Into the pod.

Hey, why wouldn’t I want to explain our podcast? You think it speaks for itself? It’s only a little podcast; it needs someone to run interference. Not so hard to understand.

Did you listen to this month’s podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, the May 2013 episode? I’ll take that as a no. Still, you might be missing out on something extra … well … strange. Wouldn’t want to be the only one who didn’t partake, right?

This was a relatively lively episode, full of bright sallies of wit and infinite jest. Here are some highlights (and no, I don’t mean the magazine most often perused in dental office waiting rooms):

NED TREK X: A PLEA FOR ARMS – Our latest installment of our increasingly possible podcast dramatic series, Ned Trek, featuring Captain Willard Mittilius Romney, commander of the starship Free Enterprise, and his talking dressage horse / first officer Mr. Ned. This time out, Willard leads a landing party back to one of the outerspace backwaters he attempted to convert during his callow youth. Special guest star is …. (that would be telling!)

PUT THE PHONE DOWN – Matt and I talk through a broad range of topics and pull news from the pages of the October 1941 issue of Country Gentleman. Care for a Lucky, anyone? It’s the cigarette recommended by 6 out of 10 doctors.

SONG: Surprise Party – This recording was made back in 1987 on a four track Tascam portastudio casette machine; another deep archival bit, rescued from a murky past. Written to mark someone’s birthday.

SONG: Don’t Tell Rick – First posting of a rough mix of our new song, Don’t Tell Rick, which will accompany the release of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. We are having second thoughts about all the stuff we said about Rick, obviously, and well, he’s got guns and rangers. Any questions on that?

SONG: Dinos – We’ve played this number before on the podcast. This has got to be the most ridiculous recording we’ve ever made, but you be the judge. I simply can’t say anymore.

Hey, may … download it. It’s freakin’ free, which means you, too, can afford it.

Getting warmer (redux)

We’ll be in the nineties again tomorrow. A couple of days ago, we had a tornado in upstate New York. Again. Lots of trees and limbs down, again. Flooding again. A tree crashed through my cousin’s roof and into his family room. The rain came down in sheets – literally a white-out out my back window. This is not the first really big storm we’ve had this season. And summer isn’t even here yet.

TornadoesNow, I’m not complaining. Upstate is nothing like Moore, Oklahoma, not by a long shot. But there can be no doubt that the weather here and everywhere else in the country is getting more severe. There is far more energy behind some of these storms than is normal. It takes a few mornings of driving through wreckage to drive home the notion that this may be the new normal. This may be the best we can expect in the years ahead. That is a disastrous prospect.

I have to think that, after there have been more Super Storm Sandies, more Moore-sized tornadoes, we will not take note of them in the same way anymore. We can’t reverently mark something that takes place every week, every day. Just today, multiple funnel clouds are plowing through Oklahoma City, St. Louis, and points east. Tomorrow they’ll be in Indiana, Ohio. After that, the front gets to us, and we start the cycle again.  When we’ve been through this fifty times, will it still be news?

Someone out there, perhaps reading this, will be thinking, there’s another crackpot blaming every storm on global warming. Heard it many times, and it’s still groundless. No one is suggesting storms are caused by global warming. But the higher CO2 content in the atmosphere – now 400 ppm – fuels these storms, packs them with more energy than they would have otherwise. For decades, while we might have been working to prevent this, we’ve sat around, clinging to these comforting myths, tossing up vacuous excuse after vacuous excuse. The time for that is gone.

Now we have to deal with the consequences of our inaction. And it’s not going to be easy, my friends. Wish I could say different.  

luv u,

jp

THIS IS BIG GREEN: May 2013

Big Green cries mayday with the tenth installment of Ned Trek, three Big Green songs, discussion of killer chickens, and more. Go clockwise round the pole.

This is Big Green – May 2013. Features:

1) Ned Trek X: A Plea For Arms;
2) Put the phone down: Matt and Joe rip the news straight out of the October 1941 Country Gentleman;
3) Song: Surprise Party, by Big Green;
4) Talk of Joe’s Korg Poly 800;
5) Scandalrama;
6) Song: Don’t Tell Rick, by Big Green;
7) Matt’s encounter with a cute kller chicken;
8. DEC talk and movies with exclamation points in the title;
9) Song: Dinos, by Big Green;
10) Once around the pole and out

Weird ass music since 1986