Process that track. Delete that wave. Get a little drunk and then dig your grave. I don’t know, what is the work song equivalent of my current occupation? Most professions have been reduced to someone sitting in front of a computer terminal, tapping away and grimacing. Here at Big Green, we are no exception. As I am now demonstrating, by sitting in front of a computer and typing. And grimacing.
Sure, I know, we should perform. I think that’s a marvelous idea. Right now, our performances are our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, which appears nearly every month right here on this channel (check local listings). We could haul our sorry, superannuated asses down to the local gin mill and slog through some of our hundreds (yes, literally hundreds) of songs, most of which have never been heard outside a small circle of friends, and I wouldn’t rule that out. Maybe we’ll do some Stage-It performances, or something like that. Who the hell knows?
The main thing is (and this is important!) we are still making ridiculous music … still bizarre and asinine after all these years. Right now, the place to hear it is here. And as I look around at the clammy walls of the empty, abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adoptive home, I am reminded of why we got into this in the first place… that spark of an idea that started Big Green decades ago, in a place far (well, not so far) away. That voice that came to me, early one morning, seeping into my cloudy, half slumbering consciousness, to whisper those inspiring words: “You need to make money somehow, you dope-ass loser … get a band going!”
Actually, it was louder than a whisper. And it wasn’t a disembodied voice; it was my roommate at the time, asking for my half of the rent. He was one of those guys who put labels on stuff in the refrigerator, each one sporting his name. To me, though, those labels always read “eat me”.
But enough about ME. What have you been up to, eh?
bothered to follow the money back from ISIS to their funders in Saudi Arabia, a nation our own John McCain and others have praised to the rafters for funding the Syrian opposition. Once again, we are staring down the barrels of our own guns, scratching our heads in wonder.
Oh, hello out there in Real Worldia. No, this isn’t another pointless argument about some instrument none of us plays. We’re just getting ready to record another episode of our Star Trek parody, Ned Trek, now in its 19th episode, featured on our monthly (or near-monthly, at least) podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Not to give away any trade secrets, but I do the voice of the Nixon android, an automaton who holds the entire personal and political history of Richard Milhous Nixon in his memory banks. Likes a good stiff drink every once in a while, Nixon does.
Of course, they already had their hair on fire about Obama’s foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Middle East. Once again, the alarm bell is cranked up to eleven … like it was for the capture of the Benghazi jihadist, and for the the Bergdahl deal, and for pretty much every thing that happens anywhere, every day of the week. Not sure why we should listen to people like Dan Senor, or John McCain, or Bill Kristol, or anyone else still on television after having been so fantastically wrong on what they were supposed to be experts about, but we keep hearing from them anyway. Go back into Iraq, they say … it’s the only way to keep the country from falling apart.
Oh, hi. Sorry about my outburst there. No, I wasn’t having an argument with my illustrious brother Matt, I was just rehearsing for our conversation later on today. I know it may seem strange, but I have to rehearse for just about everything that occurs in my life. Which is even stranger, in fact, because I almost never rehearse for gigs. In fact, you might describe me as downright hostile to the idea. (As a friend once famously said, “Rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow.”)
First of all, they were not high-value detainees. They were leadership within the Taliban regime of the 1990s – 2001, yes, but they were not implicated in the deaths of any Americans. Nor were they captured at great cost, as has been suggested by some. Two or more of them turned themselves in; others were turned in by Pakistani intelligence, probably in exchange for some payment. Will they return to “the fight”? Well, that may be, but keeping Guantanamo open all these years has inspired more (younger) people to join the fight than we could ever release from that legal limbo on Cuban soil. A lot of people want us dead; are we that worried, really?
Okay, I admit it … sometimes it’s hard to arrange a song when you’ve only got two musicians in the room, and one of them is me … and the other is my brother. (That’s brother of the same mother, Matt Perry.) The palette is limited, let us say, and of course Matt can’t play guitar and bass at the same time. (I’ve had more than one talk with him about his shortcomings.) And my keyboarding is, well, mostly confined to piano like objects, organs, etc. We’re recording new, mostly very silly songs, and they call for stuff we can’t do ourselves. At least, not without some modifications.
I confess, this Bergdahl-as-a-traitor obsession is simply astounding. Didn’t think they would go there, but apparently they have. The man spent five years as a captive of the Taliban, is finally released, and the reactionary pundits (and some of the centrists, as well) have been roasting him and his family alive ever since. This is trial by media, and they keep stoking the flame higher and higher, trotting out retired colonels and former Army comrades of Bergdahl who paint this craven picture of the young man, none of it based on demonstrable fact. My reliably conservative neighbor came out of his house the other day spouting this line about Bergdahl being a “deserter”; pretty much parroting what’s being said on Fox News.
three times a day, and it looks like I’m nominated to be his personal gardener. By default. (Well, I can’t leave it to anti-Lincoln. He’d set the poor bastard root vegetable on fire!)
The shooting cannot surprise us, any more than extreme weather can in the wake of Sandy and Katrina. We go through this process every few weeks. We see the head shaking, the somber tones of voice, the promises to do more … and then we’re back at the beginning again. In America, each day is a new beginning; yesterday is forgotten with the next sunrise. Some see this as our promise as a nation, but it’s more of a curse. We keep tripping over the same fold in the carpet, again and again. Somehow, we are helpless.