Here is the week that was:
Sunday evening, 6:37 p.m. – Mitch Macaphee test-fires the main engine on our ramshackle space craft; the one that will supposedly carry us to many a far-flung rock venue in the galaxy. Based on what I heard, I have my doubts about this vehicle. It took Mitch about fifteen pulls of that rip cord to get the thing smoking, and that’s about all it did… smoke. No lift. Matt just looked on and shook his head. I saw that and shook my head. Whole lot of shakin’ going on ’round here.
Monday afternoon, 12:45 p.m. – Sumptuous lunch of cheese doodles and expired raisins. Did I say sumptuous? I meant nauseating. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is practicing his galley skills. He has volunteered to be our ship’s cook. Lincoln refuses to call him “cookie” (as Marvin has asked to be called). Anti-Lincoln vehemently disagrees with that refusal. We shake our heads, yet again.
Monday night, 10:30 p.m. – Oh, great – now there’s drinking. No, not the band. (I’m on the wagon, for one, after that last tour.) I mean the man-sized tuber. He’s chugging great gobs of Miracle Grow in hopes of making himself too big to fit into his interstellar terrarium. Apparently he 
has come to despise that thing, as he does any object that resembles a pot. Fortunately, he’s on wheels, so no matter how large he gets, we can push him along. Or pull him behind. Do plants breathe?
Wednesday morning, 3:00 a.m. – This isn’t a legitimate entry… it’s just the name of a Simon and Garfunkel album. Pretend you didn’t read this.
Thursday afternoon, 2:45 p.m. – Fuel shipment arrives from Madagascar. (Don’t ask me. Mitch found the vendor.) Not sure how our spacecraft is supposed to run on compact alfalfa pellets. This shit looks like rabbit food to me. Mitch assures us that this will carry us from one end of the galaxy to the other. And there is much rejoicing.
Friday night, just past 7:00 p.m. – I finally find that ballpoint pen I lost last week. Was scribbling a threatening note to my creditors, and in my incandescent rage, the thing flipped out of my hand and rolled away. Oh… and we started our countdown to liftoff, by the way. I won’t tell you how far we’ve gotten.
Well, we’ve attempted to do everything that needed to be done in preparation for our trip to the stars – readying Big Green for our upcoming interstellar tour ENTER THE MIND 2010: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE. We’ve dotted every “t” and crossed every “i” (or every eye, perhaps). So many details to be considered. Much of it, on this type of outing, is best left to the scientists. Questions like, “There’s no air in space. How do we breathe?” Not sure we’ve got that little detail worked out yet, but sometimes you can’t solve every problem prior to lift off. Sure, I’d like everything to be perfect and set out in a straight line. But that’s not always possible, my friends. Sometimes, good enough has to be good enough. Good enough?
ITEM: Sandwiches. Space is a very inhospitable environment, full of hostile creatures, obstinate club owners (same thing), and the total lack of sandwiches. That’s right – Space is chock full of no sandwiches whatsoever, so you better just pack yourself some… and pronto. 
Greetings from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, a combination squat house, launch pad, recording studio, interstellar refugee center, and – now – dance studio! You heard me right. Sure, sure – no one in Big Green can dance his way out of a paper bag; this much is true. But needs dictate actions in this corner of the universe as well as in yours, and damn it, we need money to get this tour off the ground. So….. dance lessons. Administered by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), as it happens.
Why are we so short on cash? Please! Aren’t we always? Think of the expenses we need to bear. Just keeping ourselves in Cheesits and crepe paper is enough to bankrupt any tycoon. And then there’s Anti-Lincoln’s odious absinthe habit. (Now I know why he spent so much time at the theater.) We’re just pouring money down the rat hole every day of our lives. And those rats are living pretty large, my friend, pretty large. Of course, now they have to share with our tour manager, Admiral Gonutz (ret.), who needs cash (and lots of it) to provision our ramshackle interstellar space craft.
Well, friends, in preparation for our upcoming interstellar tour – ENTER THE MIND 2010: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE – we have hauled most of our moth-eaten possessions out to the curb (on Admiral Gonutz’s orders). We have also begun to rack up commitments in the outer reaches of our galaxy (some “stellar” venues among them, I should add. Heh. heh. heh.). And, perhaps (but likely not) most importantly, we have identified a rent-a-spacecraft to replace our long since repossessed Jupiter 2 imitation craft. And hey, that ship, she’s a beauty…. NOT.
stronger than Borkum Riff stuffed into that pipe of his.
Oh, hi. Glad to see you were able to take the time to stop by and read my little screed. Always edifying to see what your friends in Big Green are up to, eh? Perhaps edifying is not the right word. How about, better than cleaning toilets? If so, I would have to agree. (Of course, I have a proprietary interest here, I declare.)
Another thing he’s gotten under his ludicrous headgear – he wants us to jettison all non-essential stuff. I don’t mean from the spacecraft we have yet to rent. I mean pretty much everything around this old hammer mill that doesn’t have some kind of nautical theme. [Note to Marvin (my personal robot assistant): that hideous mantle clock of yours is safe.] So we’re carrying all manner of junk out to the side of the road for eventual pickup… very eventual, since we haven’t paid our garbage collection fee in about three years. In fact, on the suggestion of Marvin, we’re even carrying my tendency to digress out to the curb, in a basket.
Great. I’m working on this freaking Roland A-90 of mine – the one with the broken key(s) – and my technical advisor just wanders off. Probably getting a drink somewhere, even as I type this excoriation of him. (Trouble is, he’s even less reliable when he drinks.) Just trying to get our shit together in time for the next interstellar tour, which should begin sometime around Stardate 3425.6 … which, for those of you still on the Gregorian calendar, is approximately August 27th. Give or take. (Probably a bit more take than give.) Not sure why I chose to drop this sucker down a flight of stairs, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. (Note: On the advice of my analyst, I’ve been treating all of my accidents as intentional lately, just so that I feel more in control of my life. And damn it, it works.)
Just look at Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and you’ll see what I mean. He may be the most sophisticated piece of equipment we take on tour with us. (I of course mean technologically sophisticated, not intellectually.) And yet close inspection will reveal an automaton held together with glue and bailing wire – a rolling, talking, gesticulating patch-job of tarnished brass and repurposed circuit boards, wanting for everything from new fasteners to replaced CAT 6 cable to the proper grade of machine oil. One would think the presence of his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, would contribute to a better state of being for old Marvin, but alas, Mitch quickly loses interest in his inventions. Look at that planet killer death ray he built last year. Back then, it was the poison apple of his eye. Now it sits in the courtyard like a motherless puppy. (Maybe some nice neighborhood mad scientist will adopt it…)
Hey, there. Just starting to plan out our trip to the outer limits. No, not the sixties television show – that was a piece of broadcast entertainment, not a place you can actually go to. I mean the outer limits of the space-time continuum, already – that dark pocket of nothingness where all of the demand for Big Green performances floats in a vacuum like a cork in a bathtub. We must pursue that cork, my friends, for it beckons. The cork beckons! Behold, the cork! Death to Moby Dick! Right, well…. be that as it may. (I’ve been hanging around with anti-Lincoln a bit too much lately – he sometimes doest this extended riff on Captain Ahab and, well, he’s kind of convincing with that beard of his.) We must follow the demand, whatever cliff it may lead us off of.
Assisting us in this tiresome duty is our old friend, Rear Admiral Gonutz (ret.), formerly of the Naval Reserve. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) looked him up at our request when we realize that this was a job several magnitudes too subtle for the mind of the man-sized tuber, who has been filling in as our road manager. (He basically occupied roughly the same volume of space as a road manager might; other than that, not much.) As some of you might remember, Gonutz is not shy. He believes in aggressive touring – musical “shock and awe”, as it were, at least in terms of the itinerary. I personally think he is insisting on Jupiter because he’s fond of the club scene, but that’s just a suspicion. (I’m chock bloody full of suspicions.) Proud man.
Oh, hello, cyber-surfers. You find us in one of life’s most humble pursuits: making a substandard dinner. That’s the kind we like here at the Cheney Hammer Mill – far preferable to no dinner at all. In case you hadn’t guessed, soup is on the menu this evening, and inasmuch as we cannot afford that ultra-haut cuisine canned stuff you probably enjoy, your stalwart friends in Big Green are making it from scratch. And when I say scratch, that’s no euphemism. As I mentioned before, elbow grease is a euphemism, and one that should never be an ingredient in home made soup. Though, sadly, it is now part of ours. Another reason why it’s best not to have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) help with such tasks. (He just had his elbows re-greased, as it happens.)
Enough about dinner. What else is happening, aside from the fabrication of inedibles? Not a lot, my friends. Just keeping body and soul together, that’s the long and short of it. (We’re a little longer on the short of it, truth be told.) Started some projects, but have yet to finish any of them. We do have a song due out on a compilation CD – a fundraiser for Haiti relief – which is supposed to be out any day now. (A little late on that one.) That’s a new recording called “Only You,” one of Matt’s numbers. I’ll post a link when it finally sees the light of day. Either that or we’ll drop it into the soup and have you take a bowl home with you. Talk about rich! It’s soup you can dance to.
Oh, hi. Didn’t notice you there, peering at me from the other side of this flat screen monitor I live in. Hope all is well at home. I’m just hanging out here in the delightfully abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, having a little chat with our old friend Lincoln, who was carried here from yesteryear through the magic of Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device a year or two back. (That’s a long way of saying hello – I know.) What are we chatting about? Funny you should ask. The usual topics that come up around here, like how many hammers were forged here, how long this place has been abandoned, and HOW THE HELL ARE WE EVER GOING TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO GET A DECENT PLACE TO LIVE. (That last one’s a bit of a sore spot. Not sure if you can tell.)
Hmmm. That last utterance took on a decidedly militaristic cast – my apologies. As I was saying, I and several others – though certainly NOT Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – have been tossing around possible entries for Lincoln’s upcoming work. Why does he need our help? Well, friends – he may be an excellent commander in chief, a clear-minded leader with nerves of steel, a visionary… but aside from speeches written hastily on the backs of envelopes, his writing for mass audiences leaves a bit to be desired. Far too flowery, too prolix. Goodness me, Lincoln! Take a page out of your evil twin’s playbook. Economy! For chrissake, it’s a rare thing indeed when Anti-Lincoln writes anything longer than a two-word phrase that ends in “you.” (Say what you like; at least he keeps the focus on “you.”)
Whoops. Didn’t know anyone was browsing this side of the Web. Hope you’re doing well. Bit embarrassing, this, actually. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) recently got his prehensile claws on one of those super-shmeensy video cameras. He says he had to go broke to get it…. he had to go broke the department store window, that is. (Cue laugh track. I said cue it, Marvin! Do I have to do everything?) Anyhow… now Marvin has to video everything, committing our sullen, sordid lives to Quicktime day in and day out. What he’s doing with it all I can only guess. Posting it to YouTube? Burying it in a hole in the yard? Feeding it to Big Zamboola? Lawd knows.
What else has been going on? Well, a little bit of music making, one might say. There’s been some talk of a tour, it’s true – another interstellar excursion of indefinite duration and itinerary. Perhaps an inner-earth tour, though the mansized tuber may ask to be excused from that one. (As a root vegetable, he has spent more than enough of his life underground.) I have also heard mutterings about a possible performance in upstate New York, at an area music festival ’round the Mill somewheres. Can’t say more at this point. I’ll listen a little harder to see if the mutterings are generally in favor or opposed to the suggestion. Then I will amplify them with my trusty typing fingers. From their mouths to your ears – that’s my pledge. (I’m just a freaking middle man!)