How To Cook

In America:

1. Leaf through a cookbook and pick out something that sounds exciting.

2. Go to the store and buy the ingredients.

3. Follow the instructions. When it's finished, pat yourself on the back for a job well done and enjoy your tasty treat!

In Germany:

1. DAY ONE. Leaf through a cookbook and pick out something that sounds exciting. Think, "Mmm, that would be especially delicious after a year of currywurst!"

2. Write up a list of ingredients and go to the grocery store. Then go to another grocery store, and then another. Return home eight hours later holding a can of kidney beans and parsley.

3. DAY TWO. Try to find a recipe that doesn't have weird ingredients in it. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know what's considered weird in Germany, unless you can figure out why they don't touch celery, corn tortillas, farro, peanut butter, porcini mushrooms, pie, canned salmon or chili powder while devouring mayonnaise, vegetables in Jello, and sausages floating in glass jars.

4. Go back to the grocery store but admit that you need help. Type "Where is the kale?" into Google Translate, and then ask a clerk: "Wo ist die grünkohl?" Watch the thoughts flicker across his face. He glances outside: yes, it is sunny out. He looks at you: yes, you have just asked where you can find a winter vegetable. You don't look like you are mentally defective, but looks can be deceiving. The next time he talks it will be very slow, since he's decided that you are not a person who understands that the earth spins.

"IT ... IS ... SUMMER," he will say. "THIS ... IS ... NOT ... THE ... TIME ... OF ... YEAR ... FOR ... GRÜNKOHL."

If he is feeling particularly helpful, he will tell you to come back between November 27 and December 3 -- the kale season -- and that he is sure you'll enjoy your recipe even more after eleven months of anticipation.

5. Go online and investigate this mysterious phenomenon. Learn that in some countries, like Germany, they anticipate the arrival of seasonal produce rather than institutionalize immediate gratification. It's like a cultural "glass half full" thing. For thirty days per year, Germans think, "Hooray! Asparagus is here!" Whereas for 335 days per year Americans would think, "Where in hell is the goddamned asparagus?"

German grocery stores don't have every fruit and vegetable on earth flown in from Peru; instead, they sell food from local farms. When a new crop arrives, they put up a banner on the front of the store saying something like, "STRAWBERRIES ARE HERE!" and within the next 24 hours every German will eat four hundred pounds. The next day they will be gone, and if you ask about them, the clerk will again answer you very slowly.

6. Return home and find another recipe while checking the Farmer's Almanack for each ingredient. Strawberries? Late summer. Mushrooms? Early summer. Fresh green peas? June. Corn? September to October. Rhubarb? May, July, September.

So, can you actually make that Peach-Pumpkin Parfait? Sure! Well, you know -- provided it's September 24th.

7. Decide to cook without using any fresh fruits or vegetables, and suddenly realize why the produce section in a German grocery store is just slightly smaller than the deodorant aisle.

8. Go back to the store and actually find some of the ingredients your recipe requires. Now go online to buy the rest. On Google, type in "store that sells [celery, corn tortillas, farro, peanut butter, porcini mushrooms, pie, canned salmon, chili powder]." See the long list of results and think, "Hooray! I found them! I can actually finish cooking!" Now look closer at the top result and see that since your query was in English, Google found your ingredient at a Walmart Supercenter in Coffeyville, Kansas.

9. Convince yourself that you can turn Google into something useful. Type in "store that sells [celery, corn tortillas, farro, peanut butter, porcini mushrooms, pie, canned salmon, chili powder] IN GERMANY." Be pleasantly surprised when Google returns another long string of results before noticing this line under each:

Missing: Germany ‎| ‎Must include: Germany

Understand that when you asked, "Where can I find porcini mushrooms in Germany?" Google decided that the "in Germany" part didn't really matter because, hey, UPS exists. And planes.

10. Spend a second trying to understand why Google does this. Now type in "HOLY FUCKING GOD YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOTS, YES, I REALLY WANT A GODDAMN STORE IN GERMANY THAT SELLS [celery, corn tortillas, farro, peanut butter, porcini mushrooms, pie, canned salmon, chili powder]."

Notice the stream of remarkably similar websites that Google returns, and learn that the word "fucking" included in a query is weighted more heavily than a word like "mushrooms." The websites Google recommends will not help your meal but you may find it a nice change to hear people screaming, "YES, YES, YES!" after hearing "NO, NO, NO!" since the day you decided to cook.

11. DAY THREE. Go to the store and randomly grab substitute ingredients out of desperation. Just to make it easy on yourself, choose things you can easily find, like bratwurst, potatoes, or pretzels. Now it's finally time to cook!

12. Notice that instead of teaspoons and tablespoons your recipe calls for teelöffels and eßlöffels. Think that these sound pretty ridiculous, but then remember that in America you never ate tea or tables. Chalk it off to worldwide stupidity and turn to Google again:

Teelöffel (TL): ein Kaffeelöffel oder Dessertlöffel
Eßlöffel (EL): ein Suppenlöffel

Open your utensil drawer and pull out all the spoons. Hold them in your hand one at a time while thinking: "Would I use this to stir my coffee? Could I use it to eat dessert? Would I use it for soup?"

If the answer doesn't come to you immediately, run through all the different types of desserts and soups in your head. This is usually the highlight of cooking in Germany. Wonder why you like small spoons for tiramisu and vichyssoise, big spoons for ice cream and chicken soup, and forks for pie and chili. Now close the drawer and try to forget that you started thinking about pie.

13. Go to a restaurant and watch people eat. What are they using the tiny spoons for? And how about the big spoons? Yes, it's clear: big spoons are for soup, tiny spoons are for dessert. You're ready: go to a kitchen supply store and ask a clerk for measuring spoons. Watch him stare at you incredulously before he says that no such thing exists and then says, very slowly, that you should go home, open your cutlery drawer, pull out a big spoon and a tiny one, and then measure with those. Make a mental note of another difference between Germany and America: in Germany, the guy will not say "Duh."

14. Cook. Use the big spoon for EL, the tiny spoon for TL, the bratwurst for tuna, the pretzel for porcini mushrooms, the potatoes for cheddar cheese. Taste the result. Ask yourself: "Did I make the wrong substitutions? Did I get the TL and the EL mixed up? Did I measure the water in liters instead of grams?" Realize that you can never tell people that, after three days of effort, your Curried Asparagus Ratatouille turned into Cinnamon Wiener Soup. Take comfort in knowing that, tasting as it does, you will never need to.

15. Realize that you are going to live on this and currywurst for the next few years. Go over to your calendar, circle September 24th and think, "I am gonna fuckin' love that Peach-Pumpkin Parfait."

Today on German newsstands: a SPECIAL ISSUE of BEEF! about that special kind of cow called a “pig.”

Germans love to make plans. They spend hours making incredibly intricate plans, and just when you’re ready to congratulate them on a job well done they start on the backup plan.

Of course this means Germans are great to travel with, because everything will be fine. When I get in the car with my boyfriend, I know he’s already checked the traffic, the weather, the tire pressure and the gas gauge. He's got bottled water and emergency sandwiches. And that’s when we’re just going to the post office.

I actually appreciate the planning, since it's pretty much the opposite of my Brooklyn life. I've been to parties where the host forgot to show up. I've been to barbecues where nobody bought charcoal. I’ve heard all of the excuses for no-shows: their grandmother died, their subway train broke down, their boss kept them late at work. Everybody in Brooklyn knows these actually mean, "I got really stoned and fell asleep."

My friend Charlotte cancels plans if her dog coughs. Emma won't go if her horoscope is bad. It's a relief, then, to be in Germany and to know that if you have a party that ‪starts at 8‬, all the guests will be there by 8:01. If you say the party ‪ends at 10‬, everybody will be gone by ten. Brooklyn guests don’t show up before midnight, and that’s if you invite them to brunch.

When Germans are done with their own plans, they start making them for other people. “My niece is coming over tomorrow," my boyfriend announced the other day.

"That's nice," I said. "Why is she stopping by?"

I was expecting an American answer along the lines of, “Just to say hi.” Germans, however, are distinctly different people. "She will be driving past our apartment on the highway," my boyfriend said. “It is a five-hour drive, so she will park outside, sit on the couch, drink a cup of coffee, and use the toilet."

Germans plan to use the toilet a lot.

One day I noticed my boyfriend had a calendar with my name on it, and he was pencilling in entries for just about every day. "Are you ... filling up a calendar for me?" I asked. "Are you actually making a schedule for what I have to do next year?

He didn't look up but kept writing. "No, no," he said. "I am not doing that."

"Okay," I said. "Good."

"I finished that calendar hours ago," he announced. "This is what you will do in 2039."

German plans always start from the beginning and include all the mundane details. When I ask my boyfriend, "What would you like to do tomorrow?" I want an answer like, "How about if we do some shopping and maybe have lunch downtown?" or "We really should stay home and clean." A typical German answer, though, goes something like this:

"We will wake up ‪at 7:15‬. First you will use the toilet, and then I will use the toilet. I will check the weather while you take a shower, and I will take a shower while you brush your teeth.”

Unfortunately Germans get offended if you say, “Can you skip ahead eight hours, to when we’ve left the house?” You have to prop your eyes open and listen, because there’s always a step that’s a bit less mundane, like, “We will go visit my nudist friends.”

Germans are always thinking, usually about two or three things at a time. It’s exhausting just to sit and watch, but sometimes it can be frightening.

One day my boyfriend was in the garden chopping firewood. A chainsaw screeched and belched smoke into the air, and then suddenly it stopped.

I heard a scream in my boyfriend's voice. "OH NO!" it said.

I dropped everything I was doing and ran outside, expecting to see body parts. “WHAT???"

He put down the chainsaw and wiped his brow. "I just remembered I have a library book overdue."

Plus, common sense is wonderful in theory but not always in practice. When my boyfriend and I were looking at apartments, he said we shouldn't look at anything higher than the second floor.

I knew he’d have a good reason. "Because higher floors are more expensive?" I asked. "It'll be easier to move our stuff in?"

He shook his head. "The day will come when you will not be able to walk up stairs."

American wedding proposals start with something like, "I've loved you since the moment I saw you.” Skipping the schmaltz, German ones more commonly open with, “Experts agree you have eight to ten years left to live." My boyfriend used almost those exact words to propose to me, but for some reason I still said yes. Sure, it sounded creepy. And it wasn't exactly logical either: we were roughly the same age yet the sad claw of decrepitude was always knocking at my door.

Germans also don't waste time, so just a few days later he had an idea for a wedding ring. "I have a jeweler who can make anything we want," he announced. “How about we have simple silver bands engraved with our fingerprints? Your ring will have my fingerprint on it, and my ring will have your fingerprint."

The sentiment shocked me, his vulnerability contrasting sharply with the harsh accent. "So ... they're unique?” I asked. “Celebrating the two of us? Your ring says I am yours, and my ring says you are mine?”

He took a second to translate my words in his head, then he said, "Yes. That is exactly it."

I almost started crying. He wasn’t cold: he was an old softie suffering from the language problem. His sensitive soul was disguised by his broken English. I wholeheartedly agreed, and a few weeks after pressing our fingers into melted wax we got the breathtaking results. I slid mine on, this time unable to hold back the tears. He smiled and put on the other one.

We are a couple. My finger is forever holding his, and his is forever holding mine. I am getting married, I am moving to Germany, and I am never going to have to worry about the weather again.

If we were driving to a courthouse in Brooklyn and my friends were in the back of the car, I know exactly how the chatter would go. "This is sooo romantic!" Emma would say.

"I can't believe it," Charlotte would observe. "How often in this miserable fuckin' life do you get a happy ending?"

Instead, we are driving to a courthouse in Berlin, with my boyfriend's best friends in the back seat. He's already told me that my American best friends will be replaced by this heavily-accented trio: Rolf, Helmut, and Wolfgang. Rolf is a rough, butch doctor who’s also into leather and S&M. Helmut is breathtakingly handsome, and he goes skiing in the Alps every weekend. Wolfgang is an intellectual whose art collection includes a Dali, two Miros and a Cocteau. They seem friendly enough I think that it could work.

My boyfriend maneuvers the Mercedes into traffic. It beeps because he gets too close to a pole. It beeps because my seat belt isn't fastened. It beeps because someone is riding a bicycle fourteen miles away. It doesn’t bother me. I look at the people and the buildings we pass and barely hear the back-seat talk.

"I hope they have completed the paperwork in case one of them dies," Rolf says.

"They must have," Helmut replies. "It would be nonsensical to take such an important step without completing the necessary procedures."

"Did you see they have wedding rings with each others' fingerprints on them?" Rolf says.

Helmut nods. "That is a really wonderful idea."

"Yes," Wolfgang says. "It will help if they need to identify bodies."

Ezzelino Live Cams, Epilogue

I spent the next few hours in a daze. The way this encounter unraveled seemed impossible, unbelievable, or even scripted. From the beginning where I was dragged through the hidden door by the strange man, to the discovery of this strange troupe that lived in an abandoned mall, to the part where I befriended and bonded with them, to the ending where their innocent claims of creative freedom slid away to reveal a paid complicity with some anonymous, sociopathic billionaire.

There's not much I know about life, but I do know this: life is a series of dishwater-dull days that slowly slide by and leave us reassured that we're civilized, smart, healthy and invincible. Those days are occasionally shattered by unpredictable accidents that remind us that we are, in actuality, absolutely none of these things.

I knew the instant I set foot in the studio that this was an extraordinary day, but I didn't expect what had to be the opposite of an epiphany. I recognized that I was meeting extraordinary people in an extraordinary place. I wanted time to slow down so I could record every second in my head. I held onto every word, every image, desperate to remember it forever, letting go only when new words and images overwhelmed me and I had to throw something overboard.

I remember the instant when I realized it was a sham. What I'd thought was a parade turned out to be a car wreck, and I recognized too late that I shouldn't have looked. I'd gone from wanting my own disheveled bed with ROMAN scrawled on the wall above it to literally looking over my shoulder as I fled into the dark. I felt betrayed: not just by these people, but by myself.

I felt like an infant again, like everything I'd known about life had evaporated right in front of my eyes. Hadn't I constructed a persona that protected me from harm? Hadn't I learned to maintain a distance from con men, tricksters, Nigerian princes, and handsome, unemployed men who are absolutely crazy about me? I knew my safety could be violated by horror movies, and the images of people being stabbed in the eyeball that bounce back into my brain when I'm chatting at a dinner party. I know not to go on roller coasters, because I've had bodily trauma result from carry-on luggage and shopping carts. So what exactly had happened here? How had my defenses been evaded? I didn't have the faintest clue, and not being able to understand -- or even describe -- the experience upended everything I knew about myself.

Aimlessly walking the streets of Wiesbaden, I felt a scrap of paper in my pocket. I had yet to start processing the mental notes I'd made, and realized these were evidence of one. Merkur and Melanie had given me their business cards. Of course I'd wondered why they'd had them, since it didn't seem like "making fantasy snuff films for reclusive Swedes" was the kind of occupation you'd want to advertise. Both had said, coincidentally, that they'd given away all of their real business cards so they had to handwrite the information on cardboard.

Both cards gave the same website address in freeform scrawl. Melanie's card also listed an Instagram user name, so I took a table at a coffee shop, ordered a cappuccino, pulled out my phone and searched for her name.

I scrolled through thirty-something photos like the ones I've posted here. In her first post, on August 22, she wrote that she was excited to start working with a new customer.

The Swedish guy? That couldn't be right. That was just three weeks before I'd met them. They'd supposedly been there for two years, I thought: that's when Merkur took over the Spielhalle lease. Unless the new customer was --

Ezzelino?

Suddenly a sharp new thought sliced through my mental haze. I flashed back on the strange man who'd drawn me into the hidden room. We'd had a short conversation that I'd discounted at the time. One of the first things he'd told me was that there was an explanation for everything. And I'd emailed it to myself.

I switched over to my email account and there it was.

I parsed the words and they slowly revealed their meaning. The alternative scenarios I'd constructed in my head fell away one by one to reveal a truth still cloaked in impossibility.

But the email couldn't have been more clear. The whole thing was fake.

In 1992, the novel Assisted Living was published by the pseudonymous Nikanor Teratologen. Described as a Satanic work of unending violence, incest, pedophilia, racism and cannibalism, it caused a scandal that provoked equal parts repulsion and fascination. What was this work? everyone wondered. Was it an innocent allegorical construction, a boundary-pushing cautionary tale, or the authentically-debauched sickness of a demented soul?

When nice young Niclas Lundkvist came forward to announce he'd written it, the world exhaled, relieved to see the best-case scenario. The book became a best-seller, and then a cult classic. Everyone applauded his ingenuity.

Twenty years later, though, investigative journalists found Lundkvist had an alternative online identity named Ezzelino. Ezzelino was a sadistic, racist, misogynistic Nazi. His 2,000+ posts about concentration camps and gas chambers contained statements like, "The Jews are enemies of the Swedish, German, French, and English people."

Naturally, Lundkvist's work was reappraised again. The reaction to the new information was lukewarm, and many critics stood by Lundkvist. It was clear to everyone, though, that the repellent opinions Ezzelino espoused were offered fully-formed in Assisted Living, albeit conveyed through the fictional lead.

The artists Thomas Bo Nilsson and Julian Eicke created a similar paradox within a convoluted fantasy world. Their installation asked one of the questions this incident raised: could something that seemed innocent, creative, interesting or extraordinary turn into something monstrous with just one added piece of information?

I'd experienced exactly what the artists intended, and what newspapers said about the unmasking of Lundkvist's secrets: how sad it was when something thought to be beautiful, provocative art was, in fact, a terrible, provocative reality.

And finally we get closure. We are left to explore, experience, and, finally, applaud a seamless universe created entirely to explore a moral quandary. I am returned to the best-case scenario: we circle back to the beginning, and I discover a group of artists and actors creating something impossible to imagine yet equally impossible to forget. I offer my congratulations to everyone involved for their most affecting work.

Ezzelino Live Cams, Part Two

I was hooked. I'd entered a door into a magical realm that couldn't have contrasted more with the beer and bratwurst outside. I was Alice in Wonderland, and everyone surrounding me was young, fun, and infinitely creative. Sleeveless Black T-Shirt finished his introduction and I asked if I could look around.

"Absolutely," he said. In a dressing room to my left, the white-faced woman was painting a big red heart on her face. To my right, the costumed couple lazily lounged in the "kitchen" set, continually chatting but without emotion, their faces devoid of expression. I walked over slowly, mystified by their stilted acting and flat dialog, but Black T-Shirt Guy followed me. "A Swedish man sent us a script that we are acting out here," he explained. "It is about a young girl and her grandfather."

I stared for probably ten minutes. I couldn't understand anything they were saying but I was pretty sure I loved it. It definitely wasn't your grandma's Swedish cinema: while those movies are inarguably brilliant, they don't really comment on the world today, with eight hours of talking about truth and beauty before everyone dies on a beach underneath a burning scarecrow.

It reminded me of a play I saw last year called the Borderline Procession. A bunch of people sat around around in a bunch of full-sized houses constructed in a huge warehouse. One by one they were replaced by Britney Spears lookalikes. After everyone was replaced, they sang "Oops I Did It Again" and then the whole place went dark.

Because, you know, after you examine life, what's left to say? Nothing, really. There are no conclusions. So you'd might as well sing.

These two didn't exactly look like Britney, but I loved their postmodern clothes. I love it when characters are portrayed untraditionally to express the weirdness of their persona -- like having a person play a dog, or a bag of rocks portray a man. I was dying to know more but the German was impenetrable. Was the grandfather gay? No, that would be too obvious. He probably represented her burgeoning adolescent desires. With his porn mustache and hairy chest he certainly reminded me of mine.

Black T-Shirt Guy got involved with Heart-Face Actress so I walked over to a small room where a man and woman sat in front of a control panel. Mounted on the wall were eight small monitors, and a mixing board took up most of a table. They wore microphones and headphones but when I peered inside they stopped talking and waved me in.

The man introduced himself as Merkur, and he said his assistant was Amanda. He said he was the producer, which was a pretentious way of saying he sat there all day watching the rooms, making sure the actors followed the script, and sliding knobs up and down.

I glanced around the small office, overwhelmed. I couldn't begin to imagine the technological scope of this setup, even ignoring the artistic side. The TV screens, the microphones, the cameras, the internet setup: someone had a serious vision and the chops to back it up. I felt like the few scraps of information I had didn't really explain anything, and every time I talked to somebody it just raised more questions. Were the actors reciting memorized lines? Did the writers pay to get their work produced? How many subscribers did they have? Did they stick to avant-garde, allegorical pieces and hope people would appreciate them? In German I can barely ask people to point me toward a library so I started at the beginning here.

"So how did this end up in an abandoned shopping mall?"

"This is actually my second try," Merkur said. "I set up something similar but couldn't make it work. I had a job here, at the Spielhalle, when they went out of business, and they let me take over the lease. We've been here over two years."

"And now you work here full-time?"

"We all live here," he said, "in a big room in the back. We wake up at 4:30 in the afternoon and we work all night."

I absorbed this new piece of information and tried to add it to the picture in my head. Instead of explaining anything, though, it just made it seem more impossible. They lived here? For two years? The dedication, the artistry, the sheer edginess made Andy Warhol look like Chris Pratt.

"And all of this is happening because of some Swedish man?" I said, referring to their new script.

He shot me a surprised look. "Yes," he finally said. "Because of him. But we have had other customers before."

A red flag flew inside my head. I'd assumed the Swedish man had become recently involved, but his answer implied far more. Considering they'd had six studios for two years I'd assumed there'd been a lot of customers.

I sensed I'd worn out my welcome so I said goodbye and explored further, ending up at the communal bedroom. Yes, they clearly lived here. The refrigerator, the dirty clothes and the squiggly slashes of paint testified to that. It was three-quarters Salvation Army thrift shop and one-quarter artistic endeavor.

Eight beds sat side by side. Like in some demented Goldilocks set, names were painted on the wall above each bed.

While I was taking in all the details, a spunky young woman grabbed me from behind. "You speak English!" she said. "I speak English! I will explain everything to you!"

Melanie talked non-stop, mostly incomprehensibly. One thing I've learned in Germany is that the more someone insists they speak English, the less likely it is that they do. Maybe in her head she was fluent, but the sounds coming out of her mouth didn't even come close.

Melanie brought out an iPad and I thought I heard the word "chatroom." I still didn't know what their subscribers got for their money, so I looked with interest. The screen was completely blank.

My curiosity bumped up another notch. Melanie looked at it, then at me, and shrugged her shoulders. "No people yet," she announced. "I just turn it on."

One more question got added to the end of the list. How did this make sense? Wasn't it supposed to be a twenty-four hour operation? I assumed they had thousands of subscribers supporting them, so shouldn't there always be somebody in the chat room?

Still, I wrote it off. I glanced around the room and felt envious that people believed in art so strongly that they subjected themselves to this. Melanie practiced her English for a few more minutes and then held up the iPad again. "Busy now!" she said.

It wasn't busy. Two people were exchanging small talk. They clearly couldn't have been "subscribers," because instead of discussing art or film their conversation consisted solely of the lines "Where are you?" and "I'm in Australia."

We were staring at the iPad when we heard a scream. Melanie smiled and shrugged her shoulders again, not moving from her seat on the couch. I thought about ignoring it too until another scream followed, and then another. I ran toward the sound and discovered they came from the kitchen. The "young girl" was now sprawled on the ground and her "grandfather" stood over her.

He was trying to kill her.

The grandfather grabbed a hot iron and swung it at his granddaughter. She tried to fight him off but he was stronger. He pressed it against her face and she screamed again.

He grabbed the free end of the electrical cord and wrapped it tightly around her neck. He pulled on it, choking her, as she gasped for breath. That's when I noticed she was pregnant, probably five or six months along. He screamed in German. I didn't understand. He was mad about the pregnancy, maybe. She was too young. Maybe he didn't like the dad.

That's when he picked up a knife and started stabbing her in the stomach.

Or ... is it -- could he be the dad? I thought.

I took one last look at the pair and walked quickly for the door. On the monitors in the entryway the scene was playing out. I walked through the blackness of the abandoned mall as the questions circling inside my head were answered much too abruptly. Merkur had admitted it: there was no global audience that supported them: no, it was all for the Swedish man. He'd heard about Merkur's first, failed business, and then had him build the studio. He paid for everything. He scripted everything. These kids stayed locked away in this hamster cage and acted out everything he wrote. He had them perform everything he couldn't do in real life.

And so we abandon the Spielhalle, and our new acquaintances. We brush off everything we felt that afternoon: the jealousy, the admiration, the sense of adventure and fun. We abandon the young woman dying on the ground and we find our way back to the mall. It is dark and everyone is gone but noises still rattle the plywood boarding up the broken windows. Now the sounds evoke new images, of actors and a play about incest and infanticide. The meta-image of the author is also there: with his money, his power, and the lives he controls with his whim. Creating a world and then watching it, from far away, unfolding on the internet.

We glance over our shoulder for one last look. We know we've seen something we shouldn't have, as the images start to flash and swoop in our head like buzzards waiting for a kill.

Ezzelino Live Cams, Part One

I went to Wiesbaden, Germany last Friday. I didn't have any real reason to go. In fact, I didn't actually want to go, but you have to be somewhere in the universe and three days in Frankfurt was about two days too long. My boyfriend had to go there for work so I hitched a ride. It was pretty much a no-brainer: if you're lazy and like cappuccinos you can entertain yourself in any European city for a day or two. While looking for parking Boyfriend pointed out a sign advertising a Biennale -- an art festival held every other year. "You are lucky," he said. "Eh," I replied. Maybe some people would have been excited but to me it was like being in England and running into a street food fest.

After Boyfriend left for work, I glanced at the unimpressive buildings and made a snap decision: this was yet another German city where the highlight would be a cappuccino and a comfy chair. As I walked toward the old part of the city, though, another sign pointed to a temporary new art attraction so I ventured a few steps off my path.

My brain still tells me I couldn't have seen what I thought I saw. The city had a spectacular beaux arts theatre that had to be two hundred years old -- and they'd let an artist open a cheap little supermarket inside it.

The juxtaposition between the theatre and the market couldn't have been more dramatic. Half of me was dazzled by the murals, the statuary, the stone work, and the frescoes, and the other half couldn't believe that muffins were just $1.29.

This had to be the most exciting art piece I'd seen in a long time, and I'd just blown $247,000 to spend 17 years in New York.

Maybe the Biennale wouldn't be to art what Germany was to music, design, architecture, dance and comedy, I decided. After I had my fill of cappuccino and comfy chair, I went to check out more.

I've lived in Germany for 18 months now but I still don't speak the language. After a painstaking month-long course I learned a bit of grammar and vocabulary, but even asking for directions to the bathroom requires twenty-eight words, one of which is RAMPSPUTENUMFALLRICHTUNG. So, I've temporarily put off learning more and resigned myself to being permanently confused. I found a brochure for the Biennale but rather than try to decipher it -- even Artforum leaves me scratching my head, and it's allegedly in English -- I headed for their information booth.

The clerk described some of the works and it sounded like I'd already found the highlight. However, right next door was an art installation in an old shopping mall. It opened in half an hour so I wandered Wiesbaden and discovered that, like every other German city, it had an old church in an old square and forty miles of cobblestone streets lined with really boring chain stores. At opening time I was in front of the old mall next to maybe eight other people. This was probably the reason in Germany stores outnumber pop-up art galleries by 800,000 to 1.

I'm an avid fan of ruin, as you can see from my apartment and workout plan. While there's a lot of ruin in Germany, it's mostly seen in Medieval buildings and not malls built in 1972. This place had evidently suffered the same fate as the dated low-rise malls in America: tastes changed, shoppers left, and the place was just locked up tight.

They were right to abandon this place. Totally enclosed within a claustrophobic building, there was no sunlight and no fresh air. Now the escalators didn't move, the stores were shuttered, shop windows were smashed. Most of the doors were chained shut but flashing lights and strange noises beckoned me into others to confront the Biennale's theme, which was Bad News.

After fifteen minutes of wandering I started to feel a little freaked out. Seeing babies cut up rats with scissors can do that to you. The lighting, the setting, and the creepy sounds were straight out of a horror movie. I walked from floor to floor without seeing another soul, with the only signs of life spray-painted on the walls. I tried to dispassionately admire the artworks while ignoring the darker side, that they scared the shit out of me.

I ran out of water and started to get hungry but the Chinese restaurant I passed looked like it had closed fifty years before. I'd wandered in so far in and taken so many twists and turns I had no idea how to find my way out. Even the game room, or Spielhalle, seemed intimidating. The Bad News had gotten to me, that was obvious. Even when I wasn't being assaulted by some frightening new work I could hear the menace of the last one echoing in the halls. I'd clearly been in here too long when a simple blue facade seemed menacing.

Inside, a life-sized sculpture with a friendly cartoon face hung by a rope from its neck.

The darkened room was nearly empty. In one corner, a plywood door had a push-button combination lock. Next to it, a glass window looked onto a makeup table in a fully-stocked dressing room. Three television monitors hung from the ceiling, all showing the same image. Words in German listed a phone number and website, and small squares contained video footage from tiny white rooms somewhere. In some of the squares you could make out shadowy figures moving around. Across the bottom of the monitors were the words "Ezzelino Live Cams."

I didn't even notice the man approach. He had to be fifty, with handsome features, but his loose clothing couldn't disguise a hefty paunch. He said something to me in German but when I said I didn't speak the language he switched to broken English. "Google it," he said, pointing at the monitor. "There's an explanation online, in English. 'Ezzelino Live Cams.'"

Online porn doesn't interest me so I hesitated to follow his advice. He was kind of handsome, though, and I was curious, so I got out my cellphone and typed in the words. I didn't move as we both scanned the tiny screen and his arm rubbed against mine. Google turned up nothing. "Try 'Wiesbaden,'" he added. "Ezzelino Live Cams Wiesbaden."

I repeated the process but again found nothing. He took my phone. "This must be some kind of tourist Google," he said. "This is different from what I get."

He played with my phone for probably ten minutes while my interest dissipated. I reached to get it back but he was focused on the screen and missed the hint. "At three-thirty they will open the door," he said, nodding toward the corner. "I talked with them online and they told me to be here."

I looked at my phone and it was 3:26. "Oh," I said. I let him continue using my phone but fifteen minutes later the door remained shut. He tapped keys on his phone and then held it next to mine. "See the difference?" he said. On mine, the search had turned up nothing. On his was the explanatory link. I took his phone and emailed the URL to myself. Then, at 3:48, I gave up. I took back my phone and said goodbye.

I was retracing my steps down the frozen escalator when I heard the man shout. I turned and saw him in front of the Spielhalle, poised to run back in. "They opened the door!" he yelled. "They opened the door!"

He turned and ran back into the Spielhalle. I froze for a second, then sprinted up the escalator. I reached the Spielhalle just in time to see him dash through the unlocked door. I got there a second before it closed. Inside a young man with long hair and a wispy moustache shot me a cautionary look, and said something sharply in German. I guessed he was asking me if I had permission to be there, if I had talked to someone online and gotten an invitation. I nodded and said, "Ja."

To my right, the man I'd followed was sitting next to two young women who looked Scandinavian. I took an empty chair as the long-haired young man addressed the group in German. The handsome man pointed at me and said, "Can you speak English? For him?"

The guide nodded. "I am your tour guide," he said. "This is a studio for filming that is arranged like a house. There is a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Ordinary people like yourselves send us scripts, and we act them out in webcasts that continue 365 days a year, 24 hours a day."

I looked around at the rooms. To my left was the bedroom, with the dressing area and makeup table. At it, a woman was painting her face white. Another strange figure, something like a cross between a skeleton and a scarecrow, hung in the corner behind her. In the kitchen to my right a man and a woman were acting out a scene. Judging by the costumes, this scene was not supposed to look natural: the woman had a beehive hairstyle and wore a 60s-style housewife dress, while the man wore a dress that was slightly more provocative, revealing chest hair. The woman sat on a counter, the man sat in a chair, and they stared at their new audience as they argued in German. Small microphones extended in front of their mouths.

The guide smiled at us with his hands clasped across his shirt. "Welcome to Ezzelino Live Cams," he said.

Poor Rebekah Mercer! Rolling around in shit all her life and now people act like she stinks.

Rebekah Mercer is one of the daughters of Robert Mercer, the right-wing’s version of George Soros if everything conservatives said about him was true. She inherited billions of dollars along with his right-wing beliefs and the crank media outlet Breitbart News. In today’s Wall Street Journal she develops Gloria Vanderbilt’s "Poor little rich girl" theme with an op-ed about how misunderstood she is. Her "natural reluctance to speak with reporters has left [her] vulnerable to the media’s sensational fantasies." All she has is money, a dozen houses, power, recognition, politicians at her beck and call, and a media outlet to defend herself.

Poor thing. No wonder she’s jealous of the rest of us. Any time we want we can scream to our eight followers on Twitter.

I’d love to put a succinct summary of her conservative oeuvre here, but, well, there’s just too much bad to write. She helped finance Trump’s presidential run, combined six condos in a Trump Tower to make a home larger than the one New York City gives the mayor, and defended Trump’s pussy-grabbing tape. She created and ran the Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC, and made the film "Clinton Cash" with Steve Bannon. She liked him so much she started a political committee with him, and supposedly was going to push him for president in 2020.

She’s a trustee, along with names like Koch and Coors, of the Heritage Foundation, a group that denies climate change, fights ObamaCare, and authors papers arguing that same-sex marriage is a threat to religious liberty and Hispanic immigrants have lower IQ's than whites.

She didn’t start off as a villain. She tried working for daddy’s hedge fund before deciding, like Vanderbilt, to just take his money and do what she wanted. Where Vanderbilt did jeans, Mercer and her sisters started Ruby et Violette Bakery. It wasn't particularly ambitious considering they were already rolling in dough.

How does this questionable history translate in the story in the WSJ today? "Over the past 18 months," she writes, "I have been the subject of intense speculation and public scrutiny.... Some have recklessly described me as supporting toxic ideologies such as racism and anti-Semitism."

Huh? I think she’s being intentionally misleading here. It’s like Hitler defending himself with, "Right now critics are saying I’m a bad dancer." Dude, we might get to that eventually, but right now there are a few bigger fish to fry. I’m thinking misogyny and homophobia are the main complaints against Mercer, as seen in Breitbart headlines like, "Gay rights have made us dumber. It’s time to get back in the closet." and "Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?"

"Last month a writer for the Financial Times suggested mysteriously that my 'political goals are something she [sic] has never publicly defined.' In broad strokes this is what I believe:"

The next eight thousand words are a real shocker. She wants the hungry to be fed, the homeless to be sheltered, discrimination to vanish, immigrants to be welcomed, blah blah blah. Which makes me think she needs to find better advisors, because the politicians she pushes are against all of the above. "I am deeply committed to research and the scientific method," she says, though her family gave $200,000 to a politician who believes the government sprays chemicals on the public from airplanes flying overhead.

She supports "ideas and policies" rather than people. I feel better knowing maybe she didn’t like Trump but just told a lackey to put forty million dollars on the first person who said Ted Cruz’s dad shot JFK. "The only thing I ask of the politicians I back is that they be true to the promises that they made to their constituents during their campaigns." Apparently she dozed off in the seconds between Trump saying he’d never cut Medicaid or Social Security and Monday’s budget decimating both.

If she’s so smart and scientific, why does she support the voices of white supremacists, assholes and cranks through Republican politicians and "news" outlets like Breitbart? "I own a minority stake in Breitbart News," she says, implying you’d have to have 50+ percent before they’d give you the microphone at meetings. Why, 49% is hardly worth owning, since to influence Breitbart’s insanity in any way she’d have to make a deal with other owners. Sure, two are her sisters, but maybe it’s a long walk to their bedroom doors.

Segueing from "There’s nothing I can do about it!" To "It’s not really so bad," she says, "I believe [Breitbart] adds an important journalistic voice to the American conversation." I love the way this is phrased, implying differing voices are more important than honesty. No, Breitbart is part of the conversation like Uncle Hal screaming "JESSICA SIMPSON’S SURE GOT SOME TITTIES!" is an important part of the Thanksgiving conversation.

"Stephen Bannon, its former chairman, took Breitbart in the wrong direction." Hmm... He was the co-founder, so this is a little weird. It’s like getting on a bus and then shouting that the driver is going the wrong way. Next she'll say Bannon was just there to get coffee. "Now that Mr. Bannon has resigned, Breitbart has the opportunity to refine its message and expand its influence." Because nine years isn't long enough to refine your message. I can identify: I was only married thirty years and still when I tried to tell the hubby I loved him sometimes I accidentally yelled, "WHY IN GOD’S NAME DID I MARRY YOU?" Clearly that message needed some tweaking too. And they definitely need to expand their influence, because President Trump hasn’t retweeted them more than eight or nine hundred times.

"I have chosen to involve myself with important policy issues, and with some of the institutions that discuss them, because I am, first and foremost, a mother." Aw. She must be a good mom, too. I mean, mine never told me, like a Heritage Foundation panel on Feminism, that women have jobs foisted on them when what they really want are husbands.

"I hope that my children will show stoicism and perseverance through adversity," she writes. The girls will definitely find adversity at places like Breitbart, where a headline reads, "There's no hiring bias against women in tech. They just suck at interviews."

We get to her kind-of point in the last two paragraphs. It’s all about — ta dah! — free speech. "This country was founded on the principle of open discourse," Mercer writes, echoing bigots and assholes everywhere. For right-wing snowflakes it translates to, "Sure, I say offensive shit, but why do people get mad?"

It’s not an especially bright argument coming from a Stanford graduate, since it could be the defense of somebody yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater. "Well, nobody else was saying it," she could argue.

"But questioning the status quo is more important now than ever. America’s future depends on it." Rich Girl should write t-shirts instead of baking cookies. This "Question Authority" thing could really catch on. And though she’s just a minority shareholder clearly Breitbart agrees, offering their insightful retorts to accepted reality:

• Homophobia is bad: "Trannies whine about hilarious Bruce Jenner billboard."


• Racism is bad: "Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage"


• Sexual harassment is bad: "The solution to online 'harassment' is simple: Women should log off"


• Feminism is good: "Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy"

Even the Founding Fathers would be applauding these sentient additions to the discourse, as well as Mercer's pushing Trump to appoint brainiacs like Michael Flynn, Kellyanne Conaway, and Jeff Sessions. Because nobody attacks the status quo like they do, asking the tough questions like, "Is white supremacy really bad?", "Do you seriously have to put people in jail for lying to Congress?" and "Is there really such a thing as a fact?"

Call her a poor little rich girl, but know one thing: she’ll keep adding to the conversation as long as she has money, and cookies to get that bad taste out of her mouth.

I am so excited about this new film coming out! I just know I'll love it as much as The First Appearance of the Third Avenger and The Fifth Time We Saw Avengers Four Through Twelve.

The U.S. Presidency: Now Just Slightly Less Honorable Than Publisher's Clearing House

Beloved Reader,

Permit me to take the opportunity this joyous season to post one of my all-time favorite songs, an iconic holiday classic by songwriter Leonard Cohen. I hear it frequently around this time of year -- to the point where some people might get tired of it -- but somehow the uplifting melody and spiritual lyrics still give me chills.

At this wondrous time, may your holidays match your hopes: surrounded by loved ones in a comfortable home, full of good health and happiness and inspirational songs like this.

RomanHans

Macadamia

Well I heard there is a nut you take
over all the others when you bake
If you hate walnuts, really, I can't shame ya.
But there's a nut I always buy
it's from a land they call Hawaii
Don't underestimate the plucky macadamia.

Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia

When I make fruitcake it's what I choose
Don't want no fucking lame cashews
Don't pull this shit like they are all the same, ya.
Because most are crunchy and taste like cheese
but just one is round and comes from trees
Behold the one, the only macadamia.

Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia

If a can of mixed nuts you should ope,
what will be your fondest hope?
Say peanuts or Brazil nuts and I'll maim ya.
Because peanuts look like human toes
and Brazil nuts like alien embryos
not like the unspoilt, buttery macadamia.

Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia

"Chestnuts" sound like Playboy fans
and almonds look like they have glands.
If they both creep you out, then I don't blame ya.
Pine nuts could pass for doggy ticks
and pecans resemble mummy lips
so the only safe one left is macadamia.

Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia
Macadamia

I have one weird item on my bucket list. I know everybody else has the usual clichés: they want to jump out of airplanes, sing on TV, or have a shirtless Alec Baldwin knock on their door holding pizza. My dream is a little more unique, and as far as I can tell I'll be the first person in history to actually do it.

I want to kick the living shit out of a goose.

Now, I'm not a thoughtless asshole. I don't mean just ANY goose. I'm sure there are some really nice geese out there somewhere, though I'm having a hard time picturing them. I can't exactly picture a goose helping a disabled chicken across the road. I don't see them donating their bird seed to less fortunate creatures. And there's a reason you have to kill geese to get their down: they don't hold their wings back and say, "Here, you take it. I know you can't sleep without a pillow that completely collapses under your head."

If they exist, I don't want to beat up any of those geese.

No, the geese I'm talking about are the ones you see on TV's funny video programs. You know the videos: it's a beautiful spring day in the countryside, and somebody with, say, a basketful of leeks is skipping through a field when a big, angry goose comes out of nowhere with wings flailing and honking his head off. At first the person is puzzled: can this sweet, fluffy white thing really be coming after me? But then they realize it's moving like a missile with a pointy orange beak aimed directly at their crotch, and they run. As fast and as far as they can. They jump creeks and spring over fences, their leeks flying, millimeters away from the goose's angry choppers clamping down on their ass.

People laugh at these videos. Me, I don't think they're so funny.

First, I'm not a fan of unwarranted anger. What do geese have to be mad about? You're close to their nest? Whoopee. They don't have Time Warner Cable. They don't have landlords. Their friends with emergency keys don't barge in when they're trying to take a shower or masturbate, thinking that because they didn't answer a text within eight minutes they're probably sprawled out on the floor, dead.

Hey, Emma.

Second, it upends the natural order. I don't like the precedent set by running away from something so far down the food chain. If we let geese intimidate us, what's next? Rabbits? Hamsters? I refuse to put up with backtalk from other species. If I give Mr. Papadopoulos half a can of Cheapo Chow I don't want him hacking up hairballs on my shoes and thinking, "Buddy, this is your life until I get fuckin' Meow Mix." Next rats will be waking us in our beds, squeaking, "I can't get this Rice Crispies box open, and you used the scissors to trim your pubes."

Oddly, I don't have that same visceral reaction to monkey crime. You see them stealing our stuff all the time in other funny videos: tourists on mountaintops observing the cantankerous monkeys when suddenly one grabs their reading glasses and scampers up a tree. Personally, I'm fine with that. Monkeys are pretty close to us evolutionarily-wise, so it's entirely possible they have recipes to peruse or filing to do. I wouldn't blame them for getting bored in the forest and grabbing somebody's binoculars or cigarettes or fanny pack: I always pull out my cellphone when my boyfriend starts talking and he has other things to say than, "Eek eek eek."

Still, I don't want to give the wrong impression. I'm not ordinarily a tough guy, but geese aren't exactly Colin McGregor. They don't have muscles or tattoos: that would change everything. If I was in a field and a goose with a tiny teardrop tattooed under one eye came running after me, I would also run like hell. There'd be leeks all over the place. If he had a spiderweb tattooed around an ankle, I'd be completely freaked out. I'd jam YOUR ass into his beak so he'd leave MINE alone.

I think it's a fair fight, because there's just as much danger to me as there is to them. I'm a much bigger target, and they've had a lot more practice. They're more purposeful, and driven: if somebody got too close to my nest I'd be like, "Eh. It was just, like, eight minutes collecting twigs." I haven't run up to a stranger clucking since Jaegermeister passed twelve bucks a bottle.

Plus, I've never actually punched anything, especially something whose head is on a two-foot stalk. They're so fluffy I don't think I could even bruise one, while they could inflict serious damage on me. We're talking an actual animal bite, which would be painful. Maybe not alligator painful, since alligators have teeth, but about as painful as something can be when it has like a nerf ball for lips.

So anyway, it's on the list. And with all the geese here in Germany it's a distinct possibility. All I have to do is buy a basket, buy some leeks, and head for the countryside. I'll wander through fields. I'll scamper, I'll meander, I'll skip ... all while keeping my eyes wide open for the vengeful little bastards.

Eventually I'll spot one, and instead of running I'll stand tall. Of course, he'll be startled. He'll stop, confounded by a human being who has no fear. I'll lower my gaze to his round, pale face as he waddles up and squawks, "You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me?"

I'll be picturing a new video in my head. In it, I'll put the leeks down, slick back my hair, take off my shirt, crack my knuckles and say, "Yeah, you fluffy son of a bitch. And I'll start with a leg and a breast."

I've just been contemplating what a miracle the human body is. There are the eyes: complex sensors where 130 million cones and rods convert light into pictures that appear in your brain. And the ears: an intricate system of tubes and channels full of microscopic hairs and fluids that turn random air vibrations into sound.

Anyway, I'll see you later. I've got to wave my dangly thing over the toilet so I can pee.

Unbelievable. A friend of mine owns a business and he just got this letter from a customer.

______________________

U-Sav Law Form 271y-2015b

Official Notice of Refutation of Legal Culpability by Parent(s)
(Fill in blanks pertinent to specific incident)

Dear     Owner of Stoddard's Department Store    :

It has recently come to my attention that on     Thursday     you encountered some difficulties with my     daughter         Raddison    . Furthermore, I understand that you may wish to initiate legal action against    him   /  her.

Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that my     daughter     is a straight-     B-     student at the esteemed     Kids 'b' Here Day Care & TV Repair    , and recently received much acclaim for     hugging her maw-maw    . It is virtually unprecedented in this community that someone reaches such heights of accomplishment at the age of     she just turned six    .

As I understand it, the difficulty arose when my     daughter     decided it would not be deleterious to     spin around with her eyes closed and her arms out     for the reason that     everything disappears when you close your eyes    .

Though     Raddison     immediately understood the result of her actions and the fractional degree of culpability to which her parents would be exposed, it wasn't soon enough to avoid damage to     a bunch of shitty crystal    .

While     Raddison     sincerely regrets the incident, we are certain that upon further reflection you will understand that culpability lies just as much with     your shitty department store     as with us because     my husband is a LAWYER     and additionally     only a MORON would put merchandise out where CHILDREN can reach it!!!    .

It is our hope that you will discount the short-term profitability that might result from legal action and instead chalk up the incident to     YOUR IDIOTS!!!    . If you do, we are certain that the benefits you receive in future customer goodwill would far outweigh the     $40,000 in damages! UNBELIEVABLE! FOR A BUNCH OF UGLY CRYSTAL SWANS!!!     that you allegedly suffered from        BEING IDIOTS!!!     her    .

Sincerely,

    Mrs. Barbara Benelli    
(Write name here)

"Apartments in Berlin are incredibly cheap," a friend of a friend tells me. "It doesn't make sense. Europe has three main capital cities: London, Paris, and Berlin. And for some reason, real estate prices in the first two are five times the prices in the third."

I start looking at apartments online and discover he's absolutely right. In Berlin there are apartments in great neighborhoods, as big as my Brooklyn place, selling for $250,000. All of a sudden it makes that $2,500 monthly rent look awfully stupid. The place would pay for itself in 10 years, and then for the rest of my life there's just the maintenance fee of $250 a month.

I tell my German boyfriend I want to buy an apartment and he doesn't need convincing. In fact, he suggests sharing it. I'm wary: we are officially a couple, but we've only been together a year. Is it smart to buy real estate this early in the relationship? I agree to split the place, but not because of some starry-eyed optimism. No, because he works out of town, which means he'll only be there on weekends. It's hard for me to get sick of somebody when I only see them two days a week.

Plus there's that little voice in my head screaming: "If we share the place, it'll cost nothing at all."

Seemingly within minutes we find an apartment we love for an unbelievable price. What seemed like a silly daydream just a short time ago has become reality. I'm getting a home in Berlin.

I know I'll have bills to pay so I open a German bank account and link my American account to it. Right away I need $1,000 to reserve the apartment, so I go online to make the first transfer.

"Sorry," comes the error message, "that exceeds the maximum allowed."

Okay, I think. That's annoying. That's a pretty low maximum. But I'll call, I'll get it raised, and that will be that. I wait until American banking hours and telephone the bank.

I express a bit of minor irritation -- it's my money! It's not that much! Why does everything have to be so difficult? -- before a perfectly nice, reasonable clerk replies. "We're just trying to protect you, Mr. Hans. There are a lot of bad guys out there trying to do terrible things to older people."

Instantly I recognize this voice. It's the voice I use to say things like, "Grandma, I'm pretty sure Pierce Brosnan hasn't been looking at you through the kitchen window," and "That looks delicious. But you know you've baked an oven mitt into that pie?"

It hits me: this is how you talk to old people. They've checked my date of birth and decided I'm one of those clueless old people in need of help. Is this how I'm going to be treated every time I pull money out of the bank? "Now, Roman, you say you need some money to go to Spain. Are you planning on buying a plane ticket, or just walking there?"

My nieces and nephews will chime in next. "Remember, Uncle Roman -- you have to turn the water off every time you've turned it on." And "Promise me you'll never give money to a psychic, even if she breaks open an egg with a blood-red yolk."

Is this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life? Am I going to be saddled with people "helping" me?

I assure the clerk that I know what I'm doing and she makes a note allowing the transfer to go through. The next day the money moves across the ocean and I transfer the funds to the escrow account. I congratulate myself. That's one major milestone met.

But then bills come from the translator and the real estate agent, and I have to go online to move more cash. "Sorry," reads the error message again, "that exceeds the maximum allowed."

I know banking has simplified our lives incredibly since it's gone online, but it doesn't actually help if I have to call America every time I need cash. My heart is pounding in my chest but I try to stay calm as I call the bank again.

A guy gives me the same speech about my "protection" but this time I'm not feeling it. "I'm sorry, but I do not appreciate your 'help,'" I say. "I need the money right away and I don't appreciate having a simple procedure take days. I can't keep calling America to move money so I can buy an apartment."

"You're buying an apartment?"

"Yes," I reply. "This is for some of the fees."

"Oh," he says. "Okay. Before I authorize this though, tell me: have you actually seen the apartment?"

I assure him that I have. I'm tempted to run off onto random tangents, you know, like old people do. Maybe mention it's got a chair lift so I don't have to climb those awful stairs, and that I've got a cuddly red Tickle Me Elmo to keep me company. "Hello?" I'll say. "HELLO? Oh. I get confused sometimes. I spent eight hours yesterday talking into the vacuum cleaner." Instead I just ask him if the problem is fixed, he says yes, and I hang up.

And then the big day arrives. My German boyfriend and I sign the contracts and make it official. We are now the proud, joint owners of a small apartment in Berlin. Now a big pile of money has to go into the escrow account, and I go back online.

"Sorry," reads the error message, "that exceeds the maximum allowed."

I know the number by heart. "WRITE THIS DOWN," I scream red-faced into the phone. "I AM NOT AN OLD PERSON. I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF. I AM BUYING AN APARTMENT WITH MY BOYFRIEND AND I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU WOULD LET ME TAKE MY GODDAMNED MONEY OUT OF MY GODDAMNED BANK ACCOUNT."

"I'm so sorry," comes a chastened voice out of the phone. "Believe me, no one here thinks you're an old person. We're just trying to help you hold on to your hard-earned cash. I'll see to this right away." She disappears for a minute, and then the voice comes back. "Just tell me one thing: have you actually met your boyfriend?"

Americans know exactly one thing about Germany's autobahn: you can drive as fast as you want.

Naturally all the speed freaks are salivating, picturing eight or nine lanes of Mercedes, Volvos and Audis traveling at the speed of light through Blade Runner cityscapes. The fact is, though, the autobahn at its widest is three lanes across, and it mostly snakes through fields full of Swiss chard and wind turbines. The right lane is taken up by an endless line of trucks moving home furnishings, clothing and food to and from nearby countries like the Czech Republic and Poland. The left lane is shiny new cars moving unbelievably fast. And the middle lane is everybody who doesn't fit in those two groups, and that's what fucks everything up.

See, that middle lane holds all the dirty, banged-up cars that can't get up to eighty miles per hour, all the SUVs overloaded with kids watching DVDs, and all the old people who can barely see the road ahead of them. Now, I like going three hundred miles an hour, but when the lane next to me is barely shuddering along at sixty, I have second thoughts.

In America, half of everyone on the road is also on their cellphones, checking their email or talking to friends or posting photos of their drive on Facebook. This means half of the cars are bouncing around like bumper cars, slowing only when the driver looks up or smacks into something that corrects his course. If you are also doing sixty miles per hour, he will leave a dent. But if you are going three hundred miles per hour, the slightest imbalance in aerodynamics means your shiny Mercedes becomes airborne, flips eighteen times, flies off the freeway into a field of Swiss chard and comes to a rest against the base of a wind turbine.

But the German boyfriend speeds along obliviously as I quietly freak out in the passenger seat, jamming my foot onto nonexistent brake pedals every time we pass another car.

"What is going on with you?" he finally asks.

"Aren't you worried?" I ask. "What happens when one of these drivers gets distracted by his cellphone and veers into our lane, and we go flying off the autobahn into a field of Swiss chard?"

GBF looks off the highway. "First," he says in his schoolteacher tone, "it is October, so that's corn. And second, German drivers aren't on their cellphones, because that would be stupid."

And in an instant everything I know about the universe vanishes in a puff of smoke. People ... don't ... do ... something ... because ... it ... is ... STUPID? A parallel universe materializes in my head that doesn't include superhero movies or Kardashians. My entire concept of civilization changes in a flash, replaced by questions. Does this mean I have to stop watching Say Yes To The Dress and start reading books?

GBF has to travel a lot for work, so I tag along. Usually this means a night or two in Munich, Cologne, or Bonn, but on this particular weekend we're having dinner in a cafe in Oberkassel, a quaint little village on the Rhine. Food in Germany is also seasonal: for a few months every year there are massive celebrations for things like asparagus, strawberries, and mushrooms, and then the foods vanish completely until the next year. GBF gets ridiculously excited when these foods hit the market, which is why he orders a $170 plate of mushrooms. I don't want to burst his bubble but think about telling him New Yorkers get that shit from Peru year-round.

Me, I order the pizza because I've already tried German food. On one wall I spot a plaque engraved with the number 2017 and a lot of German words that make no sense to me accompanied by one that does:

KEGEL.

Now, I'm a big fan of Kegel exercises. Conventional wisdom points people to the pecs and biceps as the primary things to exercise, but these are equally important muscles deserving of equal time. Even if they're not ravaged by childbirth, they're slackened by age or disuse. I do the exercises as a sort of sexual empowerment, blindly hoping they'll improve my performance without plastic surgery. The practice is a bit more confusing for men, but I tighten up the back and I tighten up the front and cross my fingers it'll eventually show up in bed.

"What's that sign on the wall?" I ask the GBF.

"Kegel," he confirms. "They do Kegel here."

"Kegel," I repeat. "The exercise?"

He nods. "It seems they won the championship this year."

I probably shouldn't be surprised, since sex stores here put dildos in the windows. "You can win an award for it?" I'm vaguely interested, just out of curiosity, but I'm not ready for the championships yet.

He shrugs his shoulders. "It is a very popular sport. Many restaurants and bars have teams."

"So, once a week they all get together and practice? Doing Kegels?"

He's a little annoyed by all the questions but he understands this is what you get when I talk. "There must be an alley nearby."

"An alley?" I ask. "That sounds a little dirty. Why not just do it here, in the restaurant?"

He looks at me like I'm crazy while swallowing another forty dollars worth of mushrooms. "They don't have the equipment. It takes a lot of space. And then there is the noise."

I'm often impressed by Germany but here my admiration hits an all-new high. I'm picturing crowds of chubby middle-aged men in lederhosen and pale women in dirndls, all holding enormous steins of beer and squinting while they tighten up downstairs. "Okay, folks," somebody named Manfred shouts, "now two more sets of fifteen. Squeeze, and release. Everyone, repeat after me: 'NO, NO, NO. STOP THAT URINE FLOW!'"

I take another bite of bad pizza while trying to make sense of GBF's words: they need equipment? And space? And I know I've exerted myself doing Kegels but I've never made the neighbors complain. Still, I'd be surprised with all those potato-powered thighs if Germans didn't make a lot of noise. I can't begin to think of what a championship would be like, and picture arm-wrestling in my head. Could the Kegel-offs be similar? Do hyped-up competitors high-five each other while shouting stuff like, "I got the womb that's gonna take down the room!"? I don't even want to picture the movie Sylvester Stallone would make about this, but I know it would include headbands.

"Do you do Kegel?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "I tried it but didn't like it."

I feel like saying nobody likes it, but the alternative is having to tell people that you ejaculated once you hit 55. "I guess somebody must like it but I'm a little surprised there are teams."

He nods. "In America there are not?"

I shake my head. "It's a solitary thing. And I think it's mostly woman, but a few guys do it too."

He shoots me an interested look. "You do it?"

I stop and think for a second but decide there's no shame in the truth. "Yup," I say. "In fact, I'm doing it right now."

He looks puzzled. He scans my top half above the table, then he pushes the tablecloth to one side and checks out the bottom half. "You are doing Kegel right now?"

"Yup," I say. "Sometimes I do it on the subway if I'm bored and it's a long train ride."

"Kegel," he repeats.

"Yup."

"Where you have a ball, and you roll it down a long -- "

He stops because he can't find the word. I know what he's talking about but I can't find the word either. Then it comes to me. "Lane," I say.

"Lane," he says. "And you knock over pins and keep score."

I smile for a minute before finally saying, "American Kegel is a little different."

"It is an exercise you do with your clothes on? Is this something I will see when we are naked?"

I pick up the last piece of pizza. "Maybe," I say, still on the fence. "But you might want to close your eyes, just to protect yourself."

On our drive back to the hotel I explain the whole thing to him. With the language barrier I guess I shouldn't be surprised we have these disconnects. Even worse was the time I found pickle cream in the skincare section of a drug store. I asked GBF what it was and he shrugged and said you put it on pickles. I was pretty sure there was more to the story, but if you've ever tried German food you'd understand why I had my doubts.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." -- Theodore Parker

"Say what?" -- Anne Frank

CNN Explains The Lyrics From Twelve Classic Songs

Eminem verbally stomped Donald Trump at the BET Hip Hop Awards last night in a fiery, four-and-a-half minute prerecorded rap. CNN recognized that it "perhaps the fiercest and the most exhaustive attack against Donald Trump in hip-hop," then listed his "11 fiercest lines" and explained them. Thank God at least some of the media understands that regular people don't get hip-hop.

Eminem: But this is his form of distraction, plus he gets an enormous reaction when he attacks the NFL, so we focus on that instead of talking Puerto Rico or gun reform for Nevada. All these horrible tragedies and he's bored and would rather cause a Twitter storm with the Packers.

CNN: Here, the rapper slams the President for spending days attacking NFL players who take a knee and escalating the feud as a hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico and a massacre occurred in Nevada. Trump visited both Puerto Rico and Las Vegas following each disaster.

This translation may be a little loose. I don't think Eminem was pissed about Trump visiting Puerto Rico: it's probably the fact that he flung paper towels at starving poor people that pissed him off.

Eminem: Same shit that he tormented Hillary for and he slandered then does it more. From his endorsement of Bannon, support for the Klansman, tiki torches in hand for the soldier that's black and comes home from Iraq and is still told to go back to Africa.

CNN: Here, Eminem is referring to Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is also the executive chairman of the conservative media outlet Breitbart News.

CNN has apparently confused commas with periods here. Apparently they missed the end of that sentence, which refers to the fact Trump watches black people pretty closely while somehow missing those rallies with all the white guys in hoods.

Eminem: We better give Obama props 'cause what we got in office now is a kamikaze that will probably cause a nuclear holocaust while the drama pops, and he waits for s--- to quiet down, he'll just gas his plane up and fly around till the bombing stops.

CNN: Here, Eminem is likely referencing Trump's war of words on social media with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, whom the President referred to as "little rocket man."

Oh! I'm not sure why but I thought this verse was about something that happened at a Chili's.

Anyway, props (that means "thanks") to CNN for providing the translation. I only wish they'd been around when I was in college. I can only imagine how one of America's top media outlets would've translated these lines from classic songs.

Led Zeppelin: If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. It's just a spring clean for the May queen.

CNN Explanation: Whether you have a flower box on your balcony or an acre in Vermont, gardening can be just plain fun.

Pink Floyd: We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teachers, leave them kids alone

CNN Explanation: 24% of American parents find home-schooling the answer in these cautionary times.

The Beatles: Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

CNN Explanation: They left out the swaying palm trees and white sand beaches! Yes, there's nowhere else quite like Barbados.

Jefferson Airplane: One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small.

CNN Explanation: With the plethora of prescription drugs available today, many people complain of unexpected side effects.

John Lennon: Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.

CNN Explanation: For an adventurous afternoon activity, smart families look to the trampoline.

The Beatles: I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me. She showed me her room; isn't it good, Norwegian wood.

CNN Explanation: When it comes to home decoration, solicit tips from creative friends.

Steve Miller: Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah. Some call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice. 'Cause I speak of the pompitous of love.

CNN Explanation: It takes a real rocker to ask the hard questions: what happens when nicknames hurt?

Jimi Hendrix: Tell me, are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?

CNN Explanation: The smart job-seeker focuses on the basics at a job interview.

Phil Collins: I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord. And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, Oh Lord.

CNN Explanation: Putting on a pretty dress is just the beginning. The well-dressed woman also wears scent.

Marvin Gaye: Mother, mother, we don't need to escalate.

CNN Explanation: Listen to your kids! Researchers know taking the stairs can burn 20% more calories.

Billie Holiday: Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root.

CNN Explanation: In juice or in salads, who doesn't love the pomegranate?

Billy Idol: Oh dancing with myself, dancing with myself. There's nothing to lose, and there's nothing to prove; I'll be dancing with myself.

CNN Explanation: Don't be shy -- get out there and move! It's better than staying home and masturbating.