listen to cartoons

After show number one as "eigobando" everyone was happy, and there was beer in little plastic cups, and a Moroccan, and everyone sucked happy waterfalls of carbonated yellow fun from their transparent containers, and Krampus had a nice time supplemented by a toast to Cinnamon and a happy sunflower from a big chicken who cares. And then we decided it was more than fine to be re-known by our crowded gallery of fans, groupies and roadies as Listen to Cartoons.

音楽について

Peter Fox - Stadtaffe

He sounds far less pasty than he looks. Have a listen, please! "Schwarz zu Blau" represented the state of Berlin in the Bundesvision Song Contest this year and like, won by a landslide.

Moved most of my music from my external hard drive to my laptop tonight. I won't ever get enough sleep, and that's okay. At least tonight I'm not reading tongue twisters aloud to myself at 4 a.m.

Photos courtesy of Greg, who is regrettably absent in them:



Cramp, Kramp, and Ben. Kramp is stuffing her face.


The arsenal and our first (read: only) groupie, Shamisen. My violin is named John Crow, after the wonderful man who donated it free of charge.

krampy has a band?

I'm in a band now. We're not a real band, we don't even have a bass player, but this is as band-like as it's gotten thus far and I like it. For now it's mostly covers of songs everyone knows with heavily improvised violin and djembe beats, and everyone sings and switches up their instruments. Nothing professional or terribly innovative but a lot of fun. It feels amazing to be playing music again. My dreams of street musicianship appear to be well on the way to coming true. Soon I'll be shivering half-naked in tattered clothes in the Ita Gintengai shopping arcade playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with my violin case open, imploring the octogenarian passersby for pocket change.

Meanwhile I'm hit with the pressing need to travel. It's almost as urgent as needing to urinate or that graceful word - what was it - "beeriod" after a night of drinking. Walter and I have been talking about going to Shanghai for a few days. I'd be happy to walk around not being able to read anything or speak to anyone, perhaps throwing out an emphatic "ching chong wing wong" here and there, eating street dumplings cooked in cleaning product, logically followed by diarrhea without toilet paper in some filthy hellhole, and maybe a classy meal atop a skyscraper.

Actually the other day a student said "nihao" to me. I said "HELLO" back.

Hello. I sort of love being hung over. That disoriented slightly achey haze does wonders for the introspective soul and fosters a nice kind of team spirit when everyone's feeling it. It's like smoking cigarettes. If there's nothing else to talk about, you can always just talk about what you have in common. Oh, Marlboro Lights. What are you, a homo? My gay ex smokes those. I think they're so foul. Here, have a Lucky Strike. What do you mean they're too strong? What kind of pansy are you?

Only 6 more hours of work.

P.S. Welcome to the new blog.