Now, let’s see… how does that song go? Hmmmm…. strike up the band, Johnny. One small step… for one bald man. Giant leap for all time. Christmas day, thank you, ma’am. I came in peace… and left my mind!
That’s an oldy. Oh, yes… Christmas 1996 – I remember it well. As soon as we get our thumbs out of our asses on this seemingly endless project, I’m going to trawl through the archives and dust off some of those recordings that have never before seen the light of day. Prepare to be amazed. (Did I say “amazed”? I meant “annoyed.” Or perhaps “nauseated”.) But before you get to thinking that I’m distracting you from our current lethargy with vague promises of archival releases somewhere down the road, let me assure you that your good friends in Big Green are looking over these old songs for some very, very good reasons. And no, I don’t mean nostalgia for a past equally obscure as our present. No, no…. better reasons than that. Aggravated threats, mostly. And projectiles.
Let me ‘splain. We are under contract with Loathsome Prick, our corporate label, to release our long-anticipated (or perhaps no longer anticipated) sophomore album at some time in the next year or so. They had the option to demand the product any time after September 30, and, well, they did (the fuckers). Naturally, when we signed the contract (or, rather, had the man-sized tuber sign for us) we thought the release date would be quite a long ways off. Trouble with that long-ways-off kind of thinking is that, if you think about it too long, it gets a whole lot closer. So here we were, our album still not finished (though completely recorded), and the nice gentlemen at Loathsome Prick jumping all over our shit. What else could we do but cut yet another deal with them? This one was an agreement to play some gigs on Mars to promote the new collection. So now we’re scraping together a few sets worth of music – the usual last-minute scramble. So it goes.
I enlisted Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to descend into the catacombs of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in search of old songs – tapes, lead sheets, lyrics, whatever he could find. After a day or two, he reappeared on the ground 
floor, his brass tarnished, his sensors covered with dust, but his ramshackle arms laden with booty. Marvin had stumbled upon the old sea trunk I had brought with me years ago when we first arrived at the mill. (Seems like just yesterday.) Inside were moth-eaten reams of paper, yellow with age (though they were legal pads, so they actually started out kind of yellow). I showed them to Matt, and he nodded solemnly. Yes, yes… these were the notebooks upon which he and I had penned so many of the songs that had made us obscure back in the day. (That was a hard day.) We began flipping through the parchment-like folios, mouthing the words silently as we went along. Nice work, Marvin. Good robot.
Okay, so finding our notes is one thing; putting together the songs is entirely another. From what I understand, we have about three weeks to get our ducks in a row. Then it’s off to the land of “Opportunity”. (You know… the Mars rover, “Opportunity”? The other one’s called “Spirit”? Never mind.) Somebody water the tuber – this could be a long hike.
denounce president Ahmadinejad and none so much as those who invited him to speak at Morningside campus. Is it possible that his invitation was the result of some kind of clerical error? Perhaps they meant to invite some other president – someone committed to democracy, the rule of law, and the whims of the Bush clan, like “president” Pervez Musharraf. Whatever the case may be, Columbia was ground zero in the clash of civilizations for a few hours, with Ahmadinejad being decried as the “Hitler of the Middle East”. (Hmmm… that has a familiar ring to it.) Hell, over there, you can hardly take a bath without six or seven Hitlers jumping in with you. I guess the standard for Hitlerianism has lapsed somewhat over the past few years. Used to be you had to, you know, invade someone. Now it’s just saying a few laughably absurd things, like there are no gays in Iran.
presidency of Iran is a constitutionally limited office, answerable to the ruling council of mullahs and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. Second, Iran does not have the capability to destroy either America or Israel, but both of these powers have the ability to destroy Iran. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and effective delivery systems; the U.S. has thousands, plus large military deployments across the border on both sides of Iran and in the Persian Gulf. This would tend to encourage the Iranians to, well, start building bombs. (One would think Ahmadinejad would be roundly criticized for not doing so.) Finally, to the extent that Iran is interested in building nuclear weapons (which they don’t appear to be, it should be said), it’s as a deterrent to the forces arrayed against them. That is the only use for nuclear weapons, frankly. And even if he were irrational enough to want to provoke a massive retaliation that would destroy his entire country, he wouldn’t have the authority to order it.
Are you ready to rumble? Not yet? Okay then. Just asking. Don’t get upset, now. Put that down. I said PUT THAT DOWN! Do it or someone’s going to get hurt. No. NO. NOOOOOOOO!!!
unreasonable release date handed down by the corporate chieftains at our label, Loathsome Prick. Then somewhere around, oh, Wednesday, Matt and John threw up their hands. (Being somewhat less original than they are, I did so as well.) It just wasn’t going to happen. Release, yes… but not October. Never October. In fact, we ran the numbers through Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his statistical modeling analysis module started emitting greasy black smoke. (Marvin did the rest of the calculations with a pad, pencil, and 39-cent wristwatch calculator.) It seems, at our present rate of activity, we may manage a Spring 2008 release, taking into consideration the current non-alignment of the outer planets and the relative mass of the third-quarter moon. (You mathematicians know what I’m talking about.)
our old label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (now Hegephonic). It was not pleasant, not nearly… so you can probably understand our trepidation. Naturally, we recruited Marvin to convey the news, preferably in some kind of binary code that would take the suits at Loathsome Prick a couple of days to decipher. Marvin put the message together and sent it off via the automaton equivalent of instant messenger. We waited. At some point during the course of that afternoon, I felt a mild earth tremor. Translation complete! Sure enough, the phone rang. We gave it seventeen or eighteen rings before answering. (Let ’em think we’ve got customers.)