Usual Rubbish

The big show.


Good evening, everybody… glad you could tune in. This is Joe of Big Green, and I’m joined here by my bandmate/brother Matt Perry, mad scientist Mitch Macaphee, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant).

We’re running this little web-a-thon to raise funds for our bail, frankly. That’s why we’re broadcasting from this cramped little cell in a Kaztropharian jail. Yes, yes… we landed back in the crowbar hotel here on Kaztropharius 137b  thanks to the efforts of Mitch, here, who took it upon himself to start playing ducks and drakes with the planet’s gravitational field. Long story short, it ended up more drakes than ducks, and a pound of flour on Kaztropharius 137b now clocks in at about five tons. At 37 drachmas a pound… well, you do the math. No one can afford the stuff. Bread factories are closing down. Bread riots have plagued the capital. And as the last pockets of resistance are vanquished, the emperor gazes ruefully down from his citadel and ponders the fate of his… his…

Okay, I got a little far afield there. Suffice to say, the authorities weren’t too pleased by Mitch’s placing of a massive technological thumb on the scale of every commodity on the planet. To say nothing of the Kaztropharians’ self-esteem. They all weigh several tons now, and most are too ashamed to go to the beach. (Of course, here on Kaztropharius 137b, the beaches all front pools of liquid methane… so if you were considering this a possible tourist destination, consider again.) So, into the hoosegow we went. Sad but true. Got any good ideas about getting out of here? Seriously, if you ever did time on this planet and found a tunnel to the nearest launch pad, get in touch with us pronto…. like NOW.

Right then, on to the phones. What’s that? We HAVE no phones? What the hell kind of telethon is this going to be? Oh, I see … no cameras either. Well, that would seem to eliminate the need for phones. Stupid Kaztropharian prison! Okay, so I’m calling out to you surfers out there, right now, over the interWebs, from a great, great distance away (but not so far that we don’t have wifi). GET US OUT OF HERE!

Did you get that? Not sure how I would know. Hey, Matt… you shout for a while.

Political Rants

Win for losing.

Just a few short shots today. Hopefully one of them will approach some acceptable level of accuracy.

Out of work / luck. The House failed to reach the 2/3 majority it needed this week to approve extending unemployment benefits to the millions out of work for an exceedingly long period of time – about 9.6 percent of us, if you count every part-time burger flipper as “employed” (and don’t even count those unemployed but no longer looking for work). Once again, our great lawmakers are playing ducks and drakes with people’s lives, blaming the victim, punishing those who have paid for their bad decisions. Got the number of your congressman/woman? Get on the phone to them and tell them to vote for this sucker, even if it adds to the freaking deficit. This is a question of survival for millions of American families – what’s more important than that?

Gitmo conviction. Justice Department prosecutors have won the case against a Gitmo detainee Ahmed Ghailani, but are losing the propaganda war with respect to civilian trials for terror defendants. I heard ex-governor Pataki on television this week joining the chorus of ersatz conservatives who think evidence obtained under torture is somehow legitimate. Oh, how they value our traditions!

Non-starter. John McCain’s Arizona colleague appears intent on blocking an arms control treaty that any Republican would have been proud of two decades ago. So our agreement with the Russians is dangling by a thread. What sense does this make? Don’t know. What sense does it make to have NATO members sign on enthusiastically to a new “missile defense” regime – i.e., one that the Russians are not intimidated by? I suppose we should follow the money. Missile defense is as close as this or any administration will come to an industrial policy. Military Keynesianism still rocks down in D.C.

That’s all I’ve got, folks.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Find a seat and…


There’s a lot I could say at this juncture, Mitch. A whole lot… but I think I’ll just hold my tongue. Don’t want to spend time in a Kaztropharian jail if you don’t have to.

Oh, hi…. We’ve found our way to planet Kaztropharius 137b with both hands, as you might divine from that last bit of dialogue – the latest venue on our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour of the galaxy. How do you tour a whole galaxy exactly? Quite simple – just jump on the ship before we take off… next time. Right now we’re deep in the middle of nowhere, anchored to a planet that seems to like our music (something in the air, I think, makes it sound better up here… perhaps a hallucinogenic quality).  Kaztropharius 137b (I think I’ve got that spelling correct) is a solid little globe with a nickel core. Molten nickel, I’m told – I can’t say for certain, since I’ve never been there, but it seems a reasonable assumption.  

Our first couple of performances here were well received. The third, well… a little less enthusiastic. Okay, so now we’re borderline in trouble with the law on Kaztropharius 137b, and I’m not entirely sure why. It may have something to do with Mitch’s extracurricular activities while we’re busy on stage entertaining the natives. He and the two Lincolns tend to find their own entertainment, whereas Marvin (my personal robot assistant) keeps close to the band, ready to jump in when we forget a chord, or a lyric, or an entire song, perhaps. (He’s got this teleprompter screen he hangs around his neck for handy messaging… though just lately he seems to be running infomercials on the sucker.)

I don’t know – we probably just wore out our welcome. The Kaztropharians have always been fairly hospitable, even when Mitch made the mistake of sending us back through a time vortex to their Pleistocene era back when we visited here in September 2003. (Or was that their “plastocene” era? Not sure.) They didn’t get particularly sore at us, even if we inadvertently changes a few things about their remote history, like the evolution of certain essential plants and animals. (Hey… somebody should have labeled them. How the hell was I supposed to know?) Now Lincoln, Mitch, and company apparently have found another way to cheese them off.  

Anywho, they want us gone, and who can blame them. Three nights worth of Big Green tunes and pretty much any of you would feel the same way. (Don’t all contradict me at once out there. Come on – throw me a freaking bone!)

Weird ass music since 1986