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May 4, 2006
berlin II: the rescue
We recieve a message from Lance and Boy Vane in Berlin:
SCEPTER: Wow. You can’t imagine the places Boy’s been taking me to out here in Berlin. I don’t think I believe them, at least not completely, but you don’t need to believe in something to have a good time. I thought sig-Me-Ous Prime was wild.—And the horrible memories of the Kentucky drift are almost gone, thank IpThar’s hammer… I think I’ll stay out here in Berlin for a few more days. Boy mentioned something about the Affengeil Burrows being our next destination.—The bagels aren’t half bad out here either.—Commissioner Loy Svane
VANE: Get me the fuck out of here!!!
DAVE: Richie had enough of Berlin? I knew it wouldn’t last, you are too Vane to enjoy anything for too long. I think Jimbo needs to hold someone captive, go to him.
THE MAJOR: How did Boy Vane get out of those shackles? Lance?
SCEPTER: Berlin’s a bit overcast today.—The secret police raided the loft and took all of Boy Vane’s suits. They said it was necessary for all the citizens to maintain an ordered appearance. They’ve got him in red Mervyns’s shorts and a yellow tee and tube socks.—At least they let me keep my codpiece.—Maybe you could send us some food, too. It seems the feast we’ve been enjoying over the past week was our annual food drop. And there are all these strange noises and clanking and the sound of pumps and way, way off, the sound of sweet laughter.—Commissioner Lance Scepter
VANE: Lance. Lance, where are you? Is it time for my bath? I can’t tell what time it is. I feel weak. Where have you gone? Who will help me? Help!! Help!! Lance!! Why have you abandoned me?
SCEPTER: Maybe we should all regroup on the Aloha deck. I think it’s time to get out of Berlin. I think it’s time to stop, take a breath, and have a drink. Sing a song. Rub each others feet. Things are starting to unravel. I miss nutella. The damn krauts confiscated all the little oval jars throughout the province. That’s it. That’s the last draw. Berlin blows, now. Boy’s starting to freak me out, as well. His skin isn’t used to these vulgar fabrics they have him in. He’s starting to take it out on the ones that care. If anyone’s monitoring this channel, send the relief pods. I’ve encrypted our spatial and temporal coordinates.—God Speed, little emperors—Lance Scepter
THE MAJOR: Dave! Dylan! Jimmy! Come with me, quick. We’ve got to get Lance out of the boiler room.
DAVE: Ooh you caught me with my pants down. —Dylan grab the bikini-o-meter.—Jimmy make way for the space cadets.—Captain Major General Scientist Colonel, We are armed and awaiting your orders.
JIMMY: Wait! I’m playing harky sark!
THE MAJOR: Okay, as soon as Jim is done playing hacky sack we advance on the boiler room. There’s no time to lose. Jimmy will approach from the south door (through the corridor from the Naptimes Nap Lounge), Dave and I through the north door at the bottom of the central spiral staircase. Dylan, I’m going to need you to take regular bikini readings from directly below the boiler room. This means you’ll have to crawl through the bilge chamber under the pump room. Sorry - I’ll buy you an extra Cosmopolitan tonight. Jimmy, Dave and I will wait for your “all clear”, then storm the room.—We’re going to see some ugly shit in there, guys, but keep focused on the job at hand. We MUST ignore Boy Vane for now: he’s just not ready to come back up. He’s going to make things unpleasant for us down there, but we’re gonna have to tough it out.—Okay, uh…. how’s that hacky sack comin’, Jim?
SKIPPER NOLAN: It’s OK, they’ve been semi-conscious for days now but Dave’s been feeding them nutella-danish-fig-wormwood whole-wheat foccacia hoagies to help bring down their temperatures while he conducts his ‘Lomaxian recordings’. Untie the bikini-ropes at once! Boy Vane has completed his warped symphony…Get them out of Berlin, give the room a quick sweep, let the cats and monkeys in, and turn the lights off!
SCEPTER: Hey, I think I’m flashing back to the Kentucky Drift or something. Things are getting weird out here. Better hurry up with those escape pods if your getting this message.—Berlin is starting to morph into a forest of corpses. There are all these trees, how else can I describe them, made of dead, emaciated people; two, three hundred feet high. But they have the most beautiful orange blossoms and leaves. The buildings have all disappeared and cellophane red mountains have replaced them. The streets have turned into rivers of black kidneys. Our flat is a bamboo platform on stilts of sinewy vulture legs. A throne of a fat, crying babies, all stacked and blued together, is in the middle of the platform and Boy Vane’s is sitting atop it with a giant skull-mace resting over his legs. He’s wearing this Dandy Suit, very dapper, but I think it’s made from kitten tongues.—Lance
THE SKIPPER: Alright Dave, I know I said shoot some oxygen and get some more water down there, not ‘lets see what happens on film when Scepter peers through your blue Christmas lights on black light with crabnets and seaweed sculpture while wearing red 3-D goggles with demos of Several Species of… blaring with the cats and monkeys fighting over pasta while Ritchie’s perched on the balance swing.
THE MAJOR: No, I don’t think that’s it. I think I see it too. It’s horrible. It’s beautiful.
SCEPTER: I think I see Major Scientist. Way off. Coming towards us on a pink lizard-squirrel in steel war-mail. He’s Glorious—Jimmy? Jimbo? Is that you? Harkkky Sarkkk, now? Here? Amongst all this insanity? I admire your love for the game. Okay, I’m in. Every successful stall and I’ll buy a round when we get back to the Toledo deck. Your Harkkky serve.
THE MAJOR: What kind of place is this? Lance? Is that you? What is boy doing on that baby throne? What the hell is going on? Did Shaggy slip me one of his electric peanut butter cups? Lance? Are you up there? God, the trees…. they’re singing!
VANE: Lance. Lance!!—Is someone here? It’s not a cat Toungue suit, It’s made from pheasant scrotum’s. It is irritating but I like it. The only thing thats strange around here is you. I think you’re plotting against me. You here that Berlin? He doesn’t like you anymore. Well, Fouie!! You want to leave us? Oh, you’ll want to leave us! You just wait.—Love, Boy Vane
THE MAJOR: Lance, what language is that coming from Richie’s megaphone? Sounds like Spanglish.
SCEPTER: Yes, it is Spanglish, with a splash of Dutch.—The damn Krauts are turning him against me. The first week was quite Wonderful. Brothels and cafes, and evening strolls through the paper lanterned paths of the Schrebergärtens and Kleingartenkoloniens. Altwasser Bier at 11am to stem off the morning sun, followed by steam baths and pedicures. Reinish wines for lunch served by shy, grass clad islanders. And Kinder Eggs. Thousands and thousands of Kinder Eggs and Boy let me put all the little toys together. I’d spend the early evenings watching him compose his song over and over, relishing in each changed note, each altered word, the shift in tempo for a brief moment and the casual slide back, and his barely perceptible grin at the selfknowledge that the existential gloom which moors us to this world would be abated for another day. The late evenings, after such days, led us to ornate parlors of the artist whores and Thai stick rollers with their jovial handshakes and soft chaise lounge and warm bodies. Strolling the early mornings home past the Elite guards on their way to duty, and stopping at Guapto’s, with his usual flare and spin and holding the great glass doors open for me to enter, for steamed milked and coffee.—But, now he’s turning against me. He took my Quest Goggles and used the parts for his Super Mega Phone which he uses somehow to control the corpse trees and flesh flowers, standing on his baby throne in his scrotum suit.—I miss the Boy Vane I used to know.
Some transmission from Berlin was lost here. What follows is an educated reconstruction from Skipper Nolan
VANE: I’ve got nothing to sing to you today! You smell…please pour the lavender juice on your head if you insist on staying in my flat…haven’t you got you’re own home? You’d be happier with the others out at sea.
SCEPTER: Silence Narcissus! Away with your perfectly sharp tongue and magic-mirrors! I hear the violent strings of Count Zelig and his servants piercing like the sickle of Cronus ! Do you hear them? They could be of use to you you know…in the architecture of your immaculate vision.
VANE: Why must you speak like that? Please pass me my labtop, and go take a nap. Could you help me put my other stiletto on?
SCEPTER: Bootstraps must be pulled by those magicians whose minds we cannot yet see. Do not ask me to assist you with something my vast powers can’t provide near these dark mountain ranges. Greater comfort will you find with the aid of my flippers, and questing-goggles given to me by my late uncle Jaspochlid…why don’t you sing, son of Bavaria?
An actual transmission from berlin:
SCEPTER: Hey, do you guys think you could take me back to the boat now? It looks like Boy Vane have all fallen under the sleep spell of Jimbo’s pendulous Snarrrrrrrrky kicks. As much fun as I’ve had and as much as I care for Boy Vane I think I’ve overstayed my welcome in Berlin. It’s also getting a little crowded in the flat now with all these other entities of power.—I think we could slip past them and not stop until we get to the Aloha deck’s oversized coconut papa-san chairs and Deputy Bienvenu’s Bloody Mary’s.—Commissioner Lance Scepter, ready for duty
THE MAJOR: Dearest Commander—After our failed rescue attempt last week, I set out in a specially designed psychodinghy in hopes of penetrating your delusion and helping you awaken to your conventinally real environment (which is, in this case, the barge’s boiler room). As you know, I made it far enough to meet up with you at the foot of Boy Vane’s throne of babies, but after our short exchange I experienced a malfunction in my dinghy’s dashboard clock. Somehow its shorted circuit untied the “knot” in the psychic fabric upon which I’d surfed to reach you, spilling me rather abruptly into the reflection pool next to the Egyptian tomb exhibit at the Met. I hope to have the dinghy fixed and to set out on the next rescue attempt within the next 24 hours.—Yours, etc, Major Scientist
Further reconstruction from the skipper:-
VANE: why don’t you drink some water before your silent nap, snoring son of charred melba cloud. and stop eating all of those sandwiches! lord knows where they come from…i paid the chambermaid her wages a year ago and begged her never to return. she changes the linen on my hammock-swing every morning. i can’t compose with her scrubbing…and now i have you interrupting me constantly. scepter. the magnificent lance sceptor. i love and despise you. sceptor my critic, sceptor my yogi, sceptor the daemon, sceptor the shaman. had I known you would be staying here indefinitely, or as you say ‘always’, i’d have left the cave of berlin for vacation in frankfurt with my beautiful arian mistress sipping on riesling in a clean, partially sunny bed and breakfast with a fountain and statues of eros. instead i am dehydrated in the dunkelsands of berlin, encased in damp and mold, with nothing but a dirty bathtub, an ancient furnace, a festering toilet, my guitar, my labtop, my books, and my bowie and wagner. the art of the berliner…rats bite my legs. the shower burns me. the prokrastinator is driving me beyond maddness and still i sip and compose and listen to your banter. what am i doing here? why do you keep following me to the brauhaus at lunch when you know that’s my most reflective hour. why are you always questioning my most inspired notes. what have you done with my purple blouse? how do you always have cigarettes? speaking of cigarettes, could you lend me one old Lancelot? Scepter?
SCEPTER: Shhh, quiet.
VANE: what do you hear sceptor? you’re always hearing something, and i nothing but the sound of smoke exhilation, bathtub and nose drippings and the growling of our stomachs deteriorating from illegal streusel and apfelpfannkuchen. pass me my stein.
SCEPTER: Yes, I’m quite sure it’s him.
VANE: who? the chambermaid? the pawnbroker? lucky? pozzo?
SCEPTER: no one else can play the divine vulcanic pezguiharplyre so sweetly.
VANE: what the hell are you talking about?
SCEPTER: the master
VANE: what master? master who?
SCEPTER: silence young prodigy of fugue minor electric. count zelig the master, enchanter of spacechics, at one with the children, maestro of phaedrics, zelig magician both alpha and megma, great-uncle of hermes, gorgo and bella. zelig technician and teacher of bowie, sperm god of hendrix and coltrane the holy. zelig the cunning, lord of all sirens, spanker of space nymphs, and unblemished fairies.
VANE: you’re mad. but if he’s really all those things maybe he can help me privatize love, or at least spankings. wait a minute. maybe he’s hit a dry spell-thief! he wants to steal my song! he wants to collaborate! i hate collaborations! i must copyright my piece at once! pass me my laptop!
up next: the trap!
Posted by dougrice at 3:13 AM
berlin I: berlin?
Early on in the voyage, Boy Vane had an alternate trip in mind. And so, in the entries below, Berlin becomes more than a city; it slowly builds from a delusional few days in the boiler room to a dangerously strange Weimar world of the mind …
BOY VANE: My Dear Fruity Friends—I have decided not come on your little left-wing voyage. Instead I’m moving to a cold dark apartment in east berlin where I will compose infinite versions of my only love “isn’t there enough love in the world already” and pray for the return of the cold war as I think about you thinking about me—GoodBye, Vane
SKIPPER NOLAN: I’m quite sure we’ll forget about you when we have to take over your infinite duties as Engineroom Brewremastering, Administer of Prokrastinator Chalices and Absinthe Goblets, Grand Hallucinogenic Pastry Chef and Whipper of Narcotic Pancrepe Batter, Minister of Mirror Hanging and Hangings In Front of Mirrors, Tennisfishing Umpire, Galley Crustacian Races on Butter Coated Twister Map Netwizard, and Purple Velvet Cloak Inspectailor.
VANE: Fine, have it your way. I’ll come then … No, I’m not coming!! Why won’t you leave me alone?—Tennis Fishing Umpire? Tell me more!!!
Vane isn’t heard from for days, and so the Barge ships off without him. Then, on our second day at sea, a strange message from one of the holds below:
VANE: Friends—It’s good to hear from everyone, I’m glad your voyage is going well. It’s good you left-wingers got out when you did, you deserve to live a long and happy life at sea. I’m making a lot of progress here in Berlin on my 13 versions of “Isn’t there enough love in the world already.” Today, fighting erupted in eastern western europe, and the fuel supply lines are severely strained. It’s cold and damp in this apartment and I don’t have enough to eat except for one peace of vermin a day. A rat has chewed off my calf mussel on my left leg as I did not have enough energy to beat him off. I’m also struggling with a bout of sisyphus. Oh I feel inspired , again!! What a sight it is to behold, The Beauty of The End!! Wish you guys were here!!—Love, Vane
THE MAJOR: Poor Boy Vane. He has no idea we have him tied up in the boiler room of the Escape Barge.
SKIPPER: yeah, when he dropped the tea kettle on his leg and Dr. Flanger and Dougie poured two of Jimbo’s iced Chopin bottles on it, they also anesthetized him with the Halloween candy (which apparently gets stronger with increased humidity) and ducktaped him to the jellybed in the boiler room with an iPod that only had six outtakes of the german version of ‘Heroes’ and 4 takes of his own ‘Isn’t there Enough Love in the World Already.’—The wood and beer are both dark and strong down there too, so it’s an easy mistake.
VANE: Great things are happening for me in Berlin. Last night some neo-fascist youth broke into my apartment and beat me. The air is filled with the most wonderfull smell of rotting flesh. I feel more alive then I have ever before, now that I’m quite sure of the coming end of human civilization. Oh God haow great is the pain. How alive am I right now. Here comes version 8.—Love Always, VANE
It is during this time that the Barge, in yuletide bliss, slips off the written record, and we are left only with the solo adventures of Lance Scepter as he navigated the Mescaline Seas, as documented here. When we finally awoke, fixed some nutmeg daiquiris, and read over what had happened, we found the following:
SCEPTER: Thank, Zeus. Everything is okay. How, I don’t know. But I’m alive. In Berlin, which is odd, sitting here watching Boy Vane compose, and compose and compose, over and over and over. But, the terrors have already begun to vanish from my memories. Those poor souls left within the flames of Kentucky.—I can’t wait for Karaoke Bingo, whenever I get out of this Bavarian Paradise.—Lance
THE MAJOR: Somebody has to enter Boy Vane’s dream and rescue Lance!! Who dares volunteer for the Escape Barge Psychic SWAT Team?
VANE: Regulations, Smegulations. I only regulate. I cannot be regulated.
THE MAJOR: Ah, but Richie, it’s largely your smegulations that offend. Perhaps a little more regulation and a lot less smegulation, and it would hardly matter which bikini you chose.
VANE: You can’t regulate Love.—I want you all to think about that.—Here’s my new slogan for rallying against the Conservative ant-gay campaign: “Deregulate Love”
The story of art qua art, lilies as accessories, and Boy Vane in Berlin continues with the Rescue AttemptRescue Attempt
Posted by dougrice at 2:55 AM