LORD HELP ME: I’ve been posting things on fuckin YouTube. I mean, it’s got to go somewhere. Here it is if you want to see it . . . you can click / tap on this thing to take you there:

I also added it to the links in the top bar of this very website. I told you I was desperately trying to create reasons to keep waking up in the morning. This is merely one segment of it. Or perhaps this is just the lie I tell myself. Well, whatever . . . it’s working for now.

And just now I finally wrote a bio / description at the top of my YT page:

STARSAILOR TV is the creative work of a deliberate fool called Ryan Starsailor. Hey, that’s me!

This website is pretty bad, huh? So here is my contribution to homo sapiens the world over: I am not here to sell you a product or service, edify you, indoctrinate you, inundate you with “content”, nor cause you permanent brain damage.

The things I upload here are closer to something like this: “I was alive. Here is some evidence of it, if you’re into that sort of thing. If not, that’s OK too.”

Yeah? Come on back sometime. I’ll be posting regularly from now on. What the hell else am I supposed to with my life? Sit around and grow old?? Forget it!

Anyway . . . hope y’all enjoyed that!

Because I had not uploaded a video to YouTube in literally 15 years, I came to find that there are mountains of bullshit you now have to navigate in order to simply upload a video. This strengthened my cartoonish disdain for modernity, but that’s a topic where I’d sooner die than explore here. Anyway, one of the milder things you have to do is create a thumbnail for your video. I began to make some and immediately felt like a sick freak. I am categorically adverse to making the kinds of thumbnails you see on that godforsaken website, so I made something I would actually click on. It feels more honest. (I apologize for having just come off like Holden Caulfield.)

See here from what is, for some reason, my most-watched video:

And here is the video itself, which is graffitied with a bunch of dumb UI you can’t turn off:

FINALLY . . .

Now that Elina’s internship has ended, I have rehired her as my intern here at STARSAILOR CO. I’m making her business cards and everything. I asked her if we could film one thing a week, even if it’s only five minutes long (five minutes takes about 10 hours to edit, by the way), and I believe she agreed. During her inevitable intermittent absence (she has a new boyfriend (who’d better have a healthy intimidation of me (I’ll plant his Italian ass if he hurts her))), I will carry on in her stead and try to put out TWO MINUTES of something. Where I come from, that’s better than nothing at all.

Also, should we start streaming again? Elina and I had a show last year . . .

It was essentially two hours of me sitting on the couch playing something on my TV while Elina ruthlessly roasted me from my bed and cackling like a hyena. I’m sure at least one gentle soul out there enjoyed this . . .

It is five in the morning, so I’m going to eat a fistful of magnesium and hope for the best. These days, that’s all I can do.

☆彡

LISTEN:

I updated my cute little sidebar with my musician friends’ most recent work:

In order:

• Bex / lifepath99’s first single MISFORTUNE
• Chalk Talk’s newest album SUN LIES HEAVY
• Brother McCune’s band NIGHTHÄMMER’s newest album S T R U G G L E R

They are all radically different from one another. I love it . . .

Anyway, for those who came in late:

LIFEPATH
“MISFORTUNE”

This is Bex’s new project . . . I dig it.

I’m going to film her show on the 17th when I’m in London in a few weeks because what the hell else am I good for. She has also asked me to film “BTS shots”, which I had to look up either because I’m old or I have simply never encountered it before. It means behind the scenes, for the rest of you fools out there.

I’ll get to use my new lavalier mics . . .

. . . and then make a thing for her and splice the rest into a separate thing I’m making. I’m an artist now, you know.

CHALK TALK
“SUN LIES HEAVY”

My friends Chalk Talk released a new album last September, but I shamefully neglected to plug it here on starsailor dot co. This is me making amends for this disgraceful omission. Katie, Nina, Fia, Stella . . . as your surrogate brother, roadie, and driver: I am proud of you. I promise I will finish writing the story of the tour I joined you on soon. I just took the long way is all . . .

NIGHTHÄMMER
“S T R U G G L E R”

Finally, Brother “Big Delicious” McCune’s band NIGHTHÄMMER has released a new album called S T R U G G L E R. These guys love naming stuff that is annoying to format! (jk smile) The fact that this dude is a father, independent business owner, prophetic stoner sage, and on and on . . . and still makes time to routinely put out new music is wild.

I have known this guy for 20 years. And so I know it was McCune’s hand that penned this description of the album:

Man takes up the sword to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a time long past, beyond remembrance. Man wields the sword so that he may die smiling in a distant place beyond perception.

Yes.

Support my friends if you can! They are fine people.

Well . . . so long for now!

Bex (who is also lifepath99) had this pin on her bag . . . I saw it the day we were sitting on the beach in Italy earlier this month. It was a perfect little day.

I said, “Bex . . . can I get one of those at some point? After all, I did vote for you.” She took it off her bag and gave it to me. Now it is pinned to the cork board next to my desk in remembrance of that day. I told her yesterday that I say one honorific thing about her every single day, even if she doesn’t believe me. And so saying, let this serve as proof of today’s honorific utterance of her greatness.

ADDENDUM:

When I made my first (of soon-to-be many) DUDES DONE WRONG video last week, I recruited Monty to speak Spanish, Nicole the Olivetti Girl to speak Italian, and Laura’s sister Helen to speak French . . . I thought it would make the scenes where I used them more mysterious / melancholy. I did not include subtitles for that reason.

If you are a unilingual dumbass like me, you may have not been able to understand what they were saying. Well! Here it is, if you’re into that sort of thing.

This is what Monty is saying in Spanish:

. . . and this is what Nicole and Helen are saying simultaneously in Italian and French:

Wow! I love that.

I had my beloved Canadians Julia, Sarah, and Will record their lines in (Canadian) English, and had my spirit sister Tracey read hers in her thick Australian accent.

Their lines: “Ryan, is that you?” and “Where were you, Ryan?” and “You let us die!” and “You promised to help us!” are a reference to one of my favorite movies . . . but I’m not gonna tell you which one. You’ll just have to guess!!

Anyway: thank you to everyone who watched it and told me as much.

The next video I’m working on is completely insane and includes more of these dream-like voiceovers. Perhaps I have written a plaintive monologue to be read in Ukrainian. Listen: there’s only way to find out . . . be there!

UNTIL THEN . . .

:,-)

today’s the day

Bex is flying back to Europe from Las Vegas in several hours, and in two and a half weeks I’ll be in Merry Olde England with her . . . and the two of us, both non-smokers, will share a cigarette together. Why not? I smoke like five cigarettes a year, either on an Exceptionally Bad Day, or if a babe asks me to . . . this will be the third this year, all of them with her, first in Italy (top), then polluting the Swiss air together next to a crystal-clear glacial river (bottom), and soon in godforsaken England (inevitable picture forthcoming). Hey, I love it . . .

Those cigarettes in the first picture were from Japan. I have no idea how Bex got a hold of them. With her you never really know, which is something I like about her. Though yeah, they were extremely long and thin . . . real chic. It was like chiefing on a pixy stick. You could smoke one of those things in about forty-five seconds, which is the perfect length of time to smoke a cigarette if you’re not really into that sort of thing.

*burp*

A long time ago, back in the early Oakland days, I weirdly had a brief smoking phase. My cousin Jack and I would drive around in our decommissioned police car and burn through a pack of Mellow Yellows in a few days. What the hell was I thinking? Who knows . . . but my clothes always reeked of cigarettes. And then you sit down on someone’s couch and they sniff the air around you and say, “. . . did you just smoke a cigarette?” and you feel a little embarrassed because it was four hours ago and The Smell Had Remained. Plus the car always smelled like cancer. And a pack of cigarettes in California was like $14 back then. Lord only knows how much it is today. Good-bye to all that!

And yet, sometimes I Remember and briefly miss it. Smoking a cigarette was always something to do. It was an excuse to leave the room and go be outside by yourself for a few minutes. And if someone joined you, you could be alone together, just smoking cigarettes and talking. Driving down to LA at 100 mph at midnight with my cousin Jack, with the windows rolled down, blasting music, lighting cigarettes, laughing like hell . . . man! And what is it about a smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee at the same that feels so good? It almost sounds vile on paper. And yet you combine these two highly addictive stimulants and you feel like you can punch through concrete afterward. Too bad about everything else.

Remember what the fella (David Lynch (RIP)) said when he developed emphysema and quit smoking:

I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco—the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them . . . It was important to me. I wish what every addict wishes for: that what we love is good for us.

Anyway . . . now that I have for some reason written an entire post about the concept of cigarettes and smoking them, here’s Chalk Talk Fia and me in Savannah a few years ago:

And some absolutely bonkers Russian girl I met here in Berlin (who bit my lip!) took this one:

Spirit Sister Leila took this atop a bar in New Orleans last fall:

From a VIDEO I made with my friend Kelsey (Marlboro Reds . . . this was rough (I’m an Artist)):

And here is, I think, the first drawing of me that my best friend Laura Rokas ever did:

In conclusion: Seeya soon, Bex . . . miss ya. Love ya. Let’s BURN A COUPLE OF HOT ONES together in the land of May Mornings and Midsummer Eves, and feel very glad indeed. What else is there? I can’t think of anyone else with whom I would rather incinerate my throat and lungs. Yeah?

Well . . .

I was going through some old photos and found this one of me . . .

I got a word of warning for all you would-be warriors. If you reply to someone’s text with this:

. . . they will 100% hate it, so tread wisely!

Thus spoke Laura:

(We were discussing the paradox of THE TERMINATOR: how can John Connor send Kyle Reese back in time to save his mother if Kyle Reese, through this time traveling, technically becomes John’s own father by impregnating his mother? To which Laura said: “Time travel doesn’t exist so we’ll never know what’s possible. It’s believable enough to me.” Because I myself come from the future, and thus know for a fact time travel does exist, I hit her with the Javier picture. Big mistake . . .)

Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty. Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

— john falstaff in HENRY IV

we have heard the chimes at midnight . . .