What time is it? Say what? Can’t be that yet, can it? Seems like we just got up… and now it’s night fall. Oh, right. Small planet. Fast rotation. Got it.
Trouble with being on the road is you never know what town you’re waking up in. Or what planet. That’s bad enough when you have a set itinerary, but with Big Green… mother of pearl! Even when you’ve got your wits about you, it’s hard to figure out where the hell you’re playing. Like this little planetoid Urich our pilot drove us into. It’s not on any astronomical charts. It’s as yet undiscovered and unacknowledged by the scientific community. So, when we walk out on stage to do a few numbers, what the hell do we shout out to the crowd of hideously misshapen extraterrestrial concert-goers? “Helllooooooooo……. whatever!” Got any suggestions? Let us know, damn it. It’s disorienting, and I’m about as disorientated as anyone needs to be. (Except maybe the man-sized tuber… only he’s got a terrarium.)
Well, we did manage to find an opportunity to perform here on the mysterious planet Neuton. The inhabitants seem particularly fond of early 20th century calliope music and something they call “juggling”, which is a kind of anti-gravity technique involving multiple objects that don’t ordinarily float in mid-air without encouragement. But that’s 
just culture shock, I guess. There are more practical concerns. For instance, transportation is a serious issue. About the only way you can get anywhere on this planet is either by cramming into a tiny vehicle with about 20 Neutonians in full traditional garb, or getting on a tiny one-wheeled conveyance and riding to your destination across a stretched cable. (They throw a spotlight on you while you’re doing it. It’s very unnerving.) And since when are there elephants on other planets? I’ve always thought of them as the quintessential Earth animal, but I guess I’m wrong. (Here they do tricks. Curious thing.)
We performed in this large canvas enclosure propped up with enormous poles. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) didn’t like this at all – in fact, he refused to step inside, apparently taken with the impression that it might fall 
down on his polished brass head. We finally convinced him to join us on stage, though he would only agree if we gave him a barrel to stand on and a small theatrical umbrella to hold absurdly over his head. (Only tubey seemed to enjoy the spotlight.) Later that evening, we were invited to the local magistrate’s home for what was ostensibly a “meet and greet” event, during which an appalling assortment of Neutonians came up to us in their absurdly oversized footwear and performed their traditional greeting ritual, which involves shoving a sacred custard pie in each of our faces, then baptizing us with purified holy water sprayed out of a decorative lapel flower. This gets a little old… especially when the magistrate invites his entire extended family.
Hey – you got to pay to play, right? Just ask Blagojevich. And now that we’ve divested ourselves of all custard, perhaps Urich will be so kind as to GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE…….!
Forgive me, friends. My brain is addled. I’ve asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to correct my copy from here on in. It’s been a long week on the road, let me tell you. Typically I make it to the end with all of my faculties intact, but this was the week we ended up on the mysterious (and as yet undiscovered) planet Neuton. It’s a clever little globe, friends. Knows better than most how to conceal its identity. Hides behind red giants and blue dwarfs – quite ecumenical in that regard. We were diverted there by an unexpected event… a bout of binge drinking on the part of our new pilot Urich Von Braun, who took up with that party animal (in a manner of speaking) sFshzenKlyrn to slog their way through a quart and a half of Zenite lager. Not sure if you’ve ever had any of that particular micro-brew – all I can tell you is that, if you have had it, you may not remember.
started flailing his arms, let out a loud moan, and to our dismay, directed the nosecone of our second-hand Soyuz spacecraft at what he thought was a small companion star of Betelgeuse, hoping to pierce it. (It was a dagger, he claimed drunkenly, pointed at the heart of the fatherland. Who were we to argue otherwise?) Before any of us were half-aware of the danger we were in, old Urich had driven us clear around the perimeter of that obese, red star and brought us down into what we now know is the mysterious undiscovered planet Neuton. (No, it’s not where they make the fig bars. That’s clear over to the other side of galaxy. Entirely different globe, my friend.) The landing was hard but survivable. Mitch lost a tooth, but it was one he had just invented last Thursday, so he wasn’t too broken up about it.
forbidding world. The man-sized tuber was the first out the hatch. Yea, it was cold and dank out there. (More dank, really. Good hefty sweatshirt was enough to beat the cold. But that dankness… man!) We followed the tuber onto the surface and surveyed the area – a desolate boulder field, devoid of life, dimly illuminated by a mellow sun. Then on the not-so-distant horizon we spotted the silhouettes of some kind of sentient life forms. They had sensed our presence, apparently, and began moving closer. As they approached, we could begin to make out their hideously misshapen forms. Ghastly! Nauseating! But, I wondered…. do they listen to pop music? And use currency?
Green here, on the as-yet undiscovered companion (or “planet”) circling the star Sirius, once again preparing for lift-off after a relatively successful string of gigs. What do I mean by “relatively successful”? Well, that’s a somewhat qualified term, I will admit. Let me put a finer point on it. In the Big Green performance book, “success” is defined in degrees of survivability. “Relatively successful” means that few of the bottles tossed at us from the first five rows actually connected with their targets. Fortunately, with someone like sFshzenKlyrn in the group, there’s a significantly lower likelihood of being hit by missiles of any kind, since our Zenite friend is himself a celestial object of indeterminate volume and mass, surrounded by complex magnetic fields that act like an invisible shield, like a protective blister of some kind. Beer bottles just bounce off that sucker, and sometimes vaporize like pyrotechnics. It actually adds interest to the show. (Though I think sFshzenKlyrn is going a bit too far by encouraging people to chuck shit up on stage. Not cool, sFshzenKlyrn… not cool.) 
about 27 light-years worth of extra travel. (Our budget is totally blown – don’t tell our label, for chrissake.) Much as we encouraged him to use the navigational console, Urich prefers flying by the seat of his pants, as it were – a dubious approach to interstellar travel, in my humble opinion. There were a couple of occasions when Marvin (my personal robot assistant) attempted to draw Urich’s attention to one relevant read-out or another, but he was consistently rebuffed. It could be Urich has a problem with mechanical beings… or it could be he can’t see anything through those thick goggles. One way or the other, he’s clearly a pilot who takes no direction from anyone, not even his employers. (You’d think that would lend us some influence, at least. We’re not real good at this “boss” business.)
tour, trust me – Mitch can really bury his nose in a project. Crikey, he spent the better part of a decade developing the technology that brought us Marvin, and Marvin’s I.Q. is more or less on par with that of the man-sized tuber. (You’ve heard of artificial intelligence? Marvin is artificial stupidity. Nearly as complex, but not quite.) So even with all of his quirks, Urich was a good hire.