Sorry, Mitch. The batteries aren’t charged yet. No, sir… still got a few more hours to go. Hey, where’d you find those used fuel tanks? Clever man. Very clever.

Oh, hi folks. Just doing a few last-minute tasks before launch. Did I say “launch?” I meant lunch. How careless of me… and me, a man of words! No, launch won’t be for a few days yet. We’re moving the components into place, though – no doubt about it. It’s like a big, fat, dysfunctional chess board with pieces whittled from plastic explosives. A little on the touchy side, let’s say. That’s what we get for working with a mad scientist, especially one as mercurial as Mitch Macaphee. No matter… we’ll get off the ground, possibly before the Space Shuttle does. (Oh, that launched, finally? Well…. I guess maybe not.) There are other races to be won, however. We may well be the first band on the sun. Hmmm… good idea for a song. Maybe the chorus would go something like this:

Band on the sun!
Band on the sun!
The tuber-man, and uncle sam
will be toasting hot dog buns
when we land on the sun!

Well, it needs a little work. In any case, we’ve got other stuff we can play when we reach the outer rings of the Jovian system. There’s a little number called “Volcano Man” we can pull on the denizens of Titan. (It’s a tune off of our recent album International House that features a strange interlude eerily reminiscent of an afternoon we spent once on that dry alien moon.) It happens that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is particularly fond of that song. (I think it’s because he plays the singing saw in the middle 24. Listen carefully.)

Got a little extra rehearsal time in this evening. Actually, it’s kind of funny the way it worked out. We got the two Lincolns to run upstairs and bang pots and pans in the courtyard while we were playing. That’s just to throw the local constabulary off – we’re still behind about 28 months on the taxes and are technically squatters. Fact is, the boys in blue don’t know we’re in here… and so long as they don’t read this blog, they probably won’t catch on. I think the ruse worked, at least to the extent that it got Anti-Lincoln arrested for disturbing the peace. (While he’s in jail, we should get posi-Lincoln to do outrageous things and then deny responsibility, since Lincoln is obviously in jail. Clever, eh? No? Just checking. )

Okay, so anyway… back to work with us. Everybody’s got an instrument in hand, yes? Very good. And man-sized tuber…. you can use your tap root, there’s a good chap.

Well, I’ll be a positive particle in a negative universe. Is that really what deutronium costs these days? Outrageous! Don’t these mothers know there’s a recession going on down here?

Hi, friends. Just caught me going over the list of necessities for our upcoming interstellar tour de force. Here’s an item destined to cause trepidation. Radioactive deutronium fuel – $5,600.00 per pint bottle. Jesus H. Christmas. I guess prices on Aldebaran have been anything but stable over the past year. (The Aldebarans were heavy investors in Bear Stearns, rumor has it.) Not sure why they need to earn it back off of our asses, but there you have it. Anyway, it’s on the list because, as you may have surmised, Big Green has indeed secured transport for our tour. I’m glad to be the one to tell you that it will not be one of those Korean missiles. No sir, this is a proper space vehicle. Or so we’re told.

Fact is, we took Matt’s advice and called the guy in Jersey about that J-2 spacecraft old Irwin Allen dreamed up. He was more than happy to oblige – pretty broad minded of him, considering the mess we made of that vehicle when we leased it a few years back. Some of you remember – crashing on a desert isle, modifying it for a seafaring voyage, etc., etc. It was a bit worse for wear when we got back, needless to say. I suppose if they had a rating system for spacecraft renters, we’d probably only get one star. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) felt a bit embarrassed by our rank carelessness with another person’s property. (This was all the more remarkable since embarrassment hadn’t been programmed into Marvin by that point – Mitch Macaphee had, in fact, programmed it out and replaced it with joy…. yes, unbridled JOY.)

Ahem. Of course, there are other things on this list. Things like guitars, amps, drums, etc. And some other little things we call songs. That’s right – we don’t merely perform our compositions, we carry them around in plastic tubs. Some of them – like the Quality Lincoln trilogy – are a bit heavier than the others. That’s just a question of relative mass, you see. More song = more mass. And by the transitive property of musical heaviness, the heaviest songs are most likely to have the biggest impact. It’s like throwing a hammer at a wall. If it’s one of those little featherweight rubber hammers that come in a child’s carpentry set, the wall won’t mind at all. But if it’s a big old drop-forge hammer of the kind that used to be made at the Cheney Hammer Mill, well…. that wall will duck if it’s got the sense the god of walls gave it. I mean, hell… wouldn’t you? Think about it.

Well… I’ve wandered a bit. Better get back to my listing. Hey, man-sized tuber! How many bags of those cedar chips do you need for eight weeks or so? How many? Cheese and onions…. this is going to cost the earth. Get back to loading those songs, hey will you?

Well, anyway… why do we have to do the same thing every time? I mean, I know safety is important, but frankly we can’t afford a spaceship at this point. Can’t we just hitchhike to Neptune?

Good god, man. Whatever happened to the spirit of adventure? We never used to be so risk averse. We used to bear to the left and take chances. Now look at us. (You can use a smoked glass lens, if you prefer.) We’re worried about lack of gravity, lack of oxygen, exposure to radiation – what a bunch of wimps! The only one who’s really not intimidated by any of this is the mansized tuber. (At least he hasn’t said anything about it to me.) Fact is, we have to do these tours on the cheap, what with a recession on and all that. Money’s tight, and our corporate label is even tighter. They don’t even want to budget for us, let alone a ship to carry us in. Looks like we’ll be relying on comped meals again. Ever try to get a free lunch on Uranus? Hah. Take it from me – it’s even less appetizing than it sounds.

As always, our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, had a suggestion. “We should use some kind of rocket ship,” he told us. “Perhaps a multi-stage space vehicle with sufficient kinetic power to propel us beyond the surly bonds of mother earth.” (Sometimes Mitch tries to wax poetic, though it usually comes out sounding more like someone waxing their car.) To translate from Pretentious Asshole-ish, our learned friend had a specific space vehicle in mind. It was based on the Korean design that Dear Leader is so very fond of. Mitch reasoned that, in as much as that type of rocket had successfully put a satellite in orbit just a few short weeks ago, it would probably serve us well. When I pointed out that the thing had actually, well, fallen apart and crashed into the ocean, he seemed a bit irked. It’s almost as if he wants us to crash and burn. Sometimes I wonder about Mitch. What kind of mad science advisor is he, anyway?

Okay… so the Kim Jong Il missile vehicle is not such a good idea. Well, you’ll be glad to know that others in our entourage piped up with suggestions. The quality of same? Well…. not so great. Matt though we should rehabilitate the Robinson’s Jupiter 2 spacecraft. I’m thinking this is a little unrealistic, since it was just a stage set and is now owned by some guy in New Jersey. Then there was that converted treehouse we took up a couple of tours ago. That thing was reduced to splinters over the winter. (I think the plows hit it – terrible thing.) So Marvin (my personal robot assistant) had little to add to this debate. Fact is, he’s thinking about joining the Marvin Depreciation Society, a facebook group devoted to “Marvin the Paranoid Android”, who is a character in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  I think Marvin is having a slight identity crisis over the fact of the other robotic Marvin’s existence, and is hoping the depreciation society will devalue the other Marvin, thereby enhancing his own value. Yeah, it’s complicated. (In addition, he and Professor John Robinson had words the other day, so it could be the Jupiter 2 option is off the table.)

Anyway…. we’ll get to Neptune. I am sure of this. How, we don’t quite know. Details, details. Ah, for the simple life.