There were a few notable events that occurred during the chess match held between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bobby Fisher. I don’t know if I can recount all of them.
The first one that comes to mind was when a man with a goatee absent-mindedly entered Madame Olga’s Palmistry Shop –where the match was being held. At the moment he approached the bookshelf, Fisher’s cell phone rang.
“Hello, who’s this? I see, hold on…”
He turns to the stranger.
“Are you Mr. Cornell?”
Nonplussed, the stranger extends his hand and Fisher relinquishes the phone.
“Hello? Yes. No Kim, I don’t want to get the band back together. Goodbye.”
He hands the phone back to Fisher and abruptly exits the shop.
I was the only person capable of arranging this match. I had impersonated both Thomas Pynchon and J.D. Salinger. The former while roadying for Devendra Banhart and the latter while making an avant-garde appearance on the television game show Jeopardy. For every question asked regarding person, place, or date I unfailingly answered: ‘Grover Cleveland’ ‘Denmark’ ‘October 3rd 1921’. Needless to say, I did not make it to final Jeopardy.
Needless to say, I have been working on a review of the film ‘How She Move (sic)’ which was also released as ‘Step Up 2 –Da Streetz’ in the hopes of maximizing box office revenue.
…The Most Anticipated Chess Match of This, or Any Century!
Unable to acquire free passes to see the movie under either title, I instead listened to the movie-phone listings for them repeatedly. That is until I set about staging the most anticipated chess match of this, or any century!
I arranged the match on the condition that the results would never be publicly revealed. This was a condition proposed independently by Wittgenstein, Fisher and Madame Olga. Hopefully (from their respective points of view) my review would create business for Olga, book-sales for Wittgenstein, and serve as a public service announcement for schizophrenia for Fisher.
Two days after the game while preparing to write my review, I opened the Sunday Times and saw the words: “How She Move –Da Streetz: a film by Chris Cornell”. Basically Cornell’s review blows away anything I could have written. He spends three paragraphs discussing dialectics and pondering the question of whether releasing the same movie with two different titles is a post-modern exercise in addressing a (mainstream) work’s antithesis within its thesis solely through the title under which it’s released, not within the film itself. This asserts Cornell, is the boldest dialectic moment in film since Godard’s work from the late 60’s.
Of course this is all fine and well. My only problem with the review is that it quotes extensively from the chess match he witnessed –both while inside Olga’s shop and while looking in the window from the street outside. And of course he gives his account of how the game ends based on the body language of the two participants after it ended.
I will not repeat this conjecture; instead I will focus on a discussion that occurred during the game. Any hope of accurately reviewing the film ‘Step Up 2 –How She Move’ is lost forever.
A half hour after the match started Fisher announced that George W. Bush had presented a budget to Congress which would double the National Deficit, bringing it to roughly 6.2 trillion dollars. Then after a moment of silence he said: “I just want to know what’s going to happen between Now and Dune. Since Dune is obviously the science fiction film/novel which best depicts our future.”
Wittgenstein interjected: “perhaps Mad Max.”
“Perhaps, though that doesn’t really interest me. Most people think it would be Star Wars, but I think Star Wars would come much later. I kind of amuse myself by thinking someone might try to impress Darth Vader by offering him a large quantity of spice and he would be taken aback by such an antiquated gift. Because by the time civilization reaches Star Wars they will have abandoned spice and be using dilithium crystals, or whatever they use in Star Wars, exclusively.
It would be really great if in the future world of Dune, where the people’s ancestors, thousands of years prior haven’t even seen a picture of the earth that spawned them, are still saddled with the deficit. It will be, like, a universal icon, like the crucifix. The deficit will take the place of religion, or god in the future… and that’s how WE live on.” Wittgenstein muttered a: “hmmm” then made a decisive move. The game ended soon afterward.
After the players went their separate ways I convinced Madame Olga to close the shop and accompany me to the theater to see Juno. A month later I received a postcard from Bobby Fisher. He thanked me for arranging the match and added that he was listening to Devendra Banhart while writing: “It’s good, I don’t see how it’s so good that I decided to impersonate a reclusive writer and go on tour for six back-breaking months with the guy. I still don’t see what Kristin liked so much about it (yes! She still exists) maybe that’s changed, I wouldn’t know. Sometimes things don’t work out as we hoped. Anyways, eat a peach –Bobby”
So that ended my odyssey. What can I say about Juno? It was entertaining; it took my mind off the problems I was considering, for a time;
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