01 May 2018

. . . uh, anyway

Yeah. I’m working on stuff. I just have to finish it.

THE SHORTLIST:

  • acquire DOOMSMOBILE 2.0 / (Starcar 1.0??)
  • publish new bookz
  • make new videoz
  • hire intern!!
  • maintain cult of personality (jk lol (maybe))

Yesterday I participated, in some small way, in the quote-unquote Berkeley Sci-fi Film Festival. Now that I think about it, it may not be Berkeley-wide . . . and we filmed in Oakland. My friends at Berkeley Community Media, namely KATIE BURGE, who is on the BOARD of DIRECTORS, asked me to play a bit part in her short. She told me it was about a “dystopian cult who sacrifices a male nurse to an omnipresent ruler whose face is a television.”

I said, “Uh! Yeah OK!”

I showed up at this place called Automasters in Oakland at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning with a hope in my heart. I had dreamed dreary things and wanted to be around people and pretend to be someone else so I could stop thinking about any of it. There was this dude hanging around, and he owned the place, and he was constantly encircled by three huge junkyard dogs. One of them probably weighed more than I did. They were so sweet . . . maybe the nicest dogs I’d ever met. Dang were they nice! This dude was nuts though. He looked like a combination of Guile from STREET FIGHTER and Romero from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. I have helpfully created a reference photo:

This guy’s name was Lou and he really does have hair like that. THE YUPPIES, he said, hated that he had shitty old RVs and a rusted suit of armor out front, along with a lot of other cool trash, but the guy has been there for 35 years, so I guess they can go ahead and get bent.

A whole bunch of people showed up after that. I was surprised Katie was able to assemble to many adults on a Sunday morning. My friend world-famous oil painter Sam Spano (aka SLAMMO), who I worked with at Donut Farm and lived with briefly in North Oakland—well he sure did show up as well. He was the male nurse, for god’s sake. He was to be executed by me and the rest of the cronies. Katie said I was blue-shirted cronie #2, which suited me just fine because there is less pressure when you’re the second one of something. When she finally showed up with COFFEE and BAGELS, she told me I would actually be the red-shirted cult leader with the only speaking part. I had to make up all my lines on the spot. I guess it went OK, because I only had to say all my lines three times, and the guy behind the camera, bless his heart, gave me a thumbs up at some point. Mostly I just riffed on the stuff Dr. Dealgood (“Dyin’ time’s here!”) from BEYOND THUNDERDOME says. Yeah, this guy:

“All our lives hang by a thread. Now we got a man waiting for sentence. But ain’t it the truth? You take your chances with the law. Justice is only a roll of the dice. A flip of the coin. A turn . . . of the Wheel!”

Anyway here is a picture Katie took when we were rehearsing or whatever. I think will be worth a lot of money someday because I am smiling in it:

Ew!!! I’m gross. Lookit Sam Spano, though, with his cute lil’ red Crocs and his beautiful pained smile. God love that guy. I sure do~

I went home afterwards and got rid of a bunch of furniture Kerwin (RIP) had left behind when he moved back to North Carolina. Then, for the first time since September, I wrote and filmed a short and put it on my stupid Instagram. See here:

A post shared by ryan starsailor ☆彡 (@starpuncher) on Man! I got so many, uh, “messages of encouragement” after I put that one up to the effect of: “Keep making these!” Said I to them: OK!!!!!!!! I already got another one lined up. It is very good I think. I never say that about anything I make, but this one really is OK. I have about a dozen more written, all of them under a minute long, but I need help because otherwise it takes me 5-6 hours. what with having to set up and break everything down again. It is difficult to frame a shot and then be in that shot, for instance. There’s a lot of trial and error, and so on. The Berkeley Community Media people and Katie and her friends (there’s some overlap there) said they wanna help, so . . . . . . I guess that’s gonna happen. As a paying member I can rent tens of thousands of dollars worth of filming equipment which is so hilarious it almost makes me sad, namely because I’m producing one-minute throwaway videos that exist in a tiny phone resolution. Maybe that’s kind of cool though. Probably not!

Outside of drugs, I don’t know how else to keep myself from, with a philosophical flourish, throwing myself upon my sword. That’s why I gotta make stuff. It is time-consuming and robotic when I’m going about it, which is good. I don’t want to think, or use my higher brain whatsoever. That recipe is exactly what I need to put all of my unassailable rotten feelings on ice. So it’s not so much of a labor of love as it is like an end-of-my-rope last-ditch-effort to delay for as long as possible the inevitable eternal sadnesses my family and friends will experience when I really do jettison this godforsaken place for the land of nonexistence.

Hello again! I’m back. I don’t know what the hell I’ve been doing for the last month. Sleeping too much and not sleeping at all I think. I cannot stop my body and brain from hurting, and I cannot escape this bone-deep loneliness that I have experienced since the day abstract shapes in my head mutated into concrete words and sentences . . . but I can work on this website! And talk to everyone! I’m going to keep doing that until the satellites come flaming down from the heavens, and the very moon itself cracks in half, any day now. . . .

I SHALL END THIS POST THUSLY: Today I bought leather pants. Size 28! I bought them so that I can wear them while riding a motorcycle. Well, that’s something, aint it?? And next weekend I’m going to drive to Santa Cruz and drop acid on the beach. I will maybe wear my leather pants. I mean, who really cares? At any rate I’m very excited about both of these things, and god only knows when I last felt that way about anything at all, so hey~

Haaaaahhhhh bye for now ✫彡