I know I dropped it around here somewhere. Marvin, have you seen it? What’s that? Oh, right … I dropped it on the internets. How could I forget?

Yes, well … we FINALLY got around to dropping a new episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, featuring Ned Trek 31: It’s a Profitable Life. Yes, it’s a Christmas special, so think of it as that fruitcake you never opened in December, shoved to the back of the fridge, and you happen upon it one cold February morning – a happy accident! Except that, well … it’s a fruitcake. So, like it or not, here’s what you’ll find alongside the pecans and candied fruit:

Ned Trek 31: It’s a Profitable Life – Our parody of “It’s a Wonderful Life” as played by your favorite Ned Trek characters: Captain Willard Mittilius Romney in the James Stewart role; Peter Lorre as the angel- (or, rather, devil- )in-training (Gladston Goodstein); Paul Ryan sitting in for the main character’s younger brother; Bernie Sanders as the bank examiner who ends up running the bank as a worker-owned enterprise, and so on. It even features Thomas Malthus, the 18th-19th Century political economist, as the boss fallen angel. An hour of cheap laughs and satirical tirades fit for no man.

Ned Trek 31 also includes 5 new Big Green songs:

• You Can’t Do Anything – Straight rock number sung by Sulu that asks the question, “Are you having fun?” then talks about fascists on the couch at Christmas. What more can you ask?
• You Asked Me How – A 6/8, fifties-sounding song sung by Ned himself. Hear me, Android!
• Fountainhead – Another rock number, sung in the “voice” of Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan, about his favorite subject …. him, and his bankrupt philosophy.
• Christmas Without You – Doc Coburn song. If you listen carefully, you can hear a bad imitation of his colleague, Dr. John, in the background vocals.
• Christmas Pearls – A jaunty little Christmas Carol sung by Mr. Perle, in which he makes the case for his return as a top White House advisor on foreign policy, defense, and getting us into endless (but highly profitable) wars. In other words, a different version of the same song he always sings on Ned Trek.

Put The Phone Down – Our stranger than usual conversation opens with something like a song, ranges into some apologizing, lamenting the loss of John Hurt (whose resonant Shakespearean voice is often badly imitated on our podcast), a look back at my turkey house apartment in the 1980s, and wrap up with an impromptu version of Special Kind of Blood.

So, hey … Happy Holidays. Belated.