• Glastonbury Truck Break

    We’re getting towed.

    The clutch went out . Nina’s cafe phone won’t allow the incoming calls we need to keep in touch with AA (the European AAA). We hung out in Nina’s, drinking coffee and then buying some breakfast.

    Nina: “This is the hottest it’s been since ’81. We’re definitely having a heat wave.”

    Clarke: “Yeah, a heat wave where you have to wear a sweater at night.”

    Good show, old chap.

    I hung out with some kids on the lot yesterday. Real sweet kids: Caylin, 7 and Amber, 4, I think. Very smart and very nice kids.

    Amber to me: “You’re very, very, very, very cheeky.”

    Caylin to me: “You don’t know English very well, do you?”

    “Amber, do you want this peach or not?”

    “I don’t want it.”

    “Shall I eat it?”

    “Yes.”

    Just like those over-polite chipmunks.

    Caylin ran off and came back with a fake cigarette that he got at the “Joke Shop”.

    I met Churchill’s granddaughter yesterday, also. I shit you not.

  • Glastonbury Campfire Talk

    I haven’t seen a good campfire in a while. It’s nice to look at.

    Yesterday, I did a good show and Toby and Andrew came running back stage to hug me and then I played for them. Sylvia and Clarke came, too.

    After, I saw the coolest dance I’d ever seen. It was a Russian Group called “Black Sky White”. Fuckin’ amazing. It was like Brothers Quay, stop-motion animation (like the Tool video), except live.

    Around the campfire, someone came by to tell us they had just seen The Madagascar Institute (some friends of mine from Brooklyn) who had a fort made from metal scraps with fire cannons mounted at the top. When he mentioned they had a game of tug-of-war

    a lady who had fallen asleep by the fire suddenly awoke and said in my direction, “Winning wars is like winning an earthquake.”

    What did I do? Where’s my beer? I’ve got some new guilt to wash down.

  • Glastonbury, Thursday 12:20

    We’re rearranging the truck. Actually, I’m reading. Someone is playing shit on the PA that’s worse than magician music-a cross between the Ferris Bueller “Oh Yeah”, Spyrogyra, and Jan Hammer on one shitty loop.

    We parked on the road last night because they weren’t letting even performers in to set up camp. I woke to engines starting so I woke the others and we drove through at least 2-3 more checkpoints (we’d already been through 3-4 the night before).

    We drove through the festival to the performers’ camp:

    -outdoor shower,

    like in M*A*S*H, almost

    -outdoor shitters

    -not a PortaJohn, with a shit pitfall of 10 feet from the toilet seat.

    -each stall has a poster titled: “SHIT” with a plea to wash your hands to prevent disease and not throw rubbish in.

    We got a decent spot and then decided to chance losing it to haul our props to the circus tent. Hopefully, they’ll let us stay here in the circus lot – the PortaJohn is high-end and the shower is top notch.

  • Corn Mo’s Beer Shower

    Me and Clarke and Sylvia got into Waltrop about 6. Nobody that worked at the hotel spoke English but it’s our fault for not knowing German. It was a family run business and the Dad was a good ol’ jolly German but the Mom looked at us with some sort of judgement.

    We took our stuff to the room and came back down to the hotel’s restaurant because we were too tired to fuckaround with looking for some other place.

    I can’t read German good so I got the special hoping it would be so.

    It was excellent. Always get the special. It was some sort of pork with potatoes and kraut salad. I don’t mean to toot my horn or jinx myself but sometimes I can pick the right thing off a menu.

    Clark and Sylvia didn’t have the foresight I did although Clark is one of the best cooks I’ve ever met. He cooked out of his truck one night and made curried rice and salad and had made his own dressing.

    We got beer because we were in Germany and because. The Daughter brought us some tall-glass beers and spilled one of them on me. She backed up in horror like she had really done it this time and said nothing.

    I wringed my shirt out into my glass to make her feel better.

    “It’s ok. It’s ok. See? I still have some.”

    The Dad laughed because my jonny-quick humor transcends language.

    The Mom kept looking at us like I did wrong.

    The Daughter brought me another beer and I drank it both ways- through my mouth and through my skin. I got no towel. Nothing. Just my extra beer and a look of horror and a couple of laughs. Surely when the laughter goes down someone would say, “Haben eine towel fur yer bier, Herr Mo.”

    The end of our stay at this hotel brought a large argument. The festival was supposed to pay for 3 but the hotel said it was for 2. This explains the angry looks from Mom all weekend. They charged us for an extra person’s breakfast and shower for the weekend. Forty Euros for a shower!

    They call a shower a douche and Clark argued with them saying, “What about Corn Mo’s Beer Douche?”

    They went down on their price but he still got the festival to pay for it.

    German food is awesome but a mute girl’s charm goes only so far.