“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.

(ISAAC rolls over.)

“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.
ISAAC: Christ.
“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.

(ISAAC puts a pillow over his head.)

“INCEPTION”: (leaning in close) BUM BUM.
ISAAC: (throwing off the pillow) Will you please cut it out?  I’m trying to sleep.
“INCEPTION”: You finally saw me. And you’re having trouble sleeping.
ISAAC: It’s the heat.
“INCEPTION”: It’s my intricacies.
ISAAC: Your what?
“INCEPTION”: My twists and turns.
ISAAC: It’s your horns.
“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.
ISAAC: Enough already, get out of my head!
“INCEPTION”: (sitting on the edge of the bed) Lots of people have been thinking about me for days.  It’s okay, let it happen.
ISAAC: No, I’m good.  Just want to go to sleep here.
“INCEPTION”: I’m a modern classic.  I’m here to save summer.  I’m here to blow your mind.
ISAAC: (sitting up) Hold on a second.  You’re a decent movie, you’re entertaining, and you certainly have a lot of great visual and technical things going on.  The Joseph Gordon-Levitt spinning hallway fight?  Incredible.  But you are not a modern classic.
“INCEPTION”: Oh, but I am.  Have you been on Facebook lately?
ISAAC: Your script is infuriating.  Leonardo DiCaprio’s like, “This is how this all works,” and Ellen Page is like, “Wait, so that must mean this also happens,” and Michael Caine’s like, “Beware, keep in mind that it also works this way,” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s like, “Great, to reiterate, remember when I said this?  Just want to circle back and underline that again to make sure you understand the mechanisms,” and Ellen Page is like, “Ah, yes, I think I’ve got it, but I want to say it all again and you tell me if I’ve got it,” and I’m sorry, that is not storytelling.  That is reading us the assembly instructions to Mouse Trap for two and a half hours.
“INCEPTION”: How do you know you aren’t dreaming right now?
ISAAC: What, you’re performing inception to plant the idea in my head that you’re a modern classic?
“INCEPTION”: Perhaps.

(The scene changes. Suddenly ISAAC and “INCEPTION” are sitting in an empty movie theater.)

“INCEPTION”: I had my architect build –
ISAAC: Ellen Page?
“INCEPTION”: Yes.  I had her bui –
ISAAC: Is she gay?
“INCEPTION”: I didn’t ask.
ISAAC: I hope she is.
“INCEPTION”: She built us a movie theater in which we will watch all of the other summer movies, so you can see that by comparison –
ISAAC: Well, that is not fair.  If all you ask is that we compare you to, what, “The Last Airbender” and “Knight & Day,” then of course we will think you’re a modern classic.
“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.

(The movie theater doors swing open.)

“INCEPTION”: The projections of your subconscious are here. They must want to protect you.
ISAAC: Not protect me, per se.

(“INCEPTION” looks up.  Thirty JAKE GYLLENHAALS enter the movie theater and sit in the surrounding rows.)

“INCEPTION”: What the fuck?  They’re all Jake Gyllenhaal.
ISAAC: Yes, this is true.
JAKE #1: Have another popsicle!
JAKE #23: I want to get my hand stuck in your thick, coarse hair!
JAKE #16: Your eczema is adorable!

(The JAKE GYLLENHAALS begin undressing.)

“INCEPTION”: What’s going on?
ISAAC: It’s a thing we do.
JAKE #11: I have the most chest hair!
JAKE #9: Nuh uh! I have more!
JAKE #21: Feel mine!
ISAAC: Gentlemen! I will get to all of you, I promise.

(JAKE #29 rolls out a tarp.)

“INCEPTION”: They’re all going to have sex with you?
ISAAC: Yes. (checking his watch, to the Jakes) Ten minutes each, fellas — I was up late playing Mario Kart, so the circadians are not on our side tonight!
JAKE #14: All right, but is someone going to be actually watching the clock tonight?  Because last night not everyone got an equal amount of time. And if one of us isn’t happy, the group isn’t happy.
ISAAC: (to “INCEPTION”) I never should’ve let them unionize.
“INCEPTION”: My kick should be happening any minute now and I’ll be gone.
ISAAC: Not so fast, modern classic.  You lured me into a dream, and this is what happens in my dreams.  Sorry.

(ISAAC slips off his pants and underwear, straddles “INCEPTION.”)

“INCEPTION”: Whoa! 
ISAAC: BUM BUM.

The session was in a loft in Tribeca with white walls and white ceilings and white floors and orchids in vases and an organic juice and snack bar where ten percent of the proceeds benefitted Doctors Without Borders.  My expertise, however, benefitted No One. 

I was terrified, on the spot in front of a bunch of attractive, crisply-khakied finance people, rambling on.  I’m pretty sure there was one person of every race there.  Someone had a British accent, another a German.  It was like a Benneton ad, the Brangelina clan grown up, a “We Are the World” clip instead named ”We Run the World.”

The woman moderating my session did her level best to extract core values from my blog’s story and reappropriate them for the very corporate task at hand, but there was pretty much nothing she could do with this moment:

INTERVIEWER: So what tricks do you have for expanding your audience?
ISAAC: Pictures of hot celebrities.
INTERVIEWER: What?
ISAAC: I’ll put up a picture of Zac Efron, and if someone’s Googling him and finds my blog as a result, the hope is that they’ll scroll down and continue to read.  I mean, I also enjoy the pictures, so the reward is two-fold for me.
INTERVIEWER: I see.

No one laughed.  I went home and ate cheese.

Apparently there’s a whole tickling fetish community.  I’m not well-versed in fetishes that aren’t shame-based.  Can someone clue me in?

THE TKTS BOOTH: Um, did you just fart in me?
ISAAC: Oh my goodness, I was hoping you didn’t hear that.
THE TKTS BOOTH: You know I’m a pod enclosed in glass.
ISAAC: Yes.  I’m really sorry. 
THE TKTS BOOTH: Like, no smell can escape me, it can only sit and mature in me.  I’m a space age dutch oven.  God, I’m going to stink now.  You’re lucky none of my guys heard that.  How’d you even get in here?
ISAAC: I work in a box office?  I’m dropping off tickets?
THE TKTS BOOTH: “Jersey Boys”?
ISAAC: No.
THE TKTS BOOTH: “Wicked”?
ISAAC: No, I’m Off-Broadway.
THE TKTS BOOTH: Get the fuck out of here.

And have I got an Odditorium
for you.

Admission is free
for men
with hairy chests
who, in deep
resonant
timbres,
patiently offer directions
“to Ground Zero”
to groups of fanny-packed tourist ladies.

My god,
you’re so hot you’re giving the heat pit stains.

That Odditorium?  It’s my apartment.

Step right up!
After a glass or two of wine
I do a somber and piercing
“Hello, Young Lovers” in my living room,
self-accompanied on the keyboard.

My roomate’s in China on a trip,
so reprises are limitless and don’t need to be
textually-founded.

Step right up!
Last night I ate a pound of grapes,
and this morning
things were
not
right
with me.
Tonight I ate the same amount
because in addition to organized religion
I also mistrust food portioning.

Step right up!
to the biggest oddity of all
in my apartment:
your absence from it.
My empty bed,
what a freak.

At 2:30 in the morning:

Cucumber is clearly the color choice of A-Gays.  Thank you, Ken.