Tag Archives: mitch

Usual Rubbish

Mars Zero.

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I don’t know, Mitch. It could work, or maybe not. Let’s give it a shot, then. Just promise me one thing – no launch tests in the courtyard, okay? Last time you tried a stunt like that the neighbors called in the local SWAT team. It took all of our collective savings to get Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out of jail.

Talk about LAME!Oh, hi. Just settling a few details with our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee, recently repatriated from the dwarf planet Ceres. Mitch is helping us plan the launch of Big Green’s newest venture. Let me give you the background. You’ve all heard of Bas Lansdorp’s Mars One project, no doubt. Lansdorp is inviting volunteers to go on a one-way mission to colonize Mars. He says he can get the whole thing going in time for a 2025 launch date.

Well, here at Big Green’s abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we way that’s pure bullshit. Lansdorp is obviously engaging in gross exaggeration – an exercise in self-aggrandizement, no doubt. 2025 indeed! The notion is ludicrous on its face. Why, with Mitch’s help, we could get to Mars tomorrow (or, at least, next week sometime). And it wouldn’t be a suicide mission like Lansdorp’s; our missions are decidedly two-way. That’s just how we roll.

So we’ve decided to launch a new project we’re calling Mars Zero. No, it’s not a new low-calorie candy bar or soft drink. Mars Zero is our effort to claim Mars for colonization a full five years before Lansdorp’s goons get there. The red planet is ours! We saw it first! (I’m speaking for Mitch, here. He gets a little overheated about this stuff.)

Want to be a part of the Mars Zero crew, set to leave the surly bonds of Earth in April of 2020? Just contact us via our comment form or our Facebook page or our Twitter account – whatever. We’ll test your endurance through feats of strength and … um … endurance. (Send us valuable government coupons, known as money, and we’ll waive the feats of strength.)

Cowboy Scat on YouTube. Speaking of endurance tests, we’ve uploaded the first installment of our album Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick to our YouTube channel. Give it a listen and let us know what you chuck … I mean, think.

Usual Rubbish

Space invaders.

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He’s screaming about “the probe” again. It’s like he’s the Six Million Dollar man or something. Does anyone have smelling salts? Maybe we should just hit him with one of the leftover hammers. Any other good ideas?

Mitch ... not another monster.Well, as you can see, we have had a house invasion. The perpetrator? None other than our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee. When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft started orbiting his adopted home world of Ceres, he became extremely agitated. Smoke began to pour out of his ears and mouth, like VOL, from Star Trek. He simply could not live with the idea of being spied upon by the space agency. What if they stole his ideas? he thought…. then his plan to (dare I say it?) RULE THE WORLD would be scuttled. Shot down by a measly little, tin-pot space robot. THAT MAKES ME SO MAD …. !

Ahem. Sorry – I was channeling Mitch for a moment. Anyway, he denounced the NASA probe as a space invader and started bombarding it with deadly baritold rays. Deadly, that is, for vegetation on Gamma Hydra 4, but completely ineffective against ion-powered orbiter spacecrafts. Frustrated, he packed up his portable lab and lifted off. That’s the good news. The BAD news is that he landed here, at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, mad as a badger and ready to take his quarters back from Anti-Lincoln, who had scattered all of his junk over the floor of Mitch’s lab. (Anti-Lincoln’s gotten into origami in a big way, so the whole room is full of paper shards and scissors.)

Now Mitch talks (or shouts) in his sleep, and by day he’s formulating theorems to destroy his imaginary enemies. I think he’s been on that asteroid way too long, as a matter of personal opinion. But please – keep that to yourself! I may be subjected to a withering barrage of baritold rays!

Projects. Matt and I are working on some new songs for Ned Trek. I will also be posting some songs from Cowboy Scat on our YouTube channel very soon, for those of you who like listening to music on YouTube. I’ll post, tweet, whatever when they’re up.

 

Usual Rubbish

Ceres rising.

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Look … they were bound to find out sooner or later, right? I mean … you can’t commandeer a whole planet … even a dwarf planet … without someone taking notice at some stage. Mitch? Mitch, are you still there? Hello?

Whoa. You're all steamed up, Mitch!Right, well … I was just talking to our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee via Skype, and it seems he has a problem. And when Mitch has a problem, frankly, we all have a problem. That’s the thing with mad scientists. One day they’re inventing something dumb and innocuous, like Marvin (my personal robot assistant). The next they’re assembling the elements of some plane-smashing behemoth or a diabolical extreme weather machine (though I think that last one has already been invented by the mad “scientists” we call America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry).

As you may recall, we’ve been wondering what Mitch has been up to for the last couple of years. Last we’d heard he’d gone on an extended mad science bender in Madagascar. (We’d been expecting the place to begin levitating or emitting deadly baritold rays at any time.) Turns out we’d been misinformed. Mitch had somehow relocated himself to the former asteroid, now dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun at a respectable distance, in the deadly asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. (Yes, asteroid “belt”. Imagine our solar system as a middle-aged American; Jupiter is his/her corn-syrup enhanced abdomen, poking out from just south of this so-called belt.)

Well, as you might imagine, Ceres is the kind of place where a mad scientist can pursue his passions undisturbed. Until today. Nasa’s “Dawn” space probe (apparently underwritten by the people who make the detergent) has just achieved orbit around the dwarf planet. That’s why I got the interplanetary Skype call – Mitch is livid! He obviously thought he had the whole place to himself, oversized golf ball that it is, but apparently NASA has been working on this “invasion,” as Mitch calls it, for the last seven years. “Stupid Obama!” he shouted over Skype, and I nodded quietly to myself.

All right, well … this may not end well. We’ll keep you posted on what emerges from this encounter (assuming it isn’t painfully obvious).

Usual Rubbish

Old home week.

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You can’t just look through the telescope. You have to squint really hard to see them. That’s because, well, they’re either really, really small or really, really far away.

What are we doing now? Good question. Aside from working on yet another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our somewhat-monthly podcast, we are trying to catch up with some of the incidental characters in the shaggy dog story of our lives. Isolated from the world as we may be here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, buried in a mountain of snow, we still have a fitful internet connection and at least one hand free. We can track down pretty much anyone on the other end of that “series of tubes” known as the Web. (Precious little else we can accomplish, at least until Spring.)

For instance, what is Mitch Macaphee doing? Well … a quick investigation using various search engines turned up next to nothing. So I guess what I said in the last paragraph is not entirely true, at least when it comes to the nut jobs that hang around with this band. In any case, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) suggested clicking on Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device and just shouting Mitch’s name into the swirling space-time vortex it creates. We did that and, interestingly, heard back almost immediately. He’s in Colorado. I don’t think I probably have to tell you why. (Things usually look a little cloudy through the time portal, but I don’t think that’s the reason we could barely see the guy.)

The Pillars of CreationThen there’s sFshzenKlyrn, our occasional sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon. It seems sFshzenKlyrn has gotten back together with his old band, “The Pillars of Creation”. I didn’t actually find that out from him directly. They apparently did another photo shoot with NASA, using the Hubble Space Telescope. (I hear they’re doing a promo spread in Sky and Telescope). If you look closely, you can see how sFshzenKlyrn has changed over the past couple of years. A little older, a little wiser, a little cloudier, perhaps.

So, sure … keeping our hands busy, our minds engaged. Recording new numbers. And calling old friends out of the blue. Sounds like winter to me.

Usual Rubbish

Pulling it together.

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Holy Moses. Where did all this snow come from? The sky? That’s where it ordinarily comes from. There have been exceptions, sure, but … how likely is that?

Now, that's a better fit, tubeyWell, here we are. First days of the year and we’re already snowed in. Mountains of the stuff piled up against the front door of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. Just as well that it’s relatively congenial in here, that is if you don’t mind being cooped up with crazy people. There’s Matt, of course, though he mostly occupies himself with tending the wild creatures and feathered friends. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) does have some annoying habits, much as I’ve tried to program them out of him. (I’m not a scientist – I just play one on the internet.)

The most troublesome companion we have in the Mill is anti-Lincoln, the antimatter doppelganger of the Great Emancipator, who was chrono-teleported into our midst some years back by Mitch Macaphee, using Trevor James Constable’s patented orgone generating device. The device is, shall we say, a less-than-optimal time portal/matter transportation gizmo, so it made an antimatter copy of Lincoln as he was passing through the wormhole on his way to his future, our present. Lincoln has since returned to his Civil War glory days, while anti-Lincoln has remained behind to vex us unceasingly. Arrogant, selfish clone!

Our companion the man-sized tuber is not that bad, though he does require some tending. He had retired to the courtyard and was beginning to take root, but his retirement planning didn’t take Winter into account, and as the days grew colder, he yanked himself out of the ground and rolled back inside, taking his place in a terracotta planter we had lying around. Of course, one of us has to bring him water, plant food, reading material, etc. He’s been asking for wi-fi lately. I keep telling him, just get a freaking data plan, but he won’t listen.

Right, so … distractions aside, we are planning the next phase of Big Green’s conquest of the universe. Well … not the WHOLE universe; just one little tiny corner of it. Namely, this web site, where the next episode of our podcast will appear at some point. Come snow or high water.

Usual Rubbish

Inside October.

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I think time may be stretching, or rather, elongating. I don’t know the correct term – get a physicist on the phone. Or call our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee – he may have the answer. All I know is that July turned into August, September turned into October, and so on. I can feel the holidays crawling up my ass.

How did I end up on this crapfest?In any case, you may have noticed that the October installment of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast has been posted, sent out to ipods and other devices, RSS’ed around the globe, and played on somebody’s smartphone somewhere. Better late than never, I always say … but then, I am one of the people producing the podcast, so from another perspective, late may not be better than never. Be that as it may, here is a look under the hood of this latest audio crapfest:

Ned Trek 20: The Shamesters of Quadzillion. In this, the lastest episode of our ongoing bizarre-ass Star Trek parody, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney and his senior officers are captured and held prisoner on the planet Quadzillion, where they are compelled by the resident oligarchs to compete in the political media arena with other mindless also-rans. Guest stars include Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Chief Justice John Roberts, Sheldon Adelson, Charles Koch, and Foster Friess. (Classic Star Trek fan reference: Gamesters of Triskelion)

Song: The Bishop. This is a selection from our 2008 album International House. Matt wrote, arranged, and I believe even mixed this track. A mostly acoustic number with some nice-ish choral parts.

Put the Phone Down. Our conversation this month has a number of minor themes, probably the most prominent of which is a virtual visit from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is apparently hawking his new book so broadly it even got onto our lousy podcast. Matt excoriates me for my technical ineptitude, then talks about his encounter with Egbert Bagg. Kissinger joins us for a song.

Song: North Camp Pasture. One of my songs from our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This one is about Rick’s hunting camp, which used to bear a remarkably offensive racist name before that became politically inconvenient for the ambitious Rick and his kin. More broadly about the legacy of racism, Jim Crow, in modern American life.

Usual Rubbish

Sweep up.

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Oh, sweep up! I’ve been sweeping up the tips I’ve made! I’ve been livin’ on Gatorade, planning my getaway!

Grab a broom, hey willya?Apologies to Paul Simon. Actually, except for the Gatorade part, that sounds like the story of my life just lately. Trying to tidy up the cavernous squat house we call the Cheney Hammer Mill ahead of the coming winter months. Nothing worse than a dusty house when the snow is up to the rafters – ask anybody who’s spent a few frigid seasons here on the dark side of the year. So, just plying the old broom across the brick floor.

Marvin (my personal robot) is running the vacuum in the background. Not a vacuum cleaner, you understand – an actual time/space vacuum he created with the orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind so many years ago. Amazing how that thing still runs after years of neglect, no one to tend its complex servos and circuit boards, not even our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee, who used to tinker with the thing from time to time before he relocated to his new lab in Madagascar. (Don’t go there! It may no longer even exist, the way he messes with the space-time continuum.)

While I’ve been occupying myself with domestic duties, I’ve been listening to a one-off CD of some of our Ned Trek songs. They need a little work, but I don’t doubt that we’ll release them in some more finalized form one day. I’m contemplating a late year holiday release or two on YouTube, maybe a collection of Ned songs sometime after that. It’s adding up to a lot of material, actually – about 25 songs and counting, pretty much all of which have showed up on THIS IS BIG GREEN in draft form. I know, I know … sounds like another Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yep, well … that’s how we roll these days.

Hey, listen to me, right? Interstellar tour, new album, YouTube videos. Slow down, maestro, you move too fast. You got to … hoo boy, there’s Paul Simon again. Stop it, man. More later.

Usual Rubbish

August down.

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Hey, let's go to outer spaceMan, it’s so hot in here. Marvin, can you turn up the air conditioning? Oh, right … our air conditioning is a broken skylight. Sigh. Okay … break another skylight, then. Use my forty-foot pole … the one I use to keep my distance from things (and people) I don’t like.

Yes, friends … it is the end of summer, past the dog days. August is coughing up blood, writhing in the blistering sun. (Look on the bright side, brother.) Not much going on around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, as you might have suspected. I laid down a piano part on perhaps one of the most ludicrous recordings I’ve ever played on. I saw some bluejays in the courtyard. What else happened? Not mucho.

Whoever said being a musician is tantamount to perpetual unemployment was on to something. (Hey … I think that was me.) You can see why we often opt for these less-than-optimal interstellar tours, in lieu of the more profitable terrestrial variety. Pretty simple, really … crappy work is better than no work at all. We are always open to seeking a new audience, even if that means holding our breath for weeks at a time. (There must be a better way to travel through space. Where’s Gene Roddenberry when you need him?)

Once we get finished with the current set of recordings, Big Green will likely take a romp around the known solar system; maybe a 2-week Autumn tour to promote … I don’t know, whatever we have to toss out there. Trouble is, on most alien worlds, the music fans have six or seven arm-like appendages, so you have to have a lot of product to keep them satisfied. Hell, they can absorb our entire canon and still have several arms free. We’ve got to get busy!

My hope is that, this time, wherever it is we’re traveling to, we have the assistance of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser. His absence was sorely felt on our last, disastrous foray into the galactic hinterlands. Which proves that having a crazy driver is better than no driver at all. (At least out where there’s very little to crash into.)

Usual Rubbish

Exodus.

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Lincoln has returned to the 1860s via the Orgone Generating Device intertemporal portal, and best of luck to him. Hope he doesn’t run into any dental problems while he’s back there. Whiskey and pliers, that’s what he’ll have to look forward to in that grisly century.

Big GreenWell, that kind of solves his problem. What about the rest of us in the Big Green collective? A kind of dwindling party, it seems. Lincoln is back in Washington (though his evil doppelganger Anti-Lincoln remains). Washington is presumably back in Lincoln (Nebraska). Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, is still on an extended tour of resort hotels, attending mad science conferences and watching the sun set on five continents with a glass of bourbon in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other. Now that our interstellar tour is over, our occasional guitarist sFshzenKlyrn has returned to his home planet of Zenon in the Small Megellanic Cloud.

Let’s see … what else is in the news? Oh, yeah … the mansized tuber has decided at long last to take root in the courtyard. He’s pushing twenty now, and feels it’s high time for him to settle down and start a garden. Hard to argue with a root vegetable. We’ll see how long THAT lasts. Christ on a bike, about the only ones around here I can count on are my brother Matt and Marvin (my personal robot assistant), This looks like a good spotthough I caught the latter thumbing through the want ads the other day. It seems there are more opportunities out there for personal robot assistants than there were just a few years ago. I may have to start PAYING him, for chrissake.

The bottom line is that, with all of these departures and major life decisions going on, it’s getting pretty quiet around this big old barn of a place. We’ve talked about finding someplace smaller to squat, maybe opt for another three-room lean-to of the kind we occupied back in our Sri Lanka days. So long as it’s big enough to produce a podcast in, we’re good.

Usual Rubbish

What’s next.

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How about a bicycle tour around Scandinavia? They don’t have any big hills there, do they? Oh. Okay, well … how about Holland? Right. Too many stoned drivers. So I guess, by your logic, Colorado is the worst of all possible worlds for bike tours.

Big GreenYeah, well … Lincoln didn’t think that last comment was too funny, and apparently now he’s determined to jump back into the past, where (arguably) he belongs … even though in much of the past, he’s dead. So I guess he’s saying he’d rather be dead than spend another summer with Big Green. That’s just plain sad, you know? I’m sure plenty of less revered ex presidents would be more than glad to spend the summer with us, rather than in some poorly defined version of America’s past. But Lincoln does not count himself among that number.

So, it looks like pretty soon we’ll be going down to the cobweb-choked basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home, and dusting off Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device – the only piece of technological instrumentation capable of putting Lincoln back where he belongs. I’m a little nervous about doing this in Mitch Macaphee’s absence. He is, after all, our mad science advisor, and I hesitate to engage in the fraught discipline of mad science without his counsel. But … my president has called upon me, and I must respond.

Send me back four score and seventy yearsHave you stopped laughing yet? Good. I’ll continue.

Part of the issue here is that we’re just not sure what to do with ourselves, man. What the hell is next for Big Green? The bike tour idea was suggested by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), so that means we arrived at it almost entirely at random. I’m not sure who told us this (perhaps our first manager, way back in the day), but I’m pretty sure we’ve established that it’s not a good idea to make major life decisions through any process that resembles random selection. We need to put on our thinking caps.

Caps on? Great. Think, Big Green, think. Get me your ideas by midnight Thursday. Or not. I’m easy.