Cultural Junkdrawer – My Time With UN

Sorry I’ve been away for a while; I’ve been on a top secret mission for the US government.

See I got an offer to work on a film in North Korea, Kim Jung-Un’s magnum opus about the relationship between him and his father with the specter of his grandfather always looming in the background. A deft character study with sumptuous scenery and kinetic camera work. This deeply personal film about a boy realizing that his father is just a quirky, shy wallflower who just wants to be loved despite being a horrific dictator who had delusions of grandeur and was bent on domination over every aspect of his subject’s lives. The film (as scripted) also manages, somewhat miraculously, to reconcile the cannon inconsistencies created by Highlander 2 – The Quickening. Titled Zapped 2: The Subjugation of the American Dogs by the Beloved Supreme Leader of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea! The film starred a kidnapped and brainwashed Scott Baio, reprising his iconic role of Barney Springboro, who now has rejected the destructive and backwards values of decadent western culture and embraced the preferred ideologies of the Supreme Leader. Barney uses his telekinetic powers to speed along the people’s uranium refining program, resulting in weapon’s grade material sooner than projected by the glorious five-year plan! Hilarity ensues! He also uses his telekinetic powers to make the hot but straight-laced politbureau official’s skirt fly up in the air giving a quick glance at her state approved undergarments. Oh, Barney you rascal!

Willy Ames was also originally planned to be in the film but he did not respond well to “Re-education” so he was summarily executed behind the tool shed. Before you ask (and I know you were going to) this movie doesn’t recognize the events of 1990’s straight to video Zapped Again as cannon so you can just toss your Zapped fanfiction straight out the window if it pertains to anything that happened there. This film will be making the festival rounds in 2015.

Anyway, back to the top secret mission; the US government asked me to, if I got the chance, assassinate Kim Jung-Un because he is a dictator that hates freedom and poses a threat to the peace loving people of the United States. I can’t argue with this; the regime is a blood-soaked litany of fear and oppression where injustice happens every day; state-sponsored violence against its “undesirable” citizens, the desires and agenda of a tiny elite that hold power superseding the needs of the population at large, an internet spied on by the state and a dangerously militarized police force. I was too scared to say no.

North Korea is pretty bad too.

Obviously I had no small amount of trepidation about going to a country known primarily for spicy hot cabbage being served every meal, and being hostile to the US and its values, but I felt that I needed to do my duty. Plus I’ve always wanted to “accidentally” drop a movie light on somebody just to see if 1) they do a funny electric dance with little lightning bolts appearing around them, and 2) if their head will be in the shape of the light casing after they struggle hilariously for a minute to pull it off a ’la Roger Rabbit (it is possible I watch too many cartoons). So I went with the intent to kill a feared despot.

Then the strangest thing happened; Kim Jung-Un and I became buddies! We bonded over the little things; I felt that it was unfair that the servants in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast got turned into clocks and teapots and shit simply because their employer was an ass-hole to a gypsy in disguise. Kim pointed out that such a thing would never have happened in the People’s Democratic Republic because all property is owned by the state and shared equally… also all gypsies are shot.

We also both felt that Snowpiercer only worked if you accepted the whole thing as a metaphor for human civilization and any realistic interpretation would be doomed simply because a train full of the last vestiges of the human race going around a frozen planet is ridiculous. Kim saw the movie as a tribute to the struggle of the oppressed lower-classes and their eventual victory over the archaic western power structure. I disagreed feeling that what the movie was saying was that the cycle was endlessly repeated with the oppressed eventually becoming the oppressor and how the “revolution” always becomes co-opted by necessity. We had a thoughtful drawn out discussion about it; each of us supporting our arguments by example. Eventually Kim convinced me to his interpretation with that charming dorky smile of his, a quote from Das Kapital by Karl Marx, and threatening to have my pinky toes cut off.

Kim wanted to show that he had a sense of humor, something that didn’t really come across in the western press what with all the saber rattling, dangerous inflammatory rhetoric, and atomic weapons program. He was looking forward to The Interview with Seth Rogan and James Franco and seeing their, obviously hysterical, interpretation of himself as portrayed by Randall Park. Kim loved Randall Park in Sex Tape but he admits that he saw the movie because of Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal. Cameron, he says, has that “girl next door” quality, which is strange since the only girls next door to his palace are a platoon of elite snipers and a tank battalion, but I knew what he meant; Cameron Diaz has cultivated a Bro-friendly image by going to strip clubs with Justin Timberlake, shotgunning beer, and claiming to have the same sexual proclivities as a frat boy at Daytona beach. Which makes her seem approachable and relatable – a necessary perception if you’re gonna believe she is married to someone that looks like Jason Segal. Jason was Kim’s favorite in How I Met Your Mother and he said, rightly so, that Marshall and Lilly’s romance was the true heart of that show. I thought that was astute and sweet of Kim, showing a tiny glimmer of a human heart underneath the layers of expectation of his office and his role as beloved leader. Later we laughed at the slutty pumpkin episode while he oversaw a political prisoner’s nut sack getting electrocuted.

I asked him about the supposed bounty he put on Seth Rogan’s head over The Interview and he said it was all a misunderstanding; the bounty was for what Seth did to The Green Hornet, and the twenty four hour news cycle took liberties with that information. I couldn’t disagree with him about that, and after seeing the nut sack zapper didn’t want to anyway. I mentioned to Kim that everyone in America got the impression that he was upset over The Interview and wanted to stop its release. Kim shrugged saying “I hear its more Your Highness than Pineapple Express but since you bring this up, I got an idea!” he brought me to his cyber warfare unit which primarily consisted of a few dozen coders farming experience points for World of Warcraft and bitcoins. “According to some message boards I follow I hear there is going to be a hack of Sony films in the next day…” Kim said with a devilish twinkle in his eye. “… Some trolls are upset over The Amazing Spider-Man’s version of The Rhino or something. I felt it had as much internal logic as a movie dedicated to setting up a shared universe instead of telling a coherent story could have but, hey, I’m just the leader of a sovereign nation, what do I know? Anyhoo what if I claimed that North Korea was responsible for the attack in retaliation for The Interview? And that I demand that the movie be pulled from release! Every decadent western news organization will jump at that! Hell, I’m due for some sort of nut-job statement any day now anyway! Oh man, those trolls will be so pissed I stole their thunder! Especially ‘Tremendo-cock6969’ he’s a serious ass-hole!”

“And what about a response to cyber warfare from the US government?” I asked.

“Your government is too busy sorting through the late night hook-up texts and cat videos of your own people to know whether or not we really did it, and it won’t matter anyway, officially we’re enemies, so it is politically a safe zone for them. Hell, just to screw with ‘em I’ll publicly offer to work WITH the US government to catch these hackers. Man will THAT be a ballsy statement!” Kim practically doubled over I laughter.

“Yeah, but what if Sony actually does pull the movie?”

“Oh they’ll figure out a way to screen it. First I bet they’ll let the theatre chains “decide”, obviously the chains will balk at a terrorist threat and refuse to screen the movie. This’ll generate MORE press for the movie and even though nobody believes that the decision was taken out of Sony’s hands that’s what they’ll claim. Even MORE press will be generated because of the free speech issues brought up, Nightline will do a segment on it, and maybe even John Oliver will weigh in!”

“So, the movie won’t play in the theaters, that’s good?”

“Well, eventually Sony will let a few theaters screen the movie ‘Because it is the right thing to do’ and then they’ll look like first amendment heroes for doing it. I tell you, as a reprehensible despot, your first amendment thing is fun to screw with. Shit, I’d just shoot the bastards, done deal. Where was I? OH yeah, I know that Sony and every other studio wants to get away from movie theaters anyway and go to On-demand service. More profit for them. So now you got a movie with the entire juggernaut of American media doing their publicity work for them coming out through on-demand services. They’ll make a killing and not have to split profits with the theatre owners. Beats the hell out of what they did for Tower Heist. The people’s democratic republic look like a player in the hacker world, Sony gets to boost a mediocre prospect film to event status, and I get to stick it to Tremendo-cock6969! It’s a win hat trick!” Kim puffed his cigar in triumph and then he invited me to inspect a munitions factory worked by six year olds.

I have to hand it to him; the whole scenario played out almost exactly like he predicted. We parted as friends, he gave me a box of cigars… Cubans! I finished the movie, got my crew jacket, stress ball, and nut sack electrocuter with the Zapped 2 logo on them as wrap gifts, and came back to the good ‘ole United States. When asked why I didn’t “sanction” Kim I just said that the opportunity never came up. My C.I.A. handler grumbled something about “jus’ like gotdamn Rodman! The next Michael Bay movie we’ll get another shot” and let me go back to my life.

I don’t hear much from my pal, Kim Jung-Un, nowadays. The occasional funny picture through twitter, we crack on the Wincest fanfic writers on Supernatural message boards, he’s excited about the next Star Wars movie, and even likes the bastard sword lightsaber. Mostly I’ll see him on World of Warcraft as a 999th level cleric with the handle “Tremendo-cock6970” and smile inside while thinking of the good times we had.

Leeeeroy Jenkins, my friend, Leeeeroy Jenkins.