Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Record plant.

Is that where the part comes in? Doesn’t seem right, but … okay. Just can’t trust my ears. Not after Cowboy Scat, our last million seller. (We’ve got a million in our cellar.)

Hello, Big Greeniacs. We’re hip-deep in mixing, as you might have guessed. This batch of songs, composed and recorded for the next episode of Ned Trek, is proving to be both challenging and time-consuming. What the hell, we’ve been working on these songs since January, and now it’s … what … May? Really? I should get out more. Anyway … we’ve been at it a long time. This better be good.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – we have recorded enough songs since the release of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick to make three new albums, with some left over for party favors. After we’ve finished these six or seven songs, I’m sure we’ll be nudging 70 recordings over five years. We don’t have much trouble coming up with new material. Monetizing it? That’s another issue.

Got a little job for you.Let’s face it … we’re crappy capitalists. (Or crapitalists, if you will.) Matt has no interest in money or notoriety. As for me, well, I couldn’t sell songs to my mother … and I did ask nicely. In a world that measures quality in terms of the price the product commands, we strain to reach the lowest rung. Our production quality is commensurate with the resources available to us. (i.e., we’re not recording at Big Blue North, even though it’s right up the freaking street.) We are evolving in that respect, but like Issa’s snail, slowly … slowly.

Hell, we can’t even afford proper production assistants. When Big Green needs craft services, we’re reduced to asking Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to carry in a pitcher of tap water and some paper cups. When we try to market or even give away our discs, we either toss them into the street in front of the mill or hang them on the branches of the mansized tuber. (That’s why the neighbors have taken to calling him “the record plant.”)

Okay, well, I have some mixing to do. We’re having biscuits tonight. After that, I’ll do more mixing … of cement for the front walkway. There’s something I’m leaving out, but I’m sure it will come to me.

Usual Rubbish

Near hit.

Okay, I’m going down into the basement. Anyone care to join me? No? Right … off I go, then. If anything dramatic happens while I’m down there, be sure to let me know.

Hello, friend(s) of Big Green. Yes, I’m trying to push the envelope a little bit here. The mail carrier doesn’t like to get to close to this place (in that it’s an abandoned mill), so whenever I mail something, I have to push the envelope down the walk to the curb. Also, we’ve just recorded something like half a dozen songs and someone … someone has to mix them. Even though that means cloistering myself away in a dank and musty basement, churning out the mixes and probably missing that monumental event that’s scheduled for the coming week: namely, the asteroid fly-by or “near miss”.

I put that in scare quotes because, as George Carlin pointed out years ago, what people call a near miss should really be called a near-hit. Semantics aside, I just want to re-emphasize here that THERE’S AN ASTEROID HEADING TOWARDS THE EARTH!!! Am I panicking? Well, I wouldn’t call this state of mind “panic” – it’s not shrill enough. It’s more a kind of agitation … the kind you get when an asteroid grazes your exosphere and puts a scare into your large natural satellite. Am I scared? No more than the man in the moon.

It's close. TOO close.It had occurred to a few of us that we should take the opportunity of this asteroid fly-by to gather some important data on this mysterious visitor from deep space – data that could provide answers to vital questions like, “what color is it?” and “is there a Starbucks there yet?” How would we go about this? Well, we have Marvin (my personal robot assistant). And we have Mitch Macaphee’s model volcano. If we put one in to the other at the right moment, there’s a moderate chance that item A (Marvin) could reach escape velocity and, maybe, navigate his way to the asteroid. And when I say “moderate”, I mean a degree of probability that is, perhaps, calculable if and only if we were willing to make the effort to calculate it. And, well … we’re not. So, Marvin? GET IN THAT VOLCANO!

Okay, so … before you think less of me, remember that Marvin does not need air to survive, nor gravity, nor food or water. He is an automaton. That said, he doesn’t much care for outer space. And in light of the fact that he’s nowhere to be found, he’s not too fond of volcanoes, either.

Usual Rubbish

Big marble.

No, I haven’t seen your camera. Or your enlarger. What the hell do I look like, a custodian? For crying out loud – if I were a custodian, I would be retired by now on a decent state pension … instead of cooped up in this drafty squat house with a mad-man inventor who can’t find his freaking camera.

Oh, hello. You’ve just caught me in the middle of a small dispute with one of the members of Big Green’s retinue. As I am the very soul of discretion, I will refrain from saying which one … Mitch Macaphee. (I didn’t say it, I typed it.) Suffice it to say we have our share of disagreements, and it’s usually over stupid shit. Last week it was some old piece of quartz he had mistakenly left at the local watering hole. By the way he was carrying on, you would have thought it was the only quartz in the world. And I can assure you … there is more quartz out there … more than you ever dreamed of.

Now – this week – Mitch is cheesed off over some photographs he saw on the Internet (though why he wastes his time surfing the web is beyond me … that thing is never going to amount to anything). NASA just posted some shots of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft that make the planet look like a giant marble or close detail of a Nice brushwork.Van Gogh painting. Mitch got a little overwrought when he saw them. He claims that they were photos he took on our last interstellar tour. He started pacing up and down the corridor, grousing about how NASA is always using his material without compensation or attribution. Then he disappeared into his laboratory.

We all hope he’s just sulking in there. I sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in to check on Mitch; he returned with some kind of electronic device attached to his torso. It has flashing lights and makes an odd, whirring sound. Not sure whether or not it’s having an effect on Marvin – he seems to act normally, though I did notice that he now eats corn-on-the-cob on a vertical axis. Could be a coincidence. People change, right? So, too, of robots.

Okay, well … we’re trying not to let the strange sounds emanating from Mitch’s laboratory distract us from our primary task: that of making strange sounds emanate from our recording studio.