All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Sing the right one.

Let the eagle soar! Higher than it’s ever flown before! From sandy beach to rocky shore … let the mighty eagle soar!

Oh, hello. Didn’t know you were there. I was finishing up my morning shower just then. Why am I singing John Ashcroft’s signature composition? Well, you know how they tell you that the best way to ensure proper hand washing is to sing “Happy Birthday” while you’re doing it? Well, I thought I needed a song to sing while I wash my ass. And that was the first song that sprang to mind. Just thought I’d share that. (Hiya, Mr. Attorney General!)

So what have we been up to lately? Well, bits and bobs. You know the drill. Everybody’s got their onerous responsibilities to discharge, and Big Green is certainly no exception. Brother Matt has been up to his eyeballs in animal related work, of course. I have been toiling away at my nine-to-five, pulling what’s left of my not-yet-gray hair out. (In bunches.) We’ve got a lot of parts to put down on our next album … it’s just getting to it that’s the problem. Still, where there’s a will … there’s a … will? How does that go again?

Jesus.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.

Well, best get back to work. We will be posting our next episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN before too terribly long, so keep that iPod warmed up.

Political Rants

What talks.

I’m going to light on a couple of issues this week. One is a certain loudmouth real estate developer / reality television start that has been in the news a lot lately. The other is a bunch of poorly acted television ads that had me scratching my head over the last week.

Channeling the G.O.P.'s inner Milosevic.First, Trump. As someone who was once a contract employee of this individual (yes, he can say that I too took money from him at some point), I know this guy is more than just a cartoon show for our amusement. What he says and does can have real consequences for people who don’t ride in limos and private jets. So when he talks about forcing 11 million people to leave the country, understand that he is articulating a point of view that is held by a very vocal, substantial minority of Americans. There’s nothing ‘silent’ about this ‘majority’. They want ethnic cleansing.

Consider it for a moment. What would removing 11 million undocumented immigrants look like? It would involve massive police action, broad sweeps of poor neighborhoods, and mass incarceration. Trump would also have them bring along their American-born children, whose citizenship he also questions (claiming that some legal experts he plays golf with say the the 14th Amendment does not apply to American-born children of undocumented immigrant parents.) This effort would put Avigdor Lieberman to shame.

The man talks a blue streak, jumps from topic to topic, but always gets his pander-points out – and believe me, folks … he’s pandering hard. And the further he goes out on that political limb, the further his fellow presidential contenders will follow.

Fix this … fix. Have you seen those terribly acted ads about the nasty government trying to get between you and your retirement adviser? I got curious and stumbled upon a posting that linked to a Wall Street Journal article about the industry coalition behind them. Big surprise: financial advisers are not crazy about being forced by the administration to take fiduciary responsibility for the advice they give their clients. I’d heard about the regulation a few weeks ago, but didn’t connect it to these ads until now. Slimy mothers.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Density rising.

You may say I’ve got a lot to learn. Seems like this is the perfect spot to learn. No, I’m NOT playing Vegas … not yet, anyway. (Though I did spend a summer in Reno once. Long story, which I’ll spare you.)

Raining like hell here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Wish we had invested in that new roof a few years back, when we were overflowing with Neptunian shekels from our last interstellar tour. Those were the days …. NOT. Yeah, the water is coming in like … well … water from the sky. The mansized tuber is loving it. Not Marvin (my personal robot assistant), though. His brass finish is getting tarnished in the humid summer weather we get up here in upstate New York, and this is certainly not doing it any good. (Kind of vain, actually, that robot. I think he sees himself as a Tyrone Power lookalike. He needs to download some newer movies.)

Over the last few weeks the humidity has been rising. Our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin, insists that it is atmospheric density, not the humidity, that is rising. He has been hammering away at some kind of device that he claims will control the weather, or something to that effect. I could share with you what he told me, but it might cause you some distress. Suffice to say that throughout his diatribe, he managed to end each sentence with the term (and I quote) “BWA-HA-HA-HA!”  I have asked Y'know, I kinda see it.anti-Lincoln, our resident language history scholar, to find me a gloss on that. So far no luck.

We’re still working on our next album, working title “WORKING TITLE”. (We were thinking of renaming the band “Various Artists”, just so that we would show up in the Columbia House 8-track tape catalogs.) It’s slow going, to say the least. We’re re-thinking parts that we put down over the past two years, building on old tracks that were hastily recorded and shipped out via our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Some are rougher than others. And we’re starting with the roughest ones … I hope. (These are pretty freaking rough!)

So, we’ll keep scratching. Keep your eyes open …. especially if you’re driving.