Tag Archives: interstellar tour

Usual Rubbish

It’s a gas.

Back to the ongoing saga of Big Green’s Interstellar Tour 2013-14: The Cowboy Scat edition…

Interstellar Tour Log: January 27, 2014
Exiting orbit of KOI-314c

Big GreenJust in the process of attempting to reach escape velocity from KOI-314c, the strangely Earth-like planet recently detected by Earth scientists. Have to say, it was a bit disappointing. For one thing, we couldn’t find any inhabitants. Well, of course there was a vast ocean of liquid methane that might have contained some life forms, but I wasn’t going to be the first to volunteer to check it out. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) got a good look around; no clubs in site. Not even a Denny’s. What the hell is Earth-like about that? Next trip, we bring Mitch Macaphee.

Interstellar Tour Log: January 29, 2014
Entering asteroid belt (Yaaah!)

Asteroids! We’re taking a swing back through our home solar system, on our way to Sirius, and our trajectory appears to run straight through the dreaded asteroid belt that lies between Mars and the outer planets. Sure, we’ve done this before, but not without a trained pilot (or at least someone who plays one on t.v.). Anti-Lincoln claims to have some driving skills, but I think that’s more of the buckboard cart variety. Not a lot we can do with that, frankly, unless one of these asteroids would make a decent location for a re-shoot of High Noon or Showdown at the OK Corral.

Interstellar Tour Log: January 30, 2014
Unforgiving surface of Ceres, the alpha asteroid

Damn it, Marvin!Yes, you read that right. We got a bull’s eye on Ceres, the big brass buckle of the asteroid belt. I’m beginning to understand what’s happening here. Our rented space vehicle has a very primitive voice-activated computer guidance system, a bit like the blue tooth set in my car. When I tell my blue tooth, “call Oscar,” it starts dialing the number of someone in Madagascar. Well, we told our guidance system to take us to Sirius, and it took us to freaking Ceres. Christ on a bike!

Note to astronomers: Anti Lincoln decided to have a little barbecue while we were visiting, so if you see some unexplained vapor emanating from Ceres, yeah, that’s us.

Usual Rubbish

Another Earth?

Interstellar Tour Log: January 20, 2014
Somewhere in deep space

There are some things you can accomplish quite well in space (e.g. mid-air cartwheels) and others, well … not so much. I’m afraid our January podcast is an example of the latter.

Big GreenThose of you anxiously awaiting the new episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, take heart: it’s in the works, though Matt’s interplanetary breathing apparatus is getting in the way of his doing a credible talking horse imitation. (You’d think it would be a positive boon, but no.) We’re hoping this problem will be eliminated when we arrive at the gassy, Earth-like planet known as KOI-314c, which – I’m guessing – has a perfectly breathable Earth-like atmosphere. (Hey, they said it was Earth-like. That’s all I need to hear. We’re playing there.)

Interstellar Tour Log: January 23, 2014
Somewhere else in deep space

Well, we’ve arrived on  KOI-314c, and if this is Earth-like, things have gone seriously downhill back on Earth since we left.  We sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out there to gather environmental data (and hunt down some performance venues), and after twirling a few antennae and waving his arms about, he gave us the following run-down on a little strip of paper that might have emerged from a 1920’s vintage stock ticker:

  • Surface temperature: 104 degrees centigrade
  • Length of year: 23 days
  • Atmospheric composition: hydrogen and helium

Looks harmless enoughI wouldn’t say this news was received with a total lack of enthusiasm. Anti-Lincoln was just dying to get out there and take a dip in one of the nearby liquid methane pools. And for sFshzenKlyrn, the guitarist from Zenon, this sounds like a tropical paradise. There are some issues, however, should we be asked to do an outdoor concert. First, my Kork SV-1 would probably melt at 104C. Second, the helium in the atmosphere would make us all sing like those munchkin dudes from the lollipop gym.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) And if we are contracted to play again next year, that’s just 23 days from now.

Guess we’ll consider this conundrum from inside our rented spacecraft for the time being. Maybe even get a chance to finish the podcast. We’ll see, eh?

Usual Rubbish

Learning Capellini.

I’m sure I’m not the first to make this observation, but I’ll say it anyway. There’s something compelling about Capella (the Goat star). What it compels us to do is another thing entirely.

Big GreenBooked into another series of club dates on the fourth stone out from Capella, my Big Green colleagues and I have tried to make the best of it. It hasn’t been easy. For one thing, the locals here are not very fond of country music, and since our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, is largely made up of mock-country numbers,  that puts a damper on things. We’ve had to reach deep down into the song bag to keep these rock-like creatures happy. (And by that crack I don’t simply mean that they like rock music. I mean, they are themselves animate rocks, with stony arms and legs and eyes like geodes. But yes, unsurprisingly, they prefer rock music.)

We asked sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, to remove his cowboy hat for the duration (he tries his best to look the part when we go all Rick Perry) and light into some of our heavier numbers from days past, like Why Not Call It George?, one of Matt’s more rocking ruminations on the scientific method. Here’s an excerpt of the lyric, last verse:

Continental drift can be reversed
great tumblers shift
and Pangaea can be reclaimed
After me it can be renamed
Why not call it George? Call it George, after me

Do you speak Capellini?Always a favorite of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who would very much like to name a continent after himself, particularly if said continent was the result of an experiment gone horribly right.

Well, sFshzenKlyrn turned in a searing solo that sent the rock-like denizens of Capella 4 into fits of geological ecstasy. There was waving and shouting, and if I spoke Capellini, I could tell you what they were saying. Their wallets speak louder than words, however, and they were grateful enough to drop some serious stone on us before the end of our week-long engagement. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a built-in assay lab, and he tells me that the currency rocks on Capella four are mostly feldspar, with traces of iron. Not exactly a fortune, but we’ll leave that to be made elsewhere.

Next stop: Earth-Mass Gassy Planet KOI-314c