Hear that whistling? There it is again. Is that coming from upstairs or…. down… stairs. Mitch!
Oh, hi. Not sure I should be signing in today, in point of fact. No, we’re not too busy with our 
melodramatic posing to blog. We’ve moved beyond that phase entirely. (No money dropped like rain from the sky, so that obviously wasn’t working.) Besides, we were all getting sick of hearing one another. And as you might suspect, the Cheney Hammer Mill is like an enormous cave. Why, it’s the Howe Caverns of the northern half of central New York. (Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. Maybe the Petrified Creatures Museum of Little Falls.) Don’t tell Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that I suggested anything of the sort. He’ll start emoting again!
Well, that’s not all that’s going on around here. There are whispers of some festival this summer. That’s all – whispers. I’m not saying sFshzenKlyrn is going to squirt lighter fluid all over his famed Telecaster and light it up, then mutter cryptic oaths over its burning carcass. I’m not saying that at all. But one never knows what may happen in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the summer. And if we get called onto the big stage, what happens next is a conundrum wrapped in a tortilla. (John used to have a conundrum, but he broke the bottom head on our last live show. Pity that. Now he’s stretched a tortilla over the hole. But I digress… )
There are other things as well. Mitch has had another brainstorm. Here’s how it happened. You know how everyone is complaining about the cost of travel these days. Fuel costs! Baggage fees! It’s enough to drive a painfully normal person (or a T.V. journalist) nearly mad with anger. Well, Mitch has a solution. You see, it seems the diameter of the Earth is a shorter distance than the circumference. And if you tunnel straight through the Earth’s crust, you can get places a hell of a lot faster. W.t.f. – China is only 8,000 some odd miles away, and it’s all straight down. All you need is a parachute for the very end (and something clever to say to that “America’s Energy Companies” lady riding past you in that glass elevator). Only trouble is… all these holes in the ‘Oit is going to make the old girl whistle as she spins.
Hmmmm… Whistle and spin. If they still made records, that would be a good name for one.
The triumph of Joe Arpaio. So now if you’re driving while dark in Arizona (or wearing the wrong limos), expect to be carded in a very serious way. Like… show me your birth certificate. (Note to Obama – don’t go there. Something tells me they won’t accept yours as valid.)
Oh, sorry, you all. (What, am I southern now?) I was just having one of my difficult moments. That’s a new pastime here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. We each get all dramatic and difficult at least half a dozen times a day, preferably taking turns at it so that the ambient noise doesn’t upset the mongooses trying to sleep on the roof when the sun is hottest around midday. (Are you getting all this down?) Why would we take on such an endeavor? Well, as you know (and this is perhaps the reason why you love us), we are not tremendously successful as a band. No heap big contract. No honking piles of ready cash. No adoring fans dogging our every step. And times being what they are, we thought, well…. if we act like assholes, these things will come our way.
stardom. It kind of creates a penumbra of mystery around the umbra of famousness. That’s the shit we need, friend – to be sure.