Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Deal, no deal.

Here’s my counter offer. You can use the counter any time you want, even when we’re having brunch in the kitchen on alternate Sundays, as per our agreement, volume 3, chapter 5, subsection 4, paragraph 2 (see also sources in footnote 845). Now what do you say?

Yeah, here we are, making a deal with the devil, folks. Yes, I’m talking about those crazy squatters who invaded and occupied the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our makeshift home, sometime during the summer, consigning us and our various hangers-on to the potting shed in the courtyard. We’re attempting to reach some understanding with them, but it’s a bit more complicated than I had imagined. Apparently one of these yahoos is a contract lawyer. Doesn’t look it.

Anyway, our draft agreement for the return of Big Green to the Cheney Hammer Mill is … well, it’s thick as your ass, maybe thicker. Lots of wherefores and what-have-you’s, which is fine, because what have we right now but big fat nothing? There are few disputes that cannot be settled through studied diplomacy, and while none of us are trained negotiators, our friend Anti Lincoln did once play one on T.V.  … or was that Lincoln Lincoln? Not sure I remember – they look almost exactly alike. It’s uncanny! (Speaking of uncanny, when’s lunch?) So … Anti Lincoln has taken up our part in these talks, and we couldn’t be better represented. (Mainly because we have no money. Don’t tell Lincoln.)

You guys can pick the curtains.

Thing is, I don’t know how good a lawyer anti-Lincoln ever was. I mean, the real Lincoln had a sharp legal mind. That makes me suspect that anti-Lincoln is a dullard. Or maybe their opposition to one another is played out along some vector other than human intelligence. I’m thinking about suggesting that anti-Lincoln just make a speech in the meeting room, just to turn things upside-down for a few moments while we rummage through the mill and take anything of value. We could then use the proceeds of our ill-gotten gains to hire a decent lawyer, for cryin’ out loud.

In the meantime, we’re being committed to some punishing legal sanctions. It’s all in the agreement. Like page 17 – Mondays and Thursdays are pants optional days. I say “optional,” but the truth is .. they really don’t want to see any pants.  They just want to laugh at our expense. (And again, mea culpa – I didn’t realize I was spending so much.)

Well, let’s hope we can ink this thing soon. It’s getting cold out here, and the potting shed is, well, being used for pots right now.

Usual Rubbish

Mixology.

Why does it rattle so much? Is that the low end putting out all that noise? Hmmmm … well, there’s only one thing for it. Grease. Lots of grease.

Oh, hi. As is so often my affectation, I will behave as if you just came upon me in a coffee shop or squatting down on the curbside, changing a flat tire. Of course, neither of those things is true in this particular universe, but sometimes we like to act as though we’re interacting on a more personal level and not merely connecting via that series of tubes known as the internet. Okay … that’s a long way of saying, welcome, once again, to Hammer Mill Days, the Big Green blog, where we’re liable to burn half a column just saying hi.  Uh … hi.

We’re at the mixing stage of our current project. What project is that, you may ask? (And well you may.) It’s the next musical episode of Ned Trek, of course, and we’ve been working on a raft of eight songs designed to keep the plot moving forward. Matt and I have been hacking away at these songs for better than six months now, and we’re finally getting to the mixing stage. High time, too. We learned long ago that slow doesn’t necessarily mean good. So if we’re moving slowly, it’s not for goodness’s sake.

Let's get a little more guitar in there.

Mixing a Big Green project is different from most other mixing jobs. We have a peculiar approach to the process, as you might imagine. First we find a stand mixer, like one of those Kitchen Aide thingys you see in yupster kitchens of the 1990s. Then we drop the instruments in one by one, keeping the rotors going at one-quarter speed. Once everything has been dropped in, you add a pint of black coffee and switch the mixer on high. Fair warning – your music is going to slosh out of the bowl and splatter all over your kitchen … I mean, recording studio. Pay it no mind!  Think of the sacrifices made so willingly by those artists who came before you. They didn’t even HAVE electric mixers … they had to do it all by hand, with a FORK. Think about THAT for a minute or two.

Anyway. when you’re done mixing, you pour the album into cordial glasses and serve while it’s still foamy. Then you wait for the accolades to come drifting in. We’re ready, people … are you ready for some rock and roll?

Usual Rubbish

Talking stick.

Hey, wait … isn’t it my turn? No? What the hell – you just had it. I’m not going to listen to another of your drunken yarns, you ne’er do well. Jesus, what a stupid tradition. Let’s start over.

Oh, hi. Well, since we’re living so close to the ground these days, an almost traditional life style you might say, we’ve decided to take on some of the old practices, just to keep in step with our new way of living. Not sure what ancient peoples dwelt in potting sheds … perhaps there was a Potsylvania after all. (Jay Ward may have been onto something!) Nevertheless, we thought it might make the time go by a bit faster to appropriate some old traditions that we’d seen on TV at some point.

One was the talking stick. You know how it works, right? Whoever has the stick can speak to the group, tell a tale, reveal a secret, cop to a fault or instance of wrongdoing, etc. Then they pass it along. Or sometimes they don’t, and you have to grab it from their ass. God damn, I feel like knocking Anti-Lincoln on the head with the thing, he keeps it for so long. Last time he held it upside down while reading the Gettysburg Address backwards. (I didn’t even know he had an address in Gettysburg. Yes … I know.)

All right, Lincoln. You've had that thing long enough.

Anyway, I have the stick, so it’s time for me to spin a tale.  Ahem! Oh ye, oh ye … I will tell of a time before Big Green … a time when we were playing dive clubs under other forgettable names. When we played with our friend and former guitarist, Tony “Ace” Butera, there was a certain configuration of our band that we decided to call “The Space Hippies”; a moniker we gave to these characters in a Lost in Space episode, one of whom was played by Daniel Trevanti. Tony was calling area clubs, trying to book us, and one guy he talked to – a local bar owner – took exception to that name. “I can’t book a band that calls itself the Space Hippies,” he told Tony. “If I did, I’d be laughed out of Utica.”

After that, I wanted us to be called “Laughed Out Of Utica”. I got voted down on that one, though. Probably just as well. Some things sound like better ideas than they actually are. And that’s one of them. Now who gets the talking stick? Or are we on to another bogus appropriated tradition?