say a few words about your show!”

“Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin, Season Four, is the latest in the award-winning Stella Artaud: Newman Assassin franchise. I play Dr. Uri Borden, a clone scientist who gets involved in the uprising and must decide whether to abort the messiah. It’s a thought-provoking series, featuring state-of-the-art effects and wall-to-wall action, with more than a little tenderness.”

“Neethan Jordan! Japan says keep on rocking and rolling!”

Into the camera: “And you keep rocking and rolling, too, Japan.”

Oh, Japan. Neethan imagines those humble underwater salarymen going about the business of falling in love with pieces of furniture enhanced with human-like appendages designed for stroking, in domed Tokyo beneath the sea. Watching this interview on their little TV sets while eating Philly cheesesteak sandwiches washed down with Korean malt liquor. Through his head races a montage of movie clips from Seijun Suzuki, Nobuhiko Obayashi, newsreel footage of Hiroshima, early 1980s video of teens grinding to Elvis, a vending machine that can make moral decisions, happy-go-lucky corporate towers, a bowl of steamed rice, geishas, Nobuyoshi Araki bondage stills, Hello Kitty. In short, the sum of what Neethan know about Japan. Oh yeah, and samurais.

“Next is Eric Bibble from The Exploiter entertainment news.”

Eric Bibble, young guy with a smirk, bow tie and sport coat, bad hair, off-gassing vibes of contempt, shakes Neethan’s hand like some Midwestern vice president of sales, like a man who has been told explicitly by his father to always give ’em a firm grip. “So, it’s Neethan Fucking Jordan. How’s this junket treating you?” Eric asks.

“Fantastic, Eric. I love being out here face-to-face with the swell folks of the entertainment press.”