I spy with my little eye…. a breakfast nook. Yes, that’s it. I spy with my little eye… a seven-foot-tall solid iron anvil. Found that one too, eh? Hmmm… I’m going to have to make this harder.
Hello again, visitor(s). Yeah, just killing a little time on a holiday weekend. All the carolers have gone home, back to their cabins somewhere in the Adirondacks to stoke their hearth fires and peel their stocking-heel tangerines. Celebratory drinks all around! The place is as dead as a hammer head… and we’ve got a lot of those lying about the old abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (Or, as some call it, the hammer mill of the imagination.) I’m looking out upon empty cobblestone streets in the old canal-side district of Little Falls, NY, watching the snowflakes drift lazily earthward, each one laden with icy cloud-stuff, little bits of frozen heaven dropped by the formidable gods of the great north. Sometimes it feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. (I think I know why that is.) Always makes me think of Matt’s song “Ask For Leave”…
If you reversed your collar
and pulled a hood up over your head
and traveled north
You travel due north on any road
long enough
You will find an ice cave
Oh, isolation on top of the world
Maybe in twenty-five years
you can ask the lama for some leave
Hoo, man. We got to get the heat working! I’m starting to dream in sub-freezing Panavision (registered trademark). So anyway… what did you do this holiday? Assuming, of course, you observe any type of holiday, you likely consumed some rich fare, perhaps alcoholic beverages, maybe mingled with some close and not-so-close relations, imbibed more alcohol to help with the last item, then talked in circles with old uncle Farley until he was ready to retire. (Wheel him out, boys. That’s the stuff.)
Me? I worked my way down to the catacombs and played my antiquated Roland (registered trademark) piano until I started foaming at the mouth and falling over backwards. (That usually takes an hour or less.) Me need practice. Me no play so hot without plenty practice. (Me not play so hot ANYWAY… but with no practice, ME SUCK.) Why the primitive caveman jargon? Well, as you know, rock of pretty much every variety is, at its best, a minimalist art form. Very primitive music, played by very, very primitive people, many of whom scrape their knuckles over the strings, keys, skins, whatever, to make the requisite sounds.
Well, is that the time. Better get back to my Yuletide activities. What ho!
Hope you’re well. Things are okay here… about as okay as things can be. Actually, right at this moment, my knees are a little cold, but aside from that, all is well. (Bloody winter! It’s miserable even when it’s not here yet.) I suppose I should get our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to look at the thermostat one more time. Seems like no matter how many times I turn that dial clockwise, the old Hammer Mill stays cold as a New England clam. And now that we’re on the subject, I notice that there are icicles hanging from Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Great Scott… it’s not just a little glitch in the temp control. This place is a block of freaking ice. What the hell – didn’t I bribe the oil man this month? Oh, right…. not suppose to say that on the Internets. (Please don’t let that get around, okay? There’s a good chap.)
what with all the nooks and crannies and outright gaps between the bricks. (Then there are the broken windows. Six or seven… dozen…) Fact is, even when we can fill the fuel tank, most of the heat goes straight outside. And fixing the windows would take effort … effort better spent on the things that only 
morning, my bedroom wall was glowing orange and white, like a creamsicle (except less awesomely delicious). Heat was just wafting off of that sucker. At first I thought the place was on fire, and when I realized it was the O.G.M., I thought it had somehow irradiated the wall, turning it into a molten mass of hell fire. Curiously, what had actually taken place was that Trevor James’s infernal contraption had created a space/time warp to somewhere in the tropics – it may have been Honduras, because I smelled cigar smoke. It was such a hot day on the other side of the warp that the heat was rolling into my bedroom in waves. Astounding phenomenon!
Matt’s doing okay, thanks very much. He finished that little project he was working on – you know, the papier-mache helicopter that can fly between dimensions and traverse great distances fueled only by a LePage glue gun. Man, THAT was a big disappointment! Gave the prop a spin, tossed it over the battlements, and down to the street it went like a week-old cabbage. Man got to have his hobbies, you know. If it weren’t for the daily task of keeping those bazooka-toting, treestand-dwelling deer murderers away from the back forty, I don’t know how else he would occupy his time.
John has been playing guitars, banging drums, changing the laws of physics. He’s had a little help in that regard from Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, who spent a good part of this year tinkering with gravity and inertia. Next year he hopes to move on to the study of dark matter, but that involves a bit more driving around than he likes. You know old Mitch! Likes to keep close to his home planet, if he can. Anyway, he sends his regards. (Just handle them carefully… they may be radioactive.)
digress… ) Marvin’s last score in robot school was 1,694,668 calculations per second. He’ll have to work on that, obviously, but still…. we’re proud… VERY proud…
Yes, well… greetings from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill on this blessed week of giving thanks. Thanks for what? Nothing, that’s what around this dump. Forgive my ill humor… it’s just that the man-sized tuber – our own beloved root vegetable companion – has embarked upon a virtual reign of terror as our municipality’s new mayor. I’ll tell you, friends, you never really know a person (or a sweet potato) until you’ve a.) had them over for holiday dinner, or b.) elected them village mayor or town supervisor. The maxim about absolute power corrupting absolutely may well be ascribed to the extremely limited power conferred upon the executive in charge of the little hamlet that has heretofore reluctantly tolerated the presence of 
I mean, it was only hours after they hung that victory ribbon on his… his… chest-like protuberance that he started issuing edicts of the most punishing character imaginable. First there were the codes enforcement decrees – what we have come to refer to as “The Awful Things”. Matt heard this pounding on the front door, and attached thereupon (with a railroad spike, no less) was a parchment-like posting that advised us in no uncertain terms to leave the premises or face eviction. Yes, there was a grace period – 48 hours. Generous, eh? This much consideration (and no more) from someone we pulled out of the ground with our bare hands. What was he before he met us, eh? A NOTHING! A NOBODY! A…. a… SWEET POTATO! Who brought him up from the unforgiving earth? Who gave him his little wheely cart to ride around in? Who took him from one end of the galaxy to the other as our trusted mascot? (If you need answers to any of this, let me know.)
capacitors blew and he started listing up and down the halls, emitting smoke and humming “Keep the Ball Rolling” by Jay and the Techniques. Mitch Macaphee, Marvin’s inventor, has been following him around with test equipment as we fend off the firemen. It actually took Anti-Lincoln’s guile to get them to desist. He started selling them (forged) raffle tickets right back. But hot on the heels of that disruption came the codes enforcers – big, burly fellows with measuring tapes, T-squares, and deadly writs from the local magistrate. That’s right – the man-sized tuber had blown us in to a justice of the peace! (A redundant title if ever I heard one, for there can be no justice without peace… or is it vice-versa?) 
Yes, friends, we’re back home in Indiana… I mean, in upstate New York again. Back at the fabled and storied (actually, three stories, plus the roof and basement) Cheney Hammer Mill. We arrived on the redeye late last night… and by “redeye” I don’t mean an overnight flight from Andrews Airforce Base; rather, an eye-popping super-light speed journey through the outer solar system with a drunken mad scientist at the controls, half-empty quart of redeye clutched in his left paw. Weaving? Yes, we had that. Sudden drops in altitude? Most def. And what about those dramatic gravitational variances? Well, we endured our share, clinging to the exposed plumbing of the upper deck (some of which emitted an eerie green glow – uuuuhhhllll), rolling with the turbulence as our inebriated navigator snaked his way between the planets like celestial highway cones. There were a couple of exciting moments – Mitch Macaphee had missed the memo about that new Saturnian ring, and we plowed right through the sucker with inches to spare – but even with one eye closed (and one brain neutralized), we managed to hit our earthly target.
man, I pulled open the front door and let the uniformed individuals in. They were looking for the man-sized tuber, they told me, and would only say why directly to the tuber himself. When he wheeled himself into the room, one of our visitors hung a ceremonial ribbon around his… well… neck, I guess you could call it. “Congratulations, Mr. Mayor,” said the woman to the tuber, “and welcome home.” And I was like… and tubey was like… and Mitch was like… what the fuck, we were ALL like something I obviously can’t describe, but which approximates surprise and flabbergastedness. (At least not using words. Gestures, perhaps.)
Folks just north of here almost elected the intellectual equivalent of a box of rocks as their congressman. And what the hell, this seemed like it could redound significantly to our benefit, know what I mean? After all, we are just SQUATTERS here, no defined rights at least in the local codebook (except the right to be taken to jail). Now that he’s mayor, tubey can keep the heat off of us. He can, I don’t know, appoint Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as Public Safety Commissioner and Mitch Macaphee as his, I don’t know, budget director. I’m just thinking out loud here. Well, that sounded all well and good, and as they led the new mayor off to his cush mansion in the middle of town, we all sat back and waited for those benefits to start rolling in the front door like over-ripe oranges, fresh-plucked from the plush fronds of the juiciest tree in town. Mmmmm, boy – solid privilege!
Oh, hi, you-all. Hope everything is well back on Earth. We will see you there soon, I trust, as we appear to be heading in that general direction, assuming Mitch Macaphee’s navigational skills have not gone seriously downhill in the last month or so. (We walk by faith, not sight.) Rolling to the end of another outer-limits tour – this one a bit more ad hoc than previous outings, apropos of the severe economic recession back home. Couldn’t even afford to brand this tour, and that typically doesn’t cost much more than a couple of beers at the local pub. (We quaff them until somebody emits a decent idea… or something a bit less savory.) As you know, Big Green always operates on the cheap, but this time was the worst yet. As someone who’s used to dry Soy Slice sandwiches, it took some time getting used to sandwiches made with the empty plastic wrappers Soy Slices come in. And water, nothing but water to drink between gigs. That’s better than no water, but still…. water for six weeks? What would my bartender say? (Between sobs…?)
election. I understand the man-sized tuber was going to be on the ballot for town councilman back in our small upstate New York community of [INSERT NAME OF TOWN HERE]. His opponent, a member of the [INSERT PARTY HERE] party, was running on a “no vegetables in council” kind of platform, which seem kind of small minded to me. The man-sized tuber, on the other hand, was running as a representative of the [GENERIC] party. (No, that’s not an editor’s note. The party’s name is [GENERIC] in all-caps and brackets.) The [GENERIC] party’s position is that anything you say, do, or write needs to be adaptable to every imaginable set of circumstances. It’s the ultimate in egalitarianism, if you ask me. And it’s the reason that all of the [GENERIC] party’s position papers read like the preceding few lines. After winning that bi-election in [INSERT CITY HERE], the party chairman [INSERT NAME HERE] feels a lot more confident about that strange convention of writing.
town council when we get home. For the nonce, we can only speculate. (Though Lincoln has taken it upon himself to offer advice to tubey, having had a political career himself at one point in his trans-temporal existence.) Besides, there’s plenty to think about. After all, our album 
Oh, hi, Web-based readers, listeners, and curiosity seekers. It’s your old pal Big Green, out here in deep space, fresh off a thrashing series of gigs on Kaztropharius 137b – one of the few places in the known universe where our music gets played, bought, and reviewed – and headed in the general direction of home. Yes, we’ve had it for the time being. After all, the holidays are coming, daylight savings time has ended (spend all that saved-up daylight yet?), and darkness is falling across the northern hemisphere of our tattered planet. It’s at this time of year, more than any other, that the sojourner’s thoughts turn to hearth and home, and certainly we of Big Green are no exceptions. Many’s the time I’ve repaired backstage (what the hell, you can hardly repair onstage – it’s distracting to the audience!) and, in the privacy of my own musings, longed for the dank closeness of my squathouse bedroom back in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Mildew, dear mildew….
space. The other day I saw him looking at photos of the Coke machine at the corner drug store. (You know, they really hit it off.) And then there’s the holidays or, as we call them, the FREAKING holidays, with which our group has been more than tangentially associated. What the hell, I mean…. how many alt-indie rock bands do you know whose first album was a collection of original songs written around the idea of Christmas? More than one… really? There was that Boston band called “Christmas” back in the 1980s, but that doesn’t count. (Neither does the L.A. bar band called “Big Green”. Coincidence, I tell you!) Anywho, we’ve been putting our best minds on how to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the release of our album 
scrambled planet Earth on the other side of a time-space wormhole (look back a few columns, you’ll see it). “Fynde thee a performance venue, and render your music within!” he said, which, roughly translated, works out to be … book a gig somewhere and play a bunch of music from our now 10-year-old first album. Yeah, not bad for a founding father. Still… that would require some effort on our parts, and looking around this crew cabin, I don’t see a lot of motivation. Matt, you in for this? How about you, Johnny? 
Just found our way over to Kaztropharius 137b in hopes of finding some Big Green fans. (Seems like that quest takes us farther and farther with each passing year.) Not a lot of love to be had in the Great Magellanic Cloud, but the Kaztropharians are reasonably congenial … if a bit super-sized. Jesus christmas, what an enormous crowd of revelers we had that first night! It was like being in the outer-space version of Gulliver’s Travels, not the Lilliput journey but that other one. (No, not the horse people. The other, other one… with the big people.) While giants tend to make me a little nervous, most of my colleagues seemed unperturbed. Mitch Macaphee just worked on various science projects, off in a corner some where. The man-sized tuber practiced his saxophone backstage – a bit distracting, but what the hell. Only Marvin (my personal robot assistant) seemed to share my sense of trepidation, and that may have been due to our failure to bring him in for his scheduled maintenance (you know… refit bushings every 10,000 miles).
anybody? Yeah, well… pretty much just a home crowd. We came in a little hard, with “Primitive” – probably one of the closest things to a thrash tune Matt’s ever written. Brother 
vernacular. Back on our earlier tours, distinguished theorists like the disembodied brain we knew as Dr. Hump used to follow us on our rounds, collect data on our activities, then formulate theories to destroy (or, in their words, “enhance”) entire solar systems. I like to think that we didn’t contribute much to those efforts, but judging by the facial expressions we see at some of our more remote venues, I may… be… mistaken…. (Sure is a lot of space rubble around this planetoid, isn’t there? Damndest thing.) Some may accuse us of having a science-centric worldview, but I disagree. I see it more as an artistic spaceview. (Some see the hole in the donut. I see the donut itself. It’s all about choices.)
Oh, hiya. You’ve come upon us in mid-passage, once again. We’re meandering our way into deep, deep space, heading for some place a bit more congenial to the particular brand of music we’ve dedicated ourselves to. (What brand is that? Not sure how to answer you. Try my brand.) Having left Neptune under something of a cloud, Big Green is setting its sites on the mysterious deep space object known as Kaztropharius 137b, where we had a substantial following a few tours back. (You know… way back in, what, 2003 or 2002? Can’t rightly recall. Do a 
happens. Trying to sketch out a couple of sets for our first night on Kaztropharius. Of course, some might say that’s the easy part… it’s actually learning how to play the songs that takes some effort. Fair enough. That comes later in my world. (Much…. much later…)
They threw my series away
Oh, hi. Wow, THIS is embarrassing. Didn’t know anyone was listening/reading. I was just having a heated word with our navigator, the man-sized tuber. (Yes, that’s right – we have a plant for a navigator.) Got a little technical issue that needs some attention, that’s all. Wouldn’t want you to think that Big Green is hard on the help – no, sir… we treat them like KINGS. Emperors, really… especially the cruciferous ones like Tubey. He needs a little extra consideration, given his mobility problems. (Though the cart has helped these past few years, I must admit.) Don’t want to sound like I’m hyper-critical, but occasionally tempers wear a little thin in the vacuum of space, especially when you have some kind of deadly space virus loose in your vehicle, and the only thing your navigator can think of doing is EVACUATING THE CREW CABIN OF ALL ARTIFICIAL ATMOSPHERE. And while that may sound like a pretty good idea, there are a few problems with it. I won’t elaborate.
I’ve always said the Neptunian principal landmass audience is the greatest audience on the planet. (Actually, I’ve never said that, but I may start saying it from now on.) And I don’t want to start calling them out now. But those fuckers hold a grudge, to be sure. Their ears still ringing from 
which is to say, it only makes you wish you’d drop dead. I won’t elaborate, but man… I will say those Neptunians are damned vindictive. I mean, they could have tossed a celluloid stink bomb in the cabin as we were lifting off, or perhaps some kind of annoying noisemaker… maybe burdened us with one of their least favorite prison detainees (or stand-up comics, which would be worse). They might have hired a clown, for chrissake – anything but biological warfare. Cheese and crackers – that