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.
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.
Sensitive artists, these rock musicians. Well, let me qualify that. I’m actually referring to the individuals, human and non-human, who hang around with rock musicians. I’m talking about your man-sized tuber, your Marvin (my personal robot assistant), your Mitch Macaphee, your Lincoln and anti-Lincoln, etc. We of Big Green proper (brother Matt, brother-in-law John, and I) have asked these hangers-on for suggestions on where we should take the next interstellar tour. Of course, this is a bit like placing 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters and hoping for Hamlet to pop out of one of the carriages. Still, you do get lucky from time to time, and just today – I swear – one of them made a suggestion that made sense. Actual sense, in a wholly non-ironic way.
I’m sure you think we should find better things to do with our time than idly ponder the finer points of our tour itinerary when, in fact, it is totally out of our hands… and into the calloused paws of our promoter, Admiral Gonutz (ret.). Well, if you want to know the sad truth…. we don’t. This is the stuff that music biz is made of, friends. A little bit of playing and a whole lot of waiting around to play, as Keith Richards put it many long years ago. I personally prefer John Lennon’s response when someone asked him how he liked France, and he said something like, it was a car and a plane and a car and a room and a car and a plane. With us, it’s more like a skateboard and a rocket and an airless void and a volcano and an ocean and a steamboat and an ambulance and a mental ward.
Hey, out there. How long has it been since you were last here? A week, already? I’ve spent practically that whole time trying to fix my A-90 keyboard controller. I suppose if you were to be charitable about it, you could describe me as technically challenged. And with help of the sort you get from Mitch Macaphee (Big Green‘s mad science advisor) and Marvin (my personal robot assistant), I feel like the proverbial one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. Hell, if this is a horse race, I’m the nag hopping along on one hoof. (Hmmmm… what other colorfully rustic aphorisms can I employ here?) It’s hard enough trying to prepare for a tour under these conditions. But when you’re also dealing with the uncaring vacuum of space, it’s, well, kind of life-threatening.
highly repugnant flavors.) I suppose it goes without saying that Tubey never realized his dream-career, but isn’t that the case for most of us, eh? How many of you out there wanted to be space men or jet pilots or mountain climbers or steamship captains? (Only three? C’mon – it’s got to be more than just three of you!)
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…)
Oh, hi, reader. (I think you’re out there, somewhere). Just reharmonizing a thing or two before Big Green gets underway with their upcoming interstellar tour 2010 (theme not yet announced). Matter of no small necessity, actually, as I just blew out a key on my Roland A-90ex – the A below middle C, as it happens. I think it died of overuse. (We seem to play a lot in A and A minor.) But, frugal as we are, rather than replace the sucker, I’ve been working around it. Hey… we’ve got to keep our tinder dry for this tour, man. Wouldn’t want to be halfway out to Aldebaran without a spare dime in our pockets, now would we? (Would we? Could be a question for Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, who is an unaffiliated expert on interstellar economics. I myself cannot be certain. A dime COULD be worth a FORTUNE in space…)
that’s it. Just like the rest of us.
Man, I’ll tell you – tempers run short here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in the middle of July. All this heat… it’s driving us mad! Those of us who weren’t mad to begin with, that is. (Strangely, it kind of drives Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sane.) I’m just trying to clear out the clutter a little bit, and I threw out a beam of wood. I mean literally, I threw it out the window in hopes the trash collectors would pick it up. Next thing I know, it’s back in the freaking hallway. I guess Lincoln (or perhaps anti-Lincoln… I keep mixing them up because the heat makes them switch personalities) has grown attached to that particular fallen roof beam, or was perhaps planning to whittle it into something more attractive. Don’t know for sure, but he appears to have taken the heat. Calm down, Mr. President!
Still, as many of you probably know, the main consideration with these tours is logistics. I don’t know if you’ve followed our previous outings, but typically we run into some kind of technical or manpower-related difficulties at some point in the proceedings, then mayhem ensues. That’s been the pattern. Why, you ask? Well, it could be because we’re just plain unlucky. Or maybe because we’re getting a little old and codger-like. But I think the most convincing explanation is that we rely too much on frail human faculties to carry us from solar system to solar system. We need more automation. And watching all that footage of those BP robots working furiously on that spill in the Gulf, I’m reminded that robots – excluding for a moment Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – are an under-utilized resource in this operation.
Yes, friends, we’re back home in Indiana… I mean, in upstate New York again. Back at the fabled and storied (actually, three stories, plus the roof and basement) Cheney Hammer Mill. We arrived on the redeye late last night… and by “redeye” I don’t mean an overnight flight from Andrews Airforce Base; rather, an eye-popping super-light speed journey through the outer solar system with a drunken mad scientist at the controls, half-empty quart of redeye clutched in his left paw. Weaving? Yes, we had that. Sudden drops in altitude? Most def. And what about those dramatic gravitational variances? Well, we endured our share, clinging to the exposed plumbing of the upper deck (some of which emitted an eerie green glow – uuuuhhhllll), rolling with the turbulence as our inebriated navigator snaked his way between the planets like celestial highway cones. There were a couple of exciting moments – Mitch Macaphee had missed the memo about that new Saturnian ring, and we plowed right through the sucker with inches to spare – but even with one eye closed (and one brain neutralized), we managed to hit our earthly target.
man, I pulled open the front door and let the uniformed individuals in. They were looking for the man-sized tuber, they told me, and would only say why directly to the tuber himself. When he wheeled himself into the room, one of our visitors hung a ceremonial ribbon around his… well… neck, I guess you could call it. “Congratulations, Mr. Mayor,” said the woman to the tuber, “and welcome home.” And I was like… and tubey was like… and Mitch was like… what the fuck, we were ALL like something I obviously can’t describe, but which approximates surprise and flabbergastedness. (At least not using words. Gestures, perhaps.)
Folks just north of here almost elected the intellectual equivalent of a box of rocks as their congressman. And what the hell, this seemed like it could redound significantly to our benefit, know what I mean? After all, we are just SQUATTERS here, no defined rights at least in the local codebook (except the right to be taken to jail). Now that he’s mayor, tubey can keep the heat off of us. He can, I don’t know, appoint Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as Public Safety Commissioner and Mitch Macaphee as his, I don’t know, budget director. I’m just thinking out loud here. Well, that sounded all well and good, and as they led the new mayor off to his cush mansion in the middle of town, we all sat back and waited for those benefits to start rolling in the front door like over-ripe oranges, fresh-plucked from the plush fronds of the juiciest tree in town. Mmmmm, boy – solid privilege!