Archive for the ‘Ken Brady’ Category
Last Lap
Monday, August 10th, 2009
We power south down Broadway toward West 57th and into lap five, and Barry pushes the big block Chevy to its limits to make up for lost time. As we blast through the synch gate there’s that now-familiar floating feeling, like drifting in both time and space, waiting for a new Manhattan to resolve around us. Which is pretty much what happens.
Then we’re through, cloudy skies gone blue, buildings where buildings weren’t, changed signage. But it’s all barely a blur as the car gets our full attention. Barry drives, I navigate. Challenging in any race, but worse when crossing timelines.
Barry flinches as the steering wheel moves, pedals narrow, seating position changes and the rear end drifts a bit before he can compensate. It takes me a few seconds to recognize the design as vaguely BMW, then I notice the Messerschmitt logo on the wheel and can guess enough about this reality. The German billboards on Zeppelins floating above the race clarify.
Off 57th and up Park and we overtake a gorgeous Daimler that I wish was available in our reality. I glance and see it’s Jean-Paul and Etienne. They’re new to this circuit, and I think swastikas in the Upper East Side are throwing them off their race. I wave as we leave them behind and make our way through East Harlem and on to Marcus Garvey.
Each lap is roughly ten kilometers around the park, though the track is always just a little different. Political, social, and economic realities might change the landscape, but it’s still Manhattan. We’ve done races in other cities: Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Shanghai. Have seen junkyard-like wastelands and futuristic utopias. But New York is always New York.
Through the Upper West Side past bright searchlights, catching a screen of our car sporting Bosch ads, and we make a pulse-pounding run for the gate. Branding across multiple histories is difficult when you never know what car you’ll drive from lap to lap, reality to reality. Makes it hard to collect our cut of the ad revenue, so it’s best to let a cross-reality agency handle it and just view the vids later.
On other laps we navigate beneath soaring Chinese skyscrapers, past Confederate flags, next to the walls of Central Prison, through hanging gardens and greenery, under the watchful eyes of millions of cameras. We drive an electric Hummer, Japanese Corvette, four-by-four Microbus, even something that feels like a jet-powered Edsel.
We take the checkered flag in a Subaru WRX and wave to our fans. Good to be home, through twenty laps of general weirdness and alternate landscapes. We slow to see if we can spot our families and friends. From the bleachers where they should be, hundreds of Native Americans, face paint and head dresses brilliant in the afternoon sun, cheer and whoop their approval. Oops. The feather and buffalo logo on the wheel should have clued us in.
Maybe a victory lap is in order.
Jack of No Trade
Friday, July 31st, 2009
Jack stepped out of the elevator at the penthouse floor and walked confidently into the middle of a corporate emergency. He didn’t have a clue why they wanted his help, but what else was new?
A twentysomething in a tailored grey suit, her sandy blond hair pulled into a perfect, tight bun, red-framed glasses clearly for info augmentation not vision, moved to block his advance.
“Excuse me,” she said. “You are?”
“Jack Kamata. You pinged me.”
She waited for her glasses to verify his identity, then nodded and turned to walk away, giving Jack a view of even more perfect, tight buns.
He stared, even as she turned to him again to ask: “How up-to-date is your understanding of international currency arbitrage?”
“Don’t know a thing about it.”
“Perfect,” Tight Buns said. “Come with me.”
“Gladly.” He resisted the urge to spank her as he followed, and settled instead for digitally undressing her.
A brief history of Jack:
– Age 18, 1st job: pizza delivery dude
– Age 34, 57th job: water ionizer salesman
– Age 37, 69th job: perspective consultant
He had never held a job for more than a few months, but he thought “perspective consultant” might work out. He wasn’t stupid or inept, rather easily bored, easily distracted, liked to move to different cities, and had more than a passing obsession with the ladies. The poster child for 21st century drifting. In a time where everyone was so highly specialized, he’d become valuable for his lack of deep knowledge about anything.
He sat in the board room and listened as words and concepts that meant nothing to him were bandied back and forth. When it came his turn to speak, he told the room, from his outsider’s perspective, what seemed right to him. Another job, another thousand bucks, and Tight Buns was quite pleased, which got him a keycard to her apartment, and an official unraveling of her hair.
Post-coitus was business-like for her, Jack-like for him.
“You were great,” she said. “Seriously, Jack. I thought you weren’t good at anything.”
“Well,” he said, “maybe one thing.” Then: “Why are you looking at me like that?”
She stared at him with a smirk on her lips, then zapped him her résumé.
A brief history of Tight Buns:
– Age 21, Accounting degree, Columbia
– Age 23, Harvard MBA
– Age 24, US Department of Purposeful Living
“We hate people like you,” she said. “Really, we do. If it’s any consolation, you made it to number 3 on our most wanted list. Quite the star. We really thought you might have no skills at all.”
“Wait just a minute,” Jack said.
“But I guess there is something you can put on your résumé,” she said. “I’ll post my reference.”
“Fuck,” Jack said. It was like a kick in the teeth. He was now certified for real work. Reluctantly, he pulled up a list of available gigolo jobs.
“Can you give me a lift to the unemployment office?”