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Usual Rubbish

Tour log (part deux).

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There are no filling stations out yonder. Just ask Warren Oates. If you can’t find him, seek out another character actor and ask him or her. You may be surprised by their answer. (Or not.)

Here’s what happened on the “road” this week:

10.15.2011 – Pulled into Neptune, was feeling ’bout half-past dead. Our rent-a-ship has been sputtering, so we brought it into a Neptunian garage for service. The cost? Full proceeds from our three performances on Neptune, plus 9% excise tax. (Looks like Herman Cain is having an impact up here, as well. The craters tell the tale.) sFshzenKlyrn practically melted his Telecaster on the fourth song (Why Not Call It George?), then settled down for a succulent Neptunian roast. (Roasted crater peat. This is important: Neptunian is not … repeat, not … one of the great cuisines.)

10.17.2011 – Strange how Polaris looks like downtown Rochester. Could be worse. We set up on a suspended platform – one of those anti-gravity jobs you see all over the place on Kaztropharius 137b – and went through the better part of our song list. Looks like we’ll have to work up some more numbers. The Polaroids experience time in extreme slow motion – the equivalent of about 14 hours to each of our standard Earth minutes. Kind of a difficult gap to fill, actually. Hey dudes…. how about a slow one? 

10.19.2011 – Right through the center of the Great Onion Ring. You full-time terrestrials know it as the Ring Nebula, but out here they associate it with their favorite snack. Pity, really, that more interstellar phenomena aren’t named for appropriate junk food back on Earth. After all, we invented junk food, we perfected it, we raised it to a high cultural value, and we defend it with our lives. The Greeks had their gods, sure. But we have our Ring Dings.

10.20.2011 – Closing in on the next venue; that hideous little globe named Kaztropharius 137b … the one place in god’s great universe where our CDs sell like hot cakes. I may have explained this before – the denizens of Kaztropharius 137b eat complex plastics, so to put a fine point on it, our CDs are, in fact, hot cakes to them. And we’re okay with that. Just settling in for a few night gigs.

Hey…. we’re not idle on the road. Always thinking, you know. We posted the third episode of our increasingly strange podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Check it out at http://www.big-green.net/pod and be not ashamed.

Political Rants

Hors de combat.

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I’m not a big fan of the notion that people in custody should be abused, beaten, or killed. Once you have them restrained, if circumstances warrant it, that should be enough. Seeing Gaddafi beaten and bloodied, then expired with a bullet hole in his head was kind of sickening, frankly. Sure, he was an autocratic asshole. But he was also defeated and in custody. If the Libyans are starting their brave new future with extrajudicial killings, it doesn’t sound too promising. But then, I suppose, that would put them in the same league as their sponsors … particularly, us.

It’s been said that the Libya intervention is Iraq done the Obama way. Today kind of underlines that notion a bit. We didn’t get all arrogant about it or act unilaterally. We pushed through a UN resolution – something Bush couldn’t have had and probably wouldn’t have wanted, since his administration was actively trying to sideline the UN. Obama is a true imperial internationalist, and the product of that is the kinds of interventions you see in Kosovo and Libya and the kinds of coups you see in Honduras, as opposed to his predecessor’s far more blustering approach to wars and proxy overthrows. Sure, neither is a fly on Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, or even Reagan when it comes to mass killing. But Obama acts to sustain the empire, not destroy it. Bush apparently couldn’t care less about it.

My main concern is that we appear to be going the way of all empires. We are getting more comfortable with the trappings of imperial adventure. We are, in a sense, getting meaner as a society, more willing to mete out harsh “justice”, more attached to our bloodlust. We are, it’s also worth pointing out, falling apart from the inside out, the very bones of our civilization progressively embrittled by forced divestment and diversion of revenues to the maintenance of foreign wars, occupations, and forward bases. As Yeats wrote (later repurposed by Achebe), “the center cannot hold and things fall apart”. Our devotion to maintaining our neoliberal empire at all costs is driving us into a period of significant decline – one that cannot be ameliorated by the deaths in custody of third-tier dictators.

This is not an inevitable process. It’s a choice, and we can choose otherwise. Up to us. Imagine that.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Tour log 10.11

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Good evening, Mr. Phelps. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to read this blog entry from top to bottom without falling over backwards. This blog will self-destruct in ten seconds. Good luck, Jim!

Don’t mind that first paragraph. I sometimes rent my blog space out to sixties television shows. Has something to do with the space-time vortex through which we ordinarily travel when on these interstellar tours. Don’t ask me to explain – I’m not an actual scientist. And unlike some of my blog renters, I don’t even play one on television.

Anyway, here’s a rundown of how Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 is going so far, ripped straight from the pages of my log book.  

10.08.2011 – Negotiated our way through the asteroid belt. We needed to lighten our load somewhat, so we tossed a few things overboard, like Marvin (my personal assistant)’s Lowery organ he borrowed from our one-time promoter and second keyboard player, Tiny Montgomery. Mitch also chucked all of the foodstuffs. He hates foodstuffs. Food, he likes, but foodstuffs… not so much. Anyway… we started the search for the Olive Garden in orbit around Jupiter.  Tough sledding.

10.09.2011 – Actually started a gig on time – first instance of this since, oh, 1992. A couple of weeks. We played the big red spot on Jupiter. Weather was awful (seems like it’s always stormy when we play there), but the Jovian audience is the greatest audience in the world… if “the world” can be thought of to include Jupiter itself. Paid in Belgian waffles. Hard times have hit up here as well, it seems.

10.11.2011 – Woke up around 18:00. Missed yesterday entirely. Our hyperdrive engine soiled the bed, so to speak, so we’re creeping along at about 25 miles an hour, headed for Titan. Should be a Titanic gig if we ever get there. For now, I look out the porthole and see space turtles passing us. Note to self: when ship lands on Earth, fire Mitch.

10.12.2011 – Jammed with sFshzenKlyrn on Titan. He’s big into Lenny Breau, now. Watches him on YouTube, which apparently is available on the planet Zenon. You heard it here first. Glad to see no waffles in the pay packet this time. No nothing, actually – I guess the Titanians have discovered currency trading… and subsequently discovered they were no good at it.  Traded all their currency for Legos. Legos valueless in the outer planets (unlike back home).

More later. Isn’t it always the case?

Political Rants

Occupayback.

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Can’t call me a cynic quite yet. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems a very positive development to my jaundiced eye. Hell, there were reportedly 400 people at the rally in Utica. When we brought out more than 200 for the big demo on the eve of the Iraq war, that seemed amazing for a place like this. 400 is practically unheard of. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment about the financial crisis and the fact that virtually none of the large institutions that caused the meltdown have been held to account, just as no executive in any of those firms has faced the threat of prosecution. Nay, they have continued to receive obscene bonuses, showboating their excess as if to flaunt their immunity from the restrictions of either the law or the marketplace. Like Dick Cheney bragging about his support for torture, they seem to be daring us to do something – anything – about their transgressions. You can’t touch me, they laugh.

Well…. maybe we can. There seems to be an overwhelming desire to do so. Not surprising. We’ve seen the result of not holding people accountable. Cheney’s a good example – still on the loose, influencing policy in some fashion. Karl Rove is another one, out raising millions for another crop of right-wing nut jobs. If course, no one has been held to account for the Iraq War, a needless conflict that tore a swath of destruction through an entire nation as well as the military families in America, draining our treasury and putting us at greater risk of attack. Ask any conservative – if you fail to adequately punish lawbreakers, you encourage others to break the law. We have certainly emboldened future presidents to march into any country they care to invade. In fact, Obama already has, without much fanfare or protest.

Some have complained that the Occupy Wall Street movement is too diffuse and disjointed. In a sense, though, that is its strength. There is a general thrust that society is divided between the stark minority with all of the money and the vast majority with financial problems. Within that lies many topics relating to economics, war and peace, freedom of speech, tax justice, etc. Flat, leaderless movements have a kind of strength that the traditional top-down model lacks: it’s easy to corrupt a handful of top dogs. But if the entire nation of Bolivia or Argentina or Greece is out in the street, banging on pots, clogging up the works, it won’t be easily co-opted.

Like the tea party, they’ve gotten their agenda in front of the people. Let’s see if they can keep it there.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Tin can alley.

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Better take this slow, Mitch. Those suckers look sharp, real sharp. Sharp as a … a very sharp thing. Got a thesaurus? No, it’s not a creature from the Cretaceous. It’s a book with…. oh never mind.

Well here we are, on the first leg (or arm, perhaps) of Big Green’s much anticipated (by us) [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011 – an aimless romp through the chewy center of the galaxy and from one end of our voluminous songbook to the other. Oh yes, we’re going from A to Z on this one. That was something we settled on in the rehearsal cellar, mainly because we couldn’t decide what the hell to play. So Matt pulls out this massive loose-leaf tome of songs from hell, arranged alphabetically, and we started paging through. From All Saints Come to You’re Dripping… it’s a veritable cornucopian magnum opus of Big Green numbers from back in the day. Our set lists are the stuff of nightmares, frankly. (And who’s this Frank Lee you keep speaking of?)

Okay, so… we lifted off rightly enough. At least that’s what I’m told. I was unconscious… or so I’m told. (How would I know I was unconscious when I was unconscious?) No, I bit down on a cough drop and fell over backwards, I’m told, then was strapped into my couch on the rented spacecraft of doom Mitch procured for us. Actually, that was probably the best way to get me on board the sucker – feet first. I was all for getting some other type of transport. Perhaps a long elevator or some ultra-lift shoes – something, anything that would get us closer to Betelgeuse.

Well, now, I may have been overreacting to the spacecraft. It’s actually not that bad once you’ve gone a couple of million miles in it. By the time I woke up, we had gone that and then some. Of course, now we’re making our way through the asteroid belt – perhaps the pointiest part of the solar system – on our way to an engagement in the Jovian system. Which, incidentally, we may be a little late for, as this is taking longer than I’d thought likely. In truth, I’d rather our pilot, Mitch Macaphee, err on the side of caution rather than treat us like one of his lame experiments. (Did I say that? Let it pass, let it pass….)

For now, I’m just strumming on Matt’s guitar, waiting, waiting to be told to start performing, sharing this tin can with a dyspeptic crew of oddball mofos. Oh, the solitude of space travel! How I miss it.

Political Rants

Two nations.

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The Pew Research Center released a study this week examining attitudes about the ongoing wars, one of which is celebrating a grim little birthday this week. The war in Afghanistan is turning ten, and showing no signs of letting up. Yet the study shows that maybe a third of the American public is actually following the wars. For most people, it’s like a reality show that has lost its luster; there is really no more profound an investment in the enterprise than that. This is, some have pointed out, the longest continuous conflict the U.S. has ever been involved in, and certainly (I suspect) the most serious war “we’ve” ever fought that didn’t involve some kind of conscription. Less than one percent of Americans have fought in these wars, and none of them have paid any higher taxes to underwrite them.

It’s hard to imagine how a war this difficult to justify could last a decade or more on the backs of anything other than an all-volunteer force. If there’d been a draft, these wars might never have started. If the true costs were passed along to taxpayers, they certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long as this. Our nation’s war making power has been effectively insulated from public involvement and, consequently, from meaningful public input as well. America’s wars are now self-contained and self-perpetuating; they are fought by a separate nation of military families – one that bears every burden, pays every price, while we continue our normal lives, only vaguely aware of the catastrophe our elected leaders are visiting upon these unfortunate men, women, and children.

So I say unto you, on this ten year anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan (Bush’s first war of choice), don’t simply thank a soldier; apologize to them for not doing more to stop this war. That’s a start, anyway.

Knox out. Amanda Knox was freed, as I’m sure you heard. Fortunate for her that she is not a black man wrongly accused of murder in the state of Georgia; she might have been put to death, exculpatory evidence be damned. I’ve heard a lot of tut-tutting about Italy’s justice system from this side of the pond, but what the hell – look at Troy Anthony Davis and tell me how those commentators have a leg to stand on.  Our system is a disgrace, and the killing of Davis a crime. Would that he had stood before that Italian judge – he might still be with us.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Long view.

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Electrodes to power. Turbines to speed. Vector diagrams to light board. Finger fins to the driver behind. Quarter to three in the afternoon. What am I saying?

Doesn’t matter, really. We’re getting close to the departure date on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, our hotly-anticipated romp through the musical hinterlands of outer space, with planned stops in the Jovian system (Jupiter for you space travel novices), Betelgeuse, Kaztropharius 137b, Sirius, and the planet Zenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud, home base of our sometime-guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn.  Yes, I know – last time we stopped there we took a few lumps, but they’ve since healed up, and hey – never let it be said that we let experience stand in the way of a good lapse in judgment. Still got it, baby.

Anyhow, we’re just running through our confusing array of pre-launch checklists. Can’t be too careful these days, particularly when your vehicle has such a spotted past as the one we’ve rented for the occasion. Some of these lists are so damn mundane, though, it hardly seems justified…. but protocol is protocol. Here’s a for instance: (1) spacecraft fuel, check! (2) spacecraft, check!  (3) passengers and crew, check! (4) desire to depart for interstellar destinations, check! Who the f**k came up with that? My guess is that it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), due to the rote existential nature of his selections. But I digress.

Another thing that doesn’t much matter: we haven’t really worked out a set list yet. Or any of the songs that would populate a set list. That would involve rehearsal, you see, and as a very wise horn player once told me, rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow. Normally I don’t take such vouchsafes as gospel, but THIS time…. well, I daren’t disregard such an obviously valuable insight. Anyway, Matt and I have been recording some numbers for the podcast (This Is Big Green), so we will probably remember those songs at the very least. That’s about… oh…. half a set. Then there are the songs we make up on the spot. And of course, the mansized tuber plays a little accordion. (Don’t ask how little. Just… don’t.)

Okay, so yeah…. we’ve got a lot of getting together to do before our departure next week. But no fear- Big Green is up to this challenge. In fact, we’ve got a check list for this very situation. Left it around here…. somewhere…

Political Rants

Rorschach president.

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Perhaps you know this about me, but I’ve never been one to associate support for official Israeli government policy with support for Israelis. There is plenty of dissent in Israel around the conflict with the Palestinians, so I don’t know why anyone on this side of the ocean should feel reluctant to criticize actions that merit criticism. There is such demagoguery on this issue in the U.S., though, that very few people speak their minds, particularly those in the political class. However, to the extent that words and actions matter, I would have to say that Barack Obama has been at least as big a booster of the right-wing Israeli government as his predecessor, and in concrete terms – military aid, security coordination, etc. – arguable and even bigger one.

That’s why the hue and cry over Obama’s Israel policy, initially aimed at procuring a Republican victory in Anthony Weiner’s old Brooklyn district, seems so unmoored from reality. Where did they get this idea that Obama is somehow “soft” on support for Israel? I think I can guess – from somebody’s racist best friend. This appears to be an effort to crack Obama’s support amongst Jewish voters via yet another attempt to dog-whistle his “otherness” – in essence, his black identity – in a part of the country with a history of tension between black and Jewish residents. Republican candidates see an opportunity here – that’s why they’re more expulsionist than Avigdor Lieberman. That’s why we were treated to the spectacle of Rick Perry dancing with Rabbis.

Just to be clear, I do not support Obama’s policy toward Israel/Palestine. But to suggest that he is somehow anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian is just … well, that’s your crack talking. With respect to his actions and rhetoric as president, nothing could be further from the truth. And yet the Republican field senses a vulnerability on this issue, so they’re more than happy to exploit it. I can never quite work out whether these people are amazingly clever or astoundingly ignorant. Either the Republicans don’t know that he’s essentially operating from their right on this issue, or they’re race-baiting him in a not-too subtle way. Either way, it is doing neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis any good. It’s just helping to generate more bad policy.

More bad policy is just what we don’t need. But all you Likud-hawks out there, never fear: Obama is squarely in your corner.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Tune it.

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Turn the first little knob on the top. Yes, that one. Turn it. A little more. More. Right, now back it off a little. Good… now the next one – turn it clockwise. I said CLOCKWISE! What do you mean you’re from the land down under? What’s THAT got to do with ANYTHING?

Ho, man. Just getting ready for BIG GREEN’S [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011, and as you can see, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be the guitar tech again this time out. Thought it might be wise to go over the basics, just one more time, before we really need his help. No, he can’t tune a six-string guitar all by himself. He needs someone to hold the fat end while he turns the tuners – but that’s not the main drawback. You see, Marvin is made of bits left over from other experiments, in essence, including machine parts from Mitch Macaphee’s shop – air powered tools, drills, vise-grips, sanders, and the like. Sometimes when you ask him to do an open tuning on the Martin, he turns that tuner like he’s taking an air wrench to a lug nut… then it’s SNAP!  He also gets very confused on Matt’s Ovation 12-string, which Matt has set up like a six-string. (Too many machines.)

Would that that were our most serious problem on this tour. Not a bit of it. I told you, I seem to recall, about the dark vessel Mitch appears to have hired for our transport. It resembles that ship that took that fateful journey to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, that wouldn’t make me particularly nervous… except that Jupiter is on our itinerary. Seems like too much of a coincidence. No one else seems uncomfortable, but… well… I am. Open the pod door, Marvin. I said OPEN THE POD DOOR, MARVIN!

Guess I should start being nicer to the boy. At least pre-emptively. You never know what kind of situation you might find yourself in. I can imagine a scenario wherein we might find ourselves trapped in a reality that resembles what people in 1967 thought 1999 would look like.  That would not be good. But anyway….

We have a tour to plan. Bookings to book. Shoes to pack. Songs to rehearse. And guitars to tune. MARVIN!! (Please…) 

Political Rants

Requiem.

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The killing of Troy Anthony Davis has demonstrated one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: that we as a people cannot be trusted with the death penalty. To that I will add my modest opinion that no people can be trusted with this brutal and most final punishment.

I am not suggesting that that is the most compelling reason to abolish the death penalty. I think the reasons are legion. The first should be no surprise to anyone who calls themselves religious in any major monotheistic tradition – killing is morally repugnant, particularly in a situation in which the intended victim is powerless, such as someone who is incarcerated and therefore a danger to no one. Beyond simple humanity, it is legally and ethically indefensible – the ultimate denial of due process under the law. So long as you may be proven either innocent or not as guilty as first thought, there is no justification for execution.

Also, in a nation so fraught by its racist history; a nation whose justice system is shot through with the remnants of that history – particularly, it seems, at the state and local levels – there is no chance that the death penalty will be applied fairly. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that it has been applied in an unjust and biased fashion over the last three decades. In light of our very recent past – still very much with us, as evidenced by Wednesday night’s execution – we are simply incapable of conducting such a policy in any way that could be considered remotely equitable.

Not that being equitable would result in anything other than an atrocity. Uniformly applied, capital punishment might add up to thousands upon thousands of executions each year, depending upon where we draw the line on heinousness. Speaking of heinous, Governor Perry (a distant cousin, I hear) feels comfortable with a standard he claims Texas has set regarding execution of only those perpetrators who have committed the most horrible crimes. With 240+ judicial killings under his belt, one might think that the standard could apply to the governor himself. (His predecessor, of course, had opportunity to make that record seem positively progressive.)

It’s too late to save Troy Davis, I’m sorry to say – deepest regrets to his family. I only hope that Troy will, even in his absence, open the national conversation we simply must have if we are ever going to put a stop to this visceral, vindictive madness.

We have prisons that could hold the incredible Hulk. We don’t need to kill another prisoner, ever. We need to stop… now.

luv u,

jp