Winter01tour

BIG GREEN TOUR LOG.

(Winter 2001)

Dispatch #1 -- 10/28/2001

Fire Rockets!

Whoa...did someone say something? Did I say something? For a brisk moment there I thought I was rear admiral Stufflebeam or somebody. Get the lead out, you pusillanimous bacon-eating glow worms! YOU HEARD ME!!

What a "warrior president" I would have made, eh? All I need is a face like a ventriloquist's dummy and a platoon of marines flanking me fifty deep on a side. They could all just flex their muscles and carry me along to the next photo op, feet dangling, head held high. Meanwhile, somebody's up ahead arranging for a few photogenic children of color to place around me. Piece of cake...hand me the reins!

Well, it's time to change here in Sri Lanka. And no, I don't mean Greg's new song...nor do I meant the bit about Eastern Standard Time turning to Daylight Savings Time (you know...fall ahead, spring back). I mean it's time to change into our pressure suits and begin our early, early pre launch procedures in preparation for the start of Big Green's Interplanetary Tour 2001. We will be disembarking from the chewy center of the Cheney Hammer Factory courtyard in exactly 6 days from now. And I don't know about you, but I'm damned excited. Why, you ask? And well you may...

For one thing, we've received letters of commitment (complete with complimentary unidentified crystal powder) from some of our most valued compatriots and hangers-on. In fact, that poison pen letter I received last week was from none other than Dr. Hump himself, who has agreed to accompany us on one leg of the tour (the left one, I believe). In other news, Trevor James Constable sent us an "ether-gram" saying he would meet us on Titan and travel the following few stops with us, assuming we stock the ship's galley with plenty of Necco wafers. (Matt says, "Nooooo problem.")

Of course, Neccos aren't the only thing we'll be needing to accommodate our guests. Before we sign ships articles on any of these losers...I mean, cronies, we will have to make damn sure that we've got enough protective gear to fend off any unanticipated terrorist assaults beyond the exosphere. Naturally, I put sFshzenKlyrn in charge of tour security because of his long experience with law enforcement (and his remarkable resemblance to Tom Ridge.)

Our erstwhile Zenite friend immediately got his hands on a genuine Barney Fife squad care search light -- ideal for shining into the faces of unsuspecting teenage terrorists out parking on a lonely hillside with the windows all steamed up. Aw, Andy!

With characteristic aplomb, sFshzenKlyrn also snagged a few cases of traditional rubber gloves, the ideal prophylactic device for dealing with unfamiliar or suspicious mail. Not that we'll be receiving any mail during the tour, but...you understand. Don't you? (He can always make balloons out of them.)

While sFshzenKlyrn is busy with these important matters, and Matt and John are provisioning our vessel for the long journey ahead, I've been desperately trying to remix some old live takes from last year's tour so that we may have some sort of product to hawk -- all this to appease the bean counters at Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc. With professor Mitch Macaphee's assistance, I may have something before the end of the tour...but god only knows what. Gangrene, perhaps.

Dispatch #2 -- 11/4/2001

Lift off, we have lift off...

That's right, kids....Big Green has begun its lopsided journey to a dozen tour destinations in the outer solar system, packed like sardines into a crate that shouldn't even be used for shipping oranges, but that seems to be keeping the weather out, at least. Something to be grateful for. (That deep space weather is harsh!)

With a cloud of noxious vapor and a deafening poketa-poketa-poketa, our rent-to-own spacecraft lurched from its moorings in the courtyard of our temporary home at the Cheney Hammer Factory here in rural Sri Lanka. Though the hours leading up to our departure were somewhat chaotic, I have to say that this was the most trouble-free tour kick-off we've experienced in a good many years. The provisioning was completed on time. I recorded a new phone message and left a sticky note on the factory to warn the mailman (I think he'll see it). We thought of everything. Even so, I feel as though I've forgotten something. Like....like......Tiny Montgomery!

Fuck, I knew this was too easy. We've gone and left our "magic genie" organist back on Terra Firma. He's probably drowning his sorrows at his favorite roadside gin-mill, the lush. How many times have I got to tell these guys? You can be late for prayer service. You can be late for supper. But you cannot be late for lift off. Just ask sFshzenKlyrn -- he'll tell you. As someone who's missed more than his share of interstellar shuttles, our Zenite friend understands the importance of a timely....hey....where is sFshzenKlyrn, anyway?

Oh, Christ! And he's in charge of security! Just yesterday he was hovering around the flight deck with a pastrami sandwich in one "hand" and a staple gun in the other, posting helpful little security handbills that don't amount to jack without him on board. One of them is about how you can use ordinary household junk as anti-personnel weapons. It's just possible that sFshzenKlyrn was so pleased with this particular posting that he may have projected himself over to Washington to share his insights with Tom Ridge and Donny Rumsfeld. What he probably won't tell them is that only he (with his internal body temperature of 453 degrees Kelvin) can easily melt an old lawnmower into a 3-inch howitzer shell. Just wait until they figure out that little trick -- they'll make sFshzenKlyrn spacemanus non grata or, in plain English, "Mother of the Year." (It loses something in translation.)

Anyway, here's our itinerary for the coming six weeks. We've added a few dates and generally made it less comprehensible.

BIG GREEN Interplanetary Tour 2001

November 5-7 Neptune

November 12-17 Uranus

November 20-22 Pluto

November 27 Saturn

November 29 Mars (1 show only)

December 1-3 Titan

December 8-11 Kaztropharius 137b

December 14 Zenon

I know just what you're going to say..."Guys! Those stops are too far apart!" Well, it's true, distance-wise. Time-wise, they're pretty close to one another. Blame our friends at Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., always eager to turn a faster profit. But fear not...once we have Trevor James Constable on board, we'll be able to push this crate beyond the arbitrary safety limits set by Hugo's Rent-A-Rocket. Trevor J. can just set up a gaggle of orgone generating devices around the engine room, let'em rip, and it's so long natural laws!

I suppose you're as disappointed as I am that Dubya won't be joining us on this journey. (We probably would have left without him, as well.) Well, as you know, the boy's got his hands full just now. Too busy for his old partying buddies, you know. That warrior-prince role is a demanding one, even on such thin gruel as the current crisis. (I guess if he's Henry V now, that would make us Falstaff, eh? Perhaps we're a nation of Falstaffs...)

Anyway, stay tuned...I'm sure sFshzenKlyrn, at least, will catch us up in time for our first performance. I'll let you know how it goes. No sleeping until then, okay?

Dispatch #3 -- 11/11/2001

Guten tag.

Hurtling through the inky void, we've encountered something quite unexpected. A Plaid Stamp redemption center, parked amongst the fragmented worlds of the asteroid belt. What a great harbinger for a successful interplanetary tour!

Though it took Tiny Montgomery a couple of days to catch us up (his shuttle was delayed by security concerns), sFshzenKlyrn was still among the missing as of four o'clock (Mars time) that first morning...until we stumbled upon the lonely Plaid Stamp outpost. It seems our trusty Zenite guitarist has been hoarding stacks of those red & white little suckers since sometime in 1962, and has finally pasted up enough 12-page booklets to get himself a heated recliner. Sweet!

Needless to say, when we chugged out of Ceres' flaccid gravitational field, we did so with a cargo hold full of designer furniture from the 1960's. That includes a mile-long sofa with matching easy chair, several kidney-shaped coffee tables, and quite a bit more. Did I say sweet? I meant "suite".

Anyway...our friends at Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., the promoters of this interplanetary tour, added a Jupiter gig onto the front end, pushing back the rest of our schedule a couple of days. I guess it was by popular demand. Our first night on this largest of the gas giants was a real bang, with legions of oddly-misshapen listeners pressing into the Great Red Spot (Jupiter's biggest club) for an earful.

Why so enthusiastic a response? Well, it seems Hegemonic contracted some hot-shot marketing firm on Callisto to promote our appearances in the Jovian system...and let me tell you, Sven, they really went overboard! I mean, our music was virtually unknown on Jupiter, so these guys resorted wholeheartedly to unscrupulous advertising practices. They've been selling us like a new model of lawnmower, hiring some cheesecake spokesmodel they call Lotta Space (who's actually an analytic biochemist with the newly-established Office of Homeland Security) and plastering exploitative posters on every blank wall in the "Spot". Underhanded and dishonest? Yeah...but I gotta' hand it to those Callistans, it brought the pikers in by the hundreds.

Money works. Just ask Michael Bloomberg (I mean, Mayor Bloomberg).

Our first couple of sets were relatively on, considering the crushing gravity of Jupiter (and the sickening methane atmosphere). Matt made a cheap tape which I hope to share with our friends back on the good old "oit". You can't hear Tiny playing his Lowery organ on most of the cuts because he was still in his bath and didn't actually set foot onstage until the final encore. Tiny is obsessive-compulsive about bathing -- something about his childhood, I believe.

His official biopic (produced in 1972 by Quinn Martin) tells how as a boy he spent whole days in the bathtub. He and his dog Sparky would play catch until Tiny's toes turned pruny. He even wrote his first organ concerto in the tub, which explains why you can hear the sound of bubbles popping in the background of the original RCA-Victor recording. It's a sickness he's labored under for a good few years. (And one we'll have to endure for the next six weeks.....arrrgh.)

We'll keep you posted, friends. Have no fear.

Dispatch #4 -- 11/18/2001

Avast, ye Earthbound swabs...

Just ten days out of Terra and we're already adopting hyper-masculine sci-fi names like Vance and Steel and...Mitch Macaphee. (I guess he had one already.) There's something about deep space that inspires a sort of hollow chocolate soldier heroism more suited to mono-syllabic grunt-like handles.

It's a pity Dubya's too busy to join us -- we could have called him "Butch."

Here's some good news: Trevor James Constable is finally on board. He reversed polarity on his patented orgone generating device so that it would act as a homing signal, and we went right to him like...like...well, like a rent-a-wreck spaceship to a reverse-polarity orgone generation homing device. Only trouble was, the thing attracted a bunch of other stuff, too. There were the usual invisible flying predators, of course. Then there were these strange metallic entities that appeared on our mess deck, right in the middle of sFshzenKlyrn's chef salad -- a mother and son, I believe, whom we later dubbed "the Steels."

The Steels and their little dog Alloy have agreed to do our weather forecasts for the rest of the journey. They've even lined up their own sponsor. Clever devils.

With Trevor James on board, now it really feels like old times. We were in truly high spirits as we approached our Saturn engagement (moved forward two weeks for security reasons). Matt popped the cork on a bottle of Dortmunder Union from the early 1980's. He jubilantly shook the contents out, then John carved off a generous slab for each of us. Down the hatch!

What a shame this tour is being managed by a bunch of rogues and pirates! I'll tell you what -- those fuckers at Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., get us booked into the strangest venues. I mean, the Red Spot was okay, but when we arrived on Saturn we were directed towards this bottle club that was converted from an abandoned spacecraft stunt-double. Worse, the thing was made of polystyrene and stood only 16 inches tall...so we had to undergo gravimetric size reduction therapy (courtesy of Trevor James) in order to fulfill our contract obligation. Tiny Montgomery complained bitterly about the shrinking of his organ (the Lowery, okay?), and as the final indignity, the guy taking the money at the door was dressed in a ludicrous Renegade Robot from Mars outfit. What a pain in the butt!

Well, that was Saturn. A few drugged up mutants and one disgruntled door-bot who demanded 10% of our take while pointing his clawlike electrodes in our general direction. sFshzenKlyrn obligingly bought the bastard off with a pokeful of Zenite snuff.

You can see why our official tour promotion poster photo (taken on Callisto the following day) has us looking so down in the mouth. But believe me, folks, we rebounded fairly quickly after this brief debacle. To hell with Saturn....It's Uranus or bust!

Dispatch #5 -- 11/25/2001

Warning! Danger!

Well, our rent-a-wreck space ship really lived up to its name, earning its place in the annals of interplanetary travel by becoming the first modified deep space probe to lose both engine power and navigational control on the same run. Piece of shit! I should never have trusted that cologne-dunked shyster who proffered such favorable lease terms on such a ramshackle transport. (The hastily painted-over quarter panel should have tipped me off.)

I partly blame an over-zealous engine room crew for what happened on our approach to Uranus. Unfamiliar with the sluggishness of our rent-a-ship's controls, those young Turks were a little too free with the course adjustments, lurching her in directions she just plain didn't want to go in. After one particularly abrupt maneuver, all the indicators went dark and we knew we were in it...but good. John volunteered for the space buoy and spent a solid six hours working on the retro stack, to no avail. (Even Matt's idea about spraying them with WD-40 didn't work.) Done for!

It's times like these when you fully appreciate the value of having such a diverse (if drunken) entourage of hangers-on around you. I'm referring to the rich scientific contingent we have on board, including Dr. Hump, who had only just arrived the day before disaster struck. Serendipity. The good doctor's brain started bubbling like a pot of Ramen noodles, and before any of us knew it, he had the solution laid out before us like it had been there all along. Sheer genius.

When after 48 hours it became clear that AAA wasn't going to show up, we decided to give Trevor James a crack at saving us.

With characteristic aplomb, Trevor James reversed polarity on his patented orgone generating device, which then dragged the lifeless hulk of our rent-a-craft back along its own radioactive contrail to that miniscule converted spaceship on Saturn where we performed last week. Once sFshzenKlyrn had chased the owners away with some radioactive cobalt from his lunchbox, Trevor James, Mitch Macaphee, and our own Johnny White went to work on the tiny vessel, first bringing it up to scale with a hefty barrage of M-rays, then fitting it out with some fresh ion-drive engines that Dr. Hump ordered from Martha Stewart Living.

Within a few hours we were on our way to our delayed engagements on Uranus once again, flying the cush split-level space-RV we borrowed from those folks on Saturn. See -- I told you how valuable these hangers-on can be! If only I could get The Steels to work a little harder on their weather reports. (That poor kid can't even spell, let alone read a weather map. Home schooling...what can I tell you?)

Anyway...the least I can do is give you an updated itinerary, since the whole bloody tour's been pushed back. Here it is:

BIG GREEN Tour 2001

November 27 Uranus

November 29 Neptune

December 1-3 Titan

December 6 Pluto

December 8-11 Kaztropharius 137b

December 14 Zenon

December 20 Jupiter

Catch us where you can. Only if you follow us to Zenon, be sure to bring your Hazmat suit.

Dispatch #6 -- 12/1/2001

Hailing frequencies open.....

Like most elegant solutions, Trevor James Constable's spacecraft expansion formula had one fatal flaw. It seems his M-Ray treatment was time-sensitive. And though he may have mentioned that fact before we gave him the nod to proceed, he didn't exactly stamp the ship's hull with an expiration date, now did he? DID HE?!!

Sorry....just a bit on edge right now. Must compose myself. You just don't know what it's like to be bottled up inside the incredible shrinking spaceship.

That's right -- our groovy new split-level space pad gradually reverted to its original size -- 16 inches long -- and it took us with it. So now we're all shmeensy, even sFshzenKlyrn, who was fifty feet high only a few months ago. Of course, here in the icy void of interplanetary space with no conventional points of reference in the vicinity, we had now way of knowing that we had shrunken down to a tiny fraction of our original size. Imagine my surprise when I stepped out onto the tarmac on Uranus and found myself face-to-face with a spaceport security guard's toenail. I mean, what do you do in a spot like that....go up and knock?

This really seemed like it would be a problem. A hall full of Uranians, forming a mosh pit in front of a band that stands three inches tall. And the fact that they're crustaceans makes matters worse (very spastic dancers, those Uranians. All elbows.) One misstep and there goes a $425 stage set. Damn it, Trevor James! Where are your skills? What have you done to us!

It took the inestimable Dr. Hump to come up with a workable solution. From his electrified basin of spirit, the good doctor cunningly negotiated with the planet-based tour promoter to place a glass magnifying panel between us and the audience -- so they could see us better and we could live to see Neptune again. We played reasonably well as the band in the bubble, though it might have gone over better if the promoters had listened to Matt and etched "OBJECTS IN BAND ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR" at the base of the fish-eye lens.

Also, Tiny Montgomery stayed in the ship. The shrinkage thing really affected his mood, I guess. Besides, the one thing on board that didn't shrink was Tiny's favorite tie. He insisted on wearing it, though, even long after it had grown to the size of a table cloth. Troubled man, that Tiny. Truth be known, he could use a good shrink.

Anyway, we gave our Uranus performance and made it to Neptune alive, where we played another magna-shield review before an enormous audience. I only hope our shipboard brain trust can find a solution to our shrimpy size before we make it to Kaztropharius 137b, where I'm told the fans are seven stories tall. Yikes! (Oh...John says he's buying lifts and Matt's having his hat re-blocked, just in case.)

Dispatch #7 -- 12/9/2001

Land'o Goshen.....

Greetings from Kaztropharius 137b! (Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Asbury Park," but...oh well.)

After nearly 36 hours running at top whack, this mad little saucer has carried us beyond the reaches of our solar system to that recondite corner of the universe where Big Green CD's sell like hotcakes. Sure, those engines may be the size of walnuts, but they've got enough kick in them to drive us clear to Andromeda, so long as our trusty Zenite guitarist sFshzenKlyrn is at the controls. (We gave our previous engine room staff -- the "young Turks" -- their cards after they...well, after they destroyed our last engine room.)

Anyway, sFshzenKlyrn's gentle coaxing of the turbines -- combined with his liberal plyings of Zenite snuff -- got us all to the frozen wastes of Pluto, where we delivered a passable performance of our "Quality Lincoln" trilogy, as well as an impromptu medley in tribute to the late George Harrison, as per Trevor James Constable's emphatic request. He and Mitch Macaphee wanted to hear "Piggies" over and over again. Matt ended up having to get a little ugly with them. Pity.

Because of the enormous interstellar distances involved in the journey, we had to bug out of that Pluto gig a little early so that we might make it to Kaztropharius 137b in time. That meant giving the traditional Plutonian post-performance par-tay a miss (though Dr. Hump elected to remain behind and enjoy their hospitality for a few days, as well as complete his survey of Plutonian biology...hedonist that he is!) We didn't even have time to wash up and grab a meal before our departure.

It's a good thing our split-level space craft has a fully-equipped galley, including a hefty garbage dispos-all that would make any 1954 nuclear family glow green with envy. And of course, sFshzenKlyrn brought his blintz fridge along to complete our joy. How selfless of him to bring that fridge -- of all his fridges -- on this perilous journey through the trackless void.

So here we are on the remote and mysterious planet known as Kaztropharius 137b -- home of Big Green's biggest fans. And when I say big, I mean that pillars-of-Hercules, block-out-the-sun kinda big. Scary enough when you're actual size, but in our newly diminutive condition, these Kaztropharian fuckers are almost too big to see. And oddly enough, there appears to be some kind of urban cowboy fad going on out here, so everybody we've seen is wearing these big old hobnail boots and cheesy ten-gallon hats. I took one look at that and told Trevor James that he's got to try the old reverse polarity orgone energy barrage one more time -- just so that we'll be visible to our audience without an electron microscope. He said he'd see what he could do for the next two nights, but that he wasn't making any promises. (Scientists!)

I'll let you know how these K-137b gigs go. That is, if one of our patrons doesn't accidentally mistake us for bridge mix.

Dispatch #8 -- 12/16/2001

Wuzzappenin?

They said we'd be making big money on this job. And they wuz right.

Our perilous engagements on Kaztropharius 137b went off without any major injuries, in spite of the tremendous size differential between ourselves and our gargantuan fans -- a gap that was only exacerbated by the recent shrinking of our split-level space pad. No matter. We played a dozen sets over the course of four nights and managed to stay out from under foot. (Though one of Tiny Montgomery's Leslie cabinets did get flattened by one over-zealous Kaztropharian who was attempting to do the "Steamboat Dan." Like his cabinet, Tiny was a little bent out of shape.)

When it came time for the K-137b bursar to drop some cash on us, we had to scurry for cover. The Kaztropharians pay in cash, it seems -- their notes are the size of carpet rolls, their coins manhole covers. Advanced as they obviously are, they somehow have never encountered the concept of electronic funds transfer. Hell, even a colossal check would have been better than the king-size cash they piled next to our space-craft (nearly microscopic, from their perspective).

This presented a problem. How were we going to pay the thugs at our label the protection mon...I mean, the commission we owed them for our performances when we couldn't even get one of the Kaztropharian ha-pennies (value: $0.125) through the main hatch of our transport? We asked the Kaztropharians to consolidate our earnings, but the only response we got was the appearance of a rather evil-looking mechanical man from their port authority; apparently a subtle reminder that our visas had expired. Check-out time!

Now, they say there are hustlers and fixers on every planet in the known universe, but even with 17,000 giant Kaztropharian dollars burning a hole through our pockets and one fast-talking Zenite guitarist, do you think we could find one man enough to go up against their equivalent of the INS? Not a chance! And it was only when we had quite nearly resolved to abandon the booking's purse that Trevor James Constable, in his infinite resourcefulness, remembered the arcane sequence of voice commands that would throw his Orgone Generating Device into auto-expansion mode. Wasting little time on ceremony, he barked the coded directions into the machine and pointed it at our spacecraft. We scurried inside the hatch just as the thing began to expand in all directions like blown glass. Once safely super-sized, I went outside and grabbed our earnings, then gave sFshzenKlyrn the nod to start those engines.

Now everybody's happy. John's happy because he doesn't have to play a wind-up monkey's drumset anymore. Matt's happy because he knows those goons from Hegemonic Records & Worm Farm, Inc., won't re-block his hat for him, so to speak. Tiny Montgomery is happy because his tie is back to normal size and he can go on entertaining his make-believe friends without embarrassment. I'm happy over my fistful of dollars, predictably enough. And sFshzenKlyrn is overjoyed at the prospect of knocking over the 12-story delicatessen back home and absorbing all the blintzes like a bloody great sponge.

And as we head out to Zenon (where our engagements have been backed off a few days because of bad weather), Trevor James can take heart in the knowledge that his patented device truly saved our bacon. He and Mitch Macaphee are sitting in the galley as I write, comparing notes on selective gravitational force negation formulae. We're hoping that when we return home and proceed with the reconstruction of our lean-to, these boys will be able to design a "float" chamber for relaxing between takes. Something to look forward to!

Dispatch #9 --12/23/2001

Hi-de-ho, neighbor!

May the blessings of the season be upon you! (Whatever the hell that means.) For those of you who do not subscribe to the secular consumerist religion that celebrates a shop-til-you-drop pagan holiday, well...hey, howareyuh? Any news from home? Hope the bladder trouble is better.

We spent the better part of last week hurtling through the inky void of intergalactic space towards the growing point of light that has since become apparent as the planet Zenon, home of our semi-solid alien guitarist sFshzenKlyrn. This is kind of a courtesy trip, really. The planetary trust on Zenon was kind enough to lend us sFshzenKlyrn for our last couple of tours -- we could hardly turn down their invitation to perform. sFshzenKlyrn is a pretty popular guy on his home planet...Big Green, however, has yet to sell even a dozen CD's there. Could be because there are no bookshelf stereo systems on Zenon. Or maybe they just don't like us. Either way, this promises to be an interesting engagement.

We have all been straining to dream up some kind of gift we could offer the Zenites as a token of our good will. But in as much as their bodies emit the equivalent in particulate radiation as a string of leaky microwaves, such a task isn't simple. Tiny Montgomery suggested something practical, like a pair of safety gloves -- the kind commonly used for handling hazardous materials. Of course, we needed to explain to Tiny that Zenites -- like sFshzenKlyrn -- don't have "hands" per se, and that hazardous materials make up a substantial portion of their diet.

Trevor James Constable and Mitch Macaphee remain fully absorbed in their research -- too much so to pay serious attention to the matter of gifting the Zenites. The two men of science are still parked in the ship's galley, drinking cheap espresso and sketching out ideas on a roll of baker's parchment for a selective gravitational force negation device. (I can hear their squeaky grease pencils from my cabin even now.) When I tapped Trevor James' shoulder and asked him what would be an appropriate gift, he absent-mindedly slid a box of "twist-ems" towards me. Mitch Macaphee wouldn't even acknowledge my presence. Talk about dedication!

Why not ask sFshzenKlyrn? Because the guy just can't make up his mind. I think he's just too close to it all. Besides, he always resorts to food gifts, like bundt cakes and pickled herring. Sure -- he wants us to make a good first impression, but the onus is on us (hmmmm...."onus" "on us" "onus" "on us"). After all, he's the known quantity on that hideous little globe, practically a household name (except that the Zenites don't have households). And when he gets together with his family for a reunion concert, and they sing Greg's new song about sFshzenKlyrn's voice beginning to change, it'll be standing room only. How the hell are we supposed to compete with that, huh?

So my friends, though we won't be home for Christmas this year, we will be doing what many of you consider to be your patriotic duty -- shopping frantically for that un-namable something that will make us beloved in direct proportion to the item's monetary value. Next stop, the Orion Beltway Bargain Center. Happy Holidays. Terran friends!

Dispatch #10 ---- 12/30/2001

Ahem...testing? Testing?

Ah, there you are. Welcome to the well-oiled Big Green touring machine. Having burned a swath of glory from one end of the galaxy to the other, we're glad to have guests log on and pull up a virtual chair so that they might partake of our pithy interstellar anecdotes and juicy backstage insights. So, what news do we bring from that outlandish world known as Zenon? What rare nuggets can we offer to our info-starved cyberfans? What -- to put the point more finely -- is happening in the world of Big Green?

Eh. Not much. What's happening with you?

Okay, okay. The Zenon gig went pretty well, though we ended up having a little extra help on stage...something we hadn't bargained for. When we arrived, we were informed by the Zenites that they have a tradition of mixing music with a kind of ritualized mime-theatre called pon-kar-a-don-ho, which roughly translates to "dance of the robots." This peculiar art form springs from arcane sources deep in Zenite pre-history, our promo rep told us, and incorporates elements of metaphysics, musical comedy, and cajun cooking. Whatever the particulars may be, we were informed that our stage would be shared with two of Zenon's most celebrated practitioners of pon-kar-a-don-ho, the "amazing robotron" and "ponkarnac the magnificent"...both robots. Wind-up toy robots. Part of the tradition, we were told.

So picture it. We're cranking out our usual Big Green repertoire -- with a little more gusto, perhaps, because this was the end of the tour -- and there are these two man-sized toy robots flanking us, making hand gestures like stilted hula dancers, offering a ceremonial interpretation of our songs to the Zenite audience below. Sometimes they would move in unison, even executing a twirl-and-clap like the freaking Temptations. It was one weird-ass show, big mister. But we tried to keep our minds on the music, Matt and John chewing gum to keep their jaws from dropping, Tiny and I trading lines and switching instruments so we wouldn't be distracted. The only one who wasn't affected was sFshzenKlyrn. Makes sense -- it's his goofy tradition, right?

Then after the show I saw sFshzenKlyrn yukking it up with some of his fellow Zenites. I didn't think much of it at first, but then one of them let slip a few words in English about what a bunch of rubes we are, and I put 2 and 2 together. "Pon-kar-a-don-ho" my ass! It was all a gag, so those Zenites could have a few cheap laughs at our expense! When I confronted sFshzenKlyrn with the truth, he cracked up all the way and admitted it had been his idea all along. What a fucker!

You know, I like a good joke as well as anybody, okay? And I wouldn't mind so much if it had just been that one performance. But goddammit, they taped the fucking show and plan on distributing it throughout the Great Magellanic Cloud...as a comedy video! sFshzenKlyrn says we'll be the Victor Borges of M32, but I have my doubts.

We kind of gave sFshzenKlyrn the cold shoulder a good bit of the way home (except for Matt, who put gazpacho in his gym socks). I think our Zenite friend started feeling a little guilty, so by way of a peace offering, he stopped off at a boutique on Pluto and picked us up a little housewarming gift for our new (yet-to-be-built) lean-to. It's one of those charming porch jockeys you see in front of all the better homes. You know -- the kind once tackled by Dale "Factory Village" Haskell just before he uttered these immortal words to the local police:

"I hate those fuckin' things."

Actually, I think the one sFshzenKlyrn picked out was, atypically, a caucasian figurine. Go figure. No tellin' who will be leading your horse to the barn these days. Could be someone from Al Qaida (or someone named Al Qaida).

With our native solar system now plainly in view, beckoning us onward with a welcoming countenance, my shipmates and I prepared to disembark. All of us had our tasks to perform. The scientific contingent (Mitch Macaphee and Trevor James Constable), now reunited with the unredoubtable Dr. Hump, huddled even closer over diagrams of gravitational negation devices hitherto undreamt of in anyone's philosophy. The Steels, after having delivered their final weather report of the journey ("sunny"), folded themselves back into their monogrammed titanium valise (light as aluminum and strong as steel). Matt practiced his Osama bin Laden imitation in rehearsal for a series of gag videos to be dropped anonymously at the Pakistan bureau of Al-Jazeera. John worked on the drum breaks for the last number we played (nearly a week before). I spent my final hours in space packing Tiny Montgomery's overnight bag full of diatomaceous earth, while Tiny put sardines between the keys of my EMU Proteus Plus. Heh heh....what fun we have!

Now, I can't speak for the rest of us, but I for one am looking forward to setting foot on good old Terra Firma once again. Seems like it's been a long time. (Hey -- what happened with that terrorism thing, anyway? Did they catch the one who done it?)

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