What’s that, tubey? Losing pressure? Damn shame, that. And the gravity control is malfunctioning? Criminy. Oh, heck… there goes our navigation console. Reduced to molten lead. Sometimes things just don’t go right in deep space.

Hi, Big Green fans. Yes, well… we’ve finally gotten off the ground, pulling away from the Cancri 55 solar system at 40% of light velocity. Only trouble is, those repairs that our old friend sFshzenKlyrn effected just prior to our departure are turning out to be of somewhat less than the highest quality. Damn if I didn’t buy that service contract! I could have had the butt-crack guy from Sears up hear patching this decrepit ship together. Hindsight is 20:20, as they say. (What is that behind me? Looks like… an eye chart!) Feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse out here in deep space, as it happens, our life-giving oxygen seeping out into the void, our hands flailing uselessly as our legs float towards the ceiling. This is just the sort of trip that almost makes you miss commercial air travel. (At least they have free air.)

Okay, so sFshzenKlyrn fucked up… so he should be held accountable, right? Well, that would be fine, except that he’s not on board. Remember, now… he’s a creature from the planet Zenon as well as our perennial sit-in guitarist, and his ancestors spawned in an environment quite different from that of our humble home planet (Earth, for those who don’t know). He zips from solar system to solar system, galaxy to galaxy, like a mall brat on those flashing roller-sneakers (except not as noisy… and no cell phone). Once we stoked him into an inebriated state with multiple servings of flapjacks, he effected his faulty repairs and promptly flitted off into the ethers, perhaps taking in an intergalactic concert promoted by his Svengali brother, blFmondZagnitz, the Don Kirshner of the Small Magellanic Cloud. (If such a thing can be imagined…)

Whether or not it was entirely sFshzenKlyrn‘s fault is not the issue here. The issue is, well… how to breathe without air, how to keep your feet on the deck without gravity, how to navigate without controls. Vexing issues, indeed. Recognizing this to be the case, your friends in Big Green duly called upon the talents of all those within earshot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was dispatched to mend the hull, in as much as he doesn’t require oxygen (though he prefers an oxygen-rich environment… question of personal taste, really…). We asked Big Zamboola to arise from his slumber and lend us a little spare gravity. (In as much as he is a planet unto himself, he does have a little of that mysterious force to spare.) Lincoln – still insufferably pleased with himself over his appearance on a late-night sixties talk show – was disinclined to lend a hand, but his evil doppelganger (anti-Lincoln) – still pissed off over Lincoln’s appearance on a … well, you know – set himself to reconstructing our navigation panel using whatever was leftover from last night’s dinner (which was, itself, leftovers).

So, my sweaty palms grasping the makeshift celery-stalk helm controls, I will bid you adieu for the nonce. Marvin? Man the half-eaten watermelon. Looks like turbulence ahead.

Back it up a bit. Bit more. Bit more. Good, good, that’s it. Now make it smaller… much smaller. No, not that way. I mean by material transmogrification. No, I did not make that up. Just ‘cuz you don’t know how…

Bickering, bickering. Seems like that’s all we ever do these days. That and sleep. No more oldies, though – we’re off that particular plantation, thanks to the somewhat blurry-minded ingenuity of one sFshzenKlyrn, the creature from Zenon and Big Green‘s perennial sit-in guitarist. How did we get him to use his enormous etheric brain? Elementary use of flapjacks – quite simple, really. Read last week’s blog entry. Finished with it? Take your time. How about now? Jeezus, you read slow! Too much Internet, young lady – it’s rotting your brain! Got it now? Good, good. That’s right – I threatened, and then I delivered on the threat. Our sFshzenKlyrn got a tall stack of buckwheat flapjacks just after I posted. Am I a liar? Huh?

What happened next? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. All hell broke loose, that’s what. Old sFshzenKlyrn reared up like an angry elephant, his eyes (or rather, protuberances that might be mistaken for eyes) flaring like torches, his voice a deafening lash of white sound, his pseudopods pounding the tarmac until it splintered like early winter’s ice on a marsh pond. Then something unusual happened (truth is, that’s what sFshzenKlyrn always does when he gets good grub – irks the shit out of the neighbors back home). Our Zenite friend floated off towards the remains of our space craft and began making himself useful. Quite unusual. Of course, he had to displace Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who had been mounting a quixotic effort to repair the ship by himself. (Trouble is, Marvin doesn’t have super powers. I should leave him outdoors in lighting storms more often. What doesn’t kill you gives you super powers.)

Strong word of advice – never let a Zenite guitarist work unattended, especially when he’s speeding along on flapjacks. We thought we’d take an hour or so to stroll into town and, I don’t know, watch the denizens of Cancri 55.3 go about their lives. We became particularly engrossed in a display of lava lamps in a shop window, and by the time we returned, sFshzenKlyrn had grown to the size of a large-ish house… or a small-ish office building. Predictable side-effect of the flapjacks, of course. Trouble was, he had been so focused on his work that he had actually busted through the ceiling bulkhead of the spacecraft, having ballooned to forty times his normal size. Still working though. Oh sure, he wrecked our ship again, but you gotta’ admit – he’s a professional. (And as you know, professionals come in all shapes and sizes.)

Okay, but listen… that isn’t even the weirdest thing that happened to us this week. Just this past Tuesday, Lincoln and anti-Lincoln somehow got themselves on the Jack Parr show. Very popular in this corner of the universe, along with other sixties pop culture items. Gotta ask how they managed it… when they get back from the Monterey Pops Festival…

Circle Game? Done it. Keep the Ball Rollin’? God, yes. Lodi? Oh, Lord… yes. Fucking hell… Wait, I’ve got it. “Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce!” No? Come on – it’s from 1964, damn it!

What a slog. Yes, my little friends… Big Green is still here, out on the third planet of Cancri 55, only just discovered and already giving me a major, major pain in the ass. I’m telling you this right now – these space aliens have an insatiable appetite for sixties songs (which they call… “new” music). And when I say insatiable, I mean they want new shit all the time. You can not play the same song twice down here, friends. No repeating, no pre-fab set lists… just new, new, NEW. Even with a forty-year backlog, quite frankly, we are running out of stuff to play. (Note to you bar bands down there on Earth: Don’t come here. They will work you to death!) Unfortunately, we reeled through the good stuff in the first few days, worked through the bubble-gum cheese, and are truly into the dregs at this point. (As you can see, we’re starting to pull out the T.V. cartoon theme songs.)

While Matt, John, sFshzenKlyrn and I have been working the highly demanding crowd, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been devoting all of his energies to piecing our damaged space craft back together. Not an easy task, especially with his meager talents. Mind you, sFshzenKlyrn could probably knock this task off in a lazy afternoon, him being a transcendental extraterrestrial being possessed of the sum of all knowledge, good, bad, and indifferent. Trouble is, I really think he likes it here. He’s a big fan of sixties music, and since time means nothing to him, he could easily spend the next seven eons here without graying a hair. (Truth be known, the eons will not have been so kind to us.) I have been trying to think of how to incentivize sFshzenKlyrn to take over the spacecraft repair work, but so far no soap. Well… there is one thing that would work, but I would never, ever, go there. Not after the last time. It just wouldn’t be right. And it could be all any of our lives are worth to even try it again. Nope, not right at all.

Bob Seger? They want to hear Bob Seger songs? I’ll do it!

Do what? Well… we all know that sFshzenKlyrn has a little addiction issue with flapjacks. (As do we all, of course.) This is more than a mere compulsion. Some of you may remember what happened the last time he went on a major binge. If so, I need not remind you… but from the very earliest days of our association with the man from Zenon, the dreaded half-stack of buckwheat flappers has been like a gun to his oddly misshapen head. The first time we witnessed a sFshzenKlyrn bender, the space critter grew to the size of a fifty story building. That was after a rather large serving, I will admit – with the right kind of controls, we may be able to induce a pavlovian response out of him… perhaps induce him to use his enormous talents to get us off this musically-challenged cinder. And perhaps be incinerated in the process. Hmmm…

Bob Seger? Chance we’ll have to take! Oh, sFshzenKlyrn my old friend! I’ve got a little snack for you!