Learning Day: There Is A Genie In My Szechuan Sauce (Patreon)

The city’s dead tonight - cold and blue as a corpse on a slab, and fresh sorrow blowing from a muffled sax at the dive bar next door is all that mourns its passing. There’s no work across my desk that can’t be warded off with a few belts of scotch and an “I’ll do it tomorrow.” I should be writing, but my head’s full of bees and stale promises. In other words, it’s not the best of times for my gas bill, but it’s not the worst of times to squeeze in some casual gaming. Old Man Baby won’t be happy the column’s late, which’ll probably mean another late-night visit from his chief goon, Badwriter Brockway, a foolish poltroon of the lowest caliber. Packs a mean right hook though. Ah well, can’t live forever.

As if to prove my point, there’s a notification telling me about a deal on a game I wishlisted. I don’t know a wishlist from a handful of sheep shit, but I click over anyway. There on the screen, squatting low like a pitbull straining at its chain, is a $4.99 game called “There is a Genie in my Szechuan Sauce Remastered.” I know it’s trouble the minute it comes into my office, but then again, I’ve always been the type who doesn’t know what’s good for him. I pony up a fin and it downloads in a blink. Strike one.

Expecting an indie with a heart of gold and something to prove - and hoping to get more bang for my buck than when I spend $4.99 on the working girls down at the docks (I keep the extra pennies in the breast pocket of my trench coat to block 45 slugs [I am a detective]) - I load the thing up. The kid on the title card looks at me like he’s trying to rifle through my mind for the code to a safety deposit box. He’s the spitting image of a cel-shaded Professor X with turds for hair. There are a few more orange turds scattered around, a word lit up in red on the selected one like a bloody stool trying to communicate its pain: PLAY. I’m not a Moby fan. Strike two.

Strike three isn’t a strike; it’s a line drive. The game’s theme song suddenly swings hard at my right temple and connects, a real Louisville slugger of a tune. “Cover my body with your tasty and nasty Szechuan sauce” shrieks my flatscreen, in an auto-tuned accent halfway between Canadian and brain damaged. But it’s a one-two punch, and the other fist is still on the train. It pulls into the station at full speed, with neither driver nor rhyme aboard. “You dirty genie,” comes the voice, “you need to put it on me.” It’s not even the right number of syllables. The line fits over the melody like a police tarp over the remains of a high-rise jumper.

Lyrics pump from the speakers one after another, sausage links being cased…but it takes more than pig intestine to hold in that much death. “You are the nasty genie of my dreams.” POW. “When you fart it smells like the sauce.” THUD. I count at least three cracked ribs, and proper mayhem hasn’t even begun yet. It’s almost as if I’d be better off with Brockway, getting clocked by his one good arm and choking on that signature smell he cultivates working the meat counter at the manure booth of the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Almost.

Before I can mash start, one more grotesque flashes on screen, hits me like a thousand high school improv shows. It’s a kid wearing a MAGA hat, dabbing. His face is just a jumble of tan cels, but I still say “kid” because imagining an adult doing it would spoil the whiskey. Which reminds me. I tilt the highball all the way back and take down four fingers neat, pausing to peer through the thick bottom like a magnifying glass. Old habit.

That’s how I see the text under the title; the text that says “WARNING: THIS GAME WAS MADE IN 2017 BY A BUNCH OF SWEATY TEENAGERS. WE REMASTERED IT FOR THE FANS. YOU MIGHT BE SHOCKED. IT’S REALLY AWFUL. CHECK OUR OTHER GAMES BITCH.” Needless to say, the Rick and Morty levels are off the charts. I get douche chills so hard it’s like someone just used the phrase “douche chills” in front of me in the year 2024. Cursing Tim and Eric in their unmarked graves, I put the video game to my head and pull R2.

It’s always a dame. Somewhere a half-shell is missing its Venus, and better looking for it. The interloper in the wig brandishes a jar of “Szechuan sauce” at the camera, yelling improvised lines in a Justin Roiland patois saddled with heavy artificial reverb. A palooka in a skirt is always good for a laugh, but it’s still a shame to see what one of those RFK brain worms can do to a person (I’m just assuming).

I try to skip the opening cutscene, but no dice. None of the buttons have any effect, and all I get for holding O is a sore thumb and another regret to toss onto the pile. One of the aforementioned sweaty teens sits on a sofa and ponders the true cost of love, his knives and phone in ready reach. Smart - he’s a professional. But I’m better. I absently finger the mic button on my controller and it starts to glow, indicating that the mic is off, which I always find really confusing.

The mook is on the horn with his hookup, trying to score sauce. They both wear cheaters, which wakes the bully in me and makes my knuckles itch. The itch evolves into a full-on rash when it dawns on me that the assholes are using a toy dinosaur with a sticky-note on it to stand in for the titular Szechuan sauce. Somewhere, it starts raining in Chinatown. At least it hides the tears.

The first rube stumblebums his way over to his dealer’s house, the tow-headed kid from the title card. His water bottle is censored for no reason - that’s the joke. And like that, it’s as if a mask has been ripped away. This isn’t a cutscene, I realize. The video is the game! Somehow, in my jaw, I know with grim certainty that it’s true. Suddenly, the stink of internet sketch hangs thick in the air.

It’s a classic setup, and I just fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I see it clear as daylight now: the whole shooting match was never anything more than a stupid YouTube video, making $4.99 an outrageously high price point. I study the perps, try to calculate their vig and memorize their faces. I should pick up stakes right here and now…but I’m just pigheaded enough to want to see how this plays out. I embrace my inner masochist and gently set the controller aside. I even turn the volume up a few notches, like spitting in the face of a loving God.

I let the slurry of anti-humor and random memes wash over me like a two-day hangover. Opening the Szechuan sauce releases a genie in a censored t-shirt and a MAGA hat with fidget spinners for eyes. Sure, why not, bring it on. It’s a good day to die.

As intentionally stilted dialog unspools, I focus in on the accents again and start to get more of a Russian vibe. Poor bastards. The question is, is the accent legit, or another joke? I make a mental note to have my buddy down at the precinct run background checks. The genie grants our scarecrow friend (brainless and gangly as he is) four wishes, and he uses the first one to deep six his buddy, who hits the ground like a sack of potatoes in cement shoes on Jupiter.

A double-cross, I shoulda known! I’ve always had luck like that. So it is a game after all, at least technically speaking. Wiping oil from a cheesesteak on my pants, I pick up my controller again as the screen freezes and presents me with a choice. It seems these yeggs are cutting corners and passing off internet sketches as video games by tossing in a couple forks in the road - probably pocketing the difference. It’s all starting to make sense now, go see-through layer after layer, like a caramelized onion with only two layers. I press X and make the geek wish to be good looking, flinching inwardly at the prospect of siccing him on any real broad.

This turns out to be a dead end that circles back on itself, the mere illusion of choice. Reminds me of the man upstairs, and a dark alley with only locked doors and the smell of perfume. Fine, I think. Chaos for dinner again. “I wish to have a girlfriend.”

We’re four minutes into this nightmare when I run smack-dab into the second shitbird dressed as a dame and trying to pass it off as humor. The genie dabs the dead man awake as the second wish, which is a trick that woulda come in handy for yours truly on a few occasions. The scene that plays out can only be described as part Monty Python drag, part Kids in the Hall drag, and all a drag. Jokes are thrown out only in the loosest sense, and you can feel your time draining away like blood in the gutter.

Six homophobic jokes, three swipes at the female gender as a whole, and four shots of bourbon later, and we reach decision-point number two. The completionist in me wonders if we should save state so we can go back and see both outcomes. The me in me drags the completionist out kicking and screaming and puts two bullets in his brainpan. I ask the genie if I can eat the Szechuan sauce. I’m not sure if this is my third wish or just a simple request, but I tell my soul to get ready to get run through the laundry mangle either way.

The sauce genie dabs yet again, another slam of the dagger into my heart. It’s a wish then. Figures. A quick back-and-forth leads to the mark asking the other question anyway, eliminating the last shred of meaning or impact a handful of binary decisions might otherwise have. I spit blood on the floor and a molar comes with it. Guess that loose tooth finally gave up the ghost. At least someone knows when it’s time to make for the border…if only I had its smarts.

“Why did you live in Szechuan sauce?” I ask, instinctively putting my dukes up, waiting for the blow. “BECAUSE I’M COOL, BIATCH!” the genie shouts. It feels like an anvil. Atlas shrugs. The world ends. But…somehow…I pick up and carry on. I always do. Wish I could change that sometimes.

The genie accuses us of being a nugget, fucking whatever.

Animated nuggets fall from the sky without cause, without reason, like a hail of gunfire from the tommy gun of a spree shooter. They don’t care who they hurt, just that they hurt. My character does the herky-jerky dance of the white man, coupled with the flat-pitched “aaaaaaah” of Troll 2 and countless subsequent comedy bits. My penis inverts out of shame. If only shooting yourself were an option in this travesty.

Buttfucked by fate again. Instead of sweet surcease, the barman serves up a tall glass of the way every internet sketch ends if you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing - gunplay. I’m not about to gun down the much-maligned Paula, so the genie’s got to go. It’s a no-brainer, and soon he will be too.

“Why do you want to kill me?” The genie forces it through clenched teeth. I shudder preemptively and my guy says “Because you don’t like chicken nuggets.” A little vomit from last night’s binge and purge dislodges from the deeper reaches of my sinuses and hits the ol’ olfactory receptors at the same instant. Fitting. “Okay,” says the genie, “that makes sense.” Only it doesn’t, and I’m not sure anything ever will again. I go dizzy as, like trying to put a bow on a pile of shit, the cameraman pans over to Paula, who wraps up the sketch with the line “I’m not really a woman. I’m an alien.” I smoke an entire cigarette on one inhale and use every last ounce of it to sigh.

At least I have one thing going for me: I’m about ready to wrap up the Case of the Dead Format. I can feel the aching daydream there at the edge of my consciousness, the dream of freedom bouncing around the cell of a lifer. Soon I’ll be a jaybird, as in “free as a,” and making tracks to do something more pleasant, like taking an icepick to the neck. Closing this case is no feather in my cap, though. I’ll have nothing to show for it but scars and another knot of muscle that’ll never unclench, one more cluster of dead nerves in a numb heart. Oh fuck it’s this guy again.

Like some Shakespearean satyr of old, fuckface thanks me for playing the game and tries to shill two more of his own devising. Sure, I think, feed me a scorpion and ask if I want seconds. Kick me in the balls and tell me there’s two more where that came from. Remind me of her face.

This is one of the games.

Robert and Sean,

Although it has been a delight getting to contribute to a site that I truly believe is keeping a specific genre of humor alive and doing it smashingly, I’m afraid it’s time for me to turn in my badge and pen and take leave of my column. I trust you’ll be able to replace me with any number of talented comedy writers out there, but if you want some recommendations please feel free to ask. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me to do what I love and get paid for it to boot. Please know that it’s nothing personal, it’s just that I became aware of a video game called JOHN FART: TEXT-IVERSE OF CRAZINESS and now I have to go kill myself in a way that takes a lot of other people out with me.

Thanks for all the chuckles and giggles (AKA chucks and giggs)!

<3 Swaim

P.S. My attorney will be in touch, as I’ve decided to leave each of you half of the treasure map. Good hunting.

[EDITOR'S NOTE]

Resignation denied. JOHN FART is due by 5:00 am (PST).

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Koumoutsas, here to solve the brutal and senseless murders of John and Carol Fart.

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