(To see the official Kodak: The Film poster, click here.)

A week before the iconic film and camera company received the dire warning from Wall Street, threatening the delisting of its shares from the New York Stock Exchange, Kodak: The Film opened a limited run to a disappointing box office in select theaters in Los Angeles and Rochester, New York. The film, Kodak: The Film was filmed on what is thought to be the last remaining film stock of Kodak’s VISION3 200T Color Negative Film 5213/7213, a formulation the company had hoped would compete with the evolving and less expensive tape and digital recording formats. Found stored in what was once the RKO Radio Pictures Studio building in Culver City later purchased by Desilu Productions and now an independent post-production facility, the Kodak film of Kodak: The Film is iridescent and shockingly vivid in the visual and sonic information it conveys.

Kodak: The Film stars no one really but the material means of production of photographic reproduction—cameras, chemicals, emulsifiers, negatives, filters, film—exposed and not. Narrated by the comedian and educator Bill Cosby who was at one time the company’s commercial spokesman, Kodak: The Film might be thought of as a documentary docudrama hybrid. It is a 3-D, super-color-saturated version of March of the Penguins spiced with the 16mm coarsely grained b&w capitalist-socialist realistic propagandistic shorts made during the Cold War by the AFL-CIO called Industry on Parade.

Though these primogenitors suggest movement, what is most striking about Kodak: The Film is that it is a movie that does not move, shot, as it is, in a series of stills. The static motion technique of Kodak: The Film harkens back to the haunting 1962 film, La Jetee, by Chris Marker who acted, at ninety-two, as a consultant to Kodak: The Film’s director Martin Scorsese. The technique teaches the viewer, as the slide show slides by, the filmstrip nature of the film as the film is stripped of its essential illusion of movement. We are asked to appreciate the apparent invisible vibrant and constant nature of light itself, both wave and particle.

Kodak: The Film is itself haunting as it haunts itself, opening as it does with a photomontage of superimposed “found” images salvaged from dumpsters near photo processing labs where snapshots discarded by their owners were discarded. Thousands of pictures of random people posing (one after the other), waving, dissolving into pictures of people in costume—for Halloween, the prom, weddings, first communions—fading into one-hundred years of birthdays—the cakes on the tables, the air made madly solid by the spent candle smoke caught drifting, illuminated by Instamatic flash cubes that are themselves pictured flashing and turning and revealing, in the red afterglow of the flash, the picture after picture of people taking pictures of people taking pictures, the floating pinpoints of light coming to light on the contracted irises of red-eyed starry-eyed startled pets that bleeding into the overexposed nebula of nebulous social gatherings, graduations, gardens, grandstands, gratuitous sexual organs.

Kodak: The Film is a paean to point-of-view, to point-and-shoot as the camera pans and pulls, tracks and racks. One is submerged in this new sublime subliminal atmosphere of aperture and f-stop. The light here is a liquid ceaselessly flowing arranging itself in pixilated pixel patterns that sort themselves into image after image of images of images of actual water of light falling over the High Falls of the Genesee River in headwaters of the river of film, Rochester, NY.

Finally, there is finally no finality to Kodak: The Film. It is all collage and cutting. One jumps over the chasm of invisible darkness between the frames, the stutter steps over the stepping-stones, the endless loops, the speeds of stillness going nowhere fast. Kodak: The Film is the filmiest film school film filmed. Another section of the film highlights film leaders. It becomes a kind of film within a film film. A number of film leaders, their numbers counting down, lead to a film of numbers counting down. There is a poignant collection of hand-scratched changeover cue marks that promise reels of film that never arrive. The somber Kodak: The Film is both record and method of the annihilation of space and time before our eyes. It ends not as a consequence of consequence, nor through the machinations of plot or narrative of cause and effect or character drive or growth or change. Kodak: The Film ends in entropy; its final montage sequence pitted against our perceived notion of sequential time.

The movie’s whole and wholly on-message message has been this stunning relentless resistance. No beginning. No middle. No end. The final sequence consumes itself, a rapid-fire firing of the artifact of plastic time catching fire. Pictured are frames after frames of frames spontaneously combusting, melting, dissolving literally, evaporating, jammed and jellied, reduced and rendered, boiled and fried, warped and scorched, effaced, vaporized before your eyes. The sprocket holes gape open like the scream in The Scream. This goes on for hours. I mean for hours literally, in homage to Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Empire, the camera does not look away from this serial sizzling stasis. You are steeped in the banality of boredom, of the repeating images of images of time-lapsed explosion, implosion, of the deep breathing and frustrated sighing of Bill Cosby on the frayed and fraying sound-track. But you do not want to look away because (spoiler alert!) the next frozen image of decay might actually be the actual animation of Kodak: The Film’s self-destruction as all of the prints (and now there are so few left to see) are treated to ignite of their own volition, sooner or later, and disappear completely into volatile vapors and very little ash.

Transcription by Devon Brown, Paw Paw Daily—comments in parentheses are Mr. Brown’s pre-article notes and by no means reflect the opinions or beliefs of the staff of the newspaper or its owners. Due to lack of space in May 26th issue, this article was never written.

NOTES:

(Student speaking, male; 18 y.o.; seven miles off County Road 7 (unpaved); tent set up in field near woods; twenty foldout chairs)

Welcome, Paw Paw Unincorporated High School of West Virginia. It’s a lovely day to be outside, away from the bustle of city life.

 (village of Paw Paw is home to 400 residents, a stop sign, one gas station (illegal DVD rental in back), and Susie’s Famous Diner (six tables))

As you know, my name is Bert. I am this year’s valedictorian of the 2013 graduating class.

(clapping; seven people in attendance, including myself; PP Uninc. is one-room cinderblock school without AC, hence venue for hot day (May 25))

My comments today are to the rest of this year’s class. Jay, that’s you.

(only one other person in blue cap and gown, sits in first row, claps at hearing own name; strangely shaped head)

I know you and me had our differences, Jay. There’s that time we got into a shoving match by the road, when I pushed you and you got hit by that coal truck, and that’s why you can’t think clear anymore. And it’s how come you have to wear that helmet, and how come I helped you all this way and tutored you, ’cause I felt bad about pushing you, even though it was when we was seven and I didn’t know much better. But what I got to say is this: once you graduate high school, the world is your oyster. I never knew what that meant until last summer when I went to Myrtle Beach and I had oysters for the first time. You slurp ’em right out of the half-shell and leave the shell behind.

That’s what I want to say to you, Jay. Now we’re graduating I paid my debt to society and am moving on to college, which you can’t do because of your brain and all. You’re my half-shell, Jay. I’m leaving you behind.

(Jay moans audibly, reaches out to Bert, who stands behind podium (gold cross on front) that someone has transported from nearby church; Jay speaks in gibberish)

Of course, I’ve learned some lessons in my day. Being only eighteen, I know I still have much to learn, but I’ve amassed some knowledge and would like you to hear it—and that’s so you can get on by yourself when I go away.

(Bert gives thumbs up to Jay; Jay settles and gives thumbs up, both hands)

One: you got to be independent. Start wiping yourself all the time instead of me doing it sometimes when it’s messy and you start hollering for me across the hall from algebra class. That’s one.

(Jay smells hand)

Two: you got to be goal-oriented. For me, this is like picking a major and such. Me, I want to be a counselor and maybe a psychologist someday. Or psychiatrist. Whichever it is doesn’t have to go through medical school but can still help people, just not through drugs, which I see as wrong. Except for you, Jay, as you need drugs so as not to have your seizures.

(Jay holds up hands, alert bracelet on left wrist)

For you, Jay, that means maybe getting a job at the gas station washing the windows and cleaning out the trash. Mr. Laubacher said you could get yourself there Monday and Wednesday afternoons and do them jobs and get paid for it.

Mr. Hopper, I hope it was okay me asking for Jay.

(severe-looking man (gray buzz cut), large sunglasses, nods)

Three: you got to live up to your potential. For me, that is helping people in Ohio or somewhere in Illinois or something. And Jay, maybe, for you, that means learning not to be so needy. I don’t want to worry about you when I’m taking Biology 101 or Victorian literature. I don’t want to wonder if you ever learned how to put mayonnaise on a bologna sandwich right. Okay?

(Jay rises; he hugs Bert; holds Bert; Bert pats Jay’s arm; Jay is a head taller; Jay butts Bert kindly/gently with helmet; Bert swipes at eyes)

This is what I’m talking about. You can’t go hugging everybody as soon as they start talking about your bologna sandwiches or whatever.

(severe man guides Jay back to seat)

In closing, what I mean is, we can all be great. And living out my dreams, I’m going to be thinking about you, Jay, even though you can’t come with me on that road less traveled, as the poem says, because it’s a one-man road. A scary road, sometimes, I think.

(nods from adults; Jay says something like ‘scaaaaarry’ (heavy impediment); Bert looks flustered)

I’m sorry.

I didn’t mean to say that about the half-shell earlier. I guess what I’ve been thinking—just now, I mean—is that I’m the half-shell. Because, the way I see it, I’m the one being tossed out. I’m the hard one that’s got to protect the good stuff on the inside so as people can experience it, and maybe Jay—you’re the good stuff, buddy.

(Jay cheers; thumbs up)

You’re the oyster.

(Jay extends arms, raises one, lowers other, and brings back together, like croc or oyster)

You’re the world. I’m real sorry I pushed you in front of that truck, but at least I ain’t throwing you out.

(thumbs up, both boys)

I guess that’s what I have to say to the class of Paw Paw Unincorporated in the year of our Lord, 2013. You got to treat everybody according to their potential and give them a break. I got to say, that when life gives you lemons, it’s really maybe oysters. And I liked those oysters, Jay. They were real good in Myrtle Beach. I ain’t giving them up.

Read all of the winning entries. 

He told me this as if he was a victim.

He lived in a trailer next to his brother’s house in LA. His brother’s wife didn’t like him. My dad had to piss and shit in the bushes because she wouldn’t let him use the bathroom in the house.

Hearing this reminded me of my Oakland days.

I hadn’t spoken with my father in a few years. When I was nineteen I had my dad thrown in jail for an altercation he had with my sister. I hated the police and still do but they were the only ones who could get him to stop. My mom, little sister, and little brother moved to New York and I moved to Oakland to play drums in a punk band.

I had $500 that my grandmother gave me for giving my car to my cousin before I moved. I thought that was a huge amount of money. I took a Greyhound bus down from Seattle. Arriving in Oakland I slept on a friend’s couch and watched them snort cocaine and speed while listening to punk records. Cocaine was not something I did at nineteen. My money dwindled down to $300 and I found a room in a warehouse off San Leandro for $300. I paid the money and was dead broke.

My father was incommunicado, off in Brazil trying to save the rainforest and my mother was on the east coast struggling her way through a master’s degree while supporting my brother and sister. I wasn’t going to worry my grandmother. She was the only person I could have asked for money. I grinned and bared it.

My room was bare. I had a mattress and a concrete floor, my clothes folded on a white bed sheet, also on the floor. I had a beat-up Turkish rug that looked like it’d survived a fire. I had a little TV with rabbit ear antennae that managed to pick up one station, Telemundo, so I’d watch Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis overdubbed in Spanish.

I sustained myself on one carne asada taco a day. It cost one dollar from a truck parked a couple blocks away. I would pay with a handful of change. Those tacos kept me alive. God that daily taco was good. I chewed it gingerly, slowly, in order to appreciate every morsel.

Back in my clammy room, I could smell the Mexican family’s cooking next door and my stomach would twist and turn. I rifled through my roommates cupboards and found some stale tortillas and the remnants of a jar of peanut butter. I smeared the peanut butter on the stale tortillas and staved off the hunger for a while.

Oakland days.

A car slowed down on International Blvd. trying to pick me up thinking I was a young male hustler. A few weeks later I got chased by kids with baseball bats down by the train tracks in Fruitvale. A few months later off Adeline St. in North Oakland I saw a drive-by shooting, BAM BAM BAM RAT A TAT TAT TAT. I heard the ricocheting of bullets, just like the sounds in an old Western. I hit the pavement.

On my way back from a job interview I jumped the turnstiles on the BART train to avoid paying. A big black security guard chased me. I kicked the emergency exit doors open and the alarm sounded like a lost night phantom as I ran and ran.

I got a job as a customer service agent answering telephones. That last week without pay my stomach turned concave. I would steal apples from co-workers’ brown paper lunch bags in the break room refrigerator. On the way home little black kids would lift up their shirts to show me the handguns stuffed into their waistbands.

“Motherfucker. Cracker. White Bread.”

They pointed their fingers at me like pistols and blew off the imaginary smoke. I stared them in the eyes.

I heard stories. One story was about a white woman jogging with her yellow labrador retriever in West Oakland. When her dog took a shit, she put her hand inside of a plastic bag and bent down to pick it up. An older black man began to shout at her scornfully.

“Girl, what you doin’? This ain’t no Berkeley! This Oakland! You leave that shit right there! Ain’t no Berkeley,” he muttered again to himself.

I heard stories about a part of Oakland called dogtown, where giant wild mutts ran free and would snap at your legs if you rode your bike too close.

I heard a story about a crackhead who stole a couple’s TV set. He climbed in through their living room window and unplugged the TV while they were watching him incredulously, seated on their couch. He lifted the blinds and climbed right back out the window, TV in hand. The couple was in shock, they were just paralyzed. They couldn’t stop the fearless crackhead from making his broad-daylight theft. I wasn’t shocked by too much anymore.

I heard another story of a large punk rocker, a big bald white man from Louisiana riding his bicycle. A black kid tried to force him off of his bike, trying to steal it. He grabbed the kid in a headlock and pedaled at top speed. He said to the youngster,

“One of us is going to the hospital kid, and I’ll tell you one thing, it ain’t gonna be me.”

On the way to the liquor store, I saw a few kids rip off an ice cream man. They threw down a handful of change and ran off laughing, strawberry and chocolate and vanilla cones in hand.

At the liquor store, a man was trying to bargain for credit.

“Come on man, I pay you next time. You know I’m good for it.”

The turban-wearing Indian liquor store clerk yelled back.

“No, you say this last time, no good, you no come in store anymore.”

The black customer continued,

“Man, I know you ain’t no Al Qaeda. We cool. I pay you next time.”

He walked out without paying, bottle in hand.

On the street the man had uncapped his bottle and was talking to his friend.

“Man, you know how it is. First in America you had the Indians. They done got killed off. Then you had the Irish and the Italians. Nobody liked them back in the day. Then you had the slaves. Then you had the Chinese building the railroads. Black people done got profiled ‘til now. Now it’s the A-rabs. It’s they turn. Now it’s THEY turn. I’m happy the poh-lice aren’t racially profiling my ass. Profile THEY ass. The A-rabs.”

I wondered to myself what would have happened if abolitionists had taken up his personal philosophy of, “Now it’s their turn.”

Sometimes when I did my laundry I would go to a black Muslim bakery on San Pablo to get a fish sandwich. The five-dollar sandwich was one of the few luxuries I offered myself besides carne asada burritos or six packs of beer after payday. On the wall were slave shackles from the 1800s with a sign that read, “Never forget.”

“How can I help you sir,” the man working there asked. He bore a resemblance to a young Malcolm X with 1960s spectacles, bowtie and cropped hair. He put extra emphasis on the word “sir,” as if I was one of those former slaveholders he wasn’t forgetting about.

“I’ll have a fish sandwich please.”

“That will be five dollars SIR. Anything else I can get for you SIR.”

“No, that will be it.”

“Your order will be ready in about five minutes SIR.”

In the back of the bakery a group of school kids prayed to Allah on floor mats. I sat down and waited for my sandwich while enduring some scornful looks from other customers. After a few bad-vibe trips to the fish sandwich place I stopped going.

After living there for a little while, I began to understand the context of things like the Black Panthers, Hell’s Angels, Oakland Raiders. It all began to make sense.

They evicted everyone in our building in North Oakland. They were tearing it down to build new condos. It was the beginning of the gentrification up on the border with Emeryville. I moved with a friend into his van behind the Oak’s Club, a twenty-four-hour casino off San Pablo. We peed in the bushes and slept in the van. At night before bed we’d brush our teeth in the Oak’s Club bathroom. Sometimes we’d park at the Berkeley Marina and in the morning a gorgeous sunrise would shine upon the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco Bay in all of its glory. Chipmunks would exit their caves and frolic amongst the rocks. We called them “sea munks.” I would stand atop the rocks in my boxer shorts and yell,

“I am king of the sea munks!”

Sometimes gay guys would try and cruise us.

“Have you guys ever heard of Aquatic Park,” was their code-question for “Do you want to suck me off in the bushes?”

We didn’t know any code-questions. We were just young kids trying to make our way in the world. When my dad told me the story about him eating preschoolers’ graham crackers for lunch I thought, “Dad, you don’t know shit.”

My Esteemed Classmates of the Woodrow Wilson High School Class of 2013,

Most of you know me as the girl who lost her virginity to the Ben Franklin impersonator, a man who I asked to sign my tit with his quill pen when he visited our history class, a man whose real name is Chet, a man who calls his dick “The Glass Ceiling” even though a more appropriate nickname for it would be “Can of Soup.”

So yes, I’m your valedictorian, book smart, with straight As and all that, but definitely clueless about boys and men. I blame this lack of street smarts on my parents. First, I blame my mother, Carol, who endlessly pressured me to excel in the classroom, but who once told me I could get pregnant from eating a pudding cup too lustily. Next, I blame my father, Ron, who before he left us, said my goiter looked exactly like an Adam’s Apple and that I should blame my mother for this fact because her family tree was full of cousin fuckers who ate their pudding like it was going to get them pregnant.

Classmates, the first piece of wisdom I’d like to impart upon you tonight is this—when Ben Franklin/Chet calls you a few days after you lose your virginity in that motel room on the interstate that’s infested with box elder bugs, don’t pick up the phone. Why? Because Chet will prattle on about how he was a communications and theatre double major at NYU and he’ll wonder what the hell he’s doing with his life now, going to high school classrooms dressed in an itchy wig and gamey pantaloons and saying things like “Well done is better than well said.” Yes, he gets to occasionally break the cherries of weird bookish chicks who like pithy quotes and electrical storms, but is that really a perk? While you’re talking to Chet, he’ll tell you he’s been thinking about suicide a lot lately, but in between his suicidal thoughts he’s been thinking a lot about you. Next he’ll wonder if you’d like to come over to his apartment for dinner tonight. Please?

My fellow departing seniors, no matter how much Chet begs, do not go to his apartment. Why? Because when you arrive, a woman named Lisa will be sitting on his couch and Lisa will look like an older version of you, a little more leathery and a little less Adam’s Appley, but with the same French braids and the same bewildered look on her face. Chet will hand you a wine cooler and he’ll sit you and Lisa next to each other and say things like “Instead of cursing the darkness, let’s light a candle,” or “A penny saved is a penny earned” as he tries to get you and Lisa in the mood. When you don’t take his hint, Chet will press your face into Lisa’s face and you’ll suddenly be making out with an older, sadder version of yourself and your tit will start feeling all weird and throbby, mostly from Chet’s scratchy tongue, but maybe also from some infection you got when Chet signed it with his dirty quill pen.

My third piece of advice is this—when you run to your car after it’s all finished, don’t forget your purse on his kitchen counter. If you do, you’ll have to go back in and hear Lisa calling Chet’s dick “The Glass Ceiling” over and over and then you’ll drive home wondering what your place is in this stupid world is, where if you gave a blowjob to one of the Framers of the Constitution you’d only make seventy percent of what a man doing this same exact job gets.

My esteemed classmates, I’d like to leave you with one last thought as we take these intrepid steps toward our bright futures. Strangely enough it’s a quote from Old Poor Richard himself: “Many people die at twenty-five but aren’t buried until seventy-five.” Please think about this quote as you take your boundless energy out into the real world. Life is confusing and cruel and you’re going to need to be patient to achieve your dreams. Sometimes life will throw a wicked curveball at you and the only way you’ll be able to make sense of everything is to grab a spoon and sit down at your kitchen table and scarf down chocolate pudding cup after chocolate pudding cup until your stomach is so fucking full that it feels exactly like there’s a goddamn baby squirming around inside you.

First place will appear tomorrow. Read all of the winning entries.

To the naked eye, the Bat-Bat has the appearance of any other rugged-looking wooden bat, except for the fact that it’s jet black in color, much like the more popular aluminum bats favored by players of today. Let me go on record saying that I have nothing against aluminum bats. They’re a cheap, effective way to get the ball where it needs to go, namely across the field and preferably out of the gloved hands of the opposing team. If I were to take Stanley’s advice to purchase the Orioles and rename them Batman’s Baltimore Bats, I would definitely buy all the guys bats made out of aluminum, or at least an aluminum alloy. Shit, I would probably use one myself because let’s be honest, if I were to go through all the trouble of buying a baseball team, I would be playing on that fucker, in addition to managing it and being captain. That would be my right as owner. Also, my clubhouse would be called The Belfry and players would be allowed to smoke in it if they wanted to and act all crazy. I would also install a bunch of gear on the rafters in there so that they guys could strap in and hang upside down, which helps to keep the blood out of the game down there and in the game up here.

But I’m not talking about a game. I’m talking about real-life. And in real life, sometimes you find yourself knee deep in you-know-what. When that happens, you need a way to paddle out. For me, that paddle is my Bat-Bat, and the Bat-Bat is made of wood. Not any old wood, but a beautiful dark-hued Indian rosewood as hard as nails but with the added bonus of having once been a living thing and therefore possessing residual power of an occult, spiritual variety. It’s the ideal brawling weapon for a guy like me, and I like to slip it in my back pocket whenever I’m about to head into uncharted territory. Most of the time, just the sight of the thing is enough to scare off any dickbag dumb enough to consider messing with me in the first place. But the few times I have had to use it, it has come through and then some. Swinging that thing, I feel a little bit like Buford Pusser from Walking Tall or Chris Vaughn from the remake, Walking Tall, only more handsome than Joe-Don Baker, less of a bro-ham than The Rock, and with a less shitty name than either, plus a better piece of wood. Did I mention that the Bat-Bat is absolutely obsidian shit-jet? It is. The bat’s original rosewood looked pretty if we’re talking about a piece of furniture, but I wanted the warlike thing to match my non-nonsense suit, so I colored it black with an expensive German magic marker that Alfred bought me online a couple of years ago for my birthday.

Since I didn’t know what I was about to get in to with this [sic] holding hands rootless reiki business, I figured I had better bring Old Trusty along, which is where the trouble started. Old Trusty is the nickname I gave my Bat-Bat, by the way. An ironic choice on my part it turns out, as you’ll soon read.

I found the place easy enough since it’s right in the heart of this hipster-nice part of South Gotham with trees and avenues and row houses with window boxes full of pansies, nosegays, and other soft, fragrant flowers of the like. My destination was a rare, freestanding house of obscure time period and design—sort of a grotto, in the vague shape of a squat tree or toadstool, that looked like it could have been built around the salvaged husk of a giant firkin. Judging by the fact that the whole upper part of it was shrouded in tree limbs, vines, and various mosses and lichens, I deduced that there must have been some kind of rooftop garden thing going on up there.

“Must really like trees at this place.” I thought to myself as I sauntered up and rapped on the door. “Wonder what they’ll think of Old Trusty,” I continued thinking, with a mental smirk.

Finally, after about five ass-scratching minutes in which I was left scratching my head about how these dirks could possibly expect to run a successful business if they couldn’t even promptly answer their own door (and who makes customers wait at the door anyway? Ever heard of a waiting room, smart guy?) the thing opened and I was face to face with this dirty-haired, back-to-the-earth looking lady.

“Hi,” she said with a smile, extending her hand.

“Hey,” I muttered, taking it.

Hers was: warm, soft, and covered in a thin layer of fine dust. Even through my leather-clad hand, I felt the kind of electric charge that you only get when there’s an intense and innate psycho-sexual connection with someone.

“So, this is your place, huh?” I drawled coolly, even as I felt anything but.

“Yeah, pretty great, right? I love the location and the building itself—I mean, come on, I couldn’t have asked for anything more amazing.”

“It’s alright,” I grunted, trying to keep my enthusiasm dialed down so as not to appear too eager, despite the fact that I was. “You do all this yourself, or… ?”

“Actually, yeah—took me two years of my life and a lot more money than I had, but it was worth it. I may be broke, but I’m surrounded by real green things all day long and doing what I love. What could be better than that?”

“To each his own,” I said. Then saved it hastily by adding, “or hers.”

She made a clucking sound with her tongue. I think it was meant to be a sort of gentle rebuke, or a mild spell. Whatever it was, it worked, and I felt my face turning the color of Old Trusty before I’d modified it.

“Honestly, though, the money’s not too bad,” she winked. “In a few years, I might break even.”

I felt like it was an appropriate time to ask the question that had been troubling me ever since I had heard the strange name of this esoteric business.

“What is it you do here, exactly?”

She smiled, a mischievous, elfin smile, and I immediately felt myself go 100% hard.

“Oh, you’ll see… What is your name?”

“Batman,” I said hoarsely.

“Well, Batman, you can call me The Dryad. This way please.”

She took my hand again and I followed her inside, down a long, curving hallway that kind of reminded me of the inside of the midget’s house from The Lord of the Rings franchise. At the tail end was a cool, candlelit room with terracotta floors, a low, sloping ceiling, and tiny alcoves with censors of burning incense. In the middle stood some kind of ergonomic table, presumably for therapeutic or medical applications.

“Lie down,” the Dryad said “make yourself comfortable.”

“What should I do with the bat?” I asked, remembering that I literally still had Old Trusty sticking out of my back pocket.

“Leave the bat to me, man” she said.

I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I figured I’d just go with it and lay down on the table like she’d told me.

After I got down there, there was this uncomfortable silence where nothing happened until she cleared her throat.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Um, are you going to take the suit off, or… ?”

“Oh, yeah, right.” I mumbled. So this was it, I thought, it’s really happening.

I stood up and peeled my suit off, slowly and sensually, standing right in front of her, making sure she didn’t miss a single, rippling detail. I could tell by the way her green eyes popped and sparkled like a glass of Dom that she was enjoying the show as much as I was. Finished, I turned dramatically, tossed Old Trusty onto the floor and lay face down on the table, flexing and stretching my muscular triceps and delts as I settled in.

I felt her light but athletic frame touch down gently astride my massive lower back in the form of her toned, straddling thighs, firm cushion of buttocks, and soft tuft of pubic hair. Bending forward, she kneaded up and down my aching spine with sure and subtle hands. I felt the nipples of her turgid breasts graze the space between my powerful shoulder blades, electricity surging through my chakras and supercharging the raging hard-on already well under way, as she bent to whisper in my ear:

“What’ll it be for you today, Batman?” she cooed.

“Take the bat,” I gasped, so heated up I had to think about Batman’s Baltimore Bats to even be able to speak. “Take the bat to the back of the cave.”

Evidently, she took this to mean something very different than what I had intended.

Suffice it to say that what followed was undoubtedly the best massage I or any man, woman, or beast on this earth has ever had. Perfect. Ten stars. Then, she attempted to insert Old Trusty into… well, into the batcave.

I can see, now, where she might have gotten the idea that that’s what I wanted—I guess from her perspective it made sense that this was the reason I brought the Bat-Bat—but at the time I was, well, surprised. So surprised that I left in something of a huff. Probably turned the table over, said some things I might regret. I guess I didn’t pay either, come to think of it.

The thing is though, we had a great time together, and I’d love to do it again. It was a simple misunderstanding and as you can imagine, its not like it got too far before she realized that we were working from different definitions of the same metaphor. I hadn’t felt a personal connection that strong in years and I never thought I’d say it, but it felt good to be with a chick again. I’ve tried calling her a bunch of times since it happened, and even taken a couple passes by overhead in the Batwing, but we haven’t been able to reconnect.

So, for now, it looks like I’m still flying solo. Not much has changed I guess. I can’t look at Bat-Bat the same way and no longer refer to it as Old Trusty, but the company’s doing fine and Alfred’s holding down the fort at home. Meanwhile, I’m left wondering if this thing with The Dryad, this crazy connection, is ever going to develop into something more, or whether I’m wasting my time even trying to step back into the minefield of relationshits.

As a leader of the living-impaired community, I want to thank you for this invitation to speak today. This is a great honor and a big stagger forward for those of us who are so often misunderstood and caricatured on television and in films. Before I forget, let me give a shout out to your Adaptive Services division for my computer-generated voice, which makes me sound a little like Stephen Hawking whose disability has not kept him from reaching the very pinnacle of his profession thanks to his irresistibly beautiful brain.

And isn’t that what we are all here to celebrate today—brains? What do I see when I look out at all of you, you who are ready to remake the world and who are—moreover—alive? I see brains. I see literate brains shaped by English literature, succulent culinary science brains, brains salty from oceanography, well-tuned auto mechanics brains, dramatic theater arts brains, fashionable fashion studies brains, brains made slippery by philosophy, artistic brains, historical brains, technologically savvy brains, and brains which your years at this university have enhanced to such a degree that they are a real pleasure to contemplate.

The Merrian-Webster Dictionary defines “brain” as “intellectual endowment,” or “a very intelligent or intellectual person.” But there’s another definition I prefer, “the portion of the vertebrate central nervous system enclosed in the skull and continuous with the spinal cord through the foramen magnum.”

Of course, a well-rounded life requires more than brains—it requires heart. Warm, blood-pumping hearts. And livers, kidneys and spleens. And intestines. And gallbladders. And eyeballs. But I digress.

You stand here today on the verge of remarkable careers after your college years, a time which is something of a hiatus from living—I mean, from making a living—these years are a kind of Eden. But you must leave here just as Adam had to leave the Garden after taking that fateful bite of brains—I mean apple. You can’t go home again—I’ve tried. We all change. Think of the Scarecrow who could not go back to his field and be content with scaring crows after receiving his diploma from the Wizard, which finally convinced him that all along he had been in possession of what he most wanted—what we all most want—brains.

I urge you to be life-long learners. Stay curious, don’t let the world leave you behind, keep growing your brains. After all, where would you be without your brains? Let me give you a moment to contemplate that. So never stop learning and remember—I’ll be there behind you. Let me wrap up because what’s left of my stomach is grumbling and I was told there would be brains—I mean lunch.

So, in conclusion, just remember: Follow your bliss. The future is bright. The sky’s the limit. You stand on the brains of giants. I mean shoulders. Never slow down. Seriously, never slow down. Today is the first day of the rest of your brains, I mean life. Now let’s eat.

Second place will appear tomorrow. Read all of the winning entries. 

On behalf of the university’s 2567 graduating senior class, I would like to welcome the few of you who have actually shown up to today’s ceremony. With the massive, world-ending meteor hurtling its way toward Earth, it’s understandable that most of our class has decided not to participate and instead spend time with loved ones or perform acts of end-of-times debauchery. Speaking of which, could the mess of an orgy going on in the back please hold off for one moment, please? The mist of ejaculate and what smells like a copious dousing of AXE body spray is equal parts distracting and nauseating. I’m not saying don’t have an orgy. I’m just saying tone it down a bit during our graduation ceremony. Some of those who have yet to participate in a mass suicide pact actually brought family along today, and they deserve our respect for the few remaining hours of our existence.

Now, it has been four long, trying years since we first stepped foot into what would become a second home for many of us. Not only was this campus an institute to acquire knowledge and—

Okay I can’t go on without addressing the four members Phi Kappa Sigma riding around on horses that have flames spray painted on them. I know you guys think it’s a big joke, but there are a lot of people who really believe in that stuff and you’re terrifying them. Plus, that has to be considered animal cruelty in some way. I know it’s the end of times, but that doesn’t give you all an excuse to be a bunch of dicks.

Look, I got out of bed today, ate breakfast, got dressed, brushed my teeth and then, after strangling my dorm roommate for using up the last of the TP and not replacing the roll, I showed up ready to take this ceremony seriously. I just ask all of you to do the same.

Alrighty then. Where were we? Right. As we meditate on the skills we’ve honed, the friends we’ve made, and the opportunities we’ve been given here at the university, I feel confident that this graduating class will crash into a job market with ease. Oh wait, crash probably isn’t the right word… Er… I’m sure we will land a job that utilizes our degrees. I’m just now realizing how much of this speech really doesn’t apply now that we’ve only got like the next thirty hours or so to live. So, I guess the only jobs available at the moment are probably last-ditch, meteor-stopping jobs. Did any of you major in meteors? Anyone?

What’s that? Meteorology?

Oh hardy-har. Nice apocalypse pun, jerk. You’re not helping. Seriously guys, did any of you major in something that can stop a meteor from killing everyone? Is meteor-stopping a field of study here or anywhere, for that matter? No? Wow… You woulda thought we’d get that going by now.

Christ, I majored in advertising. Advertising! What am I going to do? Tell the meteor how to sell its public image? I just wanna graduate and spend some leftover student-aid refund money on postponing adulthood. Is that too much to ask? Instead I’m gonna die because some dumb space rock is gonna obliterate everything.

I’m sorry, that was selfish of me. I’m not the only one about to die, and I’m sure we’re all here to celebrate what little life we have left rather than dwell on our inevitable deaths.

But seriously, how are none of us even trying to stop the meteor?!

Did any of you idiots take an astronomy class or anything?

Hey, don’t boo me. I’m not the one throwing a rock the size of Texas at us. And at least I had the guts to come here today. Do you know where the dean is right now? Before I came on stage, he took off his pants, urinated on the floor, and started running through the auditorium screaming something about the futility and meaninglessness of existence. So don’t tell me…

Oh, you know what? Screw it. Hey, orgy in the back rows, got room for one more?

Read all of the winning entries. 

I felt grateful and delighted to have the opportunity to talk to Aisha about her writing. I found her to be sensitive, smart, and sincere, and I appreciated that after I asked a question, she would take a long pause and then respond in a way that seemed thoughtful. We met at LACMA on a weekday afternoon; the day was dry and sunny, a typical LA day. We sat in the middle of the courtyard surrounded by people and art.

ZOE RUIZ: Why did you decide to write a book of essays and how did you decide to organize the essays by location?

AISHA SABATINI SLOAN: In college I started interviewing people. I did interviews in Los Angeles, Paris, London, New York, Northfield, Detroit, and eventually South Africa. The project had different manifestations of “doneness” over the years. I wrote a lot to make that project coalesce, including these essays that attempted to capture the cultural/emotional/historical backdrop in each city. But one day, I sat down at my desk, and the interview portion of the project just slumped out of my arms and onto the floor. I took a deep breath, and I weeded out the portraits of my interviewees just to see what was left, and it was the essays about place. I felt like I was seeing the framework of a coherent project for the first time. Maybe ever.

ZR: What do you like about the essay as a form?

ASS: Well, I think in the last couple months I’ve been feeling tired of writing the way I was writing. Even on a recent plane ride, I thought, Short stories! It’s time. I can’t wait! Then that sort of passed. I think maybe some of my discomfort was coming from fear that people wouldn’t like my book. So I thought, Oh I don’t like writing that way anyway. I will try another form now.

I’m working on another essay project and it’s sort of similar. In writing the essays that I’ve been writing, I discovered I do like this approach a lot. In some ways it’s because the essay is a genre but it’s also nothing. What is this when you are writing an essay? It’s almost amorphous. It feels like I’m drawing on all these years of framing and composition, juxtaposing colors and graphics. I feel like the essay is the most obvious form of writing for me given my taste in visual expressions.

There are things you can do with essays that you aren’t necessarily called upon to do in other forms of nonfiction. Reading the book Notes from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss was a transformative experience for me because of both the subject and the form. I remember reading a three sentence paragraph—a description of herself living in Brooklyn with her cousin—and I thought, Oh my god. You can do that. And that’s all? You don’t have to say anything else? It was just a scene. It’s kind of filmic.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan by Meiko Takechi Arquillos

ZR: I just started watching film seriously in the last three months. I’d seen films, of course, but they’d been in the background. I feel like now I’m appreciating film as an art form. I’m learning about film and I’m wondering if what I learn will influence the way I write.

ASS: I think film is another thing that makes sense to me and it’s an influence for my writing because my dad loves movies. He would watch the same movie, like, twenty times in one week. I remember seeing this movie Ballast a few years ago and that movie was a painting basically. I just love these scenes where there’s a gesture or a color and sounds and that’s the entire scene.

ZR: I do as well. I haven’t seen Ballast but I felt like there are moments in Bleu or Lost in Translation that do that for me. I was wondering if your photography influences your writing at all. I ask because when you capture moments or setting, it feels almost photographic.

ASS: I feel like something about the lyric essay—reading them and then trying to write them—seems to have a quality of photography and collage. In some ways, I feel the lyric essay is where my impulse to express myself visually is being funneled right now. When I think of creating a verbal image, I think of it as a photograph or a moment of video. When I’m planning to write the moment in my head, I don’t think: Describe the landscape. It’s almost as if, in the outline to the essay, there’s a little video monitor, playing a particular photograph.

ZR: You mentioned your father and watching movies. In the collection, we learn that he is a professional photographer. You write about him a lot. What were the most challenging aspects of writing personal essays about your relationship with you father?

ASS: I find it very easy to write about my father. He is always prepared to view something through an artistic lens, so when I ask him something about himself, about our relationship or his past for the purpose of an essay, he goes straight to it. He plunges. He muses. He riffs. He is open. He doesn’t like to be photographed but doesn’t mind being written about. It feels, in a way, like a dual effort, something we are creating together. Since I was a child, every conversation has ended with him saying, “You should write about that!” He doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all for making him the subject of an essay. Although I feel some sadness for saying, in one piece, that he made bad chicken soup.

ZR: What were the most difficult aspects of writing so personally about race?

ASS: There have been a few times when I’ve pushed too hard to come to a conclusion after an exploration of a certain race-related event or topic. It was a great relief to me when, in a workshop with Alison Hawthorne Deming, I was told that it was okay to end things ambiguously when talking about race. In too many instances, I was told that I over-indulged when it came to ambiguity so it was nice to be given permission to use it. I think that, since then, I’ve discovered that there are certain kinds of ambiguity, certain ways to juxtapose in order to create a productive kind of puzzlement.

ZR: In all your essays, you intertwine two or more different subjects. In “The Birth of Cool” you write about personal stories and Thelonious Monk. In “Fawlanionese” you write about the house and Faraday and candles. I’m wondering about your writing process.

ASS: For me I do have a process now where I gravitate toward one to twenty topics.

ZR: In one essay?

ASS: There was one essay where I was trying to bring in way too many strands. But what’s funny now is I’ve been writing a piece by taking just two strands from that essay I wrote years ago. So when I’m writing, like with this essay, I’m gravitating towards David Hockney and I’m gravitating towards Rodney King, and I don’t know how they’re going to come together. I’m just sort of being really honest with myself. I’m really reading, reading, reading, and taking lots of notes and sitting with the material. Then I’m putting all the notes together and noticing when I want to force something. Then I just let the material sit with itself for a while. And then there comes a moment where I understand enough to start to intertwine. It feels really exciting to sit down and write and find connections as I go. And it feels really alive that way. And this is embarrassing, but—

ZR: Try me.

ASS: Lately I know I’m finished with an essay because I start crying. And it feels like the essay reaches this point of—it might be a real subtle moment, it might not even be at the end—it’s just that for this moment in time these two themes want to be together and then they just float away. It’s not that they come to a point, it’s just that they’re here and they’re connected and then they sort of go away.

ZR: It seems that you know the end has arrived when there’s an emotional shift. Also I think you’re acknowledging something beyond you, too. I’ve been having this experience where when I’m writing I feel like I’m tapping into some metaphysical or unknown element, a kind of energy.

ASS: I just got into an argument with my neighbor about this and he said, Oh. You’re one of those.

ZR: I feel like I say the word “energy” and people write me off as new agey. But I do think a lot about energy and intuition. I think these are important aspects of the human experience and a kind of emotional intelligence that we learn to disregard. They’re an important part of my writing process and also just my life process.

ASS: It’s interesting you say that because it reminds me of the question I get about being in LA. I was just talking to my friend who has an intuitive quality, and we were talking about how I keep offering excuses as to why I live with my mom in LA. The truth is I just followed my gut here, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

I feel like I’m supposed to have a plan, but I also feel like I’ve moved into a place where I really appreciate and accept my intuition and my gut. It doesn’t always tell me what it’s up to, but I know more and more what feels right. I know that I’m supposed to be here right now.

But I just have this feeling that’s insufficient explanation.

ZR: Well, I think a lot of people answer the question in ways that are defined by the external. If you say, I just followed my intuition here, people are going to be like—

ASS: You can go now.

ZR: Exactly. I have one last question. Did you learn anything about yourself from finishing this book?

ASS: It was much more validating than I expected to have a publisher send me a contract. I experienced six months of calm bliss. My life was literally quieter. I think that before that, not taking myself seriously had a weird impact on my writing. It warped it a little, like someone whose voice gets quieter as they speak. We say weird things when we feel like we’re talking over a bunch of invisible hecklers. Maya Angelou said something in O magazine a long time ago, which I will paraphrase: Just be the shit. Not in an arrogant way. Decide that you have what it takes.