Usual Rubbish

Have a sandwich.

Where did my paring knife go? Anyone seen it? It was here just a minute ago. Hey, anti-Lincoln — have you seen my knife? You were just in here a minute ago… uh-oh…..

Oh the butt-aches of living in a communal residence! Yes, yes, it is good to be back at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill — our adopted home — after so long an absence, especially given that this may have been the most irritating Big Green tour ever. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, sure, he says that every time, right? Okay, well maybe I did say it after our Journey to the Center of the Earth tour a couple of years ago. And maybe I did say it after our last tour, when we were kidnapped and held against our will on a hostile alien planet. And I grant you — I may well say it again after our next tour, whatever kind of disaster that may turn out to be. But I’m sure I’ll be just as convinced of its suck-acity then as I have been all the previous times. (Now you’re thinking, God, what a pain in the ass this fucker is! Why do I read this blog? WHY?)

Okay, so I’m not a very good mind reader. No matter — here we are, back at the mill, having extracted ourselves from the dreaded Doo-Dah parade (where Big Zamboola was a massive hit, I should tell you). The condemned sign has been torn from our front door. Reprieve from the city? Not quite. I asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to pull it down. It amounts to the same thing in this city. (They won’t get around to knocking this place down for another couple of years, at the very soonest. Other fish to fry.) He will be tacking up a “do not disturb” sign in its place, in hopes that this will discourage the curious (and the creditors) from trying to gain access to the mill as we turn our attention to what has become the most monumental labor of our careers — making an Irish stew without meat or potatoes. (Oh, yeah… and then there’s that album thing we’re working on. Where the hell did we leave that, anyway?)

Great day in the morning, I know it seems like Big Green has spent way too long in production. It’s nearly possible to calculate the trajectory of our latest CD project in terms of geological time. What the fuck, we started planning the sucker shortly after the release of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, back in 1999. Of course, there was some slap-dash songwriting after that, then we started recording the bastard in early 2003. Here it is three years later, and we’re finally to the point of mixing / mastering. Can hardly believe it. My guess is that, in a few more of your earth time units known as months, we will actually have something to show for all of this seemingly pointless activity. (No, Mitch. Not money. That’s your day job, okay?)

So, back to the console. But first the stew. Or perhaps just a sandwich. Where the devil is that knife? No, Anti-Lincoln, I can’t use a gun. Just put it away, now. Slowly…. slowly…. (Hey, out there… somebody call the cops… I’ll have Marvin take down the “do not disturb” sign again…)

Political Rants

Bitter end game.

We’re just days away from the close of one of the most asinine election seasons I can remember (and trust me — I can remember quite a few). Like the Howard Dean “scream” of 2004, the media has latched onto a phrase from a John Kerry speech, the interpretation of which apparently was fed to them directly by Jack Abramoff friend Ken Melman or White House blimp Karl Rove. At this point in the game, can anyone possibly believe that this administration gives a flying shit for the fighting men and women in Iraq? Just this week it was reported that the Pentagon cannot account for thousands of guns, rocket launchers, etc., that we have sent to that sorry husk of a nation. (My guess is that our troops know what happened to them, since they’re being shot at all the time.) And yet these Bush clowns feel confident enough to actually field Kerry’s lame laugh line as a campaign issue. But that’s our corporate media — Kerry botches a joke (so what’s new?) and it’s a story. Bush lets 104 young Americans die pointlessly in Iraq during the month leading up to the election, and it’s ho-hum.

This election is very important to the party in power, and they are pulling out all the stops to keep it from being a total disaster for them. Both parties have dumped millions of dollars into mostly negative advertising here in my backwater hometown district (New York’s “fighting” 24th), but it’s worth saying that I’ve received a different glossy mailing from the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee every other day, each one attacking the Democratic candidate. As someone who’s worked in advertising and done a fair amount of direct mail, I can tell you that this represents enormous sums of (unregulated) money, to say nothing of how much they’re spending on local television air time. Where campaign law is concerned, this is considered legitimate party-building activity, but really all it is is an attempt to depress turnout and build cynicism. Cynicism helps to ensure that the powerful will not be inconvenienced by “meddlesome outsiders”, as Walter Lippman put it — that is to say, people like you and me.

Some of the ads stoop pretty low, as you probably are aware. Bogus shit about triple-X 800 lines and all that. One purports that Democratic congressional candidate Michael Arcuri pushed for the release of a convicted rapist. It features an excerpt from a letter sent to a parole board by one of Arcuri’s assistant DA’s, the text of which noted the convicted man’s role in helping prosecute a murder case, closing with: “Please consider such in your overall determining of whether Thomas should be released on parole.” The excerpt featured in the RCCC mailing? “Thomas should be released on parole.” This attributed to Arcuri. The Republicans are apparently applying the same standard of accuracy to these ads as they applied in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Next they’ll be telling us Michael Arcuri has been building weapons of mass destruction. (They’ve probably already linked him with Osama.) Will the investment pay off? Not if I can help it. Don’t get me wrong — I think the Democrats are about as ineffectual an opposition party as can be imagined. But we need to shake up this one-party state a little bit.

So here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Vote this repulsive Congress out of office. Then turn right around and hold the new Congress’s feet to the fire. Either way, keep at it. ‘Nuff said.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

This is home?

Rubble. Dust rising. The dark silhouette of an ancient structure looms in the background. I can just barely make out its profile… something strangely familiar about it. Deep and foreboding. A frightening presence — home!

Greetings from what might euphemistically be described as “home”. Big Green here, more or less. We have arrived back at the Cheney Hammer Mill after a long, long, loooooonnnggg sojourn in the outer reaches of the galaxy, living the dream (or nightmare, perhaps) of performing for adoring fans (albeit five-legged ones with green antennae and ion-charged grappling hooks for claws). Always falls a bit short for this group, quite frankly… the excitement factor, that is. Sure, everyone thinks it’s “exciting” to be a rock performer and to travel to different planets, make them explode, and all that. Well, when you’ve seen one exploding planet, you’ve seen them all, right? But I digress. (Got to keep talk like that to a minimum — where Big Zamboola comes from, exploding planets are no laughing matter.)

Last you looked, we had somehow talked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into dragging us over land back to our beloved homestead. It doesn’t pride me greatly to say that, yes, he did complete that task — one worthy of John Henry himself. In fact, I’ve been calling him Marvin “John Henry” (my personal robot assistant) for a couple of days now. (Probably won’t stick.) Actually, it wasn’t that bad for our atomic powered automatonic assistant. He just threw it into low gear and tugged us onto the nearest highway (about 40 miles inland, as it happens). We just scraped the rest of the way, sparks a-flying. (Marvin had to stop and take a leak at one point, but otherwise…) Probably made a curious spectacle for our fellow travelers. Reminded me of going “skitching” when we were kids — the renowned winter pass-time of hanging on to the back bumper of a car and dragging along the icy pavement with your boots. Great fun (’til you fell off in front of a logging truck). Don’t try this at home!

Yes, it took a few days, but before any of us were ready, the looming hulk of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill came into view. It was, contrary to our expectations, still standing, but the neighborhood had definitely gone downhill in the past eight weeks or so. Street fires, excavations, random acts of mayhem, some kind of carnival people were referring to as “The Doo-Dah Parade”…. shall I go on? There was so much dust rising it was kind of hard to tell what this strange ritual entailed, but it appeared as if there were three… perhaps four men on stilts. Jugglers, too. So strange was this spectacle, neither the man-sized tuber nor Big Zamboola drew any significant attention when they piled out of our space RV into the middle of the street. If anything, they looked… well… almost normal. So did Lincoln. (Not anti-Lincoln. He just doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere.)

There goes the neighborhood. For chrissake — leave town for five minutes and they choke the fucking place with doo-dah parades! And us with an album to finish… and I mean finish … in the next few months. Where’s my blindfold?

Weird ass music since 1986