Wong Kar-wai, ever heard of him? Met him once, Beijing, summer of 2004, busy promoting his film 2046 and ignoring old friend Monica. “Who taught you about shutter speeds, Kar? KAR?” The living legend didn’t appreciate attitude from a hen, so I was shipped to a wet market to be bought, chopped, and sold before Rooster came to my rescue. He found me in a batch of diseased “chickens,” all genderless, rendered biologically obsolete beyond their flesh. I couldn’t hear their screams. Rooster still nightmares of those nights.
The Chinese film industry was very mean to me. I felt like a second-class citizen, or a second-class meal, something ready to be cooked and eaten. In America, usually you walk down the street thinking everyone is looking to rape you, and it’s true, but you have to keep your guard up, and realize that male sexuality is just like that, and most men are able to keep their impulses in check. Not lately, though; and I’m not going to be the first hen to go viral for getting turned into a chicken box. Actually I’m too au naturale for those things—you’d need some genderless “chickens” to make a real proper poisonous chicken box.
Is it appropriation for a business owned by white people in a predominantly black city to open a community theater called the Chicken Box? I don’t think so, but then again I hate all of you so much it’s unreal so I’m glad your little art project failed, even if I’m a decade late in teasing you. Mostly I’m bored because Da Boss has sent me on a footage finding mission while he continues to put off re-recording the rough mix of the movie using a small projector and his Panasonic AG-CX350. The move? What’s the move this time? Shutter speed.
He told me to record something “interesting” off the TV. So I went on YouTube and filmed a three-hour long loop of cows grazing grass. Da Boss wasn’t upset, but he wasn’t happy. “Why aren’t there any people in here, Monica? I need people wearing medical masks. Remember 2020? Cows didn’t get coronavirus.” I never liked cows, so I like watching them and making up commentary that’s supposed to be going on through their big dumb heads. I hate cows: ugly, polluting, lumped in with hens and roosters, killed in near equal numbers at the fast food stand. Every rooster and hen life is worth four cows, at least. Maybe five. But I never told Da Boss this, not that he’d care, because he eats us both, just not in front of me. I told him he could eat a Whopper in front of me, but he said that that’s “just creepy” and that I was “weird” for even suggesting it. What am I, J.D. Vance? What am I, a hack? Am I going to be entirely predictable? No. You hired a hen to edit your movies. Take a couple of things into perspective before coming up to step.
There’s no more news from the editing bay, other than that trails are in and the colors are brighter than ever.
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits