CINEMA HOLOCAUST ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA, PART 1: THOSE GOD DAMN FILM BLOGGERS

MIKE'S JOURNAL. MAY 13. MORNING

I wake up sometime around five AM. My flight to France doesn't leave until five PM. I should be there for security check in sometime around 3PM. There is no reason for me to be up this early but I'm feeling anxious. I have an itch that needs scratching. I feel the urge to clean my knife collection before packing them into my luggage.

I was hoping to do this while my wife, Cheryl, was still asleep. But I wake up to an empty bed. She's already up and fucking around somewhere in the house. She partied too hard yesterday, did too much molly, fucked too many of my friends. I bet she's sore as shit. I must have had her take on seven men in a row.

I walk over to my bathroom. I need to take a Taco Bell shit. I made the mistake of trying that cool ranch Doritos taco thing. Greasy fast food always seems like a great idea when you're slogging your way home at 2AM with a mean drunk in you and then you realize it was a pretty goddamn stupid idea once you're squirting lava out of your asshole two hours later.

I find Cheryl in the bathroom putting her make up on. She's already dressed up in a purple mini skirt, torn fish net stockings, a white blouse top, and a black corset.  Even at home, she feels the need to wear a custom. Her hair color has changed yet again from only two hours ago too. It went from a deep scarlet to a Kool Aid blue.  Our bath tub now looks like someone just murdered a family of Smurfs in it.

She doesn't even notice that I'm standing directly behind her with a half erect penis dripping urine against the back of her thigh.

The elaborate patterns that she illustrates in mascara around her eyelids require too much concentration to notice me. All of her focus is being placed on her face.  She must have been in here for at least an hour already. I wonder if she's even slept at all.

She looks like a mannequin in a Hot Topic window fixture.

She finally turns around to face me and tries to talk cute to me. Her normal voice is like that of a sailor. If you ever catch her off guard and she sounds like Tom Waits after he's finished speed smoking a pack of Marlboros. She's only 21, but she's been chain smoking since she was 10. She was shooting heroin by the time she was 16.

But she's making a very conscious effort to raise the pitch in her voice, trying her best to sound like a female character in some Japanese anime.  She thinks that I don't know what she really sounds like. She must think I'm a pedophile because she's putting on this whole elaborate show that she's some innocent, bubbly school girl with a naughty streak.

Everything about her is an act.

She blushes and acts with the posture of a fourteen year who's feeling tingly down there for the first time and says, "You're such a dirty voyeur, Mike. Does it get you hard watching unsuspecting girls?"

I respond, "Cheryl, you stopped being a girl a long time ago. And you've seen my films. You know I like to watch."

She kisses me while rubbing her fingers along the shaft of my cock and says, "I wanted to look pretty for you when you woke up. I wanted you to see me at my best before you head off to Cannes. I want to be stuck in your mind while you're hanging out with all of those pretty European models."

Cheryl is in love with me. I met her a year ago. She was working as a cocktail waitress at the strip club that I bounce for.

I liked her tits. I thought they would look great on camera. I thought they'd look even better covered in blood. I wanted her in my newest horror film at the time and she looked like a natural born victim. Every time I saw her flirt with a customer in order to get a better tip out of him, I'd think about how good she'd look getting impaled by a flagpole on video.

I've made four features so far and I have to say, it's damn convenient working as a bouncer for a strip club. It saves me a lot of time and money skipping the normal process casting actresses willing to take their clothes off and effectively look frightened on camera while I cover them in Karo syrup. Strippers are already used to being exploited and they're willing to work for a lot cheaper than a regular actress. Compared to what they do as a day job, my films are high art and they're more than happy to be a part of them.

All I had to do was offer Cheryl an eight ball and three hours later, I had her on a garage work table naked pretending to get raped by a power drill wielding madman in a dog mask.

The second time I slept with her, she asked me to marry her.  I don't know why I said yes. I hated her. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and watch her sleep. I wouldn't think about how beautiful she was, I would fantasize about strangling her. I would imagine the look in her eyes as I forced the last bit of life out of her.

But I haven't strangled her yet.  I have strangled a lot of others. I've murdered 32 women already. I don't know why I've let Cheryl live this long.

So I married her.

But I still don't love her and I can't say just how long this will last. I like getting her high enough that she'll fuck my friends at parties. If you go roaming around the amateur porn sites, you'll find her, she's a fucking superstar in the underground porn scene and she doesn't even know it.

She wraps her arms around me and hugs me. There's such tenderness in her touch. I want to beat it out of her.

"I wish I could go with you, Mike. I'm so proud of you. You're so talented. You're the best horror director out there. You're going to be huge. It's going to happen this time. They're all going to see how awesome you are."

MIKE'S JOURNAL ,MAY 13: AFTERNOON

Every time I hit 95 South from Philly to the airport, I'm always reminded just how badly I want to murder every fucker from New Jersey who owns a pickup truck or a Mustang.

I think there's some biological law of nature that every prick from the Garden State with any type of Ford vehicle feels entitled to drive aggressively on the highway and tailgate every car he comes behind.

This guy in his red mustang has been riding my ass for the last 10 minutes. I've changed lanes to lose him a few times but he keeps ending up on my rear.  The moment I see his yellow license plate, I laugh at the predictability of it.

Does he feel tough doing this? Does it excite him to try and intimidate strangers at 80mph?

As far as I'm concerned, he's threatening my life. Every time he revs his Mustang's hemmy, it's the same to me as some hood rat brandishing a gun on the street.

Even with most muggers, it's generally an empty threat. They'll hold up liquor stores and do it with an empty gun. But it's a stupid bluff to call. It's never a good idea to put a stranger at the other end of a gun if you're not willing to pull the trigger. You can't afford to make assumptions about someone you don't know.

I like to drive beaters because I don't want to feel any responsibility for whatever might happen to them. The guy with the really cheap and crappy car....he's much more likely to get road rage and do something silly when you cut him off or tailgate him.

So I decide to do something silly.

I jam my foot down on the breaks.

The asshole in the Mustang behind me swerves his car into another lane almost T-Boning a freight truck to avoid nailing my ass.

His car zig zags and almost rubs against the guard rail as he regains control of his steering wheel.

He pulls up beside me. His driver side window is down. He's screaming and cursing and giving me the finger.

Here he was trying to scare me just a minute ago. So I let know that I wasn't scared and now I'm at fault.

I smile and wave at him.

And then I steer my car directly into his.

I wish I could see his face as I force his $60,0000 Mustang into the guard rail and he realizes that, "Yes, this is indeed happening.  Yes, you're going to be in a potentially fatal car accident."

The guard rail comes to an end before opening up into a large grassy knoll that serves as a median strip.

There's a significant dip in this stretch of soil to prevent cars from making U-turns onto oncoming traffic.

The dip is significant enough to bring the Mustang to a dead halt.

The front of the car drops so fast and hits the ground so hard that it flips over from back to front.

It's a gnarly crash and the Mustang is completely totaled.

I pull up a few feet ahead of the wreckage. Luckily for me, there's no other traffic on the highway right now.  There's no one around to see what I just did. I walk over to the crumpled up ball of twisted metal lying upside down and open the driver's side door.

The asshole from Jersey is still alive, but not by much. There's a giant gash on his forehead leaking blood all over his face. He's bleeding bad, although not bad enough to bleed out. But I can tell he's had one hell of a concussion.  I can see that he's already thrown up all over himself. His whole body is shaking and his left eye is wildly blinking open and shut.

I catch a whiff of something awful and I know that he's just shit himself. I start to laugh.
The harder I laugh, the harder he cries. I take a walk around his car to observe the artistry of destruction on display. I find that his rear bumper is ordained with a wide array of obnoxious macho bumper stickers.

"My other auto is a .45 ACP." "Enjoy your freedom, thank a marine." "This is America, speak English." "Nobama."

This guy ain't no fucking marine. I know marines. They don't brag. They don't make threats. They just do. This is some just some guy who thinks he's a real badass for sitting on some army reserve base in West Virginia. This guy probably wears his camo gear to bars to pick up women.

I walk back to the front of the car and pull out a pair of leather gloves from my right coat pocket and put them on. I then pull out a small disposable camera from my left coat pocket and take some snap shots as a souvenir.

I figure this guy probably has a gun somewhere and decide to take a look.  I reach over across him and open his glove box.

Sure enough, he has a Taurus that's designed to look like some cheap desert eagle knock off.  It's a huge gun.  It fires .50 caliber rounds for Christ Sake. It's completely redundant.  Just like his car, it's over compensation. This guy is hung like a moth.

I pull the slide back chambering a round.

I point it at his face point blank. He pleads for me to spare him.

"Not so tough are you now huh?"

"Please."

"Are you going to continue tailgating people on the highway?"

"What?"

"Are you going to continue to try and intimidate strangers when you drive?"

"No. Please."

"Promise me."

"I promise I won't tailgate people anymore."

"Good."

I shoot him in the stomach and leave.

MIKE'S JOURNAL, MAY 13: EVENING

I'm on the plane. I'm restless. I'm still high off of the rush from earlier today. Every time I picture that asshole crying and begging while sitting in a pool of his own shit, I smile.

I try to burn this image into my permanent memory. I want to hold on this for later. I'm sure I can use this for one of my films in the future.

The guy sitting next to me looks like a faggot. He's got a Tony Stark styled mustache and soul patch and he's wearing a golf cap. He kind of looks like David Cross.  He's definitely going to the film festival as well.  I can tell this kid was a dork in high school. He probably makes films about samurais fighting aliens and shit.

He's typing away on his lap top. I can't believe it's not a Macbook. I thought it was required that all faggot filmmakers with mustaches only own Mac products.  

His lap top looks old and beat and cheap.

I can hear the music spilling out from his ear buds connected to the IPod resting next to his computer.

The Misfits, Static Age. At least he has good taste in music.

He notices me looking at him and takes one of the ear buds out. No, I don't want to talk to you, faggot.

He puts his hand out for me to shake and introduces himself.

"Hey. Going to the film fest?"

I don't shake his hand when I respond. "No, I'm on my way to Cannes in May for a fucking sun tan."

He's not even fazed by this. Any other little hipster would run away and find another seat after that. Or at the very least, they'd shut the fuck up and let me be.

This guy, he stares me in the eye like he's sizing me up. He doesn't retract his hand.

"I'm Greg. You are?"

I'm not shaking his hand. I refuse to. But I guess I might as well give him my name.

"Mike Dugal."

" Oh, I've seen some of your work. You directed that film where the guy skins sorority girls and then nails them to crosses at homeless shelters."

"Yeah, that's me. You look familiar. How do I know you?"

"I drink at the El Bar sometimes, I see you there a lot. We've never talked though."

"That's not it. What do you do?"

"I write for ScreenAnarchy."

Great, this guy is a fucking critic. Critics are pussy faggots. I hate them. Even worse, he's a blogger. ScreenAnarchy is just an elitist film snob version of Aint it Cool. All the writers there are bunch of dorks who've never tasted a woman's pussy before.  I'd love to see Greg's insides cut open and worn on the outside.

And then I put it together. He's Greg at Twitch; this is that snarky asshole who writes those stupid Boozie Movie reviews.  This shithead tore my last film a new asshole. He called it misogynistic and repulsive, called it soft-core porn with poorly executed torture scenes. He compared me to Bill Zebub.

He won't take his eyes off of mine.  This smug fuck must think he knows how to read me.

He grins when he talks to me."You called me an idiot and a faggot in the forum boards on ScreenAnarchy, Mike. That was really classy. You're welcome to say it to me in person. Oh, and I got that one email from you, the one where you ranted on and on about how you were going to kick my ass and show the whole world just how big of a pussy I am. Again, now that we're talking face to face, you can give that a try."

This mother fucker thinks he's some kind of hard ass. I'd like to hear squeal like a stuck pig while I turn his asshole inside out with a plunger handle.

He still doesn't retract his hand.  He just keeps it there, waiting.

"I can't trust or fight a man who won't shake my hand. Call me old fashioned. Don't worry, it's clean. I haven't masturbated in three days."

I don't say anything but I shake his hand. I grip it as hard as I can, I want to break the bones in his fingers but he doesn't budge, he doesn't even wince.

There isn't a single doubt in my mind now. I'm going to murder him at Cannes. I'm going to shove his head into a toilet full of my shit and twist a screwdriver into his back and play the xylophone with his spinal cord. I want to kill him. I want to kill him so bad I can taste it.