I got a new shirt a while back so I’m opening up the package yesterday and there’s all this cardboard and stiff plastic and tissue paper and stuff, like probably representing
forty percent of the cost of the shirt, just the packaging. But the disturbing part is all the straight pins they put in to hold the shirt perfectly together on its journey over from China in one of those container ships. A shirt tanker, maybe. You think you take out every straight pin, but can you really be sure you got them all? I put the shirt on and flexed, sunk a straight pin deep into my Triple Heater Meridian. It felt like lightning struck my liver, but it did cure my cold.

My ex-wife calls from L.A. In these budget-conscious times, she’s looking to take some cost-cutting measures. She realizes she’s been renting a storage space. She hasn’t set foot in it in fifteen years, and the rent on it would get you a nice three bedroom in Charles Village. She sends a kid down there to root around. The kid comes back with like an inventory: antique chalkboard, scuba fins, old tax returns, some chairs, couple posters. The only thing of mine in there is a 35 MM theatrical print of Kill Me Again, a movie I wrote and produced a long time ago. I guess I forgot it when I cleared out my shit. Anyway, she calls me, “You want this print?” Do I? I don’t know. I still have a straight pin in my Triple Heater. By the time it’s over it’s going to cost me a hundred bucks to have this thing shipped. What am I going to do with it? But there is an emotional attachment. A film print is a pretty cool thing. Maybe get some people together and get drunk and screen it. Or maybe cut it up in little pieces and repurpose it, make a jacket out if it or something. I feel like I need advice on this.

There’s a small hillside village in Italy, a place of stunning, unspoiled beauty. Perfectly weathered pre-18th century architecture, a labyrinth of cunning spiraled alleys and
narrow cobbled streets. No power lines, trash, or plastic signs. Humble, yet noble, peasants make pasta with wooden implements. The prostitutes in this village are super
stunning, and affordable. They fall in love easily and will marry you and give up the old profession. Mysterious hit men, and women, frequent the village. It’s perfect for hit men because no one wonders what you’re up to. There’s a five-star restaurant just for hit men and prostitutes. Even when you pull off a messy hit in the middle of the village, it’s okay because there are no witnesses and no police. The next day, no one suspects you, not even the prostitutes, though you’re the only hit man still alive in the village, and the only person in the village who wasn’t born there. That’s what it’s like to be George Clooney.

Acupuncture has been around since second century BCE, at least. The practice was exported to the West through the straight pins used in packaged shirts, Trojan Horse style. American films have been Trojan-Horsed into China and all around the planet for about a century, so I guess what goes around comes around. If a movie is available for streaming on Netflix, does that mean it will exist forever? No need to ship the print, in that case. It’s been a long winter.

-David Warfield