Young Gego is staying with me again. He was last here two or three weeks ago. His mother, my friend Isabella, left for Ireland with her boyfriend today . . . I told her that not only will I watch him anytime she needs me to, but that I actually really like having him here too. I want him here! His presence is a gift. Gego is kind of insane and weird but he’s also sweet.

Generally he sleeps in his little fort on my couch:

. . . but he also chills in this box:

Often he sleeps on my bed:

However, glancing over just now, I see him asleep on the rug beside my balcony:

This guy is all over the place!

Honestly, Gego is so cute is almost makes me sick. I can’t stand it. It is good to have a cat here though. This is the only time in my life I have not had a cat and it’s destroying my soul. But when there is a cat in my house, even just temporarily, it brings me joy and I feel at peace. It makes all the difference in the world, is what I’m saying.

Earlier tonight, I received this message from my friend Elina, The Estonian Girl:

Never mind that she thinks a bagel is, as she put it later, a “flavorless donut” . . . I thought it was cool that she did not ask if she could come over. She just told me she was coming over. I’m serious as a heart attack, I love that. I’m always telling my friends they can just show up whenever as if my apartment is Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment. I tell them, you know, just go ahead and open my refrigerator without asking, and eat whatever you want, just like in Jerry’s apartment. It’s like having Gego here: I like the company. GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR.

Anyway, Elina, who says she “doesn’t understand cats”, befriended Gego simply by sitting on my couch. He came over and rubbed his head against her leg, and then perched himself on the couch next to her:

She said, “OK, I like this cat.” I don’t want to know someone who doesn’t!

Around 11 I walked Elina to the U-bahn station so she could catch her train home. We stopped at the späti near my house and she bought a beer for the ride back. She is three inches shorter than me, but with her massive platforms on, she towered over me like Frankenstein.

We waited for the U7 to arrive . . .

When it did, she leaned down to hug me and Off She Went. We HAVE PLANS to make macaroni and cheese (she’s never had it!) and watch WILD AT HEART. I like Elina a lot. Ain’t it nice to meet someone and immediately know they will be your good friend??

And, so sayeth Scottish game designer Cara Ellison (whose book I’m in):

Listen: I am as He made me. And also she’s not wrong.

Happy Easter from the Easter Bunnies (plural) and some airport cops at Edinburgh Airport. I was one my way to Dublin and was blessed with both chance meetings. In my experience, if you ask to have your picture taken with someone in a costume and you are adult, they love that. The ladies accompanying the East Bunny in the first picture, who are standing to the left of us, they were laughing their asses off. One of them took off her bunny ears and placed them on my head.

Later, on the way to my gate, I saw some cops with machine guns (lol) posing with a second Easter Bunny and a gigantic egg. I said, “Can I get a picture with you all?” They seemed a little confused at first but nonetheless agreed. I love it.

Years ago now, when I was flying out of SFO to Nashville, there was a Santa Claus at my gate taking pictures with children. I got in line behind a bunch of seven-year-olds and waited for my turn. When I finally got to Santa, I told her (!) I wanted a bicycle. I asked her if we could take a picture together with her angrily grabbing my collar and she said, “Sure!”

. . . I love it!

how could i ever forget 9/11? when it’s the background on elina the estonian girl’s phone?

tis true

Years ago, when the world was still beautiful, when man and beast lived in perfect harmony here upon God’s green earth, there was a streaming service called FilmStruck. It combined Turner Classic Movies with The Criterion Collection. Basically, you could stream hundreds (if not thousands) of films that you might call culturally / historically / artistically significant. Back then I was (and remain still) an unmarried and childless adult who often felt life to be a senseless terror, so of course I signed up as soon as they announced it. Over the course of two years, I chewed through a metric ton of everything they ever put on there. It was a source of happiness for me . . . I could always count on finding something on FilmStruck that completely ripped my mind in half and made me remember that LIFE CAN BE BEAUTIFUL. And each month they would cycle out movies for other ones, and put them in themed collections to honor certain directors or genres or holidays, or whatever else, making it a sort of all-you-can-eat buffet of curated movies . . . an endless cavern of precious stones. It was great! (The only downside was the Apple TV app did not have dark mode. The backgrounds were white, for god’s sake . . .)

Anyway: FilmStruck lasted from November 2016 to November 2018. I seem to recall directors like Scorsese pleading that people subscribe, so delicate was its existence . . . but I reckon it ended up being super niche. By the time they killed it off, there were only 100k subscribers in the whole world versus however many hundreds of millions Netflix had. I was real bummed out when I heard the news. Some of the movies they had on there were essentially impossible to find elsewhere, even to torrent . . . many were over a hundred years old. I watched as many movies as I could leading up to the night they shut the server down, but of course shut it down they did. All those movies vanished into the abyss which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Soon after the world descended into darkness, and I along with it.

MONTHS LATER . . .

. . . Criterion themselves came down like a bolt of lightning to heal the world, announcing they were going to start their own streaming service called The Criterion Channel. Thought I: “Wow!” Still a professional loser with no reason to live, I signed up right away. In addition to getting a reduced annual fee (I pay $89.99/yr versus $99.99/yr like the rest of you freaks . . .), they also sent me this thick metal charter subscriber card. It weighs like a pound:

Since then, I have watched probably a thousand movies on The Criterion Channel. In the darkest moments of my life, when I feel the abyssal lair growing nearer, I’ll remember it exists, and go a-browsing. And lo: more often than not I’ll get lucky and find something truly moving that rekindles the light which burns within the deepest wellsprings of my being . . . and thus I AM HEALED BY CINEMA. It is a beautiful feeling.

Last week, on April 8th, I received an email which I will now share with you. Apparently it has been six years since The Criterion Channel launched:

April 8th! Of course! The date which is writ eternal upon my membership card. So it has been six years after all. Well, there it is if y’all want it: a referral code for a whole free month. Take it and run, for all I care.

I watch something on The Criterion Channel at least three or four nights a week. If they put up a themed collection called “Neo Noir” or “Hitchcock for the Holidays”, you better BELIEVE I’m watching every single god damn movie they got in there. But my favorite thing to do is a thing I started doing during the pandemic, which is to go in completely blind. I’ll just choose something based on the title or the thumbnail or the genre (“Czech New Wave”?? OK!) and watch it without having the slightest clue what it’s even about. I don’t dare read the synopsis! Some of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life I found this way. It feels like finding a Christmas present under the couch. I highly recommend it~

Anyway, get in there. Thank me later. Criterion in general seems to be pretty popular these days . . . they do those Criterion Closet videos with celebrities and all that, and a bunch of people watch that stuff. I still buy their Blu-rays because I’m an unmarried and childless adult who lives alone and stays up till 5 am, but everyone knows physical media sales are in decline . . . AND SO it is important to support streaming services like this so that they do not suffer the same fate as FilmStruck. Because let’s face it: pretty much everything outside of Criterion and MUBI and Kanopy fucking sucks. And that’s putting it mildly!

Take a look at what is like a quarter of my watchlist on CC, some of which I keep in there because I love them so much:

Listen: This is not a plug, but rather a case for your very soul. I am your Movie Friend. Join me. Step into the light. Take off your bib and turn your back on the sky-high baby food machine that is essentially every other streaming service. OK? YEAH!!!

There are so many things I wish to write about . . . I feel compelled to make a list:

• visiting Nicole in Poland last May
• visiting Demet and Ege and Aysu in Turkey last June
• touring the Southeast with Chalk Talk
• traveling nonstop around the United States and Canada between August 2023 and February 2024
• traveling nonstop around the United States and Canada between August 2024 and February 2025
• staying at my cousin’s cabin in rural Virginia
• cat-sitting Bilbo in Portland last Christmas
• being apprehended by US Border Patrol when reentering the United States from Vancouver days later
• the Dutch girls I met at Kuckucksei
• the Danish girls I met at Fahimi
• a radio station I found called Hearts of Space
• the strangers on the U-Bahn who eerily seemed to recognize me
• Madison huddling with me at sunset atop Grandview Park in San Francisco when I’d just moved to the Bay Area
• the much-missed Sunday ritual of Tom’s Diner in Portland and its similarities to Towson Diner from when I was a teenager
• being haunted by my friend J, the tall goth German girl who completely vanished from my life with no explanation
• the dream of the Haskell house
• the little spiders who guard my apartment
• sleeping next to M at K’s house
• the dead man I saw hanging from a tree
• the dark liquid behind my right eye which will not go away

. . . and so on. I’ll get to it. I’m about to have a lot of time to make thing for reasons I will explain in the next few days. Actually, what I’m about to do with my life is probably extremely stupid but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to do it because it means I will be free. Ain’t that all that really matters? Being free? That’s what I think, anyway, but then what do I know . . .

It’s 3:40 am in Berlin. Shaina is asleep in my bed and has to catch a train to Rotterdam in a few hours. I guess I will go to sleep now too.

For now . . .

What we professional liars hope to serve is truth. I’m afraid the pompous word for that is art. Picasso himself said it. Art, he said, is a lie, a lie that makes us realize the truth. Reality? It’s the toothbrush waiting at home for you in its glass, a bus ticket, a paycheck, and the grave.

orson welles