Mmmmm, burnt toast. The smell of over-heated coffee. That cool splash of orange juice in your lap, while strips of fakin’ bacon belch greasy black smoke from an unattended frying pan. Yes, breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. (Is that the fire alarm I hear? Seems like the wrong pitch….)

Greetings from the lower deck (galley area) of the reconstituted J-2 space RV, our home-away-from-home planet during this GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Big Green Tour 2006. We’re just in the middle of a particularly toxic breakfast, so bear with me. No budget for an on-board chef, unfortunately. We’ve press-ganged the man-sized tuber into doing the job. Probably not the best pick, but we figured that, since this is an all-vegetarian voyage (much to the chagrin on Mitch Macaphee), it might be appropriate to have a certified organic vegetable doing all the cooking for us. Besides, old tubey has to carry his own weight somehow. Can’t spend the whole trip sitting in his specially designed space terrarium, keeping himself humid and well-mulched. (Or can he?) So we got him a second-hand chef’s hat and made him watch the Food network in his little glass room for a few hours… and voila. Instant chef.

Still, it’s actually kind of relaxing to just sit here and let an overgrown yam burn our breakfast snausages, especially after the frantic week we’ve had, framming away uselessly on celestial objects no longer considered to be planets. (Mmmmmmm. Burned snausages….) Beats the hell out of me how these hellacious hunks of interplanetary rock and ice ever got themselves in the running to be considered planets in the first place. What the fuck were those rocket scientists thinking? Anyhow, that nightmare is over, and we are drifting lazily through the asteroid belt, meandering our way home, lonely as a cloud of dark matter. Why so nonchalant? Lots of reasons. We’re close to the end of our tour. We’re almost finished with our sophomore album (now in the mixing phase). And … ah yes… we’ve blown our ion-drive engine to kingdom come. Nearly forgot that one. (Details, details!)

How, you ask, could such a thing happen? Well, ahm gon’ tell yuh. As you know, our friend Quality Lincoln was dispatched from his position as official booking agent for this tour, owing to some rather unforgivable oversights on his part (I won’t go into all the ugly details… he knows what he’s done). He has been replaced by the inestimable Big Zamboola (a former planet himself, you know), who was serving as our navigator. That post was taken over by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who had been putting in his duty as our helmsman these past couple of weeks. Since posi-Lincoln was semi-familiar with concepts related to aviation and had personally commanded several observation balloons in his day, we though he might sit in at the helm for the last dog leg of the tour. Big mistake. BIIIGGGG mistake! My guess is that he’s more of a steam locomotive guy than an ion-drive spacecraft guy. He apparently thought he had to get up a good head of steam to pull over the top of Saturn. Then there was a bang. Then a boom. Then another bang, but not the same as the first one. Finally… the sound of a dog barking. (I’m still working on that one.)

And so, here we are. Adrift. Total rupture in the reactor vessel. No forward thrust whatsoever. Auxiliary power only. Bottled oxygen. And a vegetable cooking our meals. Is this any way to end a tour? What sayest thou? I can’t hear you. (Oh, sure…. the transmitter’s out and all. )

First there is a planet, then there is no planet, then there is. Or was that mountain? No, no… that’s planet, sayeth the booking agent. And we feasted on crow, and feces, and fillet of sole (the kind that’s glued to the bottom of your sneaker). And there was much rejoicing… not!

Well, friends… it’s only when you start thinking you’ve been fucked every way from Tuesday that they come up with three or four other days of the week you’ve never even heard of. What the hell am I talking about? Well, I’m gonna’ tell yuh. (Whoops… I’m reverting to my Warren Oates impersonation…. give me a minute. Mmmmph. Okay, that’s got it. Ahem. ) Now you may recall my account of how Quality Lincoln, our de-facto (or as we now call him, “de-FUCK-to”) booking agent, signed us up for a package tour of every planet in the solar system. And in his infinite wisdom, he accepted one flat fee for all performances on (and this is important) EVERY planet in said solar system. Then of course, moments after the toner was dry on the faxed contract, those mother-fucking snakes (i.e. space scientists) on the mother-fucking plane (i.e. planet Earth) went and added not one, not two, but THREE new planets to the solar system, obligating us to play twelve worlds for the price of nine. Remember? (Sure you do – it’s one or two entries down… have a look.)

Okay, now I will revert to 1970s-80s teenspeak to relate the subsequent developments. So we’re like, “What the fuck, Lincoln, we’re getting totally ripped off, here!” And he’s like, “No way, dude. This is great exposure.” And I’m like, “Way, Lincoln! How are we gonna’ make money here?” And he gets all, “I got it worked out, dudes… honest.” (All right…. you’ve suffered enough. ) So Lincoln suggested that we start with the outer most planets in the solar system – Charon, Pluto, and that other one… Sedna, or whatever. He said that those planets were so cold and sparsely populated that there was no way in hell we would spend more than one or two nights on any of them. Well, I should have thought better of this when I saw Marvin (my personal robot assistant) emit a strange green glow and start klanging like a steam engine. But did I listen? Did I? Now ask yourself… do I ever? (You’ve got your answer.)

Okay, so we lit out for Charon first and played three of the most bone chilling sets I can remember. We were set up on this glacier of frozen nitrogen, playing for a gaggle of stalagmite-looking shards of ice that looked… well… indistinguishable from the rest of this desolate landscape. Marvin froze in position like the tin man on the Wizard of Oz. Even sFshzenKlyrn — a denizen of deep, deep space with no body heat to speak of — was moving slower than what was common for his guitar-slinging, bound-about stage routine. Still, we turned up the thermostats on our rented spaceman suits and ground our way through the tunes, jumping up and down to keep the blood in our toes, wrestling with hypothermia while our audience stood in rapt silence. (Okay… just silence. Frankly, I think they’re really only icicles sticking out of the glacier.) Bad gig, man. And then Pluto…. you think Charon is bad, book yourself into a club called “The Cooler” on Pluto. (My shoes are still frozen to that stage, actually.)

Okay, so here’s the kicker… the thing that makes this GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Big Green Tour 2006 such a total bust. Now those fucking scientists are thinking about lopping Pluto and Charon off the end of the solar system again. So all that frozen-ass performing was for nothing! And that’s why we’re eating crow, sole, feces, etc. “Play the outer planets first,” he says! Blast you, Lincoln! There are going to be some changes around here, mark my words!

Let’s see… five from twenty-seven is twenty-two. Carry the nine. Multiply by the square root of Chicago. Now check your work. Wait for it, wait for it… okay. Pencils down!

Jeezuz. Just try to get a straight answer around here! I even get prevarication with math questions, for chrissake. Let me tell you, friends – this is one disgruntled shipload of bandmates, and it isn’t just because we spent the better part of the last week clearing unexploded ordinance from the minefields of Borax 19, a grisly little world locked in mortal combat with its near-space neighbor, the planet Calgon (not to be confused with the laundry detergent). No, sir… we’ve just come to a very disturbing realization, thanks to the Univac-like brain of Marvin (my personal robot assistant). It’s just a good goddamn thing we insisted on taking him along with us on this tour. (Actually, he insisted, but what the hell… the effect is the same).

Anyway, here’s what we’ve worked out in mid-voyage. It seems our agent-of-the-week, former president Lincoln, signed us up for one of these package promotional tours where we agree to play every planet in the solar system for a single, flat fee. Old “honest” Abe was real proud of himself on this one – we actually stood to make some money on the deal (unlike every other venue he’s booked so far). Of course, while we were away, slogging through insufferable engagements in some of the galaxy’s most undesirable backwaters, the Earthbound science community decided to reclassify several asteroid-like bodies as planets.So now, instead of playing nine planets for X level of remuneration, we’re going to have to perform on twelve planets for the same bloody money. That’s like getting docked 25% before you even show up. (We haven’t even had the chance to suck yet!)

Okay, so ask me if we’ve groused at Lincoln yet today? Now ask me again. Answer? Stand back from the monitor for a moment, this may be a little loud. FUCKER!!!!! Ahem… I feel much better, now. Yes, we’ve had a few words with the ex-president. Suffice to say we have provided his tour management career ambitions with complimentary tickets to Ford’s Theatre. (Can you say “useless?” Very good.) As a consequence of this monumental blunder, I have asked all hands to work out a formula by which we might actually come out of this 12-planet marathon with more than a few cents in our pockets.

So far, Mitch Macaphee’s formula is way out in front — we create holographic images of ourselves and project same onto several stages at one time. Same Big Green, same boss tunes, same ludicrous side-kicks… only a whole lot thinner. Like maybe one zillionth of a micron thick. (Hey, you know what they say… you can never be too thin.)

Anyway, this is how our vaunted GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Tour 2006 will conclude — with a relentless march to the sea, a la Sherman. Who was, of course, the commanding general of Lincoln’s army. Whose wife was Mary Todd Lincoln. Whose middle name is also the first name of Todd Rundgren. Who must surely have something in common with Kevin Bacon. Blast you, Lincoln!

luv u,

jp