Bugging Out

Insects. Here in the tropics, they’re everywhere. And now that it’s summer, there’s a good chance at least five are sucking blood from your skin this very second. Makes you want to douse yourself in DDT, doesn’t it?
Thankfully, we have William Burroughs’s cautionary tale Naked Lunch to keep us (mostly) chemical free. The plot follows William Lee, an exterminator whose wife begins using his insecticide to get high — and who ends up so mind-fucked by his own work supplies that he starts taking orders from a giant, imaginary bug who tells him to kill his wife, seduce her doppelganger, and seek out the man behind an epic drug empire built on mind-altering substances culled from the innards of giant centipedes. Seriously.

Wed., July 11, 7 p.m., 2012