That’s not a legitimate use of member funds. Take if from me – that would be considered, I don’t know, embezzlement or something. Don’t do it. Put the money DOWN!
Whoops, sorry. I didn’t know anyone was listening in. Well, this is kind of embarrassing. Actually, I was just giving a small piece of advice to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with regard to what is acceptable and unacceptable when one is contemplating organizing a major religion. Not that I know all that much about it, but I think I know more than Marvin does, and I think that gives me “tell you something right now” rights and privileges. Especially with a bloody robot. (Don’t tell him I said that – he’ll start sulking again.)
Um, yes, you heard me right. Marvin’s other money making schemes have all been huge disasters. So he’s decided to take the Pat Robertson route and start a back-porch religion operation. Of course, being a deductive thinker (and not terribly inventive for a robot, I must say), his idea was lifted from a favorite (of his) episode of the original Star Trek television series featuring a tribe of space hipsters (or “groovsters”) who hijacked the Enterprise to travel to a planet called “Eden.” Often considered one of the most impossibly lame and pandering segments of a generally ludicrous show, it offers some unintentionally hilarious musical numbers in a psychedelic rock vein. I give it one thumb up and one thumb…. Whoops… lapsed into television review mode. Cancel! Cancel!
Sheesh – now who’s the robot? (I guess that still would be Marvin.) Marvin was looking for a religious movement that would be, well, sticky enough to draw some fanatical adherents even in this forgotten backwater of Central New York. Kind of a back stoop movement, if you will. Marvin would do the organizing, with a little help from anti-Lincoln, who is himself a pretty effective fanatic. (Thing is, I don’t know if he can get the space-age guitar thing just right.) I am a bit skeptical, but even so… it could kind of work. Here you have a millennial movement whose goals – hijacking a fictitious space vessel and driving it to an equally fictitious planet – can never be realized, only hoped for – worshipped, if you will. Pretty much the stuff successful religions are made of. And hell, Marvin’s got his first converts: Lincoln, Big Zamboola, and the man-sized tuber.
Now if he can just keep his claw out of the till. Always the hard part. (Just wait till he starts broadcasting!)
Sensitive artists, these rock musicians. Well, let me qualify that. I’m actually referring to the individuals, human and non-human, who hang around with rock musicians. I’m talking about your man-sized tuber, your Marvin (my personal robot assistant), your Mitch Macaphee, your Lincoln and anti-Lincoln, etc. We of Big Green proper (brother Matt, brother-in-law John, and I) have asked these hangers-on for suggestions on where we should take the next interstellar tour. Of course, this is a bit like placing 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters and hoping for Hamlet to pop out of one of the carriages. Still, you do get lucky from time to time, and just today – I swear – one of them made a suggestion that made sense. Actual sense, in a wholly non-ironic way.
I’m sure you think we should find better things to do with our time than idly ponder the finer points of our tour itinerary when, in fact, it is totally out of our hands… and into the calloused paws of our promoter, Admiral Gonutz (ret.). Well, if you want to know the sad truth…. we don’t. This is the stuff that music biz is made of, friends. A little bit of playing and a whole lot of waiting around to play, as Keith Richards put it many long years ago. I personally prefer John Lennon’s response when someone asked him how he liked France, and he said something like, it was a car and a plane and a car and a room and a car and a plane. With us, it’s more like a skateboard and a rocket and an airless void and a volcano and an ocean and a steamboat and an ambulance and a mental ward.
Whoops. Didn’t know anyone was browsing this side of the Web. Hope you’re doing well. Bit embarrassing, this, actually. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) recently got his prehensile claws on one of those super-shmeensy video cameras. He says he had to go broke to get it…. he had to go broke the department store window, that is. (Cue laugh track. I said cue it, Marvin! Do I have to do everything?) Anyhow… now Marvin has to video everything, committing our sullen, sordid lives to Quicktime day in and day out. What he’s doing with it all I can only guess. Posting it to YouTube? Burying it in a hole in the yard? Feeding it to Big Zamboola? Lawd knows.
What else has been going on? Well, a little bit of music making, one might say. There’s been some talk of a tour, it’s true – another interstellar excursion of indefinite duration and itinerary. Perhaps an inner-earth tour, though the mansized tuber may ask to be excused from that one. (As a root vegetable, he has spent more than enough of his life underground.) I have also heard mutterings about a possible performance in upstate New York, at an area music festival ’round the Mill somewheres. Can’t say more at this point. I’ll listen a little harder to see if the mutterings are generally in favor or opposed to the suggestion. Then I will amplify them with my trusty typing fingers. From their mouths to your ears – that’s my pledge. (I’m just a freaking middle man!)