Full well knowing that anything rarely, if ever, lived up to it, I was finally going to be able to see what all the hype was about. I had done the research, heard the rumors and saw the results of people who, others seemed to collaborate, viewed the tape.
It took a lot of time, cunning, energy and adventure to find the cartridge (transcripts of which to be disclosed at a later date). And really, I stumbled across what I have to assume must be a master copy of that elusive cartridge. It has the logo on it but wouldn’t play in my regular speed teleplayer.
The Frenzied search for the cartridge is so intense right now (and coming from an ever widening array of angles) that I had to create a secret persona and come up with a line of inquiry that wouldn’t raise suspicions about what I was really after and would, at the same time, answer any questions I had regarding it. It was a tricky business that led to many recursive loops that I could tell no one about and therefore made me suspicious of everybody, especially when I realized with what gravity others held it.
So, finally with everything in place and all my tracks covered or rerouted, I was ready to view the tape, with only a pang of fear that it might turn me into a catatonic, drooling freak incapable of even the most rudimentary semblance of functionality. As I hit play and sat down the adrenaline rush of the hype, the months of work finally coming to fruition and sleepless nights too many to remember must have finally caught up with me. I found the movie rather disappointing, as most things with too much hype surrounding them normally are. Other than a mildly hypnotic overtone, which I immediately identified was designed to appeal to a lower level of brain functioning that humans as a race lost the need for many millennia ago but still have imprinted on our DNA, that amazing recorder of everything, the film was rather boring. In fact, maybe because every fiber of my being was utterly exhausted (even though I had really gotten caught up in the chase and it become a rather unhealthy obsession verging on almost total continual conscious perpetual paranoia) or I finally felt somewhat comfortable in my own apartment with the door locked and felt like I could take a moment to breathe and not have to watch me own back, I fell asleep before the tape was much more than halfway over. I got up in hours later, disoriented to this reality because of the DMT that was naturally coursing through my veins. It’s dumped into the bloodstream by the pineal gland during deep sleep with some reputable scientists hypothesizing that dimethyltriptamine is responsible for the most lucid dreams during R.E.M. sleep. I stumbled to the teleprompter that emitted the sickly grey-white glow of snowy, untuneable cable stations of old and turned it off and made it to my warm, comfortable bed that I hadn’t actually had a full night’s sleep in in months and fell into the most restful sleep I had in a long time.
Anyway, more than eight hours later, I woke up feeling refreshed and new. I made myself a coffee and spun up the last of my Bob Hope. After a few long held draws I played the tape again to watch it in full, thinking surely. After it was over, I could still move, I was still interested in other things and I could still think; at least what passed for the semblance of thinking in my mind. In any case, I certainly wasn’t any more or less catatonic than I normally am and I didn’t have any desire to watch the tape again or put it on some sort of infinite loop. And so the I thought for a while about all the patients I’d seen…
What sort of mental minimifescence must reside within to cause such a catatonic, vegetative state was beyond my rather significant powers of perception. I mean sure it was sometimes riveting and had me gripping the arm of my chair on occasion but that was mostly the action shots, vertiginous camera angles and nauseating out of focus, foggy fuzzy shots. As far as a solid plot though, I found it severally lacking and bordering on cliche. I found it a somewhat shoddy attempt at recreating the genius and groundbreaking work that had been done before him. It was a theme that ran through most of JO Incandeza’s work and why he could never break into the mainstream of commercialism that would have allowed him to be able to pursue his life’s real passion without spending an inordinate amount of time raising funds from outside sources. Never Having met the man in real life I couldn’t tell you about whether his ideas were good or not; and his films, though technically seemless, were ever new or innovative. As with most things real that you sort of wish were fiction, they did have a certain satirical aspect to them and Infinite Jest was no exception. Perhaps that’s why they were labelled either avant-garde or apres-garde. From the correct angle you could see a certain humorous, most certainly mocking and a somewhat disorienting aspect to the film but after the shock value to the senses was attenuated, most of the movies were really a bore. And this one was no exception; it was classic Incandeza really.
Regardless of all that, I realized that to an ever widening circle this Master copy was of almost infinite value and could definitely go a long way toward shifting alliances and power structures on what was at least a worldwide scale. Absurd really, but who was I to question the general idiocracy or the almost addictive trend toward instant gratification that most of the populace suffered from?
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