Tag Archives: Kaztropharius 137b

Usual Rubbish

Tour log (third story).

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What is all the ruckus about? I told you we were bringing equipment with us. And no, we don’t need unicycles. We can get around on our own two feet, thank you very much.

That’s the problem with interstellar tours, my friends. A billion opportunities for misunderstandings. No shortage of those, particularly when you’re traveling with the two Lincolns (posi- and anti-), as we appear to be out here on Big Green’s vaunted [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011. Anyway, here’s how it went down this week:

10.25.2011 – Our first full night on Kaztropharius 137b. If anything, it’s quiet – too quiet. Keep forgetting that there’s no atmosphere here, ergo, no sound. (Or is it “air-go; no sound”? You decide.)  We strummed our way silently through about a dozen tunes. The denizens of this strange little rock appeared partial to “My Bed”, one of Matt’s dream-sequence numbers. They pick up vibrations from our instruments via the floor of the venue. (They all appear to be equipped with stethoscopes. Looks kind of odd from on stage.) sFshzenKlyrn ripped the song a third corn chute, as the Simpsons once put it. Another triumph.

10.28.2011 – Pulling away after three successful gigs on Kaztropharius. By successful, I mean survivable… but only just barely. Anti-Lincoln decided to take a stroll down by the river district, apparently. Well, he got kind of drunk and one thing led to another. I’m not precisely sure how he acquired the riding saddle, but however it happened, he seems to have won first prize. We are now band non grata on Kaztropharius 137b. Nice work, anti-Lincoln! Who’s going to eat our discs now, pray tell?

10.29.2011 – Well, now he’s done it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has trashed the hyperdrive. He has this self-preservation circuit that compels him to replace any defective parts with whatever’s available. He needed a certain kind of chip for one of his motor circuits, and… well… he found one in our rent-a-ship’s hyper drive. So now we’re chugging along at the interstellar equivalent of 25 miles an hour, garbage scows passing us like we’re standing still. Got a string of gigs waiting for us, and at this rate, we’ll get to the first of them sometime in early 3109011 A.D. My guess is that they’ll pull out on us. What’s yours?

Oh well. Do me a favor, eh? Email me a diagram for a q47 space modulator chip.  Just google it. Thanks a million.

Usual Rubbish

Tour log (part deux).

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There are no filling stations out yonder. Just ask Warren Oates. If you can’t find him, seek out another character actor and ask him or her. You may be surprised by their answer. (Or not.)

Here’s what happened on the “road” this week:

10.15.2011 – Pulled into Neptune, was feeling ’bout half-past dead. Our rent-a-ship has been sputtering, so we brought it into a Neptunian garage for service. The cost? Full proceeds from our three performances on Neptune, plus 9% excise tax. (Looks like Herman Cain is having an impact up here, as well. The craters tell the tale.) sFshzenKlyrn practically melted his Telecaster on the fourth song (Why Not Call It George?), then settled down for a succulent Neptunian roast. (Roasted crater peat. This is important: Neptunian is not … repeat, not … one of the great cuisines.)

10.17.2011 – Strange how Polaris looks like downtown Rochester. Could be worse. We set up on a suspended platform – one of those anti-gravity jobs you see all over the place on Kaztropharius 137b – and went through the better part of our song list. Looks like we’ll have to work up some more numbers. The Polaroids experience time in extreme slow motion – the equivalent of about 14 hours to each of our standard Earth minutes. Kind of a difficult gap to fill, actually. Hey dudes…. how about a slow one? 

10.19.2011 – Right through the center of the Great Onion Ring. You full-time terrestrials know it as the Ring Nebula, but out here they associate it with their favorite snack. Pity, really, that more interstellar phenomena aren’t named for appropriate junk food back on Earth. After all, we invented junk food, we perfected it, we raised it to a high cultural value, and we defend it with our lives. The Greeks had their gods, sure. But we have our Ring Dings.

10.20.2011 – Closing in on the next venue; that hideous little globe named Kaztropharius 137b … the one place in god’s great universe where our CDs sell like hot cakes. I may have explained this before – the denizens of Kaztropharius 137b eat complex plastics, so to put a fine point on it, our CDs are, in fact, hot cakes to them. And we’re okay with that. Just settling in for a few night gigs.

Hey…. we’re not idle on the road. Always thinking, you know. We posted the third episode of our increasingly strange podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Check it out at http://www.big-green.net/pod and be not ashamed.

Usual Rubbish

Long view.

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Electrodes to power. Turbines to speed. Vector diagrams to light board. Finger fins to the driver behind. Quarter to three in the afternoon. What am I saying?

Doesn’t matter, really. We’re getting close to the departure date on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011, our hotly-anticipated romp through the musical hinterlands of outer space, with planned stops in the Jovian system (Jupiter for you space travel novices), Betelgeuse, Kaztropharius 137b, Sirius, and the planet Zenon in the Small Magellanic Cloud, home base of our sometime-guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn.  Yes, I know – last time we stopped there we took a few lumps, but they’ve since healed up, and hey – never let it be said that we let experience stand in the way of a good lapse in judgment. Still got it, baby.

Anyhow, we’re just running through our confusing array of pre-launch checklists. Can’t be too careful these days, particularly when your vehicle has such a spotted past as the one we’ve rented for the occasion. Some of these lists are so damn mundane, though, it hardly seems justified…. but protocol is protocol. Here’s a for instance: (1) spacecraft fuel, check! (2) spacecraft, check!  (3) passengers and crew, check! (4) desire to depart for interstellar destinations, check! Who the f**k came up with that? My guess is that it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), due to the rote existential nature of his selections. But I digress.

Another thing that doesn’t much matter: we haven’t really worked out a set list yet. Or any of the songs that would populate a set list. That would involve rehearsal, you see, and as a very wise horn player once told me, rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can’t blow. Normally I don’t take such vouchsafes as gospel, but THIS time…. well, I daren’t disregard such an obviously valuable insight. Anyway, Matt and I have been recording some numbers for the podcast (This Is Big Green), so we will probably remember those songs at the very least. That’s about… oh…. half a set. Then there are the songs we make up on the spot. And of course, the mansized tuber plays a little accordion. (Don’t ask how little. Just… don’t.)

Okay, so yeah…. we’ve got a lot of getting together to do before our departure next week. But no fear- Big Green is up to this challenge. In fact, we’ve got a check list for this very situation. Left it around here…. somewhere…

Usual Rubbish

Next stop.

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Great…  they’re sending a radioactive microbot up my shirtsleeve. You think the TSA is tough? Try the customs line on The “Goldilocks” planet.

I want to start this week’s “usual rubbish” blog with a thank you to all of those who helped bail us out of the Kaztropharian jail. (You know who you are.) Not sure how everyone worked out how the bail-bond system works on Kaztropharius 137b – must have looked it up on the interwebs.  (You have to put up at least three cases of cotton swabs per pound of body weight. It can get costly… so hey, thanks.) Well, as much as I like it on Kaztropharius, we left the moment they opened the cage door, overdue as we were for the next booking on our super-fantastic ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour. A little place called…. The “Goldilocks” Planet.

It was kind of a long passage, so we had some time to rehearse. Matt wanted to polish off some older material. We ran through a few numbers in the hold of our cheap rental spaceship – a bit of a challenge, since there’s no artificial gravity (or genuine gravity, for that matter). John’s sticks were flying all over the place, Matt’s bass amp kept unplugging itself, every time I hit a chord my legs would go up to the ceiling… it did add another dimension of effort to the whole enterprise, I must say. We asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to help us keep it together, just so we’d have someone to blame when it floated all to hell. Damn you, Marvin! 

What was our Thanksgiving like? Well, about as good as it can get in deep space. We brought out a couple of days’ rations and squished it all together in the shape of a roasted turkey. Then we buried it, because it was disgusting. Burial in space, you understand… you put the waste in the wasted disposal tubes and order Marvin to hit the eject button. Then we gather around the starboard port, like the little family that we are, and watch the mangled wads of tofu disperse into the void. That’s what we call Thanksgiving.

Well, back to the inspection line. B.T.W. – if you’re watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, look for us. Through the miracle of holographic imagery (thanks to ingenuity of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor), we’ll be performing on the ACME Markets / BIG M float, right below the massive generic bread loaf balloon. (The now-defunct supermarkets decided to share a float this year to cut costs.) Watch us… then SHOP, SHOP, SHOP!

(Note to parade organizer: Send check to Big Green, Abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, Nowheresville, NY, 13502.)

Usual Rubbish

The big show.

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Good evening, everybody… glad you could tune in. This is Joe of Big Green, and I’m joined here by my bandmate/brother Matt Perry, mad scientist Mitch Macaphee, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant).

We’re running this little web-a-thon to raise funds for our bail, frankly. That’s why we’re broadcasting from this cramped little cell in a Kaztropharian jail. Yes, yes… we landed back in the crowbar hotel here on Kaztropharius 137b  thanks to the efforts of Mitch, here, who took it upon himself to start playing ducks and drakes with the planet’s gravitational field. Long story short, it ended up more drakes than ducks, and a pound of flour on Kaztropharius 137b now clocks in at about five tons. At 37 drachmas a pound… well, you do the math. No one can afford the stuff. Bread factories are closing down. Bread riots have plagued the capital. And as the last pockets of resistance are vanquished, the emperor gazes ruefully down from his citadel and ponders the fate of his… his…

Okay, I got a little far afield there. Suffice to say, the authorities weren’t too pleased by Mitch’s placing of a massive technological thumb on the scale of every commodity on the planet. To say nothing of the Kaztropharians’ self-esteem. They all weigh several tons now, and most are too ashamed to go to the beach. (Of course, here on Kaztropharius 137b, the beaches all front pools of liquid methane… so if you were considering this a possible tourist destination, consider again.) So, into the hoosegow we went. Sad but true. Got any good ideas about getting out of here? Seriously, if you ever did time on this planet and found a tunnel to the nearest launch pad, get in touch with us pronto…. like NOW.

Right then, on to the phones. What’s that? We HAVE no phones? What the hell kind of telethon is this going to be? Oh, I see … no cameras either. Well, that would seem to eliminate the need for phones. Stupid Kaztropharian prison! Okay, so I’m calling out to you surfers out there, right now, over the interWebs, from a great, great distance away (but not so far that we don’t have wifi). GET US OUT OF HERE!

Did you get that? Not sure how I would know. Hey, Matt… you shout for a while.

Usual Rubbish

Find a seat and…

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There’s a lot I could say at this juncture, Mitch. A whole lot… but I think I’ll just hold my tongue. Don’t want to spend time in a Kaztropharian jail if you don’t have to.

Oh, hi…. We’ve found our way to planet Kaztropharius 137b with both hands, as you might divine from that last bit of dialogue – the latest venue on our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour of the galaxy. How do you tour a whole galaxy exactly? Quite simple – just jump on the ship before we take off… next time. Right now we’re deep in the middle of nowhere, anchored to a planet that seems to like our music (something in the air, I think, makes it sound better up here… perhaps a hallucinogenic quality).  Kaztropharius 137b (I think I’ve got that spelling correct) is a solid little globe with a nickel core. Molten nickel, I’m told – I can’t say for certain, since I’ve never been there, but it seems a reasonable assumption.  

Our first couple of performances here were well received. The third, well… a little less enthusiastic. Okay, so now we’re borderline in trouble with the law on Kaztropharius 137b, and I’m not entirely sure why. It may have something to do with Mitch’s extracurricular activities while we’re busy on stage entertaining the natives. He and the two Lincolns tend to find their own entertainment, whereas Marvin (my personal robot assistant) keeps close to the band, ready to jump in when we forget a chord, or a lyric, or an entire song, perhaps. (He’s got this teleprompter screen he hangs around his neck for handy messaging… though just lately he seems to be running infomercials on the sucker.)

I don’t know – we probably just wore out our welcome. The Kaztropharians have always been fairly hospitable, even when Mitch made the mistake of sending us back through a time vortex to their Pleistocene era back when we visited here in September 2003. (Or was that their “plastocene” era? Not sure.) They didn’t get particularly sore at us, even if we inadvertently changes a few things about their remote history, like the evolution of certain essential plants and animals. (Hey… somebody should have labeled them. How the hell was I supposed to know?) Now Lincoln, Mitch, and company apparently have found another way to cheese them off.  

Anywho, they want us gone, and who can blame them. Three nights worth of Big Green tunes and pretty much any of you would feel the same way. (Don’t all contradict me at once out there. Come on – throw me a freaking bone!)