Tag Archives: Marvin

Making perfect stock for kindling wood

December 10, 2021 Joseph

Cold as hell in here. Haven’t you got that fire going yet? Put some of that kindling around the bottom and let’s see if that catches. Okay, okay – nice. Hey … why does that kindling have an F-hole. MARVIN!!

Hello, friends. Well, winter is upon us again. This is the time of year when Big Green most deeply regrets squatting in an abandoned hammer mill. (Sounds like a good album name: Big Green most deeply regrets …. or not.) Squatters don’t get energy hookups. They just flat out ignore us, man. It’s like we’re not even here …. which is good if they’re the cops, but not so much if they’re delivering pizzas. (If cops start carrying pizzas, we’re all in trouble.)

The ghost of El Kabong

Okay, so we rely on Marvin (my personal robot) for many things. This week, it’s tending the fire. So I told him to go get some kindling wood so he could get the damn fireplace started. He came back with an odd but acceptable assortment of maple, rosewood, and birch fragments. I thought, “Hey, what the hell – maybe he’s not such a fuck up.”

Well, now I have to eat my epithets. I had pictured Marvin rooting through the neighborhood, picking up discarded pieces of wood. Turns out, he just made his way into our rehearsal space, smashed up some of our instruments like El Kabong, and brought the remains in to be incinerated. Okay, so … let me say that again. My robot assistant smashed an old guitar and a violin so he could have kindling for a fire.

You get the kindling. I'll just go over here for a while.

For the greater good

Hell, you know, this reminds me of a song. It’s called Greater Good, one of them there Big Green songs from the 1980s. I played a live version of it on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN a couple of years ago. Anyhow, there’s part of the lyric that goes something like this:

There’s something lurking there behind your eyes
It sees in me perfect stock for kindling wood
It’s sentimental for those bad old days
when sinners were murdered for the greater good
It wants to burn me for the greater good

Ironically, I think the guitar Marvin smashed up may have been the one I wrote that song on. Somehow he was trying to make the metaphor come true. That’s not something I strongly recommend when it comes to rock songs. Such a practice could make life even more confusing than it is now, and damn it, life is confusing enough!

What is the plan, man?

While we’re trying to keep warm over here in upstate New York, I imagine you are making plans for your holiday revelries. We are doing the same, in our own fashion, bit by bit. I’m still planning a holiday nano concert – just you wait and see. Marvin is looking forward to his annual gift of light machine oil. Mansized tuber is hoping for some more plant food. Lincoln, well …. reinstatement, perhaps, in true Trumpian fashion.

Got interesting yuletide plans? Share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Get them to me early enough, and I’ll write a lame song about one of them, chosen randomly. Because that’s the way we roll.

Usual Rubbish

There’s a thank you in this somewhere

November 26, 2021 Joseph

Over the river and through the woods to Macaphee’s house we go. Isn’t that the lyric? Got it wrong again? Damn. Okay, here goes. Over the river and through the woods to Trevor James Constable’s house we go.

Oh, hi. Didn’t think anyone would be reading the blog on Thanksgiving weekend, but here we are. My guess is that you’re trying to get away from your annoying relatives, especially uncle Sully, quaffing his gin, telling you all about it. That’s the kind of holiday we know and love – food and family conversation, both thoroughly indigestible.

What’s cooking, bad looking?

Let’s talk about the fare. People have this mental picture of what the traditional Thanksgiving feast should be like. Naturally, it is a concoction of many different stories and fables. The harvest feast shared by English settlers and Wampanoag people in 1621 was likely a diplomatic gathering of sorts. Who the hell knows what they ate? Corn, maybe. Freaking pine cones.

Yeah, well … we don’t go in for these fables. None of that in the old Cheney Hammer Mill. Of course, we’re all vegetarians, except for one or two vegans. Actually, Anti-Lincoln is a pescatarian, though in a very narrow sense, as he only eats one kind of fish. That’s the ancient Coelacanth, and frankly, they’re a little thin on the ground in Central New York. Most of the ones you find up here are fossilized. Sometimes they’ve got a little friend in the rock with ’em.

A thankless job

I don’t want to even suggest that Big Green is exemplary of bands in general. Contrary to popular 1960s belief, the groups don’t all live together, as Frank Zappa suggested so many years ago. And no, we don’t all gather around a big walnut table on Thanksgiving day and break bread together in fellowship. Ridiculous suggestion. The table is oak, and it used to hold woodcutter’s tools.

One of us has to cook. I usually leave that task to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). That’s because you can write up a menu, insert it into his scanner, and he will attempt to make it real. That’s the good part. The bad part is that he makes it real bad. The tofurkey is like tire rubber from the 1930s. The stuffing came out of an abandoned easy chair. And don’t even get me started on the sweet potatoes.

I know you’re supposed to thank the chef, as well as the author of the meal, but it seldom happens around this dump. Next time Mitch invents something, let’s hope it’s edible.

Incoming: annoying holiday mail

You know how people you hated in high school sometimes send a letter around the holidays telling you what they did all stupid year? Well, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar. Just a festive photo of the high times we’re having this Thanksgiving, so as to lord it over all you losers who are spending the day alone with a can of spam.

Of course, like anyone on facebook, I had to embellish the image a bit. Hard to gloat when you live in an abandoned hammer mill. All of our photos turned out hideous, so here’s a shot of me at the Macy’s multi-promotional parade, brought to you by EveryCorp(R) – slogan: “If it were in our inventory, we’d sell you ass.”

Usual Rubbish

Can Christmas be that far behind?

November 19, 2021 Joseph

I don’t think that’s the right box, man. I keep the glass bulbs in the box marked “winter gloves” and the tinsel in the box marked “soup can collection”. That box is marked “Christmas decorations”, and that’s where I keep my soup can collection. And my winter gloves.

Oh, hey. I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in. No, I’m not being anti social. I just don’t want to spoil the surprise. We’re working on our Christmas pageant, and we’re hoping that no one will guess this year’s theme before we finish our parade floats. I’ve had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run out for some more plaster of Paris. What’s that, Anti-Lincoln? Are you sure? Damn. Marvin went to Paris.

What’s in a theme?

I can tell you what the theme won’t be this year. Anti Lincoln wanted to do a reconstruction-themed Christmas. I told him that we simply couldn’t do it justice. Also, our crazy neighbors upstairs would come at us with torches for advancing what they’ve been calling Critical Race Theory. Much as I like the idea of pissing them off, I think we’ll let that one rest.

Then there was the mansized tuber’s idea. Do you really want to hear it? It’s kind of predictable. He had some goofy notion that you could find a fir tree, chop it down, haul it through the snow and back to the Mill, then poke the trunk into a base so that it stands upright. What then? According to tubey, you hang little baubles and lights from the carcass, and when you wake up Christmas morning, they’ll be a surprise under the dead tree. Crazy shit.

Living in Christmas past

Hey, in all honesty, we’re getting older. And when you get on in years, there’s a tendency to look back a bit. We’ve got a kind of storied Christmas past, which is to say that we’ve got a lot of stories about it. Of course, there’s 2000 Years To Christmas, our first album. Then there’s all those Xmas episodes we did on THIS IS BIG GREEN. And don’t forget the fractured carols we sing when we’re drunk, in any season.

Suffice to say, we’ve got a lot of material. If we actually opt for a pageant this year, there will be singing. No dancing, though – unless you count what Marvin does when he updates his operating system. Will there be a full band performance? Well …. not likely. But you may see me sitting in front of a cheap camera, strumming hesitantly on a guitar.

Our pledge to you, dear listener

One promise: I won’t play any Cowboy Scat songs. That’s final. That wouldn’t be Christmas-y. (If you want more promises, I’m taking requests – just use the comment form, below.)