All posts by Joseph

‘Tis the season to be somewhere else entirely

2000 Years to Christmas

No, I didn’t add a sousaphone. I don’t play the freaking sousaphone. I told you, I’m the only one playing. Try listening to what I say, instead of just watching for my mouth to stop moving so you can start talking again. Geez.

Hello out there. Hope all is well with you during this festive time of year. Sometimes festivities can be downright depressing. Oh, sure – there are gaudy Christmas miracles everywhere you look these days. Inflatable snowmen, bloated Santas, flashing lights of every size and color. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) felt compelled to festoon the exterior of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Most sentient beings would say he fell short, but at least he tried.

Christmas cracker concert

Okay, so, as you know, I talked myself into doing a nano concert earlier this year, and thus far the reviews have been … well …. invisible. Audience missing, presumed entertained. Well, that was so encouraging that I decided to do a special Christmas nano concert this year – a Nano Christmas, if you will, in which I would render selections from our sizeable holiday songbook. I can hear the bots applauding already.

So, once again, I’m performing solo for a cheap tablet camera, strumming an instrument I’ve never been able to master, hollering like a crazed chimp. Doesn’t that sound like Christmas? It is our gift to you, dear reader/listener. Not a thing of great value. Not a sausage, though there are such things. An offering like those proffered in days of old. No, I’m not talking about the magi. (Not THAT old!) I mean the days of Matt making Christmas tapes and handing them out to all and sundry. This is the digital interwebs version of that.

Big Green Nano Christmas Concert

Going half way

We don’t observe a lot of traditions. No fish on Christmas eve. No boxing day. No dead carcass of an evergreen tree decaying in the living room. We are non traditional, and that’s why you love us. Of course, we did a whole album of Christmas songs – not the familiar numbers, as you know, but home-made jobs, recorded in the basement, pressed, packaged, shipped, unloaded, and … well … brought back down the basement.

And yes, I know there are twelve days of Christmas. Feels more like twelve hundred, but I digress. Thing is, we’re running on fumes here at the hammer mill. So yes, we will be posting stuff over the holidays. But we can’t afford twelve days of that shit, so we’ll do six. Or seven. No more than seven. But probably six, really.

Hey, half a loaf can still make a sandwich or two, right? We may be starting with the lords a-leaping, but that doesn’t matter, man. It’s the thought that counts.

Watch for those holiday posts on our Facebook page and our Twitter feed. And have a very happy holiday week, people.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

I’ve said more than once that Trump was inches away from being a transformational president. The main impediment was his obsessive narcissism and his predilection for believing crazy-ass conspiracy theories. He truly was as gullible as his most crackpot fans, and they rightfully saw themselves reflected and amplified in his titanic stupidity.

That said, Trump was the least hide-bound of our recent presidents. He knew nothing about government or politics and so was liable to do anything. When COVID hit, he might have just rolled with a robust global response, spent as much as was necessary, and come out the other end looking like a hero. But the narcissist took over. He didn’t want COVID, and thought it wasn’t fair that he had to deal with it. Then came the flood, and it basically washed his sorry ass out of Washington.

Next guy, next fail

The talk about Biden back in January 2021 was that he might be the next FDR. Not even close. Roosevelt had a more expansive view of what was possible, fueled in large measure by the massive upheaval of the Great Depression and the growing power of labor. While Biden, on the other hand, is not entirely afraid of spending money, he has not moved aggressively on our most pressing problems. He, like the rest of the Democratic party’s octogenarian leadership, still has his head stuck in the 1990s.

Take COVID (please). The President has the authority to waive patent rights on the vaccines. He should have started with that, pushed production to developing countries, and used what resources are necessary to lead a global vaccination program. That is the only way to end this thing – that and providing free testing, free masks, free every freaking thing to our own people. Now, after ridiculing the idea, the administration plans to start sending people tests upon request.

What the fuck? Why the impediment? And why did you wait so long to do even this much? It makes zero sense to wait until after the holidays to get this done, but they’re targeting January 15. Jesus Christmas.

Promises, promises

Let’s face it – COVID is still the mess it is because the Biden administration has not stepped up the way they needed to. That is a titanic failure, and I’m not clear on how they can recover from that. Add that to the Build Back Better fiasco, his abysmal border policy, and the student loan bait-and-switch, and you’ve got a trifecta. And I haven’t even touched on their foreign policy (well, I did last week).

The student loan piece was in the news this week. Biden extended his federal student loan payment freeze until May of next year. Of course, he promised loan forgiveness, which is arguably within his power to deliver without legislation. What the hell is he waiting for? Young people to completely write Democrats off?

We live in an era when financial services companies, like SoFi, do TV commercials about the burden of student debt and how even just a modest debt restructure is cause for a frantic happy dance. Low expectations are now baked into the cake for recent graduates.

Biden needs to turn this ship around. Trouble is, he’s more like Captain Peachfuzz than Horatio Hornblower.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

How to put on the worst concert ever

2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, I don’t have time for greeting cards. Take them away, Marvin. Give them to the kids down the street. Or some monkeys in the zoo. I don’t care, man – just GET THEM OUT OF HERE!

Sorry for my all-caps utterance, friends. You know how stressful the holidays can be, particularly when your robot doesn’t follow instructions. Now, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I’m constantly reading Marvin (my personal robot assistant) the riot act. Far from it! We get along like nothing else I can name. (Take my word for the fact that that’s a good thing.)

Like you, we are engaged in a last-minute frenzy in preparation for Christmas, New Years, and other assorted observances. And this year it has been made a bit more complicated by my plan to put on yet another nano concert, like the one I did earlier this year. Turns out concert are more fun when you (a) play an instrument you can play, and (b) involve other people in your music-making. Who knew?

Hello out there!

As luck would have it, we live in a time of burgeoning COVID. It’s like being on a plague ship, minus the pleasure of a south sea cruise. The upshot for us musicians, of course, is that we can’t stand each other’s company … I mean, we can’t BE in each other’s company. If we share the same space, the smell …. I mean, the VIRUS might kill us. (As is my custom, when reading that line, I pronounce the word “kill” as KEEEL.)

Some may accuse me of harboring resentments for other musicians. That is not the case. I don’t harbor them, I nurture them. But in the end, we must all get along, at least better than we did at the beginning. So we need the means to play together in a way that won’t leave us all dead. (Again, following my personal custom, I pronounce the word “dead” as DAY-ID.)

Hello? Do you read me?

Sophisticated technology unleashed

Right, so how do you play together without being together? Technology! There’s this thing called the internets, and I’m guessing it just might catch on. You just set up your instrument at one end, play like the devil, and the music goes round and round, woah woah woah, and it comes out there. My advisors (Mitch Macaphee) tell me that there’s room enough in the internet tube for music to go both ways, so you can jam with someone on the other end of the tube. Holy cats!

Now, I know Mitch has suggested some crazy things in the past. Shit like that gonzo underground tour he dreamed up a few years back. But this time, THIS time, he may be on to something. Or just on something. In any case, yesterday he handed me the business end of something that looked like one of those Dr. Seuss instruments, like the Zimbaphone or whatever the hell. If you hold the thing up to your ear, you can vaguely hear something that sounds like Matt playing his guit-fiddle. Damndest thing.

Let’s get ready for something … anything

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for something. And if I have anything to do with it, it will involve me playing musical instruments into the Dr. Seuss invention known as the internets. When and if that happens, you will be the first to know. Or maybe the second or third to know, but certainly in the top ten.