Days of Papal Infallibility

"Because I have pressure sores"--  Christopher Walken

Al Pacino is a transformation performer. Within the apex of his talent, he changed American cinema, worrying about the maturity of applied technique much later in his career. Andy Garcia has moments of only fleeting authenticity, aping the great man with whom he appeared in Coppola's trilogy summation, which should not have been made, just as much of Garcia's work should not have been made, except when he gets interesting with self-referential irony about the art of melodrama itself. as in the 09 City Island, which makes a middling attempt at creating a language around the business of cinematic creation within a movie itself, pushed even further, and sharper, on cable, as when De Niro played a producer and Bruce Willis plays himself, having a bit of a Homeric temper tantrum in a clip on yet another Charlie Rose promotional segment. Is this language of sophistication  synchronic over time?

The Roman Catholic Church is already a dead entity, despite militant fossils like myself who do not believe in pastoral tolerance for homosexual indulgence, throwing my moral weight with the synod over Francis, then caught myself. Church authority began to die from the dawn of mass literacy, let alone the dawn of Protestant reformation and the Vatican 2.0 under John, and the fact that the Argentine is playing politics as opposed to being a spiritual leader means doctrinal infallibility is a de facto anachronism. If a speck of spastic dirt on the wall under increasing intestinal stress feels disheartened by apostasy as a democratic forum, then all is finished.

Declare defeat, go home, and perhaps preserve my form as a calcified figure on which the grandchildren of millennials can gawk, a pseudo-historical trope. What is the big deal? Fisting in secret, fisting  in the open, I myself have posted about Frank and his fingers within my rectrum as a mock-up of vigor, virility. Believers might say I'm lying to myself, that I really do believe in Christ as equal parts human divine, laughing at the rigorous objections of Dawkins to words like transubstanation, and yes, well, I was raised in Catholicism, and in middle adolescence, threw my emotions into testament-- but even before university, I challenged priests and Jewish counselors alike, questing, on fire, offensive, even as a young woman, had anyone cared, I would have been excommunicated, which invites laughter, which in Eco, spells the death of metaphysical need for answers.

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead strives to be larger than itself, and yes, Walken exposes, successfully, the narcissism with which we surround broken bodies, but as a comedy about brutality, boast, and repressive tolerances, lines not to be crossed, it bounces a bit much, like an IKEA catalog glorifying plastique fabrication even as its laminated pages curl and burn in the stink of a propane fire, the fatigue before the actual dying commences, not living long enough to polish every post, which justifies some literary critical assertion that post-modern subversion has fallen to the wayside of the NASDAQ index.

All I ever desired was a decent husband, like the fictional Maigret who actually seems to have more corporeal embodiment than Bruno Cremer, the actor who best fleshed out the detective among so many famous creations which have no real life counterpart; a decent husband, one who would have supported my ambition, a pleasant hamlet, my own space, decent literary friends. Instead, I am ugly, a trauma who draws out lesbianistic tendencies in even more marginal ugly inner city minorities who make pest control seem heroic. And yes, after the traumatic episodes that challenged my life itself, I asked, queried my internal self, did I want those games with another female, and such fleeting hormonal sensations which come with masturbatory aggression, that level of pornography itself whose exploitation is still policed, regardless of the progressive scorched earth policy for tolerance.

My answer: a resounding no, is like a flake of dandruff in a libertine world, healthy pink flesh too often pasty, soft, anemic, or brown and exaggerated. Thick buttocks, breasts so large they veer toward eccentricity. I think fecal face was a clever slang term, pointing toward epistemological values even in second rate ensembles.