Tag Archives: Marvin

Trying to overcome the rule of thumb

November 12, 2021 Joseph

Step back a little bit further – you’re out of frame. Okay, now take a step to the right. That’s it. That’s … no, that’s too far. Go back to the left. LEFT! You know, the side your left hand is on. Oh, Jesus!

Oh, hi. Well, once again I’m called upon to do something that I have zero aptitude for. Namely, that’s taking pictures of our band. We do not have an official photographer, which is a shame … because we had a professional photographer before we even had a drummer. (In fact, he sat in on one of our photo sessions as our drummer.) Then we had a drummer, but no guitar player. But I digress.

Bad self portaits

That said, I’m not averse to learning new skills. Neither am I skilled at learning a new verse. The thing is, I am singularly bad at photography. Ask anybody I’ve taken a picture of. I’m always giving them portrait orientation when they want landscape, and vice versa. (Turns out a lot of people prefer portrait – it’s more slimming.)

There’s another thing, too. I think it’s because of these damn camera phones. Back in MY day (get off my lawn!), camera’s were big, bulky things with a massive lens and hard metal shutter buttons. Now, you hold your dumb-ass phone out in front of you, accidentally pressing three or four soft-touch buttons, and next thing you know you’ve essentially butt-dialed Madagascar.

Thumbs up, baby

Then there’s my honking thumb. The sucker keeps getting in the way of the lens. I spend half an hour setting up a shot, getting all the folks together, polishing Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to a high gloss, trimming the root-mesh off of the mansized tuber’s strange protuberances, and so on. Then I take the shot …. and my MF thumb is taking up a third of the frame.

See, this is why I’m not filthy rich. If I was a shameless capitalist opportunist, I would promote this as my distinctive style, an aesthetic flourish, a unique take on the world. A little hot air can go a long way, my friends. Soon my thumb-obscured photos would hang in galleries and museums all over Europe, and I would have many imitators. But alas, like my clumsy thumb, the money-making gene skipped my generation of Perry. Them’s the breaks.

Xmas greetings ahead

Now, I know we’ve been doing nothing but repeats these past few Christmases. This year will be different …. I hope. Stay tuned. I’m thinking another nano concert is in order. Think of it as our Christmas Pageant. I’ll be the third reindeer on the left.

Usual Rubbish

Dispatch from the string recycling center

November 5, 2021 Joseph

Hey … this one doesn’t have so much twang in it. No, not Tang! Twang! You know – the sound that doesn’t occur when you pluck this dead-ass string you gave me. That’s the stuff.

Yeah, hiya, folks. It’s your old pal Joe from Big Green. No, don’t get up – just relax and have another glass of lemonade. We believe in hospitality here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our longtime squat house. You’re more than welcome to stop by, take a seat, and watch us attempt to record pop music using stone knives and bear skins.

Friends of the band will know that I’ve been framming on the guitar just lately, as seen in my recent nano-concert on YouTube. I’m not a virtuoso, to put it mildly. In fact, I beat that mother like Betty Crocker, even when I’m practicing. That’s why I found myself in need of replacement strings.

The principle of scarcity

Now, with MOST bands, when someone breaks a string, someone else runs up with a fully stringed and pre-tuned spare guitar. The musician need not trouble him/herself with menial maintenance duties and can concentrate on the performance. The music deserves their FULL attention, and that is exactly what it gets.

Well, that’s not the way things work around the hammer mill. When i snap a string, I start looking for some old set I left lying around five years ago, then pirate it for a spare. We simply don’t have a running inventory of replacement strings – that would demand too much in the way of resources. And for all you macroeconomics students out there, that means strings are scarce, real scarce.

Doc takes a detour

Sure, I know what you’re thinking: we have a mad scientist at our disposal. Why not utilize his talents towards keeping our instruments in good working order? Well, aside from the fact that Mitch Macaphee never thinks of himself as part of our entourage, the fact is that he’s skipped town.

Where did he go? Way on down to Texas. He thought he’d slip into the Q-Anon subgroup rally in Dallas to see if JFK junior might be interested in underwriting some of his projects. (Yeah, I know …. I told him.) In the end, though, those Q-folks can spot a fed when they see one. Though I think what probably gave Mitch away was his decision to bring Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with him. Even in a crowd of crazy, that makes you kind of stand out.

The Macaphee bail fund

From what I understand about Texas law, it may be illegal to have an unregistered automaton. If that’s the case, Mitch might wind up in the crowbar hotel. We may have to resort to GoFundMe or the like. Might not be a bad idea. Maybe we can use part of the proceeds to buy some freaking guitar strings.

Uncategorized

There’s another way of saying this

October 29, 2021 Joseph

I could have sworn I left it right here. Sometimes I think I’m losing my nut. And sometimes I think I’m losing my soup. So I’ve got it covered, soup to nuts. What was I saying again?

Hoo, man. Those squatters upstairs must be smoking the devil’s weed once again. I’ve got second-hand smoke brain. Of course, after having spent a third of my life with first-hand smoke brain, this almost rises to the level of clarity. No, there are many possible reasons why I’m thick as a brick today. Here’s one …

Sleep is our friend

Let’s face it. When you don’t sleep enough, you start getting stupid. Ask anyone who’s been up for five days. Rest assured, they will tell you that they cannot rest assured. And if you ask anyone who’s been up for a hundred days, they won’t answer because they’re busy being dead. In short, sleep is obligatory.

Now, many of you know I’m a part time geezer. In fact, pretty much everyone in Big Green is exactly that. My illustrious brother Matt, for instance, seems to expend endless amounts of energy looking after all of nature’s creatures. Does he sleep any more than I do? Probably not. But – and this is important! – he makes more sense than I do. Good thing, too. Anyhow … they say that you need less sleep when you get older. The truth is, you just GET less sleep. How they mix those two things up is beyond me.

Go to the window

Some people lose sleep because they walk in their sleep. The name for this syndrome is somnambulism, or “whooping cough.” (Okay, maybe not, but never mind.) To be clear, this illness not only makes you tired, it can beat the hell out of you. I don’t think that’s my problem, though to be sure I roped Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into testing my slumbering ass.

Here’s how the test worked. Marvin would wait until I was sleeping, then start playing the recording of Leo McKern in the movie Help saying “Go to the window”. The theory was that, if I were a sleepwalker, the power of suggestion would be enough for me to defenestrate myself. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. (It wasn’t for want of trying, however. Marvin ran that thing on a loop for about five hours.)

The power of Z

Leave us face it: the only cure for not getting enough sleep is getting enough sleep. Trouble is, when I try to sleep, I think about trying, then I think about thinking, then I think about thinking about thinking …. oh, damn it. It’s the brain, man! How do you stop a brain? (No one can restore a brain!)

Fortunately, I can put myself to sleep simply by playing my favorite songs. Three or four bars in, and the big Z sneaks up and takes hold. It’s a real crowd pleaser, people.

BIG GREEN