Starring GOLDSTEIN!!! in the title role. Co-starring Saint Stephan. Featuring uncounted and uncredited Welsh Losser extras
The thunderous roll of a sudden rainstorm hits the sidewalk and rushes the gutters outside the L.A. bar.
Saint Stephan holds Goldstein spellbound on the barstool next to him.
Lightning sears the cloud-hurtled sky and thunder blasts the streets quake-like, that all the little excrescences shake. And then the rain really begins to come down, turning relentless, perhaps deadly, pouring in unprecedented torrents.
At the bar, the little Losser is scared but the supremely confident bigger one embraces him with an arm and draws him to himself to reassure him. He makes him drink his beer – the one he’d bought for him, even though it’s all on the barman’s tab.
A Losser, soaked down to his fat in a cheap PR suit that is now falling apart, bursts in through the door. He’s pushing Mr. Electricity and My Ideal before him, like hostages. “Nyugits nyug nyaow,” he snarls sinisterly.
Their shoulders are up in fright, they do not want to be there but he shoves them toward a table in the back and forces them to sit down. He sits down with them, hemming them in and straddling the table with the power of his presence and his size. He snaps his wet lips into the air, ordering drinks and starts telling his captives a story in Losserspeak while a waitress out of nowhere serves them, him, mostly, reverently with the drinks, prepared ever-so quickly. Mr. Electricity and My Ideal are there at the Losser’s will and whim, and though they had other plans that day, visiting a bevy of producers and such, they dare not try to leave.
The multi-gender couple casts distraught looks at Goldstein and Saint Stephan, but neither man pays a shit to their plight. The Losser gives Mr. Electricity and My Ideal a growling snarl to keep them in line. Observing the pair, one might conclude they are sexually aroused – cheeks flushed, patting their fingers against their chests, going, “Oh, my, big fella… oh, my…”
“Your method’s no good for talking pictures, Saint. The quotes – too long, the descriptions – too long. No one writes scripts like that. Never did, never will.”
“You don’t say…”
“Your style, your approach, the motive behind why you did this in the first place – ostensibly to tell stories, or so I gather, but, but… the apparent modus operandi driving your –”
“You don’t say, you don’t say…”
“You know, when I was in Little League, all I wanted to do was play ball and be just like any other American kid, but –”
“You don’t say, Goldstein, you really do not fucking say. Say, Goldstein, why don’t you put a fucking lid on that specious all-American sob story already?”
“I want some coffee, I want some fucking coffee, goddamn it, GODDAMN IT!!!”
Every Losser in the place looks menacingly over at the bar-seated non-Losser pair.
“Give the man some coffee, will ya,” to the barman says Stephan, speaking as one with authority.
“Sorry, no can do.”
“Whatdya mean no can do,” Goldstein roars.
“Not from the bar, sir. You’re going to have to sit at a table.”
“Ah, fuck you!”
“Well, you can get out right now, or you can –”
“I said FUCK YOU!!!”
The bartender turns abruptly away, for another Losser, sopping and sour, has just bounded in. The dripping fabric of the Losser’s cheap waterlogged PR suit, which is falling apart, has molded its cold and thoroughly unpleasant wetness around his fat, which is now repulsively yellowishly visible through a soggy transparent shirt as if this man, if one could call him that, was comprised of little more than 16th century gout. The Losser takes a stool at the bar and the water runs off him onto the floor. He wrings more water out of a sleeve and a pants cuff, strangling the suit here and there with a fat frustrated fist. The barman quickly serves him a drink.
“It’s on the house, sir…”
“Nyugets nyug nyaaaaarrr…”
With reverence and panache, the barman closes his eyes and executes a slight bow to show he’s at the Losser’s service.
“You asked for it, Goldstein…”
“But this can’t be happening – it JUST CAN’T BE! So what happens next – what’s next…???”
“Are you SURE you want to know?”
“Oh, PLEASE” – Goldstein clutches at Stephan’s sleeve – “you’ve just got to tell me, Saint, don’t leave me hanging and guessing like this, all twisted up in suspense and not knowing… losing business… you’ve JUST GOT TO tell me – oh, ho-ho-ho-hooooo…!!!”
“And so… Hollywood will fill up with Lossers. The first Losser flicks will be made within the year. They will be shorts at first, and shown before the full-length feature, the way cartoons used to be back in the day. But then these Losser flicks will reach feature length themselves and take over, while films that would have been features become ever shorter, taking the Losser flicks’ place, but then they will simply disappear.
“You will know the industry by its new name – Losser Films – which will be applied to it generally and shall in this wise be understood.
“The films shall be completely inane and about nothing whatsoever, but in them Lossers will do this, and Lossers will do that, going to stores, driving in cars, going to work, visiting each other in their houses, and Losserspeak shall be the tongue by which they reign, and the people shall comprehend them not, yet shall they be completely transfixed, unable to ever satisfy their needs for more and more Lossers in film, ever paying more for admittance, begging Losser Films for more and yet more…”
“But… but that’s good. I mean, I should be in on it, I should –”
“But, lo, for in the valley the Lossers shall reap their own rewards, the Oscar shall be called the Losser, and they shall make the non-Lossers giving them this award fall over each other in droves toward the stage for to heap the Lossers in obsequious praises, and the Lossers shall laugh for they shall find this good.”
“But –”
“Whilst on the hilltop, Hollywood shall be it changed to Losserwood.”
“But, but…”
Yet, there shall be a man, and Goldstein will be he named, who, having come out of the wilderness from out of The House of The Entertainment King shall by Greyhound not Porsche be driven back there again.”
“Aaahh…”
“Now, Goldstein shall see the mayhem loosed by the Lossers on the Business he so verily loves, though maketh he not so much at it in the last 40 years.”
“Yeah, sure, but –”
“Bought he had in his day when he was yet young and full of the spirit of ambition and insanely cheap the property where this day standeth his domain – The Entertainment King – yet not only this, but still the real estate all around, for miles and square acres unto nigh fathomless stretches, seeing in his own small but not inconsequential gift of prophecy a market killing years hence, having had a vision of mass expansion down his way.”
“Damn right! They built a Taco Bell, and then a Jack in the Box, and the Singlex entertainment complex, but then it all suddenly stopped, and I… and I…”
“Yet now men of great money and means, producers, directors, writers, actors, investors, media magnates and great studio owners, and a horde of beasts with seven scaly heads and seven scaly tails and with seven scales each on their seven backs, short fat greedy fingers, drinking whisky and chomping down hard on cigars, losing much to the Lossers as the Lossers gain and yet again gain, seek out this man Goldstein of much worthless property for unto them to render help, and Goldstein, demurring not, sells. Short fat greedy fingers shall they have, drinking whisky and chomping down hard on cigars – yet no more, for lo…
“And so the man Goldstein sells, and sells and sells, driving his bargains hard, and yet up and up, exacting his conditions, and getting his price, which is high.”
“Yeeess…”
“And there these men of great money and means shall build a second Hollywood, which shall be known as Hollywood Two. Films shall they make, great films.”
“I’m not staying with the Lossers. What you’re saying – that’s what I’m going to do. That’s –”
“And the Lossers shall fall…”
“Yes, yes, fuckin’ YEEEEESSS!!!”
“And Hollywood Two shall be forgotten…”
“Wha?!”
“For it is then that the industry shall fall.”
“What are you saying?! What the fuck?! What are you saying, what are you –”
“Now, the years go by and the man known as Goldstein dies, having again, in the ultimate wash, made little cash.”
“Whatdaya… whatdaya… wha… wha… wha-a-a-a…”
“It approacheth the year 2053, and students of the history of the cinematic arts in California shall come across the trove of films made in Hollywood Two and recognize it as one of the greatest filmmaking eras of all time, just before the industry’s fall. For as there was the Golden Age, and the Silver Age of the late 1960s-early ‘70s that followed, so this era – of Hollywood Two – shall be known as the Bronze Age, but sooner than not, the Copper one, for bronze is yet too gleaming and bright, but the idea of greening copper oxidized reflecteth the idea of height a final time attained and the fall therefrom unto eternal demise.
“And yet, the triumph shall remain, forever and unto ages, for Losser Films and Losserwood shall be forgotten, thrown on the trash heap of filmic history, and gone, although its memory and that of Losser himself shall be oddly revered thereafter in Kyiv, Ukraine, yet that’s material for a vision to come. So speaketh the prophet. So sayeth the preacher.”
“Triumph? Triumph?! What fucking triumph, Saint?! Kyiv? Ukraine?! What the fuck are you talking about?! I’m going to kill you, you fucking piece of shit! I’m going to fucking kill you!!!”
Goldstein pulls out a gun and points it at Stephan.
“Tell me everything’s going to be all right, Saint! Tell me it’s all gonna be good, and I’ll make a lot of fucking money! Tell me that, fucking Saint! Or I’ll kill you, I swear I will, I’ll fucking kill you!!! Tell me!!!”
Stephan calmly twists the gun out of Goldstein’s hand and unloads all the rounds into his face and head, the shells bouncing off the bar top and onto the floor with the eerie resonance of ghostly metallic pings.
Exercising his almost boundless compassion, Stephan sucks the slugs out of Goldstein’s skull with his hand. The wounds heal and disappear and Goldstein opens his eyes. Stephan lays the emptied gun down on the bar next to Goldstein’s hand.
The Christian way is the best way, Stephan thinks.
He walks out the bar. The sea of Lossers now packed solid into the place parts to either side.
The rain stops as suddenly as it had started, the clouds part and the sun bursts through the sky.
The water retreats before Stephan’s feet, as though impatient for the gutters so that the sidewalk can dry.
He has tremendous power. He’s always had the power.
As Stephan leaves, a stiff-haired vicious-faced figure wearing nothing but a loincloth made of old Kyiv Poster copy lurches into the bar. He clutches a claw-full of McDonald’s sandwich wrappers from which he has already tooth-scraped the imitation cheese. The door closes behind him. There is a second or two of confounded silence, and then a mayhem of Lossers is loosed into the streets, reeling rampant all over L.A.
Filed by Jack Step, May 30, 2016
Meanwhile, back in Kyiv, consider the next story as it appears on the Kyiv Unedited website, under “Kyiv Commix”, wherein I, Jack Step, will unloose a local tragedy of epic proportions, starting with me not taking orders from John Smith – because I’m sick of his ass