Big Green emerges from COVID isolation with the cheap-ass monologue that is our July show, featuring some old music, some slightly less old music, some audio hand-waving, and more. Bring it on.
This is Big Green – July 2020. Features: 1) Put the phone down: Joe laments the continuing absence of Matt and debunks Big Green’s founding mythology; 2) Song: A Name And A Face, performed by Big Green; 3) Song: She Caught The Katy, performed by Big Green; 4) Song: Bad Boy, performed by Big Green; 5) Song: Slippin’ and Slidin’, performed by Big Green; 6) More disposable back story about the band; 7) Song: Just Five Seconds, by Big Green; 8) Impromptu romp through grandfather’s war; 9) Song: Nutcracker, by Big Green; 10) All about Christmas; 11) Song: Honest Man, by Big Green; 12) Time for us (me) to go.
Looks pretty moribund to me. Did you kick the tires? Here – take the ignition key and give it a few cranks. Nothing? Right. This will be harder than I thought.
Hey, hello. Welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in central New York state, an out-of-the-way corner of an out-of-the-way place if ever there was one. (And there was one.) Still in the midst of an archive summer – not that much of a novelty around this place. Seems like every summer I find myself diving through boxes and bins of old tapes, moth-eaten notebooks, forgotten scraps of paper, and old biscuit tins filled with souvenirs of a bygone age. You know what they say about idle hands. Don’t you? Hell, I don’t know what they say. I was hoping you’d tell me. Something like, idle hands build false … idols. Who knows?
Actually, it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who reminded me that we haven’t posted an episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, in over seven months. Something of an oversight, I’d say. Like most musicians in these pandemic times, I chalk it up to COVID-19, but that’s not really the reason. You know the story, right? Just too much other shit to do. Anyway, Marvin has talked me into reviving the podcast, and not a moment too soon. The RSS feed was getting too rusty to send anything over. If we’d waited another month, it would have seized up entirely. We have blown the whole impulse stack trying to start it up again. Sure, we could have mixed the matter and antimatter cold, but it’s never been done. How’s that for a reason?
As some of you know, I have, in fact, started yet another podcast – it’s called Strange Sound, and it’s a long-running political rant … something like the audio version of my, well … political rants. Anyway, that soaked up some of my time and energy. Of course, there’s ongoing maintenance of the hammer mill. Not that I actually do any of it, but it is something that’s happening, and it does take time. (Just not mine.) Then there are local relationships to keep up. You can’t overstate the importance of this – If we don’t work our butts off to mollify our neighbors, they’re likely to come after us with pruning hooks. Have you ever been pruned by an angry neighbor? One time is enough, believe me. Finally, the hammer mill’s roof is in terrible shape, and I have to spend practically every rainy day changing the buckets under the leaks. It feels like bailing out the titanic sometimes, only with less cheesy music.
Well, we’ll see if anything comes charging down that RSS feed. (Keep your ears open.)
Here’s a little update on my health crisis from a couple of months ago: I’m still paying the price. Not physically, you understand – nothing noticeable in the way of lingering after-effects of my non-COVID illness. No, I mean I’m literally still paying the price of the hospital stay I experienced in April, the week after my birthday. I think I’ve gone over the numbers before on this blog, but let me just frame it in again so that there’s no mistake: the hospital fee – not the surgeon or anesthesiologist, just the hospital – added up to more than $50,000 for four days. The negotiated rate they charged was more like $37,500, but my portion of it was in excess of $5,000. Once again – I have employer provided health insurance … and the direct cost to me was over $5,000.
I am currently garnishing my own wages to cover this massive fee, adhering to a five month payment plan I agreed to with the hospital. Fortunately – and this is important – I am financially able to afford such an arrangement. But this is the best-case scenario in this cockeyed worker’s paradise known as employer-based health care. I have what has been termed a “Cadillac plan”, mostly because my employer pays 80% of my premiums. (Of course, I am also fortunate that I am not a woman and my employer doesn’t impose its religious convictions on my coverage or that of my wife, because apparently that’s a thing.) As I write this, I can imagine people all over Europe and the rest of the industrialized world scratching their heads over this concept of health care “luxury” – one that entails enormous contributions from the person stricken with disease or injury, regardless of their ability to pay.
I spoke about this issue in a couple of episodes of my podcast, Strange Sound, focusing on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s comments regarding the supposed popularity of employer-based plans. The fact that tens of millions of people have a thing does not mean that thing is popular. A lot of people have foot diseases, for instance. And in times like these, employer-provided health insurance is a lot like a foot disease … it plagues your every step. It’s just a goddamned ridiculous way to distribute health care services, though that very formulation erroneously suggests that that is the goal of our current system. The goal of our system is not to provide people with the medical care they need; the goal is for some people to make a lot of money. The only way you can honestly analyze our healthcare system is by beginning with that realization.
With the COVID-19 pandemic raging through our country, cases on the rise in forty states, we need to seriously reassess this system. And we need to do it quickly.
luv u,
jp
Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
