Interstellar Tour Log: March 3, 2014
Planet #47 in NASA list, just south of Aldebaran
Okay, that was the planet of the dinosaurs. Check. Marvin? Be sure to put that one on the “do not visit” list. We should have known that from John Carradine’s experience back in the 1970s, but oh well.
Right, if you’re just joining us, Big Green is furiously working its way through the list of 715 new planets NASA recently put out, looking for halfway decent venues. We’re not picky, you know. It’s not like we need a proper dressing room with a row of lightbulbs arrayed above a long mirror and chilled Champagne in a bucket. Hell, we’ll settle for an unlocked fire door on one side of the stage. (I can just about hear some indie musician out there saying, “Big Green needs stages to perform on? What a bunch of prima donnas!”)
The first couple of planets on the list have been kind of a bust. Turns out, all NASA managed to do was catalog all of the seemingly habitable planets depicted in science fiction movies and television shows over the past 40 years. Not that that isn’t useful, but frankly, the Planet of the Dinosaurs has little to recommend it …. except for an outsized population of dinosaurs, and some bad-looking cave people with voices straight out of a Jay Ward cartoon. (And names like “Sookee”. Sookee? Really, space people – you can do better than that.)
Interstellar Tour Log: March 5, 2014
Planet #163 in NASA list, near Rigel
Marvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered (or was shoved out the door, one of the two) to go down to the surface of this rocky little world and see if there were any performance venues worth pissing in. The place looks a bit like west Texas, so songs from Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick should go over pretty well here. I know, it’s a little dicey using Marvin as an advance man, but Lincoln is kind of busy with his model ship building hobby and the man-sized tuber has his roots all tangled in something at the moment. (A couple of visits ago, Marvin was on the surface of a planet for six hours before he figured out it was Metaluna, the planet from “This Island Earth”. Talk about an oversight. How the hell many times do you have to watch that movie before you recognize the set?)
Looks like he’s encountered some kind of life form. Show him the contract, Marvin! Ask him if he needs a pen!