This is it – truly it. No, I don’t mean just any “it” – I mean the real thing. You don’t know what “it” is? What the hell! Where are you going? 
I’m talking to you, bwah!
Whoops. Did it again, didn’t I? Sorry… I didn’t mean for anyone outside the confines of our little space RV. How bloody humiliating. I was just reading posi-Lincoln the riot act for his various failings. Oh sure, he may have saved the Union back in the 1860s, freed the slaves, etc., but what has he done for us lately? I’ll tell you what – he’s made a flaming wreck of this tour, my friend, and I mean that quite literally. Never get an ex-president to do a booking agent’s job, that’s what I always say. (Should have stuck to my principles on that one. I wouldn’t be wasting my time right now trying to explain the meaning of “it” whilest stranded on a hostile planet.)
So yeah – we’re stranded on a hostile planet. Reason for this pickle? Simple. Our genius “great emancipator” booked us into the middle of an interstellar conflict, a la Ameniar and Vendicar from the original Star Trek 
series. Only difference is, these fuckers use real bombs, missiles, lasers, and other assorted anti-personnel devices. Anyway, that FAX Lincoln was waiting for was being sent by one of the antagonists in an interplanetary dust-up that’s been going on for the better part of a decade. The planet BORAX 19 and its near neighbor CALGON were exchanging missiles as we arrived, in fact. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was the first to notice when one skimmed by our break lounge window. The second one, well…. that landed in the galley. Not good.
Now, as you folks out in TV land know, any breach in a spaceship’s hull may present a problem, particularly to those sentient life forms (sFhszenKlyrn excluded) who may be lurking within. You know the drill – air excaping, alarms going off, the ship pitching back and forth (or, at least, the camera does and the people fall left and right in an accordingly dramatic fashion). Well, we got into a bit of that. Luckily at that particular juncture, those of us on the lower deck were trying on our newly acquired astronaut get-ups, which make for jolly good stage gear out yonder. What happened next? Well, as I was cursing Lincoln to high heaven, we followed the trajectory of a popular song from way back when:
Down and down and down we go
Round and round and round we go
From there, we experienced one of those “crash-bang” landings we’ve become famous for over the past few years. The good news is that we were able to find the venue that Lincoln booked us into. The bad news is that… that’s the building we crashed into. Once the fire was out, all we had to deal with was a very angry club owner with an oversized scrootch gun. Vendicarians speak through sign language (just like we do when we’re angry). Kind of hard to tell them you’re sorry when your hands are up.
preconditions for a cease fire in Lebanon. As foreign ministers and diplomats haggle at the U.N., people continue to die in the Levant. Israel attacked a hospital in southern Lebanon, capturing what it described as Hezbollah fighters but what a Hezbollah parliamentarian said were civilians, several of whom were in their 50s. The Hezbollah guy challenged Israel to show the people they captured, but quite frankly, the same demand might be made regarding any of the thousands of detainees Israel holds without charge. Now the IDF is pursuing a push up to the Litani, strafing little fishing boats south of Beiruit, while Hezbollah is promising to respond by targeting Tel Aviv.
Even as the middle east is drenched in blood (Iraq, of course , continuing its slide toward the total anarchy Bush terms “freedom”), there was also time enough to crow about Fidel Castro’s health problems, as the key Bush constituency of Cuban exiles celebrated in Miami and major news outlets pondered what Washington’s “options” might be. My hometown newspaper ran an interesting little chart that compared various socio-economic statistics in Cuba and the U.S. – a comparison in which Cuba fared quite well, actually. Pretty remarkable when you consider the difference in available resources and the fact that Cuba has been under embargo for decades. Far more instructive would be a similar comparison between Cuba and, say, Guatemala or Honduras, since that is the model that America’s political culture would like to see Cuba adopt, post-Castro. Troubled as Cuba’s living standard is, it’s not anywhere near as miserable as that of its neighbors, whose economies are totally supine to U.S. economic power. Even so, the press opines how Cuba is a “nation ripe for economic change” and how its “enormous pent-up consumer demand” and 97 percent literacy rate make “Cuba’s workforce… hungry to work and full of potential.”
Oh, Crikey! I had no idea you were standing right behind me (virtually speaking, of course). And here I am right in the middle of blowing a fairly salty spaceman joke. Stand-up is not my long suit. (Actually, I don’t have a long suit. Kept tripping over the excess pant-legs, quite frankly, so I cuffed the bastards.) Actually, that last aside is kind of how this joke is supposed to go, so now I’ve really blown it. No matter. I’d really much rather talk to you than this impromptu crowd of acolytes that has materialized around me. And when I say “materialized,” that is precisely what I mean. Here on the planet Omicron Rigbox, the natives move by molecular dissolution and refabrication, so they’re always appearing and disappearing at unpredictable intervals. Damned unnerving, if you ask me.
Andromedans kept requesting David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes”, and we did a kind of cobbed together version of the song just to shut them up. Before we got to the end of the number, old captain fishbowl had gotten hold of one of the Andromedans and was attempting to choke the fucker to death. (In vain, luckily, since Andromedans have three necks. Though, strangely, only two heads.) Punches were thrown. Mayhem ensued. When bottles started landing on stage, we took our leave. 
Not a quality experience, you’ll readily admit. I, for one, had thought we’d moved beyond this sphere of performance venue long ago. Sadly, posi-Lincoln has proven a bit of a disappointment as a tour promoter/booking agent. (He’s beginning to make the man-sized tuber’s cracker cousin look competent by comparison.) The guy is just too ready to say yes when an offer comes his way. He’s got issues, frankly… and I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to work through them with him. (Trevor James Constable is taking a crack at it as we speak, applying some kind of Reichian device I cannot even begin to understand. It reminds me of that glass booth people climb into at a casino where they try to grab $20 bills that are being blown around them by a fan. Disgusting.