There once was a planet named Borax, a land of all head and no thorax…. That’s all I’ve got so far. What do you think, stuffed chef? Is it lacking a certain, well, goodness? How about you, plastic ficus tree?

Man oh Manischewitz, I have never seen a place as uptight as this hideous little orb! A big cowboy howdee of thanks to honest Abe Lincoln for booking us into this hell hole. Not for nothing, as they say in the vernacular, but from the moment we crash-landed into their luxurious nightclub, the people who hired us have been… well… more than a little hostile, if you want to know the truth. As I mentioned in my previous entry, we were held at scrootch-gun point as we descended from the wreckage of our space vehicle. A fine how do you do! We were then marched off to a reception area that look suspiciously like the local drunk tank. Ever spent a night in an 11 by 14 foot cell with several disgruntled band members and a drunken Boraxian? Well… just don’t.

The next morning, we were brought before the local magistrate and ordered to explain ourselves. Unfortunately for us, the Boraxians look uncannily like our companion, the man-sized tuber, (except that they have two antenae on their heads with a little purple spark that shoots between them). This meant, of course, that they insisted on addressing all of their comments to tubey, who (as you know) is not fully checked out on the lingua franca of the galaxy. Even sFshzenKlyrn couldn’t get a decent hearing in that courtroom (and he’s such a cosmopolitan fellow of infinite jest and undeniable charm… cretins!). So there we were, standing like statues as the Boraxians babbled incoherently at our mute vegetable companion. This was not going well.

As luck would have it, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as able to act as the man-sized tuber’s “translator,” so we could feed Marvin lines and attempt to steer the proceedings to our favor. How did it turn out? Man, I’ll tell you – magistrates get very touchy during war time. We were stuck not only with damages on the luxury night club, but also a stint of community service… which in this war-torn world meant mostly digging trenches and removing unexploded ordinance dropped the night before. Hey, what can I tell you? They treated us like immigrant labor, giving us the jobs they least wanted to do. None of those tuber-like Boraxians were lining up to yank 500 pounders out of the ground, believe you me. (When I told Mitch Macaphee about the verdict, he turned green as a Martian.) Worse luck, our performance was cancelled, so we were forced to work off the damages with pick and shovel.

So what the fuck. Do any of you know what the code number 76-OX9-NL stands for on a laser guided missile? I know it means turn the cylinder either one click to the left or three click to the right, but I don’t remember which. Mitch! Come on and take a look at this thing, will you? I’ll just finish this trench. Pharaoh… Let my people gooooooo!!!

This is it – truly it. No, I don’t mean just any “it” – I mean the real thing. You don’t know what “it” is? What the hell! Where are you going? I’m talking to you, bwah!

Whoops. Did it again, didn’t I? Sorry… I didn’t mean for anyone outside the confines of our little space RV. How bloody humiliating. I was just reading posi-Lincoln the riot act for his various failings. Oh sure, he may have saved the Union back in the 1860s, freed the slaves, etc., but what has he done for us lately? I’ll tell you what – he’s made a flaming wreck of this tour, my friend, and I mean that quite literally. Never get an ex-president to do a booking agent’s job, that’s what I always say. (Should have stuck to my principles on that one. I wouldn’t be wasting my time right now trying to explain the meaning of “it” whilest stranded on a hostile planet.)

So yeah – we’re stranded on a hostile planet. Reason for this pickle? Simple. Our genius “great emancipator” booked us into the middle of an interstellar conflict, a la Ameniar and Vendicar from the original Star Trek series. Only difference is, these fuckers use real bombs, missiles, lasers, and other assorted anti-personnel devices. Anyway, that FAX Lincoln was waiting for was being sent by one of the antagonists in an interplanetary dust-up that’s been going on for the better part of a decade. The planet BORAX 19 and its near neighbor CALGON were exchanging missiles as we arrived, in fact. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was the first to notice when one skimmed by our break lounge window. The second one, well…. that landed in the galley. Not good.

Now, as you folks out in TV land know, any breach in a spaceship’s hull may present a problem, particularly to those sentient life forms (sFhszenKlyrn excluded) who may be lurking within. You know the drill – air excaping, alarms going off, the ship pitching back and forth (or, at least, the camera does and the people fall left and right in an accordingly dramatic fashion). Well, we got into a bit of that. Luckily at that particular juncture, those of us on the lower deck were trying on our newly acquired astronaut get-ups, which make for jolly good stage gear out yonder. What happened next? Well, as I was cursing Lincoln to high heaven, we followed the trajectory of a popular song from way back when:

Down and down and down we go
Round and round and round we go

From there, we experienced one of those “crash-bang” landings we’ve become famous for over the past few years. The good news is that we were able to find the venue that Lincoln booked us into. The bad news is that… that’s the building we crashed into. Once the fire was out, all we had to deal with was a very angry club owner with an oversized scrootch gun. Vendicarians speak through sign language (just like we do when we’re angry). Kind of hard to tell them you’re sorry when your hands are up.

Two guys walk into a bar, see? Okay… and one of these guys, well… he’s not really a guy, exactly, okay? Follow me so far? Right, so this one guy who’s NOT a guy, he’s got like five heads. And he breathes not so much air as, well, liquid nitrogen. Stick with me, now, it gets better…

Oh, Crikey! I had no idea you were standing right behind me (virtually speaking, of course). And here I am right in the middle of blowing a fairly salty spaceman joke. Stand-up is not my long suit. (Actually, I don’t have a long suit. Kept tripping over the excess pant-legs, quite frankly, so I cuffed the bastards.) Actually, that last aside is kind of how this joke is supposed to go, so now I’ve really blown it. No matter. I’d really much rather talk to you than this impromptu crowd of acolytes that has materialized around me. And when I say “materialized,” that is precisely what I mean. Here on the planet Omicron Rigbox, the natives move by molecular dissolution and refabrication, so they’re always appearing and disappearing at unpredictable intervals. Damned unnerving, if you ask me.

Anyway, we played kind of a small club here – not the usual stadium or theater routine, to be quite frank. I would say this is the Omicronian equivalent of CBGB – kind of rough looking and smelling of cheap beer and urine, mostly. Only Marvin (my personal robot assistant) didn’t seem to be bothered by it. (Even sFzshenKlyrn looked green… and I mean more green than is normal for him.) There was this one spaceman at the bar, dressed in a 1950s-vintage sci-fi astronaut suit, with the fish bowl helmet, the oxygen tanks, the whole nine yards. He was hitting the sauce pretty hard (his fish bowl was half-full of high-balls). Then some party of Andromedans kept requesting David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes”, and we did a kind of cobbed together version of the song just to shut them up. Before we got to the end of the number, old captain fishbowl had gotten hold of one of the Andromedans and was attempting to choke the fucker to death. (In vain, luckily, since Andromedans have three necks. Though, strangely, only two heads.) Punches were thrown. Mayhem ensued. When bottles started landing on stage, we took our leave. 

Apparently, mister spaceman had objected to these lines in the chorus of said Bowie song:

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

You know Major Tom’s a junkie

…and like many a cartoon spaceman from the 1970s, he closely identified with the fictional astronaut from Space Oddity. Touch S.O.B. … touchy crowd, too. Wouldn’t want you to think that we are at all squeamish about rowdy listeners, but you should know that the beer bottles on Omicron are the size of bowling pins, and just about as heavy. (The whole bleeding planet is made of glass, so there’s no shortage of the stuff.) You get hit by one of those suckers, and man… you stay hit. With the help of some of Marvin’s cyborg groupies, we loaded the equipment back on to the ersatz Jupiter 2 space cruiser and buggered off into the ethers, a fist-full of generally non-negotiable glass coins our only reward for the night’s work.  

Not a quality experience, you’ll readily admit. I, for one, had thought we’d moved beyond this sphere of performance venue long ago. Sadly, posi-Lincoln has proven a bit of a disappointment as a tour promoter/booking agent. (He’s beginning to make the man-sized tuber’s cracker cousin look competent by comparison.) The guy is just too ready to say yes when an offer comes his way. He’s got issues, frankly… and I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to work through them with him. (Trevor James Constable is taking a crack at it as we speak, applying some kind of Reichian device I cannot even begin to understand. It reminds me of that glass booth people climb into at a casino where they try to grab $20 bills that are being blown around them by a fan. Disgusting.  

Next stop? Don’t know, frankly. I just hope it’s better than the last one. This GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Tour 2006 is turning out to be one of the lousiest tours we’ve had since our journey to the center of the earth mis-adventure a few years back.  You know — when Marvin and the Morlocks took over the dance floor? Don’t remember? Just as well. Just as well.