☆ STARSAILOR ☆

LAST FRIDAY . . .

. . . Elina the Estonian Girl invited me to a drag show somewhere in East Berlin, and so I went. She would have otherwise been alone, and I didn’t want to leave her hanging like that . . . and anyway, why not go? I love riding the U-Bahn, and I love going to East Berlin whenever I had some reason to. And so of course I suited up in my black Canadian tuxedo and took the U7 from Schöneberg to Mehringdamm where I transferred to the U6, and then onward to wherever the hell the drag show was. Elina, who was quite sick with a sort of cold, met me outside the place and we fell into it together, like a fever or a daydream, unsure what to expect. Inside was a foyer and a bar. Elina used her connections to wrangle us some free drinks. I don’t drink at all anymore, and so I got a sparkling water. And anyway, I had two gummies in my pocket that I knew we’d get twisted on sooner than later, so I settled for sweet hydration. I am, after all, an Aquarian, the Water Bearer, and a card-carrying Weedman (pronounced weed-min) . . . my only true nemesis is dry mouth.

The crowd was not what I had expected . . . nearly everyone was 50 and over, many in their 60s and 70s even. It was a real NPR / PBS-feeling crowd in the best possible way. It put my soul at ease. I love all my brothers and sisters, but I wasn’t really in the mood to be surrounded by a bunch of cartoonishly cliche Berliners, of which the east side of this fine city is crawling with, and which is what I had anticipated. This was way more chill. Elina and I found some seats on the side and, beneath the glow of blue and purple lights, we had ourselves a good old-fashioned sit down.

The show was quite long. All told, it was a little over three and a half hours of show-dancing, karaoke, live music, and on-stage costume changes. At the end of the show, the rainbow-mohawk’d stagehand, who was in charge of collecting costumes and changing out sets, and so on, played two songs on his keyboard. He was a cool dude. When he finished his set, Elina and screamed out in rapturous support of this cool dude. As he walked past us, I asked him if we could take a picture together. He said, “Of course!”

After the show, Elina and HIT THE MEAN STREETS of Berlin and beelined towards the nearest späti. Elina got a beer and I got a Coke Zero, my only vice other than self-loathing. I reckon we are currently in the midst of the Coca-Cola Corporation’s annual thing where they put names on all the bottles. I have been documenting them because over here in Europe, you sure as hell ain’t gonna find any bottles for Kevins or Kyles or—heaven help us all—Bryans. Yuck! Behold:

AN ASIDE: I did however find a Nicole bottle, which I immediately sent to my friend Nicole, the Olivetti Typewriter Heiress:

. . . whom I also spoke to on the phone for nearly two hours earlier tonight:

BEVERAGES IN HAND . . .

. . . Elina and I boarded the near-empty U6 to Mehringdamm to catch the near-empty U7 back to Schöneberg. I told Elina I would nurse her back to health . . . that I would run her a bath and make her dinner and give her some ibuprofen. She agreed without hesitation. At that moment this fate sounded more enticing than Death.

Back in my Dracula tower in Schöneberg, I made good on my promises. While she took a vitamin E-infused bath, I whipped up a restorative meal that had kept many an American going for as long as there have been Americans: mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and broccoli. We supped in peace before the warm glow of my massive television while my galaxy light twinkled overhead.

We slept till well after noon on account of us staying up all night. And anyway, Elina needed as much sleep as she could get to quell the storm raging inside her. Other than sailing about a little and seeing the watery part of the world, a long dark weed-sleep is the best way of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. I sprang out of my coffin and made us coffee and the gay little smoothie I drink every single day of my life, and which I make for any and all of the precious little angels who are goodly enough to stay with me.

Once more for the freaks in the back:

From bottom to top:

frozen mangoes
frozen blueberries
frozen strawberries
spinach
blackberries
raspberries
vegan oat yogurt
strawberries
one banana
oat milk

Elina and I agreed to stay inside for the day to hide from the sun, and be far from the madding crowd. Mostly we drank tea and coffee and watched Comfort Movies. Since Elina had agreed to appear on my brand new Sunday night stream (I reckon I am announcing it here and now), and too sick to make her way south only to have to return again the next day, she stayed over once more. And again we slept like the dead in the cool darkness of my tower.

Next day we awoke and repeated our good and painless routine from the day before, drinking beverages and watching movies, and on and on. Around nine that night I began assembling everything we’d need to stream live from the beautiful doom metropolis which is called Berlin, hopeful I’d get it all together before our debut show at eleven.

Meanwhile, Elina rested in my bed drinking coffee and eating Nutella toast. On the topic of babes, I often utter the old American refrain: “. . . I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers!” And what is the closest crumbly cousin to the cracker? Surely it is toasted bread. Any other time, I might have been horrified to find someone eating toast where I lay my gentle head to rest, or else would outright refuse to allow them to commit this godforsaken sin. Other than turning on the overhead light, this is one of the few hard-line rules I have in my home. As far as I’m concerned, those may as well be the 11th and 12th commandments. And yet I automatically holstered my angst for Food In Bed on account of my love for my friend Elina. By her own admission, she “never eats” . . . so of course I wanted her to eat till she turned into Veruca Salt, even if it was in the last place I’d ever want food. My friend Emma in Berkeley once told me that “eating in bed is a feminine trait” and so I believe her. For Elina I let it slide. It was not difficult. For god’s sake, this girl has a lot of life ahead of her.

I even tucked dear Elina in like a little worm . . . an essential part of overall wellness, and doctor’s orders:

LATER THAT NIGHT . . .

. . . and against all odds, I managed to successfully set up two cameras with audio within the completely non-intuitive OBS streaming software. I pointed one camera at my TV and one at my couch where I was to sit. Elina was resolute to instead lean over my couch while still lying down on my bed on account of she wanted to maintain the degree of coziness which had sustained her all weekend. And who could blame her? We decided we needed something boneheaded and easy to chill with, so we chose HOGWARTS LEGACY, a sort of Harry Potter RPG, which, for reasons I won’t explain right now, Amazon Deutschland had accidentally sent me for free.

Whereas most streams are perpetrated by the worst kind of broccoli-haired Gen Z losers, who sit in $500 gaming chairs parked in front of a green screen, and who scream out unintelligibly for a crowd of lost souls, I wanted our stream to feel like a combination of Mystery Science 3000 and Wayne’s World . . . just some chill dudes hanging out for the sake of the song, so to speak. And so saying, we went live about fifteen minutes after my intended start time, which was OK with me. That it had worked at all was a kind of victory.

Meanwhile, Elina informed her thousands of followers to Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out:

AND CHILL WE DID for round about three hours as God’s green earth rotated on its axis and revolved the sun. Over the course of those three hours, we racked up sixteen unique viewers from all over the world, half of whom hung out in the chat with us. I put Elina in charge of reading out the chat, which we both responded to in real-time. Too bad the Harry Potter game was a bit of a bummer on account of how much extraneous text you have to read, and how many in-game systems you have to learn. I am 37 years old and have been paying rent for 19 years. I have a driver’s license, have been in several serious relationships, and have attended more funerals than I want to think about. There is just no way you are going to get me to care about this nerd shit. Just let me get stoned and play the game, man. Once a game starts to feel like doing my taxes, I struggle to maintain interest. As my friend Canadian Will put it, HOGWARTS LEGACY is a game for “homework likers” and he ain’t wrong.

ANYWAY—
DIG THESE
GEOGRAPHIC DEMOGRAPHICS:

Saudi Arabia!

If you did not know, Estonians hate the Finnish. They think their language (which is most similar to Estonian) is disgusting, and they resent them for taking the ferry over the Gulf of Finland to the capital city Tallinn, where they drink all the booze and smoke all the cigarettes. The Finns have higher salaries than the Estonians, so they can afford to deplete the Estonians’ vice rations. I’m sure there are other more subtle annoyances that I am not privy to, but that’s the long and short of it.

After the stream, Elina had me watch a series of videos which made up her childhood in Estonia. Estonia is a tiny country of only 1.3 million people, and I would wager to guess that most Americans have never even heard of it before. It is a shame because I love Estonians and I think, next to the Irish, they’re probably the funniest group of people I know. There is something about their sense of humor that I dig. It’s self-effacing and dark. After centuries of being subjugated by the invading Germans and later occupied by Nazi Germany, not to mention being forcibly incorporated into the USSR, and only achieving their independence and sovereignty in 1991, I can see why that is!

And as a result of all that undeserved strife and misery, like an air-thin miracle, Estonia produced my friend Elina, who moved to the same city as me around the same time, and who has now become the Elaine Benes of my apartment, thank God!

Anyway . . . she showed me the Estonian equivalent of Sesame Street, which she assured me all Estonian boys and girls grow up watching, and which I found at least slightly creepy. Sorry!

God only knows what these creatures were singing about, but she sang along with them. “I know all the lyrics.” Apparently the bear in the second picture is “a dad making coffee” . . . and I will take her word for it.

There was also this:

You don’t wanna know what lead to this kid’s horrified expression, by the way.

Just before we covered the windows to block out the impending sunrise and dream the dreams of little angels, I asked my friend Canadian Will and his son Pastrami in Toronto what he thought of our stream. Will had been a stalwart viewer that night, and had heroically held up the chat.

Yes: Elina and I have a Good Dynamic because it’s basically good cop / bad cop. She busts my balls the entire time, and I persevere through my unwavering faith in the human race, in spite of it all. I regale the crowd with my many obnoxious anecdotes, and Elina rolls her eyes and goes through my refrigerator and eats all my cheese. Hey man . . . it works!

FINALLY . . .

. . . here I will say that I will be streaming every Sunday night at a time that I have not determined. I’m here in Berlin, which is Central European Time, and which means I am six hours ahead of my brothers and sisters back home on the East Coast, and nine hours ahead of my brothers and sisters on the West Coast. And so the middle of the night for me is the afternoon and evening for them. I can see how tuning in to a Twitch stream at three in the afternoon on a Sunday is not the most enticing way to spend one’s time . . . but I reckon we’ll see!

Though yeah, it’s called SEVERE NITETIME:

. . . and you can find it here. I even added it to the navigation menu up top. Wow!

Before I GO LIVE this Sunday, I will give advance warning here on this godforsaken website. And if Elina the Estonian Girl is too busy capturing wild Pokémon around Berlin, I may have to find a guest host for the night. Such is my tale. Maybe I will have Canadian Will and Pastrami on, or else my cousin Jack. I would ask my neighbor Russian Isabel below me, but it’s her birthday on Monday (as well as Elina’s??), and I don’t want to commandeer the eve of her birthday. But for god’s sake, I can’t sit there alone. If left to my own devices in a stoned stupor, I will become embarrassingly sentimental and start talking about missing old girlfriends, or whatever else. What a disaster that would be.

It is four in the morning and I have just enough time to watch one episode of Twin Peaks before the hateful sun shines, having no alternative, on the Nothing New. I’m rewatching the entire series from start to finish with FIRE WALK WITH ME bridging Season 2 to The Return, and I just got out of the mid-season lull in Season 2 where the episodes range from not-great to downright bad (the episode Diane Keaton directed . . . woof). Last episode I watched, Billy Zane showed up. It’s been a while and I can’t quite recall how long he sticks around, but I hope he leaves soon. For shit’s sake.

Take it from Anatalia, who briefly dated the guy a few years ago:

Yeah!!! But . . . shit!!!

. . . according to the unfeeling robots which supply us with way too much information, and which will kill us yet, the sun doth rise at 5:23 am, but I know I’m going to hear the twittering of birds outside my balcony sooner than that. And once you hear the birds, it’s over. Lord help me, I’ve got about the length of an episode of Twin Peaks (47 minutes) before that happens. (At least there’s a full moon in five days.) So while I’m hip about time, I just got to go. You’ll hear from me again soon. Maybe sooner than you think. I hope that instills a warmth in your heart rather than despair. Dig?

And here at the end of all things I remember, as always . . .