Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Getting all the flashing lights straight

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

There, that’s got it. Perfect execution. Couldn’t do another one like that if I tried. Okay, Marvin, you can hit the stop button. Wait, what? YOU DIDN’T HIT RECORD?

Hi, everybody. While this seems like the very next moment in my blog post, it’s actually several hours after wrote that intro. It takes me that long to disassemble Marvin (my personal robot assistant) piece by piece and then put him back together. And as I am not particularly mechanically inclined, I usually get something wrong on the assembly side. (Last week I somehow incorporated our toaster into his torso unit.)

Okay, so those of you who are musicians (and I know there are a few of you out there) can appreciate what we’re going through these days. Performance venues are flagging, people are afraid of going out, money is scarce – situation normal, right? Our response to this crisis is exactly what you would expect from Big Green – we pull the shades down and get back into bed. Then, first thing the next morning, we sleep until noon. Then, THEN, we go down and look for snacks. That’s how we roll.

We’ll do it live!

I was the first to suggest that we start recording live performances right here in the Cheney Hammer Mill. My bandmates met that suggestion with a resounding silence. Anti Lincoln thought it was a good idea, but he was drunk on the news that his positive-polarity counterpart had been named #1 President of all time once again by the C-SPAN Historian poll. (How that would be a positive reflection on him is another question.)

Well, when it came time to record some live takes, uh … I was the only one who showed up. Now, maybe I forgot to distribute the memo. And maybe I forgot to write the memo. And maybe it never occurred to me to send a memo around in the first place. But for whatever reason, it became clear to me that I would be the only one doing this shit. Just me and my tape opp Marvin.

Choosy mothers

Of course, the question always comes down to which songs I should try to do. It’s actually and easier question than you might think. Since I am equally unpracticed on all of our songs, it really doesn’t matter what the playlist turns out to be. So I pulled some from International House, one or two from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, and a handful of numbers we haven’t included on any of our albums.

Next step, I put the songs in a blender and ran it on Frappe for 45 seconds. That gave them a smooth consistency they never had before, frankly …. maybe a bit too smooth. So I poured that bilge down the drain and limped back into the studio, guitar in hand, looking for trouble. Then trouble found me.

Uh, Marvin ... shouldn't you be minding the board?

Know-how? No how!

Now, as some of you know, I attempt to play many instruments. When I say many, I really just mean three – piano, bass, guitar. I am probably most technically inept at the guitar, so naturally, I chose to record most of my live numbers on six string, without accompaniment.

Why? It’s the challenge, my friend. We cannot make things too easy on ourselves. How far would mankind have gotten if we had taken that attitude. Do you think for one moment that we would be anywhere near the brink of total destruction if we had chosen to be content with the way things are? Not a chance.

Anyway, my lame attempts at covering our own damn songs should be dropping sometime soon. Stay tuned.

Usual Rubbish

Passing the hat on the internets

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, let me play a few more notes. Yes, I will choose them carefully. Here we go. All right, that’s got it. Did the donation meter move up at all? No? Mother of pearl.

Hey, out there. Another week in the life of Big Green, possibly the most obscure rock band in the history of the genre. I’m always looking for superlatives when I write about this group, and frankly that’s the only one I’ve got. Maybe, just maybe the Chefs of the Future (friends of ours) approach our level of obscurity, but I doubt it. (After all, if I’ve heard of them, how obscure could they be?)

I don’t need to remind you about how hard it is to keep the lights on around here. Important historical context: the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our squat house, was originally a gaslit factory, later wired for electric lights. Those lights feed on electricity from our local utility, which we … ahem …. borrow from the corner telephone poll (for crying out loud, don’t tell anybody!). Of course, they keep cutting our line, so yeah, it’s hard to keep the damn lights on. And, uh …. what was I talking about?

Return to cyber busking

Oh, yeah. Generating income. Well, as I began to describe in last week’s column, we have been turning dustbins upside-down in this place looking for material to build a show out of. Not that we’re likely to venture into local clubs or auditoriums any time soon, but the virtual space is another question. Lord knows plenty of musicians are out there framming away – why the hell not us, right?

Hence we have opened the door on cyber busking once again. I know, I know, we had a lot of problems last time, not least of which Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his shaky camera hand. Then there were the copyright strikes – damned intellectual property! YOU CALL YOURSELF AN INTELLECTUAL? HOW … DARE … YOU?

Another Big Green original

Well, fortunately, we have a lot of original material. I mean, a boatload of the stuff. Sure, it’s a boat from some unknown country where music is completely weird and unfamiliar to American ears, but that’s okay. We can fill whole nights with our own tunes, honest. I’m sitting on a stack of original songs right now. The sharps are kind of pointy, frankly. (When it comes to converting music to furniture, I prefer the flat keys.)

Okay, so you may ask (and well you may), why haven’t you done so? Why haven’t we pulled out our western guitars (or space guitars, for that matter) and started twanging on Facebook, like all of our singer-songwriter pals? Good question. I think the main reason is that it takes us nine years to do the simplest thing. We have whole albums worth of material recorded, for instance, and we can’t seem to knit those recordings into actual albums. I’ve got a stack of magazines chin high in the kitchen, and …. well …. they’ve needed to be thrown out for about five years. (Four more to go.)

Well, damn it, this time we’re determined. And we’ll flag you when we’re ready to go live. Make some tea and sit tight – we’ll be right with you.

Usual Rubbish

Another week on duty at the recycling center

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

No, man … I think it starts like this. Or maybe it’s a little slower than that. But it’s in E for sure. What? It’s in A? Are you sure? Damn ….

You know, I’ve never been very good at total recall. I don’t think my time at the Cheney Hammer Mill has improved my memory, either. So, what the hell am I talking about? Well … I’m gonna tell you. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I have been pulling out the old numbers. No, I don’t mean numerals in Old English script. No, I don’t mean stale joints. I mean songs, damn it!

Sorry. That came out a little stronger than I meant it to be. Suffice to say that we’ve decided to take a few hours to dust off some items from our back catalog. It’s a catalogue of mostly Matt’s songs, as he is the more prolific writer, by far, but regardless of authorship, there’s a lot of shit in there. (And by “in there” I mean in a recondite side room of the hammer mill where they used to keep the machine tools.)

Invisible chestnuts

Now, of course, we have a process. Marvin finds a song in the machine room. He dusts it off, as I suggested earlier, and hands it to me. Because we don’t write songs out in standard notation (or any other kind, for that matter), it’s a little hard to get a grip on a thirty-year-old song, particularly when it only exists in the vaguest metaphysical sense.

I’ve often (or perhaps never) said that Marvin’s sole super power is his ability to carry around insubstantial things. Once I saw him pushing an invisible hand cart stacked ten high with invisible cases of Nehi cola. That makes him the ideal automaton for the job of retrieving song ideas from the dustbin of history. Lord knows, there’s likely to be a chestnut or two in there. Perhaps more.

Twang!

Entering fram-a-geddon

Okay, so once Marvin trundles in with a brass armload of decades-old songs, I get right to work. I pick up my superannuated Martin guitar and start twanging until the neighbors begin throwing things. That typically takes as long as five or six minutes. Then I close the window and start over, slapping the strings with my thumb and fingers like I just don’t effing care.

Why, you may ask, don’t I use a pick? Very simple, my friends. I don’t freaking know how, that’s why. Also, you can drop a pick, but try … just try to drop your thumb. Not so easy, is it? And before you ask, yes, my right thumb gets sore and calloused and all the rest of it. And yes, my chaotic framming sounds kind of extra twangy. But a dude has to do what a dude has to do. And dis dude does dat ding. (Yes, I said that. I’m ashamed of it, but I did, in fact, say that.)

Time for the round up

Like I said earlier, there are a few of my songs in that basket. One of them is called “Good Old Boys Round Up”, which was slated for our second album, International House, but never got off the ground. I think we started to record it, but it went all pear shaped. Not that there’s anything wrong with the shape of pears, but … anyway.

I’ve been jangling that sucker a bit and will likely do some “live” virtual recordings of that and other selections, then post them somewhere, somehow, maybe with some video, who the hell knows? Well … you’ll be the first to know.

Usual Rubbish

If it frowns back, it must be a face

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

I was starting to wonder about you. Did they put you in with other robots? Huh. That’s funny. I thought they had a special section for automatons. What is law enforcement coming to, for crying out loud?

Hi, Big Green fans. It’s your old friends Big Green, still living together, like most bands do, in the same shabby domicile. Not accomplishing much these days, frankly – just trying to keep the heat out and dancing on the rubble. Sometimes we spin a record or play a tape. Occasionally we record something. It’s a slow life, but an honest one …. honestly asinine.

Name and a face

I was just getting a debriefing from Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on his latest expedition to the corner store. This time it took him fourteen hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twelve seconds. (No, I wasn’t timing him – he has a digital chronometer built into his face plate.) Last time he was a few minutes quicker, but that was the day his battery ran out.

Speaking of faceplates, apparently the cops picked Marvin up on his way back from the store. Apparently they got that facial recognition software for Christmas this year and they wanted to try it out on somebody. Now, as it’s a system designed by white people, it’s not surprising that it doesn’t work with non-white people. But robots? You’d think a piece of software could parse the sculpted brass plate that passes for Marvin’s mug, but you’d be wrong.

The almost-inmate

Okay, so, apparently Marvin’s …. uh …. face set off an alarm in the police computer downtown. The stupid software thought he was this OTHER robot that did nasty things downtown. (I think he picked yet another robot’s pocket.) In any case, they hauled Marvin in and started questioning him mercilessly.

Now, Marvin’s pretty good with interrogations. Sometimes he pulls the Captain Pike trick – you know, flash one for yes, two for no. (He can move forward. Backward a little.) I have to say, that flashing light routine really pisses the cops off big time. I’m not certain, but they may have knocked him around a bit. They’re just fishing for a consent decree.

Dudes, that just ain't him.

Suspect null set – try again

After fourteen hours, they finally got the idea that Marvin was not the android they were looking for. And no, it wasn’t the result of some cheap-ass Jedi mind trick. They printed up a photo of the suspect, and frankly, even a blind man could see that they had the wrong bot.

When they released him, though, they picked up the mansizedtuber on the rebound. They’re just grasping at straws – or husks, more properly – at this point. All I can say is that if they try to waterboard that mo-fo, he’ll just ask for more.

Usual Rubbish

The rest of the rest of the story

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

Editor’s note: There is no editor for this blog. I’m the night janitor, emptying the trash cans and spreading the refuse thin enough on the floor that no one notices. I’m on my smoke break, but I’m taking this opportunity to say that what follows is the rest of that lame interview with Big Green co-founder Joe Perry.

Part one: The bad van

Marvin: Rumor has it that Big Green and its various precursors had some of the worst vehicles in the history of indie bands. That’s quite a distinction. Care to expand on that?

JP: Glad to, Marvin. Of course, back when we were just starting out, a bunch of dewy-eyed kids with a song in our hearts and a sandwich in our hip pockets, we had a 1973 C-10 pickup with a cap on the bed. It had gaping holes, rust, primer, five different shades of orange paint, etc. In fact, it had so many pieces missing, we called it “Ruck” (i.e. not quite a truck).

I’ll spare you the grisly details of driving Ruck to gigs. Suffice to say that, at least once, I had to crawl under the sucker at the traffic light on the intersection of Central Ave and Lark in Albany, NY and tighten the gearshift linkage, which kept unscrewing itself. Once was enough.

Then we had Moby, a 1970 Econoline Supervan, former ambulance, that I bought at auction. It had duct tape over the “Ambulance” decal on the hood. On a good day it got 11 miles per gallon. It …. was a bad van.

Finally, we had a brown, mid-eighties Econoline that we took on the road a few times, including a gig up at Middlebury College. It was in January and the heat didn’t work, so we were frozen solid by the time we got home. To make matters worse, it would stall at idle. It was, in short, another bad van. I sold it, nameless, to lettuce man.

Marvin: Sad end to a sad story.

JP: The hell it is. Move on!

What, this again?

Shifting the Marlboro stacks

Marvin: Perhaps even worse than your vehicles were your PA systems. Can you talk about that a bit.

JP: I could, but you probably wouldn’t understand what I’m saying because the PA system sucks so bad.

Marvin: What was that? I can’t hear you!

JP: Back in the seventies, when the skies were black with flocks of hooting pterodactyls, we invested in a small PA. No, not the kind you see these days, with powered speakers, etc. This was a Marlboro PA, with two boxy speakers and what looked like a cheap knock-off fender guitar head with four volume pots. Pro tip: pull the volume pot and you get reverb!

Okay, so we moved to Albany and had to get something marginally better than the twin kazoos. And we did just that. We bought two of those old Shure tower speakers, with like half-a-dozen five-inch speakers in a vertical array. And when that didn’t work, we got two Cerwin-Vega 15″ cabinets that we used for years after that. The Marlboro stacks became our monitors.

Marvin: Where are they now?

JP: I’m sitting on them. They make a jolly comfortable chesterfield.

Usual Rubbish

Stepping into eden, yeah, brother.

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

Gather ’round, you kids. I’m going to tell you a tale of woe from long ago. A story so dumb it leaves you numb. A fable so …. oh, never mind.

The years are catching up with us a bit, here in Big Green-land. And as you get older, you tend to look back a bit more. Makes sense, right? No point in looking back when you’re three years old. Even less point in looking forward when you’re ninety. But you know what they say – foresight is everything, and hindsight is everything else.

The plain fact is, sometimes this stuff just pops into my head. I’ll be hanging around the kitchen of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, having a cup of borrowed tea, when suddenly I’m transported into the past. And no, it’s not the fault of Trevor James Constable’s Orgone Generating Machine. No, sir – it’s just the restlessness of an idle mind. And they don’t get much more idle than mine.

In a distant dive, long, long ago

Anywho, I was thinking of a time back in the early nineties when we were still playing clubs. Back then, the indie rock club scene was not yet much of a thing here in upstate New York, so it was hard to find places that would cater to original songs. And yea, your friends in Big Green had no abandoned mill in which to shelter, and they were sore afraid. So it is written.

Our group was my illustrious brother Matt and I, plus John White on drums and Ace guitarist Tony Butera. We started running out of Big Green work, so we decided to go back to some of the same clubs under an assumed identity. Not the first time we tried this, of course, but this time around, we actually got a few gigs. (Sometimes it makes sense to go under cover.)

Who's Herbert?

Laughed out of Utica

Anyway, we decided to call ourselves “The Space Hippies.” This was after a group of ne’er-do-well intergalactic hipsters that appeared on a Star Trek episode named The Way To Eden. (Not to be confused with the motorcycle freaks that threatened to blow up the nameless planet that the Space Family Robinson had crashed on in the 3rd and final season of Lost In Space – an episode nonsensically named Collision of the Planets.) They played twangy space guitars and, well … that seemed like a good thing to us.

Of course, it wasn’t smooth sailing. In fact, one of the first club owners Tony called to ask for a booking told him, “I can’t hire a band called The Space Hippies. It I did that, I’d be laughed out of Utica.” That was when I got the strong feeling that we should change the cover band’s name to Laughed Out of Utica. (I got voted down on that one, damn it!)

Tunes with psychological issues

Fact is, we did work a bit with the Space Hippies, though I think we kept changing the name so we could double dip, Jethro Tull-style. One club we got booked into was a place called Looney Tunes on NY Route 5. I’ve got a cassette tape of one of the nights we played there. The quality is pretty bad, but you can basically hear us framming away at those rock covers. I included one track from this tape on the July 2019 episode of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast. The song was a Matt Perry number titled “How ‘Bout The War”. (Tony plays a screaming solo on this and, basically, every track on the tape. What a madman.)

What else do I remember about the Space Hippies’ premiere gig? Let’s see. There was dogshit on the stage when we were loading in. I think it was a welcome gift from the club owner. Ah, those were the days.

Usual Rubbish

You heard it here first (and last).

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

Note: The following is a partial transcript from an interview with Big Green co-founder Joe Perry. The interviewer was conducted by Marvin (my personal robot assistant).

Part one: The first part

Marvin: In your early years, Big Green lived in not one, but TWO houses on the same street in Castleton-On-Hudson, NY. WTF were you thinking?

JP: Glad you asked me this question, Marvin. (Which is to say, I’m glad I asked your inventor, Mitch Macaphee, to program this question into your tiny brass skull.) The answer is, I haven’t a freaking clue. All I know is that the two houses were next door to one another. One of them had a claw-foot tub. The other had holes in the porch roof. Am I getting warmer?

Marvin: We all are getting warmer, due to climate change. Moving on. Big Green has released three studio albums thus far, the most recent being Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (2013). And though all three are of questionable value, Cowboy Scat is by far the sketchiest. And so, again, I say, WTF were you thinking?

JP: Thanks for that question, Marvin. That was clearly inserted into your memory banks just to piss me off. I admit that we tossed Cowboy Scat together in a hurry. It’s a collection of songs written and recorded for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.

We were posting the podcast every month, and we would rush to complete at least one or two songs for the show. At the end of a year or so, we decided to make an album out of them. So we patched about 21 of them together with tape and dropped them into the internet. Like everything else we’ve ever done, it’s been a drug on the market (that’s an antiquated term that means we haven’t sold many). But hell … we’re crappy capitalists. So what’s new?

If Big Green does it, it's a flop.

Part two: Looking ahead

Marvin: Okay, so does that mean your next album will be a bunch of songs from some random podcast?

JP: No, not some random podcast – OUR podcast segment known as Ned Trek, which we recorded from 2014 to 2018. Why are you so damned belligerent?

Marvin: That does not compute.

JP: Well, then COMPUTE HARDER.

Okay, so it’s very likely that at least one of our future projects will involve pulling together some of the more than 100 songs we wrote and recorded for Ned Trek. Though they are, indeed, podcast songs, we spent a bit more time on them than the Cowboy Scat numbers. Does that mean they’re better? Well ….. I’m a poor judge of that. The only thing I can practically guarantee is that our next album(s) will be a total commercial flop. That is OUR promise to YOU, Big Green listeners!

Okay, what else you got? I’ve got some time wasting to catch up on.

And lastly, the last … part

Marvin: Where did you leave that jar of paraffin chutney I bought? That stuff is damned expensive!

JP: What the …. ? Damn it, Mitch – stop dropping your questions into my interview! I don’t know where your fucking chutney is! It’s bloody inedible, for one thing. And for another thing …. fuck you!

Marvin: Anything you’d like to add that might interest our listeners?

JP: Sure. There’s an abandoned car just up the block. If you know anything about AMC Pacers, this might be just the vehicle for you. There are some raccoons living in it, but they’re pretty nice – I’m sure they wouldn’t mind sharing the car.

Usual Rubbish

Old home week arrives at the hammer mill.

2 Comments
2000 Years to Christmas

Man alive, I just got done talking about Mitch Macaphee’s dick-like rocket ship, and what happens? Some billionaire flies into the exosphere in a ship that looks as much like a dick as Mitch’s. What the hell!

Okay, enough with the rocket launches. I don’t want to give the impression that we spend all of our time obsessing over the exploits of space oligarchs. That’s more the province of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who likes his cable television very much. We sentient members of Big Green prefer more lofty pursuits, like …. I don’t know … reading things. Or putting one thing on top of the other. And then there’s walking around as you read a thing and tripping over the other two things. That happens a lot at the hammer mill.

Reaching back dimly

Then there’s reminiscing – every upstate musician’s favorite sport. I was thinking back this week to a time before Big Green. What do I dimly recall of those days? I remember rocks … rocks bubbling. The sky was darkened by flocks of pterodactyls. And I was groping around the ancient city of Albany, looking for a steady gig so that I could keep the light bulb burning (the one dangling from the hairy cord just below the ceiling).

There were a bunch of clubs around Albany back in the 80s, and when I got there in January of 1981, they were all hurting. New York had just raised the drinking age to 21 that very month, which meant most of the college students who crowded into bars on the weekend were now prohibited from doing so. In other words, the perfect time to start gigging in the Capital District.

It's old home week!

Friend of a friend of a friend

The only band I played with in Albany back in 1980-81 was the pre-Big Green group I started with my brother Matt, my SUNY New Paltz drummer friend Phil, and our guitarist friend Tim Walsh, who died some years back. After failing miserably, I went back to Albany in 1984 to play with a commercial club band. Let’s call that group PROMISE MARGARINE, or PROMISE for short.

A couple of years later, the drummer from PROMISE got his bandleader to hire me for another commercial gig in a band I’ll call CANDYASS. The keyboard player in that band was Big Green co-founder Ned Danison (I was playing bass). We started working on songs, and before anyone knew what the fuck was happening, Big Green emerged from the pastel colored ether of the eighties club scene around Albany, NY.

Love-in spoonful

As it happens, I heard from Ned this past week, and he shared a relatively recent song of his that sounds more than a bit like Big Green. It’s called Houston, We Have A Love-In. Give it a listen and shake your fist at us for being so damn awesome.

You can also hear our four-song Big Green demo, featuring Ned, on this very web site here.

Usual Rubbish

Mitch cashes in on a long shot.

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

Look, I may not be a venture capitalist … or even a garden-variety capitalist, but this much I know: it’s not going to work. I would stake my reputation on it. And maybe even stake something valuable on it as well.

Yes, you guessed it – trouble at the mill. How is it that you can see into our very souls? Are you Kreskin? Criswell? Big Green must know … but not right away. For now, suffice to say that our squatter’s household has been turned upside-down by the raw power of unbridled ambition and simple, bald greed. I ask you – what other band has to put up with this kind of shit? (And don’t say Chefs of the Future.)

You know, I told my illustrious brother not to leave the T.V. on during the day. The reason is simple. There’s always a chance that our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, will see it and start obsessing over something, anything. Well, it happened this past Sunday, during the multiple hours of coverage they gave to Richard Branson’s space flight.

Missile envy

Now, maybe Mitch is getting a little old. And maybe he’s just getting a little more crazy. Whatever the explanation might be, he is determined to beat Branson at his own game. It is HE, Mitch insists, who first traversed interstellar space (from an Earth launch point, mind you). “Why is Branson getting all the credit?” Mitch says, his fists waving in the air.

I think what really got Mitch, though, was the knowledge that Branson is planning on charging his passengers $250K a seat. Ever see those cartoons where a character’s pupils turn into dollar signs? That’s actually what happened to Mitch. Next thing we knew, he was forging hard alloys in the shop and sticking them together.

Looks real, uh ... anatomically correct, Mitch.

Let’s do launch!

Okay, so I think Mitch is failing to consider some important factors in his competition with various space-happy billionaires. One is that he is not, in fact, a billionaire, though as a mad scientist, he can invent all the money he wants. The other is that he doesn’t get scads of free media every time he uses the can or launches a rocket shaped like his penis. I don’t think he can invent his way out of that deficit … OR CAN HE?

There is one more thing. Branson and Bezos and the other one have access to a handy launch pad for their space flights. We don’t have anything of the sort at our disposal. Unless, of course, Mitch is thinking of using the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill as a kind of mission control center, maybe launch his flights from the courtyard.

Holy shit, Mitch. We’ve got enough trouble with the codes department as it is.

Usual Rubbish

Someone put a crimp in Lincoln’s style

Leave a comment
2000 Years to Christmas

Ring the bell tower. We don’t have one? Well, then pull the fire alarm. What? No fire alarm? Are you telling me we’ve been squatting here for twenty years and there’s no freaking fire alarm? I am depressed.

Hello and welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I’m afraid you find us in crisis mode this week. We’ve just received a ransom message from the former King of the Catskills (or so they claim) saying that they’ve kidnapped Anti-matter Lincoln and are demanding a considerable forfeit for his safer return.

My lack of god! Will these scoundrels stop at nothing? They abduct an obvious senior citizen – Anti Lincoln is 196 if he’s a day – and cart him off like a sack of grain in hopes of squeezing riches out of his squat-mates. He went off to take his constitutional this morning (he always takes the constitution for a little walk first thing) and when he didn’t return, we knew something was up.

Crimped like a sea dog

Now, this would be bad enough if Anti-Lincoln were just being held somewhere against his will. That, sadly, is not the case. The nefarious King of the Catskills has informed us that Anti-Lincoln has been consigned to a chain gang. They’re sending him to work the butterscotch mines outside of St. Johnsville. In other words, they crimped the bastard!

Look …. I’ve seen what butterscotch mining can do to a man. That’s hard labor. Someone of Anti-Lincoln’s age and temperament won’t last a week. We’re sending Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with a jug of water and a flashlight to see if he can help. Chances are good, though, that they’ll just crimp Marvin as well and put him on the automation detail.

This could work.

Go fund my ass

What can we do? Well …. the kidnappers want crypto currency, so we were thinking maybe a fundraiser – setting up crowdfunding to bail Anti-Lincoln out. Either that or busking on the corner for bit coin. Of course, we’re terrible at raising money under any circumstances, so that seems kind of like a non-starter.

We could also try to beam him out of there using Trevor James Constable’s patented Orgone Generating Device. Of course, that would require knowing his precise location. A few feet off and we could be beaming a Lincoln-shaped column of molten butterscotch into our living room. (Something I don’t want to even contemplate.)

Wait a minute …. Anti Lincoln just walked in through the front door. And apparently he knows nothing of this kidnapping business. It’s almost as if the King of the Catskills made it all up. Sheesh …. can’t trust anyone these days.