Tag Archives: interstellar tour

Usual Rubbish

Thin broth.

Hey, Lincoln. No, not you, Anti-Lincoln – I mean your positively-charged doppelganger. Lincoln … close that window, will you? It’s freaking freezing in this barn. I don’t care if you’re practicing your big speech to an imaginary multitude in the courtyard. Do it in front of an imaginary open window!

Big GreenYes, here we are … Big Green is once more ensconced in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, where the Buffalo never roamed and where peregrine falcons coexist with Web cams (no lie!). We have re-occupied our decrepit squat house, wresting it back from the yahoos that took possession of it while we were out on our multi-planet tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. A triumphant return … not.  We’ve had better tours, to be sure. (And better interstellar tour buses. That recycled rocket was a real rattle trap from start to finish.)

How did we convince the Cliven Bundy wanna-be’s to lay down their weapons and let us back into our abandoned mill? The same method we always use: soup to nuts, my friends, soup to nuts. We had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) cook up a crock of Servin' it up at the mill.his signature turnip and spare-tire consumme – a staple on our interstellar extended tours – and we offered it to the nuts occupying our adopted home. They couldn’t resist, flocking out to the courtyard to partake of that rare delicacy. While those hayseeds were choking it down, we slipped passed them and locked the front door behind us.

Sure, there was some complaining, a little KA-POW, KA-BLAM! mostly for show, but they eventually mounted their battered station wagons and rode off into the sunset. As their silhouetted figures receded from view, I meant to thank them. What for? I don’t know. Giving us a reason not to have that same soup again as our “welcome home” supper. In fact, if I NEVER taste another SPOONFUL of that BLOODY TURNIP and SPARE TIRE SOUP AGAIN, it will be MUCH … TOO … SOON!

All right, then. I feel much better now. Back to the studio.

Usual Rubbish

Home base.

Wait, I didn’t hear that last bit. Are you saying that we can’t even get in the front door let alone the living quarters? What the fuck. Where is that Goldilocks Planet again? Cygnus?

Oh, hi. Well, we have made our triumphant return to planet Earth, our somewhat disapproving mother, having completed Interstellar Tour 2014 in support of our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And as any of you who travel in interstellar space know all too well, when you get back from a long journey, typically you find that everything has gone to hell in your absence. It’s a severe disincentive to traveling, I can tell you. But what’s the alternative? Hole up in a leaky hammer mill all winter? Not a chance.

Big Green’s loaner rocket touched down in Central New York around 1:00 a.m local time on Thursday, only to find that someone had changed the padlock on the gate to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we have made our home for the past decade or two (because, as Frank Zappa said, all of the bands live together). Different lock, for sure – unlike the old one, this one works, and none of us had the key, so we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to the local constabulary and asked for assistance. (Marvin was promptly arrested for impersonating a robot, which seems unjust and vaguely insulting.)

A tense scene unfolds inside the hammer millOkay, turns out, someone moved into the Hammer Mill during our absence, and they don’t seem eager to relinquish their squatter’s rights in deference to our own. What’s worse is that they appear to be affiliated with that rancher out in Nevada – what’s his name again? You know – that dude that has been grazing his cattle for free on federal land, owes about a million dollars in back grazing fees, and got together a posse of sorts to take up arms and fight off the Bureau of Land Management. The folks in the mill, well … they’re kind of like the Led Zeppelin tribute band version of those Nevada militia dudes. They got the hats, they got the pickup trucks, and … crucially … they got the guns.

Just trying to negotiate entry right now without getting my hair parted by a 30-30 rifle round. That Goldilocks Planet is looking better all the time. I wonder if they have the extraterrestrial equivalent of QE2 up there.

Uncategorized

Dwarfed ambitions.

Interstellar Tour Log: April 10, 2014
On the surface of Dwarf Planet 2012 VP.

That’s it. I am officially declaring our Interstellar Tour over and done with. I’m sick of these stupid slug lines reminding people where the hell we are all the time. Also, we’ve simply run out of places to play here on Dwarf Planet 2012 VP. That’s likely because, aside from a few street-corner fried plantain vendors, there is virtually no commerce here. This planetoid is devoid of performance venues. We actually set up and jammed in a nearby crater just on the off chance that random extraterrestrials would happen upon us. Nothing. Not a sausage.  This is just like back home.

Ah, home. The sainted abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. It’s leaky roof, its moldy basement, its crumbling walls, its heaps of abandoned hammer parts and random knobs of discarded pig iron that I keep tripping over even after having squatted there for more than a decade. I miss that dump, and I’m not alone in that sentiment. Hell, even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) looked a little misty yesterday as he scrolled through photos of the mill on his laptop. Lincoln seems like a man without a rostrum. The mansized tuber, well … he’s a plant. Don’t expect a lot of overt sentiment out of him.

That's the ticket!So, yeah, after months in space, we are ready to take the long trip home, back from the Ort Cloud, back from hastily named space rocks that are hard to classify. Before we go, though, we want to leave a stake in the ground here on Dwarf Planet 2012 VP. My thought is, well, let’s name the sucker after ourselves. Let’s claim it for Big Green, well and truly. We could be subtle about it and just shift the name to 2012 BG. Or we could go all-out and call it Big Greenland (though I was reserving that for a future theme park). We’ve got friends at NASA … I’m guessing this is do-able. (And yes, we have to ask for permission, since we need telemetric data from the space agency to find our way back to the mill.)

Homeward bound, chaps!