Glad that’s over. Anything I hate, it’s packing over a holiday weekend. But we’re under way at last, back into the welcoming arms of deep, deep space. GJ 1132b, here we come!
I suppose I should spare you the details of the last week – the rush job of putting this expeditionary gig together, the foibles regarding our interplanetary transportation, etc. (Just try booking a four-engine ion drive spacecraft on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Freaking impossible!) As you may recall from last week’s post (particularly if you have nothing better to do with your life than to read this useless blog), Big Green has decided to pay a call on our newest neighbor in space – the recently discovered dwarf planet GJ 1132b – and see if we can discover some gainful employment there; namely, a one night stand for a terrestrial band.
Okay, so we dubbed this BIG GREEN’S CAPER BEYOND THE KUIPER (BELT), which is literally true, as GJ 1132b is out there, man, really out there. We had to name the gig in order to get some support from our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (whose indie imprint is named Hegephonic), still run by Indonesian military thugs. They’ve got deep pockets, though, and they and our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee go way back, so he was able to connive … I mean, convince them into ponying up some of their ill gotten gains to fund this reckless foray into parts unknown. Mitch is just that good.
The transport was a major problem, though. All of our previous rides were unavailable. Mitch had inadvertently vaporized our last spacecraft during the course of an experiment (one he was conducting on behalf of those same Generals from Jakarta he was conniving this past week). GJ 1132b is 39 light years away, so we needed something with a little heft. It couldn’t be one of those sub-compact crafts you take to Mars and back, right? There was a good deal of head scratching over that issue, until finally Mitch remembered an old colleague who had built an interstellar spacecraft for his own amusement at some point, then just parked it in his garage next to his Land Rover. Hobbyists!
Anywho, Mitch sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to pick it up. Big mistake – Marvin got lost on the way home, so we lost a couple of solar days, delaying our launch until Thanksgiving. Let them eat space! See you on GJ 1132b!
There is one slight wrinkle, of course. Planet GJ 1132b 
How can we be sure there are music fans on XZ9-Marvin 14? (Note: Before I get flooded with angry messages from disgruntled astrophysicists who have never had an opportunity to name a planet, consider this a planetoid pseudonym just for the purposes of this conversation.) It’s what Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, calls the fourth principle of astrophysical convenience: Any planet or planetoid large enough to land on has to be home to some kind of sentient life form, preferably one that speaks English. (The third principle is about breathable air.)
alarm clock, which now takes the form of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) setting off one of his servo-alarms while standing next to my cot.
Someone’s handing me a note. It reads, “You idiot. It’s probably Marvin (your personal robot assistant). Mitch Macaphee just made him wi-fi compatible.” Oh, right. So Marvin doesn’t even need a smart phone to buy a bunch of useless junk on credit. All he needs is the credit. Fortunately, he doesn’t have … doesn’t have … hey … where’s my wallet? MARVIN!!
Song: It Should’ve Been Me – The closer on our 2013 album 
I guess there’s a renewed interest in the red planet since NASA recently determined that there’s evidence of flowing water on the surface – mostly ice melt in the mountains. Hell, we could have told them that. I can’t remember which interstellar tour it was, but one time we played a ski chalet on Mount Olympus. The dry ice was up to our ankles, but there was some water ice as well – mostly in our cocktails, though. Pretty cushy arrangement, but again … not our audience. And dry, very dry.
Imagining Henry Kissinger trying out for the Monkees back in the late sixties, like Charles Manson did. Hanky’s Monkees, it might have been called. Or perhaps not. (This stemmed from our recollection of an earlier episode when we pondered whether or not Davy Jones might have been killed by primate poachers.)
We’re thinking about another interstellar tour. Now that Pluto is a better-known venue, that seems like a good place to start. Easy to find for our regular audiences. Small, yes. Cold, certainly. And a certain lack of amenities. But Big Green is a decidedly plain clothes gig, man. We don’t kowtow to the suits. That kind of thing is what we call “weak sauce.” We’re sticking it to “the man” – especially Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has apparently entered some kind of beatnik phase. I think he’s been watching reruns of Dobie Gillis. Or Gilligan’s Island, perhaps. He’s rocking a mop top just lately – not sure where he’s going with that.
anti-Lincoln, our resident language history scholar, to find me a gloss on that. So far no luck.