Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Inside December (2018).

It’s called snow, Marvin. The white stuff, falling from the sky? That’s not hard rain, it’s freaking snow. What the hell kind of weather station are you, anyway?

Oh, hi. Well … we’re getting into that time of year when larger mammals hibernate. That’s not how we roll, of course, but we do get a little more sedentary (if that can be imagined) as the winter months wear on. Fortunately, we have our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN to keep us hopping this December. Here’s what we’ve packed inside this hollow tree:

Ned Trek 38: The Squire of Mara Lagos. Our new installment of Ned Trek is a takeoff on the classic Star Trek episode entitled “The Squire of Gothos” and features me doing really, really poor imitations of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Perle turns out to be a compulsive gambler this week in a Lost in Space-style plot twist. See what you think … and feel free to play it back at 125% speed.

Put The Phone Down. Matt and I begin our yak session with a rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which maybe goes on a bit too long (we are joined by a Dalek after a few choruses). A little later on we go into dueling Sagan mode, give a nod to talking like a chimp, discuss the merits and demerits of the Ned Trek episode, and take a closer look at Matt’s various medals.

Marvin: It's 37 degrees. Me: Wrong.Song: Christmas is Over Here. I mentioned that we included some warmed-over holiday numbers in this episode – this isn’t one of them. This is just the two of us making up a ridiculous song that has never been sung before and likely will never be sung again. Ain’t that Christmas?

Song: Up North. One of Matt’s very first Christmas songs. This recording is, I think, from the late 1980s, a cassette 4-track master, and one of probably 4 versions of this song we’ve recorded over the decades. We include this one because of the ape-like backing vocals towards the end. Not to be missed.

Song: Quantum Christmas. This is an outtake from the sessions that resulted in our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, back in 1999. We did the mix then decided to leave it off the final collection. Matt wrote this, of course, and it plays with the observer’s paradox in quantum physics as a metaphor for avoiding your relatives.

Song: Dark Christmas. Another outtake from the 2000 Years To Christmas album. It think we thought it was just too long to fit on what was already a longish album, but … there were likely other reasons as well. This kind of sounds like what we sounded like back then as a band, so give it a go.

Song: Ornament. This is another 4-track cassette recording, this from Matt’s 1990 Christmas collection (among my all-time favorites) that he gave to family and friends that year. We did a version of this for 2000 Years To Christmas that didn’t end up on the album, but I much prefer this one.

Enjoy it, folks. Now … back to tracking the weather.

 

Problem child.

Okay, blow out the candles. Try harder. Nope, nothing. Try again. What the hell … you’d think at your age you would have this worked out by now. Silly kid.

Right, so before you call child protective services, let me reassure you that we, of Big Green, are all biologically childless. The line stops here! And it’s just as well. No, sir … I was just in the midst of celebrating the nineteenth birthday of our first commercial release (a.k.a. album), 2000 Years to Christmas, which was released …. I don’t know … sometime after Christmas in 1999. Nice timing, right? Typical.  Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and I’m glad to say it’s pretty small in the rear view mirror at this point.

So, 2000 Years To Christmas was our biggest seller. That’s not saying much. Of course, it was released relatively early in the era of online retail, and over the course of the succeeding decades it has wormed its way into any number of places online. A simple Google search on the title will show you what I mean. (Take a look at the image tab on that search if you want a cheap laugh.) It kind of has a life of is own, which is strange because we gave it life almost twenty years ago. It’s in those rebellious years, when your child tries to distance her/himself from you as much as possible. 2000 Year To Christmas never goes shopping with us anymore, and when it’s out with its friends and sees us on the street, it looks away.

They grow up so fast.We’re actually planning kind of a special party for its twentieth next year. Don’t tell it we said so – we’d like it to be a surprise. I was thinking maybe a nice new CD player, or one of those disc stands that holds maybe 200 albums. Hell, we could fill four of those with unsold copies of that thing. (Psst … don’t tell 2000 Years To Christmas that we said that, either.) In fact, forget we even had this conversation. Who are you again?

Right, well … maybe I’m being a little cautious. Nineteen is such an awkward age, and 2000 Years To Christmas still doesn’t know what it wants to do with its life.  Maybe trade school will be the thing. Maybe, I don’t know … maybe next year.

Big thanks.

Don’t suppose I ever thanked you for that, right? Well … thanks, man. Thanks a heap. Now get the hell out of my sight.

Oh, hi. Hey … no worries. Just practicing. This, as you know, is the time of year when you show gratitude to all and sundry, even your worst enemy. I was just practicing what that would look like in real life. Say, for instance, my worst enemy (whoever that may turn out to be) should pound on the hammer mill door one cold morning, maybe the day after a long, hard gig on the planet Aldebaran 12, where the bars are open until #$@ o’clock (which, for the record, is pretty late). After dragging myself out of bed, limping downstairs, and pulling the door open wide, how would I properly express my thankfulness for the many gifts of microaggression my worst enemy has bestowed upon me? Suffice to say, it takes thought and practice.

That said, I am thankful for many things. For the leaky hammer mill roof over our heads, for one. I’m thankful for the fact that vacuum tubes are still being manufactured (without those, Marvin’s metronome and inertial guidance system would cease to function). On behalf of the mansized tuber (because he can’t speak for himself), we’re all thankful for plant food. And I wouldn’t want to run through this litany without thanking Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, for not blowing us sky-high this year (third year in a row!). Thanks, also, to anti-Lincoln, whose Gettysburg Address is even more inspiring recited backwards.

Thanky, yankees.But more than anything else, we are thankful to you, our listeners and readers. (That includes all you little Russian bots – I see you!) And that’s why we have chosen to express our gratitude by posting a warmed-over installment of Ned Trek entitled “Ned Trek 29: Error of Mercy”. Check it out at NedTrek.com. This originally ran on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN back in August of 2016, in the thick of the presidential election. Highlights include the usual assortment of bad imitations, such as Matt doing James Carville and me doing Bill Clinton. Fun fact: our first read of the script was done in a hospital examination room, waiting for test results. (We were cackling so loudly I think the staff considered declaring a code red and breaking out the restraints.)

So … thanks for the laughs, and for listening to us laugh like idiots.

Fascist songbook.

Sure, you’ve played that one before. You remember. It’s the one about the fascists dropping over for Christmas. Don’t remember? Go back and look, dude!

Hiya. As you know, we’re still shut up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, working diligently on the next episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. And when I say “next”, I mean the next couple of episodes, each of which is in a different state of non-completion. This is all about Ned Trek, of course … that time-consuming mashup of space opera crossed with horse-based comedy and political satire.  If I recall correctly, we dreamed that concept up on the planet Neptune, but don’t quote me. Matt probably pulled it out of Uranus. Either way.

So … the most proximate of the “next” episodes is being edited and finished as we speak (are we speaking?). The second “next” episode hasn’t been recorded (or even completely written) yet, but that one’s a musical, so we’ve been working on songs that will go into the episode. That installment of Ned Trek will be based on the Nazi episode of Star Trek, so pretty much all of the songs are about fascists, past and present. That’s right, folks …. around the studio lately it’s been Nazi this and Nazi that. We’re calling the fuckers out, people, and in the most ridiculous ways. Word.

Okay, how about a song about that?Not that we haven’t cultivated that particular field before, you understand. It’s just that we’re digging in a bit this year. It’s partly due to the specific Star Trek episode we’re mocking, but hey, let’s face it … there are a lot of neo-fascists taking power just lately, including the clownish variety we have here in the states (to say nothing of the right-wing brown shirt organizations we deal with at the street level these days), so these songs aren’t exactly historical documents, per se. We’re jamming on current affairs, people. Ripped from the headlines, as it were.  It’s enough to make Marvin (my personal robot assistant) blow a fuse or two. Just so long as he doesn’t grow a little mustache.

I know … we’re on a slow roll here in Big Green land, but we will get back to posting podcasts in the weeks ahead, honest. Look for a new episode soonish …. now with more Nazis.

Key notes.

Here’s the problem. I hit it and it goes “dang”, then “hummmmmmm….” I don’t want dang and hum. Who the hell wants dang and hum? Dumb-ass technology. I hate the internets!

Oh, sorry. I was just complaining to Big Green’s official instrument tech, the dude who lives in the basement. (Actually, I think he may be Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, in a pair of borrowed coveralls.) My 20-year-old keyboard is falling apart, though why I would expect it to survive more than 20 years is beyond me. I am appealing to our tech dude to do some work on it, just in case … just in case we end up playing somewhere again, sometime soon. You never know, right? Did I ever think I would play on the planet Neptune? Hell no. And yet that happened. Shit happens, right?

What’s ailing my old Roland A-90ex? Same thing that ails all similar midi controllers with expansion modules. It’s the counterweights to the keys …. they are just poorly designed and liable to crack and sometimes break right off.  Especially when you play like a ham-fisted ape (my own distinctive style). That’s when you get the “dang”, though it’s really more like a “clunk” or a “thud”. It’s actually not too different from a sound we used on our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, only a little less resonant. So why am I complaining, right? Just crank up the resonance, there’s a good chap.

Dang!Right, so …. I realize this isn’t a technical blog. That’s not what you come here for. You come here for pithy observations and gripping tales of pointless adventures. For instance, I could tell you all about the festive autumnal arrangement in the hammer mill courtyard contrived by the mansized tuber in his spare time, but then this would seem like a gardening blog, and it’s anything but that. Or I could tell you about all the lawn signs that were dumped in our driveway following the mid-term elections, but then you’d think this was a political blog, and well …. sometimes it is, but  … not just now!

So, I will conclude this gripping tale of my keyboard repair adventure and return to whatever it was I was doing before I started talking about this. I think it was … repairing my piano. Right, then.

Reading me?

CQ, CQ … come in, Rangoon. This is ground station Hammermill calling all ships at sea. If you read me, come in. Ahoy, ship! Damn it. Turn the crank a little harder, Marvin. There’s a good chap.

Yeah, well … just trying something a little different this week, since our latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN is still under construction and I’m too freaking lazy to post any songs or other media files. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) dug up an old radio transmitter down in the basement of the mill, and we’ve been trying to fire the thing up ever since. This should come naturally to us, as Matt’s and my father was a Ham radio operator, but alas … I spent my childhood assiduously avoiding the acquisition of any useful knowledge or skills, and if I do say so myself, I was remarkably successful at that endeavor.

Anyway, the old radio works like this. I pick up the microphone, put on the metal headphones, and tell Marvin to start turning the crank in the side of the big old metal box, which apparently turns some kind of generator inside. Now, I’m not a scientist, but (and this is a big but) it seems to me that a few turns of the crank would be enough to power this antique for a few minutes, but no. The little on-air light blinks off almost as soon as Marvin stops turning the crank. Looks like Rangoon will have to stay out for a while longer.

Where's the ham?There are a lot of things a grown man can do in his spare time, particularly someone with so many half-baked hobbies such as myself.   Why I spend even five minutes with this hunk of junk is beyond me. And then there’s the radio. (Sorry Marvin – that was low hanging fruit.) I suppose I could become an inventor like Mitch Macaphee, or an antimatter president like Anti-Lincoln, or a large sweet potato like the mansized tuber, but there are individuals already filling those vital roles in society. Perhaps wisdom, in part, is recognizing your place in the world and trying to make the best of it. Or perhaps not … perhaps wisdom is something else entirely … in part. (And perhaps my favorite hobby is sophistry.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to make contact with someone – anyone – in Madagascar. CQ … CQ ….. Come in, Madagascar!

Casting some pod.

We just did that, man. It’s still summer, right? What? October! What the hell … we’ve got some work to do. First task: find out what happened to July. (I know I left it around here somewhere.)

Oh … hi, friends of Big Green. Seems like I’ve lost track of time just a bit. I’m off by about three months, but hey … who hasn’t lost a quarter, right? It’s probably somewhere deep in the sofa cushions. Except that we don’t have a cushioned sofa here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Just chairs. Stark wooden chairs. We sit, straight as a board, until the darkness comes, then we retire. It’s  hard, but it keeps us honest. (Honestly … it’s hard! The chair, that is.) We ain’t got no time for no podcast stuff round these parts, no how. Now GIT! Ah …. sed …. GIT!

Whoops … lapsed in to Bobby Sweet mode just then. (Not to worry. Bobby Sweet wouldn’t hurt no one. He just has a hankering for big guns.) Yeah, I can blame the calendar, I can blame my momentary lapses into stereotypical rural jargon, but when you come right down to it, the fault is mine. We haven’t posted a podcast in three months, and it’s because we haven’t finished an episode in that long. Hell, it took me all summer and half of the fall to write the script for the upcoming installment of Ned Trek. We recorded the audio last week in a couple of hours, and now it’s off to editorial. Which is to say, we need to cut the living shit out of it.

Did somebody see my summer lying around here?Hey, anyone out there who works with audio and video knows, this stuff is time consuming. Especially when you’re a lazy sloth like me. I’m a bit more like Bobby Sweet than I care to let on, truth be told. I like to sit back and strum on my old guitar, pound out a few chords on the old piano, drop some canned fruit in the old blender and swear at the fact that it still doesn’t work. All I can say is that, despite the distractions, we are working on the THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast and it will appear very soon. Which is to say, it won’t be another quarter. Maybe a nickel. Stay tuned!

Seasonal disorder.

Pipe bombs dropped at the homes of prominent opposition political figures. Scare talk about hordes of dark people working their way north towards our southern border. Dog whistles turned up to bullhorn volume in competitive races across the country, including a racist Amos and Andy-style robo call in Florida. This is what election season in the United States looks like in 2018. This is the reality show election that proceeds from the reality show presidency of Donald Trump, who is basically spending all of his time flying to every corner of the country, holding his signature Klan rallies and greasy fundraisers to prop up sagging congressional republicans desperate to hold on to their majority for another cycle.

Another Klan rallyOur local House member, Claudia Tenney in NY-22, is one such republican. Trump came for a fundraiser over the summer; Paul Ryan came by a few weeks ago, and just this week we were treated to the sight of Eric Trump, who gave a pep talk to Tenney’s campaign volunteers and staff. For her own part, she has been channeling Trump a bit more than usual, referring to Colgate university as a crazy, left-wing school, whining about “socialists” coming up from downstate to help her opponent, and so on. I suppose she is calculating that, between her own erratic behavior and the spectacle of being carried around on the flabby shoulders of GOP celebrities, she will have enough lift to get over the finish line in November. We shall see.

The net effect of all of this is to further erode the nation’s grasp on reality. This is a tried and true method of authoritarian governments – trust nothing but what comes out of Dear Leader’s mouth. As Trump said the other day in response to the press’s mild skepticism about his claims of “middle eastern” people traveling with the Honduran refugee caravan , “You can’t prove anything.” Nothing can be proven; therefore, every claim of fact is equal to every other, and those who put their claims forward the most forcefully win the day. This is a recipe for disaster and a roadmap to true authoritarian rule. Perhaps all that’s needed now is a Reichstag fire.

My advice to all is pretty simple: vote, vote, vote. Whatever else you do (and by all means, do all you can), you must cast a vote or risk losing that basic right in the months and years to come.

luv u,

jp

Grounded.

Hmmm … leaving kind of a big footprint there, aren’t you, Anti-Lincoln? Seems like you’ve been feeding on a pretty good pasture lately, am I right? No? Ah, okay.

Well, the gravity’s back. Isn’t that good new?. And now all of us weigh about twenty pounds more than before. Just a little side benefit of Mitch’s latest project. (YEAH, MITCH … THANKS A LOT. Turn that gravity thing down a little, willya?) Something tells me we will need to replace the floor joists in this crumbling old ruin of a hammer mill … except that I don’t know how to do that and I wouldn’t know a floor joist if it hit me upside of the head.

Mitch has got this whole gravity thing figured out. He describes swarms of little invisible magnet-like  particles he calls “gravitons”. Apparently these little critters swarm around you by the thousands, holding you down as the world spins out of control. Without their persistent intercession, we would all fly off into space, the earth shaking us off as it rotates on its axis. Mitch thinks of them as the quantum mechanical equivalent of guardian angels … which is the reason why he hates them with a mad man’s passion. He went into a bit of a rage last night about gravitons, swiping at the invisible particles like he was shooing away mosquitoes. At one point, he appeared to have caught one between his thumb and forefinger, but his triumph was short-lived – the little specter slipped away, eliciting a yelp from the mad scientist as if he had touched a hot stove.

Here they come again, Mitch.Okay, so …. that guy’s crazy. And, as Mr. Spock once observed, madness has no reason … but it can have a goal. That’s what Mitch’s anti-gravity machine was all about. The device attracts gravitons like a bug zapper, apparently, though it doesn’t zap them … it just keeps them busy so that they can’t hold the rest of us down. (You always thought it was THE MAN that was holding you down, but no, says Mitch, it’s the gravitons!) Anyhow, it kind of worked for about a week, then something went bust. That happens a lot with mad science tinkerers like Mitch. Hell, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has dozens of glitches, but hell … he’s family.

So we’re back on the ground, for the nonce. We’ll see what the weekend brings. I’ve got my bike helmet on, just in case.

 

Pro-gravity.

We’re fresh out of duct tape, man. All gone. And no,  I don’t have any large magnets. That wouldn’t work anyway – the floors aren’t made of metal, fool. Geez.

Yeah, I’m getting asked a bunch of dumb-ass questions by my house-mates, bandmates, mill-mates, etc. again. Everybody’s all worked up about our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee and his latest raft of experiments. (Why he keeps them on a raft, I cannot say.) Mitch has been working on selectively negating gravitation, which really should be impossible … I mean, we all wish it was impossible, but apparently it’s not. Naturally, his experimental subject was the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green’s longtime squathouse, and a place where gravity has always reigned supreme … until now.

Now, most people have a sense of how gravity works, but for those of you unfamiliar with the ways of this mysterious unseen power, here’s a primer: it holds you down. That’s it. When people talk about being held down in life, they’re talking about gravity. When Bruce Springsteen sings “I’m goin’ down, down, down, down,” he’s singing about gravity. When some politician is making a speech, imploring his audience to understand the gravity of a given situation, that politician is … well … you get where I’m going with that. How does it work? That’s complicated. Einstein had his ideas about this. More recent work has detected gravitational waves. My personal view is that there is a enormous horseshoe magnet buried deep in the earth. Next time we do a subterranean tour, I’m going to check that theory out.

YikesRight, so … Mitch Macaphee has his own theories. And his theories usually lead to some nameless device that looks like a ham radio rig from the 1960s, with dials and meters and knobs and blinking lights. It makes a “woo-woo” sound. Sometimes he puts arms and legs on it and calls it Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Sometimes he throws a switch and things disappear … or appear. This time around, he adjusted the right combination of buttons, switches, lanyards, etc., to suspend gravity in the hammer mill. An anti-gravity machine, as it were. And that means more than floating hammers, my friends. Suffice to say, I haven’t had to use the stairs all week. If this keeps up, we may be battling obesity before long.

Thing is, most of us are pro-gravity. Hence the search for duct tape, glue, velcro, etc. Or maybe we should just pull the plug on Mitch’s gizmo. Worth a go, right?