I think time may be stretching, or rather, elongating. I don’t know the correct term – get a physicist on the phone. Or call our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee – he may have the answer. All I know is that July turned into August, September turned into October, and so on. I can feel the holidays crawling up my ass.
In any case, you may have noticed that the October installment of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast has been posted, sent out to ipods and other devices, RSS’ed around the globe, and played on somebody’s smartphone somewhere. Better late than never, I always say … but then, I am one of the people producing the podcast, so from another perspective, late may not be better than never. Be that as it may, here is a look under the hood of this latest audio crapfest:
Ned Trek 20: The Shamesters of Quadzillion. In this, the lastest episode of our ongoing bizarre-ass Star Trek parody, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney and his senior officers are captured and held prisoner on the planet Quadzillion, where they are compelled by the resident oligarchs to compete in the political media arena with other mindless also-rans. Guest stars include Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Chief Justice John Roberts, Sheldon Adelson, Charles Koch, and Foster Friess. (Classic Star Trek fan reference: Gamesters of Triskelion)
Song: The Bishop. This is a selection from our 2008 album International House. Matt wrote, arranged, and I believe even mixed this track. A mostly acoustic number with some nice-ish choral parts.
Put the Phone Down. Our conversation this month has a number of minor themes, probably the most prominent of which is a virtual visit from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is apparently hawking his new book so broadly it even got onto our lousy podcast. Matt excoriates me for my technical ineptitude, then talks about his encounter with Egbert Bagg. Kissinger joins us for a song.
Song: North Camp Pasture. One of my songs from our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. This one is about Rick’s hunting camp, which used to bear a remarkably offensive racist name before that became politically inconvenient for the ambitious Rick and his kin. More broadly about the legacy of racism, Jim Crow, in modern American life.
Okay, I know what this sounds like. It sounds like pretty much every month this year, right? January’s podcast got pushed into February, March’s into April, April’s into May, and now June has evaporated. Four shows in six months is not exactly a land speed record, even for Big Green, so what can I say. As we try to raise our production values from the sub, sub-basement where they reside to the dank level of goodness just above that, we are finding that it takes a bit more effort than just plain sucking.
What do you say to someone who sleeps six and a half days a week? WAKE UP! That might work. I’ve got a little problem in that direction, I admit. It’s prompted me to ask Mitch Macaphee to install some kind of alarm clock function in Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He gave me a look that would melt iron, but w.t.f. – why shouldn’t I expect a sophisticated robot to have a level of functionality one might expect from a ten dollar wristwatch? (Mitch told me to go out and buy a ten dollar wristwatch, actually. He has a point.)