Or, for most viewers, the car will reflect vast success in the entertainment industry, which is obvious if the driver has recog, and apparent if he’s a money guy, a producer, or an award-winning technical guy, maybe one with his own special effects studio to conjure the very best in car wrecks, massive explosions, airline catastrophe, perseverant cyborgs — you name it.
In Ravid Rockulz’s case, technical affluence is assumed, because a guy who takes fish pictures can’t very well have recog — until he does the TV talk circuit, that is, and a few laps around that block puts him on the retina register of more pedestrians than not. The stop-and-stare syndrome goes from recognition of success in an unknown category to hey, it’s the fuckin fish guy!
Which makes life simple and annoying. Public recognition is fun at first. Then come the news dogs and feeding frenzy on every move, touch, wink, pick, shift, scratch or personal pursuit. Life in its most subtle movement must be guarded.
But then simplicity goes all huhu again when one guy says hey, it’s the fuckin fish guy! And it’s not the fish guy. It’s a different guy, a nobody who never did anything but stand in front of a mirror and make himself look like me. What the fuck is that?
These assessments and rationalizations drift among the fumes as the fish guy holds a seventeen by twenty blow-up of a flame angel in one hand and his four-inch brush in the other, applying vertical black stripes to the amazingly similar red background. Now it’s more than a car, just a car. It’s more fun for starters, chucking the notion of value, maybe even upping the value in the process, singling this car out with identity, personality and a star-studded past. Special care is taken to control the breathing, relax completely, let go, let go, let go, simply and naturally in one upward stroke on a perfect exhalation, rendering stripes identical to those first applied by Neptune himself.
Ravid remembers his first embarrassing cruise in the red Jaguar, compared to now. On his way to Oybek’s office, he feels corrected, more secure in the statement surrounding him, more successfully adapted. He sells himself on the idea, the concept, the way of life he has discovered and embraced so effectively, and he shares his epiphany on entering.
Oybek’s receptionist listens patiently and says the phenomenon of non-constraint is growing in leaps and bounds in classic illustration of the Oybekian influence. “It’s like painting a perfectly perfect Jaguar with black stripes, by hand. It decries what we’ve suffered so long. We keep ourselves locked up inside. Just look at the surge in special effects studios. There must be eighty new studios — or four hundred eighty. We used to have one. Or two. They supplied the entire industry for decades. Now we do fabulous explosions. You can pooh-pooh explosions and wrecks as the death of drama, but they’re not. They’re an extension of drama. Take the golden age and Joan Crawford. She’s my all-time fave. I can’t tell you what it was, but she had it. Oh. Excuse me. Mr. Navbahor will see you now.” The receptionist smoothes a bushy eyebrow with a pinkie, in case Ravid grew up without the benefit of cinema, and with batting lashes says, “Now that lady threw some hand grenades. God.”
Oybekian?
Such is the show that never ends. The contract on Oybek’s desk is thick with caveats, subordinations, sub-rights, exceptions, conditions and continuing permutations. Oybek squeezes all but the last page between his thumb and forefinger and says, “Standard. I review same with your best interest. Good for you. Okay by me.” Then he folds the stack back for signature.
Many people between Oybek’s front door and the inner sanctum lingered in the hallway to praise Ravid’s fabulous launch, which gives him a fabulous foundation on which to build; just you watch. So he signs off. “Now you see. We make magic. Presto. From nozzing, we get rabbit out of hat. You see.”
A month later the same TV talk shows want Ravid again. Several producers say they didn’t take the fish guy seriously. Now they do. They want — they stipulate — that the fish guy be the fish guy and appear in mask, fins and snorkel, because nobody needs all that water in the tank business with the knock’em sock’em scuba gear and the clunky camera stuff. For what? We need him, the fish guy. We need him to show the body you get with artistic pursuit. That’s where we’re going with this.
Oybek masterfully declines all offers, then triumphantly resists all offers, then reluctantly agrees to see what he can do. Ravid merely declines, so the talks are off. Then they’re on again — and hey, no need to be so testy. Okay?
Then the rest want in, including the gaggle of women sitting on the same couch and all honking at the same time, and the esoteric funny guy, who puts glib humor above social order on the reef and is nearly throttled for his trouble. Naturally, the lunge and grab boost the fish guy’s stock, and so the lunge and grab appear contractually for an appearance on Jerry Springer, where a panel of reproductively viable trailer trash women will claim the fish guy is the father.
Springer is also declined, but when you’re on a roll a left-handed ass scratch can pump your ratings. Showbiz is still a chore, till pounding success calls for exotic locations. Dive sites anywhere out of town sound appealing, even the Bahamas, for starters, to tie in with another project to make even more money. Now work your magic.
Well, they want the fish guy cruising a Nassau street declining some fabulously beautiful hookers. The idea is to send a message to the viewing audience that combines safe sex with commercial lust — break to some car commercials, ab enhancers and boner pills. With some terrific cleavage shots, a few hard-marched camel toes and some winning smiles, ratings aren’t bad. Nothing Fishy in Nassau won’t go to sequel, but it won’t bomb.
Then, predictably enough, come the US Virgins and the rest of the loved-to-death islands up to Martinique in a dead reef medley of brown algae and familiar effluvia, both treated and untreated. Living coral is available a mile out and will likely be available next year no farther than a mile and a quarter.
Minna goes along, regretting postponement of her professional career on the one hand but loving the scenery, money, travel and glamour on the other. Let’s face it: she’s a natural, who loves telling the camera she married Ravid years ago. She just says no to the inevitable offer in the second year of Ravid’s fame — a center spread, such as it is; everyone in LA knows it’s only art, but the ‘ohana back home would never see it that way. Ravid is artistically open-minded but secretly pleased by her decision, made with no pressure from him. He surprises her with a triple-header to the Maldives, Truk and Colombo, but here too she declines. He urges her to reconsider, because this trip will be free of the resort tourist noise, and they can...
“I’m preggers.”
“Wha?”
“You’re surprised?”
Here too, a story might end on a happily ever after in modern terms. Or it could trickle into the near future, when the beautiful young family buys a place in Malibu with a great loan package that Stephan Andrew Monihan, Oybek’s money guy, helps arrange.
Hey, it ain’t Tahiti, okay? But LA does have some stimuli waiting to jump your neurons if you give it half a chance. Stephan Andrew encourages optimism and a positive outlook but makes no apology for what goes on here, because it is what it is, which seems painfully obvious in any application, the true test being the converse proposal: what in the world is what it isn’t? But this is La La Land, which is not to confuse apparent reality with what remains to be actualized, which, as yet, isn’t. What it is in the meantime is millions of fucked up people, and if you can’t see that, you’re not paying attention. “But I’ll tell you something: some of those people, including yours truly, are very busy finding themselves. Some of us are getting well. And I’ll tell you something else: we’re smart people. We have the money thing worked out. We want more, and that’s what evolution is all about.” Stephan Andrew is quick to correct when Ravid calls him Stephan. “Please, Stephan Andrew. Monihan. I made the last name up. Get it? Money — moni...han. You’d be amazed how much money I’ve made for flaky people who couldn’t remember my name. I suppose Stephan is a m
ore popular name now, but there’s only one Stephan Andrew, so if you don’t mind, it really helps me out. Okay?” Ravid doesn’t mind, but he doesn’t say as much, so Stephan Andrew asks again, “Okay?”
“Yes, fine.” Well, the place is full of quirks, mostly harmless. But the house appears to be doable.
“And would you look at these views?” Not that a year-old baby, or the one in the oven, gives a rat’s patooty about the view, but still, maybe they will one day in their mid-forties, when they need more out of, you know, life.
The kids do love the yard on the bluff — not to worry; the fence keeps them and Little Dog from going over, though Skinny gives them a terrible turn one day, showing up out of nowhere on the other side of the fence, three feet from the cliff edge, stalking something invisible or tiny, casually as you please, till she stops and howls, “Meow!” She’s stuck. Or maybe she’s lost her bearings again.
And who goes slinking along behind for the rescue, herself as lithesome as a geriatric cat? “You tell me, what else could I do? The cat is like family. Like family! What could I do?” In fact, Basha Rivka could have spared Skinny a walk on the wild side by putting out the cat food as instructed. Nobody suggests neglect, since it wasn’t willful, and besides, contrary to the stereotype of relations between the wife and the mother-in-law, Minna and Basha Rivka have achieved their own symbiosis, where seldom is heard a discouraging word.
The basis for harmony is simple, what some would view as potentially bigoted or racist, but it is, yet again, what it is. Basha Rivka had braced herself for a shiksa, a goy with upper middle-class parents and all the snooty, boring crap that comes with that package — with a country club in the mix for all we know — a club that doesn’t allow you-know-whom, as if a bunch of big-boned, mostly blond and always boring stand-around types — unless they’re strolling the fairways — have something of interest to share with the chosen ones.
Hearing the blissful news that the new mishpocha are actually connected to Buddha, and that the connection is without dogma, brimstone, hellfire, crusades, missionaries, pedophiles, inquisitions, pogroms, social snubbery or even a general undercurrent of Jew-baiting, she is relieved. On second thought, she’s exhilarated.
Minna’s rationale is more practical, more adaptive, more in tune with modern LA, where, let’s face it, most of her friends are Jews or Buddhists already, and some are both. She embraces Basha Rivka as a concept. “A live-in babysitter? I love her. Are you kidding?”
Never have two women brought such praise, gratitude and respect to their commonly adversarial roles in the care and feeding of the man between them and the infant offspring.
Skinny suffers no lingering trauma from the cliffside event. Fourteen already, she forgets where she is, and maybe who she is, and sometimes what she is. Hunger is an instinct, free of rational thought. If not fed, she wanders in search of food.
The same is true for love, with solitary periods causing her to set up a howl. But no matter how deaf and senile she is, she jumps onto the bed beside Ravid with a good-night meow and a few circles turned before tucking herself in on the pillow, where she sleeps all night without snoring, though a fingertip on her chin gets her purring deep enough to chirp.
Minna sometimes wakens to ask, “Do you mind?”
In the daytime, between naps, she, Skinny, sits on his desk and watches him work. Sometimes, when he works too hard, she bats a pen around, and the other day, sitting on the back steps when two butterflies came in low, she sat up and swatted at them. Ha! She’s really some kind of fabulous cat.
Malibu feels more like home with the routine, the friendly neighborhood and the fabulous wealth the neighbors have in common. Money rolling in like ocean swells is a given. Sometimes it crests in breaking waves, and every now and then, with media follow-up on an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy or an Emmy, comes the tsunami. Then comes a lovely entertainment to celebrate good fortune, fame and more, in which neighbors can convene just like normal people, except for the Olympic pools, the Roman columns, the staff, caterers, valet parking and glittering guests.
Oh, money is good, first for the fabulous affluence and then as an accurate measure of performance. Did they love it? Okay, how much? Even when it’s way more than could ever be needed, the money is treasured, because it can accomplish great things and some day it will. Meanwhile, the money grows with interest, dividends, capital appreciation and some commercially zoned lots, where you really can’t beat the upside.
As if money pouring in from TV shows, book royalties, serialization rights, foreign rights, paperback and DVD rights, action toys and film options isn’t enough, next come the endorsements.
Ravid dove and shot for years with the best equipment available, with cameras and lenses considered professional, on the cutting edge of technology. He dove with housings so light, streamlined and efficient as to be exotic — dove happily, grateful for his good fortune in life, amazed that a humble dive leader could afford six thousand dollars for a camera housing. How did he do it? He could hardly believe it himself.
So when an exotic manufacturer offers up a camera housing with peripherals that retails for twelve grand, make that thirteen plus with the reasonable viewfinder and fifteen with the dome port, flat port, port rings and extensions, and make that sixteen while you’re at it, with a couple of strobes and arms, electronic interfacing, and a few back-ups Ravid says, “Nah.”
Oybek rejoins, “Wha? Nah?” Oybek is a student of the schtetl kvetch common to Hollywood and may not realize that these colloquialisms and slang are not actually English.
Ravid shrugs. “I don’t need those things. In fact, I want to get my next shots with entry level equipment.”
“You won’t get better shots.”
“Or maybe I will. I might encourage young divers by using basic equipment. People are so destructive in nearly everything they do. But young divers trying to take great pictures of fish should be encouraged to get out and give it their best, not to go deep into debt.” Ravid and Oybek are friends, sharing a bowl of hash in the LA equivalent of an enlightened negotiation, in which the party of the first part could confide in the party of the second. So Ravid exhales a celebratory billow and confides: “I want to take the technical aspect out of artistic excellence. I want to sculpt with a stone ax. I want to paint with a four inch brush. Can you see the value in that?”
“What if you get a hundred thousand dollars clear for your pocket along with this twenty thousand dollar set up?” What’f get you hunderd toozundolla fuhpocket you wis tvintyzoozundolla cumra?
“Why would they do that?”
“Why? Why not? You on. You it. The fish guy. Okay? They do that because they make it back and more. Don’t be simple. Okay?”
Well, okay.
And okay for the wetsuit, BC, regulator and dive computer endorsements, and last but not least, another quarter mil for an easy up and in on a hip shot aimed to change male fashion trends around the world, or, as they say, to sell the new look. Boxers are out. Briefs are back. So much for idealistic objective. But the money could at least be spent on making the world a better place. Couldn’t it? Besides, then comes season three, and then seasons four and five, each year generating more money than most men make in ten years, or twenty, and for what? For standing in front of a camera wearing scant skivvies that outline his cock is what.
Then comes the stock market.
Ravid is not obsessed by the acquisition of more money. He is grateful for the money he has and satisfied that it will surely pay for free time ahead, in which to pursue art with no concern for money. Humble origins, tough times and spiritual foundations intertwine to serve him well in showbiz. Hardly “big” enough to make the A-list inner sanctum, he makes it anyway on charm, humility, apparent courage, terrific anecdotes and the beautiful wife. He misses the old color and reef friends, but he visits from time to time, and the shallow scene in LA can be just as dazzling and predatory, if more tediously talkative and hungry.
He and Minna have m
any casual acquaintances and friends of friends, directly or indirectly networked. They see a few regulars at parties, events and in passing. Familiarity gains depth, but friendship and trust are secondary. Primary is the potential for progress — by which huge deals come together. The breaks are brief, the action fast. Consensus is that life is either bad or good, depending on the alacrity by which resources are brought to bear. Money, energy and spirit must be freely spent, and now. Life is best in maximum fun, with the pleasure centers stimulated and faith that smashing success is already upon us. As one dauntingly strident over-reacher put it: become the hugeness. Then, adequately buzzed and enamored of prospects, odds and cosmic certainty, the candidate for greatness must go for it.
With such a fabulous climate and abundant insight to spiritual and physical being, and such dedication to health and fitness, the potential for all things is, in a word, awesome.
This patently gratuitous formula is stereotypical of LA, but it’s also true, particularly in reference to drugs, liquor and sex. Ravid feels blessed that his external needs are simple: a reefer and a couple beers, and he’s in the groove. Sex he had plenty of and may again someday, but for now he’s content having intercourse and so on with the wife. She’s a natural, with no headaches, and a beauty to boot, after all.
She’s also a notable hottie — Minna, the fish guy’s wife, aka a fine fillet o’ perch. Unstated but understood is that you would indeed want some of that. Not yet pursued by the tabloid camera dogs, she is frequently spotted and shot, often at ten frames per second, in case she might pick her nose or scratch her crack, which she wouldn’t do with a camera on her, but hope springs eternal with the camera dogs, who want to ride that perfect fucking wave one time, just like the next guy.
Flame Angels Page 43
